I.  The Nature of Knowledge

     1. Types of Knowledge

A. Knowledge by Representation (also Propositional Knowledge)
     Can be had at second-hand.

B. Knowledge by Acquaintance
     Can only be had at first-hand.

C. Know-how (as in a skill)

A. Belief
     (To know something, you must believe it in some sense.)

B. Truth
     (To know something, it must be true, or real.  In order to know an
     imagined thing, the thing must be a real imagined thing.)

C. Justification
     (To know something, you must be able to show that you do; you
     must be able to provide sufficient evidence of your knowledge.)

     1. Rationalism

A.  True knowledge (or at least the most important knowledge) is
      essentially independent of sensory experience.  Some speak of it as
      involving a non-sensory form of experience (intuitive acquaintance).

B.  What is thus known is changeless, universal, necessary, and
      therefore certain (i.e., objectively certain, though not necessarily
      subjectively certain).

C.  It is discovered by dialectical philosophical reasoning, not by
      sense perception.   (Sense perception gives us only changeable,
      non-universal, non-necessary, and uncertain truths.)  The mind,
      therefore is not limited to the deliverances of sense perception.

D.  While logical and mathematical truths are examples, they are not the
      only or even the best examples.

E.  Note: Although Rationalists often distinguish sense perception
     (aisthesis) from true knowledge (episteme), all regard sense
     perception as more than mere opinion and as the source of
     our knowledge of tangible, physical things.

A.  All knowledge (or at least the most important knowledge) is based
     upon sense experience -- except perhaps for mathematical and
     logical truths, which are based upon analysis and comparison of
     ideas whichthemselves originate in sense experience.  (Some
     so-calledempiricists allow for non-sensory experience, but most
     exclude it.)

B.  What is known is changeable, of questionable universality,
     contingent (not necessary), and to some extent uncertain.  While
     mathematical and logical truths are certain and unchanging, they
     are trivial because they tell us nothing of vital importance about
     reality.

C.  Knowledge about the world (i.e., about reality beyond the mind) is
      discovered by empirical research (i.e., by observation,
      generalization, and experimentation), not by reason operating
      independently from sense perception.

D.  With regard to universals (general categories and principles,
      purportedly universal, unchanging, and necessary), most
      empiricists take a nominalist position -- namely, that universals
     are constructions and interpretations having no objective reality
     outside of the mind.

III.  Plato's Theory of Knowledge (Epistemology)

 1. Sense Perception (aisthesis, not knowledge or episteme in the strict sense).

• A. Sense perception apprehends concrete, particular, changeable, physical things, events, activities, and relationships, which exist objectively within the sensory world.
• B. Sense perception involves two levels:
(i) Impressions or seemings (eikrasia), and
(ii) Genuine perception with conviction (pistis).
(iii) Sense ‘knowledge’ would of course include accurate representation of things perceived.
• C. We have sense perception (sensory knowledge) by way of our bodily based sense organs.
• D. Yet sense perception presupposes and takes for granted a theoretical, non-sensory component, involving:
(i) The sharable whatness that particular things are or have (what sort, what nature), that defines, differentiates, and orders things, enabling us to recognize and comprehend them;
(ii) Quantitative (mathematical) relationships in terms of which things may be measured, compared, combined, and analyzed.
(iii) Normative criteria or standards, in light of which things may be qualitatively assessed.

2. Theoretical Knowledge (episteme, knowledge in the strict sense).

• A. True knowledge apprehends the FORMS – abstract, general (universal, not particular), unchanging  (eternal), non-physical patterns or archetypes – and their relationships.
(i) The FORMS are that by means of which we distinguish, apprehend, comprehend, explain, order, evaluate, and intelligently handle the objects of sense perception.
(ii) The FORMS are of three kinds.
a. Natural kinds (the true essences of things).
b. Mathematical and logical principles.
c. Transcendental norms (above all, justice, beauty, and truth – united in the Idea of Good [encompassing quality, excellence, and greatness wherever it is found]).
(iii) The FORMS do not themselves exist in the sensory world but are or have being objectively, beyond our individual minds, in what Plato calls “the intelligible realm or world.”
• B. Theoretical Knowledge is of two levels (actually three, when pretension to theoretical knowledge is included):
[(i) Conjectural representation of the FORMS – which is not really knowledge but only opinion or doxa.]
(ii) Dianoia (disciplined theoretical knowing, making use of [explicit allusion to and representations, including definitions, of] the FORMS).
(iii) Noesis: direct knowledge of [acquaintance with] the FORMS, knowledge (episteme) in the fullest sense.
• C. We have theoretical knowledge of the FORMS by way of a special faculty of rational intuition, called nous:
(i) An access to them that we have inwardly and innately (though it must be awakened within us), and
(ii) Which we exercise by means of dialectical reasoning and a peculiar kind of contemplative “recollection (anamnesis).”
 

     1. All knowledge begins with sense perception of concrete, particular,
         changeable, physical things.

     2. Natural kinds (the true, unchanging essences of things, the forms of
         things, necessary, universal, and certain), and all other basic categories
         with which we think and comprehend things, are abstracted from, or
         inferred and elaborated on the basis of, the images (phantasms) which
         in sense experience we receive from particular things.

A. Natural kinds do not exist separately from concrete things, except as
     concepts in the minds of people who have abstracted them.

B. Sense perception itself is not knowledge in the true or full sense;
     true knowledge requires apprehension of the true essence of things
     and the ordered, scientific understanding of their causes, why they
     are the way they are.

     4.  Complete knowledge or knowledge in the fullest sense ( = systematic,
          scientific knowledge) involves the construction of a systematic
          hierarachy of valid syllogisms which demonstrate (prove beyond a
          reasonable doubt) and explain the truth of its conclusions on the basis
          of general premises (primary premises) known to be true.
 

V.  Descartes' Theory of Knowledge

     1. Descartes is a rationalist who set out to refute radical skepticism on its
         own turf.

He sought an absolute foundation for knowledge by proposing to doubt all things and accept as knowledge (or at least as a foundation for knowledge) only what could not be doubted.  (Note that this requirement of absolute certainty [undoubtability] was not Plato's or Aristotle's criterion for knowledge.)

This leads him to consider the possibility that instead of a benevolent God, there is a powerful and evil demon systematically deceiving him into thinking things to be so that are not in fact so.  This leads him to conclude as doubtable, and therefore as not knowledge,
• sense experience, and all that sense experience testifies to (e.g., that there is an external world, other people, and even that he has a body),
• his conviction that what he takes to be waking reality is real and not a dream (or a cosmic deception),
• his memory, and
• intellectual calculation (e.g., 2 + 3 = 5).

This will become Descartes' foundational truth and the measure of all other truth:  Cogito [I think], ergo [therefore] sum [I am].

• What must be the criterion of knowledge -- namely, a candidate for belief whose certainty is wholly evident to the reflecting mind with the "clarity and distinctness" of the cogito's existence to itself.
• What his essential nature must be -- namely, a thing that thinks (including also doubts, understands, affirms, denies, wills, refuses, imagines, and feels), and
• What, to the contrary, must be the essential nature of the bodies to which our senses uncertainly testify -- namely, things which are extended in space.

     6. Thus Descartes believes he has provided a foundation, on the one
          hand, for knowledge in morality and religion (in the mind's or soul's
          givenness to itself) and, on the other hand, for knowledge in the natural
          sciences (in the nature of physical bodies to which the senses give us
          access).
 

VI.  Some Problems with Descartes' Method

     1. Insistence upon a standard of absolute certainty eliminates the middle
         ground of reasonable evidence.  It suggests that if you don't have
         complete certainty you have no evidence at all.

     2. Insistence upon absolute clarity and distinctness to the skeptical
         reflecting mind eliminates consideration of any respect in which reality
         transcends full and determinate representation.

     3. Proposing to rebuild one's knowledge from the ground up because a
         number of things that once seemed true have become doubtful or false,
         as Descartes does, is a lot like being in a boat out on the ocean and
         proposing to abandon ship in order to rebuild the boat from the keel up
         just because it has developed a few leaks.

     4. Descartes' working method of radical doubt may create more problems
         than he supposes.  In particular, it seems to put one in a very peculiar,
         abstracted state of mind where the usual clues on which we rely to
         orient ourselves and make sense of things are no longer available.  In
         other words, it may serve to cut us off from reality rather than put us
         more closely in touch with reality.

A. It disables reliance upon methodological faith, such that knowledge
     by acquaintance (whether in sense perception or in reasoned
     intuition) seems no longer trustworthy.
B. It makes experience seem passive, surface only, without depth and
     atomistic (non-integrated).
C. It cuts the mind (and all internal mental life) off from its sense of being
     in the world, being in context, situated in a time, place, culture,
     language, and in rapport with other people -- also from learning
     through empathy.

Descartes' goal: to refute the possibility that there could be an all powerful, demonic higher power (an "evil genius") systematically deceiving us (with regard to the general trustworthiness of sense perception and the reliability of reason).

A. We have a clear and distinct idea of God.

B. This is the idea of a perfect being, an infinite substance, eternal and
     unchanging, supremely intelligent and powerful, existing
     independently -- a being which created ourself and everything else
     [whatever else exists].

C. Something cannot arise from nothing.  (I.e., everything must have a
     cause.)

D. A cause must contain at least as much reality (as much perfection) as
     its effect.  (I.e., what is more perfect cannot arise from what is less
     perfect.)

E. Being an imperfect and finite (limited) being, we cannot ourself produce
     this idea of a perfect being.
____________
F. Therefore, God must exist as the being who has produced in his
     creature, namely us, the idea of a perfect being (God himself.)

G. All fraud and deceit depend upon some defect.
____________
H. Therefore, God cannot be a deceiver.

I. The only reason for doubting that human reason is reliable is the
   possibility of a higher power deceiving us (the Evil Genius hypothesis).
____________
J. Therefore, human reason is reliable.

[A problem:  Doesn't this proof assume that human reason is reliable, and thus assume the very thesis it is trying to prove?  I.e., does it not "argue in a circle"?]

1. Error results because we tend to jump to conclusions, make judgments
    too quickly on imperfect evidence.  I.e., we make mistakes because we
    do not exercise our capacity to suspend judgment: we assent or
    dissent before we have enough evidence.

2. We can avoid mistakes and achieve certainty if we hold back and
    assent only to those propositions which we clearly and distinctly
    perceive to be true (i.e., propositions for which we have fully sufficient
    evidence).

3. When we confront a statement for which there is no compelling
    evidence either that it is true or that it is false (where the truth is not
    perceived with sufficient clarity and distinctness), we should suspend
    our judgment until we have compelling evidence.

4. We shall unquestionably reach the truth, if only we give sufficient
    attention to all the things which we perfectly understand, and separate
    these from all the other cases where our apprehension is more
    confused and obscure.

5. Every clear and distinct perception must have God for its author and
    thus it cannot be deceptive, because God is no deceiver.

Descartes' goal: to establish a firm foundation on the basis of which natural science can proceed to achieve an understanding of things that will make us "masters and possessors of nature."

1. Natural science seeks knowledge of the external world.
 

a. The external world is made up of extended things, bodies in space -- and determinately representable in mathematical form.

b. The only basis we have of knowledge of the external world is
    through sense perception.

c. Sense perception, while fallible, is on the whole reliable because
    the all powerful being who created us is no deceiver.

d. But this requires that we be very circumspect in relying on the
    evidence of sense perception.

    Specifically we must rely only on evidence which is exactly
    specifiable (ideally in mathematical form), and invariant from
    person to person and under varying conditions of perception
    -- in short, impersonally given.
 

2. Natural science must therefore be very careful and discriminating of
    how it relies on sense perception.  As revealed through the method
    of systematic doubt, sense perception is at best a representative
    appearance, within the mind, of what is outside the mind.
 
a. Sense perception is conceived to be a product of the causal
    impact of features of things in the external world upon the sense
    organs of our body.

b. This impact produces two kinds of apparent features or qualities
    in our sensory impressions:

    i.  Impressions which more or less accurately represent the
        features of bodies in the external world ( = primary qualities), and

    ii.  Impressions which do not correspond but which are simply
         produced in us as a result of the impact of these features on
         our sense organs ( = secondary qualities).

c. Secondary qualities are conceived to vary from person to person
    and underdifferent conditions of perception.  This makes them
    unreliableindicators of the true nature of things ( = subjective).

   i.  Examples include color, texture, warmth, meaning, value, and
       purpose -- i.e., all qualitative features.

d. Primary qualities alone are conceived to be indicators of the true
    nature of things( = objective), and they are what natural science
    must solely relyupon.

    ii.  Examples include size, shape, mass, location, and motion -- i.e.,
         all quantitative features of extension.

X.  Empiricism

     1. All knowledge -- indeed, all ideas -- are supposed to derive from and are
         based upon sense perception.

     2. To be meaningful as well as to be true, an idea or statement must be
         traceable back to sense perception for validation (as meaningful) and
         verification.

     3. Nominalism (= concepts are names only)

A. All of the concepts and categories (i.e., the forms) with which we
     make sense of things are human constructs, not discoveries.
B. Concepts and categories are real only for those that use them, and
     their validity and truth is determined by their usefulness.
C. The only real things outside of the mind are particular, individual,
     contingent things, which are knowable only by sense perception.
D. Rational Truths are trivial because they are simply truths about the
     concepts and categories that we have constructed (they are
     analytically true).  But they tell us nothing about the world outside the
     mind.

         It is conceived as passive, without depth, and atomistic (non-integrated),
         but representative of things outside the mind that have produced (or
         caused) sense impressions within us.
 

XI.  Instead of Absolute Certainty as Criterion

     1. If absolute certainty is not the standard or criterion of knowledge, then
         what is the standard?

Human claims to knowledge are fallible.  They can be wrong.  To make a claim to knowledge is to risk being wrong.  To make a claim to knowledge is like making a wager or, alternatively, like making a promise, giving one's word, that something is so.

Thus, there is always some room for doubt.  The criterion is to eliminate or answer reasonable doubt, through having and offering sufficient evidence.  (See the handout on the nature and criticism of arguments.)  What sufficient evidence is will vary with the context and type of knowledge being claimed.

The skeptic needs to be convinced only if
   (a) he is being reasonable in his doubt,
   (b) he is really interested in getting at the truth in question, and
   (c) he is truly open to weighing relevant reasons.
If he is not, his opinion ceases to count in reasonable argumentation until he meets these conditions.
 

     They are of four kinds (at least):

A. Transcendental norms (e.g., justice, beauty, goodness)
B. Mathematical and logical principles
C. Natural kinds (the true essences of things)
D. General properties (features of things that may or may not be essential)

     1. Platonic Rationalist Answer:

They exist objectively beyond and in some sense "above" our minds, and are discovered by dialectical reasoning and a kind of intuitive recollection.  (Note: Rationalists distinguish between these truths and our ideas and opinions about them, which are our attempts at apprehending and representing them to ourselves.)  This means that there are realities to which the mind has access other than through sense perception.  In some sense they are innate (or our access to them is innate) but usually unconscious and unrecognized.

They do not exist objectively outside of our minds; they are constructions of the mind invented by us to order and make sense of our experience, and their meaningfulness and truth are entirely given in terms of their usefulness to that end.  The analytic truths of logic and mathematics are simply truths concerning the structure of and relations between these invented ideas.

They do exist objectively but within things themselves, to which we first have access through sense perception.  Through a process of intellectual abstraction and "induction" we discover them and gradually build up a sure and confident knowledge of them.

They do not exist outside the mind yet they are not invented by us.  We can discover them as the categories and principles with which the rational mind necessarily comprehends and orders sense experience.  They are imposed on experience by means of our rational apprehension of the world, which (according to Kant) is in principle the same in all rational beings.

• Apprehended by non-rational intuition?
• Bestowed by divine revelation?
• ?

     1. Analytic Statements (what Hume called "relations of ideas")

An analytic statement attributes a property to something, and that property is already implicit in the definition of that object or concept.  (E.g., "A square has four sides." And "A bachelor is unmarried.")

• It is necessary.  Its denial results sooner or later in a contradiction.
• It is universal (so far as the same definition is assumed).
• It is unchanging or eternal.
• It is certain (though not necessarily subjectively certain).
• If the definitions on which the statement is based are discovered (as rationalists claim), then such truths tell us important things about the world.
• But if the definitions are simply invented or stipulated, such truths are trivial.

A synthetic statement attributes a property to something, but that property goes beyond what is contained within the definition of the object or concept involved.  (E.g., "This page is white.")

• Its denial does not result in a contradiction.  In other words, its denial is at least conceivably possible in the abstract.
• We can know which is true (the original statement or its denial), only on the basis of some independent test.
• Empiricists maintain that we can determine the truth of such statements only on the basis of sense perception, or they are nonsense.
• Rationalists maintain that we can determine the truth of some synthetic statements through dialectical inquiry, and thus arrive at certain necessary, universal, eternal truths.
• True synthetic statements tell us matters about the world that are of practical value and usefulness.
• But the world thus described, according to empiricist assumptions, is entirely contingent and not necessary in any of its features.
• Empiricists maintain that a synthetic statement's universality cannot be known in advance of actually  checking with sense perception, so it is forever uncertain.
• Similarly, empiricists maintain that a synthetic statement does not express an eternal, forever unchanging truth (with the exception of statements asserting something to be true of a state of affairs at a certain time).  New circumstances can bring about its falsity, or make a statement which is presently false become true.
• Rationalists, however, hold that some synthetic truths -- not all truths but the most important truths about the world, on which true wisdom depends -- are necessary, universal, eternal, and certain.

1. A priori truths are truths that allegedly cannot be derived from sense
    experience and therefore are supposed to hold true independently
    of sense experience.  Their truth is not contingent upon what we find
    in experience.
a. A priori truths are the special concern and interest of rationalism.
    (More generally, rationalists maintain that they are the special
    concern and interest of philosophy.  Even empiricist principles,
    say rationalists, are putative a priori truths, for they can't be
    justified on empirical grounds.)
b. Empiricists maintain that the only a priori truths are the analytic
    truths of mathematics and logic, which tell us nothing about
    objective reality but only about relations of ideas.
c. They are what dialectical inquiry aims at discovering.
d. They are universal, certain, unchanging, and necessary
     (non-contingent).
2. A posteriori (or empirical) truths are truths that derive from and are
    dependent upon sensory experience.  Their truth is contingent upon
    what we find in experience.
a. Empiricists maintain that all synthetic truths, truths about reality
    that are not simply empty or analytic truths, are a posteriori
    truths.  Consequently, they maintain that there are no a priori
    synthetic truths.
b. Rationalists maintain that, while many synthetic truths, truths
    about contingent, non-necessary things and events in the world
    are a posteriori, other synthetic truths are a priori and are
    universal, unchanging, certain, and necessary.  (This is not,
    however, to say that everyone is aware of these truths.  Nor is it
    to say that a given person's understanding of these truths is
    absolutely certain, complete, an unchanging.)

     1. All knowledge derives from and is based on sense experience.

     2. The mind is a "blank tablet" until sense experience writes upon it.
          All content of our mind comes ultimately from this source and from
          internal reflection on what is in our minds.

     3. Sense experience is made up of sensory impressions produced in our
         minds by things in the external world (i.e., caused by them) through their
         direct or indirect impact upon the sense organs of our bodies.  (Note:
         this means that we do not directly encounter these things them-selves,
         but only the impressions they produce in us.)

Sense impressions, therefore, may be said to represent the things which produce them in us.  This view is called the Representative Theory of Perception.  (Note: Descartes basically held to this account of sense perception, so Locke is following Descartes here.)

A. Primary Qualities:

These are qualities objectively true of objects themselves (solidity, extension, figure, motion or rest, and number).

The sense impressions these qualities produce in us resemble (more or less accurately represent) the qualities themselves.

(These are the things that natural science studies.)

B. Secondary Qualities:
 
These are qualities that seem to be true of objects, but are only apparent (colors, sounds, tastes, etc.).

They are actually only impressions produced in us by certain primary qualities in things (powers to produce these sense impressions), but they do not resemble the qualities that produce them.

Hence they later (after Locke) come to be characterized as "subjective" (do distinguish them from the supposedly "objective" primary qualities).  As beauty is sometimes said to exist "merely in the eye of the beholder," so also these qualities are said merely to exist in the internal subjective experience of the beholder, not in the object being perceived.

     1. Locke's very assumptions (and Hume's, for that matter), seem not to be
         directly derivable from sense perception.  Among other things, they
         purport to establish absolute limits to the mind and what it can and
         cannot know.

     2. Locke's understanding of sense impressions being causally produced
         in our minds by things outside our minds appear not be verifiable in
         sense experience, for on his terms we never directly experience (know
         by acquaintance) anything outside our minds.  According to him, we
         never experience anything but sense impressions internal to our minds.

     3. Locke's theory of experience (and Hume's) appears to rule out vast
         ranges of our experience, notably our experience of other persons
         experiencing the same things we are experiencing.  Like Descartes, it
         assumes the mind to be outside of the external world it experiences,
         rather than situated within it alongside other persons.

     4. Locke's distinction between primary and secondary qualities doesn't
         seem to hold up well on close inspection.

A. The distinction presupposes that we somehow have access to the
     external world of primary qualities, but it is not clear how we have
     that access if we are restricted to sense impressions to go on.
     Indeed, it begs the question as to what is objectively real.

B. Measurable "primary" qualities (like size and motion) seem to be no
     less dependent upon a measurer operating in a certain context to
     recognize them than are "secondary" qualities (like color and
     meaning) dependent upon a perceiver operating in a certain context.

     1. All of our ideas ("more feeble perceptions") are copies of our
         impressions ("more lively perceptions"), either directly or indirectly by
         the mixture and composition of them by the mind and will.

Consequently, if any philosophical term is employed without a definite impression (or set of impressions) from which it is derived, it must have been compounded from ideas which themselves are copies of impressions or lack any definite meaning -- i.e., a fiction concocted by our imagination.  [The Empiricist criterion]

A. Evidence of their truth and how they are ascertained are quite
    different.
B. The former are either intuitively or demonstratively certain, so their
     contrary implies a contradiction.  Their truth is independent of what
     is anywhere existent in the universe [as discoverable by sense
     perception].
C. The latter are never intuitively nor demonstratively certain, so their
     contrary is always possible.  Their truth is entirely dependent on
     confirmation by sense perception.

A. All inductive inferences assume that the future will resemble the past.
B. If we apply Hume's empiricist criterion to this idea, it come up wanting.
C. Because it is entirely conceivable that the future might be unlike the
     past (its conception involves no logical contradiction) and because
     sense experience is entirely contingent (having no necessity), there
     is no rational basis for concluding that future instances of any
     generalization we make will be similar to past instances.
D. Thus, there is no rational justification for induction.
E. Nevertheless, says Hume, we cannot help believing that the future will
     resemble the past and making inductive inferences.

A. To this idea we must apply Hume's criterion.  When we do we come
     up, not with no impressions, but solely with impressions of
     i. Contiguity (nearness in space) of apparent cause with apparent
        effect;
     ii. Temporal priority of apparent cause to apparent affect; and
     iii. Constant conjunction of apparent cause to apparent affect in all
          previous experience.
B. But to the idea of any actual necessary connection between apparent
     cause and apparent effect, or to the idea that future occurances of the
     apparent cause and effect should be the same as experience up to
     now, we can find no corresponding impressions.
C. Therefore, such ideas are at best fictions.
D. Consequently, any reasoning based on the relation of cause and
     effect, and any expectation that a certain effect will follow a certain
     cause, must be based not on reason but on nothing more than the
     non-rational custom or habit which nature impresses upon us.
          In other words, given the fact that there is no real reason for an
     alleged effect to follow its alleged cause, no necessity, there is no
     rational justification for any inference based on cause and effect.
E.  Even so, we cannot help believing in it.

A. Similar to the idea of a self, when we apply Hume's criterion to this
     idea, it too comes up wanting.
B. Other than the sensory impressions of the qualities that characterize
     any given thing (and the ideas we have of it that are based on these
     impressions), there is no impression to be found corresponding to
     the idea of an underlying substance unifying the thing and of its
     existence independently from us and our perceptions.
C. So, the idea of substance, too, must be a fiction.
D. It is clear, nevertheless, that we cannot help but believe in the
     independent existence of things and persons -- indeed, in the whole
     external world -- but we have no rational justification for this belief.

A. When we apply Hume's test of asking from what impressions the idea
     of a substantial self could be derived, it comes up wanting.
B. There is no constant and invariable impression from which it is
     derived, but only the continuing stream of varying impressions
     constituting all that goes on in our mental life.
C. At best, all that ties this bundle of impressions and ideas together
     are three principles of association: resemblance, contiguity
     (closeness or proximity in time and space, including succession),
     and cause and effect (analyzed above) -- in a manner similar to
     what ties a republic or commonwealth together.
D. Therefore the idea of a self must be a fiction.  (So also, the idea of
     alleged acts of free choice.)
E. Even so, again, we cannot help believing in a self and personal
     identity, for ourselves and other persons.

A. Hume has shown that on empiricist principles [at least upon his
     version of them] that there is no good justification for believing
     that the future will resemble the past, that events have any necessary
     connection with each other, that there is an external world outside
     the mind, or that the mind itself exists -- all apparently very radical
     skeptical conclusions.
B. These conclusions are literally and simply unbelievable, for human
     nature through custom and habit prevents us from believing them
     -- at least when it comes to practical affairs and living our lives.
C. This suggests that our beliefs are not under our control.  Nature
     causes [?] us to believe just as it causes us to think and feel -- just as
     animals do in order to survive.
     i. What we find in experience is that belief just happens to us.  It
        "arises immediately;"  there is no operation of the mind that we
        perform in order to achieve it.
     ii. We do not and cannot make ourselves believe things.  Custom
        simply operates and, based on experience, we come to believe.
D. This amounts to a qualified or mitigated skepticism, based on
     caution and moderation, an awareness of how fallible we are, and,
     most importantly, on how lacking in rational justification are our
     most fundamental convictions about the world and our knowledge
     of it.
E. Even less justified, then, are any beliefs that go beyond ordinary
     appearances and commonsense conclusions about the world.
F. Precisely because our reasoning capacities are so fallible and
     uncertain in their conclusions, any beliefs that go beyond
     ordinary appearances and commonsense conclusions about the
     world will be unjustified and unjustifiable.  For these we have no
     reliable guide.
G. In particular Hume proposes that
     i. We should conform our beliefs (proportionally) to experience
        insofar as it is possible.
    ii. We should restrict our beliefs to the realm of experience.
   iii. We should adopt an agnostic position for matters of fact for which
        we have no relevant experience.

     1. Hume's skeptical conclusions say as much or more about the
         limitations and possible inadequacy of his criterion of meaning and
         truth as they say about the "fictional" status of the ideas of "self,"
         "substance," and "the relation of cause and effect."

     2. Hume's presupposed conception of sense experience

• as "impressions" internal to the mind conceived as a closed container (as opposed to being relational acquaintances with things beyond the mind);
• as wholly passive, somehow impinging on the mind from without (as opposed to being intentional and self-initiated);
• as surface only (with no dimension of depth); and
• as atomistic or discrete (with no integrative aspect)
necessarily result in his finding no discrete sense impression corresponding to "self," "substance," or "causal connection."

In other words, his assumptions dictate that he will find no such impressions.  A broader conception of sense experience might be able to accommodate "experiences" of these things.

XIX.  Kant's Reconciliation of Rationalism and Empiricism

     1. Kant agrees with empiricism that all knowledge arises with perceptual
         experience.  But the fact that it arises with perceptual experience does
         not entail that all knowledge derives from perceptual experience.

     2. Kant agrees with rationalism that we do have some knowledge --
         specifically knowledge of universal and necessary truths -- that does
         not and cannot possibly derive from perceptual experience.  E.g., "5 + 7
         = 12."  "All events are caused." "All things in the external world exist
         within time and space."

     3. The main problem that concerned him was what made the latter sorts
          of truths, "a priori synthetic truths" possible.  He concluded that they
          are possible only if both our knowledge and our perceptual experience
          are actively constructed by our minds (largely unconsciously) in
          accordance with these categories and principles ("forms").

A. The categories and principles that our minds use to make sense of
     experience are, according to Kant, the same for all rational beings.

B. These categories and principles (the "forms") are what reason can
     know in independence from experience.

XX.  KANT'S CRITICAL IDEALISM
        (Sometimes Interpreted as Critical Realism)

    1. Kant's way of reconciling rationalism and empiricism came at a certain
        price.  Specifically, a priori synthetic truths (the truths of reason) are not
        extra-mental truths, not truths about reality beyond the mind, but truths
        about the mind -- specifically, truths about how the mind makes sense
        of and comprehends experience.  This makes Kant a critical idealist.

    2. Knowledge and experience (phenomena) for Kant are not, however,
        created by the mind.  Their content comes from raw sense impressions
        that come from without, but its form comes from the active sense-making
        and conceptualizing power of the rational mind.  Raw sense impressions,
        he believed, come from things in themselves  beyond the mind
        (noumena), which we can never know.  This makes Kant, in certain
        respects, a critical realist.

    3. We get in trouble, Kant believed, when we extrapolate the categories
        and principles with which we make sense of and comprehend our
        experience to make inferences about matters that lie beyond any
        possible human experience -- including, of course, things in themselves
        (noumena).  Strictly speaking, he argued, this leads us into drawing
        unjustifiable, controversial, and sometimes contradictory conclusions.

    4. Nevertheless, some such ideas have a legitimate role as "regulative
        ideas," that orient us and make sense of our passions to know, to
        understand, to aspire, and to appreciate things.  But these ideas, in
        which we may be said to have faith, have no objective reference that
        we can ever be said to know.  They include, among other things, the
        idea of the world as a whole, the idea of God, the idea of a final or
        absolute justice, the idea of beauty, and even, possibly (?) the idea
        of the self as freely acting.

XXI.  Kant's Idea of Rationality

    1. Kant emphasized the active nature of thought.  What we find in nature
        and experience generally depends on what questions we ask, what
        hypotheses we propose, and what experimental tests we perform.

A. ". . . reason has insight only into that which it produces after a plan
     of its own, . . . constraining nature to give answers to questions of
     reasons own determining" (Govier 184).
B. In accordance with the regulative idea of the world as a whole, our
     reason forms ideas in pursuit of a unified, systematic understanding
     of things, which we then put to experimental test.  We do not first get
     these ideas from experience.

    3. Kant emphasized that, to be truly reasonable, we need to come up with
        ideas and principles that human reason in general can support as if they
        were universal laws that anyone anywhere (who sought to think
        rationally) would find it reasonable to accept -- i.e., that we should think
        from the standpoint of anyone indifferently, and not allow ourselves or
        anyone else be treated as an exception.

XXII. Problems with Kant's Reconciliation

    1. Kant continues to assume the representational conception of
        perceptual experience and seems to have no notion whatsoever of
        an alternative, relational conception.  So the problems connected with
        the representational conception apply to Kant as well.

A. The idea that knowledge is shaped by the mind, the way Kant
     conceives it, removes us still further from the thing-in-itself that is
     supposed to give rise to sense impressions, rather than draw us
     closer to it.
B. Despite highlighting the mind as active in shaping experience and
     knowledge, Kant still holds raw sense impressions to be wholly
     passive representations.
C. Kant's conception of experience as wholly constituted on the basis
     of raw sense impressions seems overly restrictive -- not just in
     eliminating ordinary acquaintance knowledge but also in dismissing
     many other sorts of experience.

A. But is this so?  For example, do all persons in all cultures construct
     the world the same basic way?
B. And is this assumption sufficient to establish the objectivity and
     substantial existence of the world that our minds have constructed?

A. The knowing subject for Kant is just as much outside the world and
     outside standing in relation to other people and other things as is the
     knowing subject for Descartes.
B. This leads to many problems, not least of which is how we can
     possibly know other persons in their knowing, and how others can
     know us in our knowing.

A. But it will perhaps be even more usefully understood if correlated
     with the distinction between knowledge by acquaintance (with the
     thing in itself as other than and more than what we are able to
     represent it to be) and knowledge by representation (namely, our
     conception, our representation of the thing in accordance with the
     categories and principles of our understanding).
B. This would preserve and make even more workable Kant's critical
     realism, but would put us in a position where we can raise effective
     questions about how well our understanding of things (our maps)
     does justice to things in themselves (the territory).  Kant's way of
     conceiving the relation between phenomenon and noumenon does
     not put us in such a position.

A. Euclidean Geometry at least and maybe certain forms of mathematics
     may not be as uniquely necessary for making sense of our world
     (other forms doing as well or better).
B. Certainly many, if not all, of the categories and principles we
     presupposed in making sense of our experience seem not to be
     unique, but are some among competing sets (among different
     conceptual frames of reference, which sometimes reflect culture).

XXIII.  Experience as Representational

    Object-in-itself [in the world] - > causes - > Sense data [in the mind]

(Which are supposed to represent the objects that produce them in us.)

Accordingly, the most reliable indicators for what the objects in the world are really like are supposed to be those sense data which have had the least shaping or influence on our part (the least subjective bias or spin given to them by us).

For Kant, for our experience to be experience of objects, it must be integrated, deciphered, and interpreted by the mind in accordance with the categories and principles of the rational mind.  Thus,

   Forms           Categories & Principles
     of Sensibility            of Judgment
                 |                                     |
                 |                                     |

(Note how the move here is farther and farther away from the objects to be known.  The more the mind has intervened to shape experience and understanding, the more it has added something to the sense data, and the farther it is removed from the object in itself.)

Knowing person [in the world] < - > experiences < - > Object [in the world]

Experience here is a dynamic, developing relationship of potentially deepening acquaintance with the object.

Here, the contributions of the mind may draw one nearer to the object known, as opposed to putting one at a greater distance (as in the previous model).  Note: the belief I have about the object is not the same as my experience of it, though ideally my belief should be in agreement with my experience of it.

The apparent object, on this understanding, is not an object separate from the object in the world (as it is on the conception of experience as representational), but it is a more or less tenuous relation or connection with the object itself -- a relation that holds open the possibility of deepened acquaintance.

To pursue that deepened acquaintance is to draw nearer to the object with whatever means are available, to refine one's apprehension of it (including overcoming misapprehensions of it), to come to a fuller understanding of it.

Typically, pursuing such a deepened acquaintance involves approaching the object from different angles and perspectives, taking into account other points of view, and developing a rounder grasp of it.

Key to all of this is to recognize (philosophically) that the object itself is more than any one present grasp of it, more than any one view of it can encompass, yet is open to becoming better known.

     1.  Psychology looks at what typically happens in people's experiences,
          behavior, reactions, and development.

A.  It is not usually concerned with critically assessing or evaluating
     what people say and do, to determine whether or not it is well
     reasoned or justified.

B.  Even less does it critically examine the criteria or standards people
      rely on to make judgments.

A.  Philosophy is especially concerned with examining the criteria and
      standards we rely on to make judgments.

B.  Philosophical questions arise in psychology whenever the
      assumptions which govern psychological research are examined.
      And sometimes the results of psychological research give rise to
      philosophical questions.
 

     1.  "Duality" -- knowledge is clear and unambiguous, with a right and
          wrong answer for every question.  These "facts" are external, known
          by authorities and experts.

(Compare philodoxical referral to an authority; Socrates' level one.)

(Compare the pitfall of ideological thinking, a form of philodoxy.)

(Compare the pitfall of relativism, a form of philodoxy.)

(Despite the name "relativism," compare this to what we have called reasoned inquiry and reasoned judgment, and Socrates' level two.  Here there seems to be room for level three, but it is unclear.)

     1.  "Received Knowledge" -- where knowlege is what some authority
           says it is.

(Compare philodoxical referral to an external authority; Socrates' level
one.)

(Somewhere between Perry's "unacceptable multiplicity" and "acceptable multiplicity.")

A.  "Separate Knowlege" -- objective, impartial, adversarial, where the
      knower separates herself as much as possible from the matter
      being investigated.  No claim is accepted as true until it is impartially
      tested, scrutinized, and challenged.  It relies heavily upon methodo-
      logical doubt.

      (Compare scientism.)

B.  "Connected Knowledge" -- subjective, intuitive, emotional, where
      the knower draws near the matter being investigated, dissolving
      any strict boundary between knower and known.  It utilizes empathy,
      methodological believing, gentle receptivity, etc.

      (Compare the relational conception of experience.)

XXVIII.  "Female" vs. "Male" Knowing?

     Is there a difference?  How much is due to nature and how much to
     nuture?

     1.  Intuition vs. "Sticking with the Facts"

What is intuition?  Can we distinguish different kinds of intuition.  Has it a valid role to play in knowledge and inquiry?  Has both intuition and "sticking with the facts" a valid role to play in knowledge and inquiry?  Can we distinguish when one is needed more than the other?

What are they?  Can we distinguish different kinds of emotional involvement and/or detachment?  Are there situations where either is good and helpful and others where it is bad and unhelpful?  (Is
emotional involvement and personal involvement the same?)  Have some kinds of each a valid role to play in knowledge and inquiry?  Can we distinguish when one is needed more than the other?

What are they?  Has each a valid role to play in knowledge and inquiry?  Can we distinguish when one is needed more than the other?

What are they?  Has each a valid role to play in knowledge and inquiry?  Can we distinguish when one is needed more than the other?

What are they?  Has each a valid role to play in knowledge and inquiry?  Can we distinguish when one is needed more than the other?

What are they?  Has each a valid role to play in knowledge and inquiry?  Can we distinguish when one is needed more than the other?

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Copyright © 1997 Western Oregon University
Direct suggestions, comments, and questions about this page to Dale Cannon.
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