Knowing Part II
This is the second part of a 5 part series. If you have not read the first, it may be helpful to do so (although not imperative). Please feel free to disagree or agree, ask questions or raise concerns, but more than anything... please comment. Feel free to challenge and affirm the other people who comment as well. Here is part two of five.
Searching out and defending truth is the most common and natural thing a human does. We are attracted to anything that appears to be true or real, even at the peril of being wrong. Ms. Cleo and the Psychic friends have had some impact on our culture because people want to know if they really know the truth about there future. The goal of science whether it be natural science, psychology, sociology, anthropology etc. is to observe, identify, explain, and theorize what is true.
Some may disagree that truth seeking is natural to humans. However, the one who disagrees only illustrates my point. You see they believe it is true that I am wrong. Because they see this to be truth, they seek to show the fallacy in my claim. They are living by and defending truth.
The problem lies not in whether or not we search for truth. The problem lies in whether we believe the right things. In logic, arguments are not true or false, but valid or invalid. You may have a logically sound argument that is as false as a square circle. If you start with false premises, you will have a false conclusion even if your argument is valid. Here is an example:
A circle has four sides
The definition of a square is a shape that has four sides
Therefore, a circle is a square
It is not difficult to see the error in this line of thinking, but this argument by definition is valid though not true. It’s truthfulness lies in the premises, which in this case, the first is false. However, if I believe my premises to be true, I will have a false conclusion that I see as rational, valid and true. So the question arises, “How can we know what is true or real?” In the case of the square circle, “How do I know whether or not a circle has four sides or not?” This introduces the problem of the criterion.
The Problem of the Criterion:
There are two questions we must ask in our pursuit for knowledge,
1. What do we know?
2. How do we know what we know?
Here lies the problem. We cannot know the answer to the first question without knowing the answer to the second. Similarly, we cannot know the answer to the second question without knowing the answer to the first. Think about it. If we do not know what we know, how can we say we know anything at all? Especially how we know. In the same way, we cannot know how we know something without first knowing something. There are three ways to confront this problem: Skepticism, Methodism and Particularism.
Skepticism is the simplest of the three. It says there is no good answer to either, so there is no knowledge. They take comfort in that we cannot answer either question rationally, so all is absurd and irrational.
Methodism attempts to answer the second to explain the first. They say we must first know some general criteria for knowledge (or how we can attain knowledge) in order to find out what we know. This however is not satisfactory, because they must then present criterion for how they know their proposed way of attaining knowledge is true. Then, if they do present criterion for knowing this, they must then present criterion for that. As you see, this places them in an infinite regress.
Particularism is the only one we can use effectively. It starts by knowing some clear and obvious items of knowledge and drawing criteria from these items of knowledge. The particularist does not attempt to prove how he knows them. If he did, he would then be using Methodism and end up with the same problem the Methodist has (not the denomination, of course). I think that it is obvious that we can simply know certain things without explaining how we know them. However, we do this at the peril of being wrong. One may say that we are “cheating” by simply assuming certain instances of knowledge. However, the person who doubts our knowledge must present a reason for doubting this assumed knowledge. If he/she fails to do so, she/he is not presenting an argument that is worthy of consideration and there is no reason to answer his/her question. You can doubt anything at all. However, the real question is ‘do I have good reason to doubt?’ We may present the question to our doubter “Why do you think that this assumed knowledge is false?” It places the skeptic in the place of the Methodist (not the denomination). The mere possibility that I am wrong does not suffice. The skeptic must present good reason for thinking my assumptions are false. I already claim the possibility of being wrong, but mere possibility is not sufficient for something to be considered false.
The inescapable truth is that all knowledge is based on faith (or your belief in the premises you accept). You cannot know anything without first accepting certain things without any proof or means of verification.
posted by Jim Shultz @ 11:32 AM
6 Comments:
"If we do not know what we know, how can we say we know anything at all? Especially how we know. In the same way, we cannot know how we know something without first knowing something." -> I think you said the same thing twice, and left out the other side. But I know what you meant.
What is an example of all this how-we-know stuff? Like, if I see that my monitor screen is a rectangle, I know that the screen is rectangular and I know how I know that: I see it with my eyes. What makes that uncertain?
I think you will see where I am going with all of this in the next post. I am saying you can be confident in your knowledge without having to present any criteria for your that knowledge. The idea is to show those who claim certainty is only found through the five senses (or whatever means they consider worthy) are in the same place of belief that all people are. I will develop this more tomorrow.
A man named Pontius Pilate once said "What is truth?" (John 18:38)
Jesus said, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life." (John 14:6a)
Jesus said when praying to the Father for all believers "Sanctify them in truth, your word is truth." (John 17:17)
Thanks for taking the time to stop by. I just posted part III of my blog. I hope you will take the time to read it. I agree with what you said and you will find out that ultimately these are the points I will be making in the coming posts. I am simply taking a different route to get there. I particularly will way heavily on John 17:17, though I do not site it. I really appreciate your comment.
Hey, Jim. It’s clear you’ve put a lot of thought into these posts. I've read this entire series, but I'm going to start here, because this is where you start to lose me on a few points:
I don’t really agree that skeptics believe there is no knowledge. I consider myself a skeptic of sorts, and I definitely believe that there is such a thing as truth. Perhaps I’m more of a free thinker than a tried-and-true skeptic, but I’m not sure there’s much difference. I don’t know. One skeptic whose writings I’ve gotten into over the past year or so, Michael Shermer, as I understand him, would argue that skeptics doubt what is true about a particular subject until they’ve weighed the different viewpoints on that subject, and then make up their own minds what they believe is true or not true. I’d highly recommend his book, HOW WE BELIEVE: SCIENCE, SKEPTICISM AND THE SEARCH FOR GOD. He’s as much concerned with the mechanics of belief as he is about the beliefs themselves. He’s not a philosopher, so his work is more like a survey and he makes a lot of salient points.
It also strikes me that particularism, as you describe it here, is most expedient for people who believe things for which there is no proof. I’d agree that’s all of us – but only to a certain extent. I think you might be painting with too wide a brush here. This is to say that I don’t agree that all knowledge is based on faith. Or at the very least, if all knowledge is based on faith, it’s certainly not all based on faith to the same degree.
It doesn't take a lot of faith for me to believe that gravity is going to keep me from floating into outer space this minute, tomorrow, and for the rest of my life. That is, barring some cataclysmic occurrence. This is easily observable and I have no reason to doubt it. We can deconstruct my knowledge of that fact forever, but when you get right down to it, it’s not going to change the fact that my posterior does and will remain planted in my chair because of gravity. That's a far cry from believing that God exists or, or more to the point, that a man named Jesus was dead for three days and then came back to life because he was God incarnate, all of this happening a few centuries ago with little undisputed evidence. Does that make sense? I can’t argue the big statement that we all to one degree or another put our faith in truths there isn’t any proof for. But I can’t agree that statement applies equally to all truth. There are things we can all observe and agree are true and move on. I don’t believe that God is one of them.
Brett, Thanks for your thoughtful comment. I am going to try to respond as best I can. It should first be noted that your idea of a skeptic and what I am talking about when I say "skepticism" are two differnt things. I argued that the skeptic says there are no clear items which we can know without doubt, and therefore we cannot know anything. This is clearly not the position of Shermer. You described him as one who would adhere to methodism, although his criteria for knowledge is not spelled out. You said, "skeptics doubt what is true about a particular subject until they’ve weighed the different viewpoints on that subject, and then make up their own minds what they believe is true or not true". A true skeptic doubts all things that can be doubted. You can doubt things and not be a skeptic. It's more about what you use as a means toward knowledge. I would argue that Shermer is adopting a methodism because he has some criteria for knowledge that he uses to regard something as true or not true. I will not labor the point here (because I have done so in my post), but I am saying that it is impossible to do that without accepting certain things on faith. Now, I am not trying to make a case that you can believe whatever you want and claim it as true. My point is that you can accept certain things without proof so long as there is no real evidence for believing it is false. Until someone can show me good reasons to believe that I may not be right in my truth claims, then I have no reason to doubt them. For example, I know/believe that I drove my car this morning. Until someone can give me a rational reason for thinking I am wrong, I don't need to entertain questions like "how do you know you drove your car?". I do, however, need to answer questions like "didn't you sleep all morning and just now wake up"? Why? Because the person is presenting me with a reason why I could be wrong. Now, I certainly don't think that God would fall into categories you can accept without having any proof. There are valid reasons to believe that God doesn't exist, like the problem of evil and suffering. However, what this type of discussion is helpful for doing is determining which questions are worthy of answering and how to answer them. I do not need to answer questions like "how do you know Jesus existed at all?" unless someone presents a good reason for thinking he may not have existed. Are you following me?
This was the point behind the talk about how we have a prejudice for doubt over faith as if it is more intellectually honest to doubt what can be doubted, but if that is the case, we will not have any knowledge at all because all things can be doubted.
I guess my point is to say that I agree with you that certain things are more believable than others, but I would interject that all things are to some extent accepted on faith. I am trying to even the playing field for those who would say that you cannot know certain things. Knowledge is based on faith. I also wish to take the criteria for knowledge out of the hands of the scientist (methodist) because they are trying to take useful tools and claim they are somehow more reliable than anything else, which I argued is dangerous. So, if someone presents reasons for believing that God may not exist, I need to discuss those. I plan to address the problem of evil and suffering at some point. It is my argument that it is more rational to believe that there is a god than there isn't a god. To even talk about rationality without a personal beling is fruitless, but I will argue that later. Have I made any sense at all?
Post a Comment
<< Home