Chapter 5

The Problem of the Criterion

i
"The problem of the criterion" seems to me to be one of the most
important and one of the most difficult of all the problems of phi-
losophy. I am tempted to say that one has not begun to philosophize
until one has faced this problem and has recognized how unappealing,
in the end, each of the possible solutions is. I have chosen this problem
as my topic for the Aquinas Lecture because what first set me to
thinking about it (and I remain obsessed by it) were two treatises of
twentieth century scholastic philosophy. I refer first to P. Coffey's
two-volume work, Epistemology or the Theory of Knowledge, pub-
lished in 1917. 1 This led me in turn to the treatises of Coffey's great
teacher, Cardinal D. J. Merrier: Criteriologie generale ou theorie gen-
erate de la certitude.2
Mercier and, following him, Coffey set the problem correctly, I
think, and have seen what is necessary for its solution. But I shall not
discuss their views in detail. I shall formulate the problem; then note
what, according to Mercier, is necessary if we are to solve the prob-
lem; then sketch my own solution; and, finally, note the limitations
of my approach to the problem.

What is the problem, then? It is the ancient problem of "the dial-

lelus"—the problem of "the wheel" or "the vicious circle." It was

61
 62 • PROBLEM OF THE CRITERION

put very neatly by Montaigne in his Essays. So let us being by para-

paraphrasing his formulation of the puzzle. To know whether things
really are as they seem to be, we must have a procedure for distinguish-
ing appearances that are true from appearances that are false. But to
know whether our procedures is a good procedure, we have to know
whether it really succeeds in distinguishing appearances that are true
from appearances that are false. And we cannot know whether it does
really succeed unless we already know which appearances are true
and which ones are. false. And so we are caught in a circle. 3
Let us try to see how one gets into a situation of this sort.
The puzzles begin to form when you ask yourself, "What can I
really know about the world?" We all are acquainted with people who
think they know a lot more than in fact they do know. I'm thinking
of fanatics, bigots, mystics, various types of dogmatists. And we have
all heard of people who claim at least to know a lot less than what in
fact they do know. I'm thinking of those people who call themselves
"skeptics" and who like to say that people cannot know what the
world is really like. People tend to become skeptics, temporarily,
after reading books on popular science: the authors tell us we cannot
know what things are like really (but they make use of a vast amount
of knowledge, or a vast amount of what is claimed to be knowledge,
to support this skeptical conclusion). And as we know, people tend
to become dogmatists, temporarily, as a result of the effects of alco-
hol, or drugs, or religious and emotional experiences. Then they claim
to have an inside view of the world and they think they have a deep
kind of knowledge giving them a key to the entire workings of the
universe.
If you have a healthy common sense, you will feel that something
is wrong with both of these extremes and that the truth is somewhere
in the middle: we can know far more than the skeptic says we can
know and far less than the dogmatist or the mystic says that he can
know. But how are we to decide these things?

How do we decide, in any particular case, whether we have a genu-

ine item of knowledge? Most of us are ready to confess that our be-
liefs far transcend what we really know. There are things we believe
that we don't in fact know. And we can say of many of these things
that we know that we don't know them. I believe that Mrs. Jones is
 PROBLEM OF THE CRITERION • 63

honest, say, but I don't know it, and I know that I don't know it.
There are other things that we don't know, but they are such that we
don't know that we don't know them. Last week, say, I thought I
knew that Mr. Smith was honest, but he turned out to be a thief. I
didn't know that he was a thief, and, moreover, I didn't know that I
didn't know that he was a thief; I thought I knew that he was honest.
And so the problem is: How are we to distinguish the real cases of
knowledge from what only seem to be cases of knowledge? Or, as I
put it before, how are we to decide in any particular case whether we
have genuine items of knowledge?
What would be a satisfactory solution to our problem? Let me
quote in detail what Cardinal Mercier says:
If there is any knowledge which bears the mark of truth, if the intellect does
have a way of distinguishing the true and the false, in short, if there is a criter-
ion of truth, then this criterion should satisfy three conditions: it should be in-
ternal, objective, and immediate.
It should be internal. No reason or rule of truth that is provided by an ex-
ternal authority can serve as an ultimate criterion. For the reflective doubts that
are essential to criteriology can and should be applied to this authority itself.
The mind cannot attain to certainty until it has f o u n d within itself a sufficient
reason for adhering to the testimony of such an authority.
The criterion should be objective. The ultimate reason for believing cannot be
a merely subjective state of the thinking subject. A man is aware that he can re-
flect upon his psychological states in order to control them. Knowing that he has
this ability, he does not, so long as he has not made use of it, have the right to be
sure. The ultimate ground of certitude cannot consist in a subjective feeling. It
can be found only in that which, objectively, produces this feeling and is ade-
quate to reason.
Finally, the criterion must be immediate. To be sure, a certain conviction
may rest upon many different reasons some of which are subordinate to others.
But if we are to avoid an infinite regress, then we must find a ground of assent
that presupposes no other. We must find an immediate criterion of certitude.
Is there a criterion of truth that satisfies these three conditions? If so, what is

To see how perplexing our problem is, let us consider a figure that
Descartes had suggested and that Coffey takes up in his dealings with
the problem of the criterion. 5 Descartes' figure comes to this.
Let us suppose that you have a pile of apples and you want to sort
out the good ones from the bad ones. You want to put the good ones
 64 • PROBLEM OF THE CRITERION

in a pile by themselves and throw the bad ones away. This is a useful
thing to do, obviously, because the bad apples tend to infect the good
ones and then the good ones become bad, too. Descartes thought our
beliefs were like this. The bad ones tend to infect the good ones, so
we should look them over very carefully, throw out the bad ones if
we can, and then—or so Descartes hoped—we would be left with just
a stock of good beliefs on which we could rely completely. But how
are we to do the sorting? If we are to sort out the good ones from
the bad ones, then, of course, we must have a way of recognizing the
good ones. Or at least we must have a way of recognizing the bad
ones. And —again, of course—you and I do have a way of recognizing
good apples and also of recognizing bad ones. The good ones have
their own special feel, look, and taste, and so do the bad ones.
But when we turn from apples to beliefs, the matter is quite differ-
ent. In the case of the apples, we have a method—a criterion—for
distinguishing the good ones from the bad ones. But in the case of
the beliefs, we do not have a method or a criterion for distinguishing
the good ones from the bad ones. Or, at least, we don't have one yet.
The question we started with was: How are we to tell the good ones
from the bad ones? In other words, we were asking: What is the
proper method for deciding which are the good beliefs and which are
the bad ones—which beliefs are genuine cases of knowledge and
which beliefs are not?
And now, you see, we are on the wheel. First, we want to find out
which are the good beliefs and which are the bad ones. To find this out
we have to have some way—some method—of deciding which are the
good ones and which are the bad ones. But there are good and bad
methods—good and bad ways—of sorting out the good beliefs from
the bad ones. And so we now have a new problem: How are we to
decide which are the good methods and which are the bad ones?
If we could fix on a good method for distinguishing between good
and bad methods, we might be all set. But this, of course, just moves
the problem to a different level. How are we to distinguish between a
good method for choosing good methods? If we continue in this way,
of course, we are led to an infinite regress and we will never have the
answer to our original question.
What do we do in fact? We do know that there are fairly reliable
ways of sorting out good beliefs from bad ones. Most people will tell
you, for example, that if you follow the procedures of science and
common sense—if you tend carefully to your observations and if you
 PROBLEM OF THE CRITERION • 65

make use of the canons of logic, induction, and the theory of proba-
bility—you will be following the best possible procedure for making
sure that you will have more good beliefs than bad ones. This is doubt-
less true. But how do we know that it is? How do we know that the
procedures of science, reason, and common sense are the best meth-
ods that we have?
If we do know this, it is because we know that these procedures
work. It is because we know that these procedures do in fact enable
us to distinguish the good beliefs from the bad ones. We say: "See —
these methods turn out good beliefs." But how do we know that they
do? It can only be that we already know how to tell the difference
between the good beliefs and the bad ones.
And now you can see where the skeptic comes in. He'll say this:
"You said you wanted to sort out the good beliefs from the bad ones.
Then to do this, you apply the canons of science, common sense, and
reason. And now, in answer to the question, 'How do you know that
that's the right way to do it?', you say 'Why, I can see that the ones
it picks out are the good ones and the ones it leaves behind are the
bad ones.' But if you can see which ones are the good ones and which
ones are the bad ones, why do you think you need a general method
for sorting them o u t ? "

We can formulate some of the philosophical issues that are involved

here by distinguishing two pairs of questions. These are:
A) "What do we know? What is the extent of our knowledge?"
B) "How are we to decide whether we know? What are the cri-
teria of knowledge?"
If you happen to know the answers to the first of these pairs of
questions, you may have some hope of being able to answer the sec-
ond. Thus, if you happen to know which are the good apples and
which are the bad ones, then maybe you could explain to some other
person how he could go about deciding whether or not he has a good
apple or a bad one. But if you don't know the answer to the first of
these pairs of questions—if you don't know what things you know or
how far your knowledge extends—it is difficult to see how you could
possibly figure out an answer to the second.
On the other hand, i f , somehow, you already know the answers to
 66 • PROBLEM OF THE CRITERION

the second of these pairs of questions, then you may have some hope
of being able to answer the first. Thus, if you happen to have a good
set of directions for telling whether apples are good or bad, then may-
be you can go about finding a good one—assuming, of course, that
there are some good apples to be found. But if you don't know the
answer to the second of these pairs of questions—if you don't know
how to go about deciding whether or not you know, if you don't
know what the criteria of knowing are—it is difficult to see how you
could possibly figure out an answer to the first.
And so we can formulate the position of the skeptic on these mat-
ters. He will say: "You cannot answer question A until you have an-
swered question B. And you cannot answer question B until you have
answered question A. Therefore you cannot answer either question.
You cannot know what, if anything, you know, and there is no pos-
sible way for you to decide in any particular case." Is there any reply
to this?

Broadly speaking, there are at least two other possible views. So

we may choose among three possibilities.
There are people—philosophers—who think that they do have an
answer to B and that, given their answer to B, they can then figure
out their answer to A. And there are other people—other philoso-
phers—who have it the other way around: they think that they have
an answer to A and that, given their answer to A, they can then figure
out the answer to B.
There don't seem to be any generally accepted names for these
two different philosophical positions. (Perhaps this is just as well.
There are more than enough names, as it is, for possible philosophical
views.) I suggest, for the moment, we use the expressions "method-
ists" and "particularists." By "methodists," I mean, not the followers
of John Wesley's version of Christianity, but those who think they
have an answer to B, and who then, in terms of it, work out their an-
swer to A. By "particularists" I mean those who have it the other
way around.

7
Thus John Locke was a methodist—in our present, rather special
sense of the term. He was able to arrive—somehow—at an answer to
 PROBLEM OF THE CRITERION • 67

B. He said, in effect: "The way you decide whether or not a belief

is a good belief—that is to say, the way you decide whether a belief
is likely to be a genuine case of knowledge—is to see whether it is
derived from sense experience, to see, for example, whether it bears
certain relations to your sensations." Just what these relations to our
sensations might be is a matter we may leave open, for present pur-
poses. The point is: Locke felt that if a belief is to be credible, it must
bear certain relations to the believer's sensations—but he never told
us how he happened to arrive at this conclusion. This, of course, is
the view that has come to be known as "empiricism." David Hume
followed Locke in this empiricism and said that empiricism gives us
an effective criterion for distinguishing the good apples f r o m the bad
ones. You can take this criterion to the library, he said. Suppose you
find a book in which the author makes assertions that do not con-
form to the empirical criterion. Hume said: Commit it to the flames:
for it can contain nothing b u t sophistry and illusion."

Empiricism, then, was a form of what I have called "methodism."

The empiricist—like other types of methodist—begins with a criterion
and then he uses it to throw out the bad apples. There are two objec-
tions, I would say, to empiricism. The first—which applies to every
form of methodism (in our present sense of the word)—is that the
criterion is very broad and far-reaching and at the same time com-
pletely arbitrary. How can one begin with a broad generalization? It
seems especially odd that the empiricist—who wants to proceed cau-
tiously, step by step, from experience—begins with such a generaliza-
tion. He leaves us completely in the dark so far as concerns what rea-
sons he may have for adopting this particular criterion rather than
some other. The second objection applies to empiricism in particular.
When we apply the empirical criterion—at least, as it was developed
by Hume, as well as by many of those in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries who have called themselves "empiricists"—we seem to throw
out, not only the bad apples but the good ones as well, and we are
left, in effect, with just a few parings or skins with no meat behind
them. Thus Hume virtually conceded that, if you are going to be em-
piricist, the only matters of fact that you can really know about per-
tain to the existence of sensations. "'Tis vain," he said, "To ask
whether there be b o d y . " He meant you cannot know whether any
physical things exist—whether there are trees, or houses, or bodies,
 68 • PROBLEM OF THE CRITERION

much less whether there are atoms or other such microscopic particles.
All you can know is that there are and have been certain sensations.
You cannot know whether there is any you who experiences those
sensations—much less whether any other people exist who experience
sensations. And I think, if he had been consistent in his empiricism,
he would also have said you cannot really be sure whether there have
been any sensations in the past; you can know only that certain sen-
sations exist here and now.

The great Scottish philosopher, Thomas Reid, reflected on all this

in the eighteenth century. He was serious about philosophy and man's
place in the world. He finds Hume saying things implying that we can
know only of the existence of certain sensations here and now. One
can imagine him saying: "Good Lord! What kind of nonsense is this?"
What he did say, among other things, was this: "A traveller of good
judgment may mistake his way, and be unawares led into a wrong
track; and while the road is fair before him, he may go on without
suspicion and be followed by others but, when it ends in a coal pit,
it requires no great judgment to know that he hath gone wrong, nor
perhaps to find out what misled him." 6
Thus Reid, as I interpret him, was not an empiricist; nor was he,
more generally, what I have called a "methodist." He was a "particu-
larist." That is to say, he thought that he had an answer to question
A, and in terms of the answer to question A, he then worked out
kind of an answer to question B. 7 An even better example of a "par-
ticularist" is the great twentieth century English philosopher, G. E.
Moore.
Suppose, for a moment, you were tempted to go along with Hume
and say "The only thing about the world I can really know is that
there are now sensations of a certain sort. There's a sensation of a
man, there's the sound of a voice, and there's a feeling of bewilder-
ment or boredom. But that's all I can really know about." What would
Reid say? I can imagine him saying something like this: "Well, you
can talk that way if you want to. But you know very well that it isn't
true. You know that you are there, that you have a body of such and
such a sort and that other people are here, too. And you know about
this building and where you were this morning and all kinds of other
things as well." G. E. Moore would raise his hand at this point and
 PROBLEM OF THE CRITERION • 69

say: "I know very well this is a hand, and so do you. If you come
across some philosophical theory that implies that you and I cannot
know that this is a hand, then so much the worse for the theory." I
think that Reid and Moore are right, myself, and I'm inclined to think
that the "methodists" are wrong.
Going back to our questions A and B, we may summarize the three
possible views as follows: there is skepticism (you cannot answer
either question without presupposing an answer to the other, and
therefore the questions cannot be answered at all); there is "method-
ism" (you begin with an answer to B); and there is "particularism"
(you begin with an answer to A). I suggest that the third possibility
is the most reasonable.

I would say—and many reputable philosophers would disagree with

me—that, to find out whether you know such a thing as that this is a
hand, you don't have to apply any test or criterion. Spinoza has it
right. "In order to k n o w , " he said, "there is no need to know that we
know, much less to know that we know that we know." 8
This is part of the answer, it seems to me, to the puzzle about the
diallelus. There are many things that quite obviously, we do know to
be true. If I report to you the things I now see and hear and feel—or,
if you prefer, the things I now think I see and hear and feel—the
chances are that my report will be correct; I will be telling you some-
thing I know. And so, too, if you report the things that you think you
now see and hear and feel. To be sure, there are hallucinations and
illusions. People often think they see or hear or feel things that in fact
they do not see or hear or feel. But from this fact—that our senses
do sometimes deceive us—it hardly follows that your senses and mine
are deceiving you and me right now. One may say similar things about
what we remember.
Having these good apples before us, we can look them over and
formulate certain criteria of goodness. Consider the senses, for ex-
ample. One important criterion—one epistemological principle—was
formulated by St. Augustine. It is more reasonable, he said, to trust
the senses than to distrust them. Even though there have been illu-
sions and hallucinations, the wise thing, when everything seems all
right, is to accept the testimony of the senses. I say "when everything
seems all right." If on a particular occasion something about that