The central force that drives any discussion in Epistemology is that of ideas and thinking. We need to first know what is the source of any ideas we may have before we can reason as to the nature of the universe, the idea of God, or the existence of good and evil, the three start points of any philosophical discussion. Many philosophers never even consider where our ideas originate from, but start their critiques and dialogues at one of the three main arguments. If you cannot claim, with some degree of accuracy, what the source of our knowledge is, then your whole philosophical system collapses.
Two main systems of thought have developed to help solve this problem. They are Empiricism and Rationalism. Empiricism emphasizes the role of experience and that of sense. Rationalism in contrast is concerned solely with the place of reason in knowledge. Each system has its own host of supporters and draws criticism from the other side. Yet if two systems can be offered to answer the same question, then it is logical that one must be wrong. True? More or less. Immanuel Kant realized that each system has its merits, but as well some serious problems, and the only true answer to the question lies in a synthesis of the two systems. It is Kant that will provide us with some form of an answer.
For the empiricists, experience is the primary source of our knowledge and the proper test of truth is external. Our ideas are true only if they relate to our findings of the external world. They believe the mind is a blank slate, called "tabula rosa" by the Greeks, at birth, or "a white paper, void of all characters," in which experience only can provide it with ideas. Empiricists further maintain that the acquisition of knowledge is slow and self-correcting, limited by the possibilities of experiment and observations. Hence, our knowledge is based off of a posteriori propositions, derivable with the help of sense experience. Finally, empirical knowledge is inductive in character, starting with a conclusion and attempting to prove it by premises. The premises may be true and the conclusion still false though.
The three principal philosophers who may be called Empiricists without doubt are: John Locke, David Hume, and George Berkeley. For the purposes of our discussion, the first two will be scrutinized.
JOHN LOCKE
The principal belief in Rationalism is in the existence of innate ideas, or ideas we have at birth. Locke automatically said that these innate ideas do not exist. He said there is no idea that all men have and no principle that all men accept. As well, we cannot have an idea from any other source but sensation or reflection. Ideas of sensation are arrived at by way of the object stimulating one of our sensory organs. Ideas of reflection are those we get from observing the operation of our own mind as it is used to reason, believe, know, and remember about ideas we already have. Knowledge is gained through the perception of a relationship between ideas.
Locke said that the only types of knowledge we can have is that of sensations and reflections, which yield simple ideas. Complex ideas are formed by the repetition, comparison, and combination of these simple ideas. There exists three types:
Locke said that men are capable only of a knowledge of the agreement and disagreement of their ideas through identity, diversity, and coexistence.
Next, we can discern certain qualities that objects have. They are ideas produced in the mind by an object and are of two classes:
Locke also identified three degrees of cognitive adequacy:
Finally, Locke left himself open to criticism by suggesting a world we could know only through our ideas and consisting of things held together by mysterious, unknowable substances. The question is raised of how we can know that which is unknowable and how we could possess any knowledge that such a thing exists?
DAVID HUME
David Hume agreed with his predecessors, Locke and Berekely, but carried their ideas farther. He said impressions are all the sensations, passions, and emotions that we experience. Ideas then are copies of these impressions and differ from them only in that ideas are faint and impressions are vivid. We remember impressions, the primary data of our knowledge, by "faint images" or ideas of them. The ideas may be either simple, resembling their antecedent impression, or complex, formed by means of various operations and made up of simple ideas. For example, a centaur is a complex idea made up of the simple ideas of a man and a horse. There are some words that cannot be shown to have any antecedent impressions, such as with the word substance.
We know nothing of an external world and so we cannot know the origin of our impressions. We can only know the ideas and impressions. We believe in an external world but cannot justify these beliefs since no logical explanation can be given. For this reason metaphysics is impossible.
Hume supposes the existence of two types of knowledge that we can have. First, relations of ideas are arrived at by logical reasoning. This incorporates the discipline of mathematics. Matters of fact are arrived at by observation. Reasoning here is not as certain as in the former since it is grounded in empirical fact and does not rely upon logical reasoning. For example, when you hear a phone ring you naturally reason that a person is on the other end. We distinguish between sheer coincidence and real causation and conclude that the cause necessitates the effect. Some type of necessary connection exists between the two. Due to this, we can predict that the next time A occurs B will follow.
But Hume asks what is this causal relationship or necessary connection? All we ever observe is the constant conjunction of two events in time, following from one another. Since this is all we observe, this is all we should admit. Then, if time and contiguity are all we observe, where does this idea of causal bond come from? Hume says it comes from custom or habit. By always observing B follow from A, we, by habit, assume this conjunction.
He concludes that since a large part of our study of matters of fact depend on causal relations, our knowledge must be regarded as both limited and uncertain. Hume branded an extreme form of intellectual skepticism. We cannot be sure of the existence of self, an external world, or the law of cause and effect.
Rationalists maintain that all truths of physical science and history could be discovered by pure thinking and put forth by the consequences of self-evident premises. Hence, our knowledge is based off a priori principles that are universal and necessary and apart from experience. They are innate ideas that we have at birth.
We obtain knowledge of the nature of things through reason alone. Thus, Rationalism is deductive in character, starting with premises that lead to a conclusion. But this conclusion is only true if the premises are true. An example is a syllogism:
The premises are true. Dogs do bark. Sparky, for the purposes of this example, is a dog. So therefore, Sparky, as a dog, barks.
It may be said that Locke was a Rationalist in the weakest sense. He held that the materials of human knowledge (ideas) are supplied by sense experience, but that knowledge consists in seeing necessary connections between them, a function of reason. The difference between Rationalism and Empiricism is, however, not so simple and direct, as both have admitted the existence of sensation and reflection. Kant recognized that both systems have some common ground and this was a point to base a synthesis off of.
The three Rationalists were Rene Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, and Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, of which the last two will be discussed.
SPINOZA
Baruch Spinoza, 1632-1677, said there is one absolute and distinct idea that must be an infinite substance, conceived by itself and in itself, called God. This was called pantheism, the idea that since God alone truly is, all things in some way must be God or a part of God. The belief in one substance was called monism, and was transformed from Descartes dualistic system in which the chief substances are mind and body. His monism incorporated these two substances in one called God or Nature.
Our finite understanding of this divine substance is limited to only those two attributes we have experienced, thought and extension. Mind and body, as modes of these attributes, reveal a picture of God, not as the Creator of the world, but as the world itself. Divine extension is manifested in an infinity of concrete bodies and the divine thought in an infinity of ideas. These ideas, emanations of the same divine substance as the bodies, can be ideas of those bodies.
God is free because He is what He is (sounds familiar). He is self-necessitated and self-explanatory. God then is the necessary efficient cause of finite reality. This finite reality is then quasi-divine, not to be despised, and honored with an almost religious devotion, as it is from the divine substance. Additionally, being apart of God we do not possess the free will to go our separate ways but are forced to live our lives according to some predetermined course. Finally, since this is true, nothing is good or evil in itself, but only in relation to human interests.
Complex individual bodies are made up from the coordination of many simpler units working together to achieve a single end. All human souls coincide with its body and so must work through the sense, imagination, and memory in its struggle to encompass with the world of things.
The lowest of man's cognitions and opinions are characterized by its contingency, fortuitous nature, and third by its close attachment to external causes. Science is the second kind of knowledge and is the first step towards the domination of passion by a reign of reason. Scientific reason causes order and universality in the chaos, externality, and individuality of opinion. Third is the highest which grasps the supreme clear and distinct ideas of the divine, its attributes and modes.
Spinoza says that our moral duty is to know all our affections clearly and distinctly, which is to know the thing in relation to God. But God is not personal. Our grasp of God is an intellectual love, the result of a successful philosophical endeavor. So then what of religion? Philosophy and religion often clash. If we know God by a philosophical endeavor then He falls out of the realm of religion. Spinoza says that religion has become corrupted to the point that it no longer is an interior act, but an affair of cult obedience to priestly power, as this power is the only motivator for a person to enter the priesthood.
The consequence of this discussion results in a statement of ethics. He says that emotion is useless since all our lives have been determined already. A passion is a confused idea that we submit to because we do not possess the ability to dominate it. We can free ourselves from our bondage to these emotions by striving to identify through reason, the order of the universe that will allow us to see how things must be the way they are. Through this process we come to accept and love our fate, thus discovering the "intellectual love of God" and its reward of "blessedness."
LEIBNIZ
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, 1646-1716, also had differences with his predecessors. He found the concept of substance wanting in their system, instead viewing it as dynamic, not static, and consisting of more than just one entity. This belief is what is called pluralism.
In the system of Leibniz are simple substances called "monads" that are active, simple, non material, neither in space or time, and have no parts. They come into existence by creation and are destroyed only by destruction. Monads produce no effects by themselves and are all the same kind, differing only in degrees of activity. All monads mirror the state of every other and are in perfect harmony with one another. They are the universe in miniature.
Our minds are just such dynamic, immaterial monads and what is true of our minds is true of all monads. They all consist of the same psychic, spiritual drives we find in ourselves and like us, possess powers of sensation and perception. It is by these powers of perception that every monad perceives and represents the whole universe, in miniature. Monads represent by their own unique point of view.
There exists no absolute division between mind and body but a continuity between them called forces. They are possessed of various degrees of perceptions, differing in dearness and distinctness. For example, in plant monads perception is of a limited and primitive sort while that of animals is far greater. At the highest level are humans, whose "consciousness" becomes even more refined and clear, turning into "self-consciousness."
Finally, monads are neither determined nor influenced by any external stimuli. They are like little clocks, wound up and set into motion by a perfect maker to keep perfect time.
Immanuel Kant, 1724-1804, said that the human predicament is to ask questions that we are unable to answer. He identified Metaphysics as the Queen of the sciences. She is like a government under despotic rule of the dogmatists (rationalists). But gradually, due to internecine wars (the rationalists fighting each other), gave way her empire to complete anarchy, or the skeptics (empiricists). The anarchists, although they did serious damage, were unable to completely destroy the empire. Philosophers like Locke attempted to cast doubt upon metaphysics “by tracing her lineage to vulgar origins in common experience." He, though, failed.
Kant says although we try to find answers to these questions and fail in all attempts and methods, we should not give up. There still is one method that has not been tried, the criticism of pure reason. All previous philosophers started from a common conception about the mind's nature and relation to the world of objects. They all held that the mind was set out against a world of objects, which it made every attempt to know but failed to contribute anything to its nature. The object was just given to the mind, but the mind had nothing to do with making it.
Rationalists could not explain how its innate principles gave us knowledge of this independent reality. Empiricists could not explain how we could attain anything more than collections of past observations which lacked all predictive power. In this view the mind is a passive observer. Kant goes on to say that if the mind is to succeed in arriving at a knowledge of objects, then they cannot be independent of the mind. The mind cannot be a spectator but must contribute actively to the nature of the objects presented to it in experience. Our mind can only know that which it creates itself, thereby contributing to the nature of all objects.
Kant believes we will discover that the only reality we can know is that which experience gives us. This seems to be fatal to the claims of rationalism but Kant insists that we are able to find meaning and value in these ideas only if knowledge of them is not possible. If we bound God to anthropomorphic traits than He would be bound by human limitations and His existence and presence looses all meaning for us. For them to mean something, they must have an existence beyond our empirical knowledge. He says, "I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge of God, freedom, and immorality in order to find a place for faith." Kant further says that we possess more knowledge than just empirical, and thus the belief in the three concepts expressed above have some place in our world and mind.
KANT AND THE SOLUTION
Kant starts by saying that all our knowledge begins with experience as it gives us "the raw material of our sense impressions." He therefore is in agreement with the empiricists. Saying that all knowledge begins with experience does not mean it all originates from experience. It must also be taken into account the contribution the mind makes to its knowledge of things, for it is an active participant in organizing and imposing form on the material it experiences.
The answer lied in assimilating both ideas. Any knowledge that we might possess or wish to express would need to be presented as statements whose truth or falsity could be evaluated. These he called propositions or judgments. They contain a subject, what is talked about, and a predicate, what is said about the subject. We have four types of these:
From these four listed above, two distinctions may be inferred:
These two propositions were the only two kinds we can have, as David Hume assumed, although he called them by different names. For example a priori propositions are relations of ideas in his system and tell us only about the interconnectedness of our ideas and do not increase our knowledge. Synthetic a posterior propositions are matters of fact in Hume's system and summarize what we have observed and cannot serve as predictions of future experience.
Kant, upon considering Hume's terms, now broached a third type of proposition, called a synthetic a priori proposition. This would be valuable since it would be universally true and, having important content to it, could serve as a premise for predictions about areas of natural events not yet observed or observable. The problem with this third type is in the synthetic element, being that the subject and predicate are two distinct notions. How can we say that they are necessarily connected in some way, so that "S is P' is true always. It doesn't arise for synthetic propositions but for synthetic a priori ones. Would we automatically assume that every time the subject "house" is mentioned the predicate "is burning" will follow?
Hume saw this problem limited to causation and it could be solved by denying its existence. The causal axiom is synthetic and they rest on experience so we cannot be sure of its universality. Kant, although believed the causal axiom was not an a posteriori, but an a priori truth, thereby making all events subject to it. He also realized Hume's concern was not limited to causation. The problem, as Kant saw it, was much wider and the causal axiom was an example of it. He realized that the true question was if we could really have this type of knowledge.
Kant set out in the last three sections of the Critique to prove this:
Kant helps us to see that the Source of an idea cannot guarantee its validity, as the Rationalists mistakenly thought, and that the importance of empirical evidence lies not so much in being the source of ideas, as the empiricists claim, in so far as testing and confirming them. He finishes that the process of information gathering must be guided by leading questions or a hypothesis in order to be fruitful, but the dream of an absolutely certain science built of synthetic a priori propositions is impossible.
Thus concludes Kant and our discussion of Ideas and Thinking.
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