Epistemology: Peter Kreeft’s Summa Philosophica Part VI

Remember, we’re doing summaries of summaries here; only bare sketches are possible. Buy his book for more detail.

We are back on familiar stamping groups with Question VI, Epistemology. Directly related to probability and statistics, this stuff. So brighten up! See at least the summary in Article 2.

This is the last of the foundational meaty tough stuff. Next time we we’re on to the more succulent material: ethics.

Article 1: Whether Skepticism is refutable?

Oh, yes. The basic objection is that even the most uncontroversial syllogism must rest on premises that themselves have to be proved. And if those are proved, it is because they rest on still further, more basic premises, which also have to be proved, seemingly ad infinitum. And then even the workings of the syllogism itself—why is it that the conclusion follows—must be proved, etc.

As Aristotle showed, this “backward doubt” terminates in two places: psychologically indubitable immediate sense experience and logically indubitable first principles such as “X is not non-X” in theoretical thinking and “Good is to be done and evil to be avoided” in practical thinking.

Another way, with Pascal, to say “indubitable” is “by faith.” All who claim to be skeptics lie (at least to themselves). “To practice skepticism is to cease to speak, like Cratylus, who would only move his finger.” And even that’s cheating.

Article 2: Whether truth is objective?

Yes. If you think not, tell any professor “Evolution is false.” You will quickly learn not only is there objective truth, but that some truths are sacred.

[I]f all truth were subjective, then that truth also would be subjective. But what is subjective is changeable and uncertain. Therefore if all truth were subjective, it would be changeable and uncertain, and thus that “truth” also—that all truth is changeable and uncertain—would be changeable and uncertain. But what is uncertain may be false, and what is changeable can be changed. Therefore the “truth” that all truth is subjective, is uncertain, and may be false; and it is changeable, and can be changed—and if changed, then changed to “truth is objective.”

What’s true for thee, is true for me, baby, and vicey verso. Truth is “thinking and saying what is” (Aristotle, again). It’s not “what works” or the “coherence of ideas with each other.” And it certainly isn’t idealism. I love this checklist-summary so much, that I can’t resist quoting it all (but still buy the book!):

(1) Is this thing real?

(2) If so, do I, or do we, or can I, or can we, know that this thing is real?

(3) If so, is that knowledge certain rather than merely probable?

(4) If so, can I convince others of that certainty by rational arguments?

(5) If so, does the argument use the scientific method?

A thing can be real without being known.

A thing can be known without being known with certainty.

A certainty can be private rather than demonstrable.

And proof or demonstration may use other methods than the scientific method.

Confusion between (1) and (2) produces philosophical idealism.

Confusion between (2) and (3) produces skepticism or probabilism.

Confusion between (3) and (4) produce subjectivism.

And confusion between (4) and (5) produce scientism

Article 3: Whether we know things-in-themselves?

Yes. Though Kant said we can’t. I’ll only point you to David Stove’s famous contest to identify the worst argument in the world (see Jim Franklin’s page, or this PDF). Here’s the stinker:

We can know things only {as they are related to us; under our forms of perception & understanding; in so far as they fall under our conceptual schemes etc.}

So: We cannot know things as they are in themselves.

Article 4: Whether appearance coincides with reality?

No. We need the distinction of what is “true (in which appearances faithfully coincide with reality) and the false (in which appearances deceive because they fail thus to coincide with reality).”

To ask (1) what a thing is, (2) whether it is, or (3) why it is, is to express the will to know what is true; and this is to assume that there are both true and false, i.e. real and only apparent, answers to those questions, and thus that appearance and reality are not identical.

“In order to judge appearances, we must know something more than appearances.” Which is to say, reality.

Article 5: Whether all ordinary (natural) human knowledge begins with sense experience?

Yes. Though it seems we know tidbits like “X=X, that 2+2=4, and that if it is true that X is, then it is false that X is not” without benefit of sense experience.

On the other hand, “The blind have no innate idea of color, nor the deaf of sounds.” And we “must distinguish the claim that all our knowledge begins with sense experience from the claim that it is limited to it” which is false.

We don’t learn tautologies like X=X “unless we fist experience some things through the senses and only then rise to such principles by abstraction and inductive reasoning. It is not infants but philosophers who formulate such tautologies.”

Article 6: Whether there is a priori knowledge?

Yes. But didn’t we just agree “that all knowledge begins with sense experience, which is another way of saying that all knowledge is a posteriori knowledge”? Maybe a stronger objection:

If there is a process of thinking that leads from a posteriori knowledge of sensed particulars to a priori knowledge of understood universals, it is invalid; for it is invalid to conclude to a universal merely from particulars. “All men are mortal” does not follow from “this man is mortal” or “these men are mortal” or “some men are mortal.”

Yet there “is no contradiction between saying that all our knowledge begins with sense experience and saying that from sense experience we can rise to knowledge that does not depend on sense experience” which is a priori knowledge.

The process is not first of all one of inductive reasoning…but the understanding…of a universal which we find embedded in sensory particulars and which we abstract from those particulars…We can distinguish necessary and essential features of human nature (e.g. mind and body) from contingent and accidental ones (e.g. race and gender), but abstracting the former from the latter…Thus our knowledge that all men are mortal is a priori knowledge, known with certainty even prior to observing everyone die, but it emerges only from abstraction from experience which is a posteriori and empirical.

Stove (again!) shows the difficulty begins with improper use of inductive, which is now unfortunately taken to mean all non-deductive reasoning, instead of solely the type which leads to universals. Not for the first time I recommend his Rationality of Induction.

Article 7: Whether ideas are the immediate object of knowing?

No. Idealism, as we have long agreed, is deader than Marley. Kreeft slips in a joke. “[I]f the objects of our thinking were ideas, all sciences would be subdivisions of psychology. (Perhaps some psychologists would not regard this as a reductio ad absurdum.)”

Another opportunity to push Stove: see his essay “Idealism: A Victorian Horror Story”, reproduced in many places.

Article 8: Whether certain knowledge is possible?

Yes. And if you say no, you say yes, so you must say yes. And if you say maybe, you also say yes. Put up any fight at all and you say yes. Thus, yes.

Examples of certainty? Non-contradiction, whatever comes to be is caused (God does not come to be, therefore is not caused, thus He can be the uncaused first cause). Again, try the “evolution false” gag at your nearest college campus. Or try to write a blog post about which every reader agrees (the temptation is to say it certainly cannot be done).

Article 9: Whether the essential questions of philosophy are “mysteries”?

Yes. Mysteries not in the sense of whodunnits, but are thought puzzles in the sense of nobody knows, or can know, their whys. Not to beat you over the head with Stove, but in Rationality he has a lovely essay explaining that it is senseless to ask how something which is necessarily true is true.

Why is it true that “X=X” (or pick your favorite axiom)? I don’t know, and you don’t either: it’s a mystery. It’s just true. The terms is broader than this, though:

Marcel defines a “mystery” as distinct from a mere “problem,” as “a problem that encroaches upon its own data,” i.e. a question which so involves the very being and life of the questioner that it is impossible, and even undesirable and misleading to have total detachment and objectivity, as is required in the sciences.

Incidentally, many (not all) “problems” in philosophy aren’t. They are called so because the natural conclusion derived from cherished premises is unacceptable, or a conclusion is believed but can’t be derived from acceptable premises.

Article 10: Whether we can have knowledge of mysteries such as God, freedom, immortality, morality, and the meaning (purpose) of life?

Sure.

[I]f we have no knowledge of [mysteries], how do we know them well enough to know that we have no knowledge of them? For instance, how can we know God so well that we know we cannot know Him at all? Is not such skepticism, like all skepticism, ultimately both self-contradictory and arrogant?

It’s as well to leave off with another shade of faith.

Religious faith is not the same as opinion. For faith, whether true or false, is a human response to a divine revelation, like light reflected in a faithful mirror, and thus its content is in itself most certain, even if not logically provable, for God can neither deceive nor be deceived; while mere opinion rests on the uncertainty of the human mind alone.

Faith is not (always) identical with intellectual belief.

Read Part VII.

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