After giving a bit of background information about what certainty is a whole, now I feel I can discuss limitations of the word “I am certain”. “Only when we know little can we be certain; doubt grows with greater learning.” This quote from the German philosopher, Goethe demonstrates that with the use of the “I am certain”, you are restricting yourself to only the knowledge that you have acquired. Today I am certain it is going to rain. I am making this judgement because of all of the dark clouds in the sky and this information was passed down to me from my mother. However, the dark clouds could be moving to the west and in the end it won’t rain but based on that little piece of information, which I received from my mother, I was able to come to that conclusion. This idea can be further expanded by a quote from Eric Hoffer who states, “We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand.” By this he means since we do not understand a topic or theory from our assumptions made we can make a personal justification. I am certain that if I do not do well in my assessments my parents will be disappointed. I can tell this because I know from experience that my parents were disappointed in me. “For a belief to become justified, it has to be compared with a fixed theory or belief that is dependable. As humans, our strongest belief is our emotions and memories. For example, there is no one more certain than myself whether I am in love or not, and passionate conviction will only strengthen this belief. In these cases, ‘I am certain’ is a better way of expressing knowledge (it will be less convincing if someone says, “It is certain that I love you,” since science cannot tell why you are in love, but only what happens after you are in love). Moreover, personal belief is less likely to change because one’s belief is constantly refreshed by his/her emotions and memories.” Furthermore I am certain that my name is Nishane, I am of a Sri Lankan origin and that I was born on the 8th of December 1988. I know all that all of this is true because it was passed down from my parents and my birth certificate states all of this in writing. But can I be really certain that all of this information is true? Whether it is true or not, I can never really know for sure and only have my parents words for it. I could have been picked up in a ditch or adopted from an orphanage in Sri Lanka. As ‘I am certain’ can be defined as subjective certainty ‘it is certain’ can be classified as objective certainty, according to Søren Kierkegaard’s theory. I am certain that killing somebody are wrong. I have come to this conclusion due to my upbringing because of my parents influence of me and if I did commit this it would clash with my morals and also my religion which considers killing someone as a sin.
In the previous paragraph, I discussed the how I could be certain it is going to rain by looking into the clouds and noticing that they are dark. I could say ‘it is certain’ that it is going to rain if I watched the weather forecast on TV and the weather man said that we could expect showers and since the meteorologists carried out tests and did experiments to gather this information. “Human beings are not purely rational, we cannot stop ourselves from including our values and judgements in our interpretations. This affects historical knowledge, for example: if History intends to be an objective study of the past, there must exist a line between fact and opinion, leaving all personal matters aside.” “As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality”
Passionate conviction was seen during the Roman Catholic Inquisition, the Spanish Inquisition, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the Holocaust, and more recently apartheid in South Africa, the JVP uprising of 1971, also the Fatwa against Salman Rushdie. If we are generous to George W. Bush II, we could say that he was passionately convinced of the existence of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, and that, that ‘knowledge’ prompted him to bring that country to ruin. Again being generous to Bush II, we can say that it is the ‘passionate conviction’ of the Shias and the Sunnis, of each one’s better ‘knowledge’ of the Koran and Hadith, which makes them want to blow each other to Hell.
The Catholic Church was certain (passionately convinced) that God created the Sun, the moon, the stars and the Earth just 4250 years ago. Anyone who thought otherwise risked being burnt at the stake on the charge of heresy. Joan of Arc was burnt as a witch for taking up arms against the English. The priests convinced each other that an ordinary mortal woman could not lead an army.
In finding the differences between “I am certain” and “it is certain,” it is evident that the passive and the personal assertions of certainty are not the same and cannot be applied to the same issues in all cases. “It is certain” is usually attained first through “I am certain,” because for all men to believe something, one man must have believed it. The transition is not flawless, however, because where matters are not accepted by all, two conflicting statements of “I am certain” cannot both be correct. Ethics and religion, subjective and often contradictory matters, are a perfect example of this. Passionate conviction is rarely sufficient, and never necessary for justifying knowledge. Only through emotion can zeal for a cause justify truth, and even then only a part of the time. Passionate conviction, by eliminating all other doubts, may turn an “I am certain” into an “it is certain.” Each claim has a separate axiom that is in each area of knowledge. Passionate conviction connects the personal with the passive assertions of certainty and sometimes justifies this certainty. Through every way certainty is determined, there is only one solid conclusion about it: “I am certain” may be to anyone, but “it is certain” must be to everyone.
