Epistemology:

But all these really refer to importantly different “ways of knowing” or “kinds” of knowledge. In Western philosophy, we have concentrated mostly of “propositional” knowledge. By the way, a “propositional belief” is a “that” belief: I believe that… The “proposition” is what comes after the “that.” (e.g. that the Earth revolves around the sun, that Tuesday comes after Monday; that square root of four is two).

So much emphasis on propositional knowledge has lead to the impression that all knowledge is propositional and that anything worth knowing can be expressed in propositions. (Those “that” phrases I was talking about.) I think this is problem[9], and this is one of the things we’ll talking about throughout the semester.

Traditional Account of Knowledge

Plato argues that knowledge is best understood as “true, justified belief.” That is, to say that Jose knows that Mary is guilty of cheating on her quiz is to say:

Jose believes that Mary is guilty.

It is true that Mary is guilty.

Jose has a good reason (justification) for his belief that Mary is guilty.

Kn= TJB.

This is referred to that the “Traditional Account of Knowledge.” As I say, this has been widely accepted as THE correct understanding of knowledge for the better part of Western history. More recently it has been challenged and we will be looking both at the traditional account of knowledge and its challenges throughout the semester. Today, however, I want to concentrate on how the traditional understanding of knowledge along with empiricist models of mind have come to influence contemporary popular conceptions of what can and what cannot count as knowledge. In the second half of my lecture today I will be looking at Active Theories of perception and some of its consequences for knowledge, truth and justification.

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave:

Key to understanding Platonic thought is the distinction between appearance and reality. Not everything that appears to be true is true, not everything that appears to be good is good and for Plato, it even followed that not everything that appears to be beautiful is beautiful. If this is so, then the role of philosophy is to help us the distinguish between the truth and mere appearance of truth, goodness and the mere appearance of goodness, and beauty and the mere appearance of beauty. Epistemology is the branch of philosophy which addresses the first of these, while Ethics and Aesthetics deal with the second and third of these.

Rationalism and Empiricism

So how do we acquire knowledge? How do we avoid deception and error? Plato suggested that the senses are deceptive, and that the most reliable knowledge came from reason and introspection. He can point to the reliability of math and geometry to prove his point. Note that mathematical truths can be known with absolute certainty. We do not need to update calculus textbooks nearly as often as we need to update physics and biology texts. This confidence in reason and distrust of the sensory is characteristic of one of the two great traditions in Western epistemology: Rationalism.

But Plato’s best student and best critic was the philosopher Aristotle. In contrast to Plato, Aristotle held that the best way to come to know objective truth, indeed the ONLY way to come to know objective truth, is via sensory experience. This is the second of the two great traditions: Empiricism.

These two viewpoints battled against one another for the next 2000 years. Historically the was St. Augustine, who was a rationalist, and, in contrast, St. Thomas Aquinas, an empiricist.

Early Modern Philosophers[10]

Continental Rationalists:

British Empiricists:

• René Descartes

French- 1596-1650

• Baruch Spinoza

Portuguese/Dutch 1632-1677

• Gottfried Leibniz

German- 1646-1716

• John Locke

English 1632-1704

• George Berkeley

Irish 1685-1753

• David Hume

Scottish 1711-1776

Over time Empiricism came to dominate philosophy in the United Kingdom, and eventually the United States. It is this tradition, I contend, that has had the greatest influence on contemporary popular thinking about knowledge, truth and justification in the United States. There are several features of this view that I would like to highlight and ask you to examine. The first of these is the nature of perception.

John Locke and the Causal Theory of Perception

John Lock (1632 -1704) was one of the three “British Empiricists” of the Enlightenment period.[11] As am Empiricist, Locke was committed to the idea that there were no such things as “innate ideas” and that the best, indeed the only way, to come to know objective truth was via sensory experience.

· The only way to come to know the world is through sensory experience.

· Agrees with St. Thomas Aquinas- that, “Nothing is in the mind without first having been in the senses.”[12]

· Locke claims that we start life with a blank slate, "tabula rasa[13]."

Further, Locke rejects the “direct realism” or “naïve realism” of pre-Modern philosophy. Rather than contend that we directly grasp reality in perception, Locke, like Descartes, claims we grasp only our mental representations of reality. We get the “video feed,” but do not see the world outside directly. The question then becomes” How can we go from knowledge of our perceptions (the video feed) to knowledge of extra-mental reality (the world outside)?

· Points out that there is the

(1) world and

(2) there are ideas about the world.

· This places critical importance on determining: What is the connection between reality and our minds?

The Problem of Perception and the External World

Whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities.

------Bertrand Russell, Problems of Philosophy

These skeptical worries enter Western Philosophy with a vengeance with Descartes et alia.

· Are things as they seem?

· Are there objects independent of me?

· Are there other minds?

· And even if there are…

· …how could I ever know any of these things?

Direct (“Naïve”) Realism: Physical objects are directly (“immediately”) perceived. We don’t need to justify an inference from sensory experience to physical reality because physical objects are the objects of sensory experience.

Representational Ralism (indirect realism): The immediate objects of experience represent the physical objects which cause them.

Sense Data Theories: The objects of immediate experience are sense data—private, non-physical entities, “ideas.”

Phenomenalism: Physical objects are reducible to the occurrence of the immediate objects of experience,

Scholasticism embraces a direct realism while modern philosophy largely rejects it. But with representational realism immediately comes skepticism about the “External World.”

How then to avoid skepticism: give good reason for our commonsense belief that there is an “external world? We must then explain the relation between our experience and “physical objects.”

Phenomenalism for instance, suggests that what we call “physical objects” are “logical constructions” out of sense-data—”permanent possibilities of sensation” (Mill). We must also explain the relation between our sense data and us—and other people’s sense data and them. Neutral Monism suggest that physical objects and “selves” (minds) are constructed out of the same (“neutral”) items, but in different ways.

To this end, Locke offers his “Causal Theory of Perception.”

Causal Theory of Perception ‑ the world interacts with out perceiving organs and causes our ideas in our minds; Locke’s use of the word “idea” is very broadly- nearly any mental item can count as an idea, a concept, a memory or even a simple sensation such as “salty taste.”

So then, the world causes our ideas about (perceptions of) it.

Note: our ideas about reality are different from reality itself; ideas are mental but reality is extra mental.

It is therefore crucial to examine the connection between the two: perceptions and extra-mental reality in detail. What is the relationship between our ideas and the world? How does the one give us knowledge about the other? His concerns are not really that different from those of Rene Descartes here; however, Locke’s resolution is radically different. Unlike Descartes, who sought absolute, indubitable certainty (justification must be apodictic) , Locke was after something more modest: probability/ plausibility. Like good scientists today, he was not looking for beliefs that could be proven true beyond a shadow of a doubt. Rather he is content to call knowledge those things we can demonstrate true beyond a reasonable doubt.

Our Mental Ideas and the Extra-mental Reality: Some Important Distinctions

Simple and Complex Ideas:

Our “ideas” come in two varieties according to Locke:

Simple ideas are ideas that cannot be broken down into any component parts. For example, the idea of “white” is simple. I cannot explain “white” to you; I can only show examples of white and hope you get it. Simple ideas arise from simple sensations.

Complex ideas are ideas that can be broken down into component parts. For example, the idea of (perception of) a unicorn. I can explain the idea of an unicorn to you. To explain a unicorn all one must do is take the ideas of a horse, white, and a horn and combine them in a certain way. The “idea” of an apple (i.e. one’s perception or experience of an apple) might include the simple ideas of red, round, sweet, solid, etc.[14]

Primary and Secondary Properties:

Our experience of objects reveals two kind of properties: Primary Properties and Secondary Properties.

Primary Properties

· Genuine properties of objective, extra-mental reality.

· These are the qualities of the object independent of who or whether anyone is perceiving the object. Thus these are independent of perception.

These intrinsic features, those it really has, including the "Bulk, Figure, Texture, and Motion" of its parts. (Essay II viii 9) Since these features are inseparable from the thing even when it is divided into parts too small for us to perceive, the primary qualities are independent of our perception of them. When we do perceive the primary qualities of larger objects, Locke believed, our ideas exactly resemble the qualities as they are in things.

Secondary Properties

· Properties of our peculiar experience of reality, that is, of our perception.

· They are NOT properties of the object at all.

· These properties only occur in the mind of the perceiver and only at the moment of the perception. They endure only as long as the perception endures. Thus these are perception dependent.

These are qualities not in the thing itself, but rather the powers it has to produce in us the ideas of "Colors, Sounds, Smells, Tastes, etc." (Essay II viii 10) In these cases, our ideas do not resemble their causes. Indeed, the actual causes are in nothing other than the primary qualities of the insensible parts of things.

Two ways to tell the Difference Between Primary and Secondary Properties:

1. To change a primary quality of the object you have actually have to change the object itself, but to change a secondary property one need only change the conditions of perception.

2. Primary properties can be experienced by more than on sense, but secondary properties can be experienced by one sense alone.

Consider the idea (perception) of an apple:

It is a complex idea composed of, among other simple ideas, the ideas red, round, sweet, and solid.

According to the criteria Locke provides, which of the apple’s perceived properties are primary (really “in” the apple, and which are secondary (perception dependent, having no reality apart from perception)?

· Red is secondary- (I would no longer see red if I were to change the lighting or I stared at a bright green poster board. Also I have access to the color of things through only one sense: vision.)

· Round is primary- (I would have to cut or smash the apple to change its shape. Also, I have both visual and tactile access to the shape according to Locke.)

· Sweet- secondary.

· Solid- primary.

Locke’s View in Sum and Implications:

Thus, for Locke, we gain knowledge of the objective world via the simple and complex ideas caused in us by the objects and they inform us of the primary properties of the object as well as provide us with the secondary properties given to us in experience. But this means that we must be careful about distinguishing primary and secondary when making claims about reality. There is no point is arguing about whether an object has a secondary property or not, or to what degree. Notice there is no point to us arguing about whether the soup is “too salty” or not since the very same soup may cause in me a “too salty” secondary property, but in you cause a “not salty enough” secondary property. Salty taste is a perception dependent, secondary property. Further, it might not even cause that sensation in me the next time I taste it if, for instance, I drink something even saltier than the soup in the meantime. [15] As such is it not the proper subject for serous or scientific discussions. [16]

Since secondary properties are not actually properties of objects, but rather merely properties of the perception of objects, they are not fixed nor stable. If we had evolved differently, say as sentient vegetation, “salty taste” would not happen at all. Had we all evolved like snakes, “sound” wouldn’t happen at all. Though sound waves would continue to be just as they are. Therefore, serious inquiry (science) should confine itself to primary properties.[17]

Note: This view of knowledge suggests that what can be known of objective facts and perhaps math. But if you are not talking about these matters, you are not in the business of saying anything true or false. Everything else is relegated to “matters of opinion.” More on this later.

What are the primary properties properties of?

Locke realized that there must be some “ground” for these properties. That is, the primary properties must be property of something. Properties cannot exist on their own. (i.e. What is solif and round?”) So his answer is that primary properties (these extra-mental, non-perception-dependent properties), were properties of “Physical Substance.”

Physical Substance: (Stuff) – but we can know very little about physical substance as such since we never directly perceive it. We only perceive our perceptions and they are merely properties of substance, not the substance itself.

Locke uses and old metaphysical notion of substance: that of which one predicates. Nevertheless, since we do not directly perceive physical substance, there really isn’t much more that we can know about it. Locke says of physical substance that it is “something that I know not what.”

Therefore: Our ideas are caused by the physical substance; all ideas are mediated by your senses; what causes the ideas is the physical substance that never directly have contact with. While our mental experience is rich with both primary and secondary qualities, the objective world can only be said to possess the primary properties. Secondary properties would name subjective experiences only, not the stuff of serious scientific inquiry or discourse pertaining to objective truth.

Locke’s Causal Theory of Perception

You have an object (say an apple) and it interacts with our perceiving organs (say our eye) and causes in us the perception of an apple.

While the perception has the secondary properties of red and sweet as well as the primary properties of round and solid, the actual apple has only the primary properties of round and solid.

Note then that we see with Locke the beginning of a delineation of the domain of meaningful, legitimate inquiry and dispute. We see that knowledge is best regarded as propositional disputes regarding the primary qualities of physical substance. All else is dubious and probably not something about which we can meaningfully dispute or argue. Shortly after Locke we see Hume explicitly stating as much:

"When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of act and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: For it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion." [18]

Logical Positivism

Logical Positivism followed the linguistic turn[19] in philosophy. Once it was realized that truth is a relation which holds between sentences and the world, many traditional questions of philosophy were recast into questions about the relations between our language and our experience of reality. Logical Positivism marks a development in this historical moment of Philosophy.

See: (http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/6q.htm)

Linguistic Tasks:

There are many uses of language, that is, we achieve all sort of ends with language:. (e.g. Assertions, Commands, Questions, Interjections, Poetry Recitations, etc.) If we accept the "Traditional Account of Knowledge" which claims that “knowledge” equals “true, justified propositional belief,” the only sort of sentences that express knowledge claims must be assertions.

Traditional Account of Knowledge: "knowledge” equals “true, justified propositional belief (Kn=TJB)

Assertions: The sort of sentence that has a truth value. Only this sort of sentence is meaningful according to positivism because only this sort of sentence actually informs us (conveys information).

These are to be distinguished from Pseudo-assertions.

Pseudo-assertions: The sort of sentence that may appear meaningful at first but in fact is not. It does not have a truth value and does not provide us with information.

Keep in mind that when we speak of a sentence having a “truth-value” we do not mean that the sentence IS true, but only that it is either true or false- has one of the two possible truth values.[20] What the Logical Positivists point out is that, before wasting a lot of time arguing about whether a given sentence is true or false, we should first make sure that it is an assertions; that is, we should first make sure that it is even the kind of sentence than could be true or false.

Assertions usually take the form of declarative sentences (i.e. sentences having a certain grammatical structure –subject- verb- predicate), but not all declarative sentences are assertions.

Consider for example:

“In the swirling vortex of love, a candle burns.”

This IS a declarative sentence.

____Candle │burns ________

\ a \in

Vortex_____

\the \of \swirling

love

This is NOT an assertion. (To check, ask yourself, “Is it true? Does there indeed burn a candle in the swirling vortex of love?- Or is it false? Has the candle in the swirling vortex of love gone out? Is there a light bulb there now? A neon sign instead perhaps? Perhaps a more environmentally friendly LED?)

I doubt anyone would be willing to say that this sentence is true or false. Rather, they would say that it is neither true nor false. Thus it is NOT an assertion. It neither informs nor misinforms. It lacks either “true value,” instead having none.

But note: the sentence

“In the room next-door a candle burns.”

This IS an assertion.

What’s the difference? Not the grammar. The grammar is identical to the first sentence. Both are declarative sentences with a subject and predicate.

____Candle │burns ________

\ a \in

room_____

\the \next-door

Further, consider these:

Kwai gives you all the goodness of garlic.

This product was scientifically formulated to help you manage your hair-loss situation.

History is the unfolding of consciousness to itself and for itself where the Absolute presents itself as an object and returns to itself as thought.

We did a nationwide taste test and you know what? Papa John’s won big time!

It is our destiny to rule the world.

With our Lightspeed Reading Program, you will virtually read 2, 3, 4, even up to 10 times faster.

With Elastizine you’ll see an average of 28% increase in younger looking skin.

Love. It’s what makes a Subaru a Subaru.

How many declarative sentences are contained in the following? How many assertions?

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The one 20^th century philosopher A. J. Ayer actually mentions in his Language, Truth and Logic is:

“The Absolute enters into but is itself incapable or progress or change.”

This was a sentence taken from the philosophical writings of F. H. Bradley. In Ayer’s view, it is a perfect example of nonsense. More problematic, it is nonsense masquerading as “philosophy.” The unwitting take it seriously and even dispute whether it is true or not. What a waste of time!

But how do you tell a genuine assertion when you see one? Not the grammar. So then what?

Criterion of Verification:

The criterion, used by Logical Positivists to determine if a sentence is a meaningful assertion is called the "Criterion of Verification."

Criterion of Verification: "If a sentence is unverifiable, even in principle, then it is meaningless; it is not an assertion; it is neither true or false."

Oxford philosopher A.J. Ayer (1910-1989), is the person probably most responsible for helping to make this movement so widely know. In Ayer’s Language, Truth and Logic he claims that a genuine assertion can be true or false in only one of two ways. Statements or propositions (assertions) may be true or false by definition (analytic or what 18^th Century philosopher David Hume[21] would have called “relations of ideas,”) or they may be true or false as a statement of observable fact (empirical or what Hume would have called “matters of fact and existence”).

For example, the claim “All bachelors are unmarried.” is true by definition. And the claim “Some bachelors are married.” is false by definition. This is because the predicate “unmarried” only restates part of what is meant by the subject term. Since “bachelor means “unmarried male,” to say that a bachelor is married would be logically inconsistent and therefore false.

Notice the truth or falsity of such claims can be known a priori (independent of experience).

A priori: Known or justified independent of experience.

If you came to my office and told me that your friend is in the hallway and that he was a married bachelor, I would not even have to get up from my desk to KNOW that there was no married bachelor friend of yours in the hall. I can know this independent of any particular experience (a priori).

Now suppose you claimed that “All bachelors are unmarried.” and I expressed a doubt about this. I tell you I want you to prove it to me. I suppose you could go door to door and do a survey: Knock, Knock, Knock. Excuse me sir are you a bachelor? You are? I see, but let me ask you now then, are you also an unmarried male?”

But this would be a colossal waste of your time.

For claims like “All bachelors are unmarried.” we need take no poll to verify nor do any sort of experiments, etc.. We need only to know the meaning of the terms involved in order to know whether they state a truth or a falsity. This is why they can be known a priori. This is why Hume called them "Relations of Ideas."

Relation of Ideas: Definitional-a priori, Analytic, A=A, trivial (usually), non-augmentative (usually). Ex: “All vixen are foxes.” But (perhaps) also math and geometry.

Now if you came to my office and told me you brought your pet unicorn to campus and asked me to come out into the hallway to see you pet unicorn, I would be VERY skeptical and maybe think you’re a little crazy. However, I could not know a priori that there was no unicorn in the hallway. That’s because there is nothing about a unicorn that is a logical contradiction. The reason I think that there are no unicorns is based on experiences (We’ve looked and never found one.) so it is always possible that some future experience would undermine this belief. If I really wanted to make sure there was no unicorn out in the hallway I would have to get up from my desk and poke my heard out into the hall. I don’t expect to see anything, but there is the possibility that when I did I’d say, “Damn, would you look at that.”

The claim “All bachelors are unhappy.” on the other hand is not true “by definition.” “Bachelor” does not contain the concept of “Unhappy.” If this sentence is true at all it is true as a matter of fact about the world (and if it is false, it is false as a matter of fact about the world). To discover the actual truth-value (T or F) of the claim we would have to conduct an empirical study. Since the claim “All bachelors are unhappy” and the claim “It is not the case that all bachelors are unhappy.” are both logically consistent, we cannot know which of them is true (accurately states a fact about the world) a priori.

Since the predicate is NOT merely a restatement of the subject concept, but rather a different concept entirely, the sentence is said to be “synthetic.” It weds two distinct ideas. Take for example “All Swans are white.” Swan does not MEAN white bird. We easily imagine a swan with of a different color. So the only way to see whether this synthesis in fact holds is to go and to look. Incidentally, it was widely believed that all swans were white. Then it was discovered empirically that there was a species of black swans. Notice that experience of the world is what grounded the synthetic claim in the first place and it was experience of the world which overturned and disconfirmed that same claim.

Matters of Fact: Empirical, Synthetic, A=B, interesting (usually), augmentative (usually). Ex: “All Swans are white.” Loosely speaking these are scientific claims.

If however, the truth of a sentence can be determined neither from the meaning of the words (a priori) nor by employing the scientific method (empirically) then the sentence fails the criterion of verification. The sentence is devoid of cognitive content and is literally nonsense according to the Positivists. This would be true for such pseudo-assertions as “Kwai gives you all the goodness of garlic.” but also of such claims as “An immaterial soul exists.” or ethical sentences containing such terms as “ought,” “should,” “good,” or “bad.” They are non-sensical and therefore not sentences which impart knowledge.

Consequences for Philosophy (et al.):

Many (all?) the traditional philosophical answers to traditional philosophical questions seem to fail the criterion. For example:

Natural Theology

e.g. “There is a God.”- Not a relation of ideas nor a matter of fact

Turns out to be meaningless on these grounds.

Note: “There is no God.” is equally meaningless on Positivist grounds.

Metaphysics

e.g. “Immaterial objects exist.

Aesthetics

e.g. The Miami City Ballet is a better ballet company than the San Francisco Ballet.

Ethics

e.g. Abortions is wrong. (Or, Abortion is not wrong.)

Specifically, Metaphysical Theories, Theological Theories, Epistemological Theories, Ethical Theories, Aesthetic Theories, seem to consist of sentences that are neither relations of ideas nor matters of fact. Consequently, according to the criterion of verification they are neither true nor false. They are meaningless. It is not clear what, if anything, could count a “Ethical Knowledge” for instance or an “Ethical Truth” on their view. These pseudo-assertions convey no knowledge, but rather at best are a kind of poetic or emotive use of language. The realm of meaningful discourse is very narrowly circumscribed.

Some Positivists claim that the reason for the seeming irresolvable “disagreements” on ethical matters is simply that ethical judgments have no objective validity. Ironically, the Positivist accounts for these ‘disagreements” by, in an importance sense, denying that there really every has been any. Note that a curious consequence of this view is that there are no, nor have there ever been nor can there ever be any real ethical disputes. The Anti-abortion activist who says, “Abortion is wrong!” and the Pro-reproductive rights activist who says, “Abortion is NOT wrong!” don’t really disagree about anything (any fact).

I think this a very narrow view of what constitutes meaningful discourse. This think this is a totally inadequate account of what’s going on in Ethics in particular and Philosophy in general. However, I think a little Positivism is a good thing. I think it a very useful exercise to ask oneself, “What, if anything, could possibly prove that claim true or false?” And if it turns out that the answer is, “Nothing.” then one has good reason to be deeply suspicious of the “claim.”

But my objection to Positivism is not merely the fact that, if correct, it would largely put me out of work. The criterion of verification is self-referentially incoherent. That is, the criterion fails itself. Take the sentence:

“If a sentence is unverifiable, even in principle, then it is meaningless.”

This sentence above is neither a relation of ideas (that is, a true-by-definition-tautology) nor is it a matter of fact (that is, something that can be proven by employing the scientific method). Thus either the criterion is meaningless or false. There is no way that it could be true.

Some positivists suggested that it be read as a recommendation (a mild imperative).

“Regard as meaningless any sentence which is unverifiable.”

But if it is only recommendation, we are free to either accept it of reject it. Given the excessively confining and impractical restrictions the criterion imposes on “meaningful discourse” and inquiry, many (me) have chosen to reject it.

Active Mind

All experience is mediated by active mind. This was not appreciated until relatively recently. (The myth of the “given” and the “innocent eye” still persist today.)

Immanuel Kant and Active Mind

Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804) marks an important development in Philosophy and conceptions of “Mind.” At this point in the history of Western philosophy, two great opposing traditions had come to an impasse of sorts: Rationalism and Empiricism had both seemed inadequate to account for human knowledge. Rationalism seemed unable to account for knowledge of our world of experience. Conversely, Empiricism seemed unable to account for the necessary truths of math and geometry or even the universality of the laws of nature. Taken to their logical extremes, both seemed to end in skepticism (either Descartes’s or Hume’s). Kant’s solution to the impasse was to revision the very nature of knowledge and experience. The mind does not merely receive information in the act of perception; the mind shapes that information and constructs experience out of the raw sense data that the world provides. This is sometimes referred to as Kant’s “Copernican Revolution” in Epistemology. Rather than asking “Is knowledge/ understanding possible?” Kant asks “How is knowledge/ understanding possible?” Rather than asking “How does knowledge impress itself onto mind?” (passive metaphor) Kant asks “How does mind construct knowledge?”

To accurately account for what is going on in perception it is necessary to see human experiences as having different content, but a consistent “form.” If we were to abstract all content from human experience we would arrive at the pure form of experience. Think of it a blank template into which mind pours all sensory information and thus arrives at a coherent experience. Alternatively think of my (very old, MS DOS based) Maillist program that can organize records according to one and only one pattern. No matter what data it receives, it will always organize them in the same fashion. In this case it was: First Name, Last Name, Telephone Number, Street Address. Whether the data are for my mom, my sister, the guy I knew from high school, the form of the record would always be: First Name, Last Name, Telephone Number, Street Address. Even if the cat walked across the keyboard it would be: First Name, Last Name, Telephone Number, Street Address.

Thus I have knowledge of how my 100th record will look (in broad outline) in advance of actually reviewing the 100^th record. That is, I have a priori knowledge of the 100^th record. My knowledge is not grounded in the particular experience of my 100th record, though it is grounded in experience in general. Though I don’t know what the CONTENT of the record is, I know the form because when I am referring to this program’s records, I am referring to products of its organizing function which does not/ cannot change.

Another illustration of what Kant has in mind here can be seen in those “Magic Eye” posters.[22] At one moment they look like flat two dimensional images. The next they look like a three dimensional image. What is different from one moment to the next? Is the poster giving you something different when it looks two dimensional from what it is giving you when it look 3 dimensional? No. What is different is what YOU are doing with the input from the poster, the activity of you mind in perception. But this is just a more noticeable example of what the mind does constantly. The reason you see reality as three-dimensional is NOT because “that’s how the world really is,” but rather because that’s how your mind (and every other normal, healthy human mind) is shaping the sense data. Theoretical physicists might talk of reality in multiple dimensions, but even they don’t perceive it that way. They come to that understanding purely theoretically. Perhaps aliens from outer space perceive reality in more dimensions. Perhaps’ s God perceives it that way. But not humans. Not now, not ever, says Kant. We will always only “image” the world as three dimensional. (And the same thing goes for unidirectional time.)

Kant is very specific about what these forms and categories of experience are, but I’ll only refer to a few for illustration purposes.

Space and Time are the two pure forms of experience according to Kant.

All human experience will/ must conform to 3 dimensional Euclidian Space.

All human experience will/ must conform to unidirectional time. (Past to present to future).

For another example, think of visually ambiguous images, specifically the “Duck/Rabbit.”

This phenomena shows why the old model of passive perception is inadequate for understanding how perception works. For Locke, he thought it was enough to talk about the object, the perceiving organ and the perception. On this view the object “impresses” itself on the mind and the mind is simply the inert passive recipient of the information.

We can complicate this simple model a bit by talking about the object, the organ, the retinal image, and the perception. But again, on this model, the perception is understood as the inevitable product of the retinal image. Mind plays no active role.

But in the case of ambiguous images, the poverty of this view is revealed. In the case of the “Duck/Rabbit” image, I can see a duck or I can see a rabbit, that is I can have the duck-perception or the rabbit-perception and which perception I have cannot be explained in terms of the object, the organ or the retinal image. When I have the duck-perception, the object, the perceiving organ and the retinal image are the same as when I have the rabbit-perception. There must be some other factor that explains the difference in perception, and that factor is the activity of mind. The old Lockeian model of mind simply cannot account for the phenomena.

Opens the door to Radical Relativism:

Kant believed that our (human) empirical knowledge was universal (NOT RELATIVE) because the pure forms of experience and the categories of thought were universal for all humans. Therefore, he was certain that what is true for one human is true for all humans.[23]

BUT....one might object to Kant’s view.

For instance, what if we do NOT all put the world together in basically the same way (e.g. woman according to a female template, men according to a male template)? If “Men are from mars and women are from Venus” then we are not experiencing the same worlds because we are building our worlds, shaping our experience, with the same input, but according to different templates. We are, in a very real sense, living in different worlds, and truth must be relativized to groups of cognizers who possess the same template. Rather than univalent, truth becomes bivalent or, perhaps, multivalent. Truth is potentially as multifaceted as there are minds, and no basis would exist for claiming that any particular worldview was privileged among the plurality.[24]

This realization gave rise to the Post-modernists’ notion that there is no one point of view from which Truth can be determined. Imagine two groups of people, one who could only see the duck and one that could only see the rabbit. Which group is seeing what is “really there” and which group is wrong? Well of course we see in this example that there is no reason to think that either group is privileged here. Further, the only reason we could have to say that one of them has truth and the other has falsehood and is not seeing the world “correctly” would be to advance a political, economic or social agenda.

Epilogue:

We see with Empiricism in general and Locke in particular a focus on propositional knowledge. The substance of this knowledge is confined to empirical claims and logical tautologies. Claims not falling within the categories fall outside the domain of knowledge and, consequently, serious inquiry. However A .J. Ayer’s and the Positivist’s account of knowledge seems too narrowly circumscribed. They, in essence, created a club so exclusive that it wouldn’t let them in.

We also noted that the passive model of perception coming to us from Empiricism is flawed and inadequate to account for human experience and knowledge. The mind is active in perception and our experience of the world is a result of that the world is giving us and what our minds do with this input. The act of perceiving the world is inseparable from the act of interpreting the world. Kant offers this account, in part, to answer the skeptical worries of both Rationalism and Empiricism. But we notes that he inadvertently opens the door to entirely new challenge to those seeking absolute truth and universal knowledge.

Despite the shortcomings of both Positivism and passive models of mind, both remain extremely influential on contemporary popular understanding about the nature and substance of knowledge and truth.

[1] This might be considered “propositional knowledge, but there is a sense in which is it more fundamental then that. Note also that “I know I have a hand.” In the same way that “My dog knows he has a tail.” He does not/ cannot express this propositionally. This is a kind of “somatic knowledge.”

[2] This is a typical case of propositional knowledge.

[3] Note that this is a highly “theory laden” sort of knowledge. What does this “knowledge” amount to? Not very much if you have no command of the theory in which it occurs/ originates.

[4] This is a curious sort of “knowledge” since expresses a fact of our own creation. We created the game of chess and in so doing created rooks. This truth is truth because it is part of a coherent self-contained, coherent system of inter-defined terms.

[5] This is not propositional at all, but experiential. Arguably I can know all the truth propositions about a rose there are without knowing what a rose smells like.

[6] Again, not propositional. Rather this is “know how.”

[7] Knowing where is live might be understood as propositional knowledge. (I know that I live in South Miami.) But when you think about it, there is al lot more involved in this sort of knowledge. Finding my way home requires more them merely knowing a series of propositions for instance.

[8] Arguably this requires knowing what foods I like, who my parent are, brothers and sisters, my values and spiritual commitments, dances I dance, songs that I sing…

[9] Consider, knowing how a molecule bonds or folds requires knowing its shape, But we have only limited access to molecular shape verbally. We have far better cognitive access to this information visually and/or tactically. (3D models of molecules https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ2aY5lxEGE)

[10] “Modern Philosophy dates from the 16^th and 17^th century because this period represents a sharp break with, indeed a rejection of, the classical world views of Plato, Aristotle and Scholastic thought. This same rejection characterizes much of contemporary Western philosophy.

[11] Locke was English. The two others were George Berkley (1685 –1753, Irish) and David Hume (1711 – 1776, Scottish)

[12] Note: The Peripatetic axiom: "Nothing is in the mind without first having been in the senses"

Latin: "Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius in sensu").

It is found in De veritate, q. 2 a. 3 arg. 19. Thomas Aquinas adopted this principle from the Peripatetic school of Greek philosophy, established by Aristotle.

[13] This reference may not be as familiar to you as it is to me. I can recall my grandmother talking about taking her “slate” to school. Children would learn their letters and arithmetic on handheld chalkboards, or “slates.” They were sort of the IPODs of the day and much cheaper than paper. A blank slate is merely a blank chalkboard, blank, but ready to be written upon, receive information. But then again, “chalkboard” too may be a faded cultural reference these day as well. Sigh.

[14] Incidentally this is how Locke explained how it is that we could think of some things that we have never directly perceived and were never in fact ‘in our senses.” We do so by merely recombining the component parts of the ideas of objects that we have directly perceived.

[15] “What about beauty?” one might ask. Is it “in the eye of the beholder?”

[16] Recall that Locke is writing at a time when it was still common for scientists to identify chemicals by taste.

[17] If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it...

[18] David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding Section XII, part 3

[19] Prior to the modern era, Metaphysics was considered the "First" philosophy. That is, when building a comprehensive philosophical worldview or a philosophical system, philosophers thought the first questions to be worried about would be: "What is real?" "What exists?" But with the advent of Rene Descartes Meditations on the First Philosophy he ushers in a new era where the first set of questions philosophical system builders tackle are "How do I know?" "Of what can I be certain?" This is sometimes referred to as the "Epistemological Turn." This, however, was later followed in the 20^th century with the "Linguistic Turn." If knowledge equals true propositional belief and if this can only be expressed by language, this makes the questions of epistemology (What can I know?) second order the questions of Philosophy of Language (What can I say? -and perhaps, What can I not say?). Further it “truth” is a relation that holds between our language and the world, again the Philosophy of Language become of paramount importance.

[20] Some philosophers have argued that the idea that there are only two possible truth values (T & F) is artificially narrow. What is one to do we a sentence like "France is Hexagonal." for instance? See: How To Do Things with Words By John Langshaw Austin. Nevertheless, we shall set these objections aside for another day.

[21] Note: This division is sometimes called Hume’e Fork, though Hume used it with regard to justification, not meaning. Hume’s Fork states that there are two and only two ways to justify a belief (i.e. as a relation of ideas or as a matter of fact). Hume predates Logical Positivism, but they borrowed his Fork.

[22] I am referring to autostereograms or single-image stereogram, which create the visual illusion of a three-dimensional image from a two-dimensional image.

[23] Now God or aliens from another planet may have very different forms of experience and thus different knowledge and truths, but the human task of inquiry doesn’t involve them- not yet at least. Therefore these are merely speculative concerns, not practical ones about which Kant, scientists or you and I need to worry.

[24] Some of this figures into and can even be used to justify certain claims arising from post-modernism.