The Theory of Knowledge

[steph_86]

I would like to know what the traditional understanding of epistemology within Catholic philosophy. According, to the rationalists, reason is the ultimate source of knowledge. Plato, for example, used to think that, the human being is born with ideas that are innate to him and that - like Socrates - the purpose of education was to bring those ideas out.
For the empiricists, all knowledge comes from experience and it is not possible for reason to be the final authority on reality. Reality, for many empiricists, however, was seen with skepticism and many were those - like David Hume - who doubted that we could apprehend reality in itself.

I, for myself, struggle with the notion of innate ideas. Is this true? Is this part of Catholic philosophy and theology? Also, I tend to think that all knowledge starts with the senses and that even mathematical truths would not exist if we did not have sense experience. Am I wrong?

 

[tonyrey]

Also, I tend to think that all knowledge starts with the senses and that even mathematical truths would not exist if we did not have sense experience.

All knowledge starts with our thoughts, feelings, perceptions and decisions. We interpret sense stimuli and** infer** that material objects exist but the only** direct knowledge** we have is of what occurs in our mind. We are in what has been called “the egocentric predicament”.

 

[JDaniel]

I would like to know what the traditional understanding of epistemology within Catholic philosophy. According, to the rationalists, reason is the ultimate source of knowledge. Plato, for example, used to think that, the human being is born with ideas that are innate to him and that - like Socrates - the purpose of education was to bring those ideas out.
For the empiricists, all knowledge comes from experience and it is not possible for reason to be the final authority on reality. Reality, for many empiricists, however, was seen with skepticism and many were those - like David Hume - who doubted that we could apprehend reality in itself.

I, for myself, struggle with the notion of innate ideas. Is this true? Is this part of Catholic philosophy and theology? Also, I tend to think that all knowledge starts with the senses and that even mathematical truths would not exist if we did not have sense experience. Am I wrong?

Welcome, Steph:

I tend to think that the Church takes a middle stance, someplace between idealism and empiricism. St. Thomas Aquinas was a proponent of tabula rasa, but also believed that God could, and did, infuse such knowledge as would be manifest in our knowledge of the Natural Law, for example. If our minds were indeed blank slates, upon our births, it would be likely that everything we came to know we would have received through our senses. But, that would leave open the question of how our most primitive forbearer’s might have received sufficient moral discrimination to keep from annihilating each other.

Form is soul, and form is species. We notice that the other animals that inhabit this earth, with us, tend to aggregate with their own species. Our souls installed our ancestors’ natures. From human nature, we humans derive Natural Law. Natural Law is not something that animals and humans derived from watching or, merely agreeing. Rather it is something that is more like an internal ‘longing’, or, more precisely, something that is objectively and subjectively ‘known’. It is the desired ‘good’. It must be simultaneously objective and subjective since even from our earliest ancestors’ earliest activities humans knew how they desired to be dealt with, while at the same time, knowing that the same methodologies had to be expanded to their neighbors.

Epistemology does not have to conclude either/or, empiricism or idealism.

God bless,
jd

 

[levinas12]

I think we are directly aware of external objects. This is the sense of everday life. If I were to ask most people what they are perceiving, they would say an external object, e.g., an apple or a stoplight. They would not say a private sense datum or some other entity inside their mind. We are always, already and immediately aware of things and people out there in the real world. External reality is too insistent, too “in-your-face”, to require a proof.

Perception does involve a material modification to our body. But this modification is hidden - we are not directly aware of it - instead, we grab the apple or brake at the stoplight.

 

[JackVk]

It’s quite simple: “I think, therefore I am”. Thank you, Descartes.

 

[levinas12]

It’s quite simple: “I think, therefore I am”. Thank you, Descartes.

But Descartes thought that external reality requires a proof. But it doesn’t.

 

[levinas12]

It’s quite simple: “I think, therefore I am”. Thank you, Descartes.

But Descartes thought it was necessary to provide a proof that we can go from the clear and distinct ideas inside the mind to extramental reality - and he needed God to bridge the gap between what’s inside to what’s outside. But we are already outside in the world to begin with. We don’t start within a secret cabinet of private mental entities accessible only to our lonely selves. We do not need to prove the existence of an external world.

 

[levinas12]

I think we are directly aware of external objects. This is the sense of everday life.

For those who are particular about typos, “everday” is “everyday” …

 

[In_Spiration]

Reality, for many empiricists, however, was seen with skepticism and many were those - like David Hume - who doubted that we could apprehend reality in itself.

Catholicism would seem to require some sort of Realism (as opposed to, say, Berkeleyan Idealism, which would arguably conflict with the Truth of the Incarnation, or Materialism, which denies the spiritual). There are varieties of realism though.

I, for myself, struggle with the notion of innate ideas. Is this true? Is this part of Catholic philosophy and theology? Also, I tend to think that all knowledge starts with the senses and that even mathematical truths would not exist if we did not have sense experience. Am I wrong?

You’re in good company here (Aristotle & Aquinas), at least philosophically speaking, according to natural reason – without getting into some of the theological points about grace and such. Thomas was an Aristotelian empiricist, as well as a direct realist. He held that we come into direct contact with external things themselves by way of the senses, not that we’re limited to an acquaintance w/representations or mere phenomena-but-no-noumena. And he’d say we don’t have any innate idea of triangularity allowing us to “recollect”; our intellects must first greet a real triangle once it’s been perceived by the senses. Then the “agent intellect” “illuminates and abstracts” the form of triangularity from the materially individuated, whole triangle of which it’s conscious.

P.S.: You might like this approach, from William Wallace’s “River Forest Thomism”.

 

[levinas12]

One could argue that our sense of “being” is in some way innate … since, even with our first act of perception, we are already familiar with what it means “to be” … it’s not a question of having an innate idea about a specific type of thing … but we begin with an awareness that we are already in the world … you could call it an ontological predisposition

 

[JDaniel]

One could argue that our sense of “being” is in some way innate … since, even with our first act of perception, we are already familiar with what it means “to be” … it’s not a question of having an innate idea about a specific type of thing … but we begin with an awareness that we are already in the world … you could call it an ontological predisposition

Levinas:

I like this. But, wouldn’t that rather be called an, “ontological disposition”? Anyway, I agree with your point.

God bless,
jd

 

[levinas12]

Levinas:

I like this. But, wouldn’t that rather be called an, “ontological disposition”? Anyway, I agree with your point.

God bless,
jd

Ah, picky picky … just kidding of course … you may have guessed that all this is coming from phenomenology (Husserl, Heidegger, et al) … which would be a good place for Steph 86 to go for epistemology … the miracle is that being shows itself to us … or, in more everyday language, we can find out what’s going on … that’s why we can have the sciences, the courts, even art museums … don’t get bogged down with Godel, AI, Watson doing Jeopardy, etc. … what is really mindblowing is that we are the datives of manifestation (sounds like a rock group)

 

[tonyrey]

I think we are directly aware of external objects. This is the sense of everyday life. If I were to ask most people what they are perceiving, they would say an external object, e.g., an apple or a stoplight. They would not say a private sense datum or some other entity inside their mind. We are always, already and immediately aware of things and people out there in the real world. External reality is too insistent, too “in-your-face”, to require a proof.

We are directly aware of our perceptions but not of what causes those perceptions. No two individuals perceive external objects in precisely the same way. It is not a question of doubting things exist but of knowing them as they really are. For a start they appear to be solid but in fact they aren’t!

 

[steph_86]

It’s quite simple: “I think, therefore I am”. Thank you, Descartes.

I read or heard somewhere that it’s more accurate to say: “I am, therefore I think.”

 

[steph_86]

Catholicism would seem to require some sort of Realism (as opposed to, say, Berkeleyan Idealism, which would arguably conflict with the Truth of the Incarnation, or Materialism, which denies the spiritual). There are varieties of realism though.

You’re in good company here (Aristotle & Aquinas), at least philosophically speaking, according to natural reason – without getting into some of the theological points about grace and such. Thomas was an Aristotelian empiricist, as well as a direct realist. He held that we come into direct contact with external things themselves by way of the senses, not that we’re limited to an acquaintance w/representations or mere phenomena-but-no-noumena. And he’d say we don’t have any innate idea of triangularity allowing us to “recollect”; our intellects must first greet a real triangle once it’s been perceived by the senses. Then the “agent intellect” “illuminates and abstracts” the form of triangularity from the materially individuated, whole triangle of which it’s conscious.

P.S.: You might like this approach, from William Wallace’s “River Forest Thomism”.

If I understand your point, realism is the position that the world as apprehended by the senses is real and can be understood by the intellect. If that is the case, how do we prove in the first place that our human senses can apprehend reality as it is. One of the main argument that the empiricists made was that all we can know is our experience of reality. In a sense, it is a form of subjectivism that makes it such that we have a hard having an objective hold on reality.

How do we jump out of our experience and experience reality as it is, with our senses?

 

[steph_86]

Welcome, Steph:

I tend to think that the Church takes a middle stance, someplace between idealism and empiricism. St. Thomas Aquinas was a proponent of tabula rasa, but also believed that God could, and did, infuse such knowledge as would be manifest in our knowledge of the Natural Law, for example. If our minds were indeed blank slates, upon our births, it would be likely that everything we came to know we would have received through our senses. But, that would leave open the question of how our most primitive forbearer’s might have received sufficient moral discrimination to keep from annihilating each other.

Form is soul, and form is species. We notice that the other animals that inhabit this earth, with us, tend to aggregate with their own species. Our souls installed our ancestors’ natures. From human nature, we humans derive Natural Law. Natural Law is not something that animals and humans derived from watching or, merely agreeing. Rather it is something that is more like an internal ‘longing’, or, more precisely, something that is objectively and subjectively ‘known’. It is the desired ‘good’. It must be simultaneously objective and subjective since even from our earliest ancestors’ earliest activities humans knew how they desired to be dealt with, while at the same time, knowing that the same methodologies had to be expanded to their neighbors.

Epistemology does not have to conclude either/or, empiricism or idealism.

God bless,
jd

Isn’t natural law primarily understood by our conscience since it is the series of general precepts by which we understand that we should do good and avoid evil.

 

[levinas12]

We are directly aware of our perceptions but not of what causes those perceptions. No two individuals perceive external objects in precisely the same way. It is not a question of doubting things exist but of knowing them as they really are. For a start they appear to be solid but in fact they aren’t!

Notwithstanding Eddington’s table - which is for physicists is mostly empty space at the atomic level - things are solid enough for the rest of us. We do not “dwell” in the mathematical systems of theoretical physics. We live in the everyday world of practical concerns. In an important philosophical sense, cars, girlfriends, bills to be paid, etc are a more primordial disclosure of being than quarks, strings, quantum fluctuations, multiverses, etc. And “interested” perception (as opposed to "disinterested’) is the door to the everyday world. True, no two individuals perceive external objects in the same way – but I would add: they perceive the same object, e.g., we all get on the same bus.

 

[Touchstone]

Notwithstanding Eddington’s table - which is for physicists is mostly empty space at the atomic level - things are solid enough for the rest of us. We do not “dwell” in the mathematical systems of theoretical physics. We live in the everyday world of practical concerns. In an important philosophical sense, cars, girlfriends, bills to be paid, etc are a more primordial disclosure of being than quarks, strings, quantum fluctuations, multiverses, etc. And “interested” perception (as opposed to "disinterested’) is the door to the everyday world. True, no two individuals perceive external objects in the same way – but I would add: they perceive the same object, e.g., we all get on the same bus.

This is good commentary you’ve contributed in this thread. I’m interested read what you write.

Your point on the practical “solidity” is well taken. I’m one here who regularly points out that fundamentally, technically, things aren’t as the seem “all the way down”, a rock is “practically solid” as ever. I will duck if you wing one my way, in other words, and know it will sting-like-solid if I’m hit. It is perfectly solid in that sense.

But an equivocation happens in a subtle way when we operated “day to day”, and then use that casual and practical model as the basis for overarching metaphysics. It’s one thing to duck because the rock coming my way is “solid enough”. It’s quite another to promote a metaphysic predicated on the “fundamental solidity of objects”. One has conflated “practical understanding” with “fundamental principles” in that case.

Moreover, I agree with your comments to tonyrey but suggest they don’t go far enough. Not only are you and I and tonyrey perceiving the same baseball in your hand, but we are perceiving it in the same way. We may think about our percepts in diverging ways, but we perceive them in just the same way – the wavelengths of light are unified, rods and cones in your eyes are the same rods and cones I have in my eyes, our neurons fire and establish light and movement signaling with the same machinery. If that’s not the case, I wonder where the divergence is? How is your percept of the baseball different than mine? My angle of view is different from you, standing beside you, but the physics are unified, the wiring is the same. We can even light up fMRI and other passive instrumentation to show the same areas firing in our brains in the same percept-consuming way.

I get the idea (here) that some hold that “blue” is really “red” for some people, and that wavelenghts and frequencies and response curves etc. are… I dunno, magic?

-TS

 

[levinas12]

We may think about our percepts in diverging ways, but we perceive them in just the same way – the wavelengths of light are unified, rods and cones in your eyes are the same rods and cones I have in my eyes, our neurons fire and establish light and movement signaling with the same machinery. If that’s not the case, I wonder where the divergence is? How is your percept of the baseball different than mine? My angle of view is different from you, standing beside you, but the physics are unified, the wiring is the same. We can even light up fMRI and other passive instrumentation to show the same areas firing in our brains in the same percept-consuming way.

-TS

Rods and cones and neurons and light waves are all out there in the world just like cars, girlfriends, bills to be paid, apples and oranges. Embodied consciousness is also “out there” but not in the same way as things. Consciousness is not a thing. It is an activity of disclosure. But disclosure is not a material activity like electromagnetic waves; it is a “truthing” activity. There is a mysterious connection between areas firing in our brain and consciousness. But to reduce consciousness to neuronal activity leaves out the dimension of disclosure.

As embodied, consciousness is situated; my consciousness is here, your consciousness is over there. Hence perceptual perspectives. But, again, we all get on the same bus.

 

[levinas12]

I
How do we jump out of our experience and experience reality as it is, with our senses?

But we don’t have to jump. The sense of our experience is that we are always already out there in the world doing things with others. We do not start off perceiving a secret mental entity locked in a private cabinet sealed off from external reality. So we don’t have to bridge a gap in order to get to the external world. We’re already there from git-go.