Epistemology

O flame that burns so bright within,
why do you hesitate to tell
that wisdom which thou know so well,
as though our eyes alone possess
the strength to truth from error win!
Wilt thou, inner eye, confess
to be as blind, though inward dwell?
Among deaf ears and silent tongues,
and eyes, though seeing, sightless be,
art thou, O heart, from nonsense free;
alone that sense which truth percieves?
Stand thou but on higher rungs
of that same form, which lacking, grieves
that light, though there, he cannot see.

What is knowing, and what are its instruments? This question is central to concept of epistemology, and this poem addresses one of its issues: which means of knowing with which humanity is equipped can be counted as trustworthy? The empiricists say the senses, the rationalists, the mind, and the mystics, the heart. We can see where our senses sometime go wrong, and that empiricism used exlusively precludes anything that might exist apart from what it is inherantly able to reveal, such that such an epistemology finds itself guilty of begging the question. Exclusive rationalism, on the other hand, brings us such examples of Anselm's ontological argument for God's existence, which is within itself a logically coherent argument, but in no place draws a tangent to the objective world beyond the thinker's mind, and such a dichotomy between the objective and the strictly logical is the necessary result of exclusive rationalism. And mysticsm--a trust in the heart, the intuition--yields no greater trustworthyness, for the bottom line, as the poem states, is that the heart, though perhaps a higher part of man, still belongs to him in his fallen, (or, as an evolutionist might paradoxically yet accurately say, imperfect) state, enshrouded by deception.

But if this is the final analysis, what hope of knowing anything do we have? This question can be addressed at both the philosophical and theological levels. On the philosophical level, we can concede that the outlook is ultimately a bit dim, and accept the fact that there are a great many things about which we can have very little certainty. However, things are not really so bleak altogether, for while our epistomological equipment is flawed and imperfect, it is still present. While we may not have all that we desire, we have every right to work with what we have. Our senses may sometimes deceive us, but once we have understood them the best we can and honed all of our technological exentions thereof, we have every right to assume the truth of what we have perceived. To put it simplistically, it may be theoretically uncertain that grass is green or that the moon orbits the earth, but our only reasonable option is to believe that both are true. It may in fact be that nature has played some cruel joke on us and we are really as blind as bats, metephorically speaking, but until we can hear it laughing at us, we can only live under the assumption that our senses really can tell us some things about reality.

Impiricism, however, falls severely short when it attempts to be exclusive. First of all, any claim an impiricist makes that his senses alone, apart from reason can adequetely inform about reality neglects the observation that raw facts and data without an interpreter and a rational system by which they interact with one another are meaningless. On a practical level, no observation by itself does us any good unless we make rational inferences and deductions from them. We interpret things we observe using the principles of cause-and-effect, non-contradiction, and with principles of mathematics. Without reason, there is no possible way of drawing connections between our data, producing meaning from it, or even refining our very methods of obtaining it. This much is apparent on a practical level, but it must also be recognized that aforementioned principles of reason such as non-contradiction, cause-and-effect, and mathematics are a priori laws, which are not the products of observation, but must be presupposed if any of our experiences are to make sense to us.

But while impiricism gives us facts without meaning, rationalism deprives us the means by which we can have any material to which we can apply forms of reason. In order for any knowledge to be possible, there must be both interpretation, and something to interpret. That was, it seems, the error which so many philosophers of the last five centuries tended to make: they each stood on only one epistemological leg, and as a result, their approaches to the study of existence was enfeebled. Immanuel Kant characterized this in his idea that the phenomenal (the picture of the thing which we see) could not inform us about the noumenal (the thing itself.) In some ways, this seems to harken back to the methodical skepticism of Descartes, who suggested that we doubt everything that can possibly be doubted. While this position does reflect the ultimate feebleness of the mind and heart, it deprives us of making our necessary presupposition; that until it becomes apparent that it is otherwise, we can trust that grass really is green, that acorns really do fall from trees, and (as Alvin Plantinga would point out) that other people have minds. The Kant's skepticism of the noumenal unjustly places any meaningful knowlege of reality beyond our grasp. While he recognized that our senses could tell us something about what we sensed (for in view of his skepicism of the noumenal, that is really all that he could say), our reason could draw no further conclusions about reality based on what we saw or percieved, or by extention, what the very existence of reason could suggest to us.

The point of all of this is the necessity of keeping both of our epistemological feet soundly attached to us and planted firmly on the ground. While indeed there is always the possibility that we are in error, and that we would be the laughingstock of the noumenal if it is anything that can laugh, we can only, within the realms of sanity, assume that such is not the case, and this being so, we really can have at least some presumably good knowlege about reality through both our perception and what we can infer from these perceptions and the fact of their existence. Eyes and minds and hearts may be flawed, but they are too great a gift to be thrown aside in epistemological despair.

Yet another consideration that is required in the philosophical contemplation of epistemology is the practical reality that none of us have really obtained the majority of our view of the world by such a rigorous and analytical system. We build up our total knowledge from the ground up in theory only. Our knowlege of the impirically observable world is formed largely on what others tell us, whether through those who have gone before us and studied it directly, or simply as students reading textbooks. In terms the deeper foundations of our worldviews, we do not start with our ability to reason, employ it to the task of learning about what we see around us, and then using reason to put these facts together and then make some kind of inference as to what reality is behind the existence we percieve. Quite frankly, we believe in God because our parents did, or, to bring up a whole other subject which I do not intend to discuss at this point, because the same concept of the divine which until rather recently was universal among all culturers, whatever it may be, has also worked its influence on us. The point is, we do not, and in reality cannot, form all of our ideas about reality "from the ground up."

This is not say that this bottom-up way of looking at epistemolgy wrong, but that it is not the only way. In fact, one might say that the two loci of epistemolgy are the "bottom-up" and the "top-down." While the former is useful for obtaining some new knowledge and as a lense through which to evaluate the soundness of our conceptions, the latter is the inevitable approach we use. The point is that rather than beginning with a blank slate and filling it with our observations and deductions, we begin with our ideas, and, if we desire to treat them in an appropriately critical way, see how they line up with observations and deductions we make, and see how well they address the critical questions of existence.

However, this brings us to our second leval on which we intended to address a pessimistic outlook on our ability to know anything: the theological. For all that has been said concerns the structure, not the purposeful functioning, of a sound epistemology. In fact, all of this might be called pre-epistemolgy. Once a worldview is accepted, it has every natural right to inform us about reality. In a very broad sense, that is the very essence of what a worldview is for. The people judge their king before the king judges the people. So with a worldview: it must pass a test, but once affirmed, it must be seen as reliable. If it is not, it is worthless. But it is necessary, for some presupposion (although not an unevaluated one) is an absolute necessisty for all intelligent activity. As it has been wisely said, we must know something before we can know anything. Therefore, both orientations of epistemology are necessary: the one for evaluating our knowledge, and the other for knowing.

For a Christian, this gives us confidence in our ability to have knowledge, particularly in that we can be justified in relying on God's revealed truth in Scripture. We do in fact have hope of attaining some knowledge, for our minds, eyes, and hearts, though fallen, are given to us by God, for the purpose that we might ultimately know Him better. But two things must be kept in mind: our epistemology is still fallen, and it is most unwise to think as though knowledge can be an independent human achievement. Having been given the word of God, we must rely on it. Secondly, we must never desire knowledge for its own sake, for doing so brings us perilously close to the sin of Adam and Eve. We must not be as Faust, who sold his soul for knowledge. While gaining knowledge expresses part of God's design, and glorifies Him by acting as His image bearers, to pursue knowlege apart from knowing God is to miss the point entirely, and in fact, demonstrates the essence of sin through the desire for something good like knowledge, but by ourselves, on our own terms, and for our own glory. The Greeks were right to see knowlege as something innately valualbe, but were wrong in that they did not see the basis and end for its value: to know God. This, then, is the fulfillment Christian epistemology: to know Christ, because it is through Him alone that we know God.