Knowledge and Humility

[Irenic]

---

I’m seeking the help of some one who is trained in philosophy, comes from a Catholic pespective and is not a relativist.

You’ll have to forgive my ignorance. I’m sort of an words-pictures-abstract ideas kind of flop-about and the rational and mathematic have never been my strong suit.

**I need some help sorting the following out: I find the claim that one “can’t know anything” to be intuitively icky and contradictory. However, I also realize that I am not God and I could always be mistaken (i.e.: think I know something when I’m in error.)

How can this epistemological humility be expressed and understood without devolving into relativism?**

I kind think around this issue a lot, but what really stirred it up tonight was conversation with a Calvinist who seemed to be some sort of presuppositionalist. He said that he infallibly knew that it was impossible that he could be wrong about the deity of Christ. He asked me if I could say the same.

I replied that I believed in the deity of Christ with all my heart (enough to stake my soul on it) but that, since I was not God, there is always the chance I could be wrong.

He ridiculed this statement saying that my “un-biblical Romanist worldview” didn’t allow me to know anything.

I have to admit, I wasn’t very satisfied with any answer I could come up with, but I don’t know what to do with the tension between my belief that we can know things, my trust in revelation and my own human frailty.

**If anyone can help give the the language and logic to begin to explore these issues in a fruitful way, I’d be overjoyed.

Please use simple language or point me to a simple resource as I’m a “noob” and a “bear of very little brain” when it comes to philosophy in general and epistemology in particular.***

 

[ERose]

I guess the best way to put it is that the underlying reality that is absolutely true. Which means simply that a rock is a rock with all the physical properties of a rock.

That being said we are beings that preceive things through our senses. Which means that what we know of the reality around us is a preception of that reality and not really that reality. So if we are color blind then if the rock is in reality colored blue we will perceive it in a shade of gray.

Now God made us rational social beings which means that are preception of reality can be backed up by other people’s perceptions of reality. So if I perceive that the rock’s color is blue and 50 other people perceive that it is blue then the chances are that the rock in reality is blue and as such I know with a fair amount of surety that the rock being blue is an absolute truth.

Now what if I perceive that the rock is blue and 15 out of 50 people agree with me and 20 out of the 50 think it is red and another 15 think that it is black then the only thing that I can know for sure is that my opinion is that the color of the rock is blue and I cannot be sure that it is the reality of the rock.

Hopefully this makes since to you.

Now concerning your Calvinist friend who believes that he is infallable concerning the absolute truth about God and His plan of redemption I would like to meet him because he must be one hell of an intelligent guy.

One question to ask him is what makes him think that he is infallable? Does it say somewhere in scripture that if you follow Christ appropiately that you would be infallable? I think not.

Remember it is the fools who think that they know everything. It is the wisemen who know that they do not. Socrates said that the only thing I know for sure is that I know nothing.

Hope this helps.

 

[cpayne]

I think you are right that your friend is a presuppositionalist. However, as Aquinas points out, that which is self-evidently true to God (as His existence, Christ’s divinity, and so on) is NOT self-evidently true to us, since we are not God and do not possess His state of infallible knowledge.

I think he is fooling himself. He can certainly infer and believe Christ’s divinity. But know it infallibly?