Thursday, December 29, 2005

On Truth and the Impossibility of Knowledge

Posted by The Nihilist

In politics especially, there are certain ideas that are held to be true. It is on the basis of these “truths” that positions are fixed in the minds of those who hold them. I offer the following very brief essay on the impossibility of knowledge (of the truth) in an effort to promote a healthy degree of self doubt, especially amongst political dogmatists…

“What is there, then, that can be esteemed true? Perhaps this only, that there is absolutely nothing certain.” — Descartes

In the above quote, Descartes suggests that we cannot know with certainty that anything is true. Of course, for Descartes this is a half hearted gesture aimed at discovering some indissoluble truth upon which he can build an edifice of certainty, i.e., his famous cogito. But as Bertrand Russell has noted, Descartes’s fundamental truth rests on the grammatical convenience of attaching a subject, “I” to the predicate “think”. In fact, using the method of Cartesian doubt, we find that we are able to doubt anything.

Consider the movie Matrix, in which humans are plugged into a “virtual reality” with which they engage without suspecting that it is not “real.” However, while the “virtual world” did not exist in space, did it not truly exist in the minds of those who experienced it. I will return to this question below.

Before we move on, I should explain what I understand by “truth” and “knowledge.” Truth is that which is the case in the world. And knowledge is a perfect, unmediated awareness of a truth. What, then, is it possible to know?

First we must ask how information comes to us. Either we are born with innate ideas, and learning is merely remembering, as Socrates thought, or our minds begin as a tabula rasa, as Locke thought, and we take in information through the senses — or some combination of the two, e.g., Kant.

In order to arrive at certain knowledge about the world we must trust that (A) the innate ideas we are born with are true, and/or (B) our senses are infallible. To believe (A) we would have to believe in a perfect being, viz., god, that we could trust to ensure the truth of our ideas. But “trust” and “belief” violates my definition of knowledge by mitigating between the subject and object. So what of (B)? Anyone who has experienced a hallucination or has dreamt must entertain doubts about the testimony of her senses.

The case for knowledge about the world out there seems hopeless. But what of knowledge about the mental world, the world in here? Descartes believed that the things we perceive clearly and distinctly may be esteemed true. If truth is what is the case in the world, and we admit that a person’s immediate experience is an event in the world, then it appears as though there is something that we can know for certain, viz., what we experience immediately. Even a hallucination or a dream is a real experience, something that is the case in the world, a truth.

But if we examine our claim more closely, I fear that we will find that it falls apart. The problem is time. What is experienced immediately is what is experienced right now. By the time we have processed an experience, it is already a memory, it is mediated, it is not immediate. Thus I conclude that knowledge is impossible. I would note, however, that this does not entail the conclusion that there is no truth — it merely renders the concept of truth irrelevant.

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says:
30 Dec 2005  at  06:59 am | #

Ha!

Yes, but what from there?  How to proceed?!

says:
30 Dec 2005  at  09:11 am | #

If we can learn to let go of truth, per se, I think we have the opportunity for a more fluid discourse between parties with divergent views. If I go into a debate convinced that I am right because of some truth or other, I am unlikely to listen to my opponent who may challenge my truth. I will simply say to myself, ?this person is wrong.? But if I am always open to the possibility that it is me who is wrong, and my opponent likewise, then we can each benefit from an exchange of ideas. Our basic beliefs may or may not fundamentally change, but we may each develop a broader and more nuanced understanding of the issue at hand. This I think should be the goal of any debate.

says:
30 Dec 2005  at  10:12 am | #

I understand that sentiment, and I even try to employ it in my personal life.  But how, I wonder, can someone really pursue a discussion if she really believed the truth is impossible. 

But then perhaps that is the rub—it is just a belief after all, right?

says:
30 Dec 2005  at  10:54 am | #

"There are many truths, consequently there is no truth.” ? Nietzsche

One who is wise is not one who possesses truth, but one who is open to many truths. This, however, does not mean that any opinion is as good as any other. Some ideas are ill informed, incoherent, and baseless.

says:
31 Dec 2005  at  03:21 am | #

Yes… but rather like in the Wittgenstein piece you shared with me in our off-line lives, there is an irony in what we are saying:

“Some ideas are ill informed, incoherent, and baseless.”

Can we know this?  Or are you now arguing for a philosophy of ethics?

says:
31 Dec 2005  at  03:21 am | #

BTW:

If so, how do you answer Wittgenstein in so doing?

says:
31 Dec 2005  at  10:24 am | #

Wittgenstein says somewhere in the Tractatus that logic must look after itself. That is to say that there is nothing outside of logic to which we can appeal for the validity of logic itself. I agree that it is not impossible that logic does not share a form in common with the real world, though it certainly seems to. But if this is the case we are hopelessly lost — and maybe we are. Since, however, logic “shows” that it has a form in common with the world, and if this were mere illusion and our logic shares nothing in common with the real world we certainly could not speak of it, then we must evaluate arguments in terms of their logical validity. Now, any well formed logical proposition may either be the case or not, and therefore we can never know truly what is the case, but logic can help us to discover what is nonsense.

Now it occurs to me that I have made certain claims above, and you might say, “how do you know that (e.g.) any well formed logical proposition may either be the case or not?” I answer that we can “know” “truths” about logic and math, and any other conceptual construction with well defined terms, but we cannot know that these have anything to do with the real world. They are simply true or not insofar as they conform or not to our definitions.

We must take a leap of faith. But this is a leap that would (it seems to me) be impossible not to make. For example, we know that, in arithmetic, 2+2=4. But maybe in the real world 2+2=17. We have good reason to believe that 2+2=4 in the real world because that is what the real world shows us, and we have no reason to believe that 2+2=17 in the real world. But if the real world were such that 2+2=17, but shows us that 2=2+4, then it may just as well be the case that 2+2 equals 17, or 133, or 0, or -15, and we would have no way to evaluate the case. We cannot function in such a reality. We must live in the world of appearances, which also happens to be a world of much ambiguity.

says:
01 Jan 2006  at  09:53 am | #

I need the packet you gave me to form a response, but I’m letting The Curmudgeon borrow it.  Something about the ending makes me think you are neglecting something…

says:
01 Jan 2006  at  04:39 pm | #

In Genesis, God made a deep sleep fall over Adam and no where does it ever say he woke him up. As he slept he had a dream which we share today. In that dream state man obtained the knowledge of good and evil and began to make judgements about reality. With this knowledge the mind of man became split (knowing good and evil). Being unable to see the future man failed to see the outcome of his decisions and became confused. His mind used most of the power given to it opposing itself. Like the devil on one shoulder and the angel on the other man continues to have a dialog with himself. His energy is spent by opposing forces within his mind.

Belief has nothing to do with truth. 100 years ago man believed he could not fly. He couldn’t until he discovered how and everybody began to believe differently. We exist in time so we can have time to work things out. To think is to create and the delay between our thoughts and their manifestation is a blessing for the conflicted mind.

The clearest example of the power of thought comes to us from JFK. in 1961 he said, with conviction, during this decade we will put a man on the moon. He died in 1963 and his vision lived on in the hearts and minds of his people. On July 20,1969 man stepped on the surface of the moon for the first time. Collective thought is the most powerful force on the planet and if we want to change we must change our minds.

says:
02 Jan 2006  at  06:19 am | #

Sounds like morphogenetic field theory to me.

says:
02 Jan 2006  at  09:37 am | #

Dean, you may read the Tractatus online (or download it) here:

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/5740

I await your critique.

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