The Theory of Knowledge

[steph_86]

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.

I understand that. But how then do we prove it through reason? Is it a first principle, an assumption that has to be made regarding our experience of reality? In fact, how do we establish the fact that we can understand the world using our reason? Is this also a first principle?

I have a lot of questions on my mind. For the most part, I do not doubt any of things that our Catholic tradition teaches. I am just trying to justify it using reasons and find what are the grounds of our most important philosophical assumptions.

 

[tonyrey]

We are directly aware of our perceptions

That is not the issue at stake. We don’t know things as they really are. How can we when everything we know about them is inferred?

David Hume was right in thinking that we cannot apprehend **physical reality **in itself. Yet he was mistaken in his view that **we **don’t exist! All our knowledge of things is based on our sense data (located not in the external world but in our mind). He was a phenomenalist, rejecting the idea of substance and the self - which implies that thoughts occur without a thinker and perceptions occur without a perceiver!

Very few people today accept that conclusion. The battlefield is now occupied by
materialists and dualists, i.e. those who believe matter is the primary reality and those who recognise the reality of both mind and matter. My point is that - like charity - knowledge begins at home, not in particles which lack insight but in persons who are conscious of themselves and the world. To put matter before mind is to put the cart before the horse - or, more precisely, the machine before its operator.

 

[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.

Logical and mathematical facts exist even if no one is aware of them. Before man existed if two rocks rolled down a mountain and stopped next to another rock there were three in close proximity. Similarly, the principle of contradiction also existed:
There were three rocks** or** there were not…

 

[JDaniel]

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.

Steph:

Actually, St. Thomas says, “The precepts of the natural law are to the practical reason what the first principles of demonstration are to the speculative reason, because both are self-evident principles…” - Summa Theologica, I - II, q. 94 a. 2. He goes on to say that the first principle of the natural law is from apprehending the nature of good. He defines “good” as that which all things seek after. We derive from the apprehension of what is the good, that good is to be done and evil avoided. So, it really falls under the auspices of knowledge.

God bless,
jd

 

[levinas12]

We don’t know things as they really are. How can we when everything we know about them is inferred?

Our ordinary take is that we perceive the apple as “out there” and “out there” as an apple. What’s wrong with that? I guess you question whether the apple is the thing in itself - well, why not? Why is it necessary to accept the distinction between phenomenon and noumenon? Why multiply entities (Occam?) Maybe things show themselves to us in our everyday life (i.e., “interested” perception) as they really are? Maybe Hume had an inkling of this himself when he said, at the end of his long intricate account of private free floating impressions, he was bewildered and had to return to the everyday world of backgammon.

 

[Betterave]

In fact, how do we establish the fact that we can understand the world using our reason? Is this also a first principle?

Your question seems to assume two givens: “the world” and “our reason,” and it assumes these without determining the basic nature of either one. Now we might want to ask what each of those refers to, and in what manner, or with what right, we do/can take these two ‘things’ as givens (which somehow or other are certainly related to each other).

 

[tonyrey]

We don’t know things as they really are. How can we when everything we know about them is inferred?

The question is not why multiply entities but why reject them! To believe there are no things or persons but only “free floating impressions” is to dispense with the sole basis for rational activity. How on earth could they arrive at any conclusions, reasonable or otherwise?

Things show themselves to us in our everyday life (i.e., “interested” perception) as they really are? Maybe Hume had an inkling of this himself when he said, at the end of his long intricate account of private free floating impressions, he was bewildered and had to return to the everyday world of backgammon.

I have pointed out that it is impossible for us to know things as they really are - unless we can bridge the gap between the stimuli received by our senses and the causes of those stimuli. The only way we can distinguish between physical reality and dreams or hallucinations is by the consistency and regularity of the stimuli - not by any “inside knowledge” of the outside world. The truth is not always palatable but it is an indisputable fact that we are all without exception in an egocentric predicament. You have to be out of your mind if you want to get out of your mind!

Hume was a great thinker but his scepticism was self-destructive> He was bewildered because his phenomenalism is unsustainable.

 

[levinas12]

The question is not why multiply entities but why reject them! To believe there are no things or persons but only “free floating impressions” is to dispense with the sole basis for rational activity. How on earth could they arrive at any conclusions, reasonable or otherwise?I

I agree totally that Humean private free floating impressions are unsustainable.

I’m not sure about your point about rejecting entities. I’m only arguing against the distinction of phenomenon and noumenon - there is no noumenon - the apple is as it appears to be - there is no noumenon behind the apple.

Our original sense of being involved in an external world is not derived from a consistency check of sense stimuli - we are always and already “out there” from the start - without feeling a need to make any inferences or consistency checks - the carpenter just keeps hammering away at the nails without the slightest concern about their reality. If we’re not out there from the start, then there is no way of getting there later. Because we won’t know the that there is a “there” to get to - where does the idea of a “there” come from unless we are already “there”.

 

[levinas12]

I have pointed out that it is impossible for us to know things as they really are - unless we can bridge the gap between the stimuli received by our senses and the causes of those stimuli.

Are the sense stimuli physical or mental? If they are physical, then how do we get to them unless perception discloses them immediately as they really are (just like the apples) … like the apples, sense stimuli would part of the furniture of the external world … If sense stimuli are mental, then we would get involved in a vicious infinite regress … there would be sense stimuli of sense stimuli.

Now if sense stimuli are mental, then we end up where we began with the apples … both the sense stimuli and the apples would have the same status … and we could never escape to the outside world.

The real question is where we got the sense of “outside” and “inside” … unless we are in some sense and from the first instant already “outside” - in fact, maybe there is no “inside” to begin with. It’s all a verbal knot (Wittgenstein) that, when pulled, turns out not to be a knot at all (rhyme not intended) …

 

[levinas12]

I understand that. But how then do we prove it through reason? Is it a first principle, an assumption that has to be made regarding our experience of reality? In fact, how do we establish the fact that we can understand the world using our reason? Is this also a first principle?

I have a lot of questions on my mind. For the most part, I do not doubt any of things that our Catholic tradition teaches. I am just trying to justify it using reasons and find what are the grounds of our most important philosophical assumptions.

We start from our daily activities in the world … and our initial sense that things and people are really out there … there is no need to prove the existence of an external world … what would motivate us to feel that it was necessary to provide such a proof? … in fact, it is misleading to say “out there” as if there is also some private “inside” dimension … all that metaphysics does is describe explicitly what is implicitly known in our everyday understanding - metaphysics does not add new information about new and unusual entities other than those that we already encounter on a daily basis. Quarks, strings, electrons, protons, neutrons et al are constructions which are parasitical on our everyday sense of ordinary things - the everyday disclosure is more primordial.

 

[tonyrey]

I agree totally that Humean private free floating impressions are unsustainable.

I’m not sure about your point about rejecting entities. I’m only arguing against the distinction of phenomenon and noumenon - there is no noumenon - the apple is as it appears to be - there is no noumenon behind the apple.

As it appears to whom? No two individuals perceive an apple in precisely the same way. In his famous paper"Two Dogmas of Empiricism" W.V. Quine pointed out that all entities are mental constructs. We don’'t perceive objects but the qualities of objects.

Our original sense of being involved in an external world is not derived from a consistency check of sense stimuli - we are always and already “out there” from the start - without feeling a need to make any inferences or consistency checks - the carpenter just keeps hammering away at the nails without the slightest concern about their reality. If we’re not out there from the start, then there is no way of getting there later. Because we won’t know the that there is a “there” to get to - where does the idea of a “there” come from unless we are already “there”.

How can we possibly be “out there”? How can we get beyond the stimuli received by our eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin? We don’t usually need to make inferences or consistency checks consciously because we have learned to interpret our perceptions since we were babies. Not only are we never “out there” from the start but we never get “out there”. All we perceive as babies and throughout our lives are colours, shapes, sounds, smells, tastes and sensations - nothing more than that. There is no magical method of knowing an apple apart from its qualities. It is a concept based on messages but the reality to which it refers is forever inaccessible.

 

[levinas12]

All we perceive as babies and throughout our lives are colours, shapes, sounds, smells, tastes and sensations - nothing more than that.

The question is what are we aware of - we are never just aware of qualities without also being aware of the things the qualities are “attached to” … I am aware of the red apple, not just “red” … I am aware of the noise of the motorcycle, not just “blat-blat” … In Aristotelian terms, qualities are the accidents of substances … can’t have one without the other … there’s an interesting discussion of this in Heidegger’s Being and Time … I’ll be glad to give you the page number …I would do it now but this system keeps timing me out

 

[levinas12]

.

How can we possibly be “out there”? How can we get beyond the stimuli received by our eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin?

So “eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin” are out there. So why not the apple, along with the cars, girlfriends, bills to be paid, etc? And what about the sense stimuli? Aren’t they out there? And who is being stimulated by the sense stimuli - the ego in the egocentric predicament - but if the sense stimuli are out there, isn’t the ego out there as well or how else can it be stimulated? But how do we even know about sensation? Where did that idea come from? Also, I think it is convenient that the consistency check is removed so far to the distant past that we have no memory of doing it. And what about the argument that a self-conscious consistency check is continuously required to deal with the ongoing welter of sensations? How do we stabilize the booming and the buzzing in the present moment?

N.B. the Heidegger cite (for the noise of the motorcycle, etc) is p. 207 of the English translation of Being and Time (Macquarrie and Robinson).

 

[tonyrey]

How can we possibly be “out there”? How can we get beyond the stimuli received by our eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin?

They are obviously** not** in the mind!

And what about the sense stimuli? Aren’t they out there?

The stimuli are communicated to the brain (a material object) where they are interpreted by the mind (an intangible entity). If you deny the existence of the mind how do you explain intangibles such as truth, beauty, goodness, justice, beauty, ideas, principles, emotions, decisions…?

And who is being stimulated by the sense stimuli - the ego in the egocentric predicament - but if the sense stimuli are out there, isn’t the ego out there as well or how else can it be stimulated?

If you think the “ego” is out there where precisely is it? Your questions assume that only material objects exist - which disposes of the ego for once and for all because a person is not a tangible entity.

But how do we even know about sensation? Where did that idea come from? Also, I think it is convenient that the consistency check is removed so far to the distant past that we have no memory of doing it. And what about the argument that a self-conscious consistency check is continuously required to deal with the ongoing welter of sensations? How do we stabilize the booming and the buzzing in the present moment?

You are overlooking and/or underestimating the force of habit - which is evident in our unconscious use of perspective in our interpretation of three-dimensional objects and their relative positions and distances.

 

[tonyrey]

The question is what are we aware of - we are never just aware of qualities without also being aware of the things the qualities are “attached to” … I am aware of the red apple, not just “red” … I am aware of the noise of the motorcycle, not just “blat-blat” … In Aristotelian terms, qualities are the accidents of substances … can’t have one without the other … there’s an interesting discussion of this in Heidegger’s Being and Time … I’ll be glad to give you the page number …I would do it now but this system keeps timing me out

I have pointed out that things are mental constructs we cannot and do not perceive. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist but they are forever inaccessible to us except through their qualities.

The alternative is to believe a thing is its qualities!

 

[In_Spiration]

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?

Briefly:

Sense perception integrates sensations into a unified experience, such that the intellect is presented with all the sense data of a given thing that the senses receive.

The agent intellect “shines” its natural light upon this perception (illumination), and then abstracts the form from the thing perceived – which is “in” the perception via sense data. The thing’s abstracted form is impressed upon the possible intellect, creating the intentional existence of the thing within the actual intellect. From here, the intellect can gather new sense data about the thing, new forms, from which it can derive the “essence” of the thing, etc.

Basically, the intellect “divides” (i.e., sees two, reflects) the real thing, thus making the new “ideal” thing, all without changing/destroying the original reality. The form of the thing is what is common to both reality and intentionality (i.e., the “inner world of the mind”); they only differ by their respective modes of existence. The real thing has real matter and exists causally, independently, etc.; the intentional thing only has a sort of causally inert, mind-dependent “intellectual matter” (at best, or perhaps the “new matter” of the intention inheres in/consists of brain matter?). The possible intellect would be analogous to primary matter in that it’s inconceivable on its own w/out any form, as close to nothingness as you can get. The agent intellect actualizes the possible intellect by giving it form “from outside” (like man’s version of creation – letting there be light, making “new” forms, etc. – creatio imago Dei, after all).

So the mind knows reality directly in the sense that it possesses the exact same form that’s in reality. In other words, the “two things” are in fact (formally) one, identical. Same form; different matter. One thing; two modes of being. (‘Thing’ is what exists and, strictly as such, is a potency, viz., the active potency or “substance”.)

Therefore, the things of your subjective world are the same things of the objective world. Of course, the perceiving subject is limited by a fallible nature/perspective and prone to sensory/interpretive errors. Still, the very first intention in the intellect, the “impress species” before further intellection – the illumination prior to abstraction – just is the form in reality.

[Hope that made sense. I get this mostly if not entirely from Aristotle/Aquinas, and I subscribe to it somewhat tentatively, w/details subject to clarification or revision. Note that there’s disagreement on this matter among schools of Thomism too.]

 

[levinas12]

If you deny the existence of the mind how do you explain intangibles such as truth, beauty, goodness, justice, beauty, ideas, principles, emotions, decisions…?

I don’t deny beauty, goodness, justice, etc. I don’t deny the existence of the mind. I’m not a materialist. What I mean by out there is the everyday world we all live in. Not only are rocks out there, but also beauty, goodness, persons - they’re all out there in a very public way. And when you perceive Sally, and I perceive Sally, we all perceive the same Sally. That’s why we can share a common world. And why we can talk about it in a forum.

 

[levinas12]

They are obviously** not** in the mind!

The stimuli are communicated to the brain (a material object) where they are interpreted by the mind (an intangible entity).

You say the brain is a material object. But isn’t the brain also an object of perception (at least for the anatomist or surgeon). If so, doesn’t this make it also a mental construct? And what about the stimuli? They can be perceived (at least in the laboratory). Aren’t the stimuli also mental constructs? Is everything we are aware of mental constructs? But if everything is mental, then how we even know that there is something that is “extramental” - how we do know there is an external world that we all share together in a public way? I don’t think coherence and consistency checks can help out here. I can’t look into your black box, and you can’t look into mine. So, even with consistency checks, we could all still be living in our own private worlds (as in the Matrix)? But that’s not our sense of things. When you see Sally, and I see Sally, we both perceive the same Sally but in different ways (e.g., different spatial perspectives, different memories, etc).

 

[tonyrey]

You say the brain is a material object. But isn’t the brain also an object of perception (at least for the anatomist or surgeon). If so, doesn’t this make it also a mental construct? And what about the stimuli? They can be perceived (at least in the laboratory). Aren’t the stimuli also mental constructs? Is everything we are aware of mental constructs?

Yes - except for the contents of our mind.

But if everything is mental, then how we even know that there is something that is “extramental” - how we do know there is an external world that we all share together in a public way?

We know there is an extramental world because we are constantly receiving stimuli we cannot ignore.

I don’t think coherence and consistency checks can help out here. I can’t look into your black box, and you can’t look into mine. So, even with consistency checks, we could all still be living in our own private worlds (as in the Matrix)?

We could be but there is so much consistency between the stimuli we receive we can predict, plan and act according to the rules we establish. The laws of nature are based on our mental experiences and our interpretation of them, not on an inaccessible realm of material objects.

But that’s not our sense of things. When you see Sally, and I see Sally, we both perceive the same Sally but in different ways (e.g., different spatial perspectives, different memories, etc).

Of course we see the same Sally. I am not denying persons and things exist **independently **of our experience. I am simply explaining Quine’s analysis of the source of our knowledge which I believe is irrefutable. The alternative is to believe we see Sally rather than what she looks, sounds, smells, tastes and feels like! How do you distinguish her from her qualities? Only conceptually.

It may be unpalatable but the fact is that we have direct knowledge only of our interior world. Just as we cannot get into another person’s mind we cannot get into a thing’s substance, essence, call it what you will - that to which its qualities belong. Kant was right in distinguishing between the noumenon and phenomenon as a counterblast to Hume’s “bundles of perceptions”, i.e. phenomenalism.

You seem to equate phenomena with noumena as if they are indistinguishable! Is a thing the sum of its qualities - or something more? It cannot exist without its qualities nor can its qualities exist without the possessor of those qualities. This is even more evident in the case of a person. Are you nothing more than the sum of your qualities? If so which quality enables you to make your decisions?

 

[levinas12]

I am simply explaining Quine’s analysis of the source of our knowledge which I believe is irrefutable.

I need to go and look at the specific analysis from Quine you are referring to. Can you give me a cite here?