One of the problems with the spread of ‘net-based publishing is that you inevitably miss some real gems. That happened to me today when I stumbled across a posting from 2006 by my SWC colleague, Mark Safranski (aka Zenpundit), entitled The Epistemological Battlespace. In this short post, Mark draws on an essay by André Glucksmann (Separating Truth and Belief), that beautifully highlights the concept of “civilized discourse” with its opposite, a “totalitarian way of thinking”.
Glucksmann lays out his position in a short paragraph:
Civilised discourse analyses and defines scientific truths, historic truths and matters of fact relating to knowledge, not to faith. And it does this irrespective of race or confession. We may believe these facts are profane or undignified, yet they remain distinct from religious truths. Our planet is not in the grips of a clash of civilisations or cultures. It is the battleground of a decisive struggle between two ways of thinking. There are those who declare that there are no facts, but only interpretations - so many acts of faith. These either tend toward fanaticism (’I am the truth’) or they fall into nihilism (’nothing is true, nothing is false’). Opposing them are those who advocate free discussion with a view to distinguishing between true and false, those for whom political and scientific matters – or simple judgement – can be settled on the basis of worldly facts, independently of arbitrary pre-established opinions.
In many ways, Glucksmann’s position is similar to the dichotomy I noted earlier on the difference between via positiva and via negitiva, although he has created what Weber called “Ideal Types” of both of them. Regardless of what terms we use to describe them, these epistemological stances are at the root of much of the conflict and competition going on in the world today.
Rather than going on a rant about which one is “better”, I decided to take a different tack and ask some different questions. First, are there only two, let’s call them “meta-epistemologies”? Second, what are the environmental selection criteria that support and oppose various meta-epistemologies?
How many meta-epistemologies are there?
In a rather tongue in cheek post, Carl Dyke talks about Top 10 ways to get stuff into two piles. One important observation he makes is that
In the classic version of two piles analysis there is no middle ground or mixing; the categories are mutually exclusive and mutually defining…. Of course, complexity sneaks in if the two piles can be mixed, or if they sit at the ends of a continuum of possibilities…. Pure binaries are not found in the wild, but they can still be helpful as an orienting fiction if we don’t mistake them for real; they can also be fully imposed on occasion if the alignment of conditions and forces is just right.
I Think that Carl is actually quite correct that they can be useful, as long as we remember that they are “orienting fictions”. Now, “orienting fictions” is a really nice concept since what it is really about seems to be establishing some form of dimensionality; i.e. something on which we can map and compare one instance with another.
The idea of establishing dimensionality certainly isn’t new; Descarte did it quite a while ago. For the past four years or so, I have been wrestling with the dimensionality of applied epistemologies and, so far, I have come up with five dimensions each of which is associated with a paradox.
- Empiricism vs. received wisdom - Paradox: both require the other in order to operate
- Pragmatism vs. idealism - Paradox: territory-map
- Romanticism vs. materialism - Paradox: myth and reality are the same thing
- Universality vs. particularism - Paradox: “no zeros, no infinities”
- Preservation vs. discovery - Paradox: quantum indeterminacy
Each of these dimensions involves a question that might be considered as “basic” to how a person (and/or culture) views metaphysical reality.
Empiricism vs. received wisdom
The basic question asked here is “Where do truth and meaning reside?”. Coming from that one, there are several secondary questions such as “In regards to where truthe and meaning reside, What is the purpose of life? Is it the discovery of “reality”? or, alternately the study of discovered “reality”?”. The primary paradox is that each requires the other in order to operate.
Pragmatism vs. idealism
This dimension deals with the ascribed or assumed purpose of knowledge (or the quest for knowledge) and how we should act in relation to that purpose. Put simply, is knowledge viewed as a means to an end or as an end itself? The central paradox is that “knowledge” is a “map” of a slice of reality (and the epistemology behind that knowledge is a “mapping convention”) and, by establishing any mapping convention, we limit and bias our perceptions. Given this bias, we need to decide if we should focus more heavily on a bias towards changing “perceived reality” (pragmatism) or changing “conceived reality” (idealism)
Romanticism vs. materialism
While related to the Pragmatism vs. Idealism dimension, Romanticism vs. Materialism concentrates on an axiomatic assumption about our abilities to conceive reality. “Is what we see all that is?” and “Where do we ground our actions? In Myth (conceptions)? In “Reality” (perceptions)?” Is the metaphysical ground of being in perceptible “nature” or in some imperceptible other “realm”? The main paradox is that “myth” and our perceptions of reality are the same thing (i.e. stories we tell ourselves and each other about how the world works).
Universality vs. particularism
This is a classic dimension and is embodied in the two main types of logic in use today; deduction and induction. It is also related to the much older debate between Free Will and Predestination. In some ways, it is a tactical question: “Do we [best] gain knowledge from looking for universal laws or by examining particular instances?” The key paradox can be encapsulated in the saying “no zeros, no infinities” which seems to be an operational rule governing our reality. As an example, the closer we come to defining a part of reality, the more likely we are to have observations that contravene that model. This is, possibly, best exemplified in Thos. Kuhn’s work on The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Preservation vs. discovery
Preservation vs. Discovery is an interesting dimension that asks the question, “What is the purpose of study”? Do we “learn” in order to pass knowledge on intact? or in order to “discover” new knowledge? The primary paradox that governs this dimension is quantum indeterminacy or, to put it another way, “copying errors”. This dimension seems to operate heavily at a cultural level relating to the social risk containment value of the knowledge area. In homeostatic cultures (and sub-cultures), the emphasis is more towards the “preservation” end, while in non-homeostatic cultures, it appears to be more towards the “discovery” end.
Metaphysics and Epistemology
One of the things that really jumps out at you when you start looking at epistemology is that all epistemologies are grounded in metaphysical beliefs and conditioned by socio-cultural dynamics. And, since metaphysical beliefs are also grounded in epistemologies and socio-cultural dynamics, we actually have a perceptual tautology whereby A defines B which defines C which defines A. This, also, isn’t “new” - Socrates knew it (seriously, read Xenophon’s Conversations of Socrates
Now, I don’t disagree with Glucksmann that these are possible reactions; I just disagree that there are only two meta-epistemologies. Personally, I am convinced that there are at least two others and, possibly, more. The first of the two additional meta-epistemologies that I think have been identified is, actually, mentioned by Glucksmann; “nihilism”. Basically, it is a choice of “despair” leading to either death of hedonism: we can never know truth, so we might as well just kill ourselves now and get over it (or “eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die”).
The second meta-epistemology isn’t mentioned by Glucksmann at all; it is a reaction that might be classed as “mystical” in that it bypasses the use of both deductive and inductive logics choosing, instead, to use forms of abductive logic. It is “grounded” not in observations of reality so much as in experiences of “metaphysical reality” (”gnosis” rather than “logos”); think mystics, prophets, “visionaries” and what Weber called “charismatic authority” rather than anything else. Being grounded in personal experience, the specific epistemologies that stem from it attempt to replicate and extend the potential for those experiences to their “audience” (however that may be defined).
My suspicion is that this “mystical” meta-epistemology is the metaphorical yeast in the cultural vat and is responsible for most of the rapid, “catastrophic” (in the sense of Catastrophe Theory) changes that take place in cultures if for no other reason that it seems to show up in times of socio-cultural ferment.
4 users commented in " Epistemological battlespaces "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackThanks man. This is terrific. I like my binaries best of all when there are a lot of them and they cross, each bringing new dimensions into view. Your suggestions here are good to think with.
Just to trouble things along a bit, my reading of this taps another binary and perhaps another meta-epistemology, the ’structure/agency’ one. I notice myself reflexing negatively when you say “It is our individual reactions, our choices, that decide which of these two reactions we will have.” Sure. Sometimes. Maybe. Our individual reactions may come from many places other than our choices, e.g. the idiosyncratic pre-conscious habits of a lifetime of stimulus/response loops, ‘habitus’ which is a more widely shared version of that, and ultimately the intellectual and emotional resources and options that cultures enable (and disable).
I’m in favor of holding people responsible for their actions. I don’t extend that to believing that all or even most actions are ‘intentional’ in a big, conscious sense of choosing actively from a complete menu of options.
OK, so digging deeper into this I find myself wiggling uncomfortably about the importance you’ve assigned to formalizable epistemologies. This is consistent with privileging individual choice. I think that’s ethically convenient but anthropologically implausible. It’s my impression that we know that most people’s minds are actually odd bricolages, compartmentalized to allow screaming contradictions to exist. A tool for every purpose.
For some traditions of critical analysis - Marx, Mannheim, even Freud - people’s conscious ideological constructs can never be assumed to match simply with their ‘real’ interests and motives, let alone emotional dispositions. In this critical mode the ABC tautology you identify is evidence that there is some ‘deeper’, individually pre-epistemological causal coherence at work.
In a more non-linear mode we could see A, B and C as emergent clusters in a dynamical system characterized by feedback and some turbulence. Although each cluster is important, none is sui generis or decisively causal for the whole complex.
That’s how I think about individual choice and conscious ways of knowing, which I think you capture better in referring to conditioning by socio-cultural dynamics and environmental selection criteria. Cheers!
Hi Carl,
Thanks for the comment - a lot to think about . Personally, I find that putting these ideas out in a linear form helps me to think about them analytically. I’m certainly not saying that this is how they actually operate; I’m convinced that any given “role” will have its own meta-epistemology, and that these can be totally contradictory.
The issue of “choice” is an interesting one. I’m not using it so much in the sense of “informed, rational choice” so much as the sense of “perceived options”. And, since our perceptions are heavily influenced by our interpretive schemas and emotions, I would hardly argue that they are “rational”, although I would argue that we rationalize them .
[...] on Dead zonesCarl on UndecisionShahar Ozeri on Undecisionbobritzema on Undecision» Epistemologi… on Top 10 ways to get stuff into …noen on Undecisionnoen on [...]
[...] Elsewhere, I have argued that there are several meta-epistemologies that dominate perceptual stances and reflect and refract various metaphysical positions. And yet, much of the current debate is dominated by the assumption of a very limited sub-set of these positions. Very crudely, the “university’s role in society” debate is dominated by a pragmatism-empiricism-materialism stance on the part of many university administrations and an idealism-romanticism stance by many academics (see here for these stances). Nowhere in this “debate” do I see much of a discussion of individual ethics, merely a discussion (if one can call it that) of corporate morality. [...]
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