EPISTEMIC CERTITUDE AND SCEPTICISM

Course Outline: AN OVERVIEW OF THE PROBLEM - Statement of the Problem - Important Concepts in the issue of Certitude and Scepticism: (i) Epistemology (ii) Knowledge (iii) Scepticism (iv) Certitude HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE ISSUE OF CERTITUDE AND SCEPTICISM - Origin of the Problem: The Tripartite Definition of Knowledge - The Cartesian Contribution - The Kantian Exposition of the Problem - Gettiers Deflation of the Tripartite Definition of Knowledge - Kaplans Repudiation of Knowledge KNOWLEDGE AND JUSTIFICATION: THE BANE OF CERTITUDE AND SCEPTICISM - The Challenges of scepticism - Responses to the challenges of scepticism (i) Foundationalism o Rational Foundationalism o Empirical Foundationalism (ii) Ordinary Language and Common Sense (iii) Transcendental and Dialectical Arguments (iv) Coherentism (v) Contextualism (vi) Reliabilism (vii) Context-dependency: Post Modernist approach AFRICAN EPISTEMOLOGY AND CERTITUDE AND SCEPTICISM CERTITUDE AND SCEPTICISM AS COMPLEMENTARY IN THE QUEST FOR KNOWLEDGE. RECOMMENDED LITERATURE: Aigbodioh, J. A. (1997), Imperatives of Human Knowledge illustrated with Epistemological Conceptions in African Thought in Ibadan Journal of Humanistic Studies, no.7, Oct. 1997, pp. 17-34 Bewaji, J. A. (2007), An Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge, Ibadan: Hope Publications. Brown, L. M. (2004), African Philosophy: New and Traditional Perspectives, New York: Oxford University Press. Cardinal, D.; Hayward, J.; & Jones, G. (2004), Epistemology: The Theory of Knowledge, London: John Murray Publishers Ltd. Oladipo, O., (ed.) (2006), Core Issues in African Philosophy, Ibadan: Hope Publications. Jimoh, A. (1996) A Critique of Rortys Epistemological Behaviourism, M.A. Thesis submitted To the Dept. of Philosophy, AAU, Ekpoma. Owolabi, K., (ed.), (2000), Issues and Problems in Philosophy, Ibadan: GROVACS Akanmidu, R., (ed.), (2005), Footprints in Philosophy, Ibadan: Hope Publications. Uduigwomen, A. F., (ed.) (1995), Footmarks on African Philosophy, Lagos: Obaroh and Ogbinaka Publishers Ltd.

Lecturer: Rev. Fr. Dr. Anselm JIMOH

AN OVERVIEW OF THE PROBLEM The issue of epistemological certitude and scepticism has occupied the attention of epistemologists for ages. Both have been treated as contradicting each other and efforts have been on to establish epistemic claims (knowledge) that are free of sceptical considerations. The issue of scepticism and certitude is centred on the question of whether we actually know what we claim to know. This question is a demand for what justifies our knowledge claims against the doubts that such knowledge claims may not be true or certain. As simple as the question sounds, it requires answers to the following: (i) (ii) (iii) How true (certain) are our epistemic claims? Can these claims be justified in the face of epistemological doubts? What degree of certainty do these claims require to pass as knowledge?

Statement of the Problem: Traditional Western epistemology sees the mind as a mirror of nature and conceives knowledge as the accurate representation of nature. As Rorty (1979) describes it; knowledge is seen as accuracy of internal representation of external objects. This means that if we understand how the mind works to construct its representations, then we will understand how knowledge is possible and the nature of knowledge. This has become an imperative for epistemology since the time of Descartes, whose primary epistemological effort was to defend human knowledge against scepticism. He sought unshakable foundations for human knowledge through clear and distinct ideas. Within the Cartesian scheme, knowledge is simply consciousness replicating the world. For Descartes, to know is to accurately represent the world outside the mind. (Jimoh,1999). This Cartesian notion dominated the efforts of epistemologists to present an accurate conception of knowledge throughout the modern era of Western philosophy. Philosophers like John Locke and Immanuel Kant furthered this notion and evolved an epistemological tradition that attempts to set universal and objective standards of rationality. Very prominent in this tradition is the underlining distinction between the known object and the knowing subject. Thus, our epistemic claims are justified when the knowing subject accurately represents the known object. This reveals the influence of a dualistic conception of reality in which there is a distinction between the object and the subject. This dualistic conception of reality is characteristic of traditional Western analytic philosophy, ditto; epistemology. In these efforts to find unshakable foundations for knowledge, traditional Western epistemology has treated certitude and scepticism as concepts that are exclusive and contradictory. Thus, one is seen as opposed to the other. So the efforts
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have been towards defeating scepticism so as to establish the certainty of our epistemic claims. Against this idea, this paper seeks to bring both concepts together as mutually complementary in the common search for certain knowledge. By certain knowledge, we mean epistemic claims that are not necessarily beyond doubt (sceptical considerations), but epistemic claims that are more warranted than the doubts. A closer study of the African approach to reality reveals that though the African acknowledges the dualism of the physical and spiritual, both are interwoven in a continuum of existence, such that there is no sharp distinction between the subject and the object. This metaphysical conception of reality plays a significant role in the African understanding and expression of reality as exposed in African epistemology. Thus, we have an African theory of knowledge that does not have the running battle between doubt and certitude as we have in traditional Western epistemology. IMPORTANT CONCEPTS IN THE ISSUE OF CERTITUDE AND SCEPTICISM: Epistemology: Epistemology studies philosophical problems associated with the theory of knowledge. It deals primarily with the definition of knowledge and related concepts, the criteria of true knowledge, the sources of knowledge, kinds of knowledge, the degree of certainty of various kinds of knowledge and the relationship between the knowing subject, which is man and the known object. Simply put it is the study of knowledge. Along with answering the question of what is knowledge, epistemology tries to inquire into how we acquire knowledge? The history of epistemology shows that two main schools of thought have evolved on this issue. The rationalists, consisting of continental philosophers like Rene Descartes, Gottfried Leibniz, and Benedict de Spinoza and the empiricists, consisting of British philosophers like John Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume. For the rationalists, we acquire knowledge mainly through the exercise of reason. They insist that knowledge requires a direct insight or a demonstration, which necessarily requires our faculty of reasoning. Their model is mathematics and logic, and for them, we reach truth through rational inference. On the other hand, the empiricists argue that we acquire knowledge mainly through sensory perception. Thus, their model is any of the natural sciences that implore the methods of observation, generalization, and experimentation. The case of the empiricist is strengthened by the achievements of science in the last few centuries, but questions concerning perception were raised. It is important to note that both rationalism and empiricism have one main concern, namely, whether the means by which we acquire knowledge are trustworthy. In the
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light of this, most of the discussions in epistemology are against the backdrop of scepticism. The scope of epistemology is all potential domains of knowledge. This makes ideal epistemology comprehensive and maximally explanatory. Since the realization of this will certainly be elusive, the epistemologist focuses attention on clarifying concepts. Concepts, at least, do not owe their meaningfulness to their actual existence. Thus the parameters of an epistemology would be the domain of the knowledge it explains. Epistemology according to E. Kehinde is therefore, a critical reflection about our claims to knowledge, the status of our assumptions, procedures and conclusions of everyday life. (Kehinde in Ogundowole, (ed.) 2002). It is a call to reflect on the claims of common sense that we consider justifiable. In this way, it enables us to get rid of delusions about the things we claim to know as it reveals to us the dangers in accepting the verdict of common sense without questioning. It offers us a rational basis for change and permanence in our conception of reality. It enables us to develop a critical attitude, awakening within us the relationship between our knowledge and behaviour, thus enables us to improve our social relations with one another. Knowledge: The expression to know is a slippery one; it is not always used in the same sense or in the same way all the time. Its principal uses include; Acquaintance, technical or know-how and propositional. All the senses in which the term know is used are related. Traditionally knowledge has been defined as justified true belief. This definition holds that S knows p if and only if; i. P is true ii. S believes that p is true iii. Ss belief that p is true is justified. This definition implies that three conditions are individually necessary and jointly sufficient in ascertaining knowledge. These conditions are justification, truth, and belief. The condition of belief demands that when we know that p we must believe that p. The truth condition demands that p must be true for it to be known. And the justification condition demands that there must be adequate reason, evidence or support for p to be known. Belief is considered a necessary condition because it connotes a kind of assent to a given proposition or state of affair. It means I agree in some sense. To argue that I know that p but I do not believe that p will be an absurd thing to say. When p, a variable is substituted with a specific instance, like I am in this class the epistemic claim would be I know that I am in this class but I do not believe that I am in this class. Common sense and reason would immediately
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reject this as contradictory. We can argue to the contrary that because we do not know that I am in this class; I do not believe that I am in this class. This will be acceptable to reason and common sense but not the other way round. The truth condition may be considered an external condition for knowledge. For a thing to be true, it does not require our assent. It is true whether we agree to it being true or not. If it is true that I am in this class, whether I assent to it or not would not determine the truth-value of my being in this class. We therefore accept that truth is a necessary condition by itself, for knowledge. Justification is the same as providing evidence for our belief. As a condition for knowledge, it is in reference to whether we can say we know something when we make a guess, be it a lucky guess or educated guess, that turns out to be true? Or when based on false evidence we make a claim that turns out to be true? If our guess, or claim based on false evidence turns out to be true, we cannot be said to have known that which we claim to know. Based on these reasons most philosophers have come to agree that justification, truth, and belief are necessary conditions for knowledge. Each on its own cannot give us knowledge but none of them can be excluded from what is knowledge. The issue now would be whether they are sufficient to give us knowledge as the tripartite analysis of knowledge suggests. That is, can we claim to truly have knowledge, when we have a belief that is true and justified? Epistemology as the study of the theory of knowledge asks three basic questions, (i) What are the sources of knowledge? (ii) What is the nature of knowledge? (iii) Is our knowledge valid? According to D. Cardinal, J. Hayward, and G. Jones (2004), it is basically the belief of epistemologists that knowledge comes from four sources, (i) The appeal to authority. This involves learning about the past from the testimony of others, but the fact here is that the experience of the person on whose authority we rely for this sort of knowledge is a secondary source. (ii) We gain knowledge through the senses, that is, empiricism. This argues that we have knowledge through all our perceptions of something concrete. Pragmatism as a philosophy is somehow based on this. (iii) The third source of knowledge is rationalism. It argues that thinking is the true source of knowledge since the mind has the ability to discover truth by itself. The argument here is that the discoveries of the senses are merely raw materials that the mind works on to get knowledge. (iv) The fourth and last source of knowledge is intuition. This is like direct apprehension of knowledge that is not the result of conscious reasoning or of immediate sense perception.
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Scepticism: The idea of finding unshakable foundation for knowledge is against scepticism, which claims that we cannot be certain about our epistemic claims. Scepticism as an idea connotes the critical spirit: the tendency of not being easily satisfied with simple or superficial evidence and striving to accept only incorrigible beliefs that are absolutely certain. (Owolabi, 2000). It is usually not easy to describe the features of scepticism since there are diverse and different reasons and objectives that prompt sceptical denial of certainty and objectivity of our epistemic claims. One sure thing however is that the aim of scepticism is to establish the need to properly scrutinize our epistemic claims to ensure that our epistemic claims are free from doubt. To this end, scepticism has been the force propelling the epistemological enterprise. According A. J. Ayer, these sceptical challenges supply the main subject matter for what is called theory of knowledge; and different philosophical standpoints are characterized by the acceptance or denial of different stages of the sceptics argument. (Ayer, 1956). We may therefore describe scepticism as the epistemological doctrine that challenges our cognitive claims by providing arguments and reasons why those cognitive claims should be doubted. There are variations in the arguments of the sceptics; these variations include: (i) The doubt of epistemic claims based on the source of knowledge. Most of our knowledge claims come from the sense experience and the senses have been shown to be deceitful and cannot be reliable guide to knowledge of the future. (ii) The doubt directed at theoretical knowledge as some sceptics argue that we can easily make mistakes in our deductive and mathematical inferences. This only shows we cannot be sure of the inferences we make from mathematical axioms. (iii) The doubts that arise from the similarity between actual reality and states of dream. Since it is always difficult to differentiate between these two, some sceptics argue that it is only sensible to regard our experiences as a dream from which we can wake up one day. Thus, we should not take actual experiences as absolutely certain. (iv) The doubts prompted by the Cartesian evil genius hypothesis. According to Descartes, it is possible for us to be constantly deceived by an evil genius. If this is the case, it would mean that all our knowledge are deceitful and unreliable. (Owolabi, 2000). Based on these variations in sceptical arguments, M. A. Slote summarizes the essential thesis of scepticism as; by scepticism about X (where X could mean any empirical claim) I shall mean or view that some hypothesis about X is no less reasonable than its deniable, which means that there is no more reason to believe
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that X exists than that X does not exist and that it is consequently unreasonable to believe that X exists. (Slote, 1970). Inherent in this understanding of Slote is the idea that scepticism is oriented towards the belief that our epistemic claims are not justifiable as a result of some natural problems about our interaction with the external world. (Owolabi, 2000). This understanding points at the very heart of the problem of certitude and scepticism in traditional Western epistemology, namely, the idea that until the knowing subject accurately represents the known object as it is in the eternal world, we cannot talk about knowledge. Thus, rational certainty, which guarantees knowledge, is understood within the parameters of accuracy of representation by the knowing subject. Certitude: It is problematic to provide an account of certainty, but the fact also remains that without such an account, we cannot understand the position of the sceptic concerning the attainability of knowledge. We can conceive certainty from the subjective point; that is to see certainty as a subjective assurance or a psychological indubitability. This is a situation in which the knowing subject is unable to conceive the possibility of a contrary position. Note that this does not eliminate the possibility of a contrary position; the case may be that the knowing subject is not aware of any other belief that contradicts or is contrary to the known belief. Hence, it is subjective. This is the kind of certainty in the Cartesian cogito ego sum which Descartes erroneously thought was also logically indubitable. Contrary to this Ludwig Wittgenstein argued that; one does not infer how things are from ones own certainty. Certainty is, as it were, a tone of voice in which one declares how things are but one does not infer from the tone of voice that one is justified. (Wittgenstein, 1969). Certainty as subjective indubitability is obviously not the kind of certainty epistemological discourse is interested in with regard to the definition of knowledge. We therefore need to consider another account of certainty. According to J. A. Bewaji, this other account of certainty derives from an acceptance of what John Dewey has called the spectator theory of knowledge. From the perspective of this theory, only what is completely fixed and immutable can be certain or real. (Bewaji, 2007).
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This is the kind of certainty that is associated with logical necessity. By logical necessity, we mean internal relationship of propositions, a denial of which will involve a contradiction. Examples of this account of certainty would be mathematical statements and logical inferences; they are logically necessary and analytic and they are not dependent on experience for their truth. Based on the understanding of logical or absolute certainty, the certainty of our knowledge claims would be purely internal to the object of study or claim and propositions deriving from it. (Bewaji, 2007). From whatever point of view we consider that which is certain, it is clear that certainty is human, linguistic, epistemic, pragmatic and even cultural. (Bewaji, 2007). HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE ISSUE OF CERTITUDE AND SCEPTICISM The Origin of the Problem: The Tripartite Definition of Knowledge: The question of epistemological certitude and scepticism arose from the traditional definition of knowledge as justified true belief, which is traceable to Platos Meno (1956) and Theaetetus (1987). In his dialogue, the Meno, (1956), Plato tries to work out the difference between true belief and knowledge. According to him, true belief has much in common with knowledge and both of them are useful guides to action. For as long as my beliefs are true, they are useful to me and to others as if they are knowledge. The question then arises, why we should prefer knowledge to true belief? If they are the same thing, why is knowledge so highly prized? Socrates, who was the character expounding the views of Plato in the Meno, responds to this by contrasting the stability of knowledge with the flightiness of belief. We can easily be dissuaded from our beliefs if we have no good reasons for them; on the contrary if we have good reasons for our beliefs, they are no longer just beliefs but knowledge. So with good reasons, we no longer just believe, we now know, and if we know something, we will not easily withdraw our assent from it. Therefore, knowledge is true belief with reasons to support it. Plato offers other considerations to support the idea that knowledge is more than just true belief in the Theaetus, (1987). According to him, we can hold true beliefs that we are reluctant to call knowledge because of the nature of evidence or reason supporting them. Take for instance, a juror can reach a correct decision when he balances the evidence presented in court. If the evidence is circumstantial and therefore not absolutely conclusive, we may be reluctant to call it knowledge as compared to an eyewitness account of the events in question which is more conclusive. The point here is that the manner by which one acquires a true belief, or by which one justifies it, is important to its counting as a piece of knowledge.
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(Cardinal, Hayward, and Jones, 2004). Plato therefore concludes that true belief accompanied by a rational account is knowledge. That is to say, knowledge is justified true belief. Arguments in favour of this definition have led Western epistemologists to develop a foundationalist epistemology. This was lucidly expressed in the works of Descartes, especially, the Meditations on First Philosophy. (1968) The Cartesian Contribution: Descartes began by noting that his senses have sometimes deceived him having been a victim of illusions from time to time. He therefore resolved not to trust his senses anymore and indeed anything that has in the past been deceptive. He extended his doubts to the possibility of an evil demon making anything appear so, even when it is not the case. Following this argument to its logical conclusion would imply that our existence is not even certain. Descartes response to this is that he cannot doubt his own existence, since any attempt to doubt his existence makes him realise that there is something doing the doubting and that something is him. At this point, he concluded that there is at least something he is certain about, namely his own existence. Therefore, his own existence can be known for certain in the face of his most radical doubts. The Cartesian methodological doubt was not an attempt to create and promulgate scientific-fiction fantasies, but aimed at discovering the first principle of certainty which for him was the cogito ergo sum, I think therefore I am. The doubts were meant to illuminate a crucial problem. That is the problem of our willingness to take for granted a great deal of propositions that might be false or uncertain. Thus, through his methodical doubts, he highlighted the difficulties that exist in establishing acceptable views, not to convert us to scepticism and total doubt but to make us unwilling to accept an opinion because we are afraid that it might prove false. Descartes doubt was an undertaking to find a satisfactory basis for our knowledge that is certain and unshakable even in the face of the most extravagant suppositions brought forward by scepticism. The Cartesian cogito is one of the most scrutinised philosophical arguments of all time. Many philosophers agree that it defeats the doubt about ones existence by showing that it is not possible to doubt if one does not exists in the first place. Therefore, it proves that existence is a necessary condition for doubt to occur, for it is only when one exists that can one doubt. (Cardinal, Hayward, and Jones, 2004). This type of argument is called transcendental argument. This is the type of argument we find in Kant, who brought the question of certitude and scepticism to its peak in traditional Western epistemology. According to Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason, (1968), humans have the reasoning faculty capable of giving us knowledge without an appeal to experience.
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He agreed with the empiricists that our knowledge begins with experience, but argued that though our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it all arises out of experience. (Smith, 1972). He rejected the argument of Hume (1995) that causality is simply a psychological habit of connecting two events that we call cause and effect. He argued that it is possible to possess knowledge of causality which is derived directly from the faculty of rational judgement which is a priori. For Kant, a priori knowledge is that which is absolutely independent of all experience, opposed to empirical knowledge, which is possible only a posterior; that is through experience. (Smith, 1972). The Kantian Exposition of the Problem: In the view of Kant, if we desire an example from the sciences, we need only to look at any proposition in mathematics like 2 + 2 = 4, or the proposition that Every change must have a cause are a priori and cannot be derived from experience as a result of the fact that experience cannot tell us that every change must have a cause since we have not yet experienced every change. Neither can experience tell us that connections between events are necessary, because the most experience can give us is what has occurred, but not that it can be otherwise. In other words, experience cannot give us knowledge of necessary connections; neither can it tell us about the universality of propositions. Kant did not deny that we can have knowledge of causality and universality since these concepts characterize mathematics and scientific knowledge, but what he was concerned about was how such knowledge can be accounted for. Concerning how we can account for knowledge of causality and universality, he identified a third type of knowledge which he called synthetic a priori knowledge. He distinguished between two kinds of judgements; (i) the analytic judgement, and (ii) the synthetic judgement. A judgement is an operation of thought whereby we connect a subject and predicate, where the predicate qualifies in some way the subject. The two ways in which a judgement can be made is described by him with the analytic and the synthetic. In the analytic judgements, the predicate is already contained in the concept of the subject, for instance, that all triangles have three sides. In this case, the predicate does not give us any new knowledge about the subject. Analytic judgements are true because of the logical relation of subject and predicate. To deny an analytic judgement would involve a logical contradiction. On the other hand, synthetic judgement is when the predicate is not contained in the subject. In this case, the predicate adds something to the concept of the subject, for instance, that the apple is red is a synthetic judgement. It combines two independent
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concepts; in this case, apple and redness. All analytic judgements are a priori, while for the most part, synthetic judgements are a posterior. Kant identified a third type of judgement besides the analytic a priori and the synthetic a posterior. This is the synthetic a priori judgement. According to Warburton, (2001), the synthetic a priori, which is Kants main interest in the Critique of Pure Reason, consists of judgements which are necessarily true and can be known to be true independently of experience, yet which gives us genuine knowledge of aspects of the world. Kants example of the synthetic a priori include most of mathematics like 7 + 5 = 12, and every event must have a cause. These are both necessarily true; and they are informative about the world, therefore neither of them is analytic. The introduction of the synthetic a priori knowledge by Kant was to explain his view that objects of knowledge conform to the mind and not always the reverse that the mind conforms to objects of knowledge. In his view, the world that we inhabit and perceive depends on qualities of the perceivers mind rather than existing independently of the perceivers mind. The human mind restructures objects and makes them appear to us in certain ways and it is only in these ways that we perceive them. This analysis is compared to a man wearing rose-tinted spectacles, looking at the world through it, everything appears pink, he cannot see the real colours of things but only as they appear to him. (Stumpf, 1994). Consequently, Kant distinguished between the noumena and the phenomena worlds. The noumena consist in the world as it is in itself; that is, things as they are in themselves, which, though can be imagined, cannot be known. The phenomena are the world of things as they appear to us. This is the world as we know it. Kant argues that the human mine is not passive in the process of cognition; it is very active, as it imposes its structures on things through the categories of the mind. These categories include (i) quantity (universal, particular and singular), (ii) quality (affirmative, negative and infinite), (iii) relation (categorical, hypothetical and disjunctive), and (iv) modality (problematical, assertory and apodictic). They restructure the objects of knowledge, forcing them to conform to the mind. Thus, Kant argues that the sources of knowledge are sensibility and understanding; through sensibility, objects of knowledge are given to us, and we contemplate them through understanding. Following from his arguments above, he concluded that we may be able to distinguish the difference between the knower and the thing known, we can never know that thing as it is in itself, the moment we know it, we know it as our mind permits us to know it.(Warburton, 2001). This argument separates the thing as we know it and the thing as it is in itself which means the subject can never know the thing as it is in itself only as the categories of the mind present it to him. This further complicates the division between certitude and scepticism by suggesting
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that both concepts are opposed and contradictory. In the face of Kantian argument, it is therefore more likely that the conditions of justification, truth, and belief would not be collectively sufficient to guarantee true knowledge. Gettiers Deflation of the Tripartite Definition of Knowledge: Gettier addressed the issue of whether truth, belief and justification are sufficient conditions for knowledge in his work, Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? (1963). According to him, if we have a belief that is true and justified, we cannot say we have knowledge. This means that belief, truth, and justification are together not sufficient to provide knowledge. This has come to be known as the Gettiers problem. Gettiers problem is an invitation to epistemology to reconsider the traditional definition of knowledge. It is the problem of finding a modification of, or an alternative to, the standard justified-true-belief analysis of knowledge that avoids counterexamples like Gettiers. (Moser and Sosa, (ed.), 1993). According to Gettier, there are two points to be noted; first, that it is possible for a person to believe a false proposition in the sense in which the standard analysis has used the term justified. For instance, that Ss justification in believing p is a necessary condition of S knowing that p. Secondly, that for any proposition p, if S is justified in believing p and p entails q and S deduces q from p and accepts q as a result of this deduction, then S is justified in believing q. (Gettier, 1963). Keeping these two points in mind, he proceeded with two examples to buttress his point. Example 1: Suppose that Smith and Jones have applied for a certain job. And suppose that Smith has a strong evidence for the following conjunctive proposition: (a) Jones is the man who will get the job, and Jones has ten coins in his pocket. Smiths evidence for (a) might be that the president of the company assured him that Jones would in the end be selected, and that he, Smith, had counted the coins in Joness pocket ten minutes ago. Proposition (a) entails: (b) The man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket. Let us suppose that Smith sees the entailment from (a) to (b) and accepts (b) on the grounds of (a), for which he has strong evidence. In this case, Smith is clearly justified in believing that (b) is true. But imagine, further, that unknown to Smith, he himself, not Jones, will get the job. And, also, unknown to Smith, he himself has ten coins in his pocket. Proposition (b) is then true, though proposition (a), from which Smith inferred (b), is false. In this example, then, the following are true: (i) (b) is true, (ii) Smith believes that (b) is true, and (iii) Smith is justified in believing that (b) is true. But it is equally clear that Smith does not know that (b) is true; for (b) is true in virtue
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of the number of coins in Smiths pocket, while Smith does not know how many coins are in Smiths pocket, and bases his belief in (b) on a count of the coins in Joness pocket, whom he falsely believes to be the man who will get the job. Example 2: Let us suppose that Smith has a strong evidence for the following proposition: (c) Jones owns a Ford. Smiths evidence might be that Jones has at all times in the past within Smiths memory owned a car, and always a Ford, and that Jones has just offered Smith a ride while driving a Ford. Let us imagine, now, that Smith has another friend, Brown, whose whereabouts he is totally ignorant. Smith selects three place names quite at random and constructs the following three propositions: (d) Either Jones owns a Ford, or Brown is in Boston. (e) Either Jones owns a Ford, or Brown is in Barcelona. (f) Either Jones owns a Ford, or Brown is in Brest-Litovsk. Each of these propositions is entailed by (c). Imagine that Smith realizes the entailment of each of these propositions he has constructed by (c), and proceeds to accept (d), (e), and (f) on the basis of (c). Smith has correctly inferred (d), (e), and (f) from a proposition for which he has strong evidence. Smith is therefore completely justified in believing each of these three propositions. Smith, of course, has no idea where Brown is. But imagine now that two further conditions hold. First, Jones does not own a Ford, but is at present driving a rented car. And second, by the sheerest coincidence, and entirely unknown to Smith, the place mentioned in proposition (e) happens really to be the place where Brown is. If these two conditions hold, then Smith does not know that (e) is true, even though (i) (e) is true, (ii) Smith does believe that (e) is true, and (iii) Smith is justified in believing that (e) is true. (Gettier in Griffiths, (ed.), 1967). Gettiers examples proved first and foremost that each of the three necessary conditions required by the tripartite analysis are met. Secondly, that despite the fact that these conditions are met, we cannot say there is knowledge. This is because, as his examples demonstrate, it is possible for us to be justified in believing a false proposition, which goes on to be our justification for another belief that is in fact true but not on the basis of the belief that justifies it, which he has first shown to be false itself. Thus, Gettier argues that rather than have a triangular-like definition of knowledge, that is, knowledge requiring three necessary conditions that are collectively sufficient to give us true knowledge, we may indeed require a squarelike definition that requires four conditions. That is, in addition to the other three conditions, an extra condition may be required.

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With these examples, Gettier concludes that the standard analysis definition of knowledge does not provide us with sufficient condition for one knowing any given proposition. These examples and others following this style have made it really difficult to conclusively analyze the concept of propositional knowledge. Some philosophers have argued that Gettiers examples and others of its type are defective as they rest on the false principle that false propositions can justify beliefs in other propositions. But as Moser observes, there are examples like Gettiers that are not dependent on the allegedly false principle. Here, he was thinking about the examples put forward by Richard Feldman (1974) and Keith Lehrer (1990). One important lesson that the issue raised by Gettier has presented to epistemology is that, the justification condition for knowledge is important in ensuring that we do not mistakenly identify a true belief resulting from epistemic luck or educated guess for true knowledge. Over the decades since the advent of the Gettier counterexamples, analytic philosophers have struggled either to defend the standard analysis of knowledge against Gettiers examples or to revise the standard analysis of knowledge in the light of Gettiers examples. The debate has largely been to revamp the necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge. To make a proper distinction between knowledge and belief; to giving a better and more comprehensive analysis of justification to see what it entails and what it does not, and how best to deduce from given propositions, and how to differentiate between first-person knowledge and third-person knowledge. There is much focus on the justification aspect of the whole issue and rightly so, since the Gettier examples themselves attack the aspect of justification. Many philosophers now accept that the definition of propositional knowledge requires a fourth condition. As it were, epistemologists have not generally accepted any specific fourth condition. Kaplans Repudiation of Knowledge: Kaplan, in his Its Not What You Know That Counts, (1985), argued that neither Gettiers negation nor revisions of the traditional definition of knowledge after Gettier are relevant. According to him, all those who have argued constructively have assumed that the Gettiers counterexamples imply the need for a revision of a historically important definition of knowledge. This assumption is a mistake; this is not because Gettier did not disapprove convincingly justified true belief but because, he (Kaplan) thinks, justified true belief is not, both historically and contemporarily, an important definition of knowledge. This implies that both Gettiers negation of justified true belief and the revision after Gettier are irrelevant. Kaplan begins his argument by affirming that justified true belief is a Platonic conception and in Platonic understanding, we are talking about non
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propositional objects since it is in the world of forms. In the world of forms, we have objects of reason as opposed to opinion. According to him, philosophers did not debate this point since justified true belief has been described as the classical conception of knowledge. In his view, the Cartesian idea of knowledge is by necessity infallible and acquired by internal faculty which is incapable of error. This makes Gettiers counter-examples moot to them for he is talking about true and false propositions. According to Kaplan, the history of traditional Western philosophy fails to support knowledge as justified true belief. Likewise, contemporary epistemology has failed to be a crutch for it. To prove his point, he directs our attention to what he considered two 20th century epistemological preoccupations, (i) cognitive significance, and (ii) law-likeness. Cognitive significance is the logical positivists devise to eliminate metaphysics and come up with an unambiguous first-order predicate logic by which it will describe the phenomena of science. Law-likeness on the other hand is a heuristic to distinguish generalizations that could receive evidential support and so become laws, from those that could not. (Brown, 1997). Kaplan argues that philosophers used both methods to clarify the proper conduct of inquiry with the hope that they will guide us in our inquiry. At some point in an inquiry, the inquirer would have to ask whether she knows or not. This question is already moot when the inquirer has a justified belief in a true proposition. That is to say, when you are already satisfied that a proposition (p) is true, and you have justification for believing it, there is no question whether your belief in (p) is knowledge. Knowledge turns out to be nothing more than an honorific you may bestow on those of your beliefs which you consider justified (Kaplan, 1985). Rather than Gettiers counterexamples to resolve this, it revealed that false evidence could justify a proposition. So to modify the traditional definition of knowledge as justified true belief to eliminate the possibility of being gettiered would still be to leave the problem of whether we know or we do not know unresolved. Therefore, once we are convinced through inquiry that (p) is true, the question, do I know or not remains unanswered. According to Brown (1997), No matter which side of Gettier you are on, what you know will be the same as what you are justified in believing. No solution to the Gettier problem will be able to help an inquirer distinguish the propositions she knows from the propositions she does not know; hence, Kaplan
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concludes, propositional knowledge is of no assistance in the practice of inquiry. Knowledge as conceived from a first-person perspective is different from knowledge as conceived from a third-person perspective. From the first-person perspective, no difference between knowledge as justified true belief and ungettiered justified true belief. But there can be a difference between both from the third-person perspective. This means that I as a first-person cannot know when my justification is mistaken, but you as a third-person can know when I am mistaken, and vice versa. This does not still call to question the competence of inquiry by the person who has justified, yet false, belief. For as long as the agent of inquiry thinks she is justified, her methods of justifications are above criticism. For Kaplan the problem is not knowledge itself but what we conceive knowledge to be. He points out that it is not knowledge itself, but knowledge as we conceive it, that causes the problems associated with distinguishing justified belief from knowledge. (Brown, 1997). The implication of this is that since, when we seek knowledge, what we seek is justified belief; the conditions that define knowledge will always remain elusive to us as first-persons, but perhaps not to others as third-persons in relation to us. As long as to pursue precision in justification is the only method we have to improve our inquiry on knowledge, and knowledge is out of this, whether we know or not will be out of the game altogether. The scholars whose contributions to the question of epistemological certitude and scepticism reviewed above suggest that Western epistemology has not done much in reconciling the differences between the concepts of certitude and scepticism in the search for true knowledge. Is it the same case with scholars in African epistemology?

KNOWLEDGE AND JUSTIFICATION: THE BANE OF CERTITUDE AND SCEPTICISM In our day-to-day life, we assume that we know all sorts of things, thus we use the term knowledge quite easily and freely. Do we have any justification to hold on to claims we call knowledge and what are these justifications, if there are any? I can claim that right now I am working with a laptop resting on a table before me, that I know how to tie the laces of my shoes, and that I know what a mango fruit taste like, etc. These claims would seem obvious enough, but
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philosophers have asked what justifies us in making such claims as these? Can we really tell that we know something rather than that we are just thinking that we do? How do we know that we know such things as we claim to know? What sorts of evidence do we have for most of the knowledge claims that we make? How strong and reliable are the evidences we have? We can identify five sources of evidence that we often have for making epistemic claims; (i) Common knowledge, which refers to the fund of beliefs that everyone holds and a good number of what we claim to know find justification here. (ii) Personal experience, which means that you have actually seen a coin fall faster than a feather, so you believe that a coin would fall faster than a feather when both of them are dropped at the same time. This form of knowledge is more direct and certain than common knowledge. (iii) Testimony of others, which come from what we have learnt from other sources. We would class information gained from reading and watching television in this category. (iv) Other beliefs that we already have justified by other beliefs. Given that we already believe that a heavier object would fall faster than a lighter one, and that a coin is heavier than a feather, we would then conclude that a coin would fall faster than a feather. (v) Thinking things out by using our reason. For example, we can find out that when we added 5 to 7 we get 12. (Cardinal, Hayward, and Jones, 2004). Our beliefs need justification. There are different kinds of justification and some are stronger than others. What makes a good and strong justification? And just how much justification do we need to be certain that what we claim to know is the case? The question of justification of knowledge is pitched against the doubts that we can attain the kind of certainty that is traditionally taken to be involved in knowledge. According to John Kekes, justification consists in establishing the correspondence of a proposition to a fact, and this was done by observation. (Kekes, 1997). This view takes for granted that the correspondence theory of knowledge is an accepted opinion. But this is not the case, as the correspondence theory has suffered sustained and tenable opposition, especially in the coherent theory.

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The Challenges of Scepticism: Philosophical scepticism is a test of our epistemic beliefs. It is a theoretical exercise aimed at discovering what we know. Philosophers argue to defeat scepticism so as to clarify and establish the scope and certainty of knowledge. Every sceptical argument presents us with a dilemma; we either accept it or reject it. To accept it would demand that we fit it into our system of beliefs in such a way that it is comfortable with it and if we reject it, we have to provide a reason why we did, i.e. show that something is wrong with the argument. To accept a sceptical conclusion that justification is ultimately impossible would put us in a difficult position. Because, it would imply that we have no reason to believe one thing rather than the other. What we belief and do not belief would be reduced to a matter of arbitrary choice. This sort of argument threatens the whole of our belief system. Typical examples of sceptical arguments can be grouped: (i) the infinite regress of reasons (ii) the closed belief system in which we cannot guarantee that we are not guilty of the same error as the one we accuse our opponent who stubbornly sticks to his view (iii) the Cartesian dreaming argument in which Descartes supposes that we cannot distinguish between whether we are presently dreaming or awake (iv) the brain-in-a-vat argument in which the Cartesian argument of the possibility of an evil demon perpetually deceiving us is recaptured in a scientific fiction that has become even more real in the computer virtual reality programme (v) the scepticism about knowledge of the future captured in David Humes sustained radical scepticism as exposed in his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, where we suppose that the future will be like the past. (Cardinal, Hayward, and Jones, 2004). Some sceptical arguments claim that our beliefs cannot be certain. Some show that our justification is inadequate and still others show that our beliefs cannot be shown to be true. What this goes to show is that certainty, justification/evidence, and truth are important elements of what we normally refer to as knowledge. In the opinion of the sceptic if we do not have these elements in our knowledge claims, then we cannot say we have knowledge. Responses to the Challenges of Scepticism: Scepticism and the problem of infinite regress of justification have prompted philosophers to seek for beliefs that are not subjected to doubt. These are beliefs that are self-justifying in the sense that
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they are self-evident and therefore do not need to appeal to any further belief for their justification. This approach to epistemology is called foundationalism. Foundationalism: Epistemological foundationalism is a prominent approach to inferential justification. In its traditional form, it holds that if any beliefs are to be justified, there must be some intuitive beliefs. Intuitive belief refers to such beliefs whose truth or credibility is not inferred from some other beliefs. They are also referred to as basic, foundational, self-evident, self-justifying, and sub-structural beliefs. These terms can be used interchangeably. It is true that some beliefs are certainly justified by reference to others. This is however only if these other beliefs are themselves established or well confirmed. Epistemic foundationalism conceives of beliefs as constituted into a structure, like a building with foundations. The foundations, which foundationalists refer to as the substructure, are made of beliefs that cannot be doubted. These are beliefs, which justify themselves. Other beliefs referred to as the superstructure rest on these beliefs. The superstructure is secured on the substructure by virtue of the fact that the substructure guarantees their certainty and justifies their truth. In this way, foundationalists suppose that all our beliefs will be securely justified in terms of the basic beliefs. (Sturgeon in Grayling, 1995). Thus, we will have a system of beliefs free from error and unperturbed by scepticism. Foundationalists have therefore argued that inferential justification terminates with beliefs that are immediately justified, beliefs that do not depend on any other beliefs for their justifications. (Moser and VanderNat, 1987). Epistemic foundationalism puts emphasis on intuitive belief as the foundations of our knowledge claims. Foundationalism talks about two kinds of justified belief. The first are the beliefs that are justified on their own while the second are beliefs that are justified because of their relationship to other beliefs. The first set of beliefs is called foundational while the second set is referred to as non-foundational. According to foundationalist therefore, Ss belief in P is justified if and only if: (i) Ss belief in P is a foundational belief (ii) Ss belief in P rest on foundational beliefs. (Moser and VanderNat, 1987) For Sturgeon, this would raise the following questions; what is the nature of foundational beliefs? And how do non-foundational beliefs rest on foundational beliefs? These two questions are yet to be satisfactorily answered by foundationalist. Foundationalism has a pressing difficulty, namely, how to discover the foundational beliefs and explain what makes them foundational in the sense foundationalists propose that they are foundational. In response to this difficulty,
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foundationalists are divided and this has led to the establishment of two opposing schools of thought in the 17th and 18th centuries. These schools are, (i) Rationalism, and (ii) Empiricism. Rational Foundationalism: Traditionally, the history of rationalism is often traced to the French philosopher Rene Descartes. Descartes, rather than rely on the senses, uses reason to search for the certainties upon which he hopes to rebuild the body of knowledge and he found this in the cogito. His doctrine of I think, therefore, I am. But the cogito is a limited place to build a body of knowledge; he needs other truths that have the character of the cogito. What is this character of the cogito? That it is self-justifying and can be known just by reason without recourse to experience. Descartes argues that there are other truths that share this character, these he calls clear and distinct ideas. These are ideas that are intuited by the mind through the light of reason. The knowledge provided by such ideas that are clear and distinct would resist any sceptical attack, since its truths are immediately recognized and it does not leave room for any error. For example, the fact that a triangle is three sided does not demand any further evidence other than understanding the terms that are involved. Thus, for Descartes we can make the truths of reason the bedrock on which to build our human knowledge, including the knowledge of the world around us. This Cartesian argument seems to bring to an end the infinite regress of justification as his clear and distinct ideas provide a sort of foundational beliefs for other beliefs. The Cartesian clear and distinct ideas are known a priori. Descartes was not the only rationalist of his time; others followed his footsteps by trying to establish that we can only attain true knowledge by reason. Two of such philosophers worth mentioning are Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz and Benedict Baruch de Spinoza. Both of them argued that empirical truths are necessary truths and as such can be established by reason alone. Leibniz developed a complex and comprehensive metaphysical view of the world that can be easily misrepresented if we attempt to look at his teachings in small segments in isolation. He first of all propounded a doctrine of a necessary God that is all good, all powerful, and all knowing. This God created the best possible world since it would be impossible that such a God creates a less perfect world. Against the obvious fact that we can imagine a more perfect world without the observable evils in our present world, for example, a world without pain and stress, devoid of natural disasters like earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, and dreadful diseases like HIV/AIDS and cancers, Leibniz argues that such local pieces of evil as the examples given above are necessary to maximize the overall perfection of the world. According to him, if we have the all knowing mind of God, we would understand that what we call imperfections in the present world are necessary as
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they contribute to the overall perfection of the world. He cited the example of having to endure the discomfort of taking some unpleasant medicine in order to recover from an illness. The epistemological implication of this metaphysics is that all empirical truths about the world could be worked out a priori, just by thinking about them. (Cardinal, Hayward, and Jones, 2004). Spinoza was inspired by the geometrical method of Euclid and started with a series of ethical definitions and axioms. He developed a complex metaphysical picture of the world in which God is one and the same with the universe. Like Leibniz, he claimed that all truths are necessary and that our lack of the powerful mind to see why everything is as it is that makes things appear to us as if they are contingent. Spinozas teaching was definitely pantheistic. He argued against the idea that some events in the world just happen to be the case. For instance, I just had breakfast of tea and dry toast. According to him, it was necessary that I had such a breakfast rather than something else, like boiled yam and fried eggs. I could not have had the latter instead of the former as a matter of necessity, but the fact that I lack the all powerful mind to recognize this fact, I think it was contingent that I had the tea and dry toast, rather than boiled yam and fried eggs for breakfast. By claiming that truths about the world are necessary rather than contingent, both Leibniz and Spinoza avoided Humes criticism, but that does not make their theories foolproof. They bestowed necessity on every event in the world by virtue of the existence of a necessary God. They however were unsuccessful to satisfactorily prove the existence of this God by reason alone. Neither of their versions of the ontological argument for the existence of God is generally considered as successful. It therefore seems that rationalism, either in the Cartesian version or the versions of Leibniz and Spinoza has failed to demonstrate that through reason alone, we can arrive at substantial truths about the universe and the way it works. Rationalism has postulated that there are rational truths that are eternal, and necessary. That we can arrive at these truths just by thinking and that these truths are self-justifying. It however fails to account for knowledge of contingent truths like empirical knowledge and knowledge of the natural sciences. Thus, it fails to convince us that relying on reason as the foundation of true human knowledge is a viable option to defeat the sceptical challenge. Empirical Foundationalism: Empiricism argues that human knowledge is based on the foundation of sense experience. Basically, empiricism argues that we were born with a blank mind and that everything we now know has been written on our mind by our sense experiences. Empiricists make distinction between concepts and sense experiences. Sense experiences are those things we are conscious of. For instance, that right
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now I am having a glass of pineapple juice, because, I can actually taste it, smell it, and see it. On the other hand concepts come from sense experiences and they enable us to form beliefs. Empiricists traditionally teach that we can rearrange the basic elements of things we experience but we cannot invent the elements in ourselves. The elements would have to come from what we have actually experienced. They consider sense data or sense impressions as the basic elements that come into our minds via the senses and these we cannot break down to further smaller elements.(Cardinal, Hayward, and Jones, 2004). The mind according to them retains basic sense experiences from which it forms concepts and can think of things even when not experiencing them and recognize them when it encounters them. Empiricists argue for the certainty of sensation namely, that our sense experiences are incorrigible. They are not subject to doubt. Based on this incorrigibility, they argue that our senses provide us with foundations for all human knowledge. What happens according to them is that we infer the existence of external objects and events from our sense experiences. For example, when I have the sensation that I feel pains, which I call headache, I infer that I have a head. If there is error, it is not in my sensation of the pains, but in my inference of the source of the pain. If I have the sense experience of barking, I can infer that there is a dog outside. The idea that there is a dog outside is a product of inference, but my sense experience of barking is not a product of inference. My sense experience comes to me immediately and directly, which means it leaves no room for error. Empiricists refer to sense experience as given. By this, they mean, my sense experiences do not require a further justification because there are no other conceivable circumstance that can make them be given up since they come to me immediately and directly without any intermediary. Thus, they argue that all knowledge is justified on the basis of what is given in experience and that the certainties of my sensations provide the foundation for true human knowledge. (Cardinal, Hayward, and Jones, 2004). John Locke argues that all experience and all human knowledge can be analyzed into simple sense data. He opines that our minds were blank slates at birth, tabula rasa and we furnish them with ideas concepts or beliefs through experiences. David Hume agreed with Locke that empiricism sheds light on many important issues and problems in philosophy, but disagrees that it could provide us with a true account of how we gain knowledge about the world. Humes account of causation, which shattered the rationalist enterprise, was not favourable to empiricism either. His idea that the concept of cause is not experiential but that what we mean and experience as cause and effect is simply a constant conjunction of events suggests that there are certain concepts or ideas which cannot be based on sense experience.
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Ordinary Language and Common Sense: Ordinary language philosophers and philosophers of common sense are two, not sharply distinct; groups of philosophers who try to defend our daily belief system against scepticism. They claim that it sounds better to reason, to believe that those things we ordinarily reckon to be true are true, thus, we should not allow scepticism persuade us otherwise. Ordinary language lacks the fine distinctions and precise meanings that often characterise philosophical arguments. Generally philosophical arguments and discussions are carried out in fine fashioned language distinct from that in which we ordinarily carry out our everyday discussions. In doing this however, philosophical discourses bring with them a lot of problems owing to the fact of using words in peculiar ways. Philosophers end up creating unnecessary confusions. Ordinary language philosophers advocate that we jettison this way of talking and discussing and pay attention to the way concepts and terms are used in everyday discussions. By so doing, we would avoid most of the philosophical puzzles that now abound. In line with this principle of thought, ordinary language philosophers have noted the complications that have been associated with the use of the words know and knowledge. They argue that philosophy uses the word knowledge in a way different from the way we use it in ordinary life. They see philosophical scepticism as an invitation to accept this philosophical usage and depart from the ordinary usage of the words know and knowledge. The sceptic has however not given us any reason why we should prefer this philosophical usage to the ordinary usage. Therefore, rather than accept the invitation of the sceptic, the ordinary language philosopher insists on keeping the traditional definition of knowledge and know, as they appear and are applied in our everyday discussions. Thus, he makes epistemic claims in that light. (Cardinal, Hayward, and Jones, 2004). According to the ordinary language philosopher, words are meaningful as a result of social agreement about their meaning. That is to say, words acquire their meaning from the way they are used in everyday contexts. If they are ripped from these contexts and try to make them work in a different context for which they are not designed, we would be involved in nonsensical talk. An example would be to ask us to use the word eat to do the work of the word bath, if others do not accept this new usage, we would most certainly be talking rubbish to use the words interchangeably. Ordinary language philosophers insist that we cannot just use words to mean whatever we please. They argue that when philosophers claim to have grave doubts about the existence of the physical world and physical objects, they are departing radically from the ordinary usage of the word doubt and by that have raised more
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confusion about the way the word works. If we stick to the ordinary and generally accepted understanding of the words and concepts we use, they claim that the argument of the scepticism would be rendered invalid. According to Ludwig Wittgenstein, when we allow language to go on holiday, that is, when we begin to use terms in inappropriate ways different from their original and ordinary meaning, we get involved in all manner of philosophical muddles. (Wittgenstein, 1973) Basically, their argument is that words like doubt and know begin as ordinary words used in ordinary contexts. They are at home when used in these contexts and everyone understands what the other means when he uses them. When they are taken out of their ordinary contexts, they go on holiday and are no longer able to do the work for which they are suited and confusion begins to arise. This is what the sceptic does when he begins to talk about knowledge using the term in a language out of the context in which it is ordinarily used. This means that when the sceptic is talking about knowledge, he is not talking about the same thing that we understand by the word in our everyday discussion. In this same vein, philosophers of common sense argue that philosophers are mistaken if they claim we do not know what we normally think we do. According to them, the first duty of any theory of knowledge is to account for the fact that we do in fact know all kinds or ordinary things, instead of trying to fabricate a peculiar philosophical definition of knowledge in which what can be known is drastically restricted. The 20th century philosopher, G. E. Moore is the best-known supporter of this view. He argues that we have to take for granted some of our beliefs since we cannot hope to prove everything, as the process would be endless. He thinks some beliefs must be basic and need no further proof. For him, it is not a viable option to believe nothing. After all, even the sceptic has to retain some beliefs. Concerning what we are to believe, he simply says the basic claims of common sense. The very fact that we cannot prove these basic claims of common sense shows how basic they are. They are so basic that they do not need to be proved but rather to be accepted. According to Moore, we know certain things even when we cannot prove we know them. We can actually know things without knowing we know them. (Moore, 1959). Another known defender of this view is Thomas Reid. Like David Hume, he thinks no one should take radical scepticism seriously as that would disable him from carrying out his daily business. For instance, I cannot be sure that striking the next key on my computer would cause it to explode. To take scepticism seriously would make every single act we perform a leap into the unknown. He also pointed out that even the most committed sceptic has no difficulty in carrying out his daily business. This shows that none of us is capable of sincere doubts about certain basic common sense beliefs. One of such basic beliefs is the existence of the
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physical world and all the properties we perceive it to possess. These basic common sense beliefs may strictly speaking be difficult to prove by reason. They are nonetheless fundamental to the way we think and impossible to reject. According to Reid, while it is possible to raise doubts about our basic beliefs theoretically, we cannot consistently doubt them. They are so basic to our lives that it would be pointless to doubt them. They constitute the fabric of our belief system and the mere possibility of being mistaken about common sense assumptions does not give us good reasons to doubt them. He writes, To what purpose is it for philosophy to decide against common sense in this or any other matter? The belief of a material world is older, and of more authority, than any principles of philosophy. It declines the tribunal of reason, and laughs at all the artillery of the logician. (Reid, 1846). Transcendental and Dialectical Arguments: Immanuel Kant was the first to use the term transcendental in the sense in which it is used here to characterize certain type of arguments against scepticism. It operates by demanding that the sceptic proposes what he intends to deny in order for his argument to make sense. If for instance the sceptic intends to deny the existence of the physical world, he must first articulate what he means by the physical world before putting forward the argument to negate its existence. The transcendental/dialectical arguments ask what the conditions of possibility are for something to be the case before stating what the possibilities are for it not to be the case. It only shows that there is a possibility of the thing being the case as much as there is a possibility of its not being the case. If for example, I want to doubt the existence of language, how do I formulate my doubt? They can only be formulated in language. In the very act of formulating my doubts, I would be involved in using language, the very thing for which I am supposed to doubt. Or if I am doubting that my beliefs are true or false, which is to doubt that I hold beliefs, I would be holding the belief that I do not hold beliefs or I would be holding the belief that my beliefs are not true. But the very belief with which I hold that my beliefs are not true is held as true itself. So it means that my beliefs are true. And in relation to the possibility of knowledge, if I deny that knowledge is possible then the very knowledge with which I deny the possibility of knowledge is not possible. Coherentism: The coherentists thesis is formulated in terms that deny that knowledge and justified belief rest ultimately on a foundation of non-inferential knowledge or justified belief. (Kvanvig, Retrieved from the Internet, Oct. 2009). It
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conceives of beliefs as justified to the extent that they fit in or cohere with other beliefs in a given system of beliefs. They maintain that justification is a function of some relationship between beliefs in contrast to the idea of privileged beliefs holding up a superstructure in the way maintained by the foundationalist. For them, the elements of our knowledge do not stand in any sort of linear dependence on a set of self-evident basic truths about the given but hang together in a systematic mutual corroboration. (Quinton, 1989). The better a belief fits into our already existing system of beliefs, the better that belief is justified. What we can immediately draw from this is that a belief that does not contradict our system of beliefs is justified. The concept of coherence has its theoretical basis in the notion of a system, understood as a set whose elements stand in mutual relations of consistency and interdependence. So it is not just enough that a belief fits in or coheres with our system of beliefs or that a belief does not contradict our system of beliefs, but also that a belief is supported and explained by our system of beliefs. In this theory, consistency is a lesser demand than dependence. The requirement of dependence is more difficult to specify in a suitable manner. (Sturgeon in Grayling, 1995). For the coherentists, a set of belief is coherent if any one of them follows from all the rest. This includes also that no subset of the beliefs is logically independent of the remainder. Concerning the relation that must hold for a belief to be justified Lawrence BonJour gives us an objective account of coherence relation in which he cites the following five features: (i) Logical consistency; (ii) The extent to which the system in question is probabilistically consistent; (iii) The extent to which inferential connections exist between beliefs, both in terms of the number of such connections and their strength; (iv) The inverse of the degree to which the system is divided into unrelated, unconnected subsystems of belief; and (v) The inverse of the degree to which the system of belief contains unexplained anomalies. (BonJour, 1985). Coherentists regard a priori beliefs as nearer to the centre of the web and most resistant to revision. They do not expect such beliefs to change often, but neither do they regard them as totally beyond revision. They do not think that there are any beliefs that have such privileged epistemic status as completely beyond revision as the foundationalists do with regard to incorrigible beliefs. On the outside of the web are beliefs about our perceptions. They are regularly updated in the light of new perceptual evidences. Because they are on the edges of the web, they have lesser intimate links with our whole belief system. They feed into and are accommodated with the web as a whole. They depend largely on the rest of our
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beliefs, so they must necessarily fit into our system of beliefs if they are to be accepted. Coherentism does not subscribe to absolute certainty as a necessity for knowledge. With the search for certainty leading us toward a dead end, coherentism hopes to give us a more pragmatic and workable theory of knowledge instead of what foundationalism offers. Rather than discard what is not completely certain, coherentism looks upon our already existing system of beliefs and operates with the tools of the knowledge we have already acquired. In this way, we are able to sift new beliefs and take those that cohere with our other beliefs while rejecting those that do not. Coherentism as a theory of justification has not been able to answer certain questions to guarantee its soundness as an acceptable theory of justification. One such question is what is generally thought of as the plurality objection. This is a problem that is related to the truth connection. It is expressed in the fact that a good piece of fiction, which displays the virtue of coherence, but obviously unlikely to be true can pass for a set of beliefs on which a particular belief that fits into it is justified. According to Kvanvig Jonathan, (1995) it gives the idea that coherence and the likelihood of truth are so far apart, making it implausible to think of coherence as a guide to truth at all, less a lone, a singular guide of justification. Another noticeable defect of coherentism is its neglect of the relationship between our beliefs and the way things actually are. It is essentially a theory about the relations between beliefs. It allows for justification of beliefs with no bearing to reality. But if my beliefs are to be truly justified, they must have their basis in reality. BonJour aptly states this defect when he writes: Coherence is purely a matter of the internal relations between the components of the belief system; it depends in no way on any sort of relation between the system of beliefs and anything external to that system. Hence if, as a coherence theory claims, coherence is the sole basis for empirical justification, it follows that a system of empirical beliefs might be adequately justified, indeed might constitute empirical knowledge, in spite of being utterly out of contact with the world that it purports to describe. Nothing about any requirement of coherence dictates that a coherent system of beliefs need receive any sort of input from the world or be in any way causally influenced by the world. (Bonjour, 1985). Contextualism: This is a standard non-sceptical reply to the perennial regress problem of justification. It evolved primarily as a response to the views that we
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cannot have knowledge of the world around us. In general terms, it maintains that whatever we know is relative to a context. (Black, Retrieved from the Internet, Oct. 2009). Context is seen in relation to certain features like, intentions and presuppositions of the members of a conversational situation. These features determine under what standards epistemic claims are taken to count as knowledge. Thus, there is the possibility that there are different epistemic standards according to different contexts. Contextualists do agree that standards of justifications do vary from context to context. There are some contexts with very high epistemic standards, which make it difficult, sometimes impossible to have our beliefs count as knowledge, while some other contexts have epistemic standards that are comparatively low which make most of our beliefs count as knowledge. (Black, Retrieved from the Internet, Oct. 2009). Contextualists argue that the term know is either indexical or functions very much like an indexical. To say a word or term is indexical means its meaning or semantic content depends on the context of its use. The words here and I for example are indexical. If I say for instance that Francis is here, what I mean by here depends on where I am when I say it. Given that I am in the classroom, here would simply mean classroom and if I were in my bedroom when I say it, here would mean my bedroom. In the same way I depends on the context of its use and particularly on who is using it. When Francis says, I am in the classroom, he means Francis is in the classroom and this is different from when I say, I am in the classroom, for the latter would mean Anselm is in the classroom. So we have two sentences, which are of the same sentence type in terms of sentence structure and token but mean two different things by virtue of the indexical I. According to contextualists, given that know is an indexical or functions as one, it means that its semantic content will depend on the context of its use. Following from the effect of the context on the indexical know, context will also affect the entire semantic content of complex lexical items in which know appears. That is to say, when I claim that Francis knows he is in the classroom based on his statement that I am in the classroom the justification of my epistemic claim will be in respect of the context in which I have made the claim. In the words of DeRose, The truth-conditions of knowledge ascribing and knowledge denying sentences (sentences of the form S knows that P and S doesnt know that P and related variants of such sentences) vary in certain ways according to the contexts in which they are uttered. What so varies is the epistemic standards that S must meet (or, in the case of denial of knowledge, fail to meet) in order
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for such a statement to be true. (Retrieved from the Internet, Oct. 2009). Taking contexts with very high epistemic standards, which is typical when we consider and take seriously sceptical hypotheses, make knowledge difficult and almost impossible, if not out rightly impossible. Such contexts would usually require that we rule out the possibility that we are brains-in-a-vat, or the possibility that we are dreaming or hallucinating or under the influence of the Cartesian-like evil demon. Unfortunately, our perceptual experiences cannot afford to give us evidences to completely eliminate these possibilities. Contextualists argue that in most contexts the epistemic standards are comparatively low. These are ordinary, everyday contexts in which we do not give serious considerations to sceptical hypotheses. Within such contexts we can have knowledge without necessarily eliminating the possibilities like being a brain-invat. Without going into the rigours of their analysis, it is noteworthy to state that epistemological contextualism in its most prominent forms appear in the works of Robert Nozicks (1981) subjunctive conditionals account of knowledge and the relevant alternatives theory of knowledge associated with Fred Dretske (1981) and Alvin Goldman. (1976) Michael Williams argued in favour of epistemological contextualism by dismissing scepticism as unnatural since it is dependent on essentially contentious ideas and being theoretical are not forced on our ordinary ways of epistemic thinking. As a matter of fact it is the burden of the sceptic to carry, which he unfortunately seems unable to, so we have no reason to take scepticism seriously. He argues that independently of all (situational, disciplinary and other contextually variable factors), a proposition has no epistemic status whatsoever. There is no fact of the matter as to what kind of justification it either admits of or requires. (Williams, 1996). This is essentially against epistemological realism that suggests that there is a fact of the matter as to what kind of justification a belief requires in support of the doctrine of epistemic priority. This doctrine states that our beliefs must be justified by sensory experience if they are to pass as knowledge. Reliabilism: It simply argues that a reliable method would produce a true belief and thus a belief is justified if it is produced by a reliable method rather than basing it on good reasons. There are so many knowledge claims we have that despite our inability to provide justifiable reasons why we hold on to them we are not prepared to give them up. Many a time, we feel justified in holding a belief even before we find
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evidence to support the belief. In the light of this, reliabilists think the issue is to find the evidence by which we actually support our beliefs rather than the evidence that could be used to support our beliefs. They also notice that many of our beliefs are not supported by the beliefs we currently have and not even beliefs that we could hope to acquire. Giving examples how we can hold beliefs which produce workable results without necessarily knowing how we come about such beliefs, for instance, the herbalist knows that certain leaves, roots, fluid from certain plants, etc. would cure a particular ailment when combined. What justifies his belief in the combination and not any other combination he does not know, but knows that his method would and it does work. Reliabilism thinks that the issue is that the method, which produces the beliefs, is a reliable one. Thus they argue that what justifies a belief is not that it fits with or is supported by other beliefs, which one explicitly has, but rather that it is acquired by a reliable method. (Cardinal, Hayward, and Jones, 2004). Justification for reliabilism may well be external to the mind; it does not matter so long the method that produces the belief is reliable. The implication of this idea of justification is that knowledge does not consist in having an explicit understanding of the justification of our beliefs but that we have reached our beliefs in an appropriate way. Context-Dependency: The Post Modernist Approach: Post modernism is a trend that cuts across almost all fields of study and not peculiar in any way to philosophy. Its brand of philosophy is viewed as eclectic and elusive criticism and analysis of Western philosophy heavily influenced by phenomenology, structuralism, and existentialism as espoused by philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger and to some degree, Ludwig Wittgenstein. It is thoroughly anti-foundationalism. It wages an unrelenting attack on modernism. Epistemologically, it argues against the modernist point of view that there is the possibility of objective knowledge, which assumes that such knowledge refers directly to an objective reality that should appear the same way to any and all observers. Modernist epistemology is characterised by the assumption that knowledge is a product of the activity of the mind fashioning ideas to agree or correspond with objective reality. Post modernism disagrees with this view, preferring to conceive knowledge as a special kind of relations; a text or discourse that puts words and images together in ways that is pleasing and useful to particular culture. It therefore denies objective knowledge, arguing that knowledge is made from the linguistic and other meaning making resources of a particular culture. This implies that different cultures can have different pictures of the world since they can see the world in very different ways, all of which work in their
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terms. It considers the belief that one particular cultures view of the world is universally true as a politically convenient assumption that favoured Europes imperial ambitions of the past while lacking firm intellectual basis. According to Stanley Grenz, [Post modernism] affirms that whatever we accept as truth and even the way we envision truth are dependent on the community in which we participate There is no absolute truth: rather truth is relative to the community in which we participate. (Grenz, 1995). Post modernist thinkers are of the view that justification cannot be contextindependent. For them, the acceptance of the justification for epistemic claims is determined by standards, which belong to the same context as that to which the attempted justification that is offered belongs. Richard Rorty is cited often as the most prominent defender of post modernist philosophy in recent times. Some other prominent post modernist epistemologists include; Paul Feyerabend and Thomas Kuhn. They subscribe to the context-dependency of justification. Kuhn, Feyerabend and Rorty are against Methodism as formalized in foundational epistemology. Kuhn with his notion of incommensurability (Kuhn, 1970) and Feyerabend with his idea of methodological anarchism (Feyerabend, 1975) came to the conclusion that there is no method such as the scientific method by which we conduct rational inquiry. There are various systems and each has its own standards of justification and none of them is to be considered superior to the others. Rorty takes up from here with his epistemological behaviourism. (Rorty, 1979). He discredits and dismisses traditional epistemology as pretentious in the sense that it gives a false notion of knowledge as accuracy of representations. He argued that the idea of the mind as a mirror provides this false notion of knowledge. With the idea of hermeneutics, he strengthens his argument against commensuration and agrees with Kuhn on incommensurability. In a purified form he takes sides with Feyerabend against Methodism while avoiding his epistemological extremity. He views knowledge with reference to social agreements, which is more like Kuhns idea of knowledge as a human activity. The three of them situate the justification of our epistemic claims in the society or group. This allows their work to be thought of as relativistic. They however do not quite approve of the latter characterization, which is usual with post-modernists. As brave and persuasive as their efforts are, they leave behind loopholes, which critiques have explored and continue to explore. This brings to mind one characteristic of philosophy, that there is always a room to question even the most brilliant idea. The Achilles heel is always there to be explored.
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AFRICAN EPISTEMOLOGY AND CERTITUDE AND SCEPTICISM This class is an inquiry into the nature of African epistemology. It is a critical analysis of what constitute knowledge claims for the African and how the African justifies his claims to knowledge. In the light of the latter, it examines the notion of scepticism and how African epistemology deals with the issues of doubt and certainty. It is needless to start discussing whether there is African philosophy ditto, African epistemology or not since among serious scholars it is a dead and buried issue. (Uduigwomen, 1995). According to Amaechi Udefi, protagonists of African epistemology want to direct attention to the cultural embeddings of knowledge. This is against the ideological framework of European colonisation that upholds and affirms the supremacy of Western reason over non-Western peoples and cultures. (Udefi in Akanmidu (ed.) 2005). Scholars like Seghor, Anyanwu, Onyewuenyi and others have argued that there is a distinctive African way of perceiving and reacting to the world. This is what constitutes African epistemology. African epistemology deals with what the African means and understands when he makes a knowledge claim. This consists of how the African sees or talks about reality. Concerning how the African sees or talks about reality, Molefi Kete Asante writes, there are several elements in the mind of Africa that govern how humans behave with regard to reality: the practicality of wholism, the prevalence of poly-consciousness, the idea of inclusiveness, the unity of worlds, and the value of personal relationships. (Asante, 2000). These constitute the elements of the African mind, they frame the African conception of reality, and they are the basis on which cognitive claims are made by the African. From the earliest times there was an underlining commonality in the African apprehension of the universe, environment, society, and the divine. This is because while the self remains real and the material is concrete for the African, both the self and the material however remain interwoven by custom and tradition with the latter based upon human correlativity. Thus, the African conceives reality as one large system in which personalism is expressed in concrete consubstantiation of spirit. African theory of knowledge, like other epistemologies is a social or cultural epistemology. It is an epistemology that is deliberately situated within a particular cultural context. When we talk about a phenomenon as being within a cultural context, we are talking about bringing it within the rational framework of the said cultural context; in this case, African culture. According to Kaphagawani and Melherbe, the way in which epistemic rationality and its related concepts are instantiated, filled out as it were, the concrete content that they are given in terms of linguistic descriptions and social customs, varies a great deal from one
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cultural context to another. (Kaphagawani and Melherbe in Coetzee and Roux, (ed.) 1998). The body of knowledge the set of established facts that are accepted as true in the society differ from one age to another. For instance, what would count, as a good theory, a widely accepted or a satisfactory explanation of a given phenomenon in traditional African society would differ from that which would count as satisfactory in contemporary African society. Such difference would also be noticed in the methods of acquisition of knowledge as well as the certification of knowledge justification of knowledge. Since the social philosopher works within the framework of societies and their characteristics, it means he would be interested in the habits and customs, the religions, languages, belief systems, values, interests and preferred occupations of the people. Thus, the social epistemologist is concerned with the rational practices, values, institutions, etc. of a culture. (Kaphagawani and Melherbe in Coetzee and Roux, (ed.) 1998). According to Kaphagawani and Melherbe, these rational practices consist in, i. The well-established general beliefs, concepts and theories of any particular people, in various fields such as medical science, religion, child-rearing, agriculture, psychology, education, etc. ii. The favoured ways usually institutionalised in the society, of acquiring new knowledge and evaluating accepted fact, science being a prime example of such an institution. iii. The accumulated wisdom that is passed on to the youth in the form of proverbs, revered traditions, myths and folktales. iv. The language of an ethnic group, the single most important repository of a societys accumulated knowledge. v. Customs and practices in the areas of religion and judicial procedure. vi. The accepted authorities (whether people, institutions or texts) in matters of knowledge and belief. These constitute the epistemic filaments in the fabric of a culture. So the question is how does African epistemology assess the beliefs and theories of traditional and contemporary African cultures? This may be reformulated as how do we decide what is rational in the context of African culture? This question is an inquiry into the application of the principles of rationality in the African context. African epistemology is essentially and necessarily rooted in African ontology. The epistemological view of the traditional African is consonant with his metaphysics. It is within this context we have a clearer understanding of Placid Temples idea that true wisdom, which is knowledge is to be found in ontological
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knowledge. Ontological knowledge is the intelligence of forces in their hierarchy, their cohesion and interaction. (Tempels, 1969). Epistemology is about the claims we make concerning the facts of our experience and these facts are always interpreted within certain assumptions, concepts, theories, and worldviews. This goes further to explain the necessity of the relationship between ontology and epistemology for this relation helps us to recognize, understand, and authenticate our cognitive claims. K. C. Anyanwu puts this very lucidly when he writes, We must know the basic assumptions, concepts, theories and worldview in terms of which the owners of the culture interpret the facts of experience. Without the knowledge of the African mind process and the worldview into which the facts of experience are to be fitted both the African and European researchers would merely impute emotive appeals to cultural forms and behaviour suggested by some unknown mind. (Ruch and Anyanwu, 1984). The philosophy of integration and principles of understanding, as well as aesthetic continuum of the African cultural world differ significantly from the Western world of ideas, especially when it comes to what constitutes trustworthy knowledge and reality. In classical African philosophy, there is a concrete existence of man and nature. African tradition only talks about two entities in terms of conceptual numericality and not in terms of separate ontological existence. It is impossible for the African to separate man from nature. They are sacredly united. In this unity they both participate in the same locus without being opposites. So, the African world is a unitary world as against the analytical world of western thought. Since African ontology postulates a unitary world, traditional African epistemology does not attend to the problem of knowledge by dividing its domain into the rational, the empirical, and the mystical. The three constitute a single mode of knowing in both the intellectual and concrete divisions of reality. (Nasseem, Retrieved from the Internet, July, 2009). Thus, while Western scientific paradigm is laden with methodological and mathematical formulations, the traditional African paradigm goes beyond the outer reaches of formal logic. It goes beyond logic and acknowledges the irreducible mystery of the transcendent. Traditional African epistemology sees man and nature as one inseparable continuum. As Anyanwu puts it, man and nature are not two separate independent and opposing realities but the one inseparable continuum of a hierarchical order.
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(Ruch and Anyanwu, 1984). While we may accuse Western philosophy of intellectual dogmatism that permits a dualism of the subject and object, and Asian philosophy of monism in attempting to deny the reality of the material, African philosophy tries to avoid the embarrassment of both concepts by seeking a central position for the ego (subject) in the cosmic scheme. In this way, subjectivism and objectivism do not constitute a problem to African epistemology. They are both subsumed in the unity of existence. In this unity; the subject gets to know the object. This will not be the case if they were detached. African epistemology does not demarcate between the epistemic subject and the epistemic object. The epistemic subject, which experiences the epistemic object and the epistemic object which is experienced are joined together such that the epistemic subject experiences the epistemic object in a sensuous, emotive, and intuitive understanding, rather than through abstraction as it is the case in Western epistemology. CERTITUDE AND SCEPTICISM AS COMPLEMENTARY IN THE QUEST FOR KNOWLEDGE This study adopted a critical analytic and evaluative method in understanding the perennial problem of epistemological certitude and skepticism in Western epistemology and attempted to seek solution to this problem in African epistemology. The primary aims of this study were: a. to critically examine the issue of certitude and scepticism within the context of an African epistemological approach b. to determine the specific areas of divergence between Western epistemology and African epistemology c. to appraise the response of African epistemology to the issue of certitude and scepticism d. to proffer a solution to the perennial problem of certitude and scepticism using African epistemological paradigm. To achieve these aims, this study analyzed the concept of knowledge in all its related strands. In the course of this analysis, we discovered that defining knowledge proved to be a difficult task for Western epistemology as the traditional definition of knowledge as justified true belief was shown to be inadequate by Edmund Gettier. (1963). Gettiers essay; Is Justified True Belief Knowledge exposed the inadequacy of the hitherto sufficient conditions of knowledge justification, truth, and belief. Attempts to repair this definition have not succeeded and this has further strengthened the position of scepticism; namely, that we cannot know for certain that what we claim to know is true.
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Epistemological efforts in the history of Western epistemology have had to battle with scepticism by trying to create firm and unshakable foundations for knowledge. Our analysis of the various efforts in this direction took this study through concepts like foundationalism; the theory that inferential justification terminates with beliefs that are immediately justified, beliefs that do not depend on any other beliefs for their justifications. (Moser and VanderNat, 1987). Other concepts in relation to the understanding of knowledge that we had to analyze were, (i) Coherentism; the idea that beliefs as justified to the extent that they fit in or cohere with other beliefs in a given system of beliefs (Cardinal, Hayward, & Jones, 2004). Thus, maintain that justification is a function of some relationship between beliefs in contrast to the idea of privileged beliefs holding up a superstructure in the way maintained by the foundationalist. (ii) Contexualism; the idea that whatever we know is relative to a context. Context is seen in relation to certain features like, intentions and presuppositions of the members of a conversational situation. (iii) Reliabilism; the argument that a reliable method would produce a true belief and thus a belief is justified if it is produced by a reliable method rather than basing it on good reasons. And (iv) the Contextdependency approach of the post modernist to justification, which conceive knowledge as a special kind of relations; a text or discourse that puts words and images together in ways that is pleasing and useful to particular culture. It therefore denies objective knowledge, arguing that knowledge is made from the linguistic and other meaning making resources of a particular culture. Our finding is that none of these adequately put to rest the over bearing considerations of scepticism. This situation is worsened with the sceptics demand for absolute certainty as a condition sine qua non for knowledge. Absolute certainty is objective indubitability, which necessarily also requires subjective indubitability. A further study of why the problem of certitude and scepticism continues to elude Western epistemology reveals that the rigid dichotomy between the subject and the object in the understanding of reality in Western epistemology is responsible. In this dichotomy, the subject needs to perceive the object as it is to be able to make a cognitive claim. Such perception is not possible. The Kantian theory of the nomenon and phenomenon, as the world as we know it and the world as it is in itself, which exemplifies the submission of Western epistemology shows that we can only know the world as it appears to us, and not as it is in itself. The post modernist approach which disagrees with universal standards and paradigms of rationality and objectivity for epistemic claims conceives knowledge and rational certainty within the context of social agreements, thus giving the notion of knowledge as a human activity. Within this context, justification is context-dependent. The brave and persuasive efforts of the post modernists
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however leave loopholes which critiques of the position have maximally explored and continue to explore. This makes it impossible for them to put the problem of epistemological certitude and scepticism to rest. An appraisal of the epistemological approach of African philosophy to knowledge and rational certainty first and foremost opens up the cultural embededness of knowledge; therefore revealing the important role that culture plays in the mental understanding of reality. This role is so important that unless one is intimately familiar with the ontological commitments of a culture, it is often difficult to appreciate or otherwise understand those commitments. (Brown, 2004). Therefore, it is important that we understand the African cultural and ontological conceptions of reality to enable us understand the African approach to knowledge. Exploring this further, we discover that for the African epistemologist, the African ontological understanding of reality as a basic continuum in which the dual aspects of reality; the physical and the spiritual are intrinsically interrelated in such a way that it does not allow a rigid compartmentalization of the object and the subject as two separate and different entities, enables the cognition of reality as part and parcel of itself and not as accurate representations. Thus, knowledge is not the knowing subject accurately representing the known object, but that the knowing subject knows the known object as part and parcel of its very being in one and same reality. In this way the issue of accurate representation or no accurate representation does arise. Another very important aspect that this kind of understanding reveals is the various influences on the subjects understanding of the object. Since it is not by a process of abstraction that the subject gets to know the object, such influences that arise from its human and socio-cultural being, i.e. habits, interests, values, language, etc. come into play. These cannot be denied of the subject because they shape his understanding, appreciation and interpretation of reality. With all these put together, can we say that the African epistemologist does not understand such concepts as certainty and doubt or certitude and scepticism? He certainly does understand these concepts; but not as the Western epistemologist does in relation to knowledge. Both concepts for the African epistemologist would be mutually complementary in the understanding of knowledge rather than mutually exclusive. They both play the role of ensuring that we are not mistaken in our knowledge claims. Instead of one being a paradigm and another being the obstacle to evaluating what is to be knowledge and what is not to be knowledge, both ensure that we sift the candidates for epistemic claims properly of all that could mislead the knower. The efforts by epistemologists to establish true knowledge is to guide against misinformation. This is to avoid complications and misdirection in our
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decision making processes and interpersonal relationships. To ask questions about the certitude of our epistemic claims, which amounts to raising doubts (scepticism) about such claims is to ask us to be sure of the knowledge claims we are making. On the other hand, to draw standards of certainty by which we assess our knowledge claims is to be sure of the claims are making. Thus, in either case, the aim is to avoid making mistakes in our epistemic claims. The quest for certitude and the efforts to avoid scepticism serve as check and balance for epistemological claims.

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