Reason and Experience: A Question of Knowledge - Essay Example

Reason and Experience: A Question of Knowledge Our project here is both in the survey of a discursive history and in the assessment of this history. Namely, in a question as old as Western philosophy itself, we ought not to seek novelty in a concise answer. Parmenides, before Plato, noted that there are many opinions, or appearances of reality, between falsehood (belief) and truth (knowledge) (Curd). Plato himself conjured up images of souls shackled in a dark cave, watching the shadows of marionettes on the wall, and confusing these figures for the way things really are (Plato). René Descartes posited the possibility of the existence of an entity depriving him of sound knowledge of reality (Descartes). Immanuel Kant spoke of the impossibility of man’s knowing anything beyond the veil of a phenomenal world of experience (Kant). We cannot, of course, lay out the entire history of such a discussion; however, it should supply us with the proper context for asking how such a question might be answered. The question, formulated as “does knowledge originate in the senses or in the mind?”, seems relatively straightforward. Yet, certain concepts, indicated by italics, have been the subject of philosophical debate for thousands of years. Certain terms need to be defined, in preparation—the terms of the question—in order to make progress; this process of definition will require considerable intellectual resources, but is necessary to reaching the evaluative conclusions we seek. Once the definitions are in place, the complex question we are supposed to answer will be replaced with one conscious of the context of knowledge acquisition. And the answer to this question shall take us neither to advocate for reason nor to advocate for experience, but to an integration of the two traditions. Before beginning however, according to Voltaire, we must define our terms. Knowledge, of course, is the subject of an entire branch of philosophy known as epistemology; the senses are the main topic of a field known as the philosophy of perception; and the nature of the mind has been the subject of intense debate in the philosophy of mind since Socrates. Among these, knowledge is, without a doubt, the most difficult to define properly. Plato seemed to have the correct response by claiming it to be “justified true belief”, according to his dialogue the Theaetetus in which Socrates contends that belief is dissimilar to knowledge because of justification (Plato). However, this misinterpretation of Plato, who thought knowledge was actually a matter of recollection, became all but abandoned after a paper named “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” was published by philosopher Edmund Gettier. In it, Gettier proposed two counterexamples to “justified true belief”, one of which will concern us here. Consider that person X has applied for a position at a company, but actually (1) holds a justified belief that "person Y will get the job", and (2) holds a justified belief that person Y has ten coins in her pocket. Thus, Person X validly concludes that "the person who will get the job has ten coins in his or her pocket". But person Y does not get the job, and X is hired. Nevertheless, person X (unknowingly) also had ten coins in his pocket; thus, his belief that "the person who will get the job has ten coins in his or her pocket" was justified and true (Gettier). But it does not conceptually qualify as knowledge. In response to Gettier, philosopher Robert Nozick proposed that knowledge consists of the following argument: where S knows that P, (1) S believes that P; (2) if P were false, S would not believe that P; and thus, (3) if P is true, S will believe that P. In other words, Plato’s justification is replaced with Nozick’s subjunctive conditionality, by which we mean a conditional in which if the antecedent were not true, then the consequent would not be true. This conditional relationship is present in both premises (2) and (3) (Nozick). With this definition of knowledge, we move to considering the nature of the senses. What are the senses? Because the senses are nothing physiologically more than the methods of perception, we may reductively reflect on the nature of perception instead. What, then, is perception? If we assume metaphysical realism, perception is a direct awareness of reality. Philosopher David Kelley, in his book The Evidence of the Senses, theorizes that the diaphanous model of awareness is the mistake behind all past models of perception—including direct realism and representationalism; that is, the view that consciousness is a diaphanous medium in which what is external to the mind is reflected without distortion in the mind. Abandoning this “inner theatre”, we must adopt a view of perception not as a reflective medium, but as a means of direct, automatic awareness of reality (Kelley). Finally, we must adequately define the nature of the mind itself. However, this need not be a discussion of ontology, but one of concepts. For the present discussion, it will suffice to say that ontologically, the mind is nothing more than a set of “mental properties” coinstantiated with “physical properties” in a single physical reality. I use this dualist framework, one like Donald Davidson describes in his paper “Mental Events”, to provide special focus to a specific ontological reality and knowledge itself (Davidson). But what is the “mind” conceptually? The “mind” is actually a compound of different concepts, including but not limited to memory, idea, consciousness, sentience, cognition, and imagination. All of these concepts together help define the collective experience of what is commonly referred to as the “mind”. The “mind” is often colloquially spoken of as residing in the brain as the seat of reason, emotion, and the full scope of the intellectual life of the adult human being. If “mind” is a compound concept, then we shall say if something originates in “memory”, “consciousness”, or any of the other subsumed concepts, then that something properly originates in the “mind” as well. With these conceptual elements in place, we may move on now to considering the roots of the ancient debate on the acquisition of knowledge. Indeed, ever since the inauguration of the Western philosophical tradition, theorists have been drawing distinctions between specific aspects of the two primary responses to the question: between a priori and a posteriori, between reason and experience, and, most significantly, between rationalism and empiricism. Rationalism is an epistemological position which is expressible by three theses: (1) the intuition/deduction thesis: certain subjects are knowable by “intuition” alone and others are knowable by deduction; (2) the innate knowledge thesis: certain subjects are knowable by virtue of man’s rational nature; and (3) the innate concept thesis: concepts in certain subjects are the result of man’s rational nature. According to (1) and (2), knowledge is acquired a priori—prior to experience—and purely a function of reason alone. Either taking these propositions together or utilizing one and not the others constitutes the difference between what may be termed “strong rationalism” and “weak rationalism” (Richmond). Empiricism, likewise, is an epistemological doctrine, but is expressible in terms of only a single, all-encompassing notion: (4) the empiricism thesis: there is no source of knowledge or concepts in certain subjects besides the content of perception. In essence, (4) is a complete rejection of (1) and (2), accompanied by a skepticism about (3)’s implications (Mackie). What is noteworthy about these two theories, one proposing that knowledge originates in the mind and the other in sense-perception, is that they do not necessarily contradict one another. However, once we begin to discuss entire realms of knowledge, with the universal set of all propositions capable of being known, then contradictions between (1), (2), (3), and (4) begin to unfold. Nonetheless, it makes sense to qualify the question insofar as it lacks the appropriate reference point: are we talking about all knowledge, or only certain propositions (for example, those of only mathematics and science)? In truth, it may be an instance of a false dilemma: to make the philosopher choose between the two alternatives, for it may be desirable to claim that certain types of investigation require a philosophy of rationalism while others require a philosophy of empiricism (Mackie). Even those who are staunchly classified into either the rationalist or empiricist traditions, at times, have a proclivity for inconsistency. For example, the philosopher John Locke, who is credited with commencing the tradition of modern empiricism, employed thesis (1) to suggest that our knowledge that God exists come not from the senses but from a priori necessity. Knowing this, we shall not answer the question as it stands, but rather a question of qualifications: what sorts of knowledge originate in the senses, and what sorts of knowledge originate in the mind? In other words, are there certain intellectual disciplines which may require the process of knowledge acquisition to begin in the senses and others in the mind? I believe there is; my reason is that theses (1), (2), (3), and (4) are untenable for the sum of all human understanding. Thesis (1), that all knowledge is intuited or deduced, is simply a nonstarter: it assumes substantive knowledge of the external world—knowledge which surpasses what perception can justify—is possible (Mackie). Thesis (2), that all knowledge is innate, is likewise unacceptable: according to our (Nozick’s) definition of knowledge, knowledge is must true, believed, and warranted. (2) claims that experiences trigger, but do not warrant, this innate knowledge; but how can it be the case that beliefs are warranted if they are not warranted by the experiences which caused the “triggering” (Ayer)? Thesis (3) was refuted by John Locke in his Essay. He questioned what it would be like for someone to have an innate concept; is it that someone is being conscious of it right now, or in the past (and if so, we can give counterexamples), and whether, according to Descartes, innate concepts are truly necessary as the starting point (to which one can answer that we can explain how experience can provide us with all of our ideas) (Locke). Thesis (4) alone seems equally as indefensible as its rationalist counterparts. First, a distinction may be in order: designate the acceptance of (4) and the negation of (1) – (3) as “strong empiricism” and designate the acceptance of (4) in conjunction with any or all of (1) – (3) as “weak empiricism”. Even if strong empiricism was true insofar as (4) is correct, and (1) – (3) are incorrect, such would be unverifiable. Locke, although not a strong empiricist because of a partial acceptance of (1) and (3), proposed that our experiences inform us about the nature of reality—substance. However, how is it that we can ever verify our experience with what reality really is, in order to know such? In other words, a strong empiricism lacks a credible, third-person perspective in evaluating the nature of what we really perceive. Without a faculty of reason that strong empiricism denies, we take reality simply to be axiomatic, and not worthy of proof (Brown). But the reality of our experience, in response to the philosophy of Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, and many others, does require proof of its validity—proof which strong empiricism cannot provide. Having distinguished between “strong” and “weak rationalism” already, and demonstrated the untenability of any strong notion of rationalism, we may be best served to instead integrate a weaker rationalism with a weaker empiricism. But what does an integration of such positions entail? It entails a qualified response to a qualified question: namely, some intellectual disciplines require the apriorism described by the rationalists—disciplines like grammar, logic, mathematics, and so on—while others require the a posteriori method of the empiricists—disciplines like the experimental sciences, social sciences, and so on. Thus, the question is not “[in all cases] does knowledge originate in the mind or in the senses?” but “[in what cases] does knowledge originate in the mind or in the senses?” By taking such a pragmatist position (Dewey), we may cautiously circumvent the untenability of both strong rationalism and empiricism with a position in epistemology—the acquisition of knowledge—that is both consistent with novel findings in science as well as long-standing philosophical investigations. Works Cited Ayer, A.J. Language, Truth and Logic. Dover: Dover Publications, 1952. Brown, James Robert. "Why Empiricism Wont Work." PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, Vol. 1992, Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers (1992): 271-279. Curd, Patricia. The Legacy of Parmenides: Eleatic Monism and Later Presocratic Thought. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing, 1998. Davidson, Donald. Mental Events. Oxford: Oxford Scholarship Online Monographs, 2001. Descartes, Rene. Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1999. Dewey, John. Studies in Logical Theory. Chicago: Kessinger Publishing, LLC, 2007. Gettier, Edmund. "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?" Analysis, Vol. 23, No. 6 (1963): 121-123. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1996. Kelley, David. Evidence of the Senses: A Realist Theory of Perception. New Orleans: Louisiana State University Press, 1988. Leibniz, Gottfried von. Discourse on Metaphysics and Other Essays. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1991. Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1996. Mackie, Peter. Rationalism vs. Empiricism. 19 August 2004. 6 October 2008 . Nozick, Robert. Philosophical Examinations. Chicago: Belknap Press, 2006. Plato. The Republic. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1992. Richmond, Sheldon. "Can a Rationalist Be Rational about His Rationalism?" Philosophy, Vol. 46, No. 175 (1971): 54-55. Read More