EAIM: The Nature of Truth

"What is truth?"
- pontius pilate

"The truth is out there," is the hope of the X-File's FBI agents. Perpetually foiled, they nevertheless strive to uncover the relationship between the government and extraterrestrial life. Various layers of secret society turn every new piece of evidence into merely greater enigma. In this way the story progresses continually leaving both the agents and their TV audience unsatisfied, wondering whether the show's mantra is merely a false hope.

In our most gripping life pursuits, we are driven by the idea that "the truth is out there." However, our answers lead to more questions, and we have to wonder if the forces of concealment will forever hold our prize from our grasp. After prolonged searching and frustration, a dark doubt may begin to creep: Can we reach the truth at all?

Into this doubt comes Michael Oakeshott's meditation on the nature of truth. First, he says, we have to stop thinking of truth as something that is "out there," not something we don't already have knowledge of. For if the truth is something we have no clue about currently, we will never be able to reach the truth. For we wouldn't know what would count as the truth.

Oakeshott would make this analogy, I believe. Saying "the truth is out there" without knowing what would satisfy our search is like saying the following: I want to get to a place, but I don't know what it would be like or when I would find it.

Even if we accept this answer, it seems to miss the point: the FBI agents really don't know the truth they seek. And in general we feel the strain of not having the truths we want. Our disappointment is that we don't feel satisfied in our particular pursuit. It does not matter that we know some truths, we want to know a particular truth.

To this, Oakeshott would rephrase things into something even more shocking, but after consideration, what can only be the case: yes, the FBI agents don't know the particular truth they seek, yet they do know what would count as an answer. They know that an answer must accord with the knowledge they already have. Thus they already know something of the truth, and it isn't entirely "out there" at all. This means that all the truths we could possibly know, we already know a little about them.

After we digest this shock, we should come to realize that Oakeshott is using the word "truth" in a funny way. For him, truth isn't a "thing" at all. It's something that comes in degrees. We know more or less of it. It's a feeling about how the facts fit. It's satisfaction.

About "what is out there" the FBI agents know some truth, but they don't know complete truth. But we can turn the problem around. The evidence the FBI agents do have, that is, the concrete alien DNA samples, the creepy sound recordings, and the eye-witness accounts; all these! they only know partially. They certainly have the information, but they don't know what it means. In other words, they don't know the truth even about their evidence!

It is very important to let this sink in. We can apply this thinking to everything we know. We have information which we think are facts, but until we solve every question, we don't know the full meaning of these facts. In all actuality, what we think is important, might, when a new piece of knowledge comes to us, seem unimportant after all. And what is unimportant, might take on a whole new significance.

But in all this we might become dismayed. For this makes our whole reality topsy-turvy. Now it seems, we can't count on anything to stay still for us to surely reach the truth. Should we just give up on it all?

Not at all. Again as Oakeshott says, We do have knowledge of truth. Even though it is in degrees, we still have it. Though new information modifies what we know, the new information never implies that we should reject all of what we knew before. The only thing these realizations should spur us on to is humility. Since nothing is fixed for us, the only thing for us to do is follow what the experience says we should conclude. We are responsible for no more.

"There is, it seems to us,
At best, only a limited value
In the knowledge derived from experience.
The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies,
For the pattern is new in every moment
And every moment is a new and shocking
Valuation of all we have been. We are only undeceived
Of that which, deceiving, could no longer harm.
In the middle, not only in the middle of the way
But all the way, in a dark wood, in a bramble,
On the edge of a grimpen, where is no secure foothold,
And menaced my monsters, fancy lights,
Risking enchantment. Do not let me hear
Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly,
Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession,
Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God.
The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless."
- T.S. Eliot
in East Coker

"I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth." - 1 John 

EAIM: The Character of Experience

Like many a good philosophical meditation, Experience and Its Modes begins with the definition of a key term: experience. Since experience is all-encompassing, it is important to note that whatever the definition, it is merely useful for a given purpose, and after my brief summary, I'll give my two cents as to what that is.

Oakeshott defines experience in an odd way. He says that all experience is coterminous with judgement. It is an initially shocking definition because we normally think of judgement as that which aids in formal deduction. We know we don't encounter the world in this way all the time. But further, it is strange in that judgement seems to be beyond experience: it is that force which moves us from mental state to mental state. Oakeshott's clarification is helpful and it broadens our outlook beyond these limited ideas.

Definition: Experience = judgement, which is a recognition of 'this,' not 'that.' It is a reflective modification of experience

In the likeness of a mathematical proof, this definition is demonstrated in the following way: he shows that experience cannot be either more than or less than judgment. Once this is shown we may conclude that experience and judgement are one and the same.

What is said to be less than judgement, is sensation; what is more, intuition. To be full, his argument must cover all of its bases: what is said to be more, and what is said to be less, must fall on the same spectrum, the same axis; and all that is experience must be imagined to fall on this axis. And the axis is said to be that of recognition of 'this' not that. In sensation, supposedly, we see a bare 'this.' It is not related to a background of 'not that.' In intuition, the 'this' not 'that' melts into complete union. There is no this or that, everything is seen as a mere oneness.

First, I'll give a justification of this spectrum as representative of all we could plausibly experience. In experience there are always things to experience; that is, there are always "this"s; and it appears, we have different "this"s which find themselves related within a world. These relations could go so far as identification, for even in two different "this"s, the relations of one to the other may be exhaustive: one completely defines the other. And these thoughts seem to exhaust what we mean by experience.

Now Oakeshott proceeds to say that the extreme ends of our spectrum are not actually experiences; at best, they are limiting concepts conceived by their likeness to certain features of judgement, but not actually concepts which can count as experience apart from all the features of judgement.

Sensation = Judgement. In imagining what we mean by pure sensation, we realize that we never in fact have this so-called experience. For in recognizing a "this," we in fact recognize the "this," that is, it appears identifiably within the field of our current experience. It is found somewhere within a whole in such a way that when it appears, it already bears relation to all within it.

Judgement = Intuition. [Here, I depart a bit from Oakeshott's train of thought. I don't understand it well enough.] In imagining what we mean by pure intuition, we realize, again, that we are dealing with an abstraction and not an experience (i.e. being confused).  Under this idea of intuitive experience, 'knowledge of' and 'knowledge about' are utterly distinct. So then, because judgement never gets at the reality, it is superfluous. So then "sensation" is superfluous. But this leaves only the process of identification for recognizing reality. We no longer have recognition. And it all seems to fall apart here. For all data is always given, nothing is added or removed. And reality is not in our experience static.

Why This Definition

Since it encompasses everything that we know, "experience" seems to thereby be the broadest term possible. Thus, there would seem to be an infinite ways of defining it or getting it across. In a sense, since intuition, judgement, and sensation are distinctions without differences, we could have defined reality as any of these.  So then we may ask why "judgement?" It primes the mind to understanding what we mean by truth; and truth is a domain in which judgement has a natural home: criticism has been the way of the west since Descartes.

Personal Knowledge: Summary

Personal Knowledge is a simple book with a simple plan. The whole is this, understanding the world is a practical endeavor. As such, we need to practice the art of understanding the world. And as practice, understanding the world is neither a skill nor knowledge we can understand through the mere reading of books.

He describes this view of the world through the history and psychology of science. And to the end of this world-description, the book has a very natural four-fold plan. (1) We note that skillful knowing is present in even the most objective of sciences. (2) This note spurs our considering the relationship between objective articulated knowledge and our subjective tacit skill in knowing. (3) These meditations now beg the question, How can we be confident in our knowledge, seeing that it relies on our temporary finite and error prone selves? And (4) our answers point us to an understanding of all of life, which shows the same process of personal knowledge. This understanding is reflected upon and gives us direction in understanding how we must relate to other knowing selves and what our relations say about our place in the universe.

Because we are discussing the nature of knowledge and our place as knowing agents, it is natural to look at all aspects of our lives, from science, to politics, to religion. And these diverse reflections bolster and support and help us understand the main idea: knowledge is personal, communal, and essential for the fullness of life.