Comment on a Theory of Knowledge
[Note: the following was intended as a comment on this article, but that article was in draft form, so my comment got posted inadvertently as an article on my homepage. The author of the initial article, Alex Bennett, was looking for constructive criticism of his ambitious theory of knowledge. Anyway, I’ll leave up this comment/article because some readers have commented on it. Apologies for the confusion.]
I think there are a couple of problems here. First, you’re conflating the epistemological question of the nature of knowledge (including skepticism, and so forth), with the social problem of how to improve critical thinking. These are separate problems. Indeed, the more philosophical the answer to the epistemic question of what knowledge is in the abstract, the less effective that answer is likely to be in the social context in which most people aren’t interested in philosophy.
Both questions are legitimate, of course. It’s just that I think your account would benefit if you were more explicit in speaking about the differences between them. The social issue has to do with the nature of certain societies, and with the influence of capitalism, advertising, individualism, social media, and so on. Not all societies are equally affected by this problem of the spreading of misinformation, anxiety, and cynicism (as opposed to skepticism). Epistemology doesn’t seem like the best tool for the job of fixing failing First World societies. The social solution might build on epistemology (on a technical account of the nature of knowledge), but the social answer would have to address economic, political, sociological, and historical issues which are independent of epistemology.
More importantly, I think your account of “truth units” just begs the epistemic questions. It’s like calling the parts of a car, including the engine, battery, radiator, transmission, and suspension system “car units.” Sure, after the car has been invented, we can think of the parts as adding up to a car, but that wouldn’t be very informative. When the car was invented over a century ago, the inventor wouldn’t have thought, “OK, all I need are a bunch of car units. So, I put this car unit together with that car unit, and I’ll do so by helping myself to this other car unit over here. And then I’ll have a car.” No, you’d need a reductive picture of a car, solving the technical problems in their own terms, without begging the question or presupposing the achievement of your goal (counting your chickens before they’re hatched). You’re trying to build a gas-powered vehicle. That’s the goal, but it can’t also be the means you employ to reach it. You can’t pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
In epistemology, you might want to explain how truth is a possible component of knowledge. If you could help yourself to “truth units,” there would be no problem of skepticism. That is, if there were identifiable truth units lying around, and if the world helpfully labeled them as such, there would have been no confusion about how knowledge is possible in the first place. There would have been no need for epistemology.
This problem comes out when you identify truth units with the facts of the real world. (‘In truth units theory, “the world is all the truth units.” We don’t know what “the case” is, so we substitute truth units (what is believed) for the facts—both are “atomic.” So all truth units define “the case”—the real world.’) And then you say, “truth units respect the truth of skepticism.” This leap took me aback.
First, to speak of facts in the real world as “truth units” is to speak anthropocentrically. This violates philosophical naturalism, as far as I can tell. At least, this is an implicitly idealistic account, mixing up the inner and outer worlds. Roughly speaking, truth is often a relation between the mind (or its products) and facts outside the mind. And those facts needn’t care about that relation. We care about truth because we want to engage well with the world, and we face that problem because we happen to be autonomous and indeed potentially alienated from the external world. But to just define the external facts as truth units is to shortchange the problem of skepticism, by mistaking a label for our existential situation. This would be like solving the problem of morality by labeling everyone “good.” If only it were that easy to be good!
Have you read John McDowell’s Mind and World? He delves into this problem without taking such shortcuts. He builds on Wilfrid Sellars’ distinction between the manifest and the scientific images. There are two sets of vocabularies, the value-laden ones the folks take for granted in their unreflective dealings. We speak prescriptively of truth, rationality, conscience, the need to follow the law, the preciousness of life, and so on. And then there’s the scientific picture of what there is, in which there are space and time, physical quantities, atoms and molecules, levels of causal interactions, and so forth. The modern problem of epistemology starts by noting that those two vocabularies seem incommensurable. Thus, there are no truth units, as such, in nature. We might think of facts that way, with the benefit of hindsight, just as we might think of engines and wheels as “car units.” But in reality, there are atoms, molecules, and other natural constructs that don’t care, as it were, whether our beliefs align well with them.
Likewise, you say, ‘Experience is “the case”—the real world. So, in this way, truth units respect the real world.’ But this was the problem with the empiricist’s talk of “sense data,” which is why I raised that comparison in the earlier comment. The empiricist said that the facts of experience are “given” to us to build knowledge. Again, that’s anthropocentric and implicitly idealistic, which belittles the scientific image. As far as I can see, calling the elements of experience “truth units” is just the superficial application of a label. Indeed, most of us may not even be consciously interested in the truth. We’d prefer to be coddled with comforting lies and distortions than live in the full awareness of pure, objective truth. This is why we surround ourselves with stories rather than with uncompromising theories. It’s why philosophy is much less popular than neoliberal self-help therapy, or why fantasy novels are more popular than science fictional ones.
I think you should reflect on what it is specifically about the elements of experience that could add up to truth and identify those elements in a way that doesn’t beg the question. Truth should be the product, the cake you’re trying to bake, but the ingredients should be something else. What adds up to the truth (as opposed to a noble lie, for instance)? What kind of truth would we be content with, or what kind would solve the social problems in which you also seem to be interested? I’d recommend that you make your account more reductive or less circular, in that respect.
Hope this helps.
