Philosophy Lounge

April 17, 2013

Mulling about some puzzles on ‘objective reality’

Filed under: theory of knowledge — Tags: , — jbernal @ 12:42 pm

Juan Bernal

We occasionally hear what sound like daffy ideas from theoretical physicists when they unwisely encroach on hard philosophical problems: e.g., the notion that consciousness creates the universe, sometimes called  “biocentrism.”   Another is the  assertion that space-time is not an objective feature of the universe (world), but is something dependent on the cognitive faculties of the creatures like us.  This strikes some as being a bizarre claim.

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It seems that one could offer the following rebuttal:  It does not follow that that the spatial-temporal dimensions arise from the subject’s cognitive processing because we must presuppose the spatial-temporal dimensions to make sense of experience of the physical world.

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The starting point of our epistemological theories should not be a conscious subject isolated from the social, physical world. Ultimately this notion is an incoherent one.  The starting point should be a mindful, social and corporeal subject (a conscious animal), in a natural, social world, interacting with other like creatures and engaging in cause-effect interaction with the natural, social world.

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The epistemological tradition from Descartes through the classical empiricists — Locke, Berkeley, Hume — to Immanuel Kant is based on an erroneous idea that the possibility of knowledge of the external world (external to the subject) needs to be proven.

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There’s something terribly wrong with the claim that, for any ‘X’, we can say what ‘X’ really is only in terms of

  • a possible experience of ‘X’ (i.e., ‘X’ must be an object of phenomenal experience);  or
  • a description of ‘X’ in terms of (Kantian) categories of the understanding.

There something terribly wrong with the assertion that any question of the form [What is a real ‘X’?] has to be answered in terms of the notion of ‘X-in-itself, i.e., ‘X’ as other than an object of phenomenal experience.

Recall that for Kantian thought, ‘X as an object of possible phenomenal experience is an object describable in terms of

  •  the intuitions of space and time, and
  •  the categories of the understanding.

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Ordinarily when we try to say what ‘X’ really is we do not do so in terms of Kantian noumena, i.e., thing-in-itself.  Rather we state things carefully, after additional reflection, study, and investigation (after we carry on with empirical inquiry).

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The world of physical phenomena (objects, forces, energy) is a spatio-temporal world.

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According to Kant, our experience of the physical world is temporally and spatially ordered. The cognitive mind provides this spatial-temporal template by which our phenomenal world is ordered. The world independent of this ‘subjective’ ordering (i.e., noumena, world-in-itself) falls outside the scope of our knowledge.

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But there is nothing we can say about this putative world-in-itself. We cannot legitimately say it is the world-as-it-really-is.

At best, this notion of a noumenal world is a limiting concept.

To see noumena as the way things-really-are is to erroneously interpret a limiting concept as having metaphysical import.

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Insofar as we can coherently think or talk about it, the so called “phenomenal world” is the real world, i.e., the reality of human existence and human experience. We should not be confused by the fact that his notion of reality can be analyzed and refined.  Physicists, for example, can apply their theories and mathematical models to give us a refined, abstract picture of this world.  But that resulting picture (the scientific picture that science achieves) is a picture  (a model) of the world of experience.  It is not a picture of the world-in-itself.

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The world existed long before humans arrived on the scene. Can this be seen as the legitimate idea of the world-in-itself?

There is a world that humans inhabit and experience. When humans think about or conceptualize this world, they do so in terms of spatial extension, temporal dimension, and basic categories (concepts) like object, force, causal relations, etc. . .  (and in terms of transactions between the subject and the world).  We apply those basic intuitions and concepts to the world of experience in our conceptualization of that world.

That this is an appropriate application is something that flows from the nature of the real world, a nature characterized as a spatial, temporal, physical world.

 

Extra-Ordinary Claims & Miracles

Filed under: Notes and Remarks,theory of knowledge — Tags: , — jbernal @ 12:22 pm

Juan Bernal

To be credible someone making an extra-ordinary claim, e.g. my neighbor can levitate, we would ask for evidence sufficient to the claim.  It  wouldn’t do to go on mere hear-say or my sincere insistence that my claim is true.

Extra-ordinary claims call for extra-ordinary evidence, or as David Hume stated: “A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.”

“Suppose .. that the fact which testimony endeavors to establish partakes of the extra-ordinary and the marvelous: in that the evidence resulting from the testimony admits of a diminution, greater or less, in proportion as the fact [purported ‘fact’] is more or less unusual.”

(David Hume, Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, “Section X  “Of Miracles,”  Part I”, 1748)

David Hume is regarded as  a classical empiricist.  Knowledge, if we have any, comes by way of experience.  Along with this is the assumption that there are regularities in experience and nature.

It is surprising to critical thinkers that anyone would question the principle that measures the status of a belief to the evidence supporting it.   The more extra-ordinary (marvelous, miraculous, magical) the purported event, the less weight carried by ordinary evidence (e.g., human testimony, reports, etc.).

It is not sufficient to well-grounded belief to affirm belief in miracles (e.g. a resurrection from death, or a feat of levitation) on testimony and reports of such events. Much more is called for if we’re to see such belief as rationally and empirically well-grounded.

Skepticism, not credulity, is the attitude of the rational person in the face of such extra-ordinary claims.

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What could possibly be a philosophical rebuttal to this position skeptical of miraculous claims?

Some might raise technicalities about Hume’s suggestion of an appropriate proportion of evidence to belief.  These would be questions as to the precise measured proportion: What objective standard could we apply to determine exact proportionality?

Some might object that supernatural possibilities that fall outside of human empirical knowledge are not judged in terms of evidence usually applicable only to ordinary events.

Some might bring up the fact that extra-ordinary claims in the sciences were not required to conform to a “proportionality of evidence” and were not rejected because of insufficient evidence for an extra-ordinary claim.

We can reply to each in turn.  First Hume did not propose an exact science (with precise method and measurement) for evaluating extra-ordinary claims.  Instead, he offered a practical, common sense guide for proceeding, i.e., a general “rule-of-thumb,” in a manner of speaking.

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Many events which are seen as miraculous can be shown to have natural explanation and may result from illusion or hallucination.  Those which cannot be readily explained do not automatically fall into the category of the miraculous.  On the one hand, they might be events that await further investigation.  On the other hand, they might be tagged (for now) as things we cannot presently explain.   But our inability to explain or understand the event does not imply that miracle or magical event has occurred.  All that is implied is that we do not presently have an explanation to give.

(Miracle:  The intervention of a supernatural being into a natural or social happening, many times a happening that is beneficial for humans.)

 

February 28, 2013

Opposing views on issues of knowledge, truth, and reality

Filed under: metaphysics,the mind-body problem,theory of knowledge — Tags: , — jbernal @ 12:17 pm

Juan Bernal

Recently an email correspondence  stimulated interest in an old epistemological-metaphysical  issues.

This fellow traveler (in philosophy) wrote:

“Given that mind-body dualism was given such bad reviews in the 20th century, it shouldn’t be too hard to imagine that the distinction between the subjective and the objective has no metaphysical significance. Instead, it is an artifice and a convention. It is useful within limits, but not useful for metaphysical purposes. What we have instead is “pure experience” as in the philosophies of the pragmatists (i.e. James and Dewey). All the elements of pure experience are potentially useful in framing a metaphysical philosophy. Thus those elements that are rejected from the point of view of objective thought can be considered important from the point of view of an up-to-date monism like that of James (see his 1904 essay, “Does Consciousness Exist?”).  Feelings may be considered to be as much an indication of what is real as perceptions.”

My reply:

In the modern age it may not be “hard to imagine” that the subjective/objective distinction has no “metaphysical significance,” but it surely does not follow from a philosophical rejection of the mind-body dualism.   Rejecting mind-body dualism, with its implication of mind as entity apart from body, does have metaphysical implications; but this is distinct from questions regarding the significance of the distinction between subjective experience and objective reality.  I don’t see any reason for dropping that distinction as important and significant, especially with regard to epistemological issues.  It is as simple as saying that what you feel about something (an event, a person) must be kept distinct from an honest, scientific-like assessment of that event or person.  For example, I feel very strongly that OJ Simpson killed his wife; but I realize that I cannot prove it (in a legal sense).  My strong feelings (even passion) about the event does not establish the nature of the event.  If you drop such a distinction as significant, then you open the gates to chaos based on subjective feelings and opinions.

I also question your comments about “pure experience” in the philosophy of a pragmatist like John Dewey.  Did Dewey propose that “elements of pure experience are potentially useful in framing a metaphysical philosophy”?  Your remarks suggest this. However, as far as I recall, Dewey (like Darwin, Reid, L. Wittgenstein, G. Ryle, and DW Hamlyn) reject the Cartesian notion (do we throw Husserl in here too?) that we start with purely subjective experience and frame a metaphysical knowledge of the world.   Let me add that recently I have expressed great skepticism of this notion of pure experience, questioning just what exactly the purity of experience is supposed to be.  My view is that it is another notion that some people throw around without ever having examined what exactly they’re saying.

You state that part of the issue is whether or not feelings are real.  Of course people have feelings or feel strongly about things.  But this surely does not imply what you seem to think is implied when you state:  “Feelings may be considered to be as much an indication of what is real as perceptions.”  You state that “feelings are an indication of what is real.”  Surely you’re just playing with words here.  An indication of what is real is a public matter (like a knowledge claim) in the sense that if you claim that S indicates the reality of R, you’re obligated to show others that this is so.  You cannot simply say “I feel that it is so.”  Our (another friend in the discussion) was surely right to point out that your feeling that X is R merely indicates something about you, and most likely nothing about  X.

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To which the fellow traveler replied:  

You wanted to make the point that the distinction remains useful even for people who reject mind-body dualism. I agree. However, when we use those terms it’s hard to avoid dualistic connotations. It’s hard to avoid thinking in terms of “what goes on in my mind” and what goes on in a “world out there.” Once we drop dualism, we have some options. We can become radical empiricists, believing that the distinction between subject and object arises within experience. Or we can drop one of the two categories, becoming either pure subjectivists or pure objectivists depending on which one we drop.

I intended my denial that the subjective/objective distinction has metaphysical significance to entail a claim that neither the combination of them nor either of them taken separately names an independent reality. If they exist at all, they exist only as properties of an underlying reality.

 In support of the view that the subjective/objective distinction is still useful for non-dualists, you wrote, “One’s strong feeling that something is true does not make it true.”

 But now the non-dualist faces the problem of determining what makes something true. For dualists truth is a matter of correspondence between what’s in one’s mind and what’s out there in objective reality. If the non-dualist wants to retain a correspondence theory of truth, how does he adapt it to a non-dualist theory?

 If you can figure out how to do it, let us know. If you can’t, then what do you mean when you say, “One’s strong feeling that something is true does not make it true.” How do you know what makes a statement true?

You asked whether Dewey proposed that elements of pure experience are potentially useful in framing a metaphysical philosophy. In the preface to “Experience and Nature” he says his aim throughout the book is to replace “the traditional separation of nature and experience” with the idea of continuity. If nature and experience are separated, they are two different things/substances. If there is a continuity between them, they are both real, but they are not two different things/substances. They are distinguishable properties or aspects of one thing/substance. What is that one thing/substance?

On the issue of whether feelings can be as much an indication of what is real as perceptions, it all depends on how we look at it. If we bring one set of assumptions, we get one answer. If we bring another set of assumptions, we get another answer. For example, if we reason from the perspective of dualism, we can understand sensation as information from the external world, we can base perception on sensation, and we can explain feelings as purely internal responses that tell us nothing about what is “out there.” This line of thinking leads us to the conclusion that empirical science, based on information received through our senses about the external world, is our most reliable, indeed our only source of knowledge about the real (i.e. external) world. And that leads to the conclusion, as you put it, that “an indication of what is real is a public matter.” But, if we assume with Dewey that experience and nature are related to each other like right and left or up and down, then anything that belongs to that one reality of which experience and nature are aspects can tell us something about the fundamental nature of that reality. An indication of reality would not have to be a public matter.
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In reply I stated the following:

Human beings (persons, which I assume we are) are biological beings capable of thought and feelings.

Sometimes when we think or feel that something is the case, our thought and/or feelings are reliable; other times they are not.  This is a simple fact, a truism about our ordinary experience. [It is hard to imagine anyone disputing this.]

Whether our thoughts are reliable or not can be determined by experience and inter-personal confirmation.  [E.G., I'm lost in the woods and come to a fork in the path, path A and path B.  I have reason for thinking that path A will lead me out of the woods.  I take path A and find that it does take me to safety.  My thought was reliable in that case; and its reliability was confirmed by experience.  There is absolutely no need to become puzzled by the notion of a correspondence between my thought and the objective fact!]

None of this requires that we implicitly assume any kind of dualism between mind and matter, or any philosopher’s dualism between experience and the object experienced.  Any talk of mind or thoughts or feelings can be restated as talk about the person (biological being with big brain and conditioned by culture) thinking or feeling in a particular way.  There is no need to become mystified by the notion of mind existing as an entity in its own right or even as a mysterious attachment to the biological organism (which is all we are).

None of this requires that we assume (or explain) any correspondence ( lack of it) between our thoughts and material reality, or between experience and the world.

When I say (or think) that X is A, my statement that “X is A” is true if and only if X in fact is A.   There is no mention of correspondence here.
That X is A in fact can be confirmed by scientific means or by ordinary empirical investigation (I confirm that X is A by checking and double-checking; and by having others confirm that X is A.)

When Dewey proposes that we replace “the traditional separation of nature and experience” with the idea of continuity, his proposal goes along the lines outlined above.  He surely was not proposing a metaphysics in which nature and experience are “distinguishable properties or aspects of one thing/substance.”  He is merely pointing out that our experience is continuous with nature, both our nature and objective nature (i.e., the world, our environment). The question “What is that substance?” is  the wrong question.  Asking that question attempts to get us into a metaphysical mode which a good pragmatist like Dewey would surely (and appropriately) avoid.  Avoiding or ignoring any assumptions that gets us into that mode is likely a very good way to go in philosophy today.

 

December 22, 2011

More on the Confusion regarding ‘Representations’ and the Objects represented

Filed under: theory of knowledge — Tags: , — jbernal @ 12:31 pm

By Juan Bernal

Something that the neurologist Antonio Demasio asserted reinforced the old belief that our experience of the world is at best an indirect experience of “representations” of that world.

 

An email correspondent, Spano,  remarked:

“Yesterday, in Antonio Damasio’s interview with Ira Flatow on Science Friday, Damasio frequently used the word “representation.” He spoke of the brain as producing a representation of our internal and external environments on the basis of inputs. He apparently assumes that “the represented” is not directly available to us, but is known only indirectly via a representation.”

Moi  Here we go again with this business of “input to the brain” and “represented stuff not directly available to us”!

Far too many people — mainly philosophers and psychologists — and now Antonio Damasio  (of all people!)  —- assume that it makes sense to think of “us” (the knowing subject) as somehow situated inside the brain.  Sure, if you think of the subject (who perceives and has experiences) as located inside the brain or identical to the brain, then a mystery arises as to how the subject (the person?) interprets that input, which may or may not represent external reality.  But why in the world do we have to accept this queer perspective?  None of us are inside our brains (or alternatively, we are not identical to our brains) and then have to try make sense of input from the outside?

The fact that is overlooked is that human beings (the persons) have brains which enables them to learn about their environment.  In other words, the human subject exists and operates in that ‘external’ environment.  Science, neurology and the cognitive sciences, can investigate and analyze the process by which the brain allows the animal (or person, or subject that perceives) to perceive and learn about his environment.  In the process of such an investigation one may speak about “input to the brain.”   But this is not to be understood as “input to the subject or person,” although it may correctly be called “input to the brain.”  The brain is an organ of the body; the person and his embodied mind exist in the world of objects, animals, cities, and apple trees.  They’re already in that world which, according to the ‘skeptical’ perspective is allegedly not directly accessible to us.  The very idea of “gaining knowledge of the world” is an idea which only makes sense in a social context, of an environment in which people exist among other people, in a natural and social environment which they know about and with which they interact.  Given all this, it makes little sense to introduce the fictional subject isolated and entombed inside a brain, trying to make sense of input from outside the brain.

Does all this ignore the function of the brain/mind in “constructing” (at least in part) that which we experience, e.g., the object that we see?

No it does not.  I simply do notn’t draw the inferences that Spano draws.

Spano asks:

“Why does Damasio make a represented/representation distinction? Because the role of the brain/mind in constructing a representation is all too obvious. It was obvious to the British empiricists and to Kant, . . . ”

Moi:   Of course, there is often a call for this distinction between the object as my brain/mind presents it and the object which is not equivalent to my presentation.  For example, suppose that I’m familiar with a particular piece of hardware which is part of a ground radar system.  What I see when I look at it will be very different from what others, who might not be familiar with the equipment, see.  Those who like to talk in terms of the “representation and the represented” will say that different persons looking at the equipment have different ‘representations.’  We could even allow the figurative talk which states that we see different things.  I see that part of the radar receiver which modulates the incoming radar signal, changing its configuration so that the signal can eventually be a visual target at the radar scope.  You might just see a gray box with connections to other gray boxes.

But none of this implies (or logically requires) that none of our visual ‘representations’ can provide information about the real object.  They all do, but at different levels of complexity.  To admit that my ‘representation’ differs from your ‘representation’ is not to imply that any of us are out of contact with the real world.  In my example, the ‘real world object’ is the radar system that radar engineers created; and there is absolutely no reason for concluding that nobody has access (perceptual or otherwise) to this reality.  To the extent that the British Empiricists and Kant inferred ‘non-reality’ from representation, they completely misunderstood the implication of the term ‘representation’ in this context.

Yes, scientific analysis proves that the brain/mind contributes many aspects of the object that we perceive. I might even agree with the statement that the brain/mind constructs much of what I perceive.  In his book, Consciousness Explained, Daniel Dennett discusses much of this work of the brain in constructing and filling in large parts of what we perceive.  Those of us who call ourselves scientific realists do not deny this.  What some of us deny is that this scientific analysis of the visual-neurological process of perception shows that we do not perceive the real world.  What such analysis discloses are the processes (mostly neurological processes) which make possible our experience of the real world.  To think that we experience only a questionable ‘representation’ of something else which we cannot describe, as Spano seems to do, seems reasonable only when one assumes that we must explain how we access the external world from a strictly subjectivist perspective (we are ‘inside’ the brain or the mind and must explain how we can know anything about external reality?).

But maybe I have all this wrong?  Maybe we are deceived into thinking that the world we know is real, when in fact it is just a fictional story concocted by our brain/mind.  Of course, this scenario is hard to square with the fact that our brain-mind evolved to help the animal survive and flourish in its natural environment, which surely is a real world.

Spano repeats:

Yesterday, in Antonio Damasio’s interview with Ira Flatow on Science Friday, Damasio frequently used the word “representation.” He spoke of the brain as producing a representation of our internal and external environments on the basis of inputs. He apparently assumes that “the represented” is not directly available to us, but is known only indirectly via a representation.  

Moi:  I don’t dispute that the “brain produces representations of our internal states and external environment on the basis of inputs.”

But this neurological fact does not imply that “the represented is not directly available to us,” unless the “us” at issue is the brain itself (or a homunculus inside the brain?) receiving and translating those inputs.

These neurological processes (the brain receiving and processing input) enable the subject (person, animal) to perceive and negotiate the environment in which the subject exists.  In other words, the neurological processes are part of the bodily operations that make the environment directly available to us.  (Is this too easy a reply to all this talk of the representation and the unknowable ‘represented’?)

The subject who experiences and interacts with the world and the world (environment) experienced come as one package. The person, as a corporeal being, has a brain which functions in particular ways to enable the subject to function in his environment.  We should not separate one for the other and then talk about “inputs to the brain which are representations of a reality that the subject cannot directly access.”   Well, you can separate them, but only as a thought experiment.  Descartes indulges his hyperbolic doubt and gives his ‘cogito’ argument for his absolutely certain ‘knowledge’ that the thinking subject alone is real.  But this is just a thought experiment.  It does not show that a thinking subject can exist in isolation from everything else.  Similar statements can be the made about other thought experiments:  John Locke’s claim that we directly experience only ideas, or Hume’s claim that all we have is the subject and his impressions (and the irrational belief that these represents real objects).  Following this is Berkeley’s thought experiment: All that we take to be material reality can be reconfigured as modifications of the subject’s perceptual ideas; i.e. for any perceptual object, to be is the same as “to be perceived.”

The Classical British Empiricists and much of Western Epistemological thought in the 18th – 19th centuries  (even up to the ‘sense datum’ theorists of the 20th century, including Bertrand Russell)  made too much of these thought experiments.    They took on the skeptical problem of showing how knowledge is possible given a subjective perspective, a problem for which Immanuel Kant’s critical philosophy offered a possible solution.

These famous thought experiments do not alter the fact that human beings are biological creatures who evolved with a nervous system suitable to the environment in which these beings exist.  The evolved large brain and sense faculties enable the human being to apprehend many features of his environment, interact with it (cause certain changes in the environment;  be affected by external causes and conditions), There is no general skeptical problem of having to show how the human subject’s perceptual experience accesses an external reality, although, of course, there are specific skeptical problems with regard to illusions, delusions, experiences affected by strange conditions (both subjective and objective ones).   But these come up in the context of a generally reliable mechanism (brain, sense faculties) for apprehending and negotiating the environment.

Any thought experiment which proposes that the subject can be conceived in isolation from the external world, which includes the social world of other people, of language, meanings, and concepts, proposes a fictional scenario.  It is a fiction because all of these thought experiments “smuggle in” essential elements form the external, social world.  Primary among these is language. The thought experiments utilize words, meanings, and concepts which require some natural language, which in turn is a social phenomenon.  Language cannot be a private exercise, private to the subject in isolation from everything else.  The notion of a subject existing in complete isolation from its natural and social environment is mostly a philosopher’s fantasy.

In short, all that “floundering about in the swamp” of Western epistemology could have been avoided.

December 17, 2011

Some Remarks on a Blind Alley in Western Epistemology

Filed under: theory of knowledge — Tags: — jbernal @ 11:09 am

By Juan Bernal

(A reading of Richard Rorty’s theses in his book, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, stimulated some of the thoughts contained in this remarks.)

A traditional approach to perceptual knowledge and associated distinctions misled philosophers in the western tradition for periods following Descartes.  The distinction between internal (subjectivity) and external (objectivity) played a major role, as did that between the merely contingent and the necessary.  In addition, there was the desire to grasp the noumenal (the purely object, thing-in-itself).

Assumptions: Knowledge is an assemblage of accurate representations; and in order to set knowledge on a firm foundation one must show knowledge to be analogous to the direct apprehension of an object.  [Rorty: They held to the notion of the foundation of knowledge based on an analogy with the compulsion to believe when staring at an object.” (162, ‘Mirror’)]

First:  Descartes’ meditation leading the ‘Cogito ergo sum’ brings in the stark divide between the internal-mental realm (subjectivity) and the external-material realm (objectivity).  With this comes the problem of establishing knowledge of the external on the firm foundation of ‘clear and distinct ideas’ clearly and immediately presented to the knowing subject.  The knowing subject is a thinking being, a mind seeking to make sense of ideas presented to it, ideas which must represent objects in the material-physical realm.

Secondly:  John Locke and other classical British Empiricists (Berkeley, Hume) accept a large part of the epistemological problem gotten from Descartes. They  see their task as being that of showing how the subject can have knowledge of the external world.  They focus on the mental processes underlying knowledge and beliefs about the external world; and on the subject’s apprehension of ideas or experience of impressions (putatively caused by external objects impinging on the senses).

Hence, they work with a notion of knowledge as primarily perceptual experience.  In their ‘analyses,’ they tend to confuse explanation and justification, so that one is often unsure as to whether they’re doing a quasi-psychological explanation of mental processes that base our knowing something or trying to defend a form of propositional knowledge. But mostly they ignore propositional knowledge, i.e., they favoring ‘knowing of X’ (knowledge by direct acquaintance) over ‘knowing that P’ something is the case.

The divide between the subject’s experience and external reality remains evident; hence, the skeptical problem remains prominent.

Thirdly, Immanuel Kant moves part of the way to recognizing the propositional character of knowledge with his focus on the rules that the mind must apply in order to know anything.  He recognizes that knowledge cannot simply be identified with perceptual experience, as the empiricists were inclined to do; but his focus on the structures of the understanding (mind?) indicates that he does not escape from of the idea that an explanation of knowledge requires some type of quasi-psychological analysis of mental processes.  (However, Kant appears not to have discarded entirely the Cartesian distinction between the internal-mental-realm and the external-material-realm.).

Accordingly, what we experience (and can know) results for the synthesizing activity of the transcendental ego.  But this, in turn, leads to a differentiation between objects of experience (phenomena) and the thing-in-itself (noumena).  Human experience and knowledge are limited to phenomena.

On pages 160-161 of his book (Mirror..), Rorty tells us that Kant was the first to think of the foundations of knowledge as propositional rather than objects (i.e., ideas, impressions, sensations). Instead of a search for ‘privileged representations,’ Kant searches for the rules of the mind that make experience possible. Thereby, he advances in the direction of a propositional rather than a perceptual view of knowledge.  But he only went half-way, because his ‘Critique’ was contained within the framework of causal metaphors —- “constitution,” “the working,” “shaping,” “synthesizing.”

[See Rorty’s summary statements of his assessment of the epistemological enterprise,  Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, pages 160-163.  See also he work on Kant by Robert Paul Wolff, Kant’s Theory of Mental Activity) ]

Epistemology and the problem of Justifying our Knowledge

The “Cartesian Problem”:   The subject (the thinking being = mind) apprehends ideas.  The basis for any knowledge outside the subject’s state of consciousness is the apprehension of clear and distinct ideas, because these are the only basis for the certainty required by knowledge.  So the problem of showing how knowledge of external (material) reality is possible is the problem of showing how the subject’s apprehension of clear and distinct ideas bridges the gap between subjective consciousness and external (material) reality.  This is often called the “skeptical problem”:

The problem:  How do we get from A to B?

A:  The subject apprehending his immediate impressions, perceptions, sense-data, etc , i.e. Subjective Experience.

B :  Knowledge of objective (material) reality

John Locke, Bishop Berkeley, and David Hume in turn take up this problem, with Hume showing that it leads to a philosophy of skepticism regarding both the reality of an enduring self and knowledge of objective reality.

 John Locke (primary/secondary qualities)  -> Berkeley’s Idealism  –> Hume’s Skepticism

In turn the challenge of David Hume’s skepticism was the subject of Immanuel Kant’s critical philosophy (of the Critique of Pure Reason).

(Kant’s Critical philosophy)     purports to resolve   (Hume’s Skeptical philosophy).  

Kant argued that there were three responses to the Cartesian problem:

Humean Skepticism  (an untenable position)
Dogmatism  (Naïve Realism [e.g., Thomas Reid’s Realism?])
Kant’s Critical Philosophy  (Transcendental Synthesis of experience).

Only the latter was thought to constitute an adequate, philosophical resolution of the Cartesian problem.

Acordingly, skepticism develops from the empiricism of Locke and Berkeley.  Dogmatism or naïve realism simply ignores the divide between subject and objective reality and posits that the subject directly apprehends objective things and properties. In the Kantian approach, the subject contributes the forms of intuition and categories of the understanding to make experience and knowledge possible.  The Kantian ‘solution’ is presumably one satisfactory response to the Cartesian challenge.

The challenge of the Cartesian problem is handled by Immanuel Kant’s critical philosophy (of the Critique of Pure Reason), satisfactorily in the opinion of many, but not all agree.  The crucial point is that Kant accepts the Cartesian problem as the starting point and then argues that his critical philosophy shows how experience and knowledge of objective reality are possible.

But there are alternative ways of dealing with the problem, such as representative realism and phenomenalism.  I will not discuss these, but instead will mention an alternative model of perceptual experience which avoids the skeptical problem altogether and, contrary to the accepted view, is not a piece of mere dogmatism.    The common-sense realism of Thomas Reid, can be developed into a Darwinist-Pragmatist model of sense perception.

Thomas Reid, a Scottish philosopher and contemporary to David Hume, rejected the Cartesian starting point, opting for a common sense premise that humans know and interact with a material world.  Reid’s common-sense realism [An Inquiry into the human mind (1764) & Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (1786)] has the character of dogmatism only when viewed from a perspective of the Cartesian problem.  When that starting point is rejected, Reid’s philosophy has the advantage of avoiding the idea of perception as passive sensing in favor of a propositional account of perception. This has much to recommend it.   Furthermore, this type of realism can be seen as reinvigorated, first by the Darwinian evolutionary account of animal life, including the evolution of intelligent, mindful humans, competing for survival in the world; and secondly by a scientific based pragmatism, of the sort developed by John Dewey.

Here we have an alternative to the Kantian ‘resolution’ of the Hume’s skepticism.  Kant’s resolution accepts the Cartesian problem and offers the transcendental philosophy of the first Critique as a solution to that problem and all its offspring.

The alternative solution (Reid, Darwin, Dewey) starts by rejecting the Cartesian problem and, along with it, all the offspring (including Humean skepticism).  In its place we have the common-sense realism of Thomas Reid, which can easily be seen as harmonious with a Darwinian Evolutionary philosophy and with a modern pragmatic philosophy, such as that developed by John Dewey.

With the model of sense perception of sense perception, which I shall call the “Reid-Darwin-Pragmatic model,” we assume as a starting point the existence of the individual in a natural, social world.  Instead of saying with Descartes that there is a chasm between the perceiver (the subject) and the objective, physical world which must be bridged if we’re to avoid the skeptical trap, we assume that the subject occupies a place in that objective, material world, which he perceives and with which he causally interacts.  In other words, we start with a picture of the person (human being) located in a natural/social world, perceiving things (not apprehending perceptions),  interacting with other persons and participating in actions and events, all of which also are found in that world.  He does not just perceive things, but also causally interacts with many parts of the world which he inhabits.

Not only do we avoid the skeptical dilemma, but this model also avoids the serious conceptual problems of the Cartesian-Humean mode, some of which include: .

First, the subject of the Cartesian-Humean model  has to be an abstract ego, a mental subject or “homunculus” existing inside the head who apprehends the data (perceptions, impressions, sense datum) provided by the sense faculties.  The perceiving subject is not the physical person who walks the earth, but a mysterious “ghost-in-the-machine” receiving sense impressions.

Secondly, the Cartesian-Humean model assimilates the act of perception to a passive sensing or reception of sensation.  This ignores the fact that an adequate analysis of perception reveals that the act of perceiving presupposes that the perceiver applies  relevant meaning and concepts to the object perceived.  In other words, perception is concept-laden, propositional in nature, an activity,  and cannot be adequately analyzed as a passive sensing of immediately given data.

Thirdly, we avoid the problem of presented by a subjective, private language, whose concepts presumably do not rely on concepts applied to the external world.  Ludwig Wittgenstein and ordinary language analysts have fairly refuted the notion of a private language.  But the model of a subjective ego apprehending and identifying private impressions assumes the applicability of a private language, which ultimately turns out to be an incoherent notion.

February 6, 2011

Notes on difficult subjects: Confusing our concepts, experiences, and reality

Filed under: metaphysics,philosophy and psychology,theory of knowledge — Tags: , — jbernal @ 11:36 am

It is true that we must presuppose the spatial-temporal dimensions to make sense of our experience of the physical world. But this does not logically imply that the spatial-temporal dimensions are not objective features of the physical world. The objectivity of space and time is consistent with the notion that our analysis of experience discloses that experience of the world cannot happen devoid of spatial-temporal ordering. That our experience is ordered temporally and spatially by our cognitive faculty is consistent with the proposition that time and space are properties of the objective order of reality.
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Our epistemological models do not have to posit the subjective starting point, i.e., a conscious subject (an “homunculous”) inside the head, isolated from physical and social reality. The subjective starting point is common to Descartes, Locke, Hume, and in part to Kant, and sets up the epistemological problem the task of showing how the subject can achieve knowledge of the objective world.

Ultimately, the notion of an isolated, conscious subject who can reflect on his own ideas and impressions and speculate about to their external causes (viz., use language and concepts) is an incoherent notion. But this incoherent notion is required for the epistemological model presupposed by Cartesians, Locke, Hume, and Kant.

The epistemological model of realism starts with a conscious, perceiving, acting organism (e.g. a human being) existing in a natural and social environment, experiencing that object world, causally interacting with it and with other organisms who co-exist in those worlds. This more desirable model is one found in the work of Thomas Reid and can be seen as presupposed by a Darwinian evolutionary biology, and the scientific pragmatism of John Dewey.
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Intuitively it strikes me as correct to say that the world of phenomena (objects, processes, forces, etc.) is a spatio-temporal world, i.e., one existing in space and time.

According to Kant our cognitive faculties (of the experiencing subject) provide the spatio-temporal template by which our phenomenal world (the world experienced) is ordered. Any phenomenal object (the tree and its lemons that occupy my backyard) must be described in terms of the intuition of space and time and the categories of the understanding. These intuitions and categories are imposed on experience by the subject’s cognitive faculties. But world behind the phenomena, the world separate and independent of the ordering activity of the cognitive mind, is one outside our knowledge and comprehension. This is Kant’s world-in-itself, or noumena. Presumably the real tree-in-itself and lemons-in-themselves are neither knowable nor conceivable by me. I cannot even claim that they’re found in my backyard!
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Something has gone terribly awry when we assert that any answer to the question ‘What is the real object?’ must be given in terms of the obscure notion of thing-in-itself, i.e., in terms of some object which we cannot know, experience, or even conceive.
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There’s nothing whatsoever that we can say about this putative world-in-itself. We cannot legitimately say that it is the real world, or that it is the partial cause of our phenomenal world.
At best, the notion of thing-in-itself or noumena is a limiting concept (See Strawson’s book, The Bounds of Sense).

To hold that noumena is the world as it really is, rather than world as it appears to human cognition, is erroneously to take a limiting concept as have metaphysical, ontological import.
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Insofar as our coherent language and thought allows, the so-called “phenomenal world” is the real world, i.e., the world in which we exist, the one we experience and one accessible to human understanding. Of course, our concept of this reality can be refined through analysis, mathematical modeling, scientific theorizing and investigation. The resulting picture or model, a refined one when compared to our untrained intuitions, will be a picture or model of the world of experience. It does not point to a “world-in-itself.”
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The real world is one that humans and other creatures inhabit, experience, and one with which they continually interact. Existence and experience can be characterized as transactions between the subject and the world. When humans think about or conceptualize physical aspects of this world they do so in terms of spatial extensions and a temporal dimension; and apply basic categories like object-hood, substance, cause-effect, force, and such. Conceptualization of the world presupposes application of these basic categories and intuitions. It is because the real world has the properties it has, i.e., a spatial, temporal, physical nature, that this application is an apt one.

(Yes, I know that modern physical theory — relativity physics, quantum physics, and the latest theories of particle physics — raise many questions about the ‘objective’ nature of the real world. But I’m not prepared to accept the paradoxes of particle physics as determining what we can and cannot say about the world we inhabit.)
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Our “Kantian problem” is rooted in the tendency to confuse conceptual analysis with psychology, i.e. to confuse the analysis of basic elements in our concept of experience with the scientific work of describing our cognitive faculties. Both David Hume and Immanuel Kant fall into this confusion.

With Kant it is his tendency to proceed as if he were exposing the structure of our cognitive faculties, rather than exposing the basic ideas in our concept of experience. This leads (or misleads) him to claim that the world of experience is a world of appearances only (a phenomenal world), not reality independent of the ordering activity of our cognitive faculties.
According to Robert P. Wolff, Kant offers a “theory of mental activity.” See his book, Kant’s Theory of Mental Activity.

Does Kant carry out an exploration of the conditions of experience? Alternatively, does he carry out a conceptual inquiry regarding our concepts of objective experience?

To think of an object (e.g. a tree) we must presuppose that the object is a spatial-temporal object. We cannot think of the object except as existing in time and space, having spatial extension and duration. This is a claim about our conceptual scheme. It is not a description of our cognitive faculties. It is not the work of psychology.
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We should keep these two areas of work separate from one another:
• Logic-Epistemology-Conceptual Analysis
• Empirical Psychology – theory of mental activity – description of experience.

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See Richard Rorty’s The Mirror of Nature for a sustained critique of the epistemological project from Descartes through Locke and Hume and culminating in Kant’s First Critique.
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Too many philosophers confuse their talk and thinking about the world with the world itself. Too many confuse talk about experience (e.g. perception) with a psychological account of the mental processes underlying experience.
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What would a metaphysician basing himself on Kantian philosophy say? Maybe he would assert that the California Redwood forests of the northern California coast only represent phenomena conditioned by the subject who experiences them. (?) In truth, the rugged coast and the California Redwoods are a reality independent and prior to any human experience of them.
[If certain tribes of philosophers refer to this position as naïve realism, so be it.]

Yesterday Virginia called me out to the backyard to pick lemons from our tree. What would a metaphysically inclined Kantian say? Would he assert that those lemons were not real lemons, since the lemons that I experienced (picked) were partly conditioned by my cognitive faculties? Would he declare that the real lemons, viz. the lemons-in-themselves, were unknowable and outside any possibility of my experience (I could not possibly pick them)?
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A Kantian view: The world that we experience is mere phenomena (appearance only?). The real world — the noumena is forever hidden from us. Reality lies behind the stage of phenomenal objects, processes, and actions. [Does this make any sense?]
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When we argue that the perception of X presupposes fundamental concepts of X, our argument takes place in the area of conceptual analysis; we are not doing a psychological study of the mental processes underlying perception.

When we attempt to sort and clarify perceptual concepts, and attempt to say how people can coherently speak about (and think about) perceptual experience, we do not attempt to conduct scientific (psychological) investigation into the mental processes underlying perception.
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(Caveat: Yet these two lines of inquiry, conceptual and scientific, may relate to each other. The scientific results of a psychological-neurological study of perception may significantly influence our conceptual efforts. Conversely, philosophical analysis of relevant concepts may influence how scientists approach their investigation of the mental processes related to perception, although scientist are not restricted by our ordinary ways of thinking and talking about perception. {* see note below.})

(2nd Caveat: Philosophers engaged in epistemological work have a great difficulty keeping these two forms of inquiry separated.)

* The cognitive scientist, Steven Pinker (psycho-linguist), makes use of Kantian ideas in his study of human nature via our fundamental ideas and language. See his work The Stuff of Thought.

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Scientific study of mental activity, e.g. psychology, neurology, is distinct from the work of conceptual analysis (e.g. epistemological philosophy) in which one attempts to sort and clarify such concepts as knowledge, belief, perception, truth, memory, doubt and such.

January 9, 2011

A Short Exchange on the concept of ‘Truth’

Filed under: theory of knowledge — Tags: — jbernal @ 12:38 pm

Recently the question of what we mean by “truth” came up in a discussion with one of my internet correspondents, Spanos. The issue related to a previous claim that a full understanding of what we mean by truth requires reference to an ideal observer, i.e. one who sees and knows everything.

I had stated that someone subscribing to a correspondence theory of truth, might claim that a proposition is true when it corresponds with the relevant state of affairs. For example, the proposition that “Obama is US president in 2010-2011″ is a true proposition if the factual state of affairs in 2010-2011 is that Obama is the US president. This can be stated clearly and understood clearly without any reference to perfection or to an ideal observer.

Spanos replied: “Obama is US president in 2010-2011″ is true in the normal, everyday sense of the word “true.” Is it therefore infallible? Any doubt that it is really true would be hyperbolic, but nevertheless possible. But this claim about Obama belongs to a very special class of claims. Many claims are easily doubted. These include claims made by lawyers, politicians, economists, marketers, historians, scientists, and philosophers. We often do not and cannot know what “the real truth” is in such cases. Certainly, either O.J. did or did not kill Nicole. But this appears to be one of those cases where we are simply helpless to know the real truth. In such a case, what do we mean by “the real truth?” We mean the actual state of affairs as it would be known to someone who possessed complete and infallibly accurate knowledge of all the relevant evidence. In other words, we mean the truth as it would be known to an ideal observer. This is, perhaps, truth in a sense that is never possible for us. Our ordinary applications of the word in everyday life do not measure up to this ideal of truth. Nevertheless, for some people it is the search for truth in this sense that gives meaning to life. Even if they can’t reach it, it is meaningful to just come closer to it.

Of course, this search may not really have the value that some people attribute to it. Either it does or it doesn’t, but can anyone claim to know the real truth about that? How about you? Do you find meaning in the search for “real truth?” Or are you happy to settle on conventional truth?
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My reply: “Truth” is a word. Truth is a concept. The word is part of the English language. The concept is part of our conceptual scheme. I know how to use the word correctly and how to apply the concept correctly. Stating that Obama is currently the US president in January 8, 2011 is to make a true statement. Questioning the truth of this statement by asking whether it is infallible (as you did) is either engaging a idle type of hyper skepticism (somewhat of a philosophical joke) or connecting knowledge with infallibility (a conceptual error). If someone makes a statement which is doubtful, i.e, one for which there are good reasons for doubting, then I would not see it as knowledge of any kind. Your example: “We often do not and cannot know what “the real truth” is in such cases. Certainly, either O.J. did or did not kill Nicole.” Given this reasonable doubt, I would not claim knowledge of O.J. killing Nicole.

“True” in the normal sense of true, which is good enough for the sciences, is good enough for most people, including those practiced in philosophy, but who have not been sucked in by the pseudo distinction between normal truth and your notion of “real truth.” This notion of ‘real truth’ is often just an indication of some philosophical or religious ideology.

I don’t know what you mean by stating that “our ordinary applications of the word [truth] in everyday life do not measure up to this ideal of truth. “Truth as it would be known by an ideal observer” might have some use for some philosophies; but don’t over-rate this philosopher’s device (that all it is!) and set it up as the criterion for ‘real truth.’

Many people (philosophers, scientists, writers, thinkers, ordinary people) would like to know more than they currently know; and understand more than they currently understand. We could all improve in this respect. If you want to call this the “search for the real truth,” I cannot stop you. But understand that from my perspective that phrase betrays more confusion and false assumption than it expresses something noble and meaningful.

December 17, 2010

Do we perceive real things, or just our representations of them?

Filed under: Critique of philosophy,metaphysics,theory of knowledge — Tags: — jbernal @ 12:10 pm

First Part: Spanos presents his case challenging the naïve view that we perceive real things as they really are.

I’ll put my questions in the context of a story told by Leonard Mlodinow and Stephen Hawking in “The Grand Design“:

A FEW YEARS AGO the city council of Monza, Italy, barred pet owners from keeping goldfish in curved goldfish bowls. The measure’s sponsor explained the measure in part by saying that it is cruel to keep a fish in a bowl with curved sides because, gazing out, the fish would have a distorted view of reality.

This raises an interesting question. Do the curved sides of the bowl distort the fishes’ view of reality? Would they, under normal circumstances, have an undistorted view of reality? The Mlodinow/Hawking response to this is equally interesting. They chide the sponsors of the measure for assuming that our own view of reality is undistorted.

But how do we know we have the true, undistorted picture of reality? Might not we ourselves also be inside some big goldfish bowl and have our vision distorted by an enormous lens? The goldfish’s picture of reality is different from ours, but can we be sure it is less real?

The point made by Mlodinow and Hawking is that it doesn’t make any practical difference to the fish whether the bowl is curved or straight. In either case they adapt their responses to appearances. What does make a difference is whether their responses work. In order to make their responses work, they do not need a true, undistorted picture of reality. All they need is a reliably consistent picture of reality. And evolution has given them the ability to produce such a picture. Evolution has even given them the ability to adapt their responses to changes in appearances such as would be caused by putting them in a fish bowl with curved sides.

In the light of such considerations, I’m not sure how to interpret what some people claim: namely that there is no distortion of reality taking place. For example, a colleague argued that

“if we (or other creatures) didn’t actually perceive objects (‘things’ to use your term) as they really are, we would not have survived this long in the evolutionary process. Yes, misperceptions (faulty interpretations) often occur but rarely as often as you seem to imply in the above quote. Our perceptions rarely lie to us.”

Spanos continues: Must we assume that we wouldn’t be able to survive without a true, undistorted picture of reality? If fish can survive without it, why can’t we? It’s true that our perceptions rarely lie to us. But what do they tell us? Do they tell us what reality really is, or do they only tell us whether the current situation is one that requires a particular kind of response? Perhaps the lie, if there really is one, is the lie we tell ourselves when we assume that we have a true, undistorted picture of reality.

But it’s not a lie if we only mean that we have a generally true, undistorted picture of empirical reality. (By “empirical reality” I mean “the way things appear to us.”) It’s only a lie if we mean that we have a true, undistorted picture of transcendental reality. Here is Kant’s definition of “transcendental.”

“certain of our cognitions rise completely above the sphere of all possible experience, and by means of conceptions to which there exists in the whole of experience no corresponding object, seem to extend the range of our judgments beyond its bounds. And just in this transcendental or supersensible sphere, where experience affords us neither instruction nor guidance, lie the investigations of reason, which on account of their importance, we consider far preferable to, and as having a far more elevated aim, than all that the understanding can achieve within the realm of sensuous phenomena.”

Prominent among these cognitions that “rise completely above all possible experience” are the concepts of reality and truth. We feel the pressure of these cognitions whenever we are aware of our own fallibility. I don’t think fish have these cognitions, and it is a mystery why we have them.

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Second Part: My slightly annoyed reply:

You want for us to accept the proposition that we can talk about a “true, undistorted picture of transcendental reality,” which is different from “empirical reality” and which we don’t experience at all? The true, objective reality is not something we perceive or with which we can interact with it. But is this really what Kant holds? With Kant it is never clear, for he seems to say that “transcendental reality” is the “investigation of reason.” Assuming this is human reason, does he allow that humans have “rational access” to this “transcendental realm?

Moreover, there’s ambiguity in the description of “empirical reality.” On the one hand, Kant seems to admit that reality that we ordinarily, naturally experience (the reality explored by the sciences); we are told that this is “reality as it appears to us.” But reality as it appears to me does not imply that my perception fails to inform me about the real world. For although reality-as-it-appears-to-me might differ a bit from things-as-they- really-are, it can be corrected by scientific investigation, by careful analysis and relevant investigations, by corrective lenses (i.e., eyeglasses), etc.; this gives us a distinction between “reality as it appears to us” and “a corrected version (or reality at a different level of analysis) of reality.” Both are accessible to human experience, insofar as we allow that experience to be ‘extended’ by the instruments of science, rational inquiry and analysis, technology, and so on. This common-sense distinction has nothing to do with the distinction between the world accessible to human inquiry and a ‘transcendental reality.’

At any rate, all this talk of “transcendental reality” distinct from “empirical reality” (the reality investigated by science and experienced by humans) is suspect, to say the least, unless you happen to be a Kantian or believer in transcendence of some kind.

Here’s what Richard Rorty writes concerning this distinction between “empirical reality” and “transcendental reality.”

The antirepresentationalism common to Putnam and Davidson insists, by contrast, that the notion of “theory-independent and language-independent matter-of-factual relationships” begs all the questions at issue. For this notion brings back the very representationalist picture from which we need to escape. With William James, both philosophers refuse to contrast the world with what the world is known as, since such a contrast suggests that we have somehow done what Nagel calls “climbing out of our own minds.” They do not accept the Cartesian-Kantian picture presupposed by the idea of “our minds” or “our language” as an “inside” which can be contrasted to something (perhaps something very different) “outside.” From a Darwinian point of view, there is simply no way to give sense to the idea of our minds or language as systematically out of phase with what lies beyond our skins.

I also have great trouble accepting the claim by some people that they can “climb out of their minds” to the realm of the transcendent (whether this is a philosophical, metaphysical, or mystical claim); hence, I stand with the thinking of Richard Rorty, John Dewey, William James, Hilary Putnam and Donald Davidson on this issue.

The fish-bowl analogy cited by Spanos (gotten from Hawking-Mlodinow book) is interesting, but misleading insofar as it perpetuates the inside-outside model of human experience: we are ‘inside’ looking through a lense (or window, as Spanos suggested in a previous discussion) which distorts the real nature of the ‘outside.’ There is not much of a compelling argument for this model. And the fish-bowl analogy does not offer much of a new insight to this age-old issue.

(But maybe I’m just blind and need those corrective lenses that Dr. Kant provides.)

October 3, 2010

Is Platonism the Model for Philosophy?

Filed under: Critique of philosophy,theory of knowledge — Tags: — jbernal @ 1:02 pm

Platonism: … a type of metaphysical philosophy, one directed toward a transcendent reality. The rationalistic aspect: a belief in the power of thought directly to grasp transcendent realities (e.g., forms, mathematical objects); logic and mathematics are seen as providing keys to the structure of the universe. Includes belief in degrees of reality, and belief in the immortality of souls – Platonism is opposed to anything that can be called materialism; it affirms that a system of moral conceptions will reflect the nature of the universe; morality is more than merely human.

[From the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Collier-MacMillan, 1967, vol. 6, ed. Paul Edwards]

What can we say to the claim that Plato’s philosophy characterizes the best of philosophy, or that Plato’s wisdom is “the proper domain of philosophy”? Let’s start by considering what one might mean when one makes a claim regarding the nature of philosophy.

When people claim that ‘philosophy’ is one thing as opposed to another thing they might be speaking in one of two modes:

Descriptive mode: When we try to state what the institution or discipline of philosophy is, i.e., what kinds of philosophers, philosophies, teachings, perspectives, university courses in philosophy there have been.

Prescriptive mode: When we recommend what we think philosophy should be: e.g., as when someone claims that genuine philosophy is based on the metaphysical/epistemological position indicated by Plato’s Divided Line analogy.

The Question of Platonism: Is philosophy (in general) a form of Platonism (or as Whitehead said, “a series of footnotes to Plato”)?

The Descriptive Claim:

Taken as the descriptive statement, the claim that philosophy is a form of Platonism is simply false. The work, activity or discipline of philosophy features a variety of perspectives, of which only a few can be called Platonism. Even Aristotle, a student of Plato, did not develop a philosophy that was faithful in important respects to the teachings of Plato’s Dialogues. There have been and currently are many different lines of philosophy which are very anti-Platonistic in their perspective: materialistic philosophies, Atomistic philosophies. Epicureanism, Stoicism, Modern Skepticism, Positivism, Analytical philosophies, Existentialism, … to name just a few. Some of our great figures in the history of Western philosophy, e.g., Epicurus, Spinoza, David Hume, F. Nietzsche, John Dewey, Bertrand Russell, Jean P. Sartre, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, advanced what can be called an anti-Platonistic approach to philosophical problems and issues. Only a few of the courses taught at university and college departments of philosophy can be called courses in Plato or Platonism. The majority professors of philosophy do not teach Platonism; and most likely the majority of people who practice philosophy do not identify themselves as Platonists.

In short, when considering the question, Is Philosophy a form of Platonism? most of us would answer in the negative. “No,” philosophy is not generally identifiable as a form of Platonism, nor as “a series of footnotes to Plato.” Much of philosophy that is actually practiced and taught by people can actually be seen as a counter-thesis to Platonism.

The Prescriptive Claim:

So what about the prescriptive statement? Do we have reasons for agreeing that good philosophy should be a form of Platonism? Do we have good reasons for assenting to the view that good philosophy will base itself on Plato’s Analogy of the Divided line?

When people like Whitehead and Uebersax state the case for Platonism as the key to genuine philosophy, we should understand their statements as prescriptive statements; they’re telling us what they believe philosophy should be. Admittedly, the Whitehead quotation often cited suggests a descriptive claim:

“The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”

A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality, 1929.

As a descriptive claim, this is simply false, unless we qualify it so that “a series of footnotes to Plato” include counter arguments to Plato. But we normally don’t describe contrary philosophies as “footnotes to each other.

So, I prefer to read Whitehead as a recommendation of what he best of European philosophy should be, i.e., as a prescriptive statement. This is how I shall interpret other statements in favor of Platonism: e.g., “Plato’s wisdom is the proper domain of philosophy”; “Plato’s Divided Line Analogy is the best way to deal with epistemological and ethical issues.”
[The Divided Line Analogy is given in Plato’s Republic, at Book VI, the four stages of cognition, “Speaking through the character of Socrates, Plato divides human knowledge, and its related cognitive activities, into four categories. From poorest to best, these are: eikasia, pistis, dianoia, and noesis.”]

So what are we to make of these recommendations? If there is a case to be made for Platonism as the philosophy of choice, it is a weak case. If we concentrate only on the Divided Line Analogy, we find that it is based on a specific metaphysics and epistemology, Both Plato’s metaphysics and his theory of knowledge are very questionable, to say the least.

First, consider Plato’s metaphysics. Unless we are already committed to Platonism as a philosophy, we don’t find very good arguments supporting Plato’s other world metaphysics. The arguments in Plato’s Dialogues for the necessity of a realm of eternal, unchanging forms are not cogent or sound arguments. Much in the dialogues assumes, rather than argues for the reality of a soul, separate from the body. What scientific grounds or sound philosophical arguments are there for adopting this dualistic doctrine of human reality, that essentially we are eternal souls separate from our body? What grounds – philosophical or scientific – do we have for asserting a separate, higher reality of eternal, unchanging forms? Unless we are already inclined to accept this notion of a higher separate reality, as many spiritually inclined, religious people and some mathematicians are, we shall find little or no reason for affirming such a view of reality.

Accepting Plato’s realm of eternal forms would imply that we reject the reality of modern scientific perspective of a world of evolving animal and plant life, a world of constant, dynamic change as described by astronomy, cosmology, physics, chemistry, biology, anthropology, history, and sociology. Many of us find the case for doing that to be far from convincing. In addition, Darwinian evolution by natural selection is a direct, scientific refutation of essentialism in biology; hence, it is a direct refutation of Platonism insofar as it could apply to the biosphere.

At best, Plato’s metaphysics applies to a particular philosophy of mathematics. Many mathematicians are Platonists of sorts, but the work of mathematics does not entail a Platonist metaphysics, since there are alternative philosophies of mathematics.

Likewise, the case for Plato’s theory of knowledge is a weak one. The notion of knowledge, as embodied in the Divided Line Analogy, assumes that ‘knowledge’ can be understood as a cognitive state, that it is characterized by the object of the cognitive state, and that genuine knowledge is infallible and mathematically certain. All of these propositions concerning human knowledge are questionable, to say the least. There is much work of analytical philosophers which denies these notions. First, as Gilbert Ryle, Richard Rorty and other writers on epistemological issues have argued, knowledge cannot be adequately described as a state of mind, even when it is labeled a “cognitive state.” Briefly, this is because propositional knowledge requires that something is a fact apart from the subject’s state of mind; and knowledge identifiable as a capability (knowing how to do something) requires being able to do something, not just indulge a cognitive state of mind.

“What is knowledge? Whether or not knowledge involves belief, the distinction between knowledge and belief should not be seen as a distinction between states of mind. The truth conditions of statements about knowledge must include reference to things other than states of mind . . . …being sure is not by any means necessary to knowledge, even if in the majority of cases people who know things are also sure of them. . . There are no grounds for supposing that knowledge is a conscious activity or state, nor for supposing that knowledge and awareness are the same. …

[D.W. Hamlyn, The Theory of Knowledge, Anchor Books, 1970, p. 95]

Secondly, as the twentieth century English philosopher D.W. Hamlyn points out, the view that knowledge must be infallible and mathematically certain is based on a confusion:

It is to say that we cannot both know and be wrong. Nothing follows from this about whether what we know must be such that it is impossible to be wrong about it. . . To suppose that it does is to mistake the role that “cannot” plays in “if I know, I cannot be wrong.” In fact, “cannot” merely expresses the incompatibility between knowledge and being wrong; it does not say that the only appropriate objects of knowledge are things about which it is impossible to be wrong.

[Hamlyn, ibid, p. 12]

That my ‘knowing that X’ implies that I cannot be wrong about X follows from the correct application of the concept “knowledge.” We don’t say that we know the solution to a problem if we also admit that we could be wrong. But this does not mean that in order for our claim to knowing to be appropriate it must be infallible or mathematically certain. But according to Plato, genuine knowledge is only of the infallible:

However, historically Plato and others have equated knowledge and infallibility. Plato, at one stage, cast doubt on the view that perception provides knowledge. According to him, knowledge must be reserved for objects of a higher kind, the forms. Accordingly, knowledge and infallibility go together and anything that is not infallible is not a suitable subject for knowledge. . . . . The search for indubitable and infallible truths is therefore a common feature of traditional epistemology.

[Hamlyn, ibid, p. 13 ]

However, for many philosophers this represents a wrong turn in the history of epistemological philosophy. Accepting this ‘theory of knowledge’ would imply that we really do not have knowledge in many of the natural sciences, not to mention sociological and historical sciences. It would also imply that we really all of our beliefs and affirmations about empirical matters and matters of common sense do not qualify as knowledge. Except for those who subscribe to Platonism, most people are not prepared to admit Plato’s exaggerated notion of genuine knowledge.

Hence, the case for upholding Plato’s Divided Line Analogy as a key to understanding what philosophy should be (or should aspire to) is a weak case, given the problems with its metaphysical and epistemological presuppositions. A large number of philosophers rightfully dissent.

June 19, 2010

Some Remarks about the Concept of ‘Belief’

Filed under: philosophy and psychology,theory of knowledge — Tags: , , — jbernal @ 11:11 am

The Spanish Philosopher Miguel de Unamuno once described his approach to philosophy as trying on a glove in different ways, even inside-out, to see how many different ways the glove could be worn. It is in this spirit that I offer my somewhat disconnected thoughts on the concept of ‘belief’: I trying out different perspectives to see how they fit.

William James wrote a well-known essay “The Will to Believe,” in which he defended certain religious belief as compelling even if not rationally grounded beliefs; for example, the decision to belief in God as a vital choice that many persons make, despite lacking good rational grounds to support that belief. We will to believe in God.

In one sense of the term “belief,” what James contends may strike us as being absurd. For in ordinary circumstances our belief that something is such & such (e.g., that it will rain today, or that my car has enough gasoline to get me home) is not a matter of choice or of our willing it, but rather a case in which we base the belief on supporting evidence. Here making a decision to believe irrespective of the evidence could get us in trouble. To the degree that we operate intelligently in the world, we believe that it will rain today based on relevant evidence (heavy storm clouds moving in, or a reliable weather forecast). We believe that the car has enough gasoline to make it home because the fuel tank gauge indicates the tank is half full, and we know that home is only twenty miles away; and half a tank of gasoline is good enough for 150 miles travel. The notion of “will to believe” or freedom of choice with regard to what I believe does not apply here. To operate well in the world, we strive for beliefs that conform to reality. (There is not much room here for “will to believe” or choosing to believe.)

However, Mr. James probably had in mind another sense of the term “belief” when he wrote his famous essay. This is ‘belief’ in the sense of faith or conviction, in which notions of “the will to believe” or “deciding to believe” do apply. The area of religious faith is an obvious case; but first let us try to approach the subject indirectly.

No one has knowledge of what will happen in the future, although sometimes we have some basis for highly probable inferences. Yet we never know for sure, and sometimes don’t even have a clue as to how things will turn out in the future. But we often need to assume a belief (or beliefs) as to what will happen, or at least assume beliefs as to the general pattern of future events. Sometimes we must make a choice as to how we “see” the future. If we tend to be optimists, we choose optimistic beliefs concerning the future; if we tend to be pessimists, we choose less positive beliefs.

In our daily routine, we may come in contact with hundreds of people. We don’t know most of them and really have no evidence for thinking that they are decent, law-abiding people. But in order to carry on with our daily routines and not become paranoid, we work with the belief that, like ourselves, they are decent, law-abiding people.
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Sometimes opting to believe one way or another comes by way of a “working hypothesis”; at this time we have no evidence to support any belief, but we must make a choice in order to get on with what we’re doing.

Suppose we use the terms “faith” and “objective belief” to distinguish between these two kinds of belief. Faith involves the will-to-believe; objective belief does not.

This may help some in our effort to sort through the concept of ‘belief’ in its various uses; but let’s not jump to the conclusion that this distinction tells the whole story. For we must allow that emotion, the desire or will to believe that something is true, sometimes occur with regard to our “objective beliefs”; on the other hand, some people of strong religious faith will find the notion of ‘will to believe’ foreign to their experience of faith, holding instead that they have no choice in matters of religious faith.
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In religion, opting to believe [in God, for example] may or may not be analogous to adopting a working hypothesis. Blaise Pascal may conceive of belief in God as taking the “rational” option; but many other theists will argue that their experience (religious and existential experience) is such that they have no choice on the question of God’s reality.

However, this gives us pause: most people did not originally make a conscious choice to adopt the religious belief they hold. They were born into a “world” of people holding, teaching, and imparting such religious beliefs, and never examined or questioned those beliefs. The religious beliefs just became part of their view of reality.

Nevertheless, for many people religious belief does seem to be in a different category from belief in other contexts. In a religious context, the term “belief” is used more like the term “conviction” or the related term “faith.”

Here the “belief that X” may express a strong conviction (or as some people put it: “a rock-solid conviction.” My belief that X here is not understood as a peripheral claim (tentative, subject to reexamination). It is certainly not a weak epistemic claim, made in place of a stronger claim to know that X. Here my claim that “X is true” functions much like a basic principle that defines and controls my existence. (Let “X” stand for “Jesus is the divine redeemer.”)

Here we might think of an analogy with Thomas Reid’s Principles of Common Sense. Our very existence as social beings demands the reality of the external, material world, even if the skeptic (D. Hume) demonstrates that from a subjective perspective we cannot prove that this belief is true.
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Another way of stating it: In the religious context, belief functions at a primary level —much like a principle or rule of action. It does not function like a weak epistemic claim that needs supporting evidence. The call for supporting evidence is seen as irrelevant.

It is in this context that a proponent of religious faith will say that rational skepticism is “out of order.”

Here one is more likely to “believe in something or someone” as opposed to “believing that such and such.” An example could be “belief in the goodness of human beings.”

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Much of what I believe comes from other people. People whom I admire or whom I recognize as knowledgeable authorities advance arguments and establish certain conclusions, which I accept as my beliefs. (“The belief strikes me as a reasonable one, so I adopt as my belief”).

Much of what we believe comes from familial and cultural conditioning. There is a vast body of beliefs (presuppositions) that forms the basis for our outlook on the world and our acting in the world. Most of us have never examined or evaluated these beliefs. (In what sense are these beliefs subject to choice?)

Intellectual growth and development toward some psychological maturity requires that we rationally evaluate these beliefs that we have inherited. Have we educated ourselves sufficiently to recognize the different features of our body of beliefs?

“I’ll believe what I please!” makes sense in some contexts, but not in others. And here too there will be a matter of degrees.

In some cases, beliefs are much like preferences, as in “I prefer coffee to tea.”
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On the other hand, when we remark that “Based on the evidence, I think he did it,” or “I have good reasons for thinking he did it” we are in the realm of rational belief: I believe it because I have evidence or good reasons for the belief.

By “objective belief” I mean that type of belief that a person holds because evidence or rational considerations, such as perception, factual evidence, logical inference, compel him to hold the belief. Consider, for example, the case of my belief that it will rain because heavy storm clouds are moving this way and reliable meteorological forecasts have predicted rain for today. There’s a sense in which we don’t have a choice in what we belief.

The ideal here is that our beliefs all be well-grounded (rationally well-grounded, that is). The person consciously working to realize this ideal would try to limit his beliefs to those beliefs that are supported by the facts, rational inference or immediate experience. And in those areas where such beliefs are not found, he proceeds hypothetically and experimentally.

In this context, belief that such & such is a weaker epistemic claim than knowledge that such & such. For example, I don’t know that O.J. Simpson killed his wife (in the sense that I would know if I had seen him do it), but I believe he did it (in the sense, I have some evidence that points to his doing it, although it does not prove that he did it). And I believe this only because there is much evidence that points to this as highly probable.

Here we could set up a scale of epistemic weight:

1) I know that X. (We have full, undeniable knowledge)
2) I am sure that X. (I have every reason to believe X and nothing that stands against it.)
3) Probably X. (There is a strong case to be made of X.)
4) I believe that X. (I have some reason for thinking that X. I lean this way.)
5) Possibly X. (X may be true, but we have to look more.)
6) I doubt that X. (There are good reasons against X being true.)
7) I know that not-X. (We have knowledge that X is not the case.)

Only #1 and #7 represent knowledge. The other marks on the scale represent varying degrees of belief, all weaker epistemic claims. We fall back on some form of belief when we lack knowledge or objective certainty.

In this context, my desire or need to believe are irrelevant; the strength of my faith or conviction are irrelevant.
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One attempt to define “knowledge”:
Knowledge obtains when one affirms P (some proposition, e.g., the U.S. is a democracy); and
a) the proposition affirmed (P) is true;
b) there is a rationally relevant basis for affirming ‘P’.

Of course, this applies to propositional knowledge; here we tend to analyze knowledge in terms of belief. However, this is not so obvious the way to break down ‘knowledge’ in cases of knowing by direct acquaintance (as in case of knowing that you’re here because I see you and touch you) or in the case of knowledge that applies when we ‘know how’ to do something. (I know how to ride a bicycle.)
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Don’t let our ‘belief’ expressions mislead you to think that beliefs are independent entities, existing separately from all believers. We might say that a belief is something held by some person; but should not think this implies a special entity ‘belief.’ Beliefs don’t have existence. People exist who think this or that, and hold beliefs.
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Thus, one way of dealing with beliefs leads us toward psychology: an examination of the believer.

We’re probably dealing with different personality types:

1) The rational/scientific type who feels that, as much as possible, our beliefs should be rational, well-grounded beliefs. The important things are acquiring knowledge, understanding, eventually gaining some truth about ourselves and our world, and operating intelligently in this world.

2) The religious type, who feels that the over-riding importance is that our basic beliefs reflect the highest values and convictions that we hold, and that we hold beliefs that will promote the spiritual, moral aspects of our existence. (The over-riding concerns are the kinds of lives we live and, in case of Christians, our personal salvation.)
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What I directly experience compels me to assent. In other cases, an obvious rational inference from the factual evidence compels me to believe. Objective conditions push me one way or the other. In so far as we are conscious, intelligent beings, we are pushed (by objective conditions) to believe one way or another.

When these compelling objective conditions are absent, people respond in different ways, depending on their inclinations:
The rationalist, given to logical/scientific habits of thought, will suspend belief, at most allow himself very tentative hypothesis.
The religious type will adopt some kind of “religious belief,” belief in or faith that works despite the push/pull of objective conditions, or even works in opposition to the “force” of objective conditions.

It is in this context that some people say such things as “Science and rational inquiry do not give us complete knowledge; they leave many gaps. Therefore, we must turn to religious faith to get a complete picture of reality.” Or “Science and rational inquiry takes us only part of the way; to complete the trip, we need to turn to religion.”

It is likely true that everyone has some degree of faith, including the hardest scientists and the strongest skeptic. It is also true that some people use the term “faith” to cover the most irrational fanaticism or the most absurd fantasies. And we have many degrees and gradations in between.

But having faith need not imply that the person of faith embraces irrational fanaticism or childish fantasies.

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