2008 I BELIEVE I THINK I KNOW

I BELIEVE I THINK I KNOW
By Mark Swanson

“Welfare is destroying the lives of children in this country!” “God
answered our prayers and diverted that hurricane away from our
state.” “Just rub this miraculous cream into your skin and watch the
pounds melt away!” Every day I encounter one outrageous claim
after another, from television, books, and conversations. Whether
they come from politics, philosophy, or science, they seem to demand
a judgement: “right or wrong?” “good or bad?” “true or false?” Are
there any “correct” answers? Are all opinions equally valid? Do we
“know” anything? Is there any point in distinguishing between objects
or ideas, or are we all “one” with the whole universe? I believe that
there are some “right’ answers and there are some basic, practical
methods for finding them. I believe that to be taken seriously,
extreme, outrageous claims require stronger than average evidence.
I believe that some opinions are correct and others are ridiculously
invalid. I believe the the word “truth” has a fairly clear-cut, useful
meaning. I believe that truth is “absolute,” and other things, like
perspectives and beliefs are “relative.” I believe that anyone who
bothers trying to communicate, has bought into the system of
“reason” in spite of their protests otherwise that “the heart” is the real
way to “know.” I believe that truth and happiness may not be
connected. Absurd, false superstitions may be the best route to
happiness and the highest truth may actually lead to depression.
Intellectually, I am certain that my grasp of truth is imperfect, even
though emotionally I feel like I really KNOW. So, while reading my
ideas, remember that I understand that I am doing little more than
defining the words and concepts the way I see them.

If there is a world outside and distinct from our minds, we probably
get most, (or all), of our information about it from our sensory
perceptions. One problem with perceptions is the experience of
illusions, like the stick bending in water. The reason it is a problem is
that we seem to experience two contradictory properties: the stick
cannot be both straight and bent. The law of non-contradiction is the
most fundamental and indisputable rule of reason, so to save the
outside world we need a hypothesis that explains why this illusion is
only an apparent contradiction. Otherwise, some people, like
Eastern spiritualists (“its all Maya”), and philosophical idealists,
(Plato’s cave-allegory), will throw the baby out with the bath-water
and dismiss the outside world altogether. My hypothesis is that all
human experience has, by definition, a “subjective” component
(inside one’s mind), and some human experience has an “objective”
component (outside and independent of one’s mind). Arthur Danto
uses the phrase “vehicles of understanding” to refer to whatever has
meaning or content AND may be true or false. To understand this
“vehicle” is to grasp its meaning, i.e. to know what would be the case
if it were true, (“knowledge” would be to know that it actually WAS
true). There are many words for these vehicles: “pictures” in
imaginations & books; “propositions” are units of language: “ideas”
may be in the head: “impressions” are in the senses. Danto calls all
of these vehicles “representations.” The question is always open
whether there exists something outside the representation; some
representations are only psychological, or as I would say:
“subjective.” For example, I have in front of me my grandfather’s
wedding ring. Using several sense organs I seem to perceive several
properties of this ring: hardness, shininess, silver color, circular
shape, 21 millimeters diameter, and a ringing tone when tapped with
a coin. My representation of this ring is subjective (by definition), but
also objective in a way that my current representation of a 200 mile
tall 5-legged unicorn is NOT. These two representations differ in
some very important ways: 1. “agreement” or “testability:” any
reasonable person would agree with my description of the ring. As
W. V. Quine says: “observation sentences are infallible if we toss out
disingenuous examples and new speakers of the language.” 2.
“Persistence” and “passivity;” each time I go away and come back
the ring is the same, there is no psychological sense of “creating”
these sensations as with the unicorn. My grandfather did not create
the properties of the ring that he experienced, and after he died, its
properties continue in a stable, coherent pattern through time. The
representation of the unicorn is subjective only (dependent on my
mind), while the representation of the ring has both subjective and
objective components (dependent on me and independent FROM
me). If we now designate as “true” any representation that accurately
reflects the objective, independent world, we can make sense of the
apparent contradiction of the bent stick. “Is bent” and “is straight” are
contrary properties and sticks cannot be both. One of the properties
cannot really belong to the stick. The representations of straight and
bent are inconsistent with each other, but one can be objective
or “true,” and the other can be subjective only (without objective
content) or “false;” both representations are “in the mind,” but only
one of them corresponds to an external reality, so the other is false.
This hypothesis of subjective ideas (in our minds) and objective ideas
(in our minds, but accurately reflecting real objects outside our minds)
gives us a clear, simple explanation of illusions that can coherently
explain the outside world.

To say the common sense “real world” is
all an illusion in favor of some unseen other world is an outrageous
claim which counters reason and most (if not all) evidence, though I
concede that the possibility of life after death is a strong motive for
wanting to believe it. For those who would dismiss all perception as
illusion there is a logical reason why this position is just plain silly. To
make sense at all, the very concept of “illusion” must necessarily be
contrasted with the possibility of “authentic” or “real;” to quote
Gordon Ryle, “there can be false coins only where there are coins
made of the proper materials by the proper authorities.” In other
words, some perceptions must be accurate, and in fact, it is in
contrast to these true perceptions that we find out about illusions in
the first place. While I concede that sensory perception is very
susceptible to error, in most cases it is quite easy to find the causes
and to avoid them. All sensory perception is “constructive” to some
degree. It is determined or influenced by beliefs, expectations,
metabolism, and even the specific design of our sense organs. The
only way we could completely escape this limitation of experience,
would be to literally “become” the objects we perceived, i.e. 100%
“objective.” Since this is probably impossible, it is important to
recognize and admit our limitations, while still understanding the
difference between “good” perceptions and “bad” ones, without,
once again, unnecessarily tossing the baby out with the bath-water.
Some perceptions, in good light with good visibility and an alert and
unimpaired observer, lead to reliable and accurate beliefs. Some
perceptions, with bad light, hazy visibility and impaired observers,
(fatigue, alcohol, bad eyesight), lead to incorrect belief. There is a
huge difference between seeing a person clearly in daylight, (and
cross-checking with other senses like hearing them speak, touching
them, and smelling them), and seeing a vague image of a person in
the bushes in the dark with no sensory cross-checking. I admit that
the first type does not guarantee error-free perception, but some
people’s outrageous claims indicate that they don’t realize that the
second type almost DOES guarantee mistakes. On purely logical
grounds it is clear that the first type of perception will yield more
accurate results. We also have vast amounts of empirical evidence
of the first type being more successful in helping us understand and
predict our world than perceptions of the second, vague type.