The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction

by Matthew B. Crawford

How do we know some evil genius hasn’t deceived us? Even our own senses lead us astray, for example in optical illusions. Descartes takes the very existence of an external world as a legitimate problem for philosophy to worry about. In his search for certainty—for a foundation for knowledge that would be impervious to skeptical challenge—it occurs to him that the experience of thinking (“I am thinking”) is beyond doubt. If I am thinking, I must exist. This is the secure beginning point that must serve as the foundation for knowledge altogether. What we need, then, are rules for the conduct of the mind, which we can follow from this secure beginning to build up certain knowledge. It is not the content of our thinking that matters now, but how we arrive at that content. To repeat Locke’s formula, “The floating of other Mens Opinions in our brains makes us not a jot more knowing, though they happen to be true.” This entails a new conception of what it means to be rational. The standard for rationality is no longer substantive, but procedural, as Taylor points out. And this means that the standard for truth is relocated: it is no longer found out in the world, but inside our own head; it is a function of our mental procedures.