Belief and Knowledge - Part Seven
One can undergo psychotic episodes or hallucinatory interludes or experience optical illusions. One also can, and does, make errors of all kinds: perceptual, sensory, ideational, emotional and evaluative. The horizonal presence of these possibilities means one constantly is confronted with the problem of trying to determine whether or not one's understanding correctly reflects, to some extent, that to which the understanding is making identifying reference.
Malcolm's contention, however, that knowledge claims in the "strong" sense (e.g., "Here is an ink-bottle") are referring to physical things, and not to sensations or appearances, entirely short-circuits the basic epistemological issues at stake in determining how one comes to acquire a true understanding of what is to be understood. This short-circuiting process occurs on several levels.
First of all, there is a certain degree of circularity implicit in Malcolm's "strong" sense of "know". This is so because it tends to presume that what one claims to know in this sense is true knowledge. Now, one can generate meaning in any way one wishes to.
Thus, one can stipulate, if one so chooses, that "know" in the "strong" sense refers to physical reality and not sensations or appearances. Yet, on what basis is one warranted in assigning meaning in this way as far as the nature of reality itself is concerned?
In effect, the circularity in Malcolm's "strong" sense of "know" is the belief that what we take reality to be or what we mean by reality is what in 'fact' reality must be. How else is one to explain that, according to Malcolm's view, an individual who claims to "know" in the "strong" sense is unwilling to call anything evidence which conflicts with, or undermines, one's knowledge claim?
Instead of treating evidence as the data or information which arises from whatever source and bears upon the aspect(s) of the phenomenology of the experiential field to which one is attending, evidence becomes a function of whatever one calls evidence in terms of individual meaning. As a result, reality becomes synonymous with the character of the meaning framework which an individual imposes upon reality, irrespective of whether the imposition is congruent or not.
Surely the goal of inquiry is to obtain a true understanding of that which is being inquired into. However, Malcolm creates the impression that the idea of knowledge in the "strong" sense is a matter of unyielding stubbornness in which the issue of understanding is superfluous, if not beside the point.
Yet, the character of knowledge is not a matter of claiming one is right. For something to be knowledge, it must be right or accurate. Unfortunately, Malcolm seems to emphasize the former to the exclusion of the latter.
In the long quote given just a few pages ago, Malcolm claims he could counter any of the possibilities which someone might put forth in an attempt to show that Malcolm was deceived in the case of whether or not the ink bottle was really on his desk. Thus, if Malcolm were to reach for the ink bottle, and if his hand were to pass through it, then, Malcolm contends he could say the ink bottle is not what is illusory and what actually does not exist.
Rather, the character of the illusion or hallucination is such that the ink bottle is made to appear to be not there when it really is. Or, if some friends came into the room and said, when asked by Malcolm, if there were an ink bottle on the desk, that there was no ink bottle on the desk, then, Malcolm asserts his friends could be trying to trick him into believing there is no ink bottle on the desk when, in fact, there is no ink bottle on the desktop. Alternatively, his friends themselves may be suffering from some sort of hallucination which makes them believe there is no ink bottle on the desk when there really is, and so on.
Quite conceivably, one could devise an indefinite number of explanations to counter each and every suggestion which might be put forth by someone to indicate there was no ink bottle on the desk. Indeed, there are psychotic conditions such as schizophrenic paranoia in which precisely the sort of scenario Malcolm is outlining occurs.
In these instances, an individual so affected comes up with an appropriately slanted belief system to counter the logic of whatever evidence is advanced which runs counter to the "logic" of an individual's psychotic phenomenology. Nonetheless, there is often a huge difference between what one will commit oneself to in the context of speculative whimsy when there are absolutely no consequences that have to be accepted as a price for maintaining one's commitment, and circumstances (such as in everyday life) in which there can be serious ramifications which ensue from one's claims and commitments.
For example, if the events which Malcolm describes as possibilities actually did happen, then, seemingly, one reasonably might surmise that an individual to whom these events occurred would become very disturbed and worried, if not frightened. This would be the case since his or her on-going experience would be at considerable odds with what an individual's previous range of experiences appeared to encompass.
Let us suppose someone had to go to the airport, and before he or she left, Malcolm, who desperately needed some money, wanted the person who was leaving to write Malcolm a check for one thousand dollars in payment of a debt owed to Malcolm. Let us further assume there were no pencils, crayons, paints or ballpoint pens available with which to write the check.
The only writing implement available was a dry fountain pen. One well might imagine that Malcolm probably would go to considerable lengths to try to establish whether or not the ink bottle actually was on the desk.
The possibilities which Malcolm would be willing to entertain in order to account for his experiences would be considered in the light of, or from the perspective of, the hermeneutical framework through which he approached the phenomenology of the experiential field up to that period of time. If Malcolm's friend, who owed the money, said, upon entering the room: "I see no ink bottle on the desk, and I really have to rush to the airport," Malcolm might remember this particular person always was a hard case as far as repayment of debts was concerned. Consequently, the friend might simply be lying about the non-existence of the ink bottle in order to get out of paying back the debt.
On the other hand, if Malcolm asked, in turn, his wife and, then, his neighbor and, finally, an unknown third party chosen at random in the street outside his house to come into the room and testify as to whether or not there was an ink bottle on the desk, and all these people said there was no ink bottle on the desk, Malcolm can write what he likes, but one might suspect he would be somewhat shaken by this set of experiences and would begin to question whether there really was an ink bottle on the desk as he had been claiming to know there was.
Malcolm might also wonder if there were some sort of mass conspiracy or elaborate practical joke being played on him. In this event, he would have to take into consideration whether his wife and neighbor were the sort of people who would either conspire against him or try to play an elaborate joke upon him. He also would have to think about whether the situation could have been manipulated to the extent that the unknown third party pulled in from the street by Malcolm could have been part of the conspiracy or joke. If none of these considerations made any sense and seemed too preposterous to be true, and there was no evidence suggesting these possibilities could be the case, Malcolm would have further reason to question whether he knew what he claimed to - i.e., that an ink bottle was on the desk.
Only in the most extreme cases, such as in the case of psychosis or blind prejudice or dogmatism, would someone continue to insist, without any wavering whatsoever, that an ink bottle was on the desk when all 'reality' testing indicated, in an overwhelming fashion, this might not be the case. Alternatively, aside from such phenomena as psychosis, which is a somewhat negative possibility, there is also a much more positive possibility (or some would argue) in which someone might unyieldingly remain committed to a given understanding despite the fact that a large variety of so-called reality testing had seemingly resulted in contraindications to the claimed truth or correctness of the understanding in question.
This more "positive" possibility concerns the dimension of religion in general, and, especially, its mystical aspect in particular. This is not to say all claims of religious or mystical insight are true.
Nonetheless, it does tend to force one to take into consideration, for example, that mysticism refers to something (or purports to) which is said to transcend rational capabilities and, therefore, may not be amenable to the probing of various reality tests that have been devised by rational faculties. Whether or not, in any given case, a certain mystical claim is actually legitimate, despite many rational or evidential considerations which appear to be to the contrary or whether the claim merely gives expression to some sort of delusion on the part of the claimant may be a difficult issue to settle.
However, since both the possibilities of psychosis and mysticism fall beyond, or exist at the horizons of, the vast majority of human experiential frame-works, the present consideration is with the 'normal' course of experiential events. Even though one may be forced, at certain points, to entertain the possibility that a given knowledge claim is an expression of either psychotic or mystical understanding, these two possibilities seem to constitute the limiting cases of the sort of circumstances in which someone might (but not necessarily) express behavior consonant with Malcolm's "strong" sense of "know".
Yet, even here the mystical possibility need not represent an out-of-hand rejection of all future evidence which might conflict with one's epistemic claim. The mystical path is said to be a long one, along which exist many spiritual way-stations and many levels of understanding. And, as has been said by the mystics themselves: for everyone who knows, there is one who knows more. While the mystics would, perhaps, be unyielding in certain aspects of their hermeneutic of reality, the mystical literature itself suggests there could be considerable accommodation for the possibility of revising understanding when the depth of mystical insight increases, as new evidence, in the form of mystical experiences, accumulated.
In any event, what one calls evidence need not be a function of just what is consistent with a particular claim. Frequently, evidence is a matter of what precipitates from a given set of methodological and evaluative considerations which exist prior to any given epistemic claim.
In other words, before ever making an epistemological claim, one tends to establish, formally or informally, a way of exploring, processing and evaluating various aspects of the phenomenology of the experiential field. If, during the course of entertaining some idea, one subjects this idea to one's hermeneutical mode of interacting with experience, and, on the basis of this hermeneutical process, one became convinced one knows something, one's epistemic claim can be examined from various perspectives.
For example, one can ask how it relates to the character of the different facets of the hermeneutical process which helped establish the demarcated framework of understanding out of which the claim arose. One also might inquire as to how the claim relates to a variety of questions and issues which, although not necessarily a part of the interrogative imperative dimension of an individual's hermeneutical framework (i.e., someone else asks the question or raises the issue), nonetheless, seem to represent important themes to be considered or entertained as far as the question of the tenability of the original epistemic claim is concerned.
In most instances, if the individual concerned is honest and either is willing to acknowledge legitimate problems and difficulties in relation to his or her claim, or is willing to attempt, in good faith, to demonstrate how possible difficulties can be overcome, then, one rarely, if ever, will encounter anyone who uses "know" in Malcolm's strong sense in which what one claims to know is independent of all future evidential considerations. However, if one does meet this kind of person, one must examine closely just what this person means by "knowledge" and whether his or her meaning is entirely idiosyncratic, arbitrary and without criteria, principles, rules or standards that are to be consistently applied, over time, to different situations. In addition, one must examine, carefully, the specific context in which these claims are made in order to attempt to determine whether or not what are called contradictory evidential considerations (in relation to an individual's epistemic claim) can be accounted for plausibly, or overcome in terms of the understanding that stands behind the claim.
Attempting to meet epistemological challenges to one's claim may not be a matter of rejecting anything as evidence which conflicts with one's position. Instead, it may be a matter of believing or knowing one success fully can meet whatever challenge might come along because one believes what one claims is correct or because one understands the character of one's claim in relation to the character of the given evidential challenge.
In the latter case, this relational understanding helps establish a focal/horizonal framework in the phenomenology of an individual's experiential field through which an inference or series of inferences (e.g., connecting insight) may emerge concerning the tenability of the challenge(s) confronting one's epistemic claim. The way to engage evidential challenges is not to play semantic games, as Malcolm's "strong" sense of "know" would require, such that one is unwilling to label or treat certain data or information as evidence because it appears to conflict with one's epistemic claim.
The task is to demonstrate how this evidence - when properly explained, analyzed or criticized - is either really not contradictory or can be accounted for, adequately, in terms of the demarcated conceptual geometry which underlies the epistemic claim. If one truly knows, as one claims to, one will be able to withstand all such challenges, provided the challenge does not exceed one's intellectual capacity to understand the nature of the challenge. Unfortunately, Malcolm's position distorts the whole issue of withstanding challenges to one's claims by making knowledge a matter of belief and not of true understanding. He, thereby, eliminates any basis within the phenomenology of an individual's experiential field from which an individual could differentiate between knowledge and belief.
Conclusion
In the previous two chapters, a point had been touched upon without being studied in any great detail. More specifically, both in the dis-cussion of Strawson's descriptive metaphysics and Putnam's theory of mean ing, a warning had been noted that a distinction needed to be made.
The present article has been focused on providing the beginnings of a framework from which to approach the distinction between, on the one hand, our beliefs about the nature of the world, and, on the other hand, the actual character of the things of the world (e.g., events, states, conditions, processes, things, etc.) to which our beliefs attempt to make identifying reference. I say "beginnings" because the previous discussion has not focused on establishing what the nature of the distinction is in specific theories of reality such as physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, religion, and so on.
Instead, the intent here has been to draw attention to what seems to be an intuitive basis for the kind of distinction that is required when exploring any of these broader theoretical treatments of ontological issues. This intuitive basis revolves around the sort of procedures and processes we tend to go through in order to differentiate between belief and knowledge with respect to the handling of everyday kinds of problems within the phenomenology of our experiential field.
By gaining insight into the character of the structuring processes that are used (consciously or unconsciously) in deciding whether our current hermeneutical stance concerning an everyday kind of issue is an instance of belief or knowledge (or a combination of both), we also gain insight into the remnants of the structuring process that we tend to apply to epistemological and ontological problems in general. The only difference is that the latter problems usually are treated from a much more rigorous and complex methodological perspective, involving mathematics, formal logic, experimental design, statistical analysis, confirmation theory, and so on.
Nonetheless, despite the differences in logical sophistication and mathematical rigor, the latter really presupposes, and is built upon, the intuitive sense that emerges out of our capacity (whatever its limits and possibilities, ultimately, may be) to differentiate between the character of the phenomenology of belief and the character of the phenomenology of knowledge during the course of everyday situations such as determining whether water is in the gorge or an ink bottle is on the table, and so on.
As developed in various ways during the present chapter, the capacity to differentiate between the phenomenologies of belief and knowledge involves the establishing of different kinds of congruency relationships. Some of these relationships concern the mapping operations that tie the character of a given hermeneutical perspective to the character of a certain aspect(s) of the phenomenology of the experiential field. Some of the congruency relationships deal with the mapping operations that link the character of a given hermeneutical perspective to the character of that aspect(s) of reality which makes a given experiential field of specified phenomenological character possible.
However, regardless of the kind of congruency relationship one is exploring, all such relationships are rooted in transformation functions. In essence, transformation functions are the procedures by which one lays down a network of identifying references and meanings through which one hopes to generate connecting insight concerning the character of the relationship of the expressions (e.g., hermeneutical, phenomenological, ontological) that are being explored in any given instance.
For example, one of the transformation functions which was examined during the present article concerned the notion of "in the course of normal affairs or events". In elaborating somewhat on this kind of transformation function, an outline was given of the sorts of procedures and processes an individual could go through to develop a perspective of what constituted "normal affairs" in any given set of circumstances such as the water in the gorge example, the arithmetic issue or the ink bottle problem.
Once such a perspective or framework was established, then, an individual would have a context out of which connecting insights might arise. Such insights, if they were to arise, would form the conceptual bridges that link different expressions (i.e., hermeneutical, phenomenological, ontological), and, thereby, ideally demonstrate, or give evidence of, their congruency, one with the other.
In the context of the belief/knowledge distinction problem with which the present article has been concerned, transformation functions have been developed and used to point out potential differences in the phenomenologies of belief and knowledge in specific instances such as the water gorge example. These transformation functions don't always have names or labels such as "in the course of normal affairs" through which they can be identified readily.
Nonetheless they always do involve the setting up of some kind geometry or grid-work or conceptual geometry such that the various experiential co-ordinate points that make up such grid-works can be compared with, and juxtaposed next to one another (either singly or in combinations) while one searches for congruency relationships between or among those co-ordinate points. Even if these grid-works don't come with any readily identifiable labeling handle, over time, we do come to recognize their characters in terms of the sort of phenomenology of the experiential field to which they give expression.
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