Ridling Zaine. Philosophy: Then and Now. A look back at 26 centuries of thought

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Ridling, Philosophy Then and Now: A Look Back at 26 Centuries of Thought

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with a profound puzzle, one of whose implications is that there can never be a

science of the human mind.

Implications

These two problems resemble each other in certain ways and differ in

others, but both have important implications for epistemology.

First, as the divergent perceptions about the stick indicate, things cannot

just be as they appear to be. People believe that the stick which looks bent

when it is in the water is really straight, and they also believe that the stick

which looks straight when it is out of the water is really straight. But, if the

belief that the stick in water is really straight is correct, then it follows that the

perception human beings have when they see the stick in water cannot be

correct. That particular perception is misleading with respect to the real shape

of the stick. Hence, one has to conclude that things are not always as they

appear to be.

It is possible to derive a similar conclusion with respect to the mind of

another. A person can exhibit all the signs of being in pain, but he may not be.

He may be pretending. On the basis of what can be observed, it cannot be

known with certitude that he is or that he is not in pain. The way he appears to

be may be misleading with respect to the way he actually is. Once again

vision can be misleading.

Both problems thus force one to distinguish between the way things

appear and the way they really are. This is the famous philosophical

distinction between appearance and reality. But, once that distinction is

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drawn, profound difficulties arise about how to distinguish reality from mere

appearance. As will be shown, innumerable theories have been presented by

philosophers attempting to answer this question since time immemorial.

Second, there is the question of what is meant by “knowledge.” People

claim to know that the stick is really straight even when it is half-submerged

in water. But, as indicated earlier, if this claim is correct, then knowledge

cannot simply be identical with perception. For whatever theory about the

nature of knowledge one develops, the theory cannot have as a consequence

that knowing something to be the case can sometimes be mistaken or

misleading.

Third, even if knowledge is not simply to be identified with perception,

there nevertheless must be some important relationship between knowledge

and perception. After all, how could one know that the stick is really straight

unless under some conditions it looked straight? And sometimes a person who

is in pain exhibits that pain by his behavior; thus there are conditions that

genuinely involve the behavior of pain. But what are those conditions? It

seems evident that the knowledge that a stick is straight or that one is in great

pain must come from what is seen in certain circumstances: perception must

somehow be a fundamental element in the knowledge human beings have. It

is evident that one needs a theory to explain what the relationship is – and a

theory of this sort, as the history of the subject all too well indicates, is

extraordinarily difficult to develop.

The two problems also differ in certain respects. The problem of man’s

knowledge of the external world raises a unique difficulty that some of the

best philosophical minds of the 20th century (among them, Bertrand Russell,

H.H. Price, C.D. Broad, and G.E. Moore) spent their careers trying to solve.

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The perplexity arises with respect to the status of the entity one sees when one

sees a bent stick in water. In such a case, there exists an entity – a bent stick in

water – that one perceives and that appears to be exactly where the genuinely

straight stick is. But clearly it cannot be; for the entity that exists exactly

where the straight stick is is the stick itself, an entity that is not bent. Thus, the

question arises as to what kind of a thing this bent-stick-in-water is and where

it exists.

The responses to these questions have been innumerable, and nearly all

of them raise further difficulties. Some theorists have denied that what one

sees in such a case is an existent entity at all but have found it difficult to

explain why one seems to see such an entity. Still others have suggested that

the image seen in such a case is in one’s mind and not really in space. But

then what is it for something to be in one’s mind, where in the mind is it, and

why, if it is in the mind, does it appear to be “out there,” in space where the

stick is? And above all, how does one decide these questions? The various

questions posed above only suggest the vast network of difficulties, and in

order to straighten out its tangles it becomes indispensable to develop theories.

Relation of Epistemology to Other Branches of Philosophy

Philosophy viewed in the broadest possible terms divides into many

branches: metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, logic, philosophy of language,

philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and a gamut of others. Each of

these disciplines has its special subject matter: for metaphysics it is the

ultimate nature of the world; for ethics, the nature of the good life and how

people ideally ought to comport themselves in their relations with others; and

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for philosophy of science, the methodology and results of scientific activity.

Each of these disciplines attempts to arrive at a systematic understanding of

the issues that arise in its particular domain. The word systematic is important

in this connection, referring, as explained earlier, to the construction of sets of

principles or theories that are broad-ranging, consistent, and rationally

defensible. In effect, such theories can be regarded as sets of complex claims

about the various matters that are under consideration.

Epistemology stands in a close and special relationship to each of these

disciplines. Though the various divisions of philosophy differ in their subject

matter and often in the approaches taken by philosophers to their

characteristic questions, they have one feature in common: the desire to arrive

at the truth about that with which they are concerned – say, about the

fundamental ingredients of the world or about the nature of the good life for

man. If no such claims were asserted, there would be no need for

epistemology. But, once theses have been advanced, positions staked out, and

theories proposed, the characteristic questions of epistemology inexorably

follow. How can one know that any such claim is true? What is the evidence

in favor of (or against) it? Can the claim be proven? Virtually all of the

branches of philosophy thus give rise to epistemological ponderings.

These ponderings may be described as first-order queries. They in turn

inevitably generate others that are, as it were, second-order queries, and which

are equally or more troubling. What is it to know something? What counts as

evidence for or against a particular theory? What is meant by a proof? Or

even, as the Greek Sceptics asked, is human knowledge possible at all, or is

human access to the world such that no knowledge and no certitude about it is

possible? The answers to these second-order questions also require the

construction of theories, and in this respect epistemology is no different from

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the other branches of philosophy. One can thus define or characterize

epistemology as that branch of philosophy which is dedicated to the resolution

of such first- and second-order queries.

The Nature of Knowledge

As indicated above, one of the basic questions of epistemology concerns

the nature of knowledge. Philosophers normally interpret this query as a

conceptual question, i.e., as an issue about a certain conception or idea or

notion called knowledge. The question raises a perplexing methodological

issue, namely, how does one go about investigating such conceptual

questions? It is frequently assumed, though the matter is controversial, that

one can determine what knowledge is if one can understand what the word

“knowledge” means, that is, what notion or concept the word “knowledge”

expresses or embodies.

Philosophers who proceed in this way draw a distinction between a word

and its meaning, and a meaning is generally considered to be the concept

which that particular word has or expresses. It is usually further assumed that

though concepts are not identical with words, that is, with linguistic

expressions, language is the medium in which the meaning of such concepts is

displayed or expressed.

The investigation into the nature of knowledge often begins in a similar

fashion with the study of the use of the word “knowledge” and of certain

cognate expressions and phrases found in everyday language. A survey of

such locutions reveals important differences in their uses: one finds such

expressions as “know him,” “know that,” “know how,” “know where,” “know

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why,” or “know whether.” These differences have been explored in detail,

especially in the 20th century. The expression “know x,” where “x” can be

replaced by a proper name, as in “I know Jones” or “He knows Rome,” has

been taken by some philosophers, notably Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), to be

a case of knowledge by acquaintance. Russell thought its characteristic use

was to express the kind of knowledge one has when one has first-hand

familiarity with a certain object, person, or place. Thus, one could not

properly say in the 20th century, “I know Julius Caesar,” since this would

imply that one had met or was directly acquainted with a person who had died

some 2,000 years ago. This sense or use of “know” becomes important in the

theory of perception and in sense-data theory, since some philosophers, such

as Russell and G.E. Moore (1873-1958), have held that one’s awareness of a

sense-datum (a notion to be discussed later) is a case of direct acquaintance,

whereas one’s acquaintance with a physical object, such as a human hand, is

not.

The phrases “know that” and “know how” have also played fundamental

roles in the theory of knowledge. The British philosopher Gilbert Ryle (1900-

76), for instance, argued that “know how” is normally used to refer to a kind

of skill that a person has, such as knowing how to swim. One could have such

knowledge without being able to explain to another what it is that one knows

in such a case, that is, without being able to convey to another the knowledge

required for that person to develop the same skill. “Know that,” in contrast,

does not seem to denote the possession of a skill or aptitude but rather the

possession of specific pieces of information, and the person who has

knowledge of this sort can generally convey it to others. To know that the

Concordat of Worms was signed in the year 1122 would be an example of this

sort of knowledge. Ryle has argued that, given these differences, some cases

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of knowing how cannot be reduced to cases of knowing that and, accordingly,

that the kinds of knowledge expressed by these phrases are independent of one

another.

In general, the philosophical tradition from the Greeks to the present has

focused on the kind of knowledge expressed when it is said that someone

knows that such and such is the case, e.g., that A knows that snow is white.

This sort of knowledge, called propositional knowledge, raises the classical

epistemological questions about the truth or falsity of the asserted claim, the

evidence for it, and a host of other problems. Among them is the much

debated issue of what kind of thing is known when one knows that p, i.e.,

what counts as a substitution instance of p. The list of such candidates

includes beliefs, propositions, statements, sentences, and utterances of

sentences. Each has or has had its proponents, and the arguments pro and con

are too subtle to be explored here. Two things should, however, be noted in

this connection: first, that the issue is closely related to the problem of

universals (i.e., whether what is known to be true is an abstract entity, such as

a proposition, or whether it is a linguistic expression, such as a sentence or a

sentence-token) and, second, that it is agreed by all sides that one cannot have

knowledge, in this sense of “knowledge,” of that which is not true. One of the

necessary conditions for saying that A knows that p is that p must be true, and

this condition can therefore be regarded as one of the main elements in any

accurate characterization of knowledge.

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Six Distinctions of Knowledge

Mental versus nonmental conceptions of knowledge. Philosophers have

asked whether knowledge is a state of mind, i.e., a special kind of awareness

of things. That it is has been argued by philosophers since at least the 5th

century BCE. In The Republic Plato provided the first extensive account of

such a view. He regarded knowing as a mental faculty, akin to but different

from believing or opining. Contemporary versions of this sort of theory regard

knowing as one member of a sequence of mental states that involve increasing

certitude. This spectrum would begin with guessing or conjecturing at the

lowest end of certitude, would include thinking, believing, and feeling sure as

expressing stronger attitudes of conviction, and would end with knowledge as

the highest of all these states of mind. Knowledge, in all views of this type, is

a form of consciousness, the strongest degree of awareness humans possess,

and accordingly it is common for proponents of such views to hold that, if A

knows that p, A must be conscious of what he knows. This view is normally

expressed by saying that, if A knows that p, A knows that he knows that p.

Many 20th-century philosophers have rejected the notion that

knowledge is a mental state. In On Certainty (1969) Ludwig Wittgenstein

says: “‘Knowledge’ and certainty belong to different categories. They are not

two mental states like, say surmising and being sure.” But, if knowing is not a

mental state, then what is it? These philosophers have accepted the challenge

of trying to give a different characterization of what it means to say that a

person knows something. They typically begin by pointing out that a person

can know that p without knowing that he knows it (a good example is in fact

to be found in Plato’s Meno, where Socrates gradually elicits from a slave boy

geometrical knowledge that the boy was not aware he had). They then proceed

to argue that it is a mistake to assimilate cases of knowing to cases of

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doubting, feeling a pain, or having a certain opinion about something. All of

these latter are mental states, and they are such that a person who has such a

state is aware that he does.

These philosophers, moreover, typically deny that knowing can be

described as being a single thing, such as a state of consciousness. Instead,

they claim that one can ascribe knowledge to someone, or to oneself, when

certain complex conditions are satisfied, among them certain behavioral

conditions. For example, if a person can always give the right answers to

questions under test conditions, one would be entitled to say that the person

has knowledge of the issues under consideration. Knowing on this account

seems tied to the capacity to perform in certain ways under certain standard

conditions. Accordingly, though such performances may involve the exercise

of intelligence or other mental factors, the attribution of knowledge to

someone is not merely the attribution of a certain mental state or state of

awareness to that person (as seen in the case of the slave boy in the Meno).

A well-known variant of such a view was advanced by J.L. Austin in his

1946 paper “Other Minds.” Austin claimed that, when one says “I know,” one

is not describing anything, let alone one’s psychology or a mental state.

Instead, one is engaging in a social act, i.e., one is indicating that one is in the

position (has the credentials and the reasons) to assert p in circumstances

where it is necessary to resolve a doubt. When these conditions are satisfied,

one can correctly be said to know.

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Occurrent versus Dispositional Conceptions of Knowledge

A distinction closely related to the previous one is that between

occurrent and dispositional conceptions of knowledge. The difference

between occurrences and dispositions can be illustrated with respect to sugar.

A sugar cube will dissolve if put into water. One can thus say that, even if the

cube is not now dissolving as it sits on the table, it will do so under certain

conditions. This propensity to dissolve is what is meant by a disposition, and

it is a feature sugar has at all times and in all conditions. It can be contrasted

with sugar’s actually dissolving when immersed in liquid, which is an

occurrence, that is, an event happening at a specific place and at a specific

time.

These terms also apply to mental events. One can say of Smith, who is

working on a problem, that he has just seen the solution. According to this

way of speaking, there is a certain answer that Smith is presently aware of and

to which he is attending. In such a case Smith’s knowledge is occurrent. But

one can also ascribe a different sort of knowledge to Smith. Though Smith is

perhaps not now thinking of his home address, he certainly knows it in the

sense that, if he were asked, he could produce the correct answer. One can

thus have knowledge that one is not aware of at a given moment. One can thus

say, as with sugar, that knowledge may be either occurrent or dispositional in

character, i.e., that one may or may not be in an immediate state of self-

awareness with respect to p, but that in either case it can be said that the

person knows that p.

It should be noted that the distinction between dispositional and

occurrent knowledge thus applies to cases of “knowing that” as well as to

cases of “knowing how” and thus is a powerful conceptual tool for analyzing