The Relative Absoluteness of Truth
A Guest Post by Thaddeus J. Kozinski, Ph.D.
Many today accept a false philosophical dichotomy: either the absolute absoluteness or absolute relativity of truth, as opposed to what is truly the case, as I shall explain presently, the relative absoluteness of truth. The acceptance of this false dichotomy stems from the neglect of a vital philosophical distinction. The distinction is between truth as it exists in itself, that is, in an objective sense and excluding any conditions and limitations, and truth as it comes to be present in and recognized by the minds of actual human beings, that is, in a subjective sense, including all the conditions and limitations that pertain to historical, flesh-and-blood human beings.
While it is necessarily the case that either human beings can transcend their particular history, culture, and language and attain universal and absolute truth—or they cannot; it is not necessarily the case that if they can attain absolute and universal truth, they can do so in abstraction from the relative and particular historical, cultural, and linguistic contexts in which they find themselves. Conversely, if the human attainment of absolute and universal truth is inextricably bound up with relative and particular historical, cultural, and linguistic conditions and limitations, this does not necessarily mean that absolute and universal truth cannot be attained.
Alasdair MacIntyre, one of the foremost Thomistic philosophers living today, describes accurately an understanding of truth and its relation to human reason that the false dichotomy I have described misses:
Either reason is thus impersonal, universal, and disinterested or it is the unwitting representative of particular interests, masking their drive to power by its false pretensions to neutrality and disinterestedness. What this alternative conceals from view is a third possibility, the possibility that reason can only move towards being genuinely universal and impersonal insofar as it is neither neutral nor disinterested, that membership in a particular type of moral community, one from which fundamental dissent has to be excluded, is a condition for genuinely rational enquiry and more especially for moral and theological enquiry.[i]
MacIntyre’s term for this “third-way” between absolute absolutism and absolute relativism is “tradition-constituted rationality.” According to MacIntyre, it is only through active participation in particular, historically and culturally relative traditions that men are rendered capable of discovering and achieving history and culture-transcending truth; for it is only by going down, as it were, through a particular tradition that we rise up to universal truth. As body and soul composites, we encounter reality as mediated by our bodies, which are themselves mediated by history and culture. Even the words and concepts we use to interpret and make sense of the brute facts of reality originate and develop in what MacIntyre calls “traditions of rationality.” All men are necessarily habituated into a particular tradition, even if it is a rationally incoherent and morally defective one like the tradition of secular liberalism. Without the resources that traditions provide, coherent and accurate knowledge of the truth is quite difficult, and perhaps impossible. We are, in MacIntyre’s improvement on Aristotle’s classic definition, “tradition-dependent rational animals,” or as Paul Griffiths puts it, “confessional”:
To be confessional is simply to be open about one’s historical and religious locatedness, one’s specificity, and openness that is essential for serious theological work and indeed for any serious intellectual work that is not in thrall to the myth of the disembodied and unlocated scholarly intellect.[ii]
If MacIntyre is right, the particular beliefs we hold to be true, as well as the ideas we consider indisputable, the facts we deem self-evident, the allegiances to which we are committed, the traditions we revere, the authorities we recognize, the customs we cherish, the attitudes we adopt, in short, the overall picture we embrace of God, man, and the world, although perhaps quite true in an absolute and universal objective sense, is, nevertheless, relative and particular in a subjective sense. Our beliefs, even though perhaps universally true beliefs, are still bound to a particular historical and cultural tradition in their genealogy and intelligibility. We do not discover the truth of our beliefs on our own as much as we inherit and receive them from and through others. We do not obtain knowledge autonomously, as mere individuals, and in abstraction from that which is relative and particular in our lives, but in solidarity with others, as members of a community, and in virtue of our relative and particular histories and cultures, that is, our traditions. Contra the Enlightenment, there is no “view-from-nowhere” to which we can climb, no “tradition-independent” rationality we can exercise, no “universal reason” we can access to enable us fully to escape the relative and particular character of human knowledge.
Now, the reader might be thinking that this so-called “tradition-constituted rationality” sounds a lot like the theological, philosophical, and cultural relativism condemned unambiguously by both John Paul II and Benedict XVI. If so, far from being a pre-condition to conversion, such relativism, however sophisticated in name, would effectively preclude it. If we cannot know absolute truth in an absolute manner, what is the use of talking about conversion anyway? But, to reiterate, it is not that human beings cannot recognize and possess absolute and universal truth about and God, the world, and man, but only that the mode or condition of such knowledge is ineluctably relative and particular, for we are historical and social, as well as rational and spiritual, beings. We are tradition-transcending in virtue of our spirit, yet we are tradition-bound in virtue of our body.
Paradoxically, then, in becoming a “temporary relativist,” focusing more on the genealogy rather than the truth-status of our own beliefs, we enable these beliefs to become truly absolute, with respect to their truth. For, if we hold to the absolute absoluteness of truth, it seems sinful to do anything that might render our beliefs vulnerable to refutation; thus, we avoid those grace-filled discussions and arguments that might reveal to us any errors in those beliefs or in our understanding of the natural or supernatural reality to which they refer. And if we hold to the absolute relativity of truth, it appears pointless to even search for the truth at all. To obtain the best chances of possessing absolute truth, then, we Catholics, though subscribing to a Church possessing absolute truth in an absolute manner, must embrace the relative absoluteness of our possession and recognition of this truth, and we must try to convince our interlocutors to do the same. For, as MacIntyre tells us:
It is only insofar as someone satisfies the conditions for rendering him or herself vulnerable to dialectical refutation that that person can come to know whether and what he or she knows.[iii]
Human beings can know the truth, and know that we know it. Nevertheless, we cannot escape the very human way we come to recognize and possess the truth. The sin of “angelism,” exemplified by Rene Descartes, rightly aspires to the timelessness and placelessness of God, but by rejecting the human body, it rejects God’s plan for the human attainment of transcendence. We ascend to the universal and the timeless by embracing the particular and the time-bound, especially by embracing a particular Jewish carpenter who lived in a particular backwater town in a particular time two-thousand years ago. And we embrace Him by becoming part of his Mystical Body, both timeless and time-bound, universal and particular, divine and human.
[i]Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), 59.
[ii]Paul J. Griffiths, “The Uniqueness of Christian Doctrine Defended” in Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered: The Myth of a Pluralistic Theology of Religions, ed. Gavin D’Costa (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996), 169.
[iii]Ibid., 200.
Comments are closed.
I am always amazed that right-wing Catholics, especially those who fancy themselves well read, go in for so many canards about “relativism”. When two of the greatest priest-scholars, Frs. Mersenne and Gassendi, pulled the rug out from under such simplistic thinking, in a way that specifically accords with a Catholic-cultural view of things. Well-read, my rear end!
What the h@#$ are you talking about? Say something substantial and intelligible or not at all.
How do we know we know the truth?
Thaddeus,
Great first name by the way! And phew! you seem to have thought I was attacking you. In fact I had not yet properly read your piece yet because I am allergic to warmed-over Kantianism. But I got some Benadryl and read. But my comment about Mersenne and Gassendi was meant to indicate simply — and I think pretty obviously to anyone with a real amplitude in these things — that there is and was a way to deal with these epistemological questions, in a specifically Catholic context, without recourse to the hum-drum Neo-Kantian way you seem to favor. Of course also a big problem with your view is that the miserly notion you seem to have about the Enlightenment makes it hard to understand how you are devoted to MacIntyre, who may be a Thomist, but — at least in your description — owes much more to Kant. And without the notions of the Enlightenment you disparage the Kantian view would not exist. A picture of a fly in a fly bottle is coming to mind. And also more simply a pithy summation of your view: Have your cake and eat it too.
I’ve never been described as a Kantian before, and if I am unwittingly, I am deeply concerned. Can you explain what is neo-Kantian in my essay? I would think it were anti-Kantian, if anything, in that I reject the idea of some individualist, autonomous Reason. Instead, I suggest a historically situated, community-influenced and embodied, tradition-constituted and constituive rationality. In short, I agree with MacIntyre’s historicist-friendly Thomism and I thought to convey that in my little essay.
More:
Between Foundationalism and Relativism
If the portrayal of systems of rational enquiry as historical traditions ren-ders them contestable and vulnerable to rational critique through the relativization of their truth claims, then the philosophical issue of the availability of rational criteria for intra-and inter-traditional comparison and critique becomes important. Do such criteria exist, and if so, are they also tradition-bound and relativized? If so, then how would rational evaluation and critique proceed? How could one possibly evaluate the truth claims within and among different traditions of enquiry if the criteria for evaluation are themselves tradition-relative? On the other hand, if we aspire to tradition-independent evaluative criteria, then do we not put ourselves back under the Enlightenment illusion of a neutral and tradition-transcending “reason”? If we repudiate a universally accessible rationality transcending traditions, is this not tantamount to a repudiation of universal rationality itself? Are we then left with only parochial, particularist, historically and culturally conditioned traditions among which no definitive and accurate comparative evaluation can be made, and within which access to universal truth is simply not attainable?
MacIntyre addresses and attempts to resolve these questions in his analysis of the “relativist” and “perspectivist” positions. Once we abandon the possibility of a universal mode of rational discourse accessible and intelligible to anyone regardless of the particular background beliefs of his tradition, it does become difficult to see how we can escape from either relativism, which MacIntyre defines as the “denial that rational debate between and rational choice among rival traditions is possible,” or perspectivism, the impossibility of “making truth claims from within any one tradition.” Macintyre depicts these positions as the “negative counterpart of the Enlightenment, its inverted mirror image.” Both positions have in common the rejection of the rationality of traditions: for the Enlightenment thinker, irrational tradition is that from which one must escape to attain universal rationality, while for the post-Enlightenment perspectivist and relativist, tradition is both irrational and inescapable. What both positions miss, according to MacIntyre, is the possibility of an account of tradition as neither irrational nor escapable, and an account of rationality as both tradition-bound and tradition-transcendent. What it meant by “inescapable” is not the impossibility of moving from one tradition to another, only the impossibility of moving from one particular tradition to no particular tradition, or from no particular tradition to one particular tradition. There is no such thing as thinking within “no tradition.” Even liberalism, which defines itself by eschewing tradition altogether, is a still a tradition, albeit a particularly weak one due to its thinness, hetero-geneity, and incoherency. One who attempts to defend liberalism as tradition-independent will ineluctably depend upon particular intellectual assumptions and background beliefs about reality, and standards for evaluating arguments, and he must inevitably employ a specific interpretation of the meaning of truth as well as a particular linguistic and conceptual scheme. All these epistemological and ontological components derive from a tradition of enquiry, for without these components, rationality is impossible. Thus, the denial of one’s dependence upon tradition is delusional, for affirmation and denial are themselves rational activities that presuppose a particular rational framework that only a tradition of rationality can supply: “To be outside all traditions is to be a stranger to enquiry; it is to be in a state of intellectual and moral destitution, a condition from which it is impossible to issue the relativist challenge.”
MacIntyre differentiates his viewpoint from the idealist foundationalism of Descartes and the historicist absolutism of Hegel. Pace Descartes, the foundation of any rational system of enquiry are contingent and positivist beliefs since rational analysis and critique can only take place from within the structure of rationality that one has inherited:
The rationality of a tradition-constituted and tradition-constitutive enquiry is in key and essential part a matter of the kind of progress which it makes through a number of well-defined types of stage. Every such form of en-quiry begins in and from some condition of pure historical contingency, from the beliefs, institutions and practices of some particular community which constitute a given.
Even if first principles are experienced as being discovered for oneself, discov-ery cannot occur outside a historical and dialectical process, “Such first prin-ciples are not self-sufficient epistemological first principles.” Tradition-constituted rationality is not perspectivist, however, for it accepts the existence, if not the human attainability, of a final, exhaustive, definitive truth: “Implicit in the rationality of such enquiry there is indeed a conception of final truth, that is to say, a relationship of the mind to its objects which would be wholly adequate in respect of the capacity of that mind.” However, pace Hegel, absolute knowledge of this final truth is not attainable, for dialectical justification is a process without end.
Yet, for all the particularity, contingency, and historicity of traditions, they are capable of being transcended. Micah Lott depicts MacIntyre’s theory as being both tradition-dependent and tradition-transcendent: “A theory might be rationally justified only given certain assumptions and standards of reason particular to a certain tradition, yet that theory might be a theory about how things are for all people, regardless of their tradition.” In other words, although rooted in a historically conditioned and dialectical justificatory process, MacIntyre’s theory of tradition-constituted rationality affirms the existence and attainability, at least asymptotically, of universal and objective truth, while recognizing that assertions of truth are always made within and are a constituent part of the historical development of a particular tradition. If a tradition develops from unquestioning adherence to its multiform authorities, to an identification of the inadequacies and incoherencies of these authorities, to a re-articulation of basic beliefs that resolves and overcomes prior inadequacies and limitations; it can then contrast the newly formulated beliefs with the old ones. It is in this process of identification, re-articulation, and contrast that truth emerges, truth that is recognized in the more accurate correspondence of the new, more developed, and purified beliefs with reality. Although truth can be justifiably asserted at this point, the possibility of more adequately formulated beliefs is never ruled out: “At every stage beliefs and judgments will be justified by reference to the beliefs and judgments of a previous stage, and insofar as a tradition has constituted itself as a successful form of enquiry, the claims to truth made within that tradition will always be less vulnerable to dialectical questioning and objection than were their predecessors.”
But what if one were to discover that the incoherencies, inadequacies, and limitations of one’s tradition have not been resolved by reformulating its beliefs, or that a reformulation is not possible without causing an irreparable rupture in the tradition? When those working from within a particular tradition recognize that they have ceased making progress, that internal conflicts can no longer be resolved, that there are unexplainable incoherencies and inadequacies, and that there are no available resources from within the tradition to solve these problems, the tradition has encountered what MacIntyre calls an epistemological crisis. Progress and development may resume, but only if a radically “new and conceptually enriched scheme” is developed that can solve the problems, explain why the tradition has suffered these problems, and all of this without necessarily causing a fundamental break in the tradition. If a tradition can resolve its crisis, it can emerge with both a stronger claim to truth, and a fuller understanding of the justification for this claim that is “more and other to claims of warranted assertibility.” If a tradition does not resolve its crisis, then its adherents are justified in claiming some or all of its traditional beliefs to be false. At this point, conversion from one tradition to another tradition that provides “a cogent and illuminating, that is, by their own standards—of why their own intellectual tradition had been unable to solve its problems or restore its coherence” becomes possible and rationally compelling.
MacIntyre’s explanation of both the attainability of truth from within a particular tradition, and the capacity for rationally evaluating traditions in terms of tradition-transcending truth presents a formidable challenge to perspectivism and relativism, on the one hand, and Enlightenment foundationalism, on the other. More importantly, not only is it a challenge to these theories, it is also a challenge to a radically defective modern culture whose anti-traditionalist foundations schizophrenically support both these theories. Although modern culture boasts of its neutrality towards any substantive belief system, permitting robust debate among substantive belief systems, its theater for debate presupposes precisely that belief-system most incompatible with tradition-constituted rationality:
Where the standpoint of a tradition cannot be presented except in a way which takes account of the history and the historical situatedness, both of traditions themselves and of those individuals who engage in dialogue with them, the standpoint of the forums of modern liberal culture presupposes the irrelevance of one’s history to one’s status as a participant in debate. We confront one another in such forums abstracted from and deprived of the particularities of our histories.
You wrote:
“The distinction is between truth as it exists in itself, that is, in an objective sense and excluding any conditions and limitations, and truth as it comes to be present in and recognized by the minds of actual human beings, that is, in a subjective sense, including all the conditions and limitations that pertain to historical, flesh-and-blood human beings.”
This seems to be the essence of your view, on which the whole essay is premised. I don’t know if you are joking, but if you do not understand that this is a paraphrase of Kant’s Critical view then we have some basic problem here. I don’t mean to mean, but this is pretty basic.
How does one know whose “truth as it comes to be present in and recognized by the minds of actual human beings” best expresses “truth as it exists in itself? If truth as it exists in itself cannot be made present or recognized by the minds of actual human beings as it exists in itself, then what is the standard for evaluating truth claims of various human beings? It can’t be the truth as it exists in itself, for no one has truth in this way.
It’s not Kantian because it is historical/communal limitations I am talking about. I am not talking about the mind matrix business. Kantian was not historicist at all. That’s pretty basic.
Reality is the standard. We try to have our minds adequate to reality. Humble and grace-pervaded philosophical and theological dialectic, conversation, study, seeking, suffering, intimate relations with others, prayer, experience, good poetry, literature, art, music, movies–all in the light of the Catholic Faith–I don’t know any other path to mentes adequatio ad mundum, hominum, et Deum.
If you want to talk epistemology regarding this question, we can, but I am afraid MacIntyre’s said a lot that would help in this discussion better than I would. MacIntyre’s essay/lecture “First Principles, Final Ends, and Contemporary Philosophical Issues” is the best there is. Here it is online:
http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=11105120
What a depressing ensemble of ideas you have collected. I don’t mean to be cruel, but you seem to be an avatar of the detachment of propagandized Catholic “scholarship” nowadays from real intellectual rigor. What in the world can the “mind matrix business” be?? Your entire view is beholden to Kant and you seem not to know it. Are Catholic colleges now teaching that Joseph Ratzinger developed the Transcendental viewpoint?? It is amazing how fast intellectual culture itself can disappear utterly. Replaced by what???? It is too depressing to contemplate.
Are you doing a satire about blog comments? The only way I can understand what you are doing is as parody. As straightforward commentary, I have no idea what you are talking about.
I think we can know things as they exist in themselves, but it’s assymptotic because reality is inexhaustible. But this does not prevent us from using language that does indeed get at things as they are. We just need to realize the limitations of human speech and concepts, though even with limitations, we can have genuine scientific and philosophical knowledge about reality. Aristotle is essentially right when he says that thought and thing become one.
As a fan of matters inexhaustible, I almost regret needing to ask the following: How can there be an inexhaustible thing?? You seem to say that we can know these inexhaustible things; and yet the framework for knowledge you favor would seem to make it impossible, given all the talk about limitations.. Of course this one of the areas that Buddhistic philosophy deals with with aplomb with the samsaric-nirvanic interface. But in the framework you have proposed, especially by invoking Aristotle, it is hard not to see something very contradictory. Well, based on my knowledge of the parameters of our Western thought, there would seem one sort of resolution for this in your grid, and it begins with K. But you have a problem with this Special K it seems, even though, to my mind it is, in terms of consistency the only way your views cohere. I am also a fan of cultural contradictions, especially ones involving religious ideation. I would like to understand this, to me, strange, contradiction. Fortunately I found a little article from the National Catholic Register, which is a very right-wing Catholic newspaper. In it Peter Kreeft, whose work seems like a well-versed sledgtehammer, tries to smash the Big K. And I think it tells a lot about your own fears, especially in Kreeft’s very churlish and operatic flourish on “hell” at the bottom:
” Few philosophers in history have been so unreadable and dry as Immanuel Kant. [Wow! That is the only thing here I agree with!!!] Yet few have had a more devastating impact on human thought.
Kant’s devoted servant, Lumppe, is said to have faithfully read each thing his master published, but when Kant published his most important work, “The Critique of Pure Reason,” Lumppe began but did not finish it because, he said, if he were to finish it, it would have to be in a mental hospital. Many students since then have echoed his sentiments.
Yet this abstract professor, writing in abstract style about abstract questions, is, I believe, the primary source of the idea that today imperils faith (and thus souls) more than any other; the idea that truth is subjective.
The simple citizens of his native Konigsburg, Germany, where he lived and wrote in the latter half of the 18th century, understood this better than professional scholars, for they nicknamed Kant “The Destroyer” and named their dogs after him.
He was a good-tempered, sweet and pious man, so punctual that his neighbors set their clocks by his daily walk. The basic intention of his philosophy was noble: to restore human dignity amidst a skeptical world worshiping science.
This intent becomes clear through a single anecdote. Kant was attending a lecture by a materialistic astronomer on the topic of man’s place in the universe. The astronomer concluded his lecture with: “So you see that astronomically speaking, man is utterly insignificant.” Kant replied: “Professor, you forgot the most important thing, man is the astronomer.”
Kant, more than any other thinker, gave impetus to the typically modern turn from the objective to the subjective. This may sound fine until we realize that it meant for him the redefinition of truth itself as subjective. And the consequences of this idea have been catastrophic.
If we ever engage in conversation about our faith with unbelievers, we know from experience that the most common obstacle to faith today is not any honest intellectual difficulty, like the problem of evil or the dogma of the trinity, but the assumption that religion cannot possibly concern facts and objective truth at all; that any attempt to convince another person that your faith is true—objectively true, true for everyone—is unthinkable arrogance.
The business of religion, according to this mindset, is practice and not theory; values, not facts; something subjective and private, not objective and public. Dogma is an “extra,” and a bad extra at that, for dogma fosters dogmatism. Religion, in short, equals ethics. And since Christian ethics is very similar to the ethics of most other major religions, it doesn’t matter whether you are a Christian or not; all that matters is whether you are a “good person.” (The people who believe this also usually believe that just about everyone except Adolf Hitler and Charles Manson is a “good person.”)
Kant is largely responsible for this way of thinking. He helped bury the medieval synthesis of faith and reason. He described his philosophy as “clearing away the pretensions of reason to make room for faith”—as if faith and reason were enemies and not allies. In Kant, Luther’s divorce between faith and reason becomes finalized.
Kant thought religion could never be a matter of reason, evidence or argument, or even a matter of knowledge, but a matter of feeling, motive and attitude. This assumption has deeply influenced the minds of most religious educators (e.g., catechism writers and theology departments) today, who have turned their attention away from the plain “bare bones” of faith, the objective facts narrated in Scripture and summarized in the Apostles’ creed. They have divorced the faith from reason and married it to pop psychology, because they have bought into Kant’s philosophy.
“Two things fill me with wonder,” Kant confessed: “the starry sky above and the moral law within.” What a man wonders about fills his heart and directs his thought. Note that Kant wonders about only two things: not God, not Christ, not Creation, Incarnation, Resurrection and Judgment, but “the starry sky above and the moral law within.” “The starry sky above” is the physical universe as known by modern science. Kant relegates everything else to subjectivity. The moral law is not “without” but “within,” not objective but subjective, not a Natural Law of objective rights and wrongs that comes from God but a man-made law by which we decide to bind ourselves. (But if we bind ourselves, are we really bound?) Morality is a matter of subjective intention only. It has no content except the Golden Rule (Kant’s “categorical imperative”).
If the moral law came from God rather than from man, Kant argues, then man would not be free in the sense of being autonomous. This is true, Kant then proceeds to argue that man must be autonomous, therefore the moral law does not come from God but from man. The Church argues from the same premise that the moral law does in fact come from God, therefore man is not autonomous. He is free to choose to obey or disobey the moral law, but he is not free to create the law itself.
Though Kant thought of himself as a Christian, he explicitly denied that we could know that there really exists (1) God, (2) free will, and (3) immorality. He said we must live as if these three ideas were true because if we believe them we will take morality seriously, and if we don’t we will not. It is this justification of belief by purely practical reasons that is a terrible mistake. Kant believes in God not because it is true but because it is helpful. Why not believe in Santa Claus then? If I were God, I would favor an honest atheist over a dishonest theist, and Kant is to my mind a dishonest theist, because there is only one honest reason for believing anything: because it is true.
Those who try to sell the Christian faith in the Kantian sense, as a “value system” rather than as the truth, have been failing for generations. With so many competing “value systems: on the market, why should anyone prefer the Christian variation to simpler ones with less theological baggage, and easier ones with less inconvenient moral demands?
Kant gave up the battle, in effect, by retreating from the battlefield of fact. He believed the great myth of the 18th-century “Enlightenment” (ironic name!): that Newtonian science was here to stay and that Christianity, to survive, had to find a new place in the new mental landscape sketched by the new science. The only place left was subjectivity.
That meant ignoring or interpreting as myth the supernatural and miraculous claims of traditional Christianity. Kant’s strategy was essentially the same as that of Rudolf Bultmann, the father of “demythologizing” and the man who may be responsible for more Catholic college students losing their faith than anyone else. Many theology professors follow his theories of criticism which reduce biblical claims of eyewitness description of miracles to mere myth, “values” and “pious interpretations.”
Bultmann said this about the supposed conflict between faith and science: “The scientific world picture is here to stay and will assert its right against any theology, however imposing, that conflicts with it.” Ironically, that very “scientific world picture” of Newtonian physics Kant and Bultmann accepted as absolute and unchangeable has today been almost universally rejected by scientists themselves!
Kant’s basic question was: How can we know truth? Early in his life he accepted the answer of Rationalism, that we know truth by the intellect, not the senses, and that the intellect possesses its own “innate ideas.” Then he read the Empiricist David Hume, who, Kant said, “woke me from my dogmatic slumber.” Like other Empiricists, Hume believed that we could know truth only through the senses and that we had no “innate ideas.” But Hume’s premises led him to the conclusion of Skepticism, the denial that we can ever know the truth at all with any certainty. Kant saw both the “dogmatism” of Rationalism and the skepticism of Empiricism as unacceptable, and sought a third way.
There was such a third theory available, ever since Aristotle. It was the common sense philosophy of Realism. According to Realism, we can know truth through both the intellect and the senses if only they worked properly and in tandem, like two blades of a scissors. Instead of returning to traditional Realism, Kant invented a wholly new theory of knowledge, usually called Idealism. He called it his “Copernican revolution in philosophy.” The simplest term for it is Subjectivism. It amounts to redefining truth itself as subjective, not objective.
All previous philosophers had assumed that truth was objective. That’s simply what we common-sensically mean by “truth”: knowing what really is, conforming the mind to objective reality. Some philosophers (the Rationalists) thought we could attain this goal through reason alone. The early Empiricists (like Locke) thought we could attain it through sensation. The later skeptical Empiricist Hume thought we could not attain it at all with any certainty. Kant denied the assumption common to all three competing philosophies, namely that we should attain it, that truth means conformity to objective reality. Kant’s “Copernican revolution” redefines truth itself as reality conforming to ideas. “Hitherto it has been assumed that all our knowledge must conform to objects…more progress may be made if we assume the contrary hypothesis that the objects of thought must conform to our knowledge.”
Kant claimed that all our knowledge is subjective. Well, is that knowledge subjective? If it is, then the knowledge of that fact is also subjective, et cetera, and we are reduced to an infinite hall of mirrors. Kant’s philosophy is a perfect philosophy for hell. Perhaps the damned collectively believe they aren’t really in hell, it’s all just in their mind. And perhaps it is; perhaps that’s what hell is.”
Just to stir things up even more: your argument is strongly reminiscent of Zizek’s discussion of “universal partisan truth.” The weakness in his argument is that he provides not coherent discussion of how anyone could come to reject their own (tradition imbued) notions of truth and embrace yours. I am hoping to put together a post about this one of these days.
Maybe it’s my background in mathematics, but I have no difficulty at all understanding the difference between “truth as it exists in itself” and “truth as it comes to be present in and recognized by the minds of actual human beings”. I can perfectly well comprehend terms like “point”, “line”, “plane”, etc., without being able to define them in non-tautological ways (e.g. to call a line an “infinite locus of points extending infinitely in one dimension and having no beginning or end points” is useless to one who doesn’t already understand constituent terms such as “point”, “locus”, “dimension”, and so on) or being able actually to draw one. The tiniest dot made with a pen, for example, is not really a point, mathematically speaking. Since a true point has no dimensions at all, it’s not possible even to picture it in my mind; but I know exactly what it is. As one who, following Gödel, is a mathematical Platonist, I have no doubt that mathematical constructs have real, objective existence; but when they’re instantiated into the physical world, you have something that falls short. E.g. any line I can actually draw is not perfectly straight, and it actually has two dimensions instead of one.
The same is true, a fortiori for highly abstract concepts such as groups, rings, converging or diverging series, etc.
It seems to me that proper science also exemplifies Dr. Kozinski’s point. Aristotle, Newton, and Einstein each had very different notions of how gravity is to be understood; but they all, obviously, knew that things fall down! You start from a crude concept–things fall down–then develop the notion of objects moving towards the natural goal of their nature, then you get to Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation, then Einstein’s concept in General Relativity of gravity as the curvature of space. We may never fully understand in an absolute sense just what gravity is, but we can progressively refine and deepen our understanding of it. To use math language again, we may never totally have absolute truth, but we asymptotically approach it through our senses and the context of the material world in which we live.
By the way, I see this concept as being more Platonic than Kantian, being no fan of Kant myself. I think it differs in that Kant would say that we never apprehend the Ding am Sich, and that our constructs come from the mind and don’t necessarily correspond to the thing-in-itself, in that what I’m talking about (and what I think Dr. Kozinski is saying) is a real though partial apprehension of the Ding am Sich which we gradually refine without ever getting a perfect apprehension. If you like, it’s like viewing something through a dirty glass which you gradually clean to get an ever-clearer view. However, if one wants to insist that this is Kantian or quasi-Kantian, what of it? I think it’s valid–I’m not a fan of relativism, but I don’t see how (outside of an incommunicable mystic experience) one can apprehend absolute truth with no conditioning or mediation at all. That’s always been my beef with the claims of Zen re satori.
Anyway, kudos, Dr. Kozinski–a very good and interesting post!
Now, THAT’s a real comment. I don’t know what to make of Mr. “Fuchs.” MacIntyre as Kantian. I never thought I would ever hear that!
Turmarion,
Well, that is an interesting comment. The point of stressing the Kantianism of the whole matter is not to cheerlead for Kant, believe me. I am not a great devotee of this epigone of the Enlightenment. But I am a devotee of trying to understand where our ideas come from. Even if we have changed, tweaked, re-envisioned, deconstructed, analyzed, or, please not. propagandized them. Your comment at least admits the Kantianism (or quasi-Kantianism — whatever that could be when Thaddeus is nearly quote chapter and verse from the Critique and does not seem to know it or want admit it). I could go on about how amazing this seems to me in someone who is presumably teaching the young about historical facts of philosophy. But I would rather hazard a guess on why it is so. Because I think it pertains the very impetus for the post in the first place.
It is my assessment that after training virtually all future priests and church leaders for a few generations in developed theologies of Rahner and his confreres, the Church has now become wary of PRECISELY the connection of such thinking to the ideas of the Enlightenment. And this wariness is strangely not connected to intellectual matters per se, but potentially political ones of the great bugaboo “secularism”. Let me say this clearly, there is no way to understand 99% of modern theology except as a footnote to Kant. Not being a tremendous fan of Kant I think that speaks ironically of some limitation. But it is necessary to have some clarity. Yet, the Kantian language has become so ubiquitous and accepted that now some people can imagine that it it is just part of some neutral argot of philosophizing, not standing on anyone’s shoulders. Well, news flash: this is flat wrong. And it is grotesque for an academic to participate in it. It is A-OK to carve out your own use of the tradition, to criticize it, and re-use it, as you have done in your comment. All OK. But what is not right, is for the propagandized need the Church seems to feel now to distance itself from the Enlightenment in any way. I have run across this “tactic” amongst several n relatively newly minted Catholic intellectuals, so can now identity this as a trend which must have been explicitly encouraged for presumably other reasons. I put it together with the desire to re-write history. It impedes the ability to have any real dialogue , because dialogue depends on at least some mutually agreed upon terms. And if a man can essentially quote Kant, and then deny it, then we are down the rabbit hole indeed.
Lastly, to bring Charles Taylor, a model of clarity on all these matters, into this discussion is just too much, and funny.
Here Charles Taylor explores what it would mean to “overcome epistemology,” using the insights of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty especially, on the bankruptcy of classical foundationalism and the search for a non-skeptical/relativistic alternative adequate to experience. It dovetails nicely with MacIntyre’s work, I think. An excellent, though difficult, essay, but very rewarding. Taylor is top notch:
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/taylor.htm
You have a point, Mr. Fuchs, about some Catholics not being historicist enough about the foundation of their own thinking, but you’re barking up the wrong tree, to say the least. It seems almost pathological how off you are about me. Haven’t you read MacIntyre? I’ve written an acclaimed (Tracey Rowland, Father Schall, Aidan Nichols–are these Kantians too?) book on his thought, against Rawls and Maritain, and one of my major points is that Maritain’s thought was–mirabile dictu–too Kantian! I follow Robert Kranak and D. Stephen Long on this, his “goodness of God.” It’s as if you’ve chosen precisely the one person who DOESN’T fall into your idiosyncratic critical category, and have become obsessed with putting me into it. You seem to be on the lookout for Kantians–chances are you’ll “find” one if you’re obsessed with it. I’m probably not the only one you’ve done this to.
Consider whether you are not actually putting people into your Procrustean, genealogically-aware-at-all-costs bed when they don’t at all fit and can’t fit. The irony of your calling me Kantian is astounding. I have to tell my colleagues about this. It’s almost as bad as when I was pinned down as a relativist by some relativism-obsessed people for saying that we don’t have absolutely absolute knowledge.
I think you need to genealogize your own thinking. And I’m still open to this whole thing being a parody, so don’t think you tricked me just yet. Your quip about Charles Taylor, who is one of the most profound and erudite and clear philosophers living today, almost clinches it for me that you’re in parody mode.
Well, Thaddeus, you are right about one thing. I don’t take blogs very seriously, and consider them modern day pamphlets, with just about as much importance for delimiting what is really going on. That being said, methinks the Thomist in you protests too much. I think I am right on about your assumptions, and the generalized ambition of the movement you belong to apparently. And if you try to say that there is not an effort to jettison Enlightenment critical (and “Critical” ) thinking in all of it, then I think you are just prevaricating. The issues are far bigger than you or I. They speak to broader ambitions.
Rather than keep trying to describe my astonishment that one can quote from Kant’s Critique as a premise, and not claim to be influenced by it, let me simply try to analyze your post itself. What interested me most about it was this:
“For, if we hold to the absolute absoluteness of truth, it seems sinful to do anything that might render our beliefs vulnerable to refutation; thus, we avoid those grace-filled discussions and arguments that might reveal to us any errors in those beliefs or in our understanding of the natural or supernatural reality to which they refer.”
This sounds pretty good. But if I remember the rather considerable amount of MacIntyre I read in the seminary, he hardly goes out on such a limb . Perhaps my memory fails me, but I think the last part of this is your gloss, to impress us with how open you are to outside argument, even though you are teaching in a spot that by its own announcement is devoted to avoiding any substantial discussion on ultimate matters. For to say that you would actually be able to admit errors in belief would undermine the entire Thomistic approach. Such thought always starts with the datum of Revelation, by definition, no matter how many impressive intellectual peregrinations it assays afterwards. (And as an historical aside it meant also that Thomas started with the datum of the Pseudo-Dionysius who at that time was considered almost to have a Scriptural level of authority.) By definition, you cannot be open to admitting fundamental error if you accept the Thomistic path.
So the question becomes, for the outsider, why write books about it, in a democratic context?? If we don’t unnecessarily multiply entities, a certain ambition for something unspoken suggests itself. I don’t know what ambition that could be in the open spaces of Wyoming, but I will leave that to you and your Maker.
Thaddeus:
Thank you for your essay. I find it very apropos the approaching anniversary of the U.S. Declaration of Independence’s adoption 235 years ago, with it’s very powerful second paragraph beginning with We hold these truths to be self-evident,…
Isn’t it interesting that in his revision process, Jefferson changed the religious justification “sacred & undeniable” to the rationalist “self-evident,” presumably because they gave the Declaration a more “universal” claim to authority. It isn’t hard to see that both phrases express the same underlying reality of post-Enlightenment Western perspective. But “self-evident” neatly transcends sectarian boundaries, while “sacred & undeniable” is likely to offend and get hung up in the secular mind, asserting by-the-way the existence and value of a sacred realm.
Peter Paul:
You don’t take blogs seriously–but you can can accuse me of being a prevaricator, a secret Kantian, a right-winger, simplistic, and not well-read–all from one brief essay-post–and you seem not to be able to change your mind even though I have added several posts to clarify my position and thoughts.
I am afraid at the very moment you finally make a good contribution to this discussion by asking a fair question (about my being open to changing my fundamental opinions and yet being a Thomist), you have lost my interest in prolonging this already way too stressful exchange. Let’s try again some day.
Just for the record: I don’t take blogs very seriously either. And I find this whole thread of comments very muddled and self-important.
About the post: since I don’t ascribe the opening “false dichotomy,” I also found this piece quite over complicated for what is simply a denial of an obviously false premise. “Relative absoluteness,” depending on what that means, may be what the truth is—but I doubt it. The truth is the truth; nothing more, nothing less. Yes that’s tautology. But it’s also true.
Sam
Oh Lord, having your vaunted assumptions questioned at the exquisite distance the internet provides it too-too much. You have my condolences. I take a lot of right-wingery of Catholics these days to be pure pose, as in poseur. When backed into a corner by reason, which they otherwise like to praise, they wither with faint praises and hubris. Did you read the piece by Kreeft. I think you will find the shock of recognition there. Perhaps you can identify. Imagine a person condemning Mr. Kant to hell, NOT for nor being a Christian, and NOT for not being a good person, and NOT for having a virtuous life. But merely for not sharing the exact same philosophy. I read your pose, as I read Kreeft’s, attitude, and not much more.
I hope readers learned something from my piece. If not, I am sorry for wasting your time. For the record, for Kant, knowledge is of our concepts, not things. For me, and Artistotle, and St. Thomas, and MacIntyre, knowledge is of things (in their intelligibility). Truth resides in the mind, but it is OF reality. Intentionality: My post was an attempt to discuss some of the social and historical conditions of human intentionality for us culture-dependent-yet-transcending, embodied, tradition-constituted, persons. For more on this, read MacIntyre, and Taylor.
I sometimes say the the differences in epistemology boil down to the use of prepositions.
Oh, I know. I have never encountered such an enormous amount of pedantry in my entire life, and I read my own blog.
I can’t figure out who you were quoting. But as to getting it right as to how seriously to take blog-deductions consider this: This blog. which is relatively serious compared to others, displays as an insight the notion that “Modest is Hottest”. This tells us something. That apparently hotness is a category for blog deduction even in a Catholic realm, and that it can be followed by comparisons about relativism and absoluteness. As I see it, the only conceivable value in it is persuasion. In the back and forth some amount of seriousness is glanced, even if a teensy bit. Can a person defend their ideas, or do they fall back on, tsk-tsk — it is too much for me??? That does not tell us everything. but it tells us something. The huge irony is that such contretemps will get read much more than careful scholarship. Some respond to that tragic fact by propaganda, others by melancholy. I think melancholy is the better part. I am quite willing to believe that blogs decide nothing, but they persuade a lot. That is why the only sane way to do it is to keep it out of your own happy life. Bloggers such as Thomas Peters, who live for the stuff, as evidenced on the Raymond Arroyo show recently, are the picture of complete misery, a “glutton for information” as he said. And by the way, he is a great fan of Wyoming Catholic College!
Peter:
He was quoting me. And I NEVER thought that the notion “Modest is Hotest” was an insight.
Also: careful scholarship has NEVER been read more than popular literature of all kinds. That isn’t ironin, its actaully quite normal. Plus, what is “careful scholarship” anyhow? I’d rather have people read Don Quixote. I will never forgive Raymond Arroyo for ruining my graduation… (a story for another day).
Sam
Oh, please-please-please-please do tell about your graduation. And why the heck is Modest is Hottest not an insight. It is utterly true on so many levels. I think if the human race analyzed hotness intellectuallyand spiritually we would have a lot fewer problems, and probably fewer wars even! The insight only looked a bit strange here combined with a woman’s bathroom symbol. I don’t even want to think on that the implications of that.
There could have been a fruitful discussion of the topic of my piece, the character of human knowledge and the communal and historical conditions of it, yet it was all singlehandedly sabotaged by Peter Paul Fuchs. I do hope the lead editors of this blog recognize this and deal with the problem.
Thaddeus,
No one will be less surprised than I if I get the old heave-ho here, as I got at the Mirror of Justice. What did it there was that I commented that I had slept with the assistant bishop of Washington, and that he had made that happen with some over-the top predatory type behavior. So that was too much for the tender minds at the Mirror, where Robert George delivers his wisdom. Later they published a comment by a nut calling for the death of all homosexuals, and that comment apparently was no problem. AS far as I know the comment was never removed. So you will perhaps understand why I have a rather world-weary view of these internet founts of Catholic wisdom. Anyways, comparatively this one seems better than most. We’ll have to see. Unlike many perfervid Catholics these days I don’t believe in brazenly inserting myself in utterly disruptive ways. But I do keep the words of Jesus in mind, if I may paraphrase. So you think I came to bring peace, fuggetaboutit, I bring the sword.
Apropos your apologies, thank you, I guess, but I kind of wish you wouldn’t have. One of the things I dislike in retrospect about my involvement with the Church is the poor sense of integration of male aggression, EVEN in the most attenuated forms. It breeds a special type of namby-pamby persona who are in turn deeply cruel, because they are not integrated in any way as men. I think the guy known as the American Papist, Thomas Peters could not be a better evocation of this passively cruel type the Church breeds. It seems the organization has a terrible time with inculturating male virtue, which deals with aggression wisely, which also means not tolerating transgression of some limits. That is what a healthy organization does. I think the Roman Church falls woefully short in that way specifically. Having been in the seminary, i think that goes a long way in explaining much about the personal strangeness of many priests, in my opinion.
One last comment:
I apologize to the readers of this blog for my uncharity in my comments. I exacerbated the negativity of the dispute.
Peter Paul:
I apologize for my unkind and uncharitable words. Please forgive me.
Thaddeus, One of the truths of being a human male is that we tend to compete for superiority over others. The male who is who humbles himself just as you did proves himself to be a man on the path to Truth. I appreciate the example you have set.
God Bless
I think we can know things as they exist in themselves, but it’s assymptotic because reality is inexhaustible. But this does not prevent us from using language that does indeed get at things as they are. We just need to realize the limitations of human speech and concepts, though even with limitations, we can have genuine scientific and philosophical knowledge about reality. Aristotle is essentially right when he says that thought and thing become one.
I’m in general agreement that truth is relatively absolute, or as I like to say, truth is both disclosed and created through signification, and so I’m lead to philosophical pluralism.
You say that language can get at things as they are, but I’m curious how it is you think we can know this. How do we know the point at which language reaches its limitations? If every standard of truth is to some extent relative, how do we know which relative standard should serve as definitive?
Well put. That is the crux isn’t it. I would like to suggest that one way of resolving this is just being satisfied with the fact that since we all hold some things dear, and others not, that things are not relative for us. And since life is dear to all sane human beings, a whole raft of moral propositions appear which are NOT relative, they are absolutely true for us, even if we cannot perhaps know that from a viewpoint that stands alone, because we do not stand alone… ab solas. We stand in solidarity to something we hold dear. Loyalty then is the fundamental virtue, epistemologically.
Kyle writes, “If every standard of truth is to some extent relative, how do we know which relative standard should serve as definitive?”
I don’t see where he says that “every standard of truth” is relative.
If the absoluteness of truth is itself relative, then what standard (available to us) could possibly be in no way relative?
At the human scale, reality has a certain absoluteness, but is it meaningful to talk about absolute reality when even the physical reality we take for granted as absolute appears to be relative?
Consider an example: Bob and Alice are astronauts. Bob is sitting on a chair inside a rocket ship moving away at the speed of light, while Alice sits on earth looking at Bob through a telescope. To Bob, who is moving at the speed of light, the chair he is sitting on is clearly a chair: it has four legs and supports his weight. If he took out his tape measure, he would see that it’s about two feet wide/long and three feet high. To Alice, the chair has flattened to the point where it is almost two-dimensional due to spatial compression. You could not sit on it – it has ceased to become a chair and rather has become the image of a chair. This is not an optical illusion but rather objective, physical reality. In Alice’s frame of reference, it is an image of a chair. If she took out her tape measure and measured it, it would occupy almost no volume
Now, Bob and Alice are perceiving the same physical object – what we would perceive as “objective reality” – in completely different ways. To Bob, it is a chair. To Alice, it is a two-dimensional image of a chair. Both have perfectly valid physical realities. Whose is correct?
Do we even have any precedent to assume that we have any basis whatsoever to perceive anything as absolute reality? Even the most absolute thing we can think of – God – is a relation!
Kyle:
Dr. K doesn’t use the phrase “standard of truth” in the OP. The only time he does use it is when he says in a comment that “Reality is the standard.” Otherwise, he only uses “standard” when speaking of “standards of evaluating arguments” or “standards of reason”.
Now you may ask how we know which relative and particular standard of reason is best. But I think he already gave the answer: Reality is the standard. Take for example Aristotle: He did a lot of philosophizing about physics which turned out to be wrong. We know now that theorizing about physics is fine, but it works a lot better when combined with observation and experimentation. Why? Because the results correspond better with reality.
By the way, I don’t presume to speak for Dr. K, I am only jumping in (1) for fun and mental exercise, and (2) because Dr. K indicated he was dropping out of the thread.
Whose conception of reality (that makes the absolute relative) the should be the standard?
Kyle writes, “Who’s conception of reality (that makes the absolute relative) the should be the standard?”
No one said a “conception of reality” should be the standard, but reality itself. Reality is the measure of the conception, not the other way around.
And again, Dr. K didn’t say the absolute is “made relative”. It is our mode or manner of discovering reality that is “relative and particular” to our historical situation.
I would suggest that what is meant, is that there was, for example, the system of the Greeks for discovering reality: through philosophizing and observation of the world around them, and their systematized rules of logic, which have been used in Western civilization ever since. Later on you might say there was the Scholastic method of discovering reality, via commentaries and debates. There is also the method of divine revelation given through a specific race of people, and later on through the Church at particular times and places, and continuously explicated and developed ever since. And then of course, modern science.
These are our “traditions of rationality”. Through all of them we have discovered parts of reality, but the methods themselves arose and were utilized in particular times and places and in particular ways by particular peoples. The realities discovered are not relative, only the methods and traditions and processes by which they were uncovered and spread abroad.
“Our beliefs, even though perhaps universally true beliefs, are still bound to a particular historical and cultural tradition in their **genealogy and intelligibility**. We do not discover the truth of our beliefs on our own as much as we **inherit and receive** them from and through others. We do not obtain knowledge autonomously, as mere individuals, and in abstraction from that which is relative and particular in our lives, but in solidarity with others, as members of a community, and in virtue of our relative and particular histories and cultures, that is, our traditions. Contra the Enlightenment, there is no “view-from-nowhere” to which we can climb, no “tradition-independent” rationality we can exercise, no “universal reason” we can access to enable us fully to escape the relative and particular character of human knowledge.”
Nobody knows reality itself apart from the methods we use to approach reality, and these methods do not result in reality itself, but in particular conceptions of it. You have a conception of reality. I have a conception of reality. Our conceptions may refer to the same thing–reality–and yet each is different and relative. So, I ask again, whose conception of reality should serve as the standard for judging every other conception?
Or perhaps you can point me to a conception of reality that either is reality itself or perfectly corresponds to reality in a one-to-one manner.
Kyle writes, “Nobody knows reality itself apart from the methods we use to approach reality, and these methods do not result in reality itself, but in particular conceptions of it.”
Does this statement of yours reflect reality, or merely your particular conception of it? Based on the statement itself, it’s merely your conception. So why should I accept it as objectively true?
Kyle writes, “So, I ask again, whose conception of reality should serve as the standard for judging every other conception?”
And I respond again, reality is the standard by which conceptions of reality should be judged.
I assumed this was clear, but what underlies this statement is that we can know reality and know that we are knowing it. Otherwise there is no point in even trying to discover truth, because we could never know the extent to which our conceptions of truth reflect actual truth — in fact they might not reflect it in the slightest. Philosophy would be nothing but word games — which apparently is how a lot of modern people view it, thanks to the “findings” of modern philosophy itself.
My statement reflects the ramifications of obtaining knowledge of reality through subjective means. Reality itself cannot serve as a standard because no one has that; reality apart from our conception of it is unknown to us. We know reality through our relative concepts. Take away the concepts and you’re left not with pure reality but with nothing. Yes, we can know reality, but not in an immediate, absolute way.
If you’re right and reality apart from the conception of it can serve as a standard, you should be able to show me an instance where someone has used reality as such a standard without employing any conceptions of reality. If the use of reality as a standard needed a conception of reality, then I’m right and it’s a conception of reality and not reality apart from the conception that must serve as the standard.
I note that you did not answer my question: I asked, “Does this statement of yours reflect reality, or merely your particular conception of it? Based on the statement itself, it’s merely your conception. So why should I accept it as objectively true?” (Your statement was, “Nobody knows reality itself apart from the methods we use to approach reality, and these methods do not result in reality itself, but in particular conceptions of it.”)
I would appreciate an answer to that question.
But since I’m not well educated in philosophy, let me try to understand what you’re saying now: I get the impression that by “particular conception”, you are referring to something subjective in each person, that is not shared with any other person. Therefore, everyone has his own conceptions of reality, and we have no way of knowing — since we can’t use reality itself as the standard — whether our conceptions agree with one another. So that when we use the same words, for example, we may be referring to totally different things.
Is this what you’re saying?
I referenced the specific epistemological reality (as I conceive it) on which I based my statement. My statement reflects my conception of this reality, and if my conception is true, then in a sense reality itself.
But how can I know that my statement is true? How can I know that my conception of reality corresponds to–or at least discloses–reality itself. This is the difficulty I’m presenting.
I wouldn’t call my particular conception something merely subjective: it is inter-subjective in that I can communicate it to others and others can, from their subjective perspective, know it and comment on it. Once it’s “out there” it takes on a sense of objectivity, in that it is approached as an object, but even here it remains a conception of reality, not reality itself.
My point is not that we cannot know reality–I believe we can–but that what we know when we know reality is actually a concept of reality. The object of my knowledge isn’t reality itself divorced from my conception of it, but reality as it is conceived by me. The “as” is of paramount importance here. There is no knowledge without it.
Kyle:
I can’t help but return to the idea that if you can’t know to what extent your conception of reality reflects actual reality, because you are precluded from using reality itself as the standard, then it seems to me you have no way of knowing you are not living in a complete fantasy world.
And again if you can’t use reality as the standard, then why do you believe your conception of how we perceive reality is correct? I can’t think of any possible justification for that belief, given your premises.
My answer as of now (I’m still working through this question) is that you have to go with the conception or conceptions of reality that seem to make the most sense of reality and work the best.
Interpreting reality is not unlike interpreting an ambiguous text like Hamlet. At the end of the day, you’re left with a plurality of possibly accurate interpretations that nonetheless differ from one another. To decide upon one of them means choosing the one that, to you, makes the most sense of the text. Or you can be like me and celebrate the plurality by insisting the question remain open and the selection forever undecided.
Kyle:
Let me ask you this: If you have a conception of a cat, and I have a conception of a cat, and we have a conversation about cats, how do we know we are talking about the same thing? Could we not test it by pointing to an actual cat, and asking each other, “Is that what you mean by ‘cat’?” And if we did so, would we not be using reality as the standard by which we judge the accuracy of our conceptions?
Pointing to an actual cat gets us further down the road, but I note two things: 1) The actual cat is not the meaning of our concepts but their referent (the concept doesn’t contain the actual cat, but points to it) and 2) the pointing to the actual cat assumes the accuracy of our sense of sight. We assume reality is as we perceive it.
Assuming the latter, let’s return to the former. Is the actual cat what you and I have in mind? Not exactly. The cat exists outside of and apart from our mind. To formulate a concept of cats in general or of this cat in particular, you and I construct both from what we see and assume is accurate about cats and also from the relative and subjective building blocks of language.
But can’t you and I simply point to the actual cat and come to some agreement? Some, yes, but very little. We can’t get so far as, say, the meaning of feline nature. We could, for example, both look at a cat, make the sound associated with the word “cat,” and agree to apply the linguistic expression to the actual cat. All we’ve done here, though, is attach a name to the thing. We haven’t developed any kind of philosophy of what it means to be a cat.
It’s one thing to make observations, another thing to express them in language, and yet another thing to construct a philosophical concept from those observational expressions.
Kyle,
I assume you know that BOTH sides of the Realist-Nominalist debate you are having here have been at different times embraced by the Catholic Church. The Nominalist position was anathematized by Church council in the 11th Century. But later was embraced explicitly at Constance. Proving that Church Councils do reverse themselves. And that philosophy is a sometime thing, as they say in Porgy and Bess.
Kyle:
What I don’t see you answering, is how can we form conceptions about reality when we have no contact with reality? What are the conceptions based on?
We do have contact with reality, but this contact is mediated and made possible by a world of signification (words, images, etc.).
Kyle writes, “We do have contact with reality, but this contact is mediated and made possible by a world of signification (words, images, etc.).”
Then I don’t see why we can’t use reality as a standard. Unless you have some reason to believe our minds and our senses cannot be relied upon to interpret reality — but if that’s the case, then we have no good ground for believing in the existence of reality at all.
Consider that we all have the experience of coming to know things and people through our senses. We have ideas communicated to us by people, and we judge ideas as good or bad, accurate or inaccurate, based on what we see around us and what we have learned previously. This is what I call “using reality as the standard”. We may hold ideas for a long time, and then come to realize that they are wrong, and adopt other ideas which we consider more true and accurate. But this too is judging our ideas by reality and not vice versa.
If we don’t trust our own intelligence or training to interpret things accurately, we can cross-check our ideas by comparing them with the writings of learned men; or discussing them with trusted friends, who have in turn spent time evaluating their ideas according to the standard of the realities they observe around them; or considering them in the light of received traditions, born of the experience of many people through long years of contact with reality.
Is there some reason to believe that this does not actually occur? Yes, we may all be living in The Matrix or some similar scenario, but why entertain that doubt seriously, absent strong evidence of it? Or do you have strong evidence?
My issue isn’t with some Matrix-style scenario, but with the interpretive process by which we understand reality. What each of us has in knowing reality is not reality as it is in itself, but an interpretation of reality, a conception, which may be accurate as far as it goes, but is also (and this is key) a product or creation of signification. The truths that I know are truths I have both discovered and created, and, in my view, there’s no way to separate the discovered aspects from the created aspects of the truths that I know.
You look toward received traditions born of much experience with reality and thought about it, and this illustrates my point. I can’t just know reality itself, and to better my understanding, I’m wise to look to at traditional conceptions of reality that have survived the test of time, reflection, and criticism.
Kyle, I do not know if this applies to what you are discussing, but in my conditioned way of thinking and perceiving through experience, education and mindful meditation tradition, the search for truth must first begin with internal reflection on the history of one’s suffering. It seems that is the tradition which spreads accross many traditions. It is what each human being shares in common with other human beings. Truth can only be discovered from being vulnerable, it cannot be discovered being defended. Truth that is created from a defensive position is just that, created. Truth that is discovered from a vulnerable position has always been there.
Alright Kyle. I’ll let you have the last word. I really appreciate your patiently bearing with me.