Knowledge, Theory of; Metaphysics; Philosophy -- Introductions
Thus the first answer to the difficulty of fallacious memory is to say
that memory has degrees of self-evidence, and that these correspond
to the degrees of its trustworthiness, reaching a limit of perfect
self-evidence and perfect trustworthiness in our memory of events which
are recent and vivid.
It would seem, however, that there are cases of very firm belief in a
memory which is wholly false. It is probable that, in these cases, what
is really remembered, in the sense of being immediately before the mind,
is something other than what is falsely believed in, though something
generally associated with it. George IV is said to have at last believed
that he was at the battle of Waterloo, because he had so often said that
he was. In this case, what was immediately remembered was his repeated
assertion; the belief in what he was asserting (if it existed) would
be produced by association with the remembered assertion, and would
therefore not be a genuine case of memory. It would seem that cases of
fallacious memory can probably all be dealt with in this way, i.e. they
can be shown to be not cases of memory in the strict sense at all.
One important point about self-evidence is made clear by the case of
memory, and that is, that self-evidence has degrees: it is not a quality
which is simply present or absent, but a quality which may be more or
less present, in gradations ranging from absolute certainty down to an
almost imperceptible faintness. Truths of perception and some of the
principles of logic have the very highest degree of self-evidence;
truths of immediate memory have an almost equally high degree. The
inductive principle has less self-evidence than some of the other
principles of logic, such as 'what follows from a true premiss must be
true'. Memories have a diminishing self-evidence as they become remoter
and fainter; the truths of logic and mathematics have (broadly speaking)
less self-evidence as they become more complicated. Judgements of
intrinsic ethical or aesthetic value are apt to have some self-evidence,
but not much.
Degrees of self-evidence are important in the theory of knowledge,
since, if propositions may (as seems likely) have some degree of
self-evidence without being true, it will not be necessary to abandon
all connexion between self-evidence and truth, but merely to say that,
where there is a conflict, the more self-evident proposition is to be
retained and the less self-evident rejected.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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