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.

Against Qualms Concerning Inconsistency

Continuing from the last post, I think that I've pinpointed a little bit more clearly what is going on when I reject claims of the self-defeating nature of certain views. Now, when one claims that someone is being inconsistent, they can refer to the language as being inconsistent, the concepts as being inconsistent, or a claim that the world is inconsistent. Further, the assumption seems to be that these three claims are more or less equivalent. But I disagree, and the inconsistencies I raise do not seem to be harmful ones.

Inconsistency in language, if by itself, doesn't seem pernicious. Inconsistent statements have some sort of meaning, as evidenced by the fact that people sometimes find them to be the most useful way of conveying a message. We can argue about their efficacy, but that they are meaningful is clear (they are meaningful to someone, at least; chances are, if you don't get them, it's your problem and not the other person's). And it would seem that concepts would work the same way, when considered independently of language.

The problem comes in when inconsistency in language or concepts would imply such an inconsistency in the world, which is nonsense. But why assume that an inconsistency in language implies that one claims a similar inconsistency in the world? There is an assumption of an isomorphism between world, language, and concepts. All three can be broken up into pieces which interrelate, whatever these pieces may be (perhaps form, matter, and esse, for example, where each of these can stand for a word, a concept, and an external reality). The interrelations in the world mirror those in language and concepts, and language and concepts can be made more or less precise enough to accurately mirror the world.

If there is such an isomorphism, then contradictions in language and concepts do seem to be problematic. But why assume the isomorphism in the first place? This is an assumption, and there seems to be no reason why it shouldn't be examined as well, especially when it is advanced as a weapon in some apologist's arsenal. Why can't we say that the world is a seamless whole, which nevertheless lends itself to being talked about and thought about in some way? Language and concepts are discursive, and reality is not (in this thought experiment), but that doesn't mean that language and concepts are worthless or meaningless. The point of them is a certain sort of interaction with reality, of which ultimately they are a part as well (and even here, I must use "part" language, which isn't accurate, but it may be a useful approximation for those with eyes to see). Contradictions in language then do not entail contradictions in reality. Assuming that contradictions in language do not entail anything whatsoever (and I see no reason to assume without argument that language works like a formal logical system), then why not allow contradictions?

Someone might say at this point, that it is only confused language which breaks the law of contradiction; phrases in such language might mean something, but the whole does not. Logic is the judge of language, whether language follows its laws or not. But why should we assume that? Logic is basically set theory, and works for those relationships capable of being modeled on sets. It is not clear to me that all philosophical relationships must be so clear and set-like; why assume that anything philosophical must therefore be able to be made clear, precise, and analytical?

And the next argument: "but the negation of the law of contradiction entails the law of contradiction; therefore it must be true", is pure sophistry. Not only does it not seem to be "true" anymore once one has negated it, but also, I am saying that language goes beyond precise boundaries. To revert to an argument that "the law of contradiction is either true or false" is already to miss the linguistic and ontological move I am making. In another way, the argument for the law of non-contradiction it is to assume the law of the excluded middle, as well as predicates for which both apply. I deny the law of the excluded middle too, or at least its applicability to any and all meaningful phrases.

Finally: "But with what you are saying, you can say anything and get away with it. This is just a ploy to avoid any criticism." No, it is a recognition that simply pointing out formal flaws has never been good philosophy. Look at the substance; to the reality itself! Logic is the handmaiden of true thinking, and not vice versa. We are engaged in far too difficult a program here to simply sort out arguments and thought based on cosmetic issues.

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.

javascript:void(0)

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.

The Point of Philosophy?

What is the point of doing philosophy? I've been reading Descartes' Rules for the Direction of the Mind, and he seems to suggest that one sits down and figures out the basics of how we go about thinking. Once this is done, and it should be more or less simple (easy and simple matters are what knowledge consists of, not difficult, obscure, and uncertain ones), one goes off and starts the real learning.

On the one hand, it does seem that there is something unfruitful about spending ones time only doing philosophy. One keeps thinking about thinking, about the truth, about the good, etc., without really engaging it in any particular fashion. Sure, the philosophizing is important, so that we don't go gallivanting off in any ol' direction. And we need to think about the core issues of the different fields to keep them on track and from becoming ossified. But sometimes, I at least tire of merely talking about talking. I want some more tangible field of study. I am doing that to an extent with History (at least history of thought), and I am thinking more and more about doing further work in Islamic Studies. Sometimes, when I am really tired of the field and the books, I'll start thinking about doing something drastic like getting a Psychology degree and doing clinical work (I have enough mental problems that I'm already engaged first-hand in the field, right?). But the point is, it seems good for one to have some more empirical field in which the real work gets done, the work that actually embeds one in the world and gives one some meaning (whether that's a career change, a different focus in one's academic path, or merely extracurricular activities). Do philosophy, then contribute to medicine, or law, or social work, or (gasp!) business. If nothing else, sitting around talking Marxism isn't going to change the world's business practices; more philosophers becoming business people has no worse a shot of working.

On the other hand, the picture is more complicated than Descartes thought. First, the more we've been thinking about basic issues of knowledge and cognition, the murkier they appear. It no longer is plausible that we can simply sit down and work out the issues at one point and be reasonably right. So we need to continue to rethink the issues, and this seems to require at least some people who are really sitting down and devoting themselves to the task full time. There don't seem to be any clearly intuited simples for us anymore, and the Cartesian method requires these simple and perspicacious, independent absolutes which one takes apart and puts together like legos, such that one can track one's process of knowing.

Second, there is far greater specialization going on now than in Descartes' time. Even within a field as neatly defined as mathematics, there just aren't any mathematicians who can claim expertise in every subfield of math. A fortiori, there isn't too much place for someone wishing to learn deeply across discipline. Descartes thought that one can learn about all different fields by oneself. Due to this, he argues that theoretical sciences are fundamentally unlike practical arts: in art, one must focus on a specialty to be any good, but in science, one thinks better and more clearly the more one learns across sciences, since the subject matters come together. All of them rely on the same basic processes of thinking. And he seems right; being able to think across disciplines does seem to be helpful for understanding the individual ones. But there's too much to learn in any given discipline now to be competent in any given one while chasing others. And one can throw off the previous scholastic shackles only if one (a) is independently wealthy and not needing to find an employer or tenure, and (b) is willing to give up all of the richness of the past as well as its errors.

So, to pursue a career purely in philosophy feels sterile and confining, cutting one off from much purpose and meaning in life. But one can't solve the issues in philosophy once and for all to go work in the other disciplines, and the issues are hardly trivial. There are important ethical and political reasons for why we keep going back to them, to rethink them. There are also concerns intrinsic to the other disciplines: physics needs to have a good account of how to get good physics in order to actually get good physics consistently. So how does one balance these concerns, given that one has to get a job somewhere to give one the time to work on the issues?

Suarez, Damascius, and Ineffability

Time for philosopher mash-up. I've been thinking about the problem of ineffability: how does it make sense to say that you can't say something about something? After all, you seem to have just said something about it: that you can't say anything. I will first look at 16th-17th century scholastic Suarez, who is dealing with (what seems to me to be) a similar problem with potential essences which are "omnino nihil", nothing whatsoever. Next, I will look at Damascius, the 5th-6th century Neoplatonist, who makes use of Skeptical thought to show how statements concerning the One's ineffability and transcendence are statements about language, not about the One.

For Suarez, we can talk about the essences, the being, of things around us. There are trees and cats and humans. Each individual being has an essence, and is actual: this tree is right here and now existing, and this existence is merely the actuality of its essence. It is not as though there is some being to the tree which then needs to be brought into existence; any being to the tree whatsoever is its existence. Existence is merely actuality, and not an addition to an essence.

We can also talk about a potential essence of trees, not yet made actual. But a problem arises: if there is any reality to the essence at all, it is actual. But if it is actual, it is not merely potential; potentiality by definition means that something is not actual. So a potential essence is nothing in any way. But how then do we talk about it?

Suarez says that we talk about it because of "extrinsic denomination", that is, we reference it purely through other things. A couple examples are in order. When I predicate a universal of things, I am using this same process of extrinsic denomination. I can talk about this human and that human, and I mean the same thing in both cases, and so "human" must have some generality about it. But general things don't really exist; only individual things do. There is Alice and Bob, but I don't encounter "humanness" except as the individuals. Instead, I meet Alice, and she causes a concept in my head. I can work with this concept and pick out some formal feature which have some unity to them. I'll call this her humanity. Next, I meet Bob, and do the same thing. Lo and behold, when I compare these formal features, I realize that the two individuals have caused the same concept in my mind, and so I can predicate it of both of them. So I call them both "human", where "human" is some universal concept. Technically speaking, though, "human" is a universal in my mind while they are individuals in reality, so I only call them this universal because of the similar effect the individual humans caused in me. So I call them "human" by extrinsic denomination: not something which they are simply in themselves in reality, but by something else which has some foundation in them.

Similarly with potential essences, we talk about them by extrinsic denomination by not actually talking about them, but talking about God's power to produce them. In effect (and I may be going beyond Suarez here, but this is how I make sense of what he is saying), I pick something, I have something in mind in my discourse, and I ask, "Is this potential?" But I'm not really talking about the essence of the thing itself: what I am asking about is God's power and what it can do. I think that the case can be generalized to other fields as well; Suarez thought that species are eternal, so God's power is the only thing responsible for them, but we think of species in an historical light. So it doesn't seem to me to be contrary to Suarez' project to say that we speak of, say, the essence of dinosaurs not insofar as they have being (there are no actual dinosaurs), but by extrinsic denomination from what is actual (fossils, shared biological laws with critters today, etc.). Without these sources of actuality, there would be nothing to say about dinosaurs. So talking about potential (or non-existent) essences is really a shorthand way of talking about actual essences.

What I want to take from that is this: there can be a grammatical referent without an ontological one. I talk of potential essences, but the potential essence is nothing at all. But it still may make the most sense the frame the discussion in terms of potential essences, as the lack of ontological significance does not mean that I must rephrase all of my sentences accordingly. There is a proper mechanism by which I can attribute "potential essence" to things which actually are, so my assertion of truths about a potential essence don't entail its existence in any way.

Next, Damascius. I know less about him (though I probably need to go back and brush up on the details of Suarez' account too), but there is one idea of his which I found quite interesting. In the Neoplatonic tradition, there are various realms of reality (or perhaps ways of looking at the world; I can never quite tell). There is material reality, which is too multiple to be intelligible. There is ensouled reality, which is outside of space and which provides some unity and movement, as well as discursive thought. There is noetic reality, which is also outside of time and which is quite unified, with everything reflected in everything else. But even that has some division, something which had to come together, and so there must be something else grounding it, something which has absolutely no division to be grounded, and thus is beyond thought.

This is the One, so called not because "One" applies to it so much as it is the cause of unity for everything else. But this creates a problem: if the One is so removed from division, how is it the cause of everything else? It would seem to get mixed up in multiplicity if it were tarnished by the rest of the world. This was one of the most significant problems in Neoplatonism. Damascius takes an extreme view and distances the One from everything else, such that the One isn't even really the cause of everything else.

I'll leave aside the issues of what exactly the One "is" for Damascius. What is important is that, without any causal relation to the world, we seem to have no way of talking about the One. So all we can say is that we can't talk about the One. But even that is too much. So Damascius interprets this as a claim about language itself. Statements about the One's ineffability are statements about the paucity of language. Language wants to reach beyond itself, but cannot. This is a "peritrope" of language, in Skeptical terminology and Damascius' account: language turns around and refutes itself, and this internal problem within language is what we are referring to.

Putting this all together: By Suarez, we can talk about things without necessarily commenting on their ontological status through extrinsic denomination. By Damascius, statements about the ineffability of the One are statements about the peritrope of language. So perhaps we can say that, in the statement such as "the One/God/Reality/Absolute is ineffable" is an extrinsic denomination taken from the problematic character of language itself.

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.

Cosmological Argument from Completeness

According to one of the forms of the cosmological argument (given by Aquinas and Avicenna), God exists because there must be some necessary existent. Everything we encounter is contingent, merely possible when considered in and of itself and only necessitated through another. But if it is necessitated through another, then there must be something necessary in itself which grounds everything else. It seems to me that this argument fails: first, because it does not have any force when considered in a concrete case, and second, because the nature of any given existent in question is unclear. I think that a different version of argument can be made out of the latter point, however.

So Jill is a human being, and as such is contingent. She did not have to exist; something else made her exist. This something else in the present case would be her parents. Now, the argument could be taken in two different directions. One would argue that there cannot be an infinite regress of causes in time. So her parents had parents, and her grandparents had parents, and so on, but this had to begin at some point. It is not exactly clear, though, why there absolutely cannot be an infinite regress here, and even many of the defenders of the cosmological argument have had no problem with such an infinite regress in time: Aquinas and Scotus thought such a regress possible though not actually true, and Avicenna thought it actually true. If nothing else, one is faced with the problem of a first moment: any given moment of time has the structure that it has something preceding it, and something following it. But a first moment would have nothing before it. It seems that such a concept of a first moment then would be at least as difficult to understand as an infinite regress of times.

What infinite regress does the argument disallow, then? An infinite regress of necessitation, for Avicenna, and similarly (perhaps identically), an infinite regress of actualization for Aquinas. That is to say, there are multiple causes working at the same time and not merely stretched out with the cause one moment and the effect in the next. This sort of causation would be logical or metaphysical. But what is this in our concrete example? Why say that there is anything to Jill's existence beyond what her parents gave to her? Once we have explained the physical act of generation, we have everything we need. Or perhaps we could allow in other causes at the same level, but nothing on a fundamentally different level. Any talk of possibility and contingency beyond this is over-abstraction which does not explain actual, concrete existents and so does not command any assent as to a first, necessary Existent whose being is simply is existence.

Second, the argument seems to assume that Jill is an existent. But this would seem to assume that she is an individual, such that we can put her together with other individuals and count each up. Jill and Susan together in a room would then make two individuals. But for this to be the case, there must be a clear-cut logical (not merely practical!) distinction for each individual. There must be an exact criterion of life and death, and of spatio-temporal location. But it would seem that one could pull a sorites paradox for any suggested definition. I can't see any reason for saying that their individualities are anything beyond practical constructions on our part for dealing with a confusing world. Since we start off in life making practical distinctions and only afterward make these practical distinctions precise, the onus is on my opponent to argue for why there are metaphysically as opposed to practically distinct individuals: how do we cross the gap from what is merely practical? But without metaphysical individuals, what is there around to be a merely possible existent? If anything, since the existent (and therefore its possibility) is grounded in our construction of it, the "cosmological" argument would prove the necessity of our stipulation (or better: what for practical purposes could be considered our stipulation, since we ourselves are are stipulating are constructions, as is any talk of constructions. Just as talk of mid-sized objects makes sense whether or not we think they exist metaphysically, it would seem that all this is practically meaningful even without a firm metaphysical foundation).

But there seems to be something we can take from the latter point. There is some reason why we construct "Jill" and "Susan", as well as "this tree" and "that stone". These may not be individuals we can consider on their own, such that they are real albeit contingent existents, but there must be some particularity which allows us to construct these forms.

"Particularity" is not the same as "individuality" in the way I am using it (perhaps my usage is arbitrary; all I am concerned with is that some distinction is made). If Jill is an individual and Susan is also an individual, than there are two defined and delimited individuals. If Jill and Susan each have particularity, though, then we cannot say how many individuals there are, or even if the question makes sense. Particularity undergirds any other statement of quantity, quality, construction, or the like. There is not a "this something" involved; there is merely the "this".

"Jill" and "Susan" then refer to particulars, but the construction makes them out to be individuals: something defined, delimited, and countable. We need this delimitation to think about them, we need some completeness. And here is the problem: nothing exists merely as incomplete. Such a thing would be only partially actual, but every actuality is actually actual. We may speak of, say, an incomplete paper. But what is already down is completely actual; it is the mismatch between our expectations and what is there that introduces the incompleteness, not anything in the bits and bytes or ink and paper themselves. (I think this point needs to be qualified, but I'll perhaps do that in a later post after we get some of the basics down here.)

But while our construction has this foisted completeness or incompleteness, the actuality itself is on the one hand incomplete, and on the other hand complete. Insofar as I mark off simply this little section of reality, it is incomplete. Physically, this computer screen is affected by gravitational forces from the farthest quasars and cannot be completely delimited as an individual without reference to them. They are not something external, but part of the very makeup of this screen itself, however minutely. I currently am constituted by the actual contents of my perception and consciousness: sight is nothing without a seen and intellect is nothing without an intellected, so any reference to me as a separate individual which sees without what it sees, points to something incomplete. This incompleteness, though, is an incompleteness precisely because it is impossible. The incomplete being is lacking something which it logically needs: not as something to bring it into existence or that previously brought it into existence (as with the version of the cosmological argument which I reject), but as what constitutes it here and now. It is the internal constitution of the being which needs explanation, not external factors or its existence in general.

So the fact that we can point to particularities means that we can pick out these incomplete beings. But the notion of an incomplete being is incoherent without its completion. So there must be complete being, some unity of being. I am inclined to say that this includes at least everything involved in any given causal system, but that would be another argument. There may even be levels of different completions, or perhaps different degrees of incompleteness and unity, which are again separate issues.

The incomplete beings would be particular expressions of complete being, since all of them are nexuses of complete being in a way; my computer screen (or at least its completion which is demanded by the incomplete being which I am regarding) is being regarded in one way, and distant quasars are this being regarded in another way, perhaps under a complex coordinate change. Perhaps one could take an analogy: the axioms and rules of inference of a mathematical system already have determined the entire rest of the system, such that they logically entail as their completion all of the system's theorems, while each theorem is the complete system regarded in a different way, or at least complete portions of the system regarded differently (though I question whether most of reality can be made precisely definite at all without violence). But the computer simply regarded in itself is not the complete being. The computer in itself is in fact merely an illusion, since we would take what is really incomplete (and so therefore unthinkable as such) and regard it as complete, just as the axioms regarded in themselves without any entailments have not been understood but have merely formed some basic intelligible impression (although again, the computer may be more purely illusion since it would seem to lack the definiteness of the axioms).

The presence of incomplete beings then logically entails complete being, and the incomplete beings are expressions of the complete being, illusory when considered simply in themselves and theophanies when considered in their completion. What this cosmological argument arrives at is perhaps different from "that which we call God", but it avoids hierarchical notions of causation which do not appear to have any concrete correlate.

This is my attempt to formulate an argument from the unity of being, as found in the Neoplatonists, the school of Wahdat al-Wujud in Islam, in Vedanta (expecially Advaita Vedanta), or in some schools of Buddhism; the analogy from mathematical systems in fact comes from Plotinus. It is not, then, an argument "for God" in the sense of some Creator completely distinct from creation.

Is the complete being itself delimited? The false completion of incomplete beings does involve delimitation, because there are other beings separated out from them. A complete being which does not have anything else, complete or incomplete, over and against it would not seem to have this delimitation. So it is not the degree of delimitation itself which makes something complete, but rather delimitation may already be a sign that something is incomplete since what is truly complete does not need to be marked off.

Is Faith Oppressive?

I will get back to the last installment of my expert knowledge series soon, once I figure out what I'm actually going to write for it - I had planned what is there already, and I want to see where it all leads as much as anyone else (assuming that others are interested). But first, a brief tangent that I was thinking about: is faith in a given revelation oppressive?

Now, of course, such a question cannot be answered for all cases of faith, nor perhaps can a definitive answer be given in any case. I merely want to raise some issues. It seems to me that Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism (and I've seen similar Buddhist statements) make a virtue out of faith and a vice out of doubt. One should believe authority by default; the Bible says it, the church says it, the Qur'an, the Vedas, enlightened beings, etc., and so you ought to believe what you have been told. A skeptical, critical attitude has often been regarded as not simply a misfortune keeping one from the truth (perhaps you merely have a bad luck to not be able to rationally accept an important belief, even though you have virtuous mental habits), but something evil in itself: it is a vice, and it is blameworthy.

Two things have made me think about the oppressive character of this attitude. First, I went to a conference on a text by the medieval Jewish thinker Judah Ha-Levi. The text was about a king who was searching for the right way to lead his country, and who asked a philosopher, a Christian, and Muslim, and a Jew about what he should do. The text went beyond typical religious polemics and actually gave a thoughtful response and some interesting empirical investigations into what should mark a true religion. One can still quibble with the naive trust of scriptures given, but overall Ha-Levi gave a better response than I've seen from anyone else in the Middle Ages, and probably a better response than I've seen in most contemporary apologetics. Is part of this due to the fact that the Jews were marginalized, and had to actually work through their beliefs, while Christians and Muslims have been able to mandate belief from a position of power? How could any believer hold to the obviousness of her faith without at least a history of power backing it up? Even conservative members who feel themselves under attack from the surrounding culture can only feel under attack because they used to hold the more dominant view.

Second, my master's thesis was on concerns about certain interpretations of Zen Buddhism. Some of these concerns were about the social and ethical ramifications of Zen belief: one throws away rational critique (supposedly) and therefore loses the ability to analyze one's society. This lack of critique has led to Zen involvement in WWII, and sexual abuses by roshis in American Zen centers (to put it simply; of course, there are ways in which Zen can save itself, I think). But (to make a claim which I don't have space here to elaborate), it did not seem like the problematic Zen attitudes were any different from expressions of faith in, say, an Abrahamic tradition, in which one puts some authority beyond rational critique in order to have peace (whether internal or communal). But this has led to social problems whenever it has occurred: groups become marginalized and oppressed, because the the group members are considered malformed and cannot accept the revelation that all truly virtuous people accept.

The Jews should obviously accept the New Testament because they already have the prophecies concerning Christ; the Buddhists are obviously wrong because their practices don't have the sattvic characteristics of the Vedantins; the Qur'an is obviously the work of God and anyone who says otherwise is obscuring her original nature as a Muslim; polytheists are obviously wrong because, well, they're just plain stupid, because no one has ever sat down to think through the pagan worldview. And because of this obviousness, we are justified in putting the authority beyond criticism and expecting others to do the same. For anyone who says otherwise, that this is not how the virtue of faith has worked, point me to a single work of apologetics that does not grant a special status to a view which cannot rationally support itself and that deals honestly and faithfully with other positions. Heck, simply get me one that can take simply the general skeptic's position seriously.

Now, of course these aren't the only expressions of these traditions, and not everything is wrong with some sort of faith (although in my more cynical moments I do tend to think that all acts of religious faith whatsoever are problematic in this way). I mean, I do consider it worthwhile to dedicate my life to studying religious thought, after all! But there does seem to be some problem here, and I hear enough assertions by various believers to this effect (that they know best and everyone who disagrees simply doesn't see things appropriately) that something needs to be done. We live in an age of multiple, competing authorities. We can't just wish them away, and each one calls all of the others into question. We now have a better vantage point to see how oppressed groups have been treated in the past, and we have an ethical imperative to act conscientiously.

(To point out a couple of problems with the above broad sweeps, in interest of fairness: early Christianity does seem to have the emphasis on faith even without much power, and one can see a positive role for skepticism in C. S. Lewis' That Hideous Strength. And some Islamic views concerning our original nature as Muslims are content with any affirmation of the unity of the source of being. But I think that the problems I've raised are real enough, even if the narrative is incomplete.)

Expert Knowledge - Part 4 of 4

In the previous posts, I have argued that (1) knowledge is built on expert communities, (2) these communities legitimately structure knowledge claims in a hierarchy, and (3) they can by and large avoid issues of oppression insofar as they stick to their own internal goals without adding in extraneous concerns. Whether I have argued these well is a separate issue, and I am sure that they need (and probably have received elsewhere) much more fleshing out. But in any case, I want to see what happens with religious expert communities. I will first start with the relation of communities to each other, in a couple brief senses; it really is going to be two posts in one, but I want to finish this series and I've already labeled it as as 4 post series. I may (highly) edit this and add in some citations to risk sending to a conference at some point, so please, please, PLEASE leave a philosophical criticism or two on these entries to help improve the mess if you have the time. Or let me know if this has all been said before by some continental guy I haven't read (which would be any of them) and who has said it better.

Novices vs. Ousiders

There is a difference between two different sorts of non-knowers. The first group is that of the novices, who belong to a given expert community for the time being and so are responsible to that community. If one starts asking medical questions, one is beholden to the medical experts if one actually wants to understand medicine; if one does not, one is not really asking medical questions. On the other hand, there are outsiders. If someone does not want to learn about dead white men, then those communities who specialize in dead white male culture (should) have no control over them. So one can be in a community without being considered a knower. A problem here is that outsiders may have nowhere else to go, but that is another (albeit important and relevant) issue.

Essence vs. Existence

There is also a difference between knowing about a particular topic, and knowing how it fits with other topics. A physicist may know physics thoroughly, but this does not mean that her opinion concerning the relation of physics to other sciences (or worse, to politics or religion) has any weight, except insofar as it is knowledge of physics. Of course, this is already extremely problematic; even what "physics" is has been determined by different conversations between different and interrelated communities sharing many individuals. One cannot simply delineate "this" community from "that" community in reality. But for practical and general purposes, there seems to be some sort of knowledge in which the physicist participates, being trained and ratified by a given community within which she continues to dialogue, and I can't think of a better shorthand term for this sort of knowledge than "physics".

I will refer to this division as between the essence of a body of knowledge (what it is about) and its existence (that is obtains within the broader context). There can be a community of experts about (put your favorite pseudo-science here), and they can legitimately have some body of knowledge, but there are also the interrelations between this community and other communities to be considered. Every body of knowledge both is something, but also fits within the larger context of humanity in a certain way, and these are separate issues. "Existence" as I am using it here refers only to how a thing exists, since it must already exist in some way as a communal practice if any community discusses it, but it seems for the present to make a handy technical term so I will keep it unless someone objects. Someone can talk about a phoenix, and even state truths about it (a phoenix is a bird, for example), so it must exist in some way, or we would have nothing stable to talk about. We could (in theory) disagree over whether it exists in physical reality (whereupon I could reach out and touch it) or merely in the reality of social construction (or perhaps, a differently constructed social reality than the physical one and less likely to harm me via physical contact).

The essence of the topic is something understood truly only by the given community; math is understood by mathematicians and medicine by medical experts (although again, these are not necessarily clearly delimited and defined essences which can be neatly separated from each other). The existence of the topic, though, is even less clearly delimited. There are wider communities which can discuss such issues: how physics exists is discussed in the wider community of modern science, for example. But poets and philosophers and university boards all have some relation to the different ways in which the physics community interacts within the larger world, and ultimately, so does all of humanity (and beyond, if we were to encounter other beings capable of considering these issues). Essence then is largely decided within communities, while how the essence exists is decided within ever-increasing circumferences. To fully and completely understand how anything exists, we would need all of the approaches available to us.

Members of a community must, then, listen to those outside of the community in this respect in order to understand their own field better. The mathematician does not need to listen to everyone concerning what mathematical theorems are true, but she does need to listen to others in understanding what math is. The poet may be clueless when it comes to physics, but can both heighten our appreciation of the grandeur which physics shows us as well as call into question its unjustified dominance; for this reason, the physicist may need to listen to the poet to understand physics. In the end, knowledge and communities are both internally and externally constituted and any individual (whether a human being or a specific community) is also made up by the other communities.

Religious Expert Communities

So, where does this leave religious communities? First, different religious communities set their own rules on a lot of things according to their own internal life. Muslims get to exegete the Qur'an, not Christians or Hindus. Evangelicals, Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox each get their own communities of understanding their authoritative sources and of understanding. Different religious groups have their own specific experts, and in order to be considered a knower, one must be trained and accepted by these specific experts, as in any other field.

It is one thing to be the spokesperson for a given group; it is another to say that one's given belief really obtains, and this is why I wanted to refer to an essence/existence distinction (which probably makes more sense here with religions than it did with, say, physics). The Christian can argue that, within the Christian community, God's justice needs to have been satiated by Christ's atoning death. But this pulls in notions of justice which are shared by other communities; it is not Christian justice which demands God's act, but some feature of reality which should be accessible to people in general. (In general, any rational argument is such that it should connect together ideas appropriately; other communities may disagree with one's starting position, but if you have a good argument from your own premises, this should be widely recognized or else suspicious). When no one else gets the necessity of atonement, ostensibly argued from concerns beyond those of the Christian community, the Christian community needs to revise its claims. Otherwise, it is stretching beyond its community's own inner life and being either oppressive or foolish, dictating what, say, "justice" is to others without having formed the proper expertise. The Christian community, in this case, can (a) restrict their claims to some specifically Christian form of justice which of course no one else holds by definition (but then, what about original sin?); (b) reject the argument and work within the larger community to come to a better understanding of justice and how it fits with the Atonement (as many contemporary theologians are doing); or (c) revise their arguments so that they actually explain their arguments appropriately to others so that the others can see the internal logic of the Christian position (but then the Christians must also listen to other voices in response).

So the Christian community in this case is making claims beyond itself, as it seems to me that world-wide religions must all do to preserve their claims to heal the human spirit in general. While Christians are the finally arbiters on what Christians actually teach (and not, say, militant atheists or well-meaning religious pluralists), they are not the arbiters on what they say that falls within the scope of humanity at large or within other groups' expertises'. To say otherwise would be like allowing a peculiar sort of Christian math which can trump everyone else's math, perhaps because of some rounding found in the measurements of the bath in Soloman's temple. But this is ridiculous; the community which actually understands math through constant practice and training and in which one can be recognized for knowing math is the arbiter for interpreting Christian mathematical claims, not vice versa. But at the same time, when Christians are confronted by other communities, it is the Christian community which decides how to respond based on its own internal life. It may be oppressive (or foolish) to continue claiming knowledge outside of the community's marked expertise, but there is no single response to having a problem pointed out, as shown in the example above with justice. Religious communities must change based on their own internal principles, as mathematics did in the 18th and 19th centuries when it split into modern math and physics.

Religious Expertise and Laypeople

So this goes some way toward outlining how communities can relate to each other, though it is at best a beginning. But what about the novices in the community of faith? How do they relate to the experts of their faith? Are professors, pastors, and priests more members of a given faith than the common people? That depends on the faith and what it requires for practice; one can practice correctly without complete understanding. The experts in the community decide what is actually the knowledge-base of that community. But, since that community does not have any say outside of its own legitimate principles without becoming oppressive, novices in religious understanding may be the relevant experts in some areas upon which the religion touches. When the experts of the community say that the Bible denies evolution, the microbiologist within that particular church is dependent on those experts for their understanding of the Bible; evolution, however, is also discussed by the scientific and especially biological community, and so she is the expert there. One could also say that married people are better experts on family and procreation than celibate priests, no matter how well the latter have been trained in their own expertises.

So the common people of the religion do lack the sort of knowledge which the experts of their religion have. Further, insofar as religious dialogues are concerned with intersecting expertises, lay people uninvolved with these expertises will be left out. But some issues have broader human concern, and so while many people will have no legitimate opinion about the essence of any of these bodies of expert knowledge, they do have some say on how these bodies of knowledge exist. The working-class person's opinion of what is true in physics is irrelevant, but her opinion of how physics impacts her own life (perhaps in being replaced by a machine at work?) is part of the larger discussion. So too does the person sitting in the pews (or standing, or sitting on the floor, or kneeling in prayer) have some aspect in which her religion is affecting her, as will even the ardently non-religious.

Expert Knowledge - Part 3 of 4

In my last post, I argued that it does make sense to include certain people within the category of expert knowers and others outside as non-knowers. However, this raises the specter of unequitable power relations, with which I hope to deal in this post.

Someone may criticize this view as being elitist, and the concern seems to come up often enough that it should be dealt with. Is the attribution merely descriptive, or pejorative? If descriptive, then it probably fits; so what? If pejorative, then what exactly is wrong?

It is the denial of elitism that is problematic. On the one hand, it is harmful to deny one's own superiority in a given area if one clearly knows more. I rely on my doctor having more medical knowledge than myself; if she were to play humble and average Jane on me, claiming that she really doesn't know any more than I do, or any more than I could figure out on my own relatively efficiently, then she would have trouble curing me.

It also seems that a frank admission of elitism, that some people really do know more than others, that some people really are experts and this is something that it takes years of effort to achieve (and so is not open to the general public for scrutiny), is the ground on which we can even talk of oppression. If people are oppressed, they are actually oppressed. They are actually deprived of some good. To act as though we are all equal when we are not in actuality is to say that those deprived of an education have not actually missed out on anything; that is, they have not been oppressed, and we can all breathe more easily.

In addition, to deny elitism in this sense is to place either an undue burden on the individual, who must now shoulder all responsibility herself for everything she needs, or we must cheapen knowledge acquisition, as if understanding the world and the Other were a simple business. We live and learn communally, which entails our dependence on others who know better than us, even if dependence can be painful.

With that said, the problem with expert knowledge is deciding who the experts are. When we fill the concept of "rationality" and "expert" with content determined by the experience of white males, for example, then this perpetuates a cycle. Men do math, because men are good at math; they are the ones rational enough to do math. Which means that in the next generation, mostly men will be drawn to do math, which means that the stereotype sticks. Maybe a couple women are "unfeminine" enough to be mathematicians, but most women (and all the "real" women) stay out. And of course, examples could be adduced; it was the experience of privileged, rational, land-owning Whites who gave content to the Enlightenment notion of a person, for instance, such that it was a simply matter to consider black slaves as non-persons.

The problem here, it seems to me, is that we multiply the final causes (that is, the goals, that which unifies) of a discipline. We implicitly (since we dare not explicitly) hold both that medicine must work empirically, and that the doctors conform to our image of what a doctor should be. But what is it within each disciple that justifies it? We have our expert community pursuing a discipline; what justifies that community?

It seems important here that we can pick out some immanent criterion, something tangible and readily within experience. If we say that the certainty of math is what legitimates it, then the current experts are the ones who tell us what certainty is, and who can have it. This seems to me to be a way in which those experts in power continue their dominance against minority voices, perhaps illegitimately. But this problem is lessened if we look for a clear mark. What has distinguished the mathematical community of experts? Their unanimity. If a sizable body of people claiming to do math, and who have put in the requisite time for study, come to different conclusions, they could not simply be written off. This is because writing them off would both assume unanimity (which is why they must be wrong) and deny it (since not everyone has agreed). Therefore, this community must be admitted and their claims critically analyzed from within the community, perhaps leading to a redefinition of mathematics.

This can come about because communities are not static. Every expert community can have its common goals for the time being which unify that community. These may need to change; there is no reason to assume eternal essences to disciplines. After all, mathematics today is not the same discipline as of a couple centuries ago. Leibniz saw no need to have a mathematical basis for continuity, because everything in nature is continuous. Modern math doesn't care about the natural world, although it can be applied to it, and no principle can be left undefined. But the changes in math came about due to internal specifications of its goals, and internal processes changing those goals. When the goals split in different directions, we got two different bodies of experts: the mathematicians (favoring logical rigor) and the physicists (favoring description of the natural world). But both of these communities naturally grew out of earlier mathematics.

How does this relate to power relations? The goals of a community are what define the community; these in themselves do not seem to set up unjust power relations. If you don't want to empirically test medical techniques, you're simply not doing what the typical modern medical community is doing. Other aspects (to be covered below) may create injustice, but for the present we are simply defining the communities. Therefore, what creates the power imbalance is the community ignores its unifying principle, its form of life, for tangential concerns. If medicine is defined by being empirical, but we don't even bother to look at the empirical investigations of other sources of medicine or of medicine done by certain minority groups, then we have transgressed the inner life of the medical community itself. But racism within medicine is not to claim that medicine is set up such that minorities are bad doctors; it is to claim that the minorities would be good doctors but are prevented from being such by extrinsic concerns (if minorities would truly be bad doctors, they shouldn't be doctors, since they wouldn't be able to cure people well; I simply don't admit the starting hypothesis). Racism and sexism are problems precisely because they are at odds with the internal goals of the community.

So now the question might be: what keeps there from being a community which defines itself in terms of being white and male, and dedicated to preserved the white male culture? Nothing, really, and I'm not sure that there is anything intrinsically wrong with this. Kant and Plato said some good things, after all, and it would be a shame to lose them. But there should also be room for a community dedicated to preserving, say, black culture. There would be two reasons why our white male community could be problematic. First, it could dictate the concerns of other communities, preventing the black cultural community from existing, or at least flourishing. Second, and perhaps simply a variant of the first, such a community could create exocentric values; that is, values for those outside of itself (and poisoning individuals within, for that matter), which state that not only does the community have its own goals and processes and standards, but that these should be normative for others: people in general ought to study white male culture, since it is superior to other cultures.

Both of these points, though, seem to be illegitimate uses of expert knowledge. The specialist in white male philosophy is only an expert in that area, and so unless she is an expert in, say, black culture as well (and all expertise must be ratified by the community itself), she must defer to the experts in that field when making claims about it. Similarly, the mathematical community can say what it wants to about math, but mathematicians cannot in themselves set the value of math for everyone else (although they can extol the praises of why they themselves love math). There is a plurality of expertises, and experts in one field do not thereby have any claims in other fields until they have proven themselves again.

In summary, then, it would seem that a strategy for reducing unjust power relations in expert communities would be for such communities to a) pay attention to their own internal workings and to hold themselves to such internal standards, and b) respect other communities as being other with their own separate expertise.

Of course, this leaves other problematic issues. Do we say that Nazi Germany was free to abide by the inner life of its own community? It seems to me that political entities have their own problems, not least because the criterion of expertise is missing (there seems to be relatively little knowledge required for political behavior, other than how to gain power for oneself). At any rate, I do not claim to be solving all problems of injustice in this essay; I merely want to lay out some ways in which expert communities can keep their claims to expertise and their stratifications of knowledge-bearers, without thereby necessarily introducing concerns about race, gender, etc.

Now that I have something of a working theory, I would like to turn it to the problem of knowledge within religious communities as given through testimony.

Expert Knowledge - Part 2 of 4

In the last post, I argued that even deductive systems of knowledge such as math are based on socialized systems of expert knowledge. Now, I will analyze ways in which we separate knowers from non-knowers.

If I am a math teacher, and some arrogant high school student claims to know more about math than I do, I am justified in dismissing their claims. It could always be the case that I have a Carl Friedrich Gauss in my classroom, and I am truly in the wrong. Or there are cases when I may be wrong in a given problem on the board and the student correctly points out my mistake, which was a temporary blip on my part and not a product of habitual ignorance. When it comes to substantial mathematical claims, though, assuming typical (and even precocious) students, I don't have any reason to listen to their concerns insofar as I am a mathematician. Insofar as I am a teacher, I should respond to their concerns, but even here, I am the knower communicating to the non-knowers.

So people may agree to this example; no one really likes math, so no one cares if they don't really know math. But what about medicine? People care about their health, and will follow any crazy diet or alternative source of medicine they can find to support themselves. The trained doctor, though, seems to have real knowledge on this score. If the patient disagrees with the doctor, the doctor, again, doesn't have to pay attention to any epistemological concerns that may arise; the doctor only has to pay attention insofar as it means that she has a stubborn patient that needs extra persuasion. This case is more difficult, since there is greater disagreement within the medical profession than within the mathematical. In addition, it is not as though traditional medicines of other cultures have been entirely non-empirical, and they could potentially bring something to the table that modern scientific medicine has ignored. But in most cases, the medical advice offered by average people who have not done the research is bogus. It doesn't matter that it impacts their lives more than math.

This is leading up to the touchy subject: ethics and religion. So it seems justified to have expert communities of knowledge; mathematicians really know math better (as demonstrated by near-unanimous agreement) and doctors really know medicine better (as demonstrated by empirical efficacy). And as seen with medicine, the fact that people care about the subject does not make them knowers. So why should the principles concerning how we live our lives be any different? The person who spends time familiarizing herself with long hours of study concerning how to live well, and who engages in constant dialogue with others doing the same, all the while paying attention to how the great experts in thinking and living in the past have done the same thing, therefore knows better how to live than the person on the street. The person investigating religious truths in whatever manner is appropriate to them, who spends long hours studying the appropriate material and engaging in dialogue, etc., knows the religious life better in a way that entails that the average person does not know the religious life as well.

I want to return to the latter point in discussing some points in the nature of religious faith and testimony. But a problem arises here: while it seems right to say that in some cases, we have the right to ignore opinions of those who do not know, this same attitude has in the past also been used to silence minority voices in order to preserve positions of privilege. So next, I will discuss how relations of power should also introduce a skeptical element into expert communities.

Expert Knowledge - Part 1 of 4

When one gets right down to it, it seems that, at least from our standpoint, all knowledge comes down to expert knowledge. Practice within a field and a developed intimacy with the object of knowledge precedes any statements about logical certainty and deductive reasoning.

Let's take math, for example. Math is the most straightforwardly deductive and certain of all of our bodies of knowledge, and so if I can show that math is based on expert knowledge, then it would seem that all knowledge would be. As a math student, I had to be taught how to reason mathematically. I had to be inducted into the community of mathematicians and taught their methods of argument. When I started learning, the experienced certainty which I had of some wrong arguments was no different from the experienced certainty of many right arguments. My experience of certainty, then, was not on its own a sign of mathematical truth. I had to practice the field and learn how the mathematical community goes about doing things. Therefore, I had become an expert from the experts; it was not a bunch of reasoning which I could just show to any supposedly rational human being and have them come to the same conclusion.

Does this mean that that knowledge was just a human construction, or that there is nothing more than the agreement? Not at all! In math, the experts almost unanimously agree on the main part of the subject. In other fields, by contrast, there is a greater degree of disagreement, and so therefore the agreement does not appear to be the socialization in itself, since the practice of socialization is shared across the disciplines. It would seem that the greater the agreement is in the community of individuals looking at the object, the better our knowledge of that object is. If a bunch of people look at a visible object and agree in their description of it, it is likely that the object is what they see (more or less, subject to metaphysical and epistemological qualifications). If the people disagree, then they may not be looking at the same object, or they may not be equipped to see the object properly (perhaps it is dark). But their report of the object becomes suspect without agreement.

But if we don't have certain deductive knowledge to fall back on, since that arises out of expert knowledge and not vice versa, then the problem of competing viewpoints becomes difficult. And we cannot fall back onto deductive knowledge itself, until someone can provide a way in which I can have certainty which does not come through my own (fallible and socialized) feeling of certainty; even if they could offer anything other than a purely dogmatic assertion to the point, how would this non-perceived certainty be the certainty of my knowledge? But if we start from any system of knowledge which relies on consensus within the community, then Any time people disagree on a topic, we would seem to have reason to believe that they are not really apprehending the object of knowledge. But expert knowledge relies on stratified communities; that is, some people are included as knowers, others as non-knowers, with a range in between. It is this to which I will turn in my next post.