Tag Archives: epistemology

Philosophy

Is the Act of Knowing a Physical Process? Part 2

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In part 1 of this post, we discussed Francis Parker’s argument that the process of knowing cannot be physical.  A purely physical account of knowledge simply does not work.  In part 2, we pick up where we left off.

Parker draws out more disturbing consequences of the materialistic account of knowing.

If, on the other hand, the particles that you actually see are really in the brain . . . , then another disturbing implication arises. Since everything which is known—the objects of all science and common sense would then be physically contained in human brains, the arduous and painful process of education would seem to be rather inefficient, to say the least, for we ought then to be able to learn everything that is known by the relatively simple process of brain surgery? We would be able to learn a given thing, presumably, simply by opening the appropriate skull, and the brain surgeon should therefore be the wisest of all men.

It hardly needs to be mentioned, however, that no brain surgeon will ever find a book in your brain (at least while you are thinking about a book), nor when what you know is the universe will he find the universe in your brain—for this would mean that the whole is contained in a rather small and insignificant one of its parts. Nor would it help for the “under-the-hat” theorist to object that this may be because our present knowledge of the brain is far from complete.

It is nonsensical to think that what we know physically resides in our brain, because we know things that are much larger than our brains!  But it gets worse for the materialistic account, because it’s not even clear that we can know anything in our brain, whether it physically fits or not.

Finally, having seen that on this view you could never know anything outside your own brain, there is a serious question as to whether you could even know anything in your own brain. For here again the process of “knowing” would be a physical one, whose beginning and whose end are consequently different. If, for example, the object of your knowledge were a certain structure in one of the fissures of your frontal lobe, your knowing of it would consist in a physical series whose last member would be located somewhere else in your brain. If, for instance, your knowledge of that frontal fissure consisted in part in the formation of a visual image of it, that visual image would not occur until the process had terminated in the back of your head, in which case the object of your knowledge is not the frontal fissure at all, but rather something in your occipital lobe. And if you were to know this particle in the back of your head, what you would know would be another particle somewhere else. And so on indefinitely.

In short, when we ask the Materialist where the object of his knowledge is, he must, if he is consistent, answer that the object which he “really knows” is at best different from the object which he “thinks he knows” (the former being under his hat or projected out from under his hat) and at worst no object at all—since his knowing of anything means that he does not know it, but rather something different, ad infinitum. So the Materialistic account of the act of knowing is untenable . . . when we consider the location of its object of knowledge.

Parker, in his essay, goes on to provide even more reasons why the materialist account of knowledge fails, but I consider the case to be made at this point.  If you are a person who does not believe in the existence of immaterial things, then what do you do?  How do you counter Parker?

Philosophy

Is the Act of Knowing a Physical Process? Part 1

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

If you are a materialist, physicalist, or naturalist, then you must say “yes” because everything reduces to physical processes on those views.  Francis Parker, Professor of Philosophy at Haverford College, argues, however, that the act of knowing cannot be a physical process.

Parker offers the following scenario that a materialist may offer for how a person would know the contents of a book:

First of all, there is the book—a real, physical thing existing in a certain definite spatial location. Then there is the light reflected from this book, waves or particles (or “wavicles”) of light passing from the surface of the book to your eye. Upon reaching your eye, you may continue, these particles of light pass through the cornea, aqueous humour, lens, and vitreous humour and then strike the nerve-endings in the retina where they produce an electrochemical impulse. This impulse, you may then say, travels along the optic nerve to the occipital lobe of the brain in the back of your head, whereupon, finally, you say you “see” the book. Thus awareness, you may suggest, is merely a straightforward physical process, just like any other.

After this account of knowing the book, Parker asks, “Where is the object of your knowledge?  Where is the book you see?”  If the materialist eagerly offers, “The book is out there, in space, where we see it,” this presents a problem.

Parker walks us through the problem the materialist now faces.

Let us look once more at the process involved. The seeing of the book requires all of the steps enumerated above. You do not see the book until after all these steps have occurred, until the end of the process. And when the process is completed, the earlier stages no longer exist. But where is the end of this process? In the back of your brain. Hence it would appear that the physical thing that you physically see is not “out there,” separate from you in space, but rather in your head—”under your hat.” And for this reason this materialistic account of the act of knowing has sometimes been called the “under-the-hat” theory.

So if knowing is a physical process, then the object we know is actually not “out there” but in our brain where the visual process ends.  This seems like a strange result.  If knowing is a purely physical process, then the objects of our knowledge only exist spatially in our brain.  We don’t know anything at all outside of our brains.

Is this what materialists want to sign up for?  Part 2 of this post will uncover more problems for the materialist account.  Stay tuned…

Mind-Body Theory, Philosophy

Why Think Humans Have an Immaterial Soul? Part 2

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Joseph Owens’ book, An Elementary Christian Metaphysics, argues for the existence of an immaterial human soul.  In part 1 of this post, we looked at three of his arguments for an immaterial soul: 1) the human intellect’s ability to know things as universals, 2) the human intellect’s ability to know in a way that transcends time, and 3) the human intellect’s ability to reason and pursue science.

In part 2, we will look at more reasons to think that there is an immaterial human soul.

First, Owens argues that man’s ability to reflect on himself entails an immaterial soul.  Material things cannot perceive themselves.  “An act of seeing or of any other external sense is always different from the thing it perceives.  It cannot perceive itself.”  Think of a movie projector at a theater.  The projector is able to project all sorts of images on the screen, but it would it be impossible for the projector to project itself on the screen.

But the human intellect is able to perceive itself.  Owens elaborates:

Men experience this self-knowledge through reflection.  The reflection is complete.  It is not a case of one sense perceiving the operations of another sense, as an internal sense attains the workings of the external senses.  It is a case of the intellect making itself and its own activities the object of its full reflective gaze. . . .  It is a complete bending back to view its own self.

Material things cannot accomplish this complete bending back, so the intellect must not be material.

Second, Owens explains that the human power of free will negates the possibility of a completely material intellect.  Why?  The acts of material substances are determined by their physical form.  If the human intellect were completely material, then all the actions of the intellect would be determined by physical processes.

Man, however, is aware that he has, at least sometimes, the power to choose without those choices being determined.  Owens explains, “This power cannot come to him from anything [material], for what is [material] is already determined to a definite way of acting. Free choice is an activity that functions beyond the limiting conditions of matter, and cannot proceed from a principle that is [material].”

To summarize, given the human intellect’s abilities of 1) knowing things as universals, 2) knowing things in a way that transcends time, 3) reasoning and doing science, 4) self-reflection, and 5) free choice, the intellect must consist of an immaterial component.  It cannot be completely material as material objects cannot do any of these things.

 

Mind-Body Theory, Philosophy

Why Think Humans Have an Immaterial Soul? Part 1

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Another chapter from Joseph Owens’ book An Elementary Christian Metaphysics urged me to write.  This chapter has Owens explaining why he believes humans have an immaterial soul.

He first points out that “actions and reactions in the material universe take place under the conditions of singularity.”  He explains that an “individual ball hits an individual wall.”  The reason for this is that “matter in the real world limits a material form to being under designated quantitative dimensions of length, breadth, and thickness. . . . One throw with the shovel removes only one shovelful of earth.”  Things of matter are individual and singular.

Owens argues, however, that the human intellect attains things as universal, not just as individual or singular.

It knows a [thing’s] nature not as something restricted to the singular thing before its gaze, but as applicable to all individuals of the species.  It knows it in a way that breaks through the individuating conditions of matter.  It knows it in a way that is not possible for a merely material knower.  The universal way in which the human intellect knows things, therefore, marks it as a cognitive principle that is to a certain extent functioning independently of matter.

The human intellect is able to escape the individuality of matter because it knows things as universals.  For example, we can know what human means without seeing every single instance of a human.  We are able to universalize what a human is in our minds.

Secondly, Owens notes that the human intellect is able to know things in a way that transcends time.  Time and matter go together, so anything that eludes time is also independent of matter.

The individual sensible thing is continually changing from moment to moment.  As perceived by the senses, it is attained under these changing conditions.  A leaf is seen as swaying in the wind, as green in summer, as multicolored in autumn, as decaying and falling in the frosty weather.  Under the universal aspect of leaf, however, it is known by the intellect in a way that transcends time.  It is known under an aspect that can be applied to any leaf at any time, an aspect that does not undergo any changes with the passage of time. . . . In attaining its object as immune to the changes of time, the intellect is operating in a way that cannot have its source [in] matter.

Third, Owens argues that science and reasoning could not exist unless the human intellect could go beyond time and space.

The scientific reasoning of one man becomes the common property of all who pursue the science from one generation to the other.  The enormous body of knowledge is not lost with the death of the individuals who so far have been bringing it into being.  It is not limited to the conditions of individuation and change, conditions inevitably imposed by matter.  Scientific progress, accordingly, requires that the intellects through which it takes place function in a way that is independent of the strictly material principle in the knowing subjects.

In part 2 of this post, we will continue to look at the case that Owens builds for arguing that there must an immaterial part of man.

Philosophy, Theology

What Happens to Us When We Gain New Knowledge?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

OK, I admit we’re in deep waters with this question, but I’ve been studying epistemology, the investigation of human knowledge, for the last few months and I have run across a short section in a book I’m reading that struck me as particularly profound.

Before I discuss that section, I want to share a common question that people ask me.  The question is this: “Why do you read and study so much?  What’s the point of it all?  Is there no end to your search for knowledge?”  Generally these are people who don’t know what to think of all the books I read, of the blog posts I write, of the seminary courses I take.  To them, it might all be a colossal waste of time.

The only way I can answer this question is that once I started studying the teachings of Christianity, my mind literally awakened to an immense world that I never knew existed.  Since that time, I have felt an incredible drive, almost a primal need, to learn as much as I can about God, humans, and the world we live in – in that order of importance.  I can’t get enough of it and I don’t think I ever will.

Is something wrong with me and people like me?  Sometimes I wonder, but then I ran across a passage in a book that explains why I do what I do – why I want to know things.  The book is An Elementary Christian Metaphysics by Joseph Owens and is one of the most difficult books I’ve ever read.  It is as abstract as you can possibly get, because the book is mostly about the concept of existence, of what it means for something to exist.  There is no more basic subject than that, and thus it makes for abstract reading.

So what does the book have to say?

Through sense cognition a man is able to become [in his mind] one by one the . . . things he encounters in his daily life.  He enriches himself with their forms as he perceives each of them [as they really are], and conserves the forms in his imagination.

Think about this.  We actually become the things we perceive as we bring them into our mind.  We are enriched by the things we come to know and we are able to preserve these things in our mind even after we stop seeing them.

Through intellection [man] is able to transcend the confines of the here and now, and become objects whose extent is unlimited.

How does this work?  We are able to identify common natures in things, and once we identify a common nature, we are able to know all things that possess that common nature.  For example, when we understand the concept of humanity as a nature, we now understand what all humans are like in their common humanity.  We can know what humans were like in the past, in the present, and in the future without ever seeing all instances of human beings.  That’s amazing when you think about it.

Though remaining an individual he is brought into a life that bursts away from the ghetto of his immediate surroundings and extends as far as do the natures of the things with which he comes in contact. . . . Through science he can enrich himself with myriad forms that could never impinge themselves on his immediate cognition.

The intellect and the ability to know things expands the universe far beyond what a man can directly see or hear.  How far can man go?

In grasping the [existence] of sensible things . . . he has the starting point from which he can reach [God].  By intellective reflection [man] becomes himself . . . and is himself in a way that enables him to dominate his own activity.  Knowing his own actions through reflection he has starting points for the investigation of spiritual nature.

Thus we are the only animals that can reach God by reflecting on ourselves.  We see that we have a spiritual nature, that we have a mind, that we think, feel, and will.  As Owens reminds us, this reflection provides the starting point for us to know that God exists.

Owens concludes:

The kinds of things that a man can know through his intellect are consequently unlimited. . . . Intellection, therefore, is able to enrich the knower cognitionally with the form of anything whatsoever.  Those forms remain with the knower permanently as [intellectual likenesses] in which the thing may again be actually known at any time.  There need be little wonder, then, that Aristotle saw in intellection the supreme happiness and destiny of man, and that according to the Christian the Beatific Vision is the ultimate goal of human living.

I believe that God has placed the desire to know in all humans, and that He has given some of us extra doses of that desire.  That is why I want to know.  Why has God given man the desire to know?  Because the pursuit of knowledge, for the Christian, eventually culminates in the ultimate human experience, seeing God in the Beatific Vision.  It doesn’t get any better than that.

Philosophy, Polls

Do We Have Intuitive Knowledge?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Philosophers who study how we know things (epistemologists) have long debated whether we have innate or intuitive knowledge.  This kind of knowledge is often referred to as a priori knowledge.  It is knowledge that one has prior to or independently of sense experience. It cannot be proven by experience.

The debate over a priori knowledge is important to Christians because atheists, agnostics, and naturalists often deny the existence of most kinds of a priori knowledge and claim that we can only know what we observe with our senses.  For example, do we know that raping little children for fun is wrong?  Most people would say “yes” and in a poll I ran last week on the blog, 89% did answer “yes.”  Now, this is hardly a scientific poll, but the results, I think, are still indicative.

This is an example of a priori knowledge, because we don’t come to this conclusion by observing the world around us – we just know intuitively that raping little children for fun is wrong.  Philosopher Louis Pojman lists eleven examples of propositions that have been proposed as a priori knowledge by epistemologists:

  1. If John is taller than Mary and Tom is taller than John, Tom is taller than Mary.
  2. 5 + 7 = 12
  3. Nothing is both red and green.
  4. Some sentences are not both true and false.
  5. If Socrates is a man and all men are mortal, Socrates is mortal.
  6. Every event has a cause.
  7. All bodies are extended.
  8. A greatest possible being necessarily exists.
  9. It is wrong to harm people just for the fun of it.
  10. If I believe I exist, I exist.
  11. Not both p and not-p.

These propositions represent several different categories of knowledge: mathematics, knowledge of “greater than,” laws of logic, morality, deductive logic, causality, knowledge of space, knowledge of God, and introspective knowledge.

Philosopher Alvin Plantinga holds that a priori knowledge, besides being true, must fulfill four conditions:

  1. The proposition p must be believed and believed to be necessarily true.
  2. You must be able to form the belief immediately upon understanding it.
  3. The proposition p must not be believed on the basis of perception, memory, or testimony.
  4. The belief must be accompanied with a certain phenomenal feel, what the rationalists call intuition.

What do you think?  Do you think certain kinds of knowledge are built in to human beings, that we just know some things intuitively?  If so, what kinds of things do you think we know intuitively?

I’ve given you 11 examples of what some philosophers have considered to be a priori knowledge, but I’d like for you to vote in the poll below.  The assignment is easy: tell us which of the 11 propositions, once you’ve read and understood the terms in them, are intuitively obvious or self-evident.  I look forward to seeing the results.

Evolution, Philosophy

Does Evolution Give Us True Beliefs?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

If our minds developed solely due to the process of Darwinian evolution, then how can we trust that our minds give us true beliefs about the world?  This is a nasty problem for atheistic naturalists, because if they cannot argue convincingly that evolution gave us minds that generate true beliefs, then they cannot argue that atheistic naturalism is true.

Evolution is only concerned with survival, so the evolutionist must somehow convince us that most of our beliefs about the world are true because they help us survive.  But there are many examples we can give where that connection breaks down.

Philosopher Louis Pojman, in his book What Can We Know? ,  relates the research of John Garcia and his rats.  Garcia and his co-workers “performed experiments on rats in which the rats were fed distinctively flavored water or food and then given high doses of radiation, inducing sickness.  After a single exposure to radiation, the rats developed a strong aversion to their aforementioned distinctively flavored water or food.  Even if the radiation is given as long as twelve hours after eating the food or water, the aversion pattern follows.”

In this example, the rats believe the food and water make them sick, but they are wrong.  It seems that this aversion pattern is the result of natural selection to aid in survival.  Evolution has caused the rat to have untrue beliefs in order to survive.  Pojman notes that humans follow this same pattern when we become sick after eating a particular food, and then are often repulsed by that food for the rest of our lives, even though the food had nothing to do with us getting sick.

Pojman also explains that:

False beliefs may positively procure survival.  Inducing beliefs that great spirits are protecting members of the tribe may enable these members to surmount dangerous obstacles that would otherwise destroy them.  Consider two tribes, the Optimists and the Accuratists, who go to war.  They are relevantly similar in every way except that the Optimists believe that if they die in battle (especially sacrificing themselves for their mates), they will be rewarded with an afterlife of unparalleled sensuous bliss, whereas the Accuratists, tailoring the strength of their beliefs to the strength of the available evidence, believe that in all likelihood this life is all they have, that death is the final cessation of consciousness.  The Optimists are more likely to win; the Accuratists more likely to flee or submit to an inferior settlement.

As long as our beliefs enable us to reproduce more successfully, they may have nothing to do with truth.  Pojman quotes Pat Churchland, “Boiled down to essentials, a nervous system enables the organism to succeed in the four F’s: feeding, fleeing, fighting, and reproducing.  The principle chore of nervous systems is to get the body parts where they should be in order that the organism may survive. . . . Truth, whatever that is, definitely takes the hindmost.”

Darwin himself had fears about evolution giving us true beliefs:

With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy.  Would any one trust in the conviction of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?

Perhaps the belief that atheistic naturalism is true is nothing more than a genetic mutation which survives in a small number of advanced primates.  If you’re an atheistic naturalist, you may never know.