Prof. Susanna Rinard
ZG: To start, we know that your philosophy focuses on skepticism. Could you elaborate on your view?
SR: Yes. My views on skepticism are highly unusual among philosophers. I am actually somebody who thinks that skepticism is true. So I think that we actually lack knowledge of most ordinary subject matters. Philosophers have traditionally given skeptical arguments by pointing to possible scenarios of radical doubt; situations in which you have the same experiences that you currently do, but the world is radically different from how you think it is. Maybe you’re dreaming or maybe you’re in something sort of like The Matrix.
My view is that we don’t and can’t know really anything about the external world, or about the past or about the future, because you can construct skeptical scenarios for all of these situations. Sometimes people will react by saying, maybe I don’t know that I’m not a “Brain in a Vat,” but surely it’s unlikely. They’ll appeal to some sort of probability claim and I hold the radical view that even that claim is false.
At the end of the day, we are lacking in a certain kind of evidence based justification for almost all of our beliefs. Some philosophers have been sort of afraid of this view because they think that if this were true, it would follow that we should not believe anything; that we should suspend judgment and everything and have radical doubts. That is a view that I reject.
In some of my other work on the ethics of belief, I’ve argued against the view known by the term “evidentialism,” which is the view that only evidence is a good justification to believe something. I reject that because I think we don’t have evidence even for very basic beliefs, like there’s a table in front of me or there are other people in this room. I think we don’t even have evidence that is strong enough to support that. I defend the view that we should think of believing as more like acting, so when it comes to action, the default is any action is permissible unless there’s some alternative that’s better.
Some people get worried about that at this point because they think: Does that mean there are no constraints on belief and “crazy people” are no less rational than other people? I want to try to mitigate that objection, by pointing to the fact that most of us, even if there’s no ultimate rational justification for it, do actually agree on a lot of basic things.
“We often focus on our disagreements but a lot of people agree that if you are looking at the colors of ravens, and you see lots of black ravens, that you are going to be more likely to think the next raven is going to be black rather than pink. I think we can get a certain kind of agreement even if it’s lacking in a rational justification. ”
We often focus on our disagreements but a lot of people agree that if you are looking at the colors of ravens, and you see lots of black ravens, that you are going to be more likely to think the next raven is going to be black rather than pink. I think we can get a certain kind of agreement even if it’s lacking in a rational justification.
ZG: Given that you think so much about skepticism and epistemology, what made you want to teach a course on Happiness?
SR: Well, I’ll tell you a story. When I turned thirty, I went to Mount Auburn Cemetery, and I sat down on a bench. I said to myself: I’m really an adult now. My death is a reality.
What do I want to do with my life before I die?
I came up with two broad goals. The first was very concrete, which was that I wanted to have children. Then, the second goal was more loosely defined—I wanted to devote a considerable portion of my time and energy to understanding some of the biggest challenges facing humanity. I felt called to focus on the question of: Why is it that despite our incredible material wealth compared to human beings that have existed for most of history, so many people are still so miserable? That’s superficially paradoxical, what’s going on there?
What are the causes of happiness and unhappiness? How has our society been set up in such a way that despite all of this incredible material luxury, we still have so many challenges when it comes to happiness?
The course was just an official structure for me to set aside some time and space to try to look at some of these issues, and just have a dialogue with students about it. I was motivated because of this problem of misery, but I didn’t want the course to be too much of a downer. So, I decided to focus on the other side of the coin—the happiness part.
ZG: With an eye to common struggles that Harvard students might have in attaining happiness from your perspective, we want you to imagine that you’re hosting “Happiness Olympics.” What type of challenge would you have for your philosophy students?
SR: If I had to give people one challenge, maybe it would be this:
Take some time, an hour, two hours and just think about what it is that you think really matters in life. What is it that you want to do with your life? What is it you want to do before you die? Is it making money? Is it attaining a certain kind of position in society? Is it relating to other people in a deep way? Is it appreciating or creating beauty? Is it trying to solve some of the world’s problems? Is it contemplating deep philosophical questions that have perplexed human beings for centuries? It can be kind of hard to ask yourself those questions, but maybe doing that with friends in a social way. That would be my challenge.