Tag Archives: epistemology

Common Sense

Perhaps I’m the only one who thinks this, but we give too much weight to facts. In many conversations — politics, science, religion, you name it — one often suggests that if we could only get down to hashing out the facts, they would speak for themselves and only one interpretation would be possible. I’m not so sure.

When one speaks of these facts, one actually means quantifiable and verifiable observations (how scientific!). While I readily accept that, such sentiment often misses the more important part of the equation: one still reads and interprets those facts, removing them from their original contexts and placing them in a ready-made context which often reinforces one’s own viewpoint. This is why, for example, those who claim that Obama was not a ‘natural-born’ citizen of the United States (and therefore disqualified from being President) continue to insist the truth of their claims despite the evidence provided precisely because they consider that evidence (birth certificate forms) to be fabrications on the basis of his not being born on U.S. soil. While the people who either don’t care or don’t agree with these ‘birthers’ accept the evidence as factual proof that Obama was a ‘natural-born’ citizen, the ‘birthers’ take that evidence as factual proof that he wasn’t.

This kind of logic has developed from two different psychological effects which are based in the Common Sense Realism of the eighteenth century. The first effect is the belief that one will change one’s beliefs when sufficient evidence is presented. The second is the belief that one welcomes divergent views. Both are illusions. Together, these two create the understanding that one has more knowledge of the subject at hand than other dialogue partners and, if only those partners were rational, they would change their minds by the sheer force of evidence presented. The harsher reality is that all the participants in the dialogue are enmeshed in their own reality and refuse to accept evidence contrary to their beliefs as facts. Either the science is biased, the presenter misinterpreted, or the context from which those facts were ripped is inaccurate (or unrealistic!). Whatever the case may be, people (including myself!) do not take new, contrary facts easily (if it is even possible).

The real result of these effects and the presentation of facts is that the very definition of facts is up to interpretation. Take, for example, the general scientific consensus that there is sufficient evidence to support the claim that modern human activity has contributed significantly to global warming. As far as scientific evidence goes, this is confirmed observation, but yet those who disagree speak about believing in climate change. The same also goes with the general scientific consensus on evolution. In other words, even evidence facts must be believed for them to have any degree of truth.

Where this leaves human dialogue, then, is in the realm of debate between orthodoxies. In many (if not all) cases, we have two or more dialogue partners who have their own ready-made realities and every discussion of substance without agreement is a clash of these realities that can never be harmonised. Instead, what normally happens is that the partners end their dialogue (at best, by ‘agreeing to disagree’) with further confirmation of their own set of beliefs as truth and their partners’ set of beliefs as heterodoxy (which is also often equated with heresy).

If this can be overcome, it is through the embrace of pluralism which doesn’t just welcome divergent views but expects them. Such polydoxy can be found in some ecumenical dialogues which find an important point around which agreement can be centered and friendly relationships established. It can also be found in religiously plural environments where people practise multiple faith traditions simultaneously (e.g. Buddhist Christians) as well as in religious groups like the Marranos and Messianic Judaism which also hold two different faiths in tension. In other words, the way out of entrenched orthodoxies is to become, in essence, a Marrano and find a new harmony in the discordance of beliefs.

Summa Scientiae

Anyone who visits Wikipedia currently will (or at least should) notice a very large banner ad at the top of the page that says “Please Read: A Personal Appeal from Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales.”  This ad rotates with a few others asking for donations to the Wikimedia Foundation.  The personal appeal from its founder can be found here.  What bothers me most about this is that it states its goal is “imagine a world where every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.”  Here’s a few reasons why this bothers me so:

1. Is “the sum of all human knowledge” even accessible? There are many subjects (especially the more abstract ones) which don’t have nice, clear-cut answers that make the sum of all knowledge rather silly.  In other words, these things are hotly debated and unless all viewpoints are explained, this project fails to realize “the sum of all human knowledge.”

2. Is Wikipedia this storehouse of information?  Probably not.  The best and wort part of a community like Wikipedia is that Joe the Plumber has as much credibility and influence on a Wikipedia article on Schroedinger’s Paradox as a theoretical physicist whose life’s work is on that exact subject.  Secondly, since Wikipedia does not allow people to promote their own research/understanding, all information must be, by default, secondhand at best.  Wikipedia is good in that it requires sources for “verification,” but looking at the topics which I am knowledgable, these sources aren’t even primary sources but already secondary sources with the opinions of the secondary authors.  I could go on a rant here, but it is not vital to this article.

3. Who gets to determine which information is valid for a Wikipedia entry?  In short, the Wikipedia community.  I’m not a conspiracy theorist who believes the bulk of Wikipedia is moderated by a small group of zealots.  However, I don’t expect the large majority of people to be experts on any given topic.  In other words, the experts on any given topic are always in the minority, which means their expertise is counted equally with the majority’s lack of expertise.

4. Who doesn’t have free access to Wikipedia?  I can think of two examples: those who lack internet access and those who are denied access to Wikipedia (either by governments or ISPs).  Both of these categories are things that the Wikimedia Foundation does not list in its goals.  What do they list?  In short, their own sustainability (check out the about page in the annual report).  Where does their money go?  The majority of the $5.6M goes to paying for salaries, travel, business-related expenses, and real estate.  In other words, they are an incarnation of “consumer-supported” products (such as PBS, public radio, etc).  “Free access” in their case means keeping them in business; everyone must provide their own avenue to Wikipedia.

Wikipedia’s fundraising here isn’t so that every single person on the planet has access to the sum of all human knowledge.  It is, instead, so that every single person on the planet–who has proer internet access–has access to a summary of information democratically chosen and edited primarily by average people with average understanding.

Postmortem Epistemology

This is part 5 of 5 in the Knowing series

What would a “postmodern” look like? Some turn towards language because they believe epistemology cannot be “solved” until we can be sure that we’re talking about the same thing. Some reject any attempt at epistemology because it is simply beyond our reach. took up an argument similar to Kierkegaard’s in opposition to Hegel and through him comes the “latest” theories of knowledge.

Truth as

Possibly Nietzsche’s greatest contribution to the study of knowledge focused on the of epistemology. In his essay titled “On truth and lie in an extra-moral sense,” Nietzsche describes his position nicely:

What then is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms — in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins. (from The Portable Nietzsche, 46-7).

Simulated Truth

The message is clear: truth as a concept derives from the usage of language and is based solely on language. In reality, there is no Absolute Knowledge; there is no access to an undifferentiated knowledge of truth. Because of language, there cannot be knowledge of any kind of “objective” truth. For Nietzsche, truth and knowledge are really just forays into what is now called deconstruction. It’s all about interpretations of interpretations. To borrow Baudrillard, the language of truth is a set of simulacra that create and re-create a false notion of truth that has been accepted as the real thing. In reality, however, this notion of truth is the lack of the real thing. Slavoj explains how Coke is a great example of this:

We drink Coke — or any drink — for two reasons: for its thirst-quenching or nutritional value, and for its taste. In the case of caffeine-free diet Coke, nutritional value is suspended and the caffeine, as the key ingredient of its taste, is also taken away — all that remains is a pure semblance, an artificial promise of a substance which never materialized. Is it not true that in this sense, in the case of caffeine-free diet Coke, we almost literally “drink nothing in the guise of something”? (from The Fragile Absolute, 23)

Conclusions

There is no “postmodern epistemology” because it requires us to move beyond the confines of language. 20th century philosophy was obsessed about language until it slowly began to realize it cannot be comprehended. Language, as the vehicle of “truth,” cannot be transcended or reduced in order to provide insight into knowledge and truth. Truth and knowledge are embedded in language, the thing to which we humans are bound and chained. The best description we can have of truth and knowledge can be seen in Deleuze’s work The Logic of Sense. In this work, speaks of knowledge as a polymorphic surface on which we oscillate between sense and nonsense, between understanding and non-understanding. There is no “deeper” meaning to language because it is all “surface” level; it would be better to picture it as moving away towards the edges (nonsense) and less as some kind of hidden “deep” structure (yes, Deleuze’s work here is a critique of people such as Noam Chomsky).
This brings the end of this series to an anticlimatic moment. The most recent theories of knowledge only undo the ones before it, bringing us back oddly close to ‘s position in the Meno: we cannot know truth in its unadulterated form. Truth as a concept is buried in our usage of language and neither it nor we can overcome language. We cannot overcome ourselves.

Synthetic & Metaphor

This is part 4 of 5 in the Knowing series

Finally, a return to the series on . Previously, we’ve covered the “basics” of epistemology, as well as the Greek responses to epistemology. Last time, we hit on and the early French and English responses. Now, we turn to the Germans.

A Response to Rationalism

Let’s start by reviewing Descartes by analogy. Let’s say Jim finds a photograph of a building titled “Empire State Building” in his grandmother’s attic. He’s never heard of this building, never saw King Kong, etc. Does the picture provide enough evidence to prove that the building exists? No, because it could have been drawn by a good artist and simply be a product of the artist’s imagination. Even if Jim knows that the artist always paints from his life experiences and is a good painter, he might have enough evidence to convincingly argue that the building exists. This is what Descartes means when he says that God is what presents information to our senses for experience and that God can be trusted.

Now let’s look at ‘s conclusions: knowledge cannot rely on any form of correspondence with either some external “reality” or even some internal belief. Truth is nothing but an agreed-upon custom. So, let’s imagine Steve takes Terry to a baseball game, but Terry is totally ignorant of this game called “baseball” and Steve keeps him in the dark. As Terry watches the events unfold during the first inning, he will come to the conclusion that each inning will run in the same predictable fashion (one team hits the ball with the stick and runs around the track of dirt touching the white bags on the ground while the other team tries to touch that guy with the ball he just hit, etc). But, Terry has no sufficient proof that this will continue. This is analogous to Hume’s dilemma (above).
So now, we can bring in . His response is simple: if our mind uses rules to process our experiences and join them together, then we can be certain that the regularities will always occur in “reality.” To return to our analogies, it would be like Jim going to New York City and finding the city archives (without ever seeing the Empire State Building) and finding in the archives the blueprints for a building titled “Empire State Building.” Those blueprints are a set of rules for creating such a building, so as long as Jim knows that they have been used, then he can be sure that there is a building that resembles those blueprints. There is an expectation that if there are a set of rules for the creation of something and that those rules have been enacted at least once, then there should be that particular product. With Terry, let’s imagine now that Steve explains to Terry that they are at a baseball game. Because games have rules, Terry is confident that the remaining innings will occur in roughly the same fashion.

Kant spends the majority of his time in the Critique of Pure Reason developing these ideas and discovering the rules by which the mind processes and unifies experiences into a coherent whole. How so? All humans are roughly equal in abilities when it comes to experience and knowledge–a regularity. Furthermore, humans do agree that green is green, so there must be a common set of experiences that humans do process roughly the same. Let’s label this set of experiences phenomena. By tracing what occurs when the mind experiences something in the phenomenal world of experience, Kant argues that there is a non-physical aspect of humans that does this processing. Let’s label that area noumena. This is where the self (i.e. one’s mind) exists and processes experiences. The pathway that this occurs is through the usage of rules, what Kant labels judgments of perception and judgments of experience. These are first filtered through what Kant calls the pure (read noumenal, not clean) categories of understanding. It is quite likely that other types of beings have different processes, so this isn’t something universal and across the board. These rules and pathways can only apply to things experienced, but there’s one shortcoming: one cannot experience any pure (again, noumenal) thing. These are the things in themselves (Ding-an-sich) and are always experienced through the phenomenal categories first.

After Kant

There were a few differences with those who followed after Kant, namely and . Hegel sought to remove the limit of knowing things in themselves. His arguments were based on what he termed Absolute Knowledge, which is to be seen not as some form of omniscience but rather as an understanding of self-understanding, (introspective) reflection, and understanding that the object of knowledge is also a subject understanding oneself. In this way, Hegel argues that one can actually know and experience things in themselves. Kierkegaard takes a different route and stands against Hegel’s interpretation of Kant while also inserting his own view of faith into it. Kierkegaard argues that all knowledge is grounded in the ethical–that is, knowledge is itself ethical and rooted in ethics and morality. While both of these derivatives of Kant have some ground, they have been largely ignored by subsequent epistemology (and only there).

Correspondences

This is part 3 of 5 in the Knowing series

In the last two posts, i outlined first the “broad strokes” of what falls under the realm of epistemology, followed by a look at some Greek responses to knowledge. Now, our focus jumps nearly two millenia to the next “big thing” in the history of : .

In his Meditations on First Philosophy as an attempt to prove God’s existence concludes two things with regards to knowledge: it must both be foundational and correspond. Knowledge is true if and only if a person’s matches (or corresponds to) the external world. Descartes gets to these conclusions by first being skeptical about everything (so he says). He reasons that if he finds something that he cannot doubt, then he can build up an entire system of knowledge that (ultimately) proces the existence of God. Descartes first reasons that he could be dreaming (sometimes called the Dream Hypothesis), so he concludes that anything perceptible is suspicious. Keeping with his plan, he rejects as a basis for . In his second meditation, Descartes argues that if he is supposing that all perceptions are false, then he must somehow exist (yes, this is where he gives he famous cogito ergo sum). But, he could be deceived. So, he supposes that that some being with powers on par with God has deceived him (this is called the Evil God Scenario by some) on everything (including that which he removed via the Dream Hypothesis). But still, Decartes is still thinking. The next logical step is that he perceives himself and this must be true because he exists. Therefore, whatever he can “clearly and distinctly perceive” must be true (this is his response to the DH). Descartes then proceeds through the 3rd, 4tf, and 5th meditations arguing God’s existence on these two bases. His final conclusion is that God, a perfect being, exists and does not decieve (and thus negates the EGS). Therefore, since God does not deceive and is the source of perceptions (God is the vehicle through which perceptions are made), what is perceived must also exist. Thus, Descartes concludes that what one perceives corresponds to reality and, as such, must be true. One way of seeing this is:
Descartes_diagram

In a relatively short time frame after Descartes, George Berkeley, a Bishop and professor, brought forth his ideas on human knowledge, which showed some of the difficulties with Descartes’s theory. One of Berkeley’s primary arguments against Descartes dealt with correspondence and perceptions. Essentially, one only perceives one’s own sensations. That is, all perceptions a person experiences comes from the person. This leads Berkeley to conclude that an external world (if it exists) cannot be verified. As such, there cannot be any correspondence between an internal concept/perception and an external object. Therefore, Berkeley concludes that for something to be true, it must correspond with an idea within the self. This would look like such:
Berkeley_diagram

Following Berkeley’s motion, Hume took the most extreme position for his day by rejecting even Berkeley’s idea. Where Berkeley was satisfied with knowledge being an internal correspondence, Hume still wanted a better definition. Hume’s main problem was that of cause and effect. He proposed that cause-and-effect was just a custom. No matter how often something came before another (such as lightning before thunder), there was no guarantee that it would be such in the future. Because of this, there isn’t anything available for an internal correspondence because every instance of something must be taken as a new object, instead of a recurrence of an prior object. There cannot be any internal correspondence. As such, Hume saw no other possible criteria for truth other than custom (or tradition).

Since Hume, very few philosophers have accepted the idea of correspondence when it comes to epistemology as a foundational criteria of it. Of course, it should be noted that Plato had already come to this conclusion centuries before (see the second post in this series), so it could be argued that, except for this small period of time, correspondence has never been a criteria for knowledge (let alone true knowledge), even though some philosophers have found ways of incorporating it in remarkable ways.