One non-answer
One commenter on Josh’s post asked for just one example of another “way of knowing” and another was ready with an answer.
Let’s see … do you has a “significant other” … a person you love? How do you know that you “love” that person? Note that I am not asking about hormones or brain chemistry (unless, in fact, you have measured your hormone levels or your brain chemistry in order to decide if, in truth, you “love” that person … in which case, I feel very sorry for you). The question is how YOU know you love that person.
So…the claim is that there are “other ways of knowing” and one of them is knowing you love someone.
But there’s so much wrong with that it’s hard to know where to begin, so I won’t bother trying to say all that’s wrong with it. But one thing is that knowledge of one’s own emotions is not automatically or necessarily really knowledge – in other words, we can get our own emotions wrong. Another thing is that it’s not really the kind of knowledge that’s at issue (which is probably why it’s not usually even referred to as knowledge). A more relevant kind of knowledge would be knowledge that a person you love loves you. That’s more relevant because it is knowledge about a part of the world outside the self, so it’s more closely related to science than introspection is. So – the question then becomes ‘how do you know that person loves you?’ Well guess what – sometimes you don’t!
This is not a big news shock, right? We can get these things wrong. It happens. And in any case, we’re not going by some special spooky kind of knowledge – we’re going by various kinds of empirical knowledge. We don’t decide that people love us for no reason – we don’t decide that some random acquaintance loves us just because we have an intuition or an insight. We “know” that particular people love us for reasons – we have reasons for the “knowledge” – and those reasons are hooked up to the world; they’re not weird or special or supernatural. They’re rooted in history and behavior and words and actions.
And even with all that, we can be wrong. We don’t know, and we often know we don’t know. Suppose X starts acting like someone who doesn’t love us a bit – suppose X becomes distant and cold and irritable. We may want to decide that we still “know” X loves us; we may decide that X is acting this way for reasons that are nothing to do with us. We may be right – and we may be wrong. By the same token, we may decide that X does not love us, and there again we may be right or we may be wrong. In other words – we don’t know. Knowledge that people love us isn’t inherently reliable knowledge at all, not of its nature. Of course it’s good to trust people’s love unless there’s a good reason not to, but that’s not because it’s reliable knowledge – it’s for other reasons.
So, no, the ‘love’ answer doesn’t cut it.
It’s a strawman, anyway. Nobody claims that the only way of getting information is from science. Obviously there are many ways to get information that are not distinctively scientific. E.g., as I said at Jerry’s place, I may have to miss a dinner that a friend went to. I want to know what happened, so I simply ask her. There’s nothing especially scientific about it.
There are, indeed, many ways of forming justified, true beliefs. Simple observation (under good conditions) is one. Asking a person who is likely to know the answer and to tell the truth is another. Reading a novel by an insightful author may well be another – it may convey all sorts of truths of which I was previously unaware.
If that was all that was meant by this spooky-sounding talk of “other ways of knowing”, none of us would have a problem with it. But this sort of language is used to suggest that it’s possible to obtain true (and objectively justified) beliefs by means such as drug-induced trances, divine revelation, mystical insights, etc. That kind of thing is NOT demonstrated by my ability to ask a friend what happened at a dinner that I missed, or by any other reasonable example.
How about “knowledge that who you love exists?” I mean feelings are fairly subjective, but the existence of the focus of those feelings needn’t be.
Michael, my niece loves her imaginary friends. To her, they really seem real. I have seen her having conversations with them when she doesn’t know I’m looking. They give her consolation when she’s sad and they entertain her when she’s bored. Does she have knowldege that who she loves exists?
People who don’t use evidence to determine whether they love or are loved have a simple name. They’re called stalkers.
There really is a difference between love and stalking, you know.
I once had a memorable experience regarding this phenomenon. I was given a lift in a car at very late morning. I rode in the back seat while the two women (mother and daughter) who gave me the lift rode in the front. Their conversation ran like this:
Mother (driving): Darling, are you hungry?
Daughter: No, not at all.
Mother: But darling, you must be hungry.
Daughter: No, I’m not hungry at all.
Mother: Darling, that cannot be true. You MUST be hungry!
Daughter: No. No. I’m truly not.
Mother: Darling, that simply CANNOT be true! You MUST be hungry…
By now the reader will have got the drift of the conversation, and will be in a position to predict likely outcomes. The car shortly afterwards got to where I was going, and I thankfully (and I mean in every sense of the word) got out.
They probably continued at it.
They are possibly still at it; though it is also possible that one of them went berserk shortly after I got out.
But I will never know for sure.
People who talk about ‘other ways of knowing’ seem to be trying to conflate two opposing things; a method which is resolutely anti-scientific (eg revelation) with an outcome which is resolutely not (ie hard facts). They miss the point that facts aren’t respected merely in of themselves, but are only regarded so highly because of the method used to arrive at them, since other methods have consistently shown themselves to fail in this respect. Facts and knowledge aren’t free-floating concepts, open to access by different means – they are intrinsically linked to the means used to arrive at them, and are in fact rendered meaningless in the absence of verifiably successful methods.
“Obviously there are many ways to get information that are not distinctively scientific.”
Yes, but they’re also not the opposite of science – they’re not discontinuous with science – they’re not radically different from science. And as conditions change, the many ways will become more like science, so that they can be more reliable. For instance if you change missing a dinner that a friend went to and asking her what happened in order to find out, to missing a meeting between officials and lobbyists and asking a friend who is a lobbyist what happened in order to find out – you will (if you have any sense) be way more cautious about considering the friend’s account reliable. If you are a journalist or an activist covering the issue that was discussed at the meeting, you are pretty much vocationally and public duty-ly required to realize that you need a better source.
And so on. Much as Dave sums up.
And exactly, about stalking.
That’s an amplification of Russell’s point, not a disagreement with it – he’s made the same point himself more than once! Such as in the ‘There is one world’ post a couple of months ago.
I think you may be focusing too much on the possibility of being wrong invalidating other ‘ways of knowing’ in the opening post. After all, our scientifically acquired knowledge is explicitly provisional, and subject to change in light of new evidence.
Taking knowledge as ‘justified true belief’ I usually think of the ‘justification’ part as relating to the epistemology used to acquire it (and not all justifications are equal). In the case of scientific knowledge I regard the justification as being the strongest possible since science is a process, not a conclusion (In one sense at least.) So seeking further verification in the form of repeatability, independent confirmation, peer review of assumptions, etc. lend more and more strength to the justification of these beliefs.
Of course theological beliefs also run into trouble with the ‘true’ part of ‘justified, true belief’ since I tend to go for some sort of correspondence theory of truth. And when people talk about things like god, things whose very existence is at least debatable, then I have a hard time thinking of them as true without something we can agree that it must correspond to.
For me the idea of knowledge always has an unstated degree of certainty attached to it. I accept other ways of knowing, it’s just that they always come with a price. And that price is paid out of the justification fund. Some ways of knowing carry such a high price that they bankrupt any knowledge they presume to support.
While I broadly agree with you, Grendels Dad, I think it is simply a category mistake to refer to faith as any kind of justification: The very essence of faith – in the sense of religious faith which endorses beliefs, not in the many other definitions of “faith” that ignorant or dishonest believers frequently use in bait-and-switch/equivocation arguments – is that faith eschews justification entirely. At some point, the faithful person must answer all questions along the lines of “How do you know that?” with the answer “I just know it” – which is not an answer at all. Faith is not and cannot be a way of knowing, and all talk couched in such terms makes a complete hash out of the meaning of the word “know” and its cognates.
But at some level, refusing to refer to faith as a method of justification rather than just describing it as an awful/horrendous/epic fail method of justification is a stylistic choice. Along similar lines, I’m frequently confronted by reasoning so bad that I am loathe to refer to what someone has said or written as “reasoning” or “argument” even for the purpose of explaining why it is such poor reasoning or such a bad argument: Instead, I’m forced to substitute words like “rationalizing” and “pseudo-argument,” and carefully explain how I am using these terms and why – which is a pain in the behind.
I think you meant Josh’s post, not Jason. Though I thought he looked like a Jason too.
I suppose that I see faith of the ‘I just know’ variety as a ‘divine revelation’. I have had conversations where people have told me that they ‘just know’ something because god has told them so. Curiously enough, god usually tells these people things ‘in their hearts’…
My problem with this is two-fold; I know that I can be mistaken, and I know that I can be deceived (even deceiving myself on occasion). I assume that everybody else is also susceptible to these errors to one degree or another. That is why I see the idea of a divine revelation, where I just know something to be true, as the weakest of justifications.
So, whether faith is the weakest of justifications or no justification at all seems to be along the lines of whether or not 1.99999… = 2. Maybe I am bending over backwards to give the faithful the benefit of the doubt when I say they are not equal, or maybe I just don’t know my asymptote from a hole in the ground. Or, as G says, maybe it is just a stylistic choice.
At any rate, if the faithful want to use such a weak/non justification for such grand claims about the nature of their god, it is hard not to pity them. Or, it would be if they weren’t so smugly self satisfied in the solidity of the house of cards they have constructed on an active earthquake fault line. And then there is the matter of being looked down on for not agreeing with them about every contradictory little thing that their hearts tell them. I guess that is where I am pushed over the line from pity to annoyance.
Someone famous once said it’s a good idea to hang around with people smarter than oneself and ask questions. So, here’s my questions (I hope they bear some relevancy to the topic): do the abilities of people like Mozart and Descartes to pull beautiful symphanies or analytic geometry out of thin air count as a “way of knowing”? Is implicit unconscious processing a different way of knowing to explicit conscious processing? Is it possible to know something yet not know how to explain it?
The real issue here is that this person has a different definition of “love” than yours. They’re treating “love” as an existant cosmic force. You’re treating it as an emotion.
If “love” is an emotion, then to experience it is proof that it exists. End of debate. This requires no additional ways of knowing beyond the usual. This is where I stand on the subject- I know that there is an emotion called “love” because I feel it.
But lets say that you’re a person who believes that “love” is an actual, existant cosmic force. And what’s worse, you’ve locked yourself in a dichotomy in which you believe that love is EITHER an existant cosmic force, or it doesn’t exist.
You believe that you *know* that love exists, ie, is an existant cosmic force, because you’ve felt it. And when OB comes along and tells you that feeling things isn’t real *knowing,* you interpret her as denying the entire existence of love in every form you’ve ever considered it to possibly hold.
So… while I agree with your argument, I’m not sure that the commenter will. Because to the commenter you completely missed the point. You keep talking about whether a specific person does or does not love another person, they’re talking about whether “LOVE” “EXISTS.” They’ll continue to believe that you’re being hypocritical as long as you think that its possible for at least one hypothetical person to be in love.
This is the same issue as the “I know god exists because I am filled with faith” argument. Atheists hear this and think, “You moron, you can’t prove that god exists by saying that you have faith, that’s saying that gods existance is proven by your willingness to believe in it without proof. That’s ridiculous!”
But that’s not what they usually mean. They *feel* faith. And from that they conclude that the object of their faith exists, because how else could they feel faith towards it? Which is silly when you think about it, but does have a certain subjective, personal appeal if you don’t.
Parhhesia, check out the July archives at blog.talkingphilosophy.com for the post titled ‘Oop Bop Sh’Bam’. It discussed something along the lines of your question.
Thanks Grendels Dad (your moniker always makes me smile) I’ll check it out. I am interested to know whether OB considers implicit processing and explicit processing different ways of knowing.
And Patrick, I think that’s what I was trying to say with the imaginary friend example (although on reflection I think I could have misinterpreted Michael’s point). This thread really seems to illustrates the mutual exclusivity of reason-based and faith-based epistemologies, doesn’t it?
Whoops, please excuse typos in previous comment.
Parrhesia, If you can forgive me misspelling your name (among many, many other things) then I certainly can’t fault you for any typos.
Patrick wrote:
I think this is very insightful, and gets to what I see as the heart of the confusion in religious thinking: they’re reifying abstractions. Understanding the difference between concrete and abstract nouns, and what they refer to, takes some sophisticated analysis. The natural, original approach most people use is to think of everything as a kind of thing, or object. Adjectives and adverbs turned into nouns also become things. They are a kind of energy, or force.
Where do these things exist? In a different kind of world. Objects which can’t be measured, seen, or handled in the material world — including abstractions and emotions — are immaterial objects. There must be an immaterial world, then, another dimension of reality which we learn about through an immaterial, internal, direct mind-based way of knowing.
You can pick up a fuzzy thing, but you can’t pick up “fuzziness.” Love is real, but you can’t see it.
Abstractions which apparently trip some sort of significance meter are thrown into the category of the spiritual. Along with love, include beauty, goodness, forgiveness, and wonder. How do you know or learn about these things?
Extra sensory perception. You “just know.”
Parr. –
“I am interested to know whether OB considers implicit processing and explicit processing different ways of knowing.”
No I don’t think so. I’m no expert but I think implicit processing starts out as explicit and then once it’s absorbed it becomes implicit. You explictly learn the specific steps in skating or dance or tennis or piano or driving a car or whatever it is – and then once you have the rules down you don’t think about them any more and you’re free to practice and improve.
I think what happens though is that unconscious processing feels like a different kind of knowledge, so a lot of people conclude that it is a different kind of knowledge. That could be a lot of what’s behind the whole idea. Good point!
I’m sure Claire knows about this.
Ugh, the stupid love argument–a sure sign that someone is a faitheist and can’t distinguish feelings from fact. For some reason this argument seems to work too well supporters of “belief in belief”. It reminds me of parents who think belief in Santa is a glorious thing to promote and prolong in children.
Religionists claim that invisible immeasurable forms of consciousness exist–be they, gods, souls, demons, angels, ghosts, or body Thetans. They claim to “know” such things even though science has no method to distinguish this so-called “knowledge” from fantasy. A god belief is no more scientifically valid or compatible than a belief in gremlins that cause irritating things to happen in your daily life or sprites that whisper good ideas into your ear.
If religionists and faitheists want us to treat religion differently than they’d treat the above mentioned beliefs, then they better be prepared to give us a reason why. And so far, the “other ways of knowledge” argument fails big time.
Do such people imagine that belief in Satan is another path to knowledge too?
Isn’t an argument about how you know you “hate” equal to an argument to how we know we love someone?
The love argument must have been printed in some apologist literature because it comes up so often and the people spouting this nonsense actually think they are making a valid point. In fact, I bet this is the best they have because it’s used so often by people I had thought were smarter than that. I guess faitheists are too invested to realize that they’ve been tricked into confirming their biases via semantic smoke and mirrors.
Yeah it’s an oldy – I can remember buffoons triumphantly asking Carl Sagan if he believed in love, apparently expecting him to say “Oh yes, so I do, I take it all back, science isn’t any better than thinking with the gut.”
:) Yeah, Sagan says it better and more succinctly than I could. (If I try to emulate him, maybe the Toothpaste Twins as helping “the cause”.)
*makes note to self to learn to enthusiastically agree with faitheists–sarcastically, but not shrilly*
Well, I know when I love someone by how it feels, or by how I feel.
No very intense introspection is needed to decide if the experienced emotion is love, usually. Though sometimes people have to introspect and decide whether what they are feeling is love, or some combination of lust, affection, pity, loyalty, etc, things that can overlap with love in various ways.
That introspection, whether it’s of something immediately obvious or of something elusive, is a form of observation. And observation is step 1 of the scientific method.
So people do know whether or not they love someone by the scientific “way of knowing”. It’s just that some people think it’s rude or unromantic to say so. Not me, though.
So my answer would be: Yes, I know I love someone by scientific means. And look! Science isn’t so dry after all!
Re articullet’s mention of Santa Claus. My parents played the Santa game with me, and I enjoyed it. It was nicely weird. And when I figured out that it was a hoax, I enjoyed that too. Both directions, coming to and leaving Santa Claus, were fun.
And – though my parents didn’t exactly mean it that way – it was a sceptical rite of passage. It was only a couple of years after ditching Santa Claus that I ditched gods and Jesus too, on similar grounds. The Santa thing, as a common Western childhood experience, may be a good introduction to sceptical thinking.
Is the implication that my love for my wife has no effect on my behaviour or the external world in any way? That our friends would not be able to tell that I loved her in any way by observation? The poor man must live a strange solipsistic existence if he takes the problem of other minds so seriously that he cannot acknowledge signs of love in other people. Lets hear it for evidence-based romance.
Ophelia,
I love you.
But probably you don’t know it!
Well…I assume it. Because I’m so lovable!
Hahahahaha
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