A dialogue

Lakshmi : Can you tell me how everything went wrong?

Kartikay : I have gone through the events over and over and I remain at a loss how my plans crumbled, and I ended up 180 degrees from where I began.

Lakshmi : Tell me.

Kartikay : After i acquired a Genesis planet, with the most advanced template I set out to create a race of sublime mortals. I learned from the mistakes of the elder gods and I intended to fulfill all the dreams of these mortals, satisfy their desires and ensure that happiness was a reality, not a mere ideal. My stratagems were put in effect to produce a perfect race that lives comfortably in utopia, and I would become the envy of all other pantheons.

Lakshmi : That is why you created them as children – all the better to enjoy the world, live in the present and be carefree.

Kartikay : No matter how advanced my template was, these mortals were flawed . They did not remain idyllic for long. Much to my surprise, they grew… sophisticated.

Lakshmi : They tired of being children?

Kartikay : Yes. They gained the ability to reason, and that caused a general mood of disappointment. Their childlike hopes disintegrated rather quickly.

Lakshmi : But – the suicides?

Kartikay : That was my first sign. Through reasoning, they figured out how to kill off themselves. Once their hopes were dashed, they could no longer bear living. My ambitious project turned out to be a greater failure than any of the elder gods!

Lakshmi : Weren’t you successful for several centuries of your rule?

Kartikay : Actually, I did try short-term solutions to solve this existential malady – I added more land to the world, and introduced more variety in nature with animals and plants. These changes did work for a while, and they distracted the mortals. As the years passed, the novelty faded, and they grew bored with life again. Even contemptuous! I could never return them to their original state as children.

Lakshmi : Hmmm. Nothing new can outlast the invincible sequence of time.

Kartikay : I didn’t stop there. I tried introducing more obstacles in order to challenge them, force them to expand their reason and find solutions. I also proliferated the mortals into different factions, so they could not intermingle as easily and casually. They were strangers to one another, constantly misunderstanding each other, and that led to discord, violent conflict.

Lakshmi : Wasn’t that Yahweh’s original error?

Kartikay : No, he did it too early, when the population on Earth was much smaller. Never mind that. Despite all the obstacles, and the increase in their intellectual activity, they lapsed back into boredom. Ennui seemed ineradicable.

Lakshmi : Perhaps your template was not flawed.

Kartikay : Indeed, perhaps it was too advanced. Despite all their intellectual development, they are demanding for the presence of Truth!

Lakshmi : No, it isn’t the template. It is time to abandon your original plan. Your problem is an excess of mercy, and that makes it easier for your mortals to take you for granted. I recommend you to answer their demands: Send them the Truth.

Kartikay : You’re mad. By doing so, won’t that turn them into gods?

Lakshmi : Not exactly. Not even Truth could do that. In fact, she will pull off the opposite. She will destroy all their illusions, and become the Tyrant of the race.

Kartikay : Preposterous! Truth is Beauty. She reveals our beatitude.

Lakshmi : Sure, but she shall reflect the mortals’ wretchedness instead. Not their beauty. For them the only truth is the falsity of all things, for they all are temporary, merely transient, and all their griefs are empty. These mortals will always remain dissatisfied, and their dissatisfaction continues to crucify them for all time…..

There are two forms of knowledge: logos and mythos. From an old post of mine, based on Karen Armstrong’s division of knowledge:

Mythos: “myth”, from greek musteion - to close eyes or mouth. Myth as a mode of Knowledge was rooted in silence and intuitive insight, and gave meaning to life, human existence, but cannot be explained in rational terms. In the premodern world, mythical knowledge was complementary to logos.

Logos: “word” or rational, logical, scientific discourse

Both were essential and complementary ways of arriving at the truth for each had its area of competence. Myth was regarded as primary, for it dealt with the timeless or constant elements of human existence. Myth was about the origins of life, the very foundations of culture and the most essential nature of human mind. However, myth has little to do with practical stuff, or anything other than the meaning of life. If people cannot or do not find significance in their lives, despair is the result. The mythos of a society is the context that makes sense of the daily life, and points at the eternal and universal. Moreover, myth is rooted in unconscious. The various stories of myth, which were not meant to be taken literally, was ancient psychology. All these stories of heroes in the underworld, in labyrinths, and fighting monsters, was the premodern way of dealing with the obscure realm of unconscious, which is completely inaccessible to rational investigation, but had profound effects on experience and behavior. Since myth is absent in modern society we instead developed the science of psychoanalysis to deal with our inner world. (more…)

In the previous blog, I discussed the ontology presuppositions and the conditions of the theory of knowledge. Now, I will go over the limits of the theory of knowledge and the Bataillean concept of non-knowledge.

Limits of the theory of knowledge

The combination of classical empiricism, the platonic distinction and the natural sciences provided a fertile ground for the modern theory of knowledge (TK). This theory implies that knowledge is pre-structured and that it cannot be acquired independently of this structure. Kant implies as much in his critique of traditional metaphysics, with the categories and the synthetic a priori, and so does Husserl’s later phenomenology that was concerned with the transcendental conditions of knowledge. The same implication of knowledge is found in many other variants: paradigm, language games, lebenswelt, unconscious, hard core, and so on.

Then a particular question becomes obvious: can a proposition at all be true independent of the structure, the very language that expresses it? The realization that such interrogations are incoherent, even incredulous, for language is the limit of all thought possibilities, also marks the initial “linguistic turn” in anglophone philosophy, a turn from the inherent foundationalism of the correspondence theories to coherentism. The TK shifted from earlier empirical concerns or conceptually constructed knowledge to language, where propositions are the only possible candidate for the expression of true knowledge.

But here’s the rub: what do we really know about this structure that makes knowledge and the TK intelligible? Put this in another way: how do we gain knowledge about this structure that consists of the conditions of knowledge, if these conditions are given by the TK, which is intelligible only within the structure that is the object of the investigation? This circular and narrow question, along with the platonic notions of truth, knowledge and the distinction has made knowledge impossible.

First, the TK is the attempt to discover how true knowledge is acquired. This is achieved by identifying the conditions for what is acceptable as knowledge for philosophy. Such discursive reconstruction of our understanding, in the development of the concepts that explain how we gain knowledge, investigates human experience in order to determine which sort of experience can become candidates of knowledge. Yet, the consequence of the investigation, based on those concepts, is that knowledge by its own conditions seem impossible to locate in human experience.

Bataille called this knowledge, as understood by the TK, is “closing itself around itself.” All other types of human experience, despite the fact they are understood, true and communicated, are ruled out of bounds. Serious and grave philosophers limited their concerns to the legitimate type of human experience that contributes to knowledge, which makes other experiences unimportant or inessential. Yet given the inaccessibility of TK, only non-knowledge and inner experience is possible. Since this cannot possibly be the case, we must find a better view of how human experience and knowledge are related. Perhaps we should take another look at the least controversial condition of the TK, that knowledge must be stated in the form of a proposition.

How do you know you’re in love or that someone loves you? That sort of knowledge does not come from a mere communication of linguistic means. A perfectly valid and sound argument is insufficient, for something more is required. Love is communicated and experienced by extra-discursive means: with facial expressions, being caressed, the time spent together, even if the conversation happens to be mostly bad arguments and unreasonable demands.

While it is true that we can present such experiences discursively, the knowledge gained from the discursive representation does not provoke love itself. That is why we are unable to explain why a particular joke is funny. The communication of something funny makes us laugh and creates an experience, but this experience is a type of knowledge that escapes propositional knowledge.

Such experiences are termed as “inner experience,” the sort one gains from living life, and the accumulated experiences of both the extreme and the ordinary, in solitude or with others, constitute ‘non-knowledge.’ These terms are not to be confused with the expressions of mysticism or esoteric thought, but since the concept of knowledge in the TK is so narrow, religious or mystic experiences also belong to non-knowledge.

Limits of philosophy

Going back to the schism between anglo-phone and continental philosophy, the lack of ontological concerns and naïve beliefs about language and experience indicate an institutional ignorance among the academics in philosophy that oversimplifies the reality of human experience.

It is not a matter of locating an intelligible path to the truth, but that the project of philosophy is, in principle, impossible. The concept of knowledge in philosophy misrepresents human experience, and demonstrates how little the philosophers actually understand about human knowledge, and how they marginalize human experience.

This extreme attention to truth and knowledge has made philosophers blind to what human experience actually is in reality. Philosophical knowledge does not deliver its promise of the truth, due to its inability to account for the rich material of human experience. However, all philosophers seek the truth, and they all must express themselves discursively in order to be recognized by other philosophers.

In the book Unfinished System of Nonknowledge, Bataille argues that non-knowledge is actually rebellion. This means, for Bataille, knowledge is an establishment that enslaves people, for in knowledge there is a servility where one inherits a world view. Rebellion lies at the limits of discursiveness, the limit experiences that go beyond philosophical knowledge, but not too far for communication. Bataille contests the legitimacy of the will to knowledge as traditionally expressed by the philosophers, but he is also driven by the same will, at the same time convinced of its futility, that the will to knowledge in philosophy inevitably leads to non-knowledge. Unlike the others, Bataille investigates taboos - what civilization suppresses and expels – and in doing so he questions the institutions and ideals of the civilized people. He has made human experiences a legitimate subject for philosophy, even though the inherent morality of academia has yet to welcome him to the pantheon of philosophers.

The first part will cover the ontological implications and the necessary conditions of knowledge. I will add the Limits of the ToK later.The ontology of the theory of knowledge

There is a schism, a fissure in philosophy that has been widening in the past 100 years between continental (French and German) philosophy and analytic (British-American) philosophy. Hopefully, I will explain how this gap, consisting of stylistic, temperamental, as well as methodological differences, owes much to the relationship between epistemology and ontology.

In ancient philosophy, all the way back to Plato, the theory of knowledge was intimately tied to ontology, which is the case for most thinkers. However, in the specialized nature of academia, professors of philosophy chose to concern themselves with only one branch of philosophy at the expense of others.

In the Anglo-American tradition, the theory of knowledge was developed independently of ontological concerns. This is not a matter of coincidence but most importantly, a theory of knowledge indeed does imply some form of ontology. Many thinkers in the analytic tradition lacked the formal training in philosophy, and came from disciplines like physics and mathematics. Because ontology is extremely speculative, the choice to focus on the theory of knowledge at the expense of ontology is typical of the natural scientist’s attitude towards anti-metaphysical, hard nosed empiricism that had already been entrenched in the English countries.

Despite such attitudes, no philosopher can make ontological-independent assumptions. The theory of knowledge implies ontological assumptions where reality is governed by permanent principles, which can be discerned by a systematic intellectual program, i.e., the laws of the natural sciences. This assumption that the philosopher can abstain from ontological concerns until after the truthful scientific knowledge about reality has been addressed hides a self-serving positivist attitude. Therefore, the development of the theory of knowledge as a fundamental philosophy presupposes positivism, or at least the faint whiff of the Vienna Circle.

The theory of knowledge dates back to Plato’s Republic, where knowledge is defined in contrast to opinions, in which the former is about what is, i.e., being, and the latter can be based on both what is and what is not, what both is and is not, i.e., what is becoming. Knowledge is always true, and opinions can be either truthful or erroneous, and Plato was interested in the conditions that opinions must fulfill in order to become true knowledge.

This model of epistemology is based on ontological presuppositions, where what is real cannot be the object of change, and what most of us already suppose as real is only protean appearance. Epistemology helps us decipher the stable and permanent reality underneath or beyond the appearances, for knowledge must be stable and constantly valid.

However, discourse of the theory of knowledge today abstains from such speculation about ontological matters, despite implicit assumptions about something permanent and established under the protean surface – the laws of nature – which are eventually identified by a systematic intellectual program. This is not the case for Plato, given the metaphor of the cave, which indicates an epistemology where true knowledge may be obtained through a sudden and involuntary enlightenment.

The modern theory of knowledge upholds Plato’s distinction between opinion and true knowledge, but not his ontology or epistemology. Yet, if form and content are inter-dependent, then the theory of knowledge that utilizes Plato’s distinction also includes preconditions that determines the structure of the theory of knowledge.

Conditions of Knowledge
This distinction in turns becomes an investigation in epistemology that analyzes the possible conditions that legitimize opinions as true knowledge. These conditions may be necessary, rather than sufficient, for they alone do not suffice for true knowledge. So far, I have identified at least four necessary conditions:

• Opinions must be articulated in propositions in order to be considered as potential candidates for true knowledge. Sensory data is insufficient to be considered as a candidate for it is glitchy and inconsistent, and Platonic Forms are far too ill-defined and indeterminable.
• Propositions must be meaningful, i.e., understandable for the language user, which indicates the condition for meaningfulness is linguistic competence. Propositions like “The world was here before man” cannot be verified without referring to ontological presuppositions, a conceptual scheme of philosophy. (See here for more exposition on such propositions)
• In addition to meaningfulness, propositions must also be true. Theoreticians of knowledge will never exhaust themselves over what exactly the “truth” of a meaningful proposition is. At least in analytic philosophy, there are two generic positions: a true proposition expresses a real “state of affairs,” and it cannot contradict another true proposition. This expression of a certain state of affairs is the first step towards a correspondence theory of truth, where a true proposition corresponds to reality. That true proposition cannot contradict each other is another step towards the coherence theory of truth, in which a true proposition is a part of a system of other true propositions.
• For both generic positions a proposition is true by reference to something else, which means there is a reason for the truth of a proposition. In principle, it must be always possible to talk about this reason in order to be confirmed or rejected.

Bottom line: these conditions are discursive requirements that knowledge is necessarily an opinion asserted as an intelligible, true, and well grounded proposition. Intelligible propositions presuppose a society of language participants, one with a proclivity for discursive communication. If an experience can be communicated discursively, then it is a candidate for knowledge. This means for the theory of knowledge, a singular, private or meta-discursive experience cannot be knowledge.

Human experience such as the Bataillean “inner experience” and “non-knowledge” lie beyond the bounds of modern philosophy that is concerned only with a theory of knowledge in order to ascertain true knowledge. If the theory of human experience is beyond epistemology, then it belongs to ontology. Many aspects of the human experience fail to meet the conditions for knowledge, despite their preponderance or importance to humanity. The philosophical concept of knowledge rules out the majority of the understanding and experience that people glean from their lives such as pragmatic moxie, wisdom, imagination, religious perception, physical suffering, anguish, ecstasy and etcetera. Even Plato’s concept of knowledge as the direct experience of the Forms fail to make the cut.