The Epistemological Problem – Can We Believe Anything?
At the beginning of the 21st century our attitude to belief is challenged on one hand by the recollection of a violent history delivered by religious and political ideologies and, on the other hand, by a ubiquitous and persistent postmodern perspective expressed as epistemological relativism. The American philosopher, Willard V. O. Quine says in Word and
Object:
‘Any statement can be true if we make drastic enough adjustments elsewhere in the system [of our beliefs]’.
We can, it would seem, believe anything. Or, what amounts to the same thing, believe nothing.
Some postmodern philosophers now challenge the very grounds of analytic philosophy – truth, reality, being, meaning, language – the whole shebang. The view of postmodernism taken here is more nuanced – more Deleuze than Derrida. The view taken here is that of a perspective which has emerged from the idealist (or anti-realist) tradition which recognises the full consequences of a thorough-going human subjectivism but stays within the rules of analytical philosophic discourse. This requires us to speak in terms of immanence rather than transcendence. It obliges us to distinguish between universal ‘Truths’ and human ‘facts’.
Between ‘The Truth’ and ‘a truth’. It is ‘post’ modern in the sense that it marks a break from the ‘modernism’ expressed in the absolutes and utopian certainties of the Enlightenment.
In a response to this challenge to belief, perhaps as a direct consequence, there has been resurgence in transcendental perspectives: a revival in religious fundamentalism (Christian and Islamic); an outbreak of political ideology (racism and nationalism); and a renewed challenge to science and reason which it would be dangerous to ignore. The alternative to postmodernism is not modernism it is pre-modernism - barbarism.
Some academics, particularly those with Marxist leanings, express concern that postmodernism’s undermining of Enlightenment values makes a progressive cultural politics difficult, if not impossible. It is the intention here to deny that view and to demonstrate that while postmodernism insists that all values are relative, all values do not have equal status – some values are more valuable than others. Some truths (if you insist on the term) are truer than others. We can, it will be argued here, recognise some universalities within the subjective human condition.
Humanism, as the term is currently used, can be seen to have its genesis in the scepticism of the early Greek philosophers. It is now commonly associated with the values of the
Enlightenment – rationalism, secularism, and the humanitarian values. Hitherto, this traditional humanism has filled the intellectual gap between dogmatic ideology and destructive nihilism with a kind of free-wheeling intellectual liberalism. History shows that this traditional humanism is no longer enough – if indeed it ever was. Humanist thought, as
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expressed in Enlightenment values, has been shown to fail to constrain the violent conflicts of our recent past. Indeed, as remarked above, some see Enlightenment certainty as legitimising the violent action of the righteous.
However we might view this, under the twin challenges of fundamentalism on one hand and cultural relativism on the other, traditional humanism seems no longer to provide the intellectual distinctiveness, the focus, to influence a modern society. In the words of Richard
Rorty:
‘In our century, the rationalist justification of the Enlightenment compromise has been discredited’.
Rorty saw that the Enlightenment had replaced the theocratic divine with the secular gods of
Reason, Truth and Reality. This powerful, but misguided, view of an accessible, objective
‘Truth’, a ‘real’ reality, remains the source of many of our problems -philosophical and social.
Thus, while the Enlightenment can be welcomed as identifying liberal, humanitarian values, it can be seen to have seduced us with dangerous concepts of transcendence. The error here was not in the use of reason per se but rather in the view that rationality gave access to an objective universal reality. Now, the concept of a transcendent Truth feeds the fantasies of the religious and political fundamentalism of the modern terrorist.
In an attempt to address the philosophical inadequacy of the traditional humanist view, some humanists have sought to replace a transcendent God with the idea of a transcendent Man - leading to the accusation of humanism as a pseudo-religion (John Gray’s ‘shoddy replica of
Christian faith’). Some humanists join with the religious in attacking relativism as the enemy of ethical and moral values. Certainly, the urge to embrace a transcendental Truth makes strange bed-fellows. Other humanists claim it is not possible to identify a coherent philosophical position. The British Humanists Philosophers Group says, with regard to the realist versus anti-realist argument:
‘No resolution of this debate is in sight… there is no humanist orthodoxy on these difficult questions.’
This uncertainty is the source of confusion as to what exactly contemporary humanism is.
While many people (and, according to some surveys, a majority) might claim to be atheists, non-believers, or secularists, the confusion has allowed humanist views to be largely ignored by the establishment e.g. in the UK, current legislation on religious schools. In the USA the situation is visibly worse; religious belief drives social and foreign policy. Humanism, as a dynamic of social action, is punching below its weight.
This paper seeks to identify the basis of a philosophic discourse which takes regard of the humanist Enlightenment tradition but which does not deny the advances in philosophy, science and social theory. Rather than seeing the concepts of relativism as a threat to humanist beliefs it is argued here that postmodern relativism allows humanism to develop its distinctive and essential identity - identified here as Humanism (with a capital H). The aim here is to identify a postmodern philosophic framework for knowledge and belief, within the humanist tradition, to inform our values and our ethics.
To explicate such a philosophy we will have to address further the fundamental issue of what, in the current intellectual climate, the status of truth and reality, reason, knowledge and belief, is.
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Truth and Reality
Ideas concerning truth and reality, knowledge and meaning, have engaged philosophers for millennia – they continue to do so. To exercise control, and to impress the uninitiated, philosophers traditionally address these matters under the headings of:
Ontology – how we view what is.
Epistemology – how we know.
Logic – how we reason.
Phenomenology – how we experience.
In fact, all these concerns are inter-related and overlap and, in seeking to describe a belief system, it will be necessary to refer to all of them.
It is, of course, not possible to address here the many ontological theories that have emerged from philosophical discourses over the years – much less the epistemological ones. However, we can note in passing that: Kant had a view he called ‘transcendental idealism’; Hegel saw beliefs as historical and cultural; Hodge and Kress saw truth and reality as premises created and exploited by competing groups of communicators; Derrida and Foucault saw that truth and belief arise at the service of power.
From a scientific perspective, Roger Penrose, in the Road to Reality, gives a quantum physicist’s view of reality, in mathematical terms:
‘…modern physicists invariably describe things in terms of mathematical models… It is as though they seek to find “reality” within the Platonic world of mathematical ideals.’
What are we to make of these competing, and often conflicting, views? The position adopted in this paper is that all concepts of truth and reality are human constructs. All existential propositions (sentences using the verb ‘to be’) are subjective. Our ‘is’ arises from the architecture of the human brain and the physiology of our sense organs in reaction with the environment (the non-‘us’) physical and cultural. Other sentient beings will have their ‘is’ – if indeed they have an ‘is’. If we dismiss (or at least ignore) the possibility of transcendental godly revelation (the source of an objective universal ‘is’) we are left with the unavoidable, inescapable, human-subjective ‘is’.
We must recognise the inevitable anthropocentric ontology and epistemology that this delivers.
We must ask how we can progress from the recognition of the subjective status of our concepts to identify the philosophic structure of a practical system of knowledge and belief as the basis for human ethics.
For our purpose here, Kant’s work (chiefly his Critique of Pure Reason) can be recognised as providing the genesis for much current thinking. It is at least largely compatible with, if not supportive of, the perspective argued here. We can adopt a version of Kant’s basic approach, his methodology, to the question of knowledge and belief.
Kant, in common with most other philosophers in the Western canonical tradition, recognised that reason is ‘a priori’ to their thinking. If we deny reason as a conceptual tool we cannot
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construct meaningful concepts. Reason is at the heart of any analytic discourse and, following
Kant, it will be necessary, to consider further its philosophical status in the light of a postmodern perspective.
Reason
The concept ‘reason’ and the use of reason, rationality, has been the focus of much philosophical debate, often associated with Platonism. Indeed, reason lies at the heart of all analytical discourse.
As we have seen, the Enlightenment elevated the status of reason to deliver philosophical absolutes, objective Truths, a ‘real’ reality. This, it is argued by some, has led to a reductive scientific hegemony, and worse – the quasi sciences of Fascism and Communism. We should have been warned by the fact that reason led our mentor, Kant, to endorse racism. And Plato thought it reasonable to embrace slavery – if not the slaves. The Romantic movement of the
18th century responded by asserting the primacy of emotion over reason.
The Romantics had a point in attacking the Enlightenment’s optimistic attachment to reason.
But the fatal flaw in Enlightenment thinking was not in recognising reason as an epistemological tool but rather in elevating reason to an absolute which could deliver absolute
Truths.
Thus, while accepting reason as an evolutionary tool we must deny the Enlightenment’s view of epistemic reason, that is reason as a means of delivering immutable objective Truths.
Postmodernists can accept reason, must accept reason, as a tool to identify human ‘facts’. The human species is homo rationalist. Reason is a priori in any belief system, but reason, although necessary, is not an absolute.
Entangled in the understanding of reason is the ontological consideration of what the meaning, the status, of ‘is’ is – the question of being and reality. Rationality involves not only our epistemology but also our ontology. We must return to this issue later but here we can simply note that rationality is an expression of the universal, innate human condition. We think, therefore we reason. Our belief system must be rationally coherent, but cannot be rationally determined.
We must recognise that it is not possible to venture outside this human condition. For us,
Homo Sapiens, rationality is not optional. But we must remember that the status of the concepts that reason delivers can be only that of species-subjective human constructs.
Epistemological Systems
From an analytic perspective, our knowledge and beliefs can be seen to be based on the recognition of some ‘a priori’, some necessary premises. Based on this a priori we construct a framework of knowledge and belief, values and ethics.
From the perspective developed here the recognition of such a priori is paramount – it allows us to acknowledge the relative status of our knowledge and the status of our beliefs, and to distinguish between them.
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We can recognise a necessary a priori for knowledge and belief adopted in much of classical philosophy – even if the authors didn’t always do so – what Nietzsche, Heidegger and others identified as the ‘already given’. As an illustration, consider Descartes’ assertion ‘cognito ergo sum’, ‘I think therefore I am’. On analysis, (deconstruction if you like), we can see that this statement implies acceptance of the following a priori:
The ‘
I
’ implies an autonomous self.
The ‘ think
’ recognises our subjectivity, our idealism.
The ‘ therefore
’ implies reason.
The ‘ am
’ implies an ontological objectivity – or does it?
The ontological status of Descartes’ ‘am’ is uncertain. Does Descartes believe he has found his searched-for objectivity? Or does he recognise the ‘am’ as subjective and contingent upon his ‘I think’?
In his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant recognises human subjectivity in our view of reality:
‘Thus the order and regularity in the appearances, which we entitle nature, we ourselves introduce. We could never find them in appearances had not we ourselves, or the nature of our mind, originally set them there. …and if these subjective conditions contained a priori in the original cognitive powers of our mind … were not at the same time [taken to be] objectively valid.’
Kant would seem to be saying that our subjectivity is our only objectivity. Our ‘think’ is our only ‘is’. In the terms of Steven Pinker, an ‘is’ is an essential part of our universal human grammar.
It will be argued here that the Kantian ‘order and regularity’ we see in nature forms the necessary a priori of any belief system including a species subjective view of an objective ‘is’.
The view adopted in this paper is that this innate human condition includes a universal cognitive process which includes: the propensity to conceive an autonomous core self
(however that concept might be viewed as having been constructed); a universal use of reason
(however that concept might be viewed as contingent); a view of ontology (a universal grammar which requires us to think in terms of the verb ‘to be’). These form the necessary basis, the human a priori, for our knowledge and belief. That is the human condition. That is where evolution has delivered us. That is what the ‘us’ is.
For convenience and for clarity, views of knowledge and beliefs will be considered separately here, but it is recognised that, for some writers, these concepts are viewed as interdependent and reactive. Our beliefs will affect what we choose to see as our facts and what we see as facts will affect what we believe. That view is important and the thesis argued here is not incompatible with that position.
For the purpose of this paper a distinction is made here between knowledge (our facts) and belief – although it is recognised that they are both subjective human constructs. From a behavioural perspective, we would be prepared to act upon our knowledge with confidence.
With our other beliefs we might be prepared (sometimes) to take a chance.
Our knowledge is recognised here as universal and predetermined by the physiology of our species. Our beliefs are recognised as personal and culturally predisposed.
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From this perspective it is necessary to consider further what the status and content of our knowledge and beliefs might be.
Knowledge
The status of our knowledge, our ‘facts’, is related to the view we take of the concept of reality. Kant addresses this question with his ‘noumena’, the ‘thing in itself’, and his
‘phenomena’, the ‘thing as perceived’.
The view taken in this paper is phenomenological insofar as it is accepted that all we can say about the ‘thing in itself’ is that it is that which allows us to experience it, to perceive it, in the way we do – and allows other sentient beings to perceive it in the way they do. The idea of the ‘thing in itself’ without a perceiver is thus meaningless.
This is not an extreme expression of Berkeley’s idealism. It is not to say that without an observer the ‘thing in itself’ does not exist. It is, rather, to say that without an observer the concept of the ‘thing in itself’ as an objective reality is meaningless, or, at least, unnecessary.
We can think (and act as though) there IS something out there – but the concept ‘is’ is meaningful only when related to empiric perception. Crucially, we must recognise our perceptions of an external (and internal) reality are species-subjective and thus, in this sense, the ‘thing in itself’ is subjectively contingent.
It is with this recognition of our anthropocentric subjectivism that we can identify our species’ a priori – the necessary foundation of our system of knowledge and belief. Here we can proceed, rather freely, along the lines of Kant’s methodology, safe in the knowledge that he won’t object - though undoubtedly others will.
We can recognise that our knowledge consists of two elements: ‘analytic’ and ‘synthetic’. We can identify the necessary analytic a priori (understood as the necessary basis for concepts which are independent of empiric experience) such as logic and mathematics to include:
Rationality; autonomy; ontology (our ‘is’); universality (or unity).
The necessary synthetic a priori (understood as the necessary basis for concepts arising from empiric experience) might then additionally include:
Empiricism (or quasi-realism); causality; space-time.
These combined synthetic and analytic a priori give rise to our universal synthetic knowledge i.e. to our sciences and our universal empirical ‘facts’.
Thus, our analytic and synthetic knowledge, our intellectual and empirical facts, comprise a universal species’ view of what is the case (as Wittgenstein would put it), understood here as a universal species response to the environment arising from the evolved physiology of the human brain and senses.
We must note that these concepts are not transcendental – they do not reveal the objectively
‘real’ or ‘True’ – but rather because, empirically, they work. Knowledge can be described as universal, provisional, potentially useful beliefs, consistent with reason and empiric experience; a view that might be described as quasi-realism – or, perhaps, as Kant’s
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‘transcendental idealism’. This form of knowledge is expressed most strongly in our scientific facts which can be observed, tested and, crucially, challenged.
The concept Truth (with a capital T), viewed as an objective account of an objective reality, has become untenable, or, at least, unnecessary – and certainly dangerous. But we can, indeed for most practical considerations it seems we must, retain the idea of truth (with a small t) to describe our synthetic and analytic knowledge, our facts. We can have our ‘truth for us, for now’.
Belief
Knowledge alone is without value. Reason and empirical observations cannot deliver value or meaning. We cannot assign relevance or significance to our knowledge, to our facts, until we declare, assert, our other beliefs. Beliefs give us the possibility of attributing to our knowledge importance, a value status and, from this, we can identify purpose and hence, rationally, our ethics and morals.
Thus, to complete a practical belief system we need to go beyond our analytic and synthetic knowledge – we must add our individual culturally predisposed beliefs as assertions.
Reason cannot lead us to these belief assertions per se, but reason can condition and restrain our assertions. Our beliefs must be rationally coherent with each other and with all other elements of our belief system including our ‘facts’ and our scientific discourse. Beliefs are, then, asserted concepts arrived at independent of reason (but are rationally cohesive); not dependent on empirical experience (but consistent with it).
In classical philosophical terms we can recognise Hegelian individual, culturally conditioned beliefs as assertions located upon a base of Kantian universal knowledge. Or, in a phenomenological sense we can see, as Husserl argued, logical objective ideas (mathematics, science) combined with subjective acts of consciousness (psychology).
In this way, we recognise the status of our KNOWLEDGE as universal but speciessubjective, determined by our human physiology. We recognise our BELIEFS as individually-subjective, contingent, and culturally predisposed.
By definition, these beliefs are provisional, contingent and pragmatic. All our beliefs will be conditional and will need to be continually amended by our changing experience, hopes and expectations – by the unfurling human vision.
We must recognise the relative, subjective status of all beliefs, but we can see that some beliefs are more believable than others. Some beliefs, some values, will be seen to be ‘better’
(more rational, more coherent, with more empirical support and observed to better achieve desired outcomes) than others.
As we have noted, our knowledge is universal and trans-cultural; our beliefs are local and culturally conditioned. We can see different beliefs emerging as predisposed by different societies. However, some beliefs can be seen as fundamental and universal, as trans-cultural
(i.e. arising rationally and coherently from our a priori). If these universal beliefs were to be identified and agreed, they could, together with our universal knowledge, provide a basic monoculture upon which our separate multicultures could coexist in (relative) harmony.
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Currently, from the perspective of 21st century postmodern philosophy, these universal beliefs could be seen to include:
Anthropocentrism – a recognition of our species subjectivity.
Empiricism (quasi-realism) and pragmatism.
Ethnomethodologicalism – a sort of sociological positivism. Society is a flux, but we are genetically and culturally predisposed to recognise and promote patterns and relationships. As Kant put it: ‘the Enlightenment must be self willed but, once established, exerts a centrifugal force to become a social dynamic’.
Pluralism – the recognition of the autonomy of all, and the right to a free and equal existential choice for all personal and collective destinies.
Universalism – the recognition of a universal basic structure of knowledge and beliefs, values and human rights. A universal monoculture of knowledge and beliefs as the basis for multicultural societies.
The above account must be, of course, only one person’s view at this moment of history. A more authoritative, collective, account will need to be expressed progressively in the form of a universally agreed framework of trans-cultural knowledge and belief. The principle concern in this paper is the possible form of such a system rather than its precise content. The identification and promotion of such a universal belief system can be seen as a primary task of
Postmodern Humanism.
The Vision Thing
We have seen that reason, rationality, is an innate characteristic of the human species – though it may be difficult to recognise this sometimes. Nevertheless, it is now generally recognised that reason alone cannot lead us to beliefs, values, or ethics.
It is clear that most of us, most of the time, do not adopt beliefs in accordance with analytical philosophy. Nietzsche and Heidegger are more relevant here than Kant and Descartes. Many philosophers recognise belief as arising from the cultural environment – what Derrida recognised as their ‘multiple discourses’; Kant saw the need to extend his analytic and synthetic knowledge to include ‘transcendental imagination’; Heidegger wanted his ‘clearing in the forest’; and Wittgenstein was so convinced by his own logic that he gave up analytic philosophy.
We must recognise our cognitive systems of belief as emergent, historical and contingent.
Here we must look to psychology rather than analytical philosophy – although, from the perspective developed here it can be recognised that these are much the same thing.
With their propensity to alarm (and to earn a living) some postmodern writers see the future in apocalyptic terms - they could be right! Most see the dangers in a reductive scientific hegemony and accept that the rationalist’s scientific discourse cannot contain the aesthetic. As
Albert Ellis, the American psychologist wrote ‘Reason without emotion is empty; emotion without reason is blind’. Heidegger recognised the role of language in our thinking and argued that language is the abode of the living - and that art, especially poetry is crucial for thinking.
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We need only to note here that we need to leave space in our belief system for the recognition of creative, non-rational concepts. That is not to say we can reject the rational, it is only to say that reason cannot deliver the whole picture - we must allow for the different functions of the left and right hemispheres of the brain. It is here, with the recognition of both the rational and non-rational, that we can find a full expression of the human condition.
It is important that we take account of this human predisposition. Many people (and in some circumstances most) respond to a political or religious or secular vision which cannot be explained or defended solely on grounds of reason. This brought Derrida, in an excess of enthusiasm (or perhaps a commercial need) to deny the entire analytic philosophic tradition.
Deleuze and Wittgenstein moved to quasi-mystical positions. For others, their vision is associated with nationality or race or a self-identified tribe where their glorious myths are self-attributed – except, of course with Newcastle United Football Club where the glories are real.
Clearly, while recognising this predisposition for creative thinking, for imaginings, for inventing concepts of reality, we must be wary of what visions the human species can embrace. Some members of our species, perhaps all members, in disregarding rationality, history and empiric evidence, can be seriously and dangerously bonkers. By elevating our vision to the status of a vehicle for delivering immutable Truths, we can be led to the tyrannies of the 20th century and the terrorists of the 21st.
The human condition insists that we cannot just exist in a sort of free-wheeling belief vacuum.
We need our visions, our grand narratives. Postmodernism does not deny us these props – postmodernism simply insists we remember their status as human constructs.
We need to construct a compelling human vision or the political and religious ideologues will do it for us. Our protection against the visionary extremists lies in the recognition of the status of our visions as human constructs, as relative, as human myths.
It is argued here that a safe human vision can arise only within a secular rational relativist perspective. We can recognise the spectacular grandeur of the universe and the complexity of the human species which observes it – what some have called a ‘secular enchantment’ – without recourse to a transcendental narrative. That view, together with the recognition that we ourselves have the ability, the responsibility, to create the essence of the human species - and what it is to become - must surely be capable of expression as a Humanist vision which is at the same time rational and empirical, passionate and compelling.
Summary
The principal question addressed in this paper is whether it is possible to construct a system of knowledge and belief which fully recognises human species subjectivity, but is as compelling as the many transcendental narratives, political and religious, which have allowed, if not caused, so much human suffering, so many human disasters.
A chief objective has been to identify the status of our knowledge and our other beliefs and consequently how we should behave when we act in their name. This perspective has been identified here as ‘rational relativism’.
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Having identified the subjective status of our knowledge as universal and species-determined, and our beliefs as individual and culturally predisposed, we can, with the proper use of reason, observation, experience and the lessons of history, go on to consider what beliefs, what visions, we choose to assert. The ‘truth’ emerging from this process must be seen as advice as how we are to behave ‘as if’, for now. The idea of ‘truth’ is useful (necessary even) if held pragmatically, contingently, and provisionally. We must think as quasi-idealists but can act as quasi-realists.
Our epistemological and ethical systems, our knowledge and our beliefs, will change (must be allowed to change) with time. Identifying our beliefs as relative and subjective, not rationally determined but rationally cohesive, allows that creative freedom. We must learn how to deal with this freedom in our collective and personal relationships and as a basis for our social and political structures.
We have come to a (more or less) universal agreement on what constitutes the body of knowledge in our science and our ‘facts’. It is possible to recognise some other universal, trans-cultural, beliefs common to our species. These beliefs, together with our universal knowledge, could form a global monoculture upon which our local multicultures could comfortably co-exist.
However, it is unlikely that we will ever find an intellectual process for settling all differences of culturally predisposed beliefs and we must turn to global structures to negotiate and accommodate these differences if we are to survive as a species.
Calvin O. Schrag says in The Task of Philosophy after Postmodernism:
‘Truth must no longer be conceived of, metaphysically or epistemologically, as the correspondence of (subjective) ideas with so- called objective reality…Truth must be seen to be a practical notion, an “implicate” of our being and action. Truth is not merely to be discovered; it is something we have the responsibility for making… the disclosure of possibilities for agreed upon perspectives for seeing the world and acting within it.’
As viewed here, Postmodern Humanism can be seen as facilitating such a process as an urgent and necessary human project. It offers a distinctive coherent philosophy to accommodate and support a universal system of evolving knowledge and belief with the prospect, perhaps the only prospect, of a non-confrontational future. It allows us to decide what the human species is and to choose, in a non-self-destructive manner, what it is to become.
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