Negative Epistemology

Is epistemology about building up our knowledge? I would like to put forward an alternative: the goal of understanding is to reduce our knowledge; or rather, to reduce our habitual sedimentations and programmed responses to the world. It is not something we hold on to, but a clearing away and a freeing up.

For example, I can come to the world conditioned by a good number of anti-Islamic attitudes, conditioned by society. I can then approach scholarly research which points out a number of ways in which I am just wrong about the Islamicate world. What have I learned? Well, there have been facts involved, and it can be helpful to keep them on hand as tools for various purposes, not least of which is helping other people come to the same point. But what I have really gained is a removal of old habits and a new openness to people and society. Even if I forget everything I read, I keep this new freedom unless old habits find ways of re-asserting themselves.

So when I approach philosophy from an historical angle, I should sometimes remember the arguments; they are essential for publishing and teaching, and therefore securing a job. But the mere memory of ideas is not necessarily what I am after. Of what use is mere accumulation of knowledge, other than as a mere pastime? I want to free my thinking, to see how I have become blind to my own presuppositions, and to how I already hedge in the possibilities of the world.

Now, one might say that there certainly seem to be times at which we want to have knowledge, and we mean by that that we are actually building up facts about the world. Granted. To this end, I distinguish two types of knowledge. One the knowledge of means to a given end, and in this case we want positive knowledge of how to go about achieving our end. But how do we pick an end in the first place? How do we come at the world in general, aside for using it for our own purposes? It is in situations like these where I would suggest that a negative epistemology might be in order, at least as an interesting thought experiment.

Common Sense and Explainability

We should be skeptical of a belief given by common presuppositions in the case that they can be explained by some reason other than their veracity. If we can explain how a habit forms (say, the belief in external objects, that historical events are actual, or within a given religious context that certain dispositions are sinful and that we have an innate conscience) and give an adequate account of how it comes to be, why do we need to assume that it also gives us a direct window on reality? Belief in external objects comes about in early stages of development as we learn to deal with the bloomin' buzz and confusion around us, to organize it so that we can make sense of it. It it a very practical habit to believe that our blankie is still existent when it is put behind the pillow, even though we cannot see it.

Reality is such that the belief is practical. But this does not mean that reality is as the belief holds. I see a green leaf; the leaf itself is not green (at least while I'm taking off my idealist hat for a moment and speaking from the perspective of the realist), but is a physical object that reflects the light of a given wavelength such that it hits my eye, where due to a complex interaction of rods and cones and processing in the LGN followed by assimilation in the visual cortex I experience the qualitative experience of green on a leaf shape. The belief that the leaf is green is not caused by the leaf's actually being green, though the reality is such to produce that belief, produce it regularly, and make it a helpful belief for navigating the world. Similarly, belief in external objects can be caused by some feature of the world that is not the actual existence of external objects.

But if this is the case, why believe that there are actually external objects? I have explained why there is a wide-spread habit pertaining to them (and there is the experimental data to further substantiate my claims), and there does not appear to me at this point to be anything left unexplained. So why do we assume some mystical sense which gives us real knowledge of the way things are? There is no facet of our experience otherwise unexplained which needs such a faculty. Therefore, positing such a faculty is arbitrary, merely a means of allowing us to hold to the same things we have always held instead of actually trying to think through them and explain them. There is as little reason to assume that faculties of this sort exist, as that a misargued mathematical theorem gives us probable mathematical knowledge. But if such a belief only arises from practical engagement in the world, then it is hard to see without further argument how it could even possibly have metaphysical value unless as merely a different dimension of the same world.

There is a positive side to this, though. While it seems utterly arbitrary to multiply entities beyond what is needed for explanation (not that the simplest theory must be true, but that whatever is posited must play some explanatory role not otherwise accounted for in order to have any meaning), if we avoid doing such, then typical skeptical arguments melt away. Take Hume, for instance: Hume doubts causation, as to whether it is anything more than constant conjunction, but then returns to billiards where natural impulses make him believe in causation again. On my view (which likely is a repetition of the work of others who have explored this much more deeply), Hume isn't merely caused by natural impulses to believe in causation and so engage in self-deception. The language of causation is rooted in empirical life as a way of organizing it. Talk of one billiard ball causing another to move is perfectly legitimate; when we are talking about causation in billiards, we are not referring to features such as necessity, or universality, or quantum mechanics. We are explaining that aspect of our experience which involves the balls hitting each other regularly, enabling us to play the game, without thought of what might be causing this; there is continuity in practical discussions of causation even as philosophy and science radically change our understanding of it. To self-reflectively talk about causation is to enter into another context, and in this context causation as a general principle may be doubted, and may even be meaningless, but this self-reflection is not a feature of most everyday accounts of causation. This philosophical context is not illegitimate, but its concerns are not the concerns of the billiard player, and its accounts of causation get at something else. Now, for the philosophical billiard player, these two accounts may be entangled, or one may take priority; it depends on the specific context and the specific person, but there is nothing that says that different language games are hermetically sealed from each other.

Let us take Descartes as well. Descartes postulates an evil genius which could be messing with his mind. On my view, this is irrelevant. Concepts are taken from experience and explain experience. If that experience is of an evil genius messing with us, whether we know it or not, then these concepts explain that experience of human-nature-being-messed-with. They are concepts forged from inconsistent memories or other tricks which are thrown our way, but this does not make them false; they merely describe a rockier terrain than one in which we would have perfect memories and veridical habits. Similarly, if we were in the Matrix, our concepts would describe the world of the Matrix, again whether we would realize we were in it or not. It would be the world of our experience, and thus what concepts would arise from and refer to.

I do not mean by our "experience" merely the world of sense-data, but absolutely anything experienced. Consciousness, imagination, and our conceptual life seem to be legitimate realms of experience as well. If there is some Agent Intellect beaming intelligibles into our minds, then this is a part of our experience. The worlds of the poet are just as much experienced, even in the wildest cases. Skepticism isn't about strictly rationing our intellectual diet; it is about clearing away sedimentations and ossifications which obstruct living.

Is Skepticism Self-Defeating?

I was writing this as a comment on an earlier post, but I keep thinking of more stuff to say, so I think that I'll just make another post of it. The charge is this: skepticism is self-defeating. It asserts something, namely that nothing is to be asserted. I'm not a big fan of these types of "self-defeating" arguments, and I figured that I should lay out my reasoning. Of course, if anyone understands the reasoning, one will realize that all that I am about to say should not be held to, that one should look beyond the reasonings, but a first step must be taken.

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Language is practical. One uses it; it's not setting forward fixed propositional truth. This at least is the standpoint I want to explore here for the moment. It's hardly a critique of a statement to say that it falls apart in saying that language falls apart. Anyone who took the statement to be a set of propositions which I was strictly asserting would have gotten it wrong. Look at the moon, not the finger; or if you prefer, use the ladder then kick it away.

One can look at the meaning of such an argument in two ways. First, one can take the straightforward meaning. One will have missed the point then, since one will think it perfectly consistent, but it is helpful in leading one to a given state. The practical function of leading someone to a non-discursive state is the point, since I can't very well put that state down on paper or computer screen itself.

Alternatively, one can realize the inconsistencies, but then the meaning is in the performance. Treat it as a poem, if you prefer; there seems to be nothing wrong with putting down in performance and poetry what cannot be said in prose.

The criticism (and the related claim that from a contradiction everything follows) only operates on one level of language. But this is a fairly high level, and there is something going on underneath. Language affects us and moves us even before we have it completely rationally synthesized. Take the poem "Jabberwocky", for example. If I have to look at it in terms of referents and such, it is pure nonsense. The terms just have no meaning. But yet, one does have a vague sense of what goes on in the poem, regardless. Likewise, a contradictory statement might be nonsense when analytically interpreted, but that's not the only level on which that statement was functioning.

Why should we say that such statements have meaning? Because some people say they do. If Bob sees only that x is meaningful, but cannot see any meaning in not-x, while Alice claims to grasp the meaning of not-x, it would seem that Alice has the advantage. Bob's lack of imagination or overly-focused view of the world could just as much explain why he cannot get what not-x is getting at as not-x being meaningless. Not being able to conceive something (especially when someone else can conceive of it) doesn't amount to much in argument.

If anyone has been following this post, they will realize that what I am saying is primarily to be used, not judged right or wrong (although one can judge the post efficacious or not, and can judge whether the destination is worth arriving at). Of course it's all nonsense if one looks at it purely analytically; so find other ways of looking at it.

But let's take the worst-case scenario: the above just doesn't work (and I stress its working and not its veracity) and it all is just inconsistent without any directly redeeming value. Well, what is one to do? Pick up just another other system that's lying around to get out of the problem? But this seems to be at least as bad; leaps of faith are such because they are blind leaps, and blind leaps land you in chasms more often than not. If I can't escape from being embedded in some conceptual system, being human and thrown into the world as it is, this doesn't mean that I must therefore give my allegiance to some conceptual system. I can simultaneously recognize that no conceptual system is grounded, perhaps even that no conceptual system is completely coherent, while also recognizing that I must be implicated in one and can never simply jump out and either renounce all views or take a God's eye view. Will this pull me in two directions, and so be "inconsistent"? Sure, but it seems that a continuing movement between imperfect systems is better than giving up and artificially ironing out a problem of human living and dedicating myself to one of them.

Skepticism and the Will

I propose that there are two orders of our being which run contrary to each other. The first is the order of knowledge, in which the negative statement has priority and the affirmative must be argued for. Thus, skepticism doesn't need an argument; all other views do. However, this is actually freeing, since in the second order of being, that of willing, the affirmative has priority and prohibitions must be argued for. Relative traditions give determination to the will instead of absolute reason.

Why does skepticism hold sway in matters of reason? It is because if there is no connection between pieces of discourse, there is no connection. If we think that there is a connection and there is not, we are mistaken; we are not half right, or even necessarily on the right track. If I have a proof for a mathematical theorem, and the proof has a single detail wrong, I have proven absolutely nothing; I haven't given a proof that the theorem is 99% likely. If a single case falsifies a scientific theory, the theory is wrong.

Now, I might be able to pick up the pieces of the old proof or the old theoryand get something out of them, but this points to something else that they were telling us all along. The broken scientific theory still told us about the data we were experiencing, even if not about the world in general. Or perhaps we wish to talk about the historically formed concept given by science which has structured our world, and this was actually part of our reality apart from any inferences. But in these cases, I have presented the immediate, non-inferred connection between what I was doing in science and what I was experiencing in the world, and so I have given a proper connection for a qualified affirmative proposition.

Common sense seems to me to be the worst possible means of ascertaining the truth about the world. The reason is this: common sense is simply the habit of a group of people. Habits don't tell us that they represent reality accurately, merely that they are some way of working within reality. The habit of common sense tells us on a pragmatic level that what the community does works, and so the structure of reality must be such that what the community does works. However, where is the connection between the habitual belief that individual and separable things in the external world exist, which is a pragmatic tool for navigating the world, and the metaphysical fact that such individual and separable things exist externally? How does the first, the way we get understanding, connect at all to the common sense belief to provide any grounds? How does common sense provide any ground whatsoever for the belief that we are not in the Matrix or deluded by an evil genius? Of course if we were deluded, we would not instantly recognize that we were deluded, so what does our lack of recognition actually tell us about the world?

Without some sort of connection, without showing some way in which we legitimately get information for any specific idea, and without introducing some "just so" story to beg the question, what is left? Without some connection, there is no reason inclining us one way or the other. Without reason, all views are epistemologically equivalent; common sense belief in metaphysically individual entities, without some proper grounding beyond "we just intuit them", is equivalent to talk of aliens on the Hale-Bopp comet coming to take us away.

So if some connection must be established to give any sort of rational justification to an idea, and any flaws in this connection make it a different sort of connection, the skeptic is automatically justified in pursuing her project. The connection needs to be made, and the skeptic merely points out that it has not been made and so may very well be worthless. It may very well not be, also; we have no way of telling yet.

But what is the positive side of this? The positive side is that the Good is self-diffusive, that goodness is the one thing that needs no reason. There doesn't need to be a reason to follow our desires or what we find good (desirable, aesthetic, holy) in our culture, but rather the reason must be supplied as to what not to do. Reason can prohibit, but the prohibition must be established.

For example, it is not the homosexuals that should have to argue for their unions, as this needs no argument or rational support, but rather those opposed. And if we are confronted by the Matrix scenario, the correct response is not the deny the premise (how would we even possibly do that?) but rather to say, "So what? My acting is just as real in a simulation as in a so-called 'real world'". And while I may have no theoretical justification for believing in the existence of individual middle-sized objects such as chairs and trees, there is nothing stopping me from living as if there were.

But this leads to the problem that our willing would seem undetermined. This would seem to be the argument of some against skepticism: the skeptic can't live daily life, because she needs to determine her actions in some way and can never really give reasons for doing so. Therefore, no one really is a skeptic on an existential level. But the skeptic doesn't need to give rational arguments for everything she does; her actions can be non-rational as long as there is some other method of determining them.

This would seem to be where culture and tradition comes in. Let me compare the situation to that of languages, which are one of the forms of culture: I can speak in English, formulate my thoughts and poetry in it, look to the great masters of the language such as Shakespeare and Chaucer, and enjoy the heritage and what I can do with it. English determines my speech in a way that lets me actually talk. But there is nothing rationally determinate about English (indeed, there isn't much rational about the language at all!). And there is nothing saying that English is overall a superior language to, say, Arabic. I have something given to me to determine my will in matters of communication, even though I have no arguments for how to speak in general.

I can criticize my culture, just as I can point out some particularly annoying inconsistencies in typical English which spoil its communicative abilities. The point is not that nothing is prohibited; it is that there must be a sound argument for the prohibition before anything is legitimately prohibited.

Now, the problem is that traditions don't see themselves as quite so relative as languages. They make demands and see themselves as being ultimate. And taking any tradition to determine one's acting will most likely involve illegitimate prohibitions as well. But these prohibitions can be seen to have some purpose, just as the artist must determine her work in some fashion to get anything of beauty, even if other determinations (and even opposite ones) were equally possible. Concerning the ultimacy which traditions claim, though, I really don't have much sympathy. If it can't be demonstrated, then there is no reason to believe it, other some some fideism on par with chasing after leprechauns.