In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis described the human mind as three concentric circles which he labeled fantasy, intellect, and will. Lewis was speaking at this point specifically of virtues and as such it is important to note that what falls into fantasy should probably not be called knowledge but is more like a vague shadow of knowledge; an example of fantastic sin might be resentment for wartime enemies that the thinker has never met and an example of fantastic virtue might be prayers for the soul of a person to whom the thinker never shows the faintest hints of compassion in daily interactions. As we approach intellect we must simultaneously consider will for it is only by contrasting the two that we can really identify either. This contrast is exemplified by two claims: one by Paul that we do things which we know are wrong and one by Socrates that evil is the result of ignorance. At first glance these statements seems contradictory but in reality they are both equally true claims about different experiences of knowledge. Paul is describing knowledge experienced only in the intellect while Socrates is perfectly correct on the subject of knowledge experienced in the will, knowledge which can at that point be recognized as “wisdom.” The situation Paul describes is one where we have knowledge intellectually but have failed to incorporate that knowledge into our will or heart as Lewis says it is also called in the Bible. Such a person may have access to a clear and definite truth but when he is pushed to his limit he will forsake it and follow the lies that have been instilled in his heart. On the other hand, one who has incorporated truth into his will is a person whose habits and emotional reactions on relevant matters are centered around that truth. Often, knowledge that exists only in the intellect will only be examined or acted upon as a distant theory which is disconnected from the life of the thinker. The movement from intellect to will is one which will be initiated usually by introspection on behalf of the speaker but this in itself is not enough; knowledge within the intellect may be positioned to be now father from and now closer to the will but the actual change is not a gradual one and is instead marked by a distinct barrier which must be breached. (I might add here the very important observation that I am not my will. Though I am nowhere near qualified to say precisely what the self is, I can confidently say that it is distinct from what I have described. I am aware of false knowledge in the will of which I disapprove based on knowledge in my will of the rudimentary nature of goodness and more detailed knowledge that is struggling to escape my intellect and I am faced with the choice of what ideas are to be encouraged and which are to be tossed out.) This may be a difficult concept to grasp at first in its fully defined state but it is nonetheless one which we use everyday; I may know intellectually that I should not procrastinate on a given assignment but I still put it off because I do not know the same in my will or in a Bible study you ask a fellow participant if he is saying what he really believes or what he knows he should (even and especially if he knows intellectually that this is not just an earthly “should”) believe. In reading the Word you should observe that this is called not only “the heart” but also “the heart of hearts.”
To understand these three areas, consider the example of love. For someone who has never had a serious relationship, love may reside in the circle of fantasy. In this case, he will probably think of it as some undefinable emotional state (it should be noted here that whenever something is described as being innately “undefinable”, as opposed to simply being something we lack the faculties or information to define, the subject resides in the circle of fantasy; all truths have a definite nature, regardless of whether or not we can grasp it, and even in the case of things which define all other things we can understand their nature by understanding what they define) onto which he projects all his sorrows and desires.
A man whose knowledge of love resides primarily in his intellect (love is something that we all need in order to live healthy, fulfilling lives and therefore we all have some knowledge of it in our will) may think of it in any number of ways but in all likelihood he will think of it in a cynical manner. He will talk about the ways in which love affects a person’s behavior, ramble endlessly on concerning the different ways in which it is expressed, ponder the benefits and difficulties it generates for the affected parties, and assert vigorously his belief in the rationality or irrationality (probably the latter) of the subject. However, so long as his will-knowledge of love is at a minimum, the concept will not produce any strong emotion in him; the only thing about it that will in any way excite him will be the act of analyzing and arguing about it.
By contrast, the man who understand love in the deepest part of his being will approach it in an entirely different spirit. This man has been directly acquainted with his subject (has met it in battle, drank of it as of a fine wine, and lain awake at night absorbed in contemplation of it) and he knows it best because of the experience. For this man, love is a reality which has a distinct role in his life and if his understanding of it were changed by logical speculation or experience i life would change. The man will have fantasies about love and they will still be vaporous, practically waiting to be disassembled by reality, but they will be false only in that they will be scenarios which are not actually happening. He will still have an intellectual understanding of love but it will be more accurate than anyone whose will-knowledge of love is out of touch with his intellectual knowledge of it and, more importantly, it will have real meaning to him.
It is not wrong to have fantasies and intellectual knowledge, they are part of the way in which we are made to function, but the intellect is meant to grow out of the will and our fantasies are meant to be expressions of our creativity based on knowledge from the other two circles; when this natural state is abandoned our correspondence with Reason is disrupted and we are left unable to live prosperously. The thing about intellect in separation from the will is that it can discuss only appearances whereas the will is concerned with the essences or, as Plato would have said, forms of its subjects. In conjunction with the will it can make statements about forms but all insight must originate with the will. In fact, since the forms (the most important of them being Beauty, Reason, Being, and Love, all of which in turn stem from Goodness) are the foundations everything that exists, all knowledge must originate with the insights of the will.
In the will, all knowledge either emerges from experience or is inborn and is thus possessed by us simply by virtue of being human. When it comes down to it, the core of all our knowledge is inborn either through emotional demands, our capacity for knowledge of various subjects, or through basic and unquestioned assumptions. If we lack the ability to understand images, for instance, no amount of experience will ever make them intelligible to us. Thus we see that experience does not ever provide us with any genuinely new information but rather refines what intuition has already taught us. It allows us to realize less fundamental truths such as the dangers of procrastination, to use my above example, and it helps to bring the three circles into the proper order. If a man’s only will-knowledge of love comes from intuition, the most honest approach he can take to it intellectually would be to suspend judgment and if he could not do that (which would probably be the case) he might very well fail to make the connection between his will-knowledge of love with the intellectual theory he is forming altogether. If this man were then to experience love, however, the blurred edges of the form he has always been aware of would come into focus, the connection between form and appearance would become obvious, his ability to understand and analyze that appearance would grow exponentially, and his knowledge of that appearance would become something relevant to his life.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Epistemology Part 3: The Four Paths to Knowledge
In philosophy, there are four paths to knowledge: simple seeing, empiricism, dialectic, and authority. Simple seeing is the act of perceiving an item of knowledge through direct or nearly direct experiences of them such as a tree or a conversation. Empiricism is basically science and while it is not always clearly defined, we may be satisfied here to say that it is the study of truths concerning the visible world through reasoning and through the study of observable phenomena in a controlled environment (this is the ideal, mind you, there are forms of empiricism in which we cannot control the environment but the subject matter and the general approach is the same). Dialectic is the study of truths beyond the visible world through the careful and intense use of logic. Finally, authority is the reliance on another for knowledge which we either cannot obtain on our own or simply do not have the time for. Each of these paths are equally legitimate provided that they are used in logically relevant ways in search for the knowledge which it is appropriate to each.
For starters, simple seeing is basically our semi-direct experience of reality through our senses, our emotions, and our intuition. The thing that most distinguishes simple seeing from empiricism most is that simple seeing involves no analysis. The purpose of simple seeing is to provide us with raw data about reality and the level to which we can trust that data varies with the complexity and clarity with which we experience as well as other factors which may indicate whether or not we are in our right mind. This raw data is then used for two purposes: to provide a basis for speculation using empiricism and dialectics and to allow us to function in the world. The sensory form of simple seeing is the one with which we in our modern culture most readily acknowledge and understand and it is quite simply our experience of the physical world. Our ability to perceive reality through our emotions is much more complicated and is very rarely thought of as a means of obtaining knowledge and when it is, it is typically viewed as something that is apart from reason, a belief held by both anti-sentimentalists and romantics which vulgarizes reason and emotions alike. In truth, our emotions give us insight into moral and spiritual reality (given that humans are rational beings, and any view that denies this must also deny the logical arguments it uses to reach its conclusions, and also given that non-physical truths exist, and if they do not then there is no point in arguing with me is there?) although they do require analysis to determine natural responses (which should be trust) from conditioned responses (which should not be trusted). Finally, our intuition is the most reliable form of simple seeing and it consists of our most basic assumptions about reality such as our belief in the laws of logic, basic moral truths (this is different from our emotions in that it is limited to the most basic moral judgements and our knowledge of the very existence of moral truths whereas our emotions may reach any level of complexity), our own existence, and the lower forms of mathematics. In short, our intuitive knowledge is that which we cannot conceive of as being false.
The field of empiricism, on the other hand, is much more complex difficult to define. Once again, empiricism is basically another word for science and for the most part it is distinguished by the use of tests and observations in a controlled environment on the methodological side and a focus on the physical world and that which has a lower existence than us when it comes to subject matter. I say “that which has a lower existence than us” instead of just stopping at “the physical world” because empiricism does study the human mind through psychology so it is not completely limited to the physical universe but the mind is still distinct from the self so it is also below us on the metaphysical ladder. Many people believe that empiricism is the only trustworthy path to knowledge yet this is a gross exaggeration of the real value of empiricism. For starters, unless one has walked through each step of an experiment he is relying on authority, not empiricism, as a path to knowledge and as such most of the time when non-scientists talk about “what we know through science” what they are actually talking about is the secular consensus which they have accepted on authority. Additionally, the history of science is often not one of refinements but rather is filled with theories that were completely discarded. Finally, there is the limit to what science can study, a limit that means empiricism can never make judgements about morality, spirituality, or even its own validity.
Yet as difficult to pin down as empiricism is, dialects is even more troublesome. Dialectics is philosophical reasoning and it is distinctive from empiricism mainly in that it is based more on speculation than on tests. There are different methods to dialectics but what it comes down to is analyzing the available data; defining one’s assumptions, conclusions, and terms; checking those assumptions and conclusions for logical contradictions; and the use of thought experiments. Dialectics is also much less limited than empiricism in that it extends to every aspect of reality. Naturally, there are certain physical questions which dialectics should not be used to answer but there are others, such as those concerning the origin of the universe, which are intimately connected to deeper metaphysical questions. On such issues it is sometimes appropriate for dialectics to yield to empiricism but only when there are strong empirical and dialectical arguments against the standing philosophical theory.
Finally, we have before us the matter of authority. You might have concluded earlier that our ultimate source of all knowledge is simple seeing since it includes not only physical information but also our sense of reason and moral values. However, when it comes down to it, we must accept the claims of our experiences on authority and not only that but we have no way at all to test the validity of this claim to authority. Claims to authority made by individuals are usually fairly easy to test as long as the appropriate information is available and claims made by a culture (such as those on matters of history or ethics) can be evaluated by looking to see what other cultures have to say on the subject and through empirical or dialectical analysis but this is not the case with the most basic authoritative claims. How can you logical evaluate the claim that logic exists? On the other hand, despite many attempts by skeptics, no one has ever succeeded in living out any philosophy that denies these basic claims or even in truly believing such a worldview. Skeptics argue with logic, nihilists kill themselves at despair which has no place in a world without values, the history of philosophy is littered with the corpses of belief systems attempting to deny this ultimate authority. In short, the only alternative to an acceptance the authoritative claims of reason, morality, and the senses is literally nothing.
And now there is a lesson for us Christians to draw from all this. While it is impossible for the nothingness philosophy that opposes human reason to raise any substantial argument, there is still the question of consistency. After all, reason is perfect by nature and as such it cannot be something that arises within us but rather if we are rational creatures then it must be something that we reflect like a mirror. But if we are not created being and are instead simply accidents of nature then how could this be the case? Ultimately, we must be created by God for us to be truly rational creatures. What this also means is that God has actively revealed truth to us and as such any conception of Him must view Him as one who deeply cares about us and is determined to reveal Himself and all His knowledge to us. This not only suggests Christianity as the most likely true path due to the constant intervention of God as displayed in biblical history but also gives us a new way in which to view those interventions. What it tells us of is a King gleeful to share with us a deep and abiding understanding of beauty, love, Himself, and even us.
For starters, simple seeing is basically our semi-direct experience of reality through our senses, our emotions, and our intuition. The thing that most distinguishes simple seeing from empiricism most is that simple seeing involves no analysis. The purpose of simple seeing is to provide us with raw data about reality and the level to which we can trust that data varies with the complexity and clarity with which we experience as well as other factors which may indicate whether or not we are in our right mind. This raw data is then used for two purposes: to provide a basis for speculation using empiricism and dialectics and to allow us to function in the world. The sensory form of simple seeing is the one with which we in our modern culture most readily acknowledge and understand and it is quite simply our experience of the physical world. Our ability to perceive reality through our emotions is much more complicated and is very rarely thought of as a means of obtaining knowledge and when it is, it is typically viewed as something that is apart from reason, a belief held by both anti-sentimentalists and romantics which vulgarizes reason and emotions alike. In truth, our emotions give us insight into moral and spiritual reality (given that humans are rational beings, and any view that denies this must also deny the logical arguments it uses to reach its conclusions, and also given that non-physical truths exist, and if they do not then there is no point in arguing with me is there?) although they do require analysis to determine natural responses (which should be trust) from conditioned responses (which should not be trusted). Finally, our intuition is the most reliable form of simple seeing and it consists of our most basic assumptions about reality such as our belief in the laws of logic, basic moral truths (this is different from our emotions in that it is limited to the most basic moral judgements and our knowledge of the very existence of moral truths whereas our emotions may reach any level of complexity), our own existence, and the lower forms of mathematics. In short, our intuitive knowledge is that which we cannot conceive of as being false.
The field of empiricism, on the other hand, is much more complex difficult to define. Once again, empiricism is basically another word for science and for the most part it is distinguished by the use of tests and observations in a controlled environment on the methodological side and a focus on the physical world and that which has a lower existence than us when it comes to subject matter. I say “that which has a lower existence than us” instead of just stopping at “the physical world” because empiricism does study the human mind through psychology so it is not completely limited to the physical universe but the mind is still distinct from the self so it is also below us on the metaphysical ladder. Many people believe that empiricism is the only trustworthy path to knowledge yet this is a gross exaggeration of the real value of empiricism. For starters, unless one has walked through each step of an experiment he is relying on authority, not empiricism, as a path to knowledge and as such most of the time when non-scientists talk about “what we know through science” what they are actually talking about is the secular consensus which they have accepted on authority. Additionally, the history of science is often not one of refinements but rather is filled with theories that were completely discarded. Finally, there is the limit to what science can study, a limit that means empiricism can never make judgements about morality, spirituality, or even its own validity.
Yet as difficult to pin down as empiricism is, dialects is even more troublesome. Dialectics is philosophical reasoning and it is distinctive from empiricism mainly in that it is based more on speculation than on tests. There are different methods to dialectics but what it comes down to is analyzing the available data; defining one’s assumptions, conclusions, and terms; checking those assumptions and conclusions for logical contradictions; and the use of thought experiments. Dialectics is also much less limited than empiricism in that it extends to every aspect of reality. Naturally, there are certain physical questions which dialectics should not be used to answer but there are others, such as those concerning the origin of the universe, which are intimately connected to deeper metaphysical questions. On such issues it is sometimes appropriate for dialectics to yield to empiricism but only when there are strong empirical and dialectical arguments against the standing philosophical theory.
Finally, we have before us the matter of authority. You might have concluded earlier that our ultimate source of all knowledge is simple seeing since it includes not only physical information but also our sense of reason and moral values. However, when it comes down to it, we must accept the claims of our experiences on authority and not only that but we have no way at all to test the validity of this claim to authority. Claims to authority made by individuals are usually fairly easy to test as long as the appropriate information is available and claims made by a culture (such as those on matters of history or ethics) can be evaluated by looking to see what other cultures have to say on the subject and through empirical or dialectical analysis but this is not the case with the most basic authoritative claims. How can you logical evaluate the claim that logic exists? On the other hand, despite many attempts by skeptics, no one has ever succeeded in living out any philosophy that denies these basic claims or even in truly believing such a worldview. Skeptics argue with logic, nihilists kill themselves at despair which has no place in a world without values, the history of philosophy is littered with the corpses of belief systems attempting to deny this ultimate authority. In short, the only alternative to an acceptance the authoritative claims of reason, morality, and the senses is literally nothing.
And now there is a lesson for us Christians to draw from all this. While it is impossible for the nothingness philosophy that opposes human reason to raise any substantial argument, there is still the question of consistency. After all, reason is perfect by nature and as such it cannot be something that arises within us but rather if we are rational creatures then it must be something that we reflect like a mirror. But if we are not created being and are instead simply accidents of nature then how could this be the case? Ultimately, we must be created by God for us to be truly rational creatures. What this also means is that God has actively revealed truth to us and as such any conception of Him must view Him as one who deeply cares about us and is determined to reveal Himself and all His knowledge to us. This not only suggests Christianity as the most likely true path due to the constant intervention of God as displayed in biblical history but also gives us a new way in which to view those interventions. What it tells us of is a King gleeful to share with us a deep and abiding understanding of beauty, love, Himself, and even us.
Epistemology Part 2: Opinions, Weak Beliefs, Confident Beliefs, and Unfailing Knowledge
This is something that is inspired by a conversation I had (by which I mean an argument into which I injected myself) with someone while ministering on Sunday about postmodernism vs. Christianity and the word “belief.” This is written to clarify our understanding of knowledge which I put into the categories of (you guessed it) opinions, weak beliefs, confident beliefs, and unfailing knowledge.
First off, opinion is not something that I would actually classify as knowledge though it may be true in some cases. Opinion is either something that cannot be true such as “red is better than blue” or else is a claim that is formed either without access to relevant unfailing knowledge or confident beliefs or else is formed without analysing them. Opinions are usually results of emotion or influence from an unquestioned authority and should always be cast aside in favor of real knowledge.
A belief is an item of knowledge that is either true or false. This statement is true of both weak beliefs and confident beliefs but what distinguishes common beliefs is that they lack certainty. A person who has a weak belief may have some understanding of the subject of a belief but their knowledge on the subject is limited and does not include all major perspectives. A weak belief is either a good or a bad thing to have depending on whether or not you are satisfied with it; a common belief makes a wonderful stepping stone but a very poor endpoint.
There are two kinds of confident beliefs, beliefs about the physical and beliefs about the nonphysical. At the present I believe that I am typing this brief discussion on a computer and I also believe that what I say here is true. Either belief could be false but they are still both have and extremely high probability of truthfulness. I am confident in my physical belief because I currently do not have any reason to doubt my senses and I am confident in my nonphysical belief because I have studied the topic in depth and have experience with it (note that this claim is itself a confident belief which, while technically nonphysical, is similar to my previously stated physical belief in that my confidence comes from my lack of any reason to distrust my memory). Not all confident beliefs have the same level of certainty and how much study is required for a claim to count as a confident belief may depend on the subject such as with my confident belief that what I am saying is true which is a claim that requires relatively little study due to the basic and comparatively simple nature of the topic. It is completely acceptable to treat a confident belief as fact though it may need to be defended in a debate.
Unfailing Knowledge is knowledge which we can inherently know without any need to justify it. There is very little that can be put into the category of unfailing knowledge and this is (arguably) the existence of oneself, basic moral mandates and values, numbers, and the laws of logic. Some people would disagree about putting morality in there but I don’t feel like refuting relativists and naturalists right now so instead I’m going to just tell those people to shut up and ask them if that means there would be nothing objectively wrong about them being murdered. No matter what any given person’s philosophy says, in our heart of hearts we are really do believe and act on the belief that there is objective moral truth. Except for psychopaths but those people are defective so they don’t count.
First off, opinion is not something that I would actually classify as knowledge though it may be true in some cases. Opinion is either something that cannot be true such as “red is better than blue” or else is a claim that is formed either without access to relevant unfailing knowledge or confident beliefs or else is formed without analysing them. Opinions are usually results of emotion or influence from an unquestioned authority and should always be cast aside in favor of real knowledge.
A belief is an item of knowledge that is either true or false. This statement is true of both weak beliefs and confident beliefs but what distinguishes common beliefs is that they lack certainty. A person who has a weak belief may have some understanding of the subject of a belief but their knowledge on the subject is limited and does not include all major perspectives. A weak belief is either a good or a bad thing to have depending on whether or not you are satisfied with it; a common belief makes a wonderful stepping stone but a very poor endpoint.
There are two kinds of confident beliefs, beliefs about the physical and beliefs about the nonphysical. At the present I believe that I am typing this brief discussion on a computer and I also believe that what I say here is true. Either belief could be false but they are still both have and extremely high probability of truthfulness. I am confident in my physical belief because I currently do not have any reason to doubt my senses and I am confident in my nonphysical belief because I have studied the topic in depth and have experience with it (note that this claim is itself a confident belief which, while technically nonphysical, is similar to my previously stated physical belief in that my confidence comes from my lack of any reason to distrust my memory). Not all confident beliefs have the same level of certainty and how much study is required for a claim to count as a confident belief may depend on the subject such as with my confident belief that what I am saying is true which is a claim that requires relatively little study due to the basic and comparatively simple nature of the topic. It is completely acceptable to treat a confident belief as fact though it may need to be defended in a debate.
Unfailing Knowledge is knowledge which we can inherently know without any need to justify it. There is very little that can be put into the category of unfailing knowledge and this is (arguably) the existence of oneself, basic moral mandates and values, numbers, and the laws of logic. Some people would disagree about putting morality in there but I don’t feel like refuting relativists and naturalists right now so instead I’m going to just tell those people to shut up and ask them if that means there would be nothing objectively wrong about them being murdered. No matter what any given person’s philosophy says, in our heart of hearts we are really do believe and act on the belief that there is objective moral truth. Except for psychopaths but those people are defective so they don’t count.
Epistemology Part 1: The Problem of the Criterion
One of the best arguments for skepticism is the Problem of the Criterion, which consists of two questions. The first question is “what do we know?” and the second is “how do we know anything?” The resulting dilemma is obvious as soon as one tries to answer it and finds that to answer either question requires the solution of the other.
Of course, the usual conclusion to be drawn from this problem is one which is completely unacceptable. I do not mean here that skepticism is unacceptable because it is pointless to assume our powers of intellect are useless or for any other such reason but rather because skepticism is self-contradictory: it is the claim to rationally know that nothing can be rationally known. Of course, a real skeptic could reply that to point out this contradiction is to rely on logic and therefore it cannot be used to refute it. Unlike his opponent, the skeptic can simply refuse to observe his own use of human reason while attacking the use his opponent makes of it because consistency is a demand of the laws of logic whereas the illogical have no laws at all.
Fortunately, there are no real skeptics, only particularists who think that they are skeptics. Neither are there any real methodists (those who choose the second response to the Problem of the Criterion and say that we start out with a criterion for knowledge) but instead there are only particularists who haven’t thought about their epistemology quite long enough. A particularist is one who chooses the third response to the above dilemma and holds that we can have certain items of knowledge without needing to explain why we have them. This is in part because we can sometimes know something but have little confidence in our knowledge or lack an awareness of just how we came to know it but also because in any string of propositions and explanations there must be some collection of final propositions which are themselves inexplicable because they are the basis for all explanations.
The skeptic may claim that the particularist simply begs the question by assuming that we have knowledge but when it comes down to any real skeptic must start off by assuming that we do not. When a skeptic argues through reason that reason is invalid, he is (or would be if there was any possible manner of thinking outside of reason) not actually embracing the premises he describes but is rather pointing out contradictions to invalidate his opponent’s philosophy. Thus both particularists and skeptics have never reached their views as conclusions but rather assumed them both from the very start. Of course this is one again dealing with a hypothetical scenario involving a real skeptic; in reality the skeptic has started with a particularist assumption about knowledge and ended with a refutation of logic that he claims to believe in and an affirmation of logic that he actually believes in. On the other hand there is a way in which the basic assumptions of each side differ and that is in their approach to proofs and their definition of knowledge. To a skeptic, the mere possibility that we are in error in some way is cause to disregard our thoughts on the matter but the particularist takes the more dynamic and positive view that we should not even consider rejecting an idea unless we have evidence that an alternative claim is true.
Of course, the usual conclusion to be drawn from this problem is one which is completely unacceptable. I do not mean here that skepticism is unacceptable because it is pointless to assume our powers of intellect are useless or for any other such reason but rather because skepticism is self-contradictory: it is the claim to rationally know that nothing can be rationally known. Of course, a real skeptic could reply that to point out this contradiction is to rely on logic and therefore it cannot be used to refute it. Unlike his opponent, the skeptic can simply refuse to observe his own use of human reason while attacking the use his opponent makes of it because consistency is a demand of the laws of logic whereas the illogical have no laws at all.
Fortunately, there are no real skeptics, only particularists who think that they are skeptics. Neither are there any real methodists (those who choose the second response to the Problem of the Criterion and say that we start out with a criterion for knowledge) but instead there are only particularists who haven’t thought about their epistemology quite long enough. A particularist is one who chooses the third response to the above dilemma and holds that we can have certain items of knowledge without needing to explain why we have them. This is in part because we can sometimes know something but have little confidence in our knowledge or lack an awareness of just how we came to know it but also because in any string of propositions and explanations there must be some collection of final propositions which are themselves inexplicable because they are the basis for all explanations.
The skeptic may claim that the particularist simply begs the question by assuming that we have knowledge but when it comes down to any real skeptic must start off by assuming that we do not. When a skeptic argues through reason that reason is invalid, he is (or would be if there was any possible manner of thinking outside of reason) not actually embracing the premises he describes but is rather pointing out contradictions to invalidate his opponent’s philosophy. Thus both particularists and skeptics have never reached their views as conclusions but rather assumed them both from the very start. Of course this is one again dealing with a hypothetical scenario involving a real skeptic; in reality the skeptic has started with a particularist assumption about knowledge and ended with a refutation of logic that he claims to believe in and an affirmation of logic that he actually believes in. On the other hand there is a way in which the basic assumptions of each side differ and that is in their approach to proofs and their definition of knowledge. To a skeptic, the mere possibility that we are in error in some way is cause to disregard our thoughts on the matter but the particularist takes the more dynamic and positive view that we should not even consider rejecting an idea unless we have evidence that an alternative claim is true.
The Different Senses of "My"
1- the “my” as applied to inanimate objects; this is the most possessive sense
example: my boots
2- the “my” as applied to characteristics; this is a very odd sense in that on the one hand we do possess them much more than many other things in one sense but they also have a certain extent of possession of us
example: my virtues
3- the “my” as applied to pets and livestock
example: my dog
4- the “my” as applied to human beings over whom one has authority
example: my child
5- the “my” as applied to a group of people over whom one has authority; like the previous sense, this involves certain responsibilities on behalf of the speaker but it also implies greater power of the subject to hold him/her accountable to that responsibility
example: my class
6- the “my” as applied to equals with whom the speaker has a mutually agreed upon relationship
example: my coworkers
7- the “my” as applied to an equal with whom the speaker has a more valuable and therefore responsibility-laden relationship
example: my wife
8- the “my” as applied to an individual who has a mild authority over the speaker
example: my master
9- the “my” as applied to an individual who has a strong moral or political authourity over the speaker
example: my president
10- the “my” as applied to a group with casual authourity over the speaker
example: my team
11- the “my” as applied to a group with strong moral and/or political authourity over the speaker
example: my country
12- the “my” as applied to God, moral laws, religions, and spiritual truths
example: my doctrine
13: the “my” as applied to craftsmanship, meaning items that one made but does not actually own
example: my painting
There are thirteen different senses of the word “my” used here but with the possible exception of the thirteenth sense, all of these senses fall into either the category of possession, authority, association, or subordination. Words could be produced for each one of the thirteen senses or else simply for these four categories. Either way, however, it is important to recongize the many different ways in which we use this word and how few of them actually imply authority.
example: my boots
2- the “my” as applied to characteristics; this is a very odd sense in that on the one hand we do possess them much more than many other things in one sense but they also have a certain extent of possession of us
example: my virtues
3- the “my” as applied to pets and livestock
example: my dog
4- the “my” as applied to human beings over whom one has authority
example: my child
5- the “my” as applied to a group of people over whom one has authority; like the previous sense, this involves certain responsibilities on behalf of the speaker but it also implies greater power of the subject to hold him/her accountable to that responsibility
example: my class
6- the “my” as applied to equals with whom the speaker has a mutually agreed upon relationship
example: my coworkers
7- the “my” as applied to an equal with whom the speaker has a more valuable and therefore responsibility-laden relationship
example: my wife
8- the “my” as applied to an individual who has a mild authority over the speaker
example: my master
9- the “my” as applied to an individual who has a strong moral or political authourity over the speaker
example: my president
10- the “my” as applied to a group with casual authourity over the speaker
example: my team
11- the “my” as applied to a group with strong moral and/or political authourity over the speaker
example: my country
12- the “my” as applied to God, moral laws, religions, and spiritual truths
example: my doctrine
13: the “my” as applied to craftsmanship, meaning items that one made but does not actually own
example: my painting
There are thirteen different senses of the word “my” used here but with the possible exception of the thirteenth sense, all of these senses fall into either the category of possession, authority, association, or subordination. Words could be produced for each one of the thirteen senses or else simply for these four categories. Either way, however, it is important to recongize the many different ways in which we use this word and how few of them actually imply authority.
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