Epistemology has been a scourge, even a holocaust, for philosophy in the last three hundred years. In the last one hundred years it has contaminated every orientation of philosophical thought, rendering us all but blind to the world. When you read Plato, Aristotle, Lucretius, Spinoza, and Leibniz, you get the sense that epistemology is a side-question, a sort of clean up work, that you do after your speculation. Yet now questions of epistemology saturate everything. On the one hand, epistemology represents the will to power, the desire to know before we know. If we can engage in a transcendental analysis, if we can engage in a phenomenological investigation, then we need not engage in the difficult work of reading articles or investigating the world because we already know the basic structure of truth (which is inherently without surprise and coherentist). The transcendental philosopher tells us that “of course he isn’t opposed to science, but is merely grounding science.” Yet this alone is sufficient, in his secret thoughts, to absolve him of any obligation to know what science or mathematics is actually doing. Why? Because he already knows. He knows before he knows, and therefore need not acquaint himself with anything. Since he has already created the police state of what can and cannot be known, and since that police state, like the mental ward that gives a lobotomy in the name of the patient, is done for the sake of grounding the science and grounding its certitude (as if the scientist has asked for certitude), he can rest content in the belief that there’s no possible contradiction between what he is claiming and what we are discovering. Indeed, he will point out that after all, the transcendental subject does not “exist”, but is merely a “condition” for the subject of science. And so it goes, Zeus is the origin of lightning.
Of course, this desire to know before we know is premised on narcissism or to be above the fray as the desire for certainty always is. Philosophy suffered a major blow towards the end of the 19th century when natural philosophy became natural science (in Greek, of course, science is one of the words for knowledge), effectively detaching itself from the philosophers, asserting its autonomy, and succeeding remarkably. Philosophers, no doubt, were miffed that this new breed of beasts, the natural scientists, did not seem to place much stock in their questions or epistemological conditions, but had their own “crass” epistemology and rough and ready methodology. From there legions of students that were spawned, birthed on the halycion memory of the golden age where they were “knowledge”, and have been bitter ever since. The phenomenologists, for example, came to code the term “science” as synonymous with “dogmatism”, and consoled themselves in the belief that they knew the “truth behind truth” or the ultimate grounds in consciousness or the transcendental subject and intentional lived experience prior to any empirical investigation. This would lead Husserl to claim that the natural world cannot be a condition for consciousness as consciousness is a condition for nature, thereby revealing his dualistic and idealistic superstitions or his crypto-theology. In the meantime, those descended from Kant, the so-called “Critical Theorists” (who were anything but critical but who were certainly reactionary) would talk endlessly about how concepts precede any investigation of the world, while the rest of us, having learned our lessons well from Husserl who was right about some things, would scratch our heads wondering just what the hell a concept is and how one could possibly arrive at the idea that we think conceptually. In the meantime, being too polite to be argumentative, we would conclude that all this talk of concepts and whatnot was like trying to do neurosurgery with a butter knife, giving us a folk-psychology about as accurate as explaining a tsunami by reference to Poseidon. In other words, “concepts”, “conditions”, the “transcendental”, had become the new Zeus and Dionysius, explaining respectively lightning and the harvest. But it certainly sounded impressive!
read on!
But then we must wonder when the question “how do you know?” emerges. Such a question certainly wouldn’t arise for people trying to know in day to day life, for example, when trying to figure out why a car is not working. Oh sure, they one person might contest another mechanics explanation. But this wouldn’t be on epistemic grounds but on grounds of some element lacking in the explanation. It appears that the question “how do you know” only emerges when the answers that we discover are really uncomfortable to our theological and superstitious prejudices. For example, you point out that in studies of patients suffering from particular brain legions presiding over affectivity, these patients were able to engage in excellent abstract reasoning and showed a high or mid-range IQ, but nonetheless had fallen into terrible moral reasoning. The conclusion of such observations, obviously, would be that Kant’s thesis that moral reasoning must be rigorously separated from all that is affective, all that is pathological (bodily), must be deeply and fundamentally mistaken. Merleau-Ponty, the great phenomenologist and quasi-correlationist, understood the necessity of taking this sort of research seriously.
In short, epistemology arises when we want to change the subject by virtue of being uncomfortable with the findings. It is, as it were, a red herring. Logicians speculate that the expression “red herring” arose from those that would like to set others off their trail by dragging a rotting fish in another direction to confuse the blood hound. And indeed, so it is in the case of epistemology. Epistemology functions to halt speculation which it names as “dogmatism”. And, of course, those still quivering in their boots over Sokal are eager to change the subject by rendering these issues as being issues about knowledge rather than the world. Of course, they protest that they are naturalists and good materialists. Yet oddly they never cite what the naturalists and the materialists are saying. Like Plato who believed that forms are eternal, they treat their conditions as being eternal and a priori, regarding no engagement with what things actually suggest. Armchairs. And they call all of this “dogmatism”, even though it is based on humility and the thesis of where there stronger argument lies. In the mean time, they blame the glutton for lacking will to follow the categorical imperative, ignoring how that person might biologically not produce leptin which regulates hunger satiation. Such arguments are equivalent to demanding a VCR to play a DVD. But, of course, we are told that we can trust the self-certainties of conscious introspection or intuition.
In horror, it will be claimed, this will open the door to speculations such as those we find in Leibniz and Spinoza and Descartes, where people will believe that they can prove the existence of God and the immortality of the soul alone. Have you not read, it will be asked, Hume and Kant on how we must put an end to the endless disputes of metaphysics? But, on the one hand, we got endless disputes in epistemology (when really we wanted to know about the world and not how we know that we know, and being good inductivists we understood that an inductive argument is about support for a conclusion not proof), and on the other hand, we got the worst sort of dogmatism that believed that it could reject whatever it found uncomfortable based on criteria of knowledge derived from a transcendental analysis, the intentional structure of lived experience, the play of the signifier, or whatever. At least in the case of Descartes, Leibniz, and Spinoza the world was transformed, even if only in a small way, opening entirely new avenues of research and inquiry. Let us put these “dogmatic” philosophers to the test with respect to their arguments about the nature of God. Certainly my students seem to have no difficulty in contesting the strength of these arguments. Speculation, at least, creates a debate as to the question of how things are, rather than an endless discussion about how we might know how things are, not unlike the poor obsessional endlessly preparing the perfect moment and setting for the dame he would like to bed. Yet in the end, aren’t all these discussions defense formations against our finitude and against not knowing before we are know? Aren’t they ways of trying to skip steps, to ignore, to minimize the research we have to do and what we might have to read? In the wonderful LOL catz language of my friend Nick, aren’t these elaborate languages, these superstitions dressed up in fine and intimidating clothing, really ways of saying “oh noez, there’s maths in this book!”
April 8, 2009 at 4:01 pm
Epistemology has been a scourge, even a holocaust, for philosophy in the last three hundred years. In the last one hundred years it has contaminated every orientation of philosophical thought, rendering us all but blind to the world.
Why do you have to paint such a horrible picture of everything before you deal with it? How does it help us to imagine a world in a crisis? Why can’t you just say what you mean without having to go all apocalyptic and doom-oriented? I was showing a video about “Battle Cry” in my class the other day, you remind me of a philosophical equivalent of that movement – you artificially create these dire conditions for philosophy and then you are justified in despairing or encouraged in your fight to the death with mortal enemies. Exchange “moral relativism” or “depravity” for “epistemology” in your post and you will get a nice fundamentalist sermon. Is everything ok? I remember the days when you were posting away a 1000 words a minute of pure unadulterated straight-up philosophy. Do you really have to paint the world black? Is this your strange way of working through your philosophical frustrations? Don’t you think its rather unhealthy to be so negative?
April 8, 2009 at 5:03 pm
I think the post pretty clearly explains my problems with epistemology and why I think it’s been pretty negative for philosophy overall. I can understand your objection to my rhetoric. I do, like you, get carried way in terms of how I express myself at times as I think style should be vivid and engaging. I do object to your characterization of me as “not having dealt” with this or that. This is a rhetorical maneuver I notice you using often. When someone criticizes another philosopher or a particular branch or orientation of philosophy to you that means that they “haven’t dealt with it” or haven’t read it. But I’ve dealt with these sorts of questions for years and, during most of the time, thought in the very way posts like this are criticizing. I think epistemology is an entirely useless branch of philosophy because it is addressed only to other philosophers. Certainly epistemology doesn’t impact scientists in any way, nor the public at large. For this reason, I think philosophy would be much better served in devoting its energies to metaphysics, ethical questions, and questions of political theory. With respect to metaphysics, philosophy has often served the very useful function of helping to open new fields of inquiry that later are taken up by science. For example, Hegel could be seen, in certain respects, as the inventor of sociology. Hegel was wrong on a number of things regarding the social, but he very much helped to open the field through his speculations. Likewise, Deleuze and Whitehead’s metaphysics have played a role in the development of chaos and complexity science, as well as network theory which is vital to understanding brain functioning (the question of how networks of neurons function is a huge one in neurology), epidemiologies of diseases, economics, social movements, etc. These speculations that appear completely dogmatic to some eyes and that proceed in a “reckless” way speculating about the world, paradoxically seem to produce the most real impact. In this regard, it seems to me that epistemology is at best a diversion with little or no real importance philosophically or scientific, and at worst a sort of psychological disease.
April 8, 2009 at 5:20 pm
I think epistemology is an entirely useless branch of philosophy because it is addressed only to other philosophers. Certainly epistemology doesn’t impact scientists in any way, nor the public at large.
Great. Why do you then go kicking the dead horse? If you claim that it is dead, why not bury it already? It’s starting to smell really bad. Why not just move onto great useful things? That’s why I note that maybe you need to kick this epistemology around a bit to get yourself all worked up (philosophically, of course, I don’t know you personally).
For this reason, I think philosophy would be much better served in devoting its energies to metaphysics, ethical questions, and questions of political theory.
Without ever asking a question like “how do I know if my opinion is true?” or “how is it possible to arrive at the same conclusion with others?” or “what is knowledge?” – I’d like to see how that works. Metaphysics without epistemology might work just fine, you can think up whatever world you’d like to think up, one with objects sealed tightly in sandwich bags, another with objects hugging intensely or dancing an energetic tango – but ethics and politics without a criterion of knowledge will be all about opinions and ultimately “might makes right” – don’t you think?
April 8, 2009 at 5:54 pm
No, I don’t think so. As I said in the post, this notion that questions of knowledge are “propaeduetic” to metaphysics represents a desire to know before we know. I think we can do a pretty good job addressing the sorts of questions you outline here in and through the debate that follows various metaphysical proposals. For example, someone makes the claim that everything in the entire universe doubles in size every two minutes. You might respond by pointing out that while that is a provocative and interesting thesis, there is no way of knowing whether or not it is true because were everything to double in size every two minutes we would not be able to recognize any difference is size as all the relative sizes would remain the same. This sort of give and take does the job pretty well where such claims are concerned. The reason that I don’t have to take the Biblical literalist seriously is because their philosophical arguments and claims that the Bible is written by God simply can’t be supported one way or another. Similarly, string theory is a provocative and very exciting hypothesis about the fundamental nature of our universe which elegantly unifies the macro-world of Einsteinian relativity and the micro-world of subatomic particles, but at present we have no observational or experimental support for this theory. Consequently, at present we leave it at the stage of being a very promising hypothesis and await advocates of this hypothesis to devise experiments that will begin providing evidence for the theory. This sort of very minimal, rough and ready, epistemology is more than sufficient for our tasks and helps us get around in the world just fine. It has repeatedly shown itself capable of delivering us knowledge about the world. Epistemology, by contrast, turns out all to often to be a way of just not talking about the world but changing the subject. In my view, then, it becomes a refuge for superstition. For example, if the Husserlian is so intent on defending the primacy of consciousness and thought then, I strongly suspect, this is because at some level, perhaps unconscious, their narcissism is wounded by the thought that we are material things or brains. Phenomenology becomes a way of retaining dualism without explicitly coming out and saying so. Moreover, it effectively changes the subject with its endless questions about grounding via consciousness, rather than exploring the philosophical implications (as Catherine Malabou so nicely does in What Should We Do With Our Brains? or as Patricia Churchland does in Brain-Wise) of neurology and how neurology requires us to transform our understanding of human life, nature, ethics, etc. Instead we get all tangled up in discussions about grounding and foundations not unlike the intricacies of the Scholastic arguments about universals, individuation, etc. The language, questions, and thought process sound impressive but really they are the “metaphysical jargon” that Hume so rightfully derides as superstition dressed up in fancy clothes.
April 8, 2009 at 6:04 pm
As for why I continue to talk about this, it’s because it’s what’s on my mind right now as a result of the discussions we’ve been having. I feel bullied and hectored by the epistemologues despite the fact that their arguments are extremely dogmatic, circular, textual and ignoring any empirical or observational evidence to the contrary. Despite the fact that we have bodies of findings that seriously call into question this way of doing philosophy, we’re still supposed to take these positions seriously. It’s odd because at what point can we move on from things in the history of philosophy? Unless were a scholar in the history of philosophy, we don’t really read Malbranche anymore. And if I said to you that you ought to give Malbranche a fair hearing, devoting significant precious time to his work (have you devoted significant time to giving Whitehead or the Churchland’s a fair hearing? Why is it only Kant that deserves such a hearing?) you would probably laugh in my face or raise a quizzical eyebrow and go back to what you were doing. I also think that given that my position is a somewhat rare one in Continental philosophy, it is worth putting it out there so that it is at least partially represented as an alternative possibility for thought in our orientation of philosophy. Not to worry though, I’m sure I’ll move on soon enough.
April 8, 2009 at 6:25 pm
Levi,
This sort of very minimal, rough and ready, epistemology is more than sufficient for our tasks and helps us get around in the world just fine. It has repeatedly shown itself capable of delivering us knowledge about the world.
So you don’t deny that we need epistemology, you just don’t like how it is done now? Because your next sentence is:
Epistemology, by contrast, turns out all to often to be a way of just not talking about the world but changing the subject. In my view, then, it becomes a refuge for superstition.
So the first “minimal” epistemology is good, but the second “superstitious” epistemology is bad? It seems to me that you are criticizing how epistemology is done, not dismissing it completely.
I feel bullied and hectored by the epistemologues despite the fact that their arguments are extremely dogmatic, circular, textual and ignoring any empirical or observational evidence to the contrary.
That was sort of my original point – why do you feel bullied? Is epistemology really bullying you or do you need to feel bullied to get in the mood for philosophy? It seems from your comments that you feel bullied by a specific type of epistemology, type you disagree with, since you think that a certain “minimal” type of epistemology is acceptable. You say: “…we’re still supposed to take these positions seriously.” Who says that? Who is bullying you into taking something you disagree with seriously? Is someone making you read books you don’t want to? Think about things you don’t want to? Who is the great oppressor? Big scary epistemologist gang? Seriously, I’d like to know because, at least in my case, it seems that there are so many philosophical options out there that I don’t know if I will ever be able to get to them all – if you feel trapped and oppressed, why not leave the oppressive environment and stop reading about this “bad” epistemology?
And if I said to you that you ought to give Malbranche a fair hearing, devoting significant precious time to his work… you would probably laugh in my face or raise a quizzical eyebrow and go back to what you were doing.
I personally wouldn’t – your imaginary opponent who oppresses you and bullies you probably would, but he is in your head. I would be very intrigued to hear what you have to say about Malbranche. Look, the thing is, of course you can write about whatever bothers you, it’s your blog and if you don’t need others to react to your posts, I would also understand that, but it seems to be that you are soliciting some sort of reaction, right? Or are you simply airing your grievances and just want to get it out? In that case I probably shouldn’t comment – it just seems to me that you are wasting your talent on negativity and “philosophical sulking” while there’s so much more positive stuff out there for all of us.
April 8, 2009 at 6:49 pm
To put it more precisely, I object to the notion of epistemology as first philosophy. As for feeling bullied, I think we need only look back to the initial posts on the ontic principle to see where that sense comes from. Immediately the question became one of “how do you know?” rather than a discussion of how the position might be falsified by the behavior of objects, etc. I also think we need only look at SPEP and Continental journals to discern the effects of the turn to epistemology as first philosophy. What we have is paper after paper on the thought of a particular philosopher, the vastly disproportionate representation of anti-realist papers to the exclusion of almost any realist positions, and the almost complete exclusion of any discussion of science. I’ll never forget a friend of mine, who is a very well known and well respected scholar in his area, exclaiming to me, about Badiou, “but that’s analytic philosophy!” In other words, for us Continentalists we’re supposed to ignore science and mathematics unless it is to denigrate these things. I think that’s a problem.
April 8, 2009 at 7:04 pm
I’m sorry but if you feel bullied by a simple question like “how do you know X?” then you are in the wrong discipline. I really thought people were attacking your views the way they do in the academia (viciously and without much sense of propriety)… Plus, with your admiration of science one would think that a simple question like “how do you know X?” would be a welcome question.
Saying that you object to epistemology as a first philosophy is completely different from saying you object to epistemology, period. The question “how do you know that objects are all stacked away in sealed shoe-boxes?” is a completely legitimate question, is it not? If you cannot show others how you arrived at your conclusion, at your theory, how do you expect them to have a conversation with you about it? What is the common ground on which we can all agree that we have knowledge, not just opinions? That’s very minimal and epistemological – you’re right, it doesn’t have to be “first philosophy” but there’s a place for it and when you propose a new theory the most natural question is not “please tell us, how awesome and wonderful is your new theory?” but “how do you know that it is true?”
I think if you wanted to go about it in a way that makes philosophical creations into a sort of aesthetically pleasing/displeasing theories, it would be fine – then you can say, “my theory is elegant and yours is awkward and crude, I win” but you want to have your cake and eat it too, you want people to take your theory seriously as any other philosophical theory, yet without putting it through a grinder of logic/epistemology etc etc…
April 8, 2009 at 7:31 pm
I think it’s rather obvious how we know that people with legions on their frontal cortex lack affectivity. In other words, scientists get by just fine as realists and without an elaborate epistemology the Kantian sort. We observe them and correlate the damages of the brain with the responses to various cues. When I say that there is no difference that makes a difference, the question then becomes one of determining whether or not a counter-example can be found and how such a thesis might modify how we investigate the world. I am all for putting any theory through the grinder of logic. If a theory generates contradictions I believe it has to be revised. I am also not opposed to the question of whether or not a theory is true. For example, one of the reasons I reject Spinoza’s theory of the universe is that I think the notion of a substance prior to its properties, qualities, or affections is an incoherent idea. Thus when Spinoza says that “substance is by nature prior to its affection” (1p1), I think he’s making a false claim from the outset because it is impossible to individuate a substance without reference to its affections. By all means, grind things up that way. I just don’t think there’s much point in meta-theoretical discussions that want to define truth and the criteria of knowledge prior to investigation of actual things in the world. The questions of truth don’t arise prior the formulation of theories and explanations of various things in the world, but in the analysis of specific theories. Take the example of the caloric theory of heat. Scientists hypothesized that heat was a sort of fluid substance possessed by objects which objects could gain or loose. This is a good hypothesis as it seems that heat is something gains or loses and therefore a substance. However, once this theory was proposed, it called for testing and observation. If heat is a substance then it follows that it will have mass. Moreover, it would follow that an object would not be able to continuously heat up because eventually the object would loose all of its caloric substance. Upon observation and experimentation, neither of these predictions turned out to be true. First, no difference in mass could be found for hot objects and cold objects. They weighed exactly the same. Second, objects didn’t cease to be hot over time when heated up. As a result, the caloric theory was eventually abandoned and we instead adopted the kinetic theory of heat as agitated motion. This is all the critique you really need when raising questions of truth. You don’t need a meta-theory prior to the rest of the theory. The case is no different with my philosophical claims. If I claim that “there is no transportation without translation” (i.e., that for any interaction among objects the second object modifies the transferred force, for example, according to its own material structure), this is a hypothesis that admits of the possibility of counter-examples. Were those counter-examples to be found, then the thesis would have to be revised, qualified, or abandoned.
Ultimately, I think where we differ is the place of epistemology in philosophy and science. For you epistemology is First Philosophy or where we have to begin. We first have to have a theory of truth and knowledge before investigating the world. For me, epistemology is not First Philosophy or even particularly interesting, but is an excresence in philosophy. The evaluation of a theory takes place not by first having a transcendental theory of knowledge and then determining whether or not the theory conforms to those constraints, but in the process of building the theory where it is determined whether predictions can be made, whether the theory is able to explain wide bodies of phenomena, and whether or not there are counter-examples. Where you are a foundationalist, I am not.
April 8, 2009 at 10:25 pm
Greetings,
Where you are a foundationalist, I am not.
I don’t see how asking epistemological, not meta-theoretical, I don’t know what these are, actually, questions make me a foundationalist at all. And when did I say that epistemology is a first philosophy? Oh wait, because I agree with Kant and Kant says that epistemology is a first philosophy? He doesn’t, but even if he did, if you don’t think epistemology is important, then don’t propose any sort of “minimal epistemology” – just get out there and start knowing things right and left, that’s fine.
But as I said earlier, you want to have it both ways – you don’t want an epistemology, because once you start on that path, things will get complicated very quickly (think about something easy like Socratic questions, pick your favorite example of a character claiming to know things that in the end they reveal to be ignorant of), yet you do want epistemology because without it you cannot have any sort of intelligible discourse that uses phrases like “I know” or “I proposes,” can you? Brave scientists discovering things have a method, experimental method is a method, generally speaking they don’t just wonder around poking things and scratching their heads, do they? Why is it unfair to ask a question about their method, their epistemological assumptions? There’s plenty of work being done there since the 80s and the rise of the history of science a la Shapin/Shaffer, there were a lot of accusations about undermining science and all back then, but we’ve learned to appreciate that kind of approach, didn’t we? Let’s not pretend here that scientists are out there “doing it” and we are just sitting around “talking about it” – you present science as some kind of uncontroversial and simple discovery of knowledge, as if there are no problems in science, but a continual progress toward the happy bright future of humankind.
I know this is strange question, but where do you think logic comes from, since you are allowing your theories to be grinded through it? Where do ideas like “coherence” or “consistency” come from? Where do notions of “hypothesis” or “counter-examples” come from? Are they just there, available for us to implement? You don’t have to spend the rest of your life doing epistemology, god knows I don’t want to do it either – you don’t have to make it your “first philosophy” (whatever that means), but you have to at least agree to some rules, some procedures when doing philosophy, right? My question is a very simple one: where do those rules come from?
April 8, 2009 at 11:58 pm
Mikhail,
I already began to give a sketch responding to your question about logic in my post “Time, Turtles, Kant, and Correlationism” in terms of evolutionary theory. Logic being a part of mathematical thought would fall under this account. Lakoff and Nunz give a more developed account in their book Where Mathematics Comes From. Whitehead also gives such an account throughout his work. And of course Kant is both a foundationalist and one who treats epistemology as first philosophy. He is a foundationalist in that he is treating the a priori structures of mind as the ultimate ground of all else. He is treating epistemology as first philosophy in that a “critique” or an investigation into mind and knowledge is propaeduetic, for him, to any other knowledge.
April 9, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Certainly epistemology doesn’t impact scientists in any way, nor the public at large
Levi, this strikes me as a pretty dubious claim, unless what you mean is that very tightly secluded, quite formal subject within the perview of a single discipline is somehow separate from matters of method, methodical approaches, publishing findings and submitting findings to the examination of others.
April 9, 2009 at 12:42 pm
I don’t have time to do all that I want to do now (grading awaits and must be done), but it seems to me that the very processes of our ontological emergence gives rise to epistemology, albeit not solely epitemology in a western philosophical key. Descartes, Kant etc seem to me (though I know their work much less well than either you or Mikhail do) to be developing their notions within and against the notion of the fundamental lie found in Genesis II (among no doubt other things). By contrast, Hindu-Balinese epistemology (which might look like a form of Cartesianism or what you sometimes call correlationism but I think isn’t) develop within and against notions of lela and maya, that is divine play and illusion. On this more later (as I said, grading awaits).
April 9, 2009 at 1:47 pm
Hi Jerry,
I’m not referring to all the methodological and evidential discussions we find in the various disciplines. What I have in mind, rather, is that form of philosophy that presumes it can determine the nature of what counts as knowledge in advance, independent of all empirical inquiry in other disciplines, effectively striving to police these other disciplines. In addition to this, I think the philosopher needs to take seriously the point that the physical scientist understands his claims in realist terms. That is, he doesn’t understand himself as making claims “for-us” or about how the world appears to us, but as discovering things about the referent. Correlationist epistemology, by contrast, dismisses this as a sort of naivete on the scientist’s part. I suppose my position would be somewhat pragmatist at the end of the day, seeing knowledge as a process of inquiry and a result, not as something we have at the beginning.
April 9, 2009 at 11:06 pm
What I have in mind, rather, is that form of philosophy that presumes it can determine the nature of what counts as knowledge in advance, independent of all empirical inquiry in other disciplines, effectively striving to police these other disciplines.
How else do you determine what counts as knowledge, Levi, give me an example of a “form of philosophy” that arrives at what constitutes knowledge after its inquiries? I mean you’re sliding into some sort of naive empiricism here. If I ask you to go out and find me some “knowledge” and you have no idea what “knowledge” is before you are looking for it, how are you going to find it? That’s a common assumption since Socrates, it seems – if you don’t know what you’re looking for, you’ll either never find it or find it everywhere.
April 10, 2009 at 2:09 am
Mikhail,
I think the question of what counts as knowledge remains very much an open question. In my view, there is a dialectic between our epistemologies or theories of knowledge and our constituted knowledge in disciplines like mathematics, physics, biology, mathematics, neurology, etc. An epistemology or theory of knowledge articulates a set of criteria for what constitutes knowledge that play a role in guiding inquiry. Subsequent discoveries in a particular discipline call into question this theory of knowledge or epistemology. The epistemology gets revised, and the process takes place over again. At this point in our history it is easier to determine what epistemological theories must be mistaken than to develop a particular epistemology. Thus, for example, it’s clear that the epistemologies of Kant and phenomenology must be mistaken (though the latter fairs better in a number of respects). In part, I outlined the inadequacy of these epistemologies in my three posts on Meillassoux. On the other hand, the findings of neurology indicate that while phenomenology has gotten some things right about the nature of our cognition at the cognitive level (not the neurological level), but the Kantian account of our mind and many of the details of the various phenomenological approaches to mind are mistaken. This calls for revisions in how we understand the questions of epistemology. I am not sure what you are referring to as a “naive empiricism”. I certainly do not think we can just “observe the world” and arrive at a knowledge of it, but rather that we always approach the world with a particular theory that organizes our observations and investigations. I am fine with a limited version of Meno’s paradox in the sense that I agree we must have a theory to guide what we’re looking for. I diverge from Plato’s formulation of that paradox in that the theory that guides our observations of the world gets revised as a result of our observations and experiments. In many respects, my criticism of how much continental philosophy is conducted is premised on Meno’s paradox. That is, I have been arguing that because continentalists believe that they are providing conditions of knowledge prior to any investigation they do not believe they have to actually take into account of the various findings of the different sciences. As such, they end up with a highly prejudiced epistemology that presupposes a particular ontology or nature of the world that has largely been discredited by contemporary science.
April 10, 2009 at 4:29 am
I think the question of what counts as knowledge remains very much an open question.
How do you answer that question is my question?
In my view, there is a dialectic between our epistemologies or theories of knowledge and our constituted knowledge in disciplines like mathematics, physics, biology, mathematics, neurology, etc.
You just said we don’t know what knowledge is – how do you get from not knowing what knowledge is to “constituted knowledge” of all of these sciences? where do they get their ideas of “knowledge”?
Subsequent discoveries in a particular discipline call into question this theory of knowledge or epistemology.
So, there is a “theory of knowledge” to being with? Where does it come from?
At this point in our history it is easier to determine what epistemological theories must be mistaken than to develop a particular epistemology.
How so if you don’t know what knowledge is to begin with?
Are you just trying to confuse me or do you really believe what you just wrote?
April 10, 2009 at 6:26 am
Mikhail,
I get the sense that you’re not listening to what I’m saying. The short answer is that at this point in time, I don’t have an answer to your question. If it is true that discoveries in our sciences require the revision of our philosophical positions, then the first step in answering the sort of question you’re asking lies in getting a fix as to just where we are in our sciences, what their major claims are, etc. Absent that, it is impossible to even properly formulate the question. I am in the process of doing exactly that work right now. Perhaps you would better understand my thesis if you situated it in terms of Gadamer’s theory of interpretation in Truth and Method. Whenever we approach any text, according to Gadamer, we begin with certain expectations as to what that text will say and argue and of what a text is, in general. Over the course of the process of reading these initial assumptions are modified and transformed as we read the text. Something similar takes place with our theories of knowledge. What we understand as criteria of knowledge (i.e., meta-theoretical conceptions of knowledge) changes as we engage in the activity of inquiry and discover the inadequacy of our prior criteria with respect to what we actually discover. In this connection your question is nonsensical, as “our idea of knowledge” could be anything depending on the historical point of development that we’re at. For example, it could be the very simple idea that we simply observe the world and that what can be sensed belongs to the object and what cannot be sensed is just a fiction. Clearly this idea of knowledge gets demolished pretty quickly over the course of inquiry as we conclude that a wide range of phenomena can’t be explained based on what we sense alone. At that point the epistemological theory gets revised and more complex. It seems to me that you think in very static and fixed terms, missing entirely the dynamism of knowledge and the dialectic of our meta-theories and our investigation of the world. You treat knowledge as if it is a thing (a body of propositions), or at least that’s how it sounds to me, rather than as a process of inquiry that revises itself as it unfolds. This is abundantly clear in your [mistaken] characterization of Kant’s transcendental method where you argue that first we develop a theory of inquiry and then proceed to investigate the world. Where you could possibly get such a silly idea is beyond me, because 1) mathematicians and scientists have obviously been doing their work for centuries, while often only having very vulgar and simplistic epistemologies (Newton’s self-described epistemology is a real howler– he describes it basically as direct observational empiricism –compared to what he is actually doing, but it gets the job done), and because 2) Kant obviously begins with established and secure bodies of knowledge (geometry, arithmetic, and Newtonian physics) and then develops an epistemological theory for these knowledges (very close to the very process I’m describing!). This is because Kant isn’t presuming to tell scientists and mathematicians how to do their work, but rather because he’s 1) trying to refute the skeptic, (i.e., Hume), and 2) overturn the dogmatists. In short, the Critique isn’t really addressed to scientists and mathematicians at all. They get along just fine without his sort of metatheoretical analysis and their “naive” belief that they’re talking about reality itself rather than phenomena. And yes, I really believe what I wrote in my previous response to you, at least for the time being.
April 10, 2009 at 4:05 pm
I think I see what you’re saying actually, especially with the example of Gadamer. My minor concern is, as always, one is accustomed to expect it in our exchanges, that you might be misreading Kant’s use of geometry, but I think generally I see your drift here vis-a-vis epistemology and its place. Again, it seems to me though that this work, the work you are undertaking, is nothing new and there are plenty of examples of various solutions to the problem – of course, you don’t have to agree with those solutions, but taking “science” as your new master and eagerly await what it has to say on the matter, leaning forward excitedly every time it opens its mouth seems a bit naive. In any case, I hope it doesn’t seem like I’m giving hard time for no reason, just helping you bounce ideas off (my hard head, I suppose).
April 10, 2009 at 5:16 pm
Mikhail,
I don’t think it’s a question of “taking science as my new master”, but rather of asking what does our time call us to think as philosophers? Since this question is controversial in our current historical moment– and vaguely threatening to Continentalists –let’s jump back to a less threatening context to illustrate the point. In many respects, Plato’s thought can be seen as precisely a response to this sort of question. As we all know, the new geometry was a tremendous shock to his thought, and was at the center of his philosophy so much so that we are told that he had over the doors of the academy “let none enter here who have no knowledge of geometry.” We can imagine Plato’s reaction to geometry: “What can it mean that we can deduce truth through thought alone in geometry?” “What can it mean that the figures dealt with in geometry are purely ideal objects, found nowhere in our ordinary experience, but only found in thought?” “What can it mean that, in trying to think geometrically, we risk going wildly astray if we rely on sense-experience?” And so on.
Plato’s encounter with geometry– and here the term “encounter” should be thought as something jarring and shaking, life-changing, like falling in love –required, to his thinking, an entire transformation of philosophical thought in terms of epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, and politics. The point wasn’t that “geometry had delivered us the truth and everything else should be set aside”, but rather that the invention of geometry, the fact of its existence, called for the rethinking of our most basic philosophical questions and areas of thought. Geometry becomes, for Plato, the guiding light for every other area of thought in philosophy. It becomes the guiding light of philosophy. Something similar happens in the 17th century with the new physics, where the fact of the new physics becomes, among other things, that which summons thought to rethink all other branches of philosophy.
The moral of this story, in my view, is that the conditions of philosophy are themselves extra-philosophical. Philosophy always occurs in dialogue with an outside or in dialogue with something that is not itself philosophical, whether that outside be a massive political transformation, the emergence of a new form of art, a transformation in mathematics, or transformations that take place in science. While I do not share Badiou’s ontology, I think he’s hit on something deep and fundamental when he argues that 1) philosophy does not itself produce truths, 2) philosophy is always dependent on truths from elsewhere (politics, art, math, science, etc), and most importantly, 3) the vocation of philosophy is to think its present, just as Plato sought to think his present in light of the event of geometry. Philosophy can thus be thought as a reflection on the thought or truth of its present. In our time, the question then becomes that of how things like the new mathematics, the new physics, the new neurology, the new biology, the new aesthetics, and the new politics (globalization), fundamentally summon us to rethink the most basic questions of philosophy. Yet if this is to be possible we cannot cloister ourselves in the texts of the tradition of philosophy nor think of the questions of philosophy as self-contained and in reference to an outside, but rather we must familiarize ourselves with this outset and raise the questions of how this outside calls us to rethink epistemology, metaphysics, ethic, politics, aesthetics, etc.
April 10, 2009 at 5:28 pm
[…] 10, 2009 by Mikhail Emelianov While reading the latest output concerning the doomed conditions that, according to Larval Subjects, philosophy is unfortunate enough to find itself in, I could not […]
April 10, 2009 at 6:31 pm
That’s a pretty ambitious undertaking, my only point is that every philosopher, in a sense, thinks of herself as undertaking such an ambitious task, it seems to be the very nature of philosophical discourse to situate itself in a dramatic scenario like yours – so every historical period, every new discovery solicit such a dramatic response. I have to say I find the audacity to speak for the whole of philosophy – “what does our time call us to think as philosophers?” – and for the whole of “our time” a bit awkward and overly Romantially dramatic – but, you know, maybe it’s the task of the young and restless to shake things up a bit?
April 12, 2009 at 12:52 am
this is good. reminds me a bit of Deleuze’s essay on the Method of Dramatization in Deserts Islands. he says we have to ask “who?” or “which one?”
who is the one who wants to know? – the jealous husband
someone asks a question and says “you use the jealous husband as an example..” and Deleuze replies “if it is only an example, I have failed.”
this is cryptic, but it seems to me that you have fleshed out well here how it is not just an example.
keep up the good work