Philosophy: epistemic anxiety

“Huh?”

That’s what I heard from one friend when I asked her, “don’t you ever feel… I don’t know… epistemic anxiety?”

Apparently it’s quite common, even if us common folk don’t know exactly what it is. Here is how it works:

Say you’re on a plane to London and the passenger next to you asks, “do you know when the plane will land in London?” You look at your itinerary and confidently reply, “yes, 3pm.”

The passenger thinks for a moment, and then asks, “do you know that we won’t be delayed?”

“No.” is your initial reaction, “of course not. How could I know that?”

But, then you realize, how do you know that the plane will land at 3pm?

The point is to illustrate a principle called “closure.” In it’s bare logical form it goes like this:

1) Subject (S) knows proposition (p)
2) S knows that p implies another proposition (q)
3) therefore S knows q

In many cases this makes perfect sense. Say, you know that a red stove-top means it’s really hot. You know that something being really hot implies that it will burn you (implies is just fancy talk for an if…. then statement – if something is really hot, then it will burn you). Therefore you know that a red stove-top will burn you. Got it?

But what if someone raised a question about the (q) – the implication of the knowledge you thought you held? Then wouldn’t you also doubt your (p) (your supposed knowledge that the plane will land at 3pm)?

This is epistemic anxiety. It is meant to show that once we begin to look upon claims with skepticism, that not much of what we claim to know (if anything) can survive free of the ever-growing avalanche of doubt that should ensue. After all, all of our beliefs have implications, right? And all of these implications could be openned up to doubt and perhaps shown to be false.

But maybe “closure” is false. Maybe we can “know” things like “the plane will land at 3pm” even though we don’t know that “the plane won’t be delayed.” Sounds strange though, right?

hm….

In any case, this is one of the riveting aspects of Epistemology I have the pleasure of learning about this semester. Just thought I’d spread the love 🙂