Life seems hell-bent on keeping me from writing the final entry in my How to be a Conservative series, distracting me with an endless array of philosophical questions to answer. The current one that I'm addressing is on the nature of knowledge. Specifically, I claim that knowledge is but does not exist. In this discussion, I'll touch on a number of related questions and produce a rough metaphysics. This post has grown out of a conversation I had last night with a few of my brothers, so I'll be drawing from their expressed views primarily.
We will begin with fairly simple metaphysical ideas: all that is exists; there exists a universe of objects independent of perception; the objects within this universe functions according to fixed, causal laws. Before going any further, let's clarify what the distinction between being and existing. To exist means to be in space and time. This carries some things along with it, such as extension (occupying a volume of space) and weight (being movable, but resisting motion). Being is a broader term allowing for the possibility that there are objects which do not occupy space for any period of time. What the nature of such non-physical (non-existing) objects may be is a question we will not be exploring.
Now, we can make an easy objection to our beginning ideas: how do we know that the universe functions according to fixed laws? Perhaps the objects in the universe behave randomly instead. This objection was answered long ago by Heraclitus of Ephasus. He said that everything changes except the Logos, or law of the universe. But what was the law? That everything changes. By the same token, if all in the universe is random, then the law "All is random" is applicable. Even if there are only some objects which obey fixed laws, then the law "Some things are random" is applicable.
We can go even further by asking what it means for something to be random. The standard answer is that something is random if it is unpredictable. But predictable by whom? What does it even mean to predict something? Presumably, to have justifiable, true knowledge of an event before it occurs. But we don't know what knowledge is yet. We can't use a concept we are trying to derive in formulating our premises. To do so is simply to beg the question. After dealing with the subject of knowledge, we'll return to this issue, but to discuss it now is absurd.
Let us now construct a theory of knowledge based on the metaphysical assumptions we mentioned. In the universe, there exist objects obeying fixed laws. Certain objects in a certain space, called a mind, have a correspondence with objects outside of the mind. Specific behavior of objects outside the mind produces, according to fixed laws, specific behaviors of the objects within the mind. Some of these behaviors are knowledge. Some behaviors within the mind can also cause other behaviors within the mind, some of which are knowledge.
This theory of knowledge is extremely broad, and we have not even given a specific definition of what behaviors of objects within the mind actually constitute knowledge. However, it gives us enough to notice a couple critical problems. How does this square up with how we actually think? Well, for one thing, it means that no one has free will, so really this entire discussion is pointless. Everything we say and do is predetermined by the laws of the universe, so even trying to define knowledge is pointless. Another thing is that we haven't defined what it means to have knowledge of something. In ordinary life, when we say that you know X, we generally mean also that you have knowledge of something to which X applies. For example, I know that it is sunny means that I know something about the weather. Perhaps we should say that we have knowledge of that which immediately causes our knowledge. But then, we have no knowledge of any connections between things in temporal sequence beyond a single stage. If X=>Y and Y=>Z, where Z is knowledge, then we only have knowledge of Y, never knowledge of X. Making things a bit more complex, If X=>Y and A=>B, but A is before X, then even if B&Y=>Z, we only have knowledge of B&Y and still no knowledge of A or X, let alone their temporal sequence.
Perhaps we can make this work. If A=>X and X=>Y and A&Y=>Z, then can we have knowledge beyond one stage of temporal sequence? Not so, because A must persist for A&Y to be true and we still only have knowledge of one stage of the temporal sequence, that in which A and Y coincide. We still know nothing about what happened before then. Thus, we have no knowledge of any historical even that we did not directly experience. We cannot say, "Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49BC," only "I learned that Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49BC." This may seem vaguely similar to the notion of meaning proposed by A. J. Ayer, that the meaning of a proposition is its method of verification, but we have actually made a stronger statement. Whereas Ayer would translate the statement, "Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49BC," as, "If you look in a book on history, you will be able to verify that Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49BC," we are saying that even this is an unwarranted extrapolation.
We can even go further in striking down impermissible statements. Not only can we not say "Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49BC," we cannot even say that Caesar existed, not because we can't be certain of it, but because we don't have any knowledge of Caesar! Furthermore, we don't have knowledge of anything in the universe outside of our mind except what directly grants us knowledge. But wait! At the beginning, we stipulated various metaphysical statements that guided our theorizing--how could we have formulated those statements if we can't even have knowledge of the objects we were describing?
The situation does not improve if we relax the standard for what the object of our knowledge is by going back some more stages in the chain of causation or by saying that something can give us knowledge of something causally unconnected (except perhaps going back to the beginning of time). We still have knowledge only of specific things and cannot grasp the whole.
Well, maybe we can rectify this situation by saying that we know of all the stages in the chain of causation leading to our knowledge and all the effects of these causes, whether these effects led to our knowledge or not. In this case, as soon as we know one thing, we know of everything. We might change this to make it slightly less ridiculous, perhaps by saying that we don't immediately have knowledge of everything, but after a certain amount of knowledge has been formed, we have constructed knowledge of everything. However, even leaving aside the obvious absurdity of knowing of everything, we still could not make the statements we gave at the beginning because we couldn't grasp the unity of all things. Thus, we could not say there a universe exists, let alone anything about its properties.
The solution to this contradiction is to realize that we have implicitly assumed that some things are withing existing. The unity of all things is but does not exist; rather, it is a mental construction. More fundamentally, the laws that govern the behavior of objects cannot exist, yet they are nonetheless. When we said that a specific place in space was the mind, we used another mental construction. Thus, even in attempting to create the most materialistic metaphysics possible, we have necessarily employed non-physical objects.
But wait! I left the issue of a purely random universe hanging--how can I deal with that possibility. First, my initial objection stands: we begin our theorizing with a random universe because to do so involves having a theory of knowledge already. Second, the issue of the objects of knowledge remains. If knowledge is acquired randomly, we still could not have knowledge of things which do not exist, such as the unity of the universe.
These objections are fatal, but using a non-materialistic theory of knowledge can give us some extra insight. If knowledge is not physical (along with the concomitants mind, consciousness, intuition, etc.), then we can meaningfully speak of randomness as unpredictability. In a weak form, this means simply that we lack sufficient knowledge to systematically predict events correctly. We might have ideas about what will happen, but we don't know for certain until it happens. To this I raise no serious objection at the present time. However, the stronger form, that no causal relations exist, creates problems. Dealing with this claim requires a great deal of argument, and this post is already rather long as is. At this point, I will say simply that no one actually believes this and leave it to Immanuel Kant and Hans-Hermann Hoppe to explain why.
At this point, I am confident that I have demonstrated the necessity of objects which do not exist, but nonetheless have being, though I suspect I'll be accused of begging the question. Criticism is welcome.
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