Reality and the Mind

Epistemology

Celestine N. C. Bittle

• Publisher: Barakaldo Books
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781839743320
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

It lies in the very nature of epistemology to question the capability of man's mind to contact reality and to know what things are in themselves, the validity of all knowledge, and consequently also of science, it at sake. The foundations of human knowledge are challenged, examined and frequently attacked. An acquaintance with this problem and its possible solution will be, therefore, a matter of prime importance for every seeker of the truth and for every student of philosophy.—Print ed.

PART I—THE POSSIBILITY OF VALID KNOWLEDGE

CHAPTER I—STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

Knowledge is at once the simplest and the profoundest of human experiences.

Nothing seems more plain to the ordinary man, and more beyond the possibility of any doubt, than the everyday facts of his knowledge. He is utterly convinced of the truth and certainty of the happenings in and around him. It never enters his mind to question the validity of his convictions concerning the knowledge of his experience. We may imagine him sitting in his lounging chair before a window and communing with his thoughts:

“It is certainly pleasant to sit here in comfort and watch the world go by. People are hurrying home from their business, chatting noisily with one another as they walk along the street. The sun appears flatter, larger, and redder every minute, as it slowly sinks in the west, and little by little the blue of the sky seems to turn into fire and gold. Soon the darkness will be here, and I shall see the distant stars. I did not think the wind was so very strong, but I see that it broke a branch from the tree in the square opposite. It is much colder than it was yesterday; I believe that will cause a frost tonight. The air is very raw outside. I ought not have gone without a topcoat this morning. I believe I have caught a cold; I felt miserable all afternoon, I had a headache, the old pipe didn’t taste, and my mind was so foggy that I couldn’t control my thoughts properly, and I made a number of errors. I am not myself now. I must see my physician tomorrow; he knows my body almost as well as I know my soul.”

All this seems so simple and matter-of-fact, and the knowledge contained in these statements seems so obvious and transparent, that we should scarcely consider it worthy of second thought. Much less should we think that philosophers could discover any deep and mysterious problems hidden in the desultory musings of an old gentleman seeking comfort in his easy-chair. Such, however, is precisely the case.

FACTS AND KNOWLEDGE

Many things are directly mentioned as existing, and a spontaneous conviction is expressed regarding ‘facts’ and ‘knowledge,’ in the self-communing quoted above. He ‘watches the world go by.’ So he is sure that there is a real world of substance, an existing universe of tremendous magnitude, consisting of earth and sun and stars. He may have no conception of the exact dimensions of this universe, nor of the distance and volume and nature of the stars; but he is sure that they are really there and that he does not merely imagine them. He peaks of space and space-relations: for people are walking ‘along the street,’ there is a ‘square opposite,’ the sun is ‘sinking in the west’; he notices a ‘here’ and ‘there,’ an ‘outside’ and ‘inside.’ He mentions time and time-relations: ‘yesterday,’ ‘tonight,’ ‘tomorrow,’ ‘soon’; and the elements of succession in time are designated by the phrase ‘every minute.’ Mathematical quantities are affirmed: ‘square,’ ‘larger,’ ‘flatter.’ And also numerical quantities appear: ‘people,’ ‘stars,’ ‘tree.’ He notices the relation of part to whole in the ‘branch’ that is broken off the ‘tree.’ There are qualities, like ‘blue,’ ‘strong,’ ‘cold’; actions, like ‘walking,’ ‘sinking,’ ‘broke off’; reactions, like ‘caught a cold,’ the branch ‘broken’ by the wind; posture, like ‘sitting in comfort’; habitus, like ‘being clothed with a topcoat.’

Facts of sense-experience are enumerated: he ‘sees’ the things about him on the earth and in the sky; he ‘hears’ people chatting; he ‘tastes’ his pipe; he ‘feels’ sick; he is ‘conscious’ of his body. And so, too, facts of intellectual experience are noted: consciousness of the Ego or ‘self,’ ‘thoughts’ ‘knowledge,’ ‘soul’; states of mind, like ‘belief,’ ‘errors,’: states of will, like ‘I must,’ ‘I ought not.’

He is aware of the great distinction between his self and things-other-than-his-self; between mind and matter; between living and inanimate things; between the subjective and objective; between the ideal and the real; between substantial and accidental being; between appearance and reality; between knowledge and opinion; between truth and error; between certainty and probability.

And many other things are contained in the data of his musings by implication. He is convinced that his senses, by and large, give him a true picture of the world about him and that lie can trust them in their function of bringing the world into contact with his mind by means of the sense-organs of his body. He is also convinced that his intellect, through judgment and thought, can acquire a knowledge of the world and of himself which is true and valid and certain. He realizes that his mind can make ‘errors’ and that appearances may deceive (as when the sun ‘appears’ flatter, bigger, and redder, and when the sky ‘seems’ to turn into fire and gold); but he also realizes that his mind can detect errors and correct deceiving impressions, finally arriving at truth. Furthermore, he knows that truth is objective, that his mind does not fabricate truth but merely discovers it, and that his mind will possess truth only when it agrees in its judgments with the things as they are in themselves.

SPONTANEOUS CONVICTIONS

Facts of everyday experience, such as those mentioned above, could be multiplied indefinitely. The ordinary man has a spontaneous and unshakable conviction that they are genuinely true. No amount of argument could convince him that his knowledge is not valid. He may not be very clear in his own mind about the scientific and philosophic grounds and proofs for this conviction, but of the reality of the world and of the truth of the facts he entertains not the slightest doubt. His common sense tells him that he is right. Every moment of his life, from the cradle to the grave, confirms his convictions that the world outside and around him is as he experiences it to be and that his knowledge of it is a correct insight into its reality. The whole substance of these convictions can be summed up in this: the world is objectively real and man has a genuine knowledge of it as it is.

They are not forced convictions, accepted by the mind against its better judgment; rather, they are spontaneous for the very reason that they are the natural and obvious interpretations of the things and happenings in which man lives, and all together they form a system of knowledge which agrees with the demands of his rational nature. Man lives with and by and in these convictions, and these convictions are found by daily experience to be in accord with the facts as he knows them. Hence, he never questions their truth and validity; to him they are self-understood and self-demonstrative, and he feels perfectly safe in their possession.

This, of course, is strong presumptive evidence in their favor. If man’s whole life can be regulated by them, in a practical as well as in a rational manner, then it is a prima facie proof that he is right in his assumptions. It would, then, seem superfluous for the scientist and philosopher to investigate the grounds and reasons of these spontaneous convictions. But such is not the nature of the human mind in its insatiable desire for deeper and more extensive knowledge. Man’s mind simply cannot rest satisfied with the obvious and transparent explanation of facts. The urge for knowledge prompts him to investigate the foundations, the ultimate grounds and reasons, the ‘how’ and ‘why,’ of these spontaneous convictions.

THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE

It is this urge for knowledge which accounts for the rise and development of the sciences. Not satisfied with the superficial appearance of things, as the ordinary man sees and knows them, chemistry searches for the component elements of bodies, their activities and energies, their nature and qualities, their workings and the laws of their combinations. Gases (e.g., air), fluids (e.g., water), and solids (e.g., stones) are now understood to be, not bodies consisting of homogeneous material, but chemical compounds of very divergent elements united in definite quantities according to definite proportions under definite laws through the expenditure of definite amounts of energy. Not satisfied with the ordinary explanations of physical happenings in nature, physics attempts to discover their underlying causes and to chart their course of action from start to finish. Not satisfied with the common view that life in all its phases and functions is an inexplicable mystery, physiology and biology and kindred sciences have probed deeply into the hidden recesses of living organs and tissues and have wrested from them many secrets hitherto unsuspected. Many things concerning life have advanced into a clearer stage of scientific knowledge: among others, cell organization and function, the origin and growth of organisms, bacterial infection with corresponding medical treatment and international disease control, aseptic surgery, the proper distribution of nutritive values in foods. Similar progress has been made in the other sciences, due to the urge for deeper knowledge inherent in the human mind.

All of this shows that scientific investigation of such problems is not a futile occupation. In many instances age-old spontaneous convictions have been confirmed by science, and in other instances they have been disproved. Many supposedly certain truths have had to be discarded, to give place to more reliable information. Thus, to mention a case in point, the Ptolemaic geocentric system, in which the earth was considered to be at the center of the universe with the sun and moon and stars revolving around it, has been proved by science to be false and has had to make room for the Copernican heliocentric system, in which the earth was relegated to the secondary position of one among many planets revolving around the sun.

This one instance has an important bearing on the problem of spontaneous conviction and knowledge. From the stand-point of human experience, nothing appears more plain than that the sun revolves around the earth. Yet we now know that the moon does, and the sun does not; but to all appearances both sun and moon travel through the sky in the same way. Similarly, due to the atmospheric refraction of light, both sun and moon are seen in the east before they are above the horizon, and in the west they are seen after they are below the horizon. Both are seen as deep-red in color when they rise and set; and both balloon out to a number of rimes their normal size, with bulging sides and flattened upper and lower poles; they shrink as they ride to the zenith and grow larger as they descend. Actually, however, the sun and the moon do not increase and decrease in bulk, and at no time are they red in color. Again, the sun never actually grows warmer in the course of the day, nor is it any hotter in summer than in winter, nor does it change its position in the sky during the seasons of the year: its position in the firmament and its temperature are always the same. But the testimony of our senses seems perfectly clear regarding these changes, and mankind for thousands of years has had a firm, spontaneous conviction of the truth of this testimony. And even though science has furnished indubitable proof that our spontaneous conviction is wrong, our sense-experience still testifies to the same phenomena as before. Of course, there is an explanation for these phenomena; but the fact remains that spontaneous convictions can be radically wrong, even when based on apparently irreproachable evidence of the senses. This, as will be seen later, is borne out by many instances besides the case mentioned above.

From the above it will be clear that the philosopher has a right to question the validity of the spontaneous convictions of man and to investigate their claim to truth and certainty. Just as it is necessary to examine the foundations of the ordinary man’s views on nature and physical phenomena, so philosophy needs to lay bare the ultimate grounds and reasons of man’s knowledge and spontaneous convictions, in order to see whether they will survive the test of a critical examination in the light of reason. If they survive, then they will be so much the firmer, since they will rest upon a scientific foundation; if they are disproved, then they must be discarded as obsolete and irrational, the same as many naïve and unscientific ideas of a bygone age regarding physical phenomena and their causes. Man is a part of nature, and his knowledge is also a phenomenon of nature; as such it should be analyzed and examined in its origin, development, and truth-value, to see whether it really gives us a true interpretation of the world around us and can lead us to a well-reasoned certitude. For that is the purpose and function of philosophy: to investigate and demonstrate the ultimate grounds and reasons of things.

To the ordinary man nothing seems simpler than his knowledge; but to the philosopher the problem of knowledge is by no means so simple as it seems. The speculative mind of the philosopher discovers a multitude of knotty questions which puzzle him sorely and for which he would fain find a solution. He is not at all sure that the spontaneous convictions and beliefs of the ordinary man deserve the credence accorded them. Science has disillusioned man regarding many of his century-old notions and convictions; and science itself has gone through many battles of conflicting opinions and hypotheses, reversing its conclusions in more than one instance. It is, therefore, no idle question to ask: What can we know? How far can the mind of man reach? Is valid knowledge really attainable? Is truth objective? Can we be absolutely certain about anything?

The inductive sciences, such as physics, chemistry, astronomy, geology, biology, physiology, and anthropology, are all based on ideas, principles, and laws derived from the objects and operations of nature, and the knowledge acquired in and through these sciences is almost entirely the result of sense-experience and experiment. Even the deductive sciences, like arithmetic, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and calculus, are based on the ideas of quantity derived from space and number in material nature. The sciences, therefore, depend upon the validity of sense-perceptions and intellectual conce...

Table of contents

• Title page
• Table of Contents
• PREFACE
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• PART I-THE POSSIBILITY OF VALID KNOWLEDGE
• PART II-THE VALIDITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
• GLOSSARY OF TERMS
• BIBLIOGRAPHY