on certainty 671

671. I fly from here to a part of the world where the people have only indefinite information, or none at all, about the possibility of flying. I tell them I have just flown there from …They ask me if I might be mistaken. – They have obviously a false impression of how the thing happens. (If I were packed up in a box it would be possible for me to be mistaken about the way I travelled.) If I simply tell them that I can’t be mistaken, that won’t perhaps convince them: but it will if I describe the actual procedure to them. Then they will certainly not bring the possibility of a mistake into question. But for all that – even if they trust me – they might believe I had been dreaming or that magic had made me imagine it.

if I tell them that I can’t be mistaken –

I can’t be mistaken because I am certain

if from their point of view I am mistaken –

it is because they are certain –

what you have then is a clash of certainties –

and it is not surprising in such a situation –

that one would say of the other that he is mistaken –

but what does this mean?

if I say you are mistaken it means –

I am certain and certain that you are wrong –

which just amounts to a restatement –

of the original claim of certainty

‘you’ve made a mistake’ – is what you say –

when you really have nothing to say –

except that you are certain –

and so to say someone has made a mistake –

can only really be a rhetorical move –

the point of which is –

to turn them to your way of thinking –

the mistake’s only value is rhetorical

and if the other says you’ve been dreaming –

that gives them an explanation –

for your delusion of certainty –

leaving  their’s intact

© greg t. charlton. 2010.