Natural Attitude

The "Natural Attitude" defines belief as "the manner in which we accept the things in the world, and the world itself" (Kolokowski 45).

The skeptic would obviously scoff at even such a concept as belief, although might I say I find that slightly hypocritical-- a skeptic holds to a philosophical belief which says that for every proposition there is contradictory one that is also conceivably true. Well, by that thinking, there is a philosophy that is contrary to that of skepticism, which by skepticism thinking, is also conceivably true.

But I digress.

Phenomenology, in its defining of the "Natural Attitude", offers a rather suprising argument to the skepticism of Sextus Empericus. Rather than progressing with the familiar 'cogito argument' (which, by the way, was first found in St. Augustine, long before Descartes penned it), it argues for an a priori knowledge of the world.

Sokolowski comments, "Even the most rudimentary sense of self could not arise except on the bases of world belief" (46).

[It is important to note that when we speak of the 'world' we speak not of the globe or a large physical thing, but rather "the ultimate setting for ourselves and for all the things we experience" (44).]

He then supplies an argument for his point. I will not further analyze his actual argument, but rather comment on the signifigance of his conclusion.

If it is indeed so that 'world belief' comes prior to an ego-centric belief, then we truly are a part to the world, and even more, a moment to the world. The world is then something bigger than ourselves, but not dependent on our own existance (even though our existance is dependent upon the world's existance).

This would be a direct contradiction to any sort of relativism. If we are dependent on the world and the world is not dependent upon us, then it is impossible for the world to be subjective to our own minds in an absolute sense. There necessarily must be an objective state to the world.

An interesting connection, I think, and one that I would like to dive deeper into.