Abstract
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with the criteria of what constitutes knowledge. The primary purpose of epistemological investigation is to determine the legitimacy of any knowledge claim.
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Notes (Chapter 5)
Almost all the examples in textbooks of modern epistemology involve visual perception as the primary form of knowledge.
Historically, the issue of whether the active intellect was particular or universal foreshadows the modern and contemporary discussions of whether epistemology is individual or social.
Plato transcended this problem by denying that knowledge originates in a natural process from external objects. We are almost tempted to assert that Plato’s argument in the Meno about the origin of knowledge is the first expression of skepticism! The Copernican position also transcends this problem by denying that knowledge originates in a natural process, however its solution differs from Plato’s in its grounding.
The contemporary counterpart to Ockham’s notion of a natural sign would be the contention that machines can perform cognitive tasks because some natural events are “signs” of other natural events.
The reader should recall from our discussion in the previous chapter that `negation’ is a problematic concept for modern naturalist metaphysics.
We can even ask if the word `compare’ has any meaning. For example, how would one “compare” a box with its shape? As Wittgenstein will argue later the whole question seems misconceived.
That is why we distinguished in the last chapter between the metaphysics of analytic philosophy (background) and analytic metaphysics - the ontology that is now supposed to emerge from the epistemological analysis. Our claim is that there is more in the background than can be verified, and that the more is precisely what cannot be made coherent with what is verified.
Locke, Essay, IV, iii, 25, p. 556.
In his attempt (1961) to downplay the distinction between organic and mechanical systems, Nagel is led to conclude that there is “no general criterion which makes it possible to identify in an absolute way systems that are `genuinely functional’ as distinct from systems that are `merely summative”’ (p. 393 ). What this amounts to is the recognition that mechanism as a micro thesis is not an empirical scientific thesis but a metaphysical thesis. We have no clear cut instances of a mechanical system. All such alleged systems refer to initially hidden entities which are supposed to be ultimately intelligible as clearly identifiable structures. No such structures ever emerge in scientific discourse. The ultimate entities always interact in some process that requires either interpretation or the further search for even more fundamental ultimate entities (e.g., quarks).
This is an early version of identity theories of mind.
One important difference between Spinoza and Locke is that, according to Locke, we have intuitive knowledge only of our own existence.
Platonists, Copernicans, and Deists all respond to this challenge in different ways and in a way different from that of modern naturalists.
Consider Hume’s claim that the existence of body (i.e., the external world) is a basic assumption that must be taken for granted.
See Stroud (1984).
it is impossible to be generally in error“ - Davidson (1983b), pp. 19–20.
Popper (1983), p. 96.
The traditional epistemological problem of certainty may thus be seen as derivative from the more fundamental problem of what it means to say that we abstract the form from matter.
Kripke (1982) identifies a position allegedly held jointly by Hume and Wittgenstein as the `skeptical argument’.
We wish to remind the reader that there are different kinds of conventionalism so that the conventionalism of Protagoras is different from that of Hume or of Wittgenstein or of American pragmatism. To the modern naturalist epistemologist such distinctions are irrelevant.
Modern naturalist epistemologists, because of their commitment to realism, are always unhappy with those philosophers like Hume who seek to subvert skepticism by appeal to the practical and social context of knowledge. What the committed naturalist wants is a refutation of skepticism that is grounded in something incontrovertibly objective and unchanging, i.e., something independent of human social agents.
One of the great sustaining myths of the analytic view of the history of philosophy is that Berkeley and Hume are empiricists (modern Aristotelians). On the contrary, we would contend that Berkeley was a “Platonist” (hence his critique of the process of abstraction) and that Hume was one of the originators of the Copernican Revolution in philosophy.
See Brentano (1862), (1867), (1911a), and (1911b).
Austin’s (1962) devastating critique of A.J. Ayer is the best example of this recrudescence.
See also 6.342–343 for the view that the science of mechanics sufficiently describes the whole world.
How the description of the propositions is produced is not essential“ (3.317); ”This shows too that there is no such thing as the soul - the subject, etc.- as it is conceived in the superficial psychology of the present day“ (5.5421). Note as well (1961b), p. 80: ”Isn’t the thinking subject in the last resort mere superstition?“
Quoted in Anscombe (1959) p. 161.
Wittgenstein (1974), p. 72.
In his later work, the Investigations,Wittgenstein maintains that this does show the inadequacy of modern naturalist epistemology. Both works are still held together by the view that the abstraction process cannot be explained, but the later work denies for that very reason that there is an abstraction process. In the later work, Wittgenstein comes to embrace the Copernican Revolution in philosophy.
Every picture is at the same time a logical one. (On the other hand, not every picture is, for example, a spatial one)“ 2.182.
Propositions show the logical form of reality. They display it“ (4.121); ”What can be shown, cannot be said“ (4.1212).
One of the best books written on the Tractatus is McDonough (1986). I am indebted to McDonough for his many helpful conversations on this topic.
According to Aristotle, the word is a symbol for a thought,which in its turn is, or may be, a picture of a thing. According to a medieval line of thought which we have met in Ockham, the spoken or written sign stands, by arbitrary convention, for a mental sign which in a natural way, non-arbitrarily, refers to its object. Locke said that words primarily stand for ideas. The later Wittgenstein [of the Investigations,not the Tractatus turns sharply against the philosophical tradition of which these theories are examples“ Wedberg (1984), p. 328.
The view of the Tractatus is that the propositional symbol involves a meaning locus, an entity which is intrinsically meaningful, which contains its own rule of projection, etc. This meaning locus is also an interpretation terminus: To be aware of such an entity is to be aware of something which unambiguously shows its own meaning, which does not stand in need of interpretation“ McDonough (1986), p. 172.
Hegel’s Absolute can be seen as Aristotle’s, Spinoza’s and Leibniz’s God constituting the whole of reality. In Leibniz, God as the Supreme monad takes into His consciousness the consciousness of all monads. Fichte’s postulation of the external world can be seen as the self qua Leibnizian monad postulating the world that it then reflects in its own consciousness. Leibniz is the source for the entire tradition of German idealism. However, Leibnizian monads are not physical objects and not atomistic but relational in nature. This will be echoed in Hegel. The notion of a meaning terminus is also at the heart of Nozick’s self-subsuming explanation that we discussed in Chapter Four.
The whole modern conception of the world is founded on the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena“ (6.371).
Wittgenstein and Russell disagreed concerning the relevance of theory of knowledge to the domain of philosophy. Wittgenstein regarded it as of little philosophical import and deprecated Russell’s concern for it, while Russell regarded it as a core and foundation for work in logic and in scientific conceptual analysis. To him [Russell] science and philosophy were intimately related in the analysis of scientific concepts by philosophy. For Wittgenstein, the two realms of science and philosophy were separate; philosophy cannot tell us how things are, and science cannot clarify our ideas or our language“ Eames (1989), p. 168.
If Wittgenstein is correct, then all that science (Model,) can show us is how one object interacts with another object. Science cannot show us how an object interacts with or causes cognitive and mental phenomena; that is there cannot be model,). Hence, Quine is correct to maintain that any “scientific” (i.e., Model,) account of language learning would have to be behavioristic; unfortunately, Quine’s statement of his holism is an example of Model, and therefore on Wittgensteinian grounds incoherent.
The notebooks were written during the period 1914–16, but they were not published until 1961.
In the Philosophische Bemerkungen,Wittgenstein suggests, technically speaking, only that systems of propositions correspond to the world. It is a transitional work in enlarging the unit of correspondence and does not quite reach coherence.
Reality’ and `world’ are different concepts in the Tractatus `reality’ refers to what is and to what is not; `world’ refers to what is.
Wittgenstein, (1961b), p. 33.
So when Solipsism is worked out, it becomes clear there is no difference between it and Realism. Moreover, since the unique self is nothing, it would be equally possible to take an impersonal view of the vanishing point behind the mirror of language. Language would then be any language, the metaphysical subject would be the world spirit, and Idealism would lie on the route from Solipsism to Realism. Wittgenstein takes all three of these steps in the Notebooks, but in the Tractatus he takes only the first, which is also associated with Realism “ Pears (1971), p. 76.
The answer then would have to be that what was left out could only be shown, not described, with the implication that language cannot be freed from its dependence on context. Yet a recording angel [our italics,writing a history of the world, which included the fact of my writing these words, would not need to employ any such demonstratives. Perhaps the moral is that we, taking part as we do in the history of the world, and speaking from our position inside it, cannot assume the standpoint of the recording angel. Or rather, we can assume his standpoint but have to return to our places in order to interpret the utterances which we issue from it“ Ayer (1982), p. 29. We might also suggest that within the modern historical period of the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, God played, for many philosophers, the important epistemological role of Ayer’s recording angel.
During the 1960s, many analytic epistemologists rejected the message of the Tractatus and began to focus once again on the causal processes that seemingly generate knowledge. See Goldman (1967); Skyrms (1967); and Unger (1968).
We feel that even when all possible scientific questions have been answered, the problems of life remain completely untouched. Of course there are then no questions left, and this itself is the answer“ (6.52); ”The solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the problem“ (6.521).
Unable to appeal to science, some contemporary naturalist epistemologists have sought to evade the challenge to their metaphysical thesis by using a cultural argument, e.g., Sosa (1987) to the effect that the Enlightenment program of social technology requires the thesis. This argument shall be challenged in the last chapter.
For a recent statement see Kitcher (1992), pp. 74–76: “The epistemic status of a state is dependent on the processes that generate and sustain it. The central epistemological project is to be carried out by describing processes that are reliable, in the sense that they would have a high frequency of generating epistemically virtuous states in human beings in our world. Virtually nothing is knowable a priori,and, in particular, no epistemological principle is knowable a priori.” Note as well the statement (pp. 63–64) that “the root issue will always be whether the methods recommended are well adapted for the attainment of our epistemic ends, and that cannot be settled by simply appealing to our current concepts.”
Quine (1969b), p. 83.
Quine (1969b) and (1975).
Kornblith (1985), pp. 1–15.
Evolutionary epistemology is just such an approach. It is the analogue in epistemology of the historicist notion of progress in science. That is, just as the myth of historical progress was used to buttress the claim that science is autonomous and self-certifying, so evolutionary epistemology will be used to buttress the claim that we can, “in time”, give a scientific account of the process of knowledge acquisition. The fact that evolutionary epistemology uses biological metaphors gives it a kind of specious scientific plausibility. The analytic notion of evolutionary epistemology should not be confused with Bergson’s creative evolution or Piaget’s genetic epistemology.
In Chapter Four we argued that Kripke’s attempt to provide a causal theory of naming violated Hegel’s contention that no statement about the whole could be established by correspondence. In this chapter we have argued that Kripke’s attempt violates the argument of the Tractatus. In the next chapter, we argue that Kripke’s attempt fails because it falls into the abyss of exploration.
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Capaldi, N. (1998). Analytic Epistemology. In: The Enlightenment Project in the Analytic Conversation. Philosophical Studies in Contemporary Culture, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3300-7_6
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