How Can We Come to Know? Meditations on the Puzzle of Criteria
Perhaps the worthiest of the meta-philosophical disputes is that ever-confounding epistemological query: What are the superior modes of cognition?[1] Mounting a reply is sure to produce a variant of philosophical psychosis: To unveil the truly accredited sources of knowing, one must display a background capacity for distinguishing what those sources capture veridically and what they do not. Problematically, this very capacity appears as an independent manifestation of knowing, yet by assumption it has transcended any ostensible criteria; cognition, in its springing forth, has returned and confronted itself. Following Roderick Chisolm, we shall dub this seeming paradox the “Problem of the Criterion.”[2] Making the issue more tractable requires going beyond many touchstones and assumptions of classic epistemology, and in the process formulating a new image of thought. First, the skeptical mindset is given cursory treatment. The confused nature of the relevant Problem is elucidated thereafter, and a possible solution to these dogmas is offered in closing.
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A Case Study: Skeptical Tranquility
Historically, the life of the philosopher has been noted as one of perpetual mental strife. Each new intellectual age gives birth to its own characteristic dialectics, which in turn are either exposed as being illusory in a grand act of synthesis or are met with a kind of methodic quietism.
In consideration of the latter, recall the words of Sextus Empiricus:
“[Suspension of judgement] comes about- to put it rather generally- through the opposition of things. We oppose what appears to what appears, or what is thought of to what is thought of, or crosswise.”[3]
Again:
“Now the Skeptics were hoping to acquire tranquility by deciding the anomalies in what appears and is thought of, and being unable to do this they suspended judgement. But when they suspended judgement, tranquility followed as it were fortuitously, as a shadow follows a body.”[4]
The tendency toward systematic doubt derives from Pyrrhonistic attitudes regarding circularity and infinity; any kind of being that is self-grounding or is infinitely deferred never rises to the occasion of being at all. Such is how things stand with the justification of belief:
Agrippa’s Trilemma
(i) Some beliefs are justified.
(ii) A belief receives justification only from another justified belief.
(iii) Chains of justification must not be circular.
(iv) Chains of justification must not be infinitely long.
Each proposition strikes one as individually plausible, yet they are certainly not co-tenable. Sextus reinforces this anxiety about elliptical and unbounded thought by again suspending judgement. But what more can be said of this frenetic, circular movement? First, note that the aforementioned puzzle involving cognition exhibits a nearly indiscernible structure:[5]
Problem of the Criterion
(A) What is the extent of our knowledge?
(B) How are we to decide, in any particular case, whether we know?
(i) (A) cannot be answered without an answer to (B).
(ii) (B) cannot be answered without an answer to (A).
Chisolm himself devised a (triune) taxonomy of solutions: Particularists impart epistemic independence and priority to (A), appealing to some self-evident foundation of particulars from which to abstract general criteria applicable to (B); Methodists promptly argue in the opposite direction, contending that knowing subjects are innately equipped with some adequate knowledge-schema, within which the answer to (A) is subsequently discerned; skeptics identify the equipollence of both directions and escape this loop of justification by declaring (A) and (B) unanswerable, thus denying the very possibility of first-order knowledge:
“Again, in order for the dispute that has arisen about standards to be decided, we must possess an agreed standard through which we can judge it; and in order for us to possess an agreed standard, the dispute about standards must already have been decided. Thus, the argument falls into the reciprocal mode and the discovery of a standard is blocked…”[6]
With the space of the debate mapped exhaustively, the inadequacy of both the particularist-methodist divide and the skeptical going-beyond will be demonstrated independently.
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A False Dichotomy
It must be admitted that both the methodist and the particularist display acute arbitrariness in their reasoning. As the gap between representation and reality inevitably demands some account of (meta-) evidential support, at any level of inquiry, attempts to dogmatically posit some object of knowledge as “epistemically prior” yield dissatisfaction. To review, the particularist is forced to neglect any consideration of cognitive criteria for what is known in a “primary” way. But, of course, it may always be retorted: How are these privileged contents known to be known? Similarly, the methodist proposes some criteria without having any examples to which the criteria apply. So, it may be asked: How can these criteria be judged as successful? Each party defers justification for whenever it is convenient; neither is ever keen to acknowledge a virtuous circle. Particularists may be unparalleled in their ineptitude, for they do not just fall apart when confronted with Methodist arguments, but do not have the conceptual resources to offer reasons. They cannot even engage in the performance of giving and taking grounds, of committing oneself to a trust of discussion. Once the basic, knowable particulars have become the objects of justification, a new layer of particulars has taken shape. Particularism has no way to justify itself in a meta-epistmeological way, since all it can offer at the outset are bare, putative instances of knowing. Yet as has already been seen, methodism is not in a far superior position. Postulating criteria absent of any positive epistemic reason for preferring them clearly begs the question. First-principles may have had an intuitive appeal throughout the history of philosophy, but methodists devastatingly struggle to reincorporate their results back into the foundation that gave rise to them.
If serves one well to not belabor over the details of the debate thus formulated, especially considering that both the particularist and methodist concur on a consequential assumption: the act of cognizing the nature of reality (or, the process of acquiring knowledge of what-is) consists of employing an instrument with the aim of making truth attainable. The instrument analogy is not arbitrary- just as a tool may be picked up or put down at will in accordance with its user’s whims, so on this picture cognition is a potentially inert faculty that, when engaged, makes reality in its fullest truth available. This assumption then entails that to understand the transformed object of knowledge, one must develop a robust understanding of the transformative tool. Of course, this picture is precisely what generates the vicious circularities at play. Presupposing that cognition itself must be scrutinized within the project of knowledge-attainment is a dangerous maneuver, and it is only natural that such images disintegrate into skepticism. But the skeptic has not gone far enough. Drastically fearing epistemic error cannot sustain its own anxieties; how can the skeptic be assured that these are not Error itself? Commonsense may deserve a congratulatory nod in this respect, with its unqualified acknowledgement of the real possibility of knowledge. By juxtaposing thinking and truth, and so necessarily excluding one from the other, the demand for thinking’s own “truth” is generated and remains insatiable. It is only by including the very act of thought in the catalog of truth that the Problem of the Criterion can become a philosophical mirage.
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Thinking and Being
If thinking and truth do not stand opposed, how do they stand with respect to one another? The great error of the assumptions traced so far is to separate knowers from the medium through which they know, to pry apart selves and faculties so as to create an appearance of non-identity. The arbitrary selection that particularists and methodists are forced into is a function primarily of a potential discrepancy between appearance and reality. That possible cleavage requires that our propositions be bolstered by some external evidence, assuring their epistemic acceptability. Similarly, when applying the Problem of the Criterion to theories of knowledge, one is obliged to offer some evidential support for the putative superiority of one doctrine over any other. In this way, rationalism may even boast of an especial advantage over its empirical counterpart, as the empiricist’s dictum that all (substantive) knowledge be rooted in sensorial input cannot possibly be derived from unmediated sensations in-themselves. Transcending these myriad shortcomings is a matter of re-directing knowing’s gaze back within knowing itself, rather than concentrating solely on examining the ordinary objects that this knowing grows accustomed to. The opponent might suggest that a meta-meta-level of the Problem has been instituted, as it is not immediately clear that what a subject takes for granted as its process of knowing is genuine, or veridical.
By selecting the original act of knowing as the proper object of interrogation, it has been suggested that new irresoluble problems have appeared on the scene. But now recall how the first two levels of the original Problem were issued forth. At the level of first-order knowledge claims, the possibility of error demanded a justificatory account that was doomed to lapse into regress. A similar problematic for the next highest order is entailed. Things have now come back to knowledge itself, however, raising the question of wherein fallibility resides, if at all. Knowledge bears an inextricable link to self-knowledge, consciousness to self-consciousness. If truth is what is here sought, then allow an ostensible distinction to be drawn between knowing that is non-illuminating and knowing that is. For the distinction to even be made, knowing is saturating each direction; the act of knowing means supplying the definitive metric of what it is to know, whether that is supposedly false knowledge or not. Since knowing the act of knowledge is the foundation of any thinking at all, there are some conscious states that are strong enough to legitimate knowledge. These are conscious states that require no real intermedium to take themselves as their object, and this is where knowing begins, absent of any all-encompassing criteria-scheme or particular knowledge-claims about the ordinary objects of thought. Such a solution may well suit those seeking to overcome the Problem at hand without entertaining those “coherence” responses which simply seem too good to be true.
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Conclusion
A life positively drenched with thought would become wholly paralyzed if knowledge were not possible. What would be some consequences of this form of living? It is rather difficult to fathom, for the simple reason that engaging any activity whatsoever presupposes the intelligibility of the concept in question. As the above arguments have attempted to convey, those who provide themselves the illusion of calling this concept into doubt dwell with a stagging ignorance of their own assumptions. In denying the possibility of grasping truth, they have already taken for granted as true the notion that knowledge itself stands outside of this truth. Additionally, they have taken for granted that knowledge is something gathered and employed for some preconceived ends, rather than something that is always immanent to thinkers. The skeptic succeeds in exposing the inadequacy of the particularist/methodist divide, while the particularist and the methodist triumph in making knowledge an indubitable reality. Like so many antitheses of what is true and what is false in philosophy, the disagreements sketched place intellectual acts like acceptance and rejection on a pedestal, not seeing the relevant debate’s framing as just another step in a sequence toward ultimate truth.
[1] By “cognition” is meant subjective states that are possibly knowledge-producing.
[2] Chisholm, Roderick. The Theory of Knowledge. New York: International Publishers, 1977.
[3] Sextus. Outlines of Pyrrhonism. p.11. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1933.
[4] Sextus. Outlines of Pyrrhonism. p. 13. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1933.
[5] Indeed, the Problem of the Criterion as portrayed by Chisolm is just Agrippa’s Trilemma applied to epistemological inquiry itself.
[6] Sextus. Outlines of Pyrrhonism. p. 72. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1933.