Introduction
Epistemology
is one of the disciplines of philosophy that is also verily tied up with
Metaphysics that remained as what Kant would say, ‘an endless battle of controversies’.[1] It
was the Ancient ordeal to arrive at truth thus what we deem knowledge but the
problem stems that every new epistemic theory that arises, it is always
challenged thereafter. An epistemic theory thus functions as assistance or a
framework wherein we can arrive at knowledge but sooner or later it will always
be proven wrong or lacking. Yet even in the falsification of these epistemic
theories, man has always claimed to know and for that what then is knowing?
That has been one of the aporias that has never been absolutely resolved. We cannot find a final definition of knowing
and even knowledge that will cease the debate once and for all. Therefore, epistemology is still yet a
discipline that has to be settled.
But
why are we driven to know things? Is it because Aristotle was right when he
said that ‘all men by nature desire to know’[2]?
That it is already within us that we tend to know, a nature of man? Or simply
we want to know because there is an end to it? We might gain happiness,
enlightenment and whatsoever? Even though we may postulate ends in knowing,
these ends themselves are vague in the sense that it cannot be pinpointed to
what, just like when we say we want to know, because we want the truth; the
truth is the good and the good is beautiful. All of these know, truth, good,
beautiful are interchangeable terms, or in the sense they overlap each other or
is there even really a difference between these? If these cannot be clearly
shown having a distinct cut from the other terms then the quest for knowing is
something vague, to posit ends that are in themselves incapable of being
understood.
Let
us just set aside those but let us try to focus on what I ought to do. There is
what I
call the ‘burden of omniscience’ of which this
has been the pervading problem that I faced in tackling the course and not even
just in the course itself but also as how I came into realization of the course
of Epistemology in the History of Philosophy. What then about this ‘burden of
omniscience’? It is this burden that made man strives so hard to make something
eternally pervading in a given moment. The point is that one philosopher tries
his very best to construct such indubitable schema but every person
after him who tries to negate him laid upon
him a ‘burden of omniscience’ that is he could have thought of this so that he
will not commit a mistake. But it does only stop there, in the play of time
there is always someone who refutes someone and placed the burden of that
previous someone that ‘you could have known this before then there will be no
problem’.
Also,
not only that someone after us place unto the prior an accusation that relates
to the burden of omniscience but also in one’s own time frame one is burdened
by the fact when he is so much of an open minded person that he should have
known everything in order to claim something as such. Or if one is not merely
passive on anything that he transpires around him, then he ought to investigate
more into things before he can claim anything. Aristotle once said that “all
men by nature desire to know” and by that it is already in man that he is
geared towards knowing and also there is the fear of being in error that is why
man seeks the truth and every time that fear of error comes, he personally
place a task unto himself to know everything or even if this may sound
impossible, but the drive to know everything springs about so that one can
claim knowledge or that he knows, but that burden is too much because we always
experience a defeat once what we claim is being challenged afterwards, placing
the very moment of claim accountable to the line ‘I could have known this and
that’.
So
I am tackling the so called ‘burden of omniscience’ as an endeavour of the
subject generating knowledge that he is burdened with such task to make
something that is absolute and also as a pointing finger expression to the
person before that he should have known this before.
My
paper will then show a brief account of the book Knowledge Puzzles by Stephen Hetherington and the expositions of
some issues raised in the book so as inducing my perspectives of the problems
using Hegel’s dialectics.
What is
knowledge?
Knowledge
has been the dispute of the ages whether we can attain one or leave it to
suspension especially when there is a correlation of it to the criteria such as
justified true belief or the famous JTB. But to further penetrate into the
definition of knowledge is to further swell the mystery of its understanding
since we have yet to explicate or even justify what is justification, truth and
belief.
We
can go with Aristotle in terms of what knowledge really is and that is it
requires experience. What he says about “whatever that comes into the mind pass
through the senses”[3]
entails that knowledge here is in the level of what is in the head that is
already a product of experience. Wherein what we know of must come from
experience and there is no knowledge when otherwise. Knowledge then is knowledge
of the abstract that is derived from the phantasm coming from sense experience.
The whole process leads to correspondence wherein what there is in thought must
also correspond with reality leading such into a certain justification being
made that there is a connection from thought to senses thus substantially lay a
strong claim over the object. But in this instance there is no believing since
it appears directly to the senses but such instance leads to justification and
truth. Truth in the sense that it is justified and what is justified that there
is the relation of object and what is in thought.
Still
it poses a question when there is already a challenge that tends to qualify
more of the said claim over an individual. It is thus then a form of
re-evaluating the claim of one from the viewpoint of another in order to really
claim such that the one who claims really knows, the end then foreseen that
there will be knowledge when there is a universal consensus. But as long there
is the presence of another that gives a challenge some claims that deems one as
knowledge stands questionable. Is then what was known by one not knowledge when
it is successfully challenged by the other especially when one has a
reinforcement of his own sense data as justification?
To
go to Plato prior to that of Aristotle, Plato deems that knowledge is already
in man that it is already innate and that in order for it to come to be, there
must be an intellectual midwifery that has to occur wherein this intellectual
midwifery is the assisting of one in order to recollect knowledge which is
forgotten. Plato’s metaphysics that of the dichotomous view of the world as
that of change and ideas permeates also in the understanding of his
epistemology. Because he believed that ideas are immortal and they are perfect
and for that they belong to a separate world to where the before man came to be
the soul was freely floating in this perfect world but in the even when soul
collided with matter thus came man, thus the soul was tainted with imperfection
of which it led to the erroneous nature of man – a sign of forgetfulness. But
man is tasked to recollect knowledge and not even one is an impediment to
recollect, but it is already in him that he does so. What man remembers as he
recollects and to that which his soul grasps those ideas Plato deems as
knowledge.
Although
there is that famous line as mentioned in one Plato’s dialogues that the more
we know the more we are aware of our ignorance and even the more we are
ignorant. Yet there is the drive in man that he wishes to extend his ignorance
all the more because he wants to know
more and more. Even though if one does not even seem to care, one is always
lead into some kind of personal quest that he wishes to undertake to
understand. One is compelled to know, the burden of omniscience is upon him.
Even
when we proceed to St. Augustine’s epistemic
theories, man still follows the desire to know and that he proposes a
light into the understanding of how man came into knowledge. He mentions of God
as being the source of all the eternal truths that we can comprehend or cognize.[4] To
place God then as the source of the
eternal truths is one manifestation of what is behind St. Augustine’s
rationale, regardless of his being theological in manner, but let us take that
God is that goal where man is so desperate to attain and to presuppose Him as
the source of even the so called eternal truths makes one suspicious of a
hidden desire within man of becoming godlike i.e. to become like Him,
omniscient. To directly beheld such truths without even climbing a certain
ladder that transcends and even has to pass through our materiality.
Here
then we go to the Modern Period in the philosophical movement, and let us take
Rene Descartes especially the idea he proposed. He was engrossed into the
finding of certitude or the truth. He is compelled to find such because there
is the uncertainty or the no-knowledgeness of the false, and that certainty
that is something resists doubt can be deemed as true and as knowledge. Even
though that he was destructive due to his methodic doubt but it is all in the
purpose of knowing, but where is the burden of omniscience thereof? Even though
he states the first truth that of the cogito, and the reinstatement of a God as
the source of the cogito, this second truth is a manoeuvre by Descartes to help him claim knowledge
other than the first truth, if he remained in the first truth then he cannot
claim any knowledge of the things outside of it, but he dares want to claim
knowledge other than the first truth then he wishes to know more even outside
of the first truth. Descartes is lead again to the Aristotelian drive i.e. all
men by nature desire to know. The burden of knowing, the burden of arriving at
certitude is evidential in Descartes epistemology.
When
we proceed to the rationalists, there is the desire in them to claim absolute
knowledge by the means of ratiocination or the use of logic. We can arrive at
knowledge or certitude when we use logic to demonstrate the coherence or the
consistency of the things that are at hand. When we venture to Leibnitz’ Monadology there he displayed a kind of
reasoning, the very method of the rationalist who use logic and how he
presented it is how a geometrician presents his work, even with Spinoza in his The Ethics. But the tendency of the
rationalists, even though they sound so convincing in giving logical
explanations in everything and the logical means in order to arrive at
certitude is that they become s dogmatic because there is the doubt resisting
tendency especially when we submit to the logical means, and logic thrives in
some assumptions that is still yet to be questioned whether they do have any
bearing in reality, that is there is now the demand of correspondingness of
thought with the empirical reality. But again, the rationalists are driven by
the burden that they should come up with the truths that are so called
knowledge, the burden to exhaust their logical prowess into the arrival in the
understanding of everything.
Another
trend other than the rationalists are the empiricists who proposes to include
and give primacy to experience other than what was presented by the rationalists.
The likes of John Locke denied that there are innate ideas and wherein he
asserts that the mind is a tabula rasa
before experience. But I would like to assert notorious of the empiricists
namely David Hume. He said that the “opposite of every matter of fact is always
possible”, he further reinforced that claim once he redefined the metaphysical
assumption of causality, wherein causality is just a product of habitually
perceiving the phenomenon of concern. For that causality is just by matter of habit
and therefore we predict in manner of what we are habituated at, and not to
mention that there is always the possibility of another effect to anything what
we deem as cause. It is then more likely that the sun will rise in the morrow
it is because we are habituated by our experiencing such phenomenon, but it is
also probable that the sun may not rise on the morrow. Although Hume is a
sceptic but he establish that we may know something due to habit and through
what we experience but, there is always a possibility something else other than
what is present at experience. [5]
The
burden then rest when a falsification that occurs after a statement made that
then we could have known the possibility of that matter of fact earlier than
our experience of error. Every now and then I would always reiterate that there
is this demand of knowing it all. It is because we cannot have knowledge when
there is something that defeats the other. Or there is no knowledge when we are
ignorant of the possibilities.
Of
all the exposition I gave, of somewhat a brief history of the progress of
epistemology until the modern period, there is always the placing of that
burden of omniscience that is triggered when there is the presence of error.
How then do I relate both? One is burdened to know all to escape from error.
Error, falsity, untruth, wrong, whatever you may call it is always deemed as
something which is contrary to knowledge. Such as the Gettier cases to which it
shows that knowledge claims have been doubted because there is the presence of
err and the emergence of the burden is the consequence of the apparent fear of
error. Not only doubted but knowledge is been removed. The Gettier case shows
the standard epistemological interpretations resulting thereof to bringing
counterexamples to the JTB.[6]
The counterexamples thereof pose as a product of ‘what ifs?’ that questions the
claim of one. These counterexamples then are a key point in driving the falsity
of a certain JTB or it can reassure it, but it cannot be without such an
immense power to shake the foundations of certain claims.
These
counterexamples then also pose a somewhat imperative to us that we could have
known these counterexamples to which we could have already made such a clean
claim into knowing things. Such then is one burden, a burden to know all
counterexamples in order to claim knowledge.
When
we go to defeasibility, wherein there are challenges that attack our knowledge
claims, then whatever claim that has a defeater will deny the claim as somewhat
knowledge. Simply when things go into error, then such status of being
knowledge is questioned to the point that it is no longer knowledge. Is then
knowledge really limited to the true? Or does truth has needs to be taken into
another account?
We
always try to escape error and that is also the burden implied with the burden
of omniscience, to know all leads one to escape error once he perceives it
before enmeshed in its actuality. It is because once we realized the error once
we are already in it, the tendency is to discredit the knowledge claim that was
made prior.
But
what if there is nothing wrong once you are in error and that it doesn’t
challenge the fact that you know something. This then poses as a revolutionary
kind of thinking that if taken without careful consideration it will be a
transgression to logic and even to epistemology.
Dialectics
and Error
What
is mentioned above is a brief history of classic epistemology that ranges until
the modern period of which there is the relation to the burden of omniscience.
One is then burdened because there is a fear of fault or error that it deemed
so as something that refutes our knowledge claim.
In
Hegel’s philosophy, he offers a different treatment to error or what he dubs as
the negative. This idea is one of the revolutionary ideas that made him a mark
in the history of philosophy. His phenomenology of the spirit displays the
process of spirit in time and the process is what is dubbed as dialectics.
What
then is this dialectics? This is an attempt of Hegel to explain the nature of
everything of which there is always the presence of reactionaries of different
forces and these are the opposites. Hegel states that the “True is the Whole”[7].
And by Whole he means the totality. Commonly what we deem true is only the
common sense of it that it appears true to us. Simply there is correspondence
of thought and reality or a tandem between thoughts and intuitions. And as
mentioned previously that one is in err when there is a challenge to the
knowledge claim and that is by a good argument or a reality that defies claim. But
Hegel takes on a new understanding of truth or the True.
Hegel
takes into account thought process, and does not go to an end without the
means. That is there is the importance of the opposite in thought play. There
is a realization of the true in the false. The negative serves as a supplement
to the realization of truth. Simply negative is the ‘is not’ or the opposite.
As how Hegel illustrates the movement of the bud in his Phenomenology of Spirit that the flower is realized after a process
of negation from it being a seed that then in turn negates its ‘seedness’ once
it has developed into a bud and the bud then negates itself once it is realized
into a flower. The process of refuting one with the other is a supplementation
to the realization of the latter. “Refutation[s] would therefore properly
consist in the further development of the principle.”[8]
When
there is now a refutation of the former with the latter the latter is
reinforced by the negation of the former. That is then there is a different
experience with a realization. But as what was stated earlier in this paper
that the burden of omniscience grows when there is the fear of error. But here
in Hegel’s dialectics, error is part in truth. As again stated the “True is the
Whole”. Then when one is in error is it then a failure of knowledge or an
opening to the realization of something novel and has more ground than what was
just static before refutation or negation or error?
We
have then to acquiesce that knowledge is dynamic. Wherein there is the interplay
of the positive and the negative. In which the positive is realized and given
ground when there is something that challenges its state. The true has the
false within it, and that is the truth. Whenever we are “Gettiered” it does not
mean we didn’t know, we are just complimented in a negative way to reinforce a
kind of knowing or realization experience. Even though my previous claim may be
erroneous due to some other possibilities it does not mean that there is no
knowledge there.
Slowly
as I have negated I indeed can say that I did not know of this and so therefore
I err, but what has been unknown shakes the claim to knowledge but the unknown
now known supplements the idea of concern. Momentarily we can say that we don’t
know, and that our errors will lead us to having no knowledge, but when we look
at knowledge in a larger perspective, it is always about claiming what is known
that then will be challenge by the unknown then that became present in mind; it
will then result to a further reassurance of the claim or the complete
rejection of one in the form of being challenged by a negative.
When
we then try to use this lens to the philosophers mentioned above, then Plato
could have been reinterpreted that being ignorant is also being knowledgeable
when one is at the point of realizations. Or Aristotle’s classic empiricism can
be viewed that even though the faculties of man in gaining knowledge may not be
sufficient enough to rightfully claim, but it cannot be an impediment when we
still yet have that nature in us to know to correct ourselves and supplement
the knowledge claims further by our errors but only if when we have gained
realizations.
In
St. Augustine there is also that errors are the result of knowledge that is not
of God, then when one is in error that will then supplement one’s cause into
finding more of what then are the divine
truths that appear unto man. To then follow with Rene Descartes is that
the doubting that led to the exposition
of errors aided him into certainty, thus to say that the errors that he
realized in his meditations gave rise to his indubitable cogito. Then to go to
Hume, who says that there is always the possibility of every matter of fact,
makes us realize that there is always change and that it can challenge the
claims of today but it then does not mean that we don’t know, but we now know
further because we have erred by subjugating things to our habit once habit is
transgressed there is now something novel that appears to us.
The point that I am making here is that knowledge
is dynamic and in the sense there can be no knowledge when there is no error.
The very thing that makes us at fault is the very thing that also will guide us
into knowing, if we don’t stop the quest for truth. Yes, we are burdened to
know everything, but such burden is a good driving force for us to be accurate
in the demand of the moment but it will no longer be such a burden once we know
that errors are necessary upon realization. Knowledge and no-knowledge are tied
together to what we call a full reinforced realization of Knowledge.
References
G.W.F.
Hegel. The Phenomenology of Spirit .Trans.
by. A.V. Miller. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1962.
___________.
Hegel’s Science of Logic. Trans. by
Walter Henry Jonaston; L.G. Struthers.
London: G. Allen and Unwin. 1951.
___________.
The Berlin Phenomenology. Trans. by
M.J. Petry. Boston: D. Reidel. 1981.
Hetherington,
Stephen. Knowledge Puzzles: An
Introduction to Epistemology. USA: Westview Press, 1996.
Kant,
Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason.
Trans by Max Muller. New York: Penguin Classics. 2007.
Kojeve,
Alexander. Introduction to the Reading of
Hegel. New York:Basic Books Inc.1969.
Stumpf,
Samuel & Fieser, James. Socrates to
Sartre and Beyond: A History of Philosophy 8th Edition. Boston: Mc. Graw-Hill.
2008.
[1] Immanuel
Kant. Critique of Pure Reason. Trans
by Max Muller. New York: Penguin Classics. 2007. p. xxvi.
[4] Samuel Stumpf & James Fieser. Socrates to Sartre and Beyond: A History of
Philosophy 8th Edition. Boston:
Mc. GrawHill, 2008. pp. 117-118.
[5]
Mostly from the things that I have written, they are class notes from the
lectures of Bro. Abulad in Modern Philosophy, Epistemology and Metaphysics.
Although there were primary sources that were given to us, photocopies of some
sections of the philosophers at concern but I failed in my part to find their
details for bibliographic entries and quotation purposes. Even from the discussion
here of Plato down to Hume is a product of the conglomeration of class notes I
have.
[7] G.W.F.
Hegel. The Phenomenology of Spirit .Trans.
by. A.V. Miller. Oxford: Clarendon Press. p. 11.
[8] Ibid.
p.13.
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