Knowing Knowledge

There are lots of concepts which we take ourselves to understand clearly. However, philosophical reflection upon those concepts reveals that our initial grasp of them is infected with lots of inconsistencies. Philosophy has a bad reputation of unnecessarily making simple things more complex. However, philosophy through attempting to explain those apparently simple concepts don't only allow us to understand them better, but it also explains a lot about our own nature and the nature of the world we live in.

Attempting to define those concepts is not an easy job. Those attempts extend back to the time of Socrates and it might even extend for more ancient times. The failure of various accounts offered by so many distinguished philosophers to explain such concepts made lots of thinkers conclude that such attempts are destined to fail. Some argued that we should conceive it as a matter of fact that the human thought process lacks a concrete foundation. However, other philosophers, driven by their passion to understand, insisted on providing an explanation of those concepts. Their efforts didn't only prove worthy but in addition to explaining those concepts, they explained what went wrong with previous failed attempts. The persistence of contemporary philosophers like McIntyre, Putnam, Grayling and so many others allowed us to finally comprehend the foundation of the human thought process. At last, it seems more possible than ever that we can reach a solid ground upon which we can resolve our conflicts, to reach a better understanding of this world and to share a unified vision of what is most significant to us.

What is most fascinating about the most recent attempts to explain such basic concepts like knowledge, truth, reality, justice, love and so on is that the social nature of human beings was found to be so much significant in comprehending them. The efforts of various philosophers can be puzzled together to reveal that human conceptualization of those concepts was based on shared forms of social activities. Shared forms of social activities make up the foundation of the human thought process.

One of those concepts that I am so much fascinated with is the concept of knowledge. In this post, I will use this concept as an example to reveal what I have considered as the primacy of the social nature of human beings. I will not go into the details of the philosophical debate that went literally for centuries to explain the concept of knowledge. Instead, I will try to offer the most recent account explaining knowledge which was shaped by both philosophers and cognitive psychologists.

Human beings are characterized by some unique abilities. We are born in this world with an innate ability to distinguish objects present in our environment. Psychologists have realized that by the age of two, an infant gains the capacity not only to manipulate objects but to comprehend relationships of size and how such objects can fit together. In addition, infants at an even younger age can distinguish faces, facial expressions, and gestures such as pointing toward something. Certainly, our ability to distinguish various objects constituting this world is attained before our ability of linguistic conceptions of them. The cooperation among our various sense together with the basic construction of our brain allow us to acquire such an ability to distinguish and manipulate objects even if there is no language to aid in the formation of concrete conceptualization of them. This finding constitutes an evidence against the claim that perceiving is believing. A two year old child who can recognize his care takers from strangers and who can manipulate objects with an adequate level of dexterity is certainly perceiving those persons and those objects even though he is not capable of conceiving them or forming beliefs about them. He is not able to conceive them or to form believes about them because he still lacks a langue to constitute such beliefs.

Anyway, a child gains language skills by the age of four. This is a relatively very young age to acquire such a highly organized form of behavior. This remarkable ability to acquire language seems to have been allowed by long centuries of evolution. Through evolution, our left brain hemisphere has been shaped to develop Broca's area. The wiring among the neurons of Broca's area is taken to be what allow such a rapid process of language acquisition. The growth of a human being is taken to be generally similar to the process of evolution that created humans in the first place. However, the growth of language skill in today's world humans might not represent the process of evolution of language properly. There are evidences which suggest that it must have taken our ancestors so many years to develop a language that is much more simple compared to the complexity of any natural language existing today. The evolution of language must have progressed synchronously with the evolution of Broca's area in our left brain hemisphere to allow the rapid language acquisition seen in today's humans.

The evolution of language was allowed by our unique abilities to produce a wide variety of sounds together with our ability to imitate, to associate various stimuli together and to memorize. Primitive language consisted of simple names of objects. Our more primitive ability to distinguish objects and persons, together with our ability to respond to gestures allowed the creation of this primitive form of language. Even in its primitive form communication through language enhanced the survival of our ancestors to a great extent. It allowed them to avoid threats and to gain goods in a much more efficient way than before. Conformity to the rule of naming objects became crucial for the survival of any human being. It is important here to emphasize the importance of following rules. Any individual human being with the previous abilities I have just mentioned could have named any object with any name he might have came up with. However, such names in this case would be useless, since it deprives him from comprehending others and thus gaining the benefits of language. Any form of private language that is not shared by others is useless. Sharing rules of language plays, as I will explain later, a crucial part in explaining the primacy of the social nature of human beings, even when it comes to concepts such as knowledge.

Anyway, primitive languages continued to evolve. It extended beyond naming objects to explaining relations among those objects. Then, it continued to evolve to capture the rules of behavior of such objects. Here, there is an important point to mentions before explaining this next stage of language development. A pre-linguistic human don't only have the ability to distinguish and separate objects in the surrounding world, but in addition any individual human being has the ability to distinguish and separate himself from the rest of the world, even before acquisition of language. Psychologists have realized that an infant develops what they called the theory of mind before learning to use language. A pre-linguistic child, by the age of three, acts in a way that reflects his awareness that his own mental experience of the world doesn't necessarily coincide with the reality of this world. As a matter of fact, it is now argued that autistic children lack the capacity to develop this theory of mind. It is taken that is the reason why autistic children lack adequate communication skills. Having an ability to distinguish oneself from the rest of the world is again a mere capacity and not a conception in itself. A human can't conceptualize anything or become conscious of anything unless he becomes able to acquire beliefs about such a thing. Constitution of beliefs requires language. Therefore, before language acquisition, no conception of ones individuality can be achieved. However, the ability to distinguish one self from the rest of the world was crucial for the next stage of language evolution. Realizing that the world and I are two distinct things means realizing that the world extends beyond my initial scope of perception both in space and in time. Humans thus had the ability to recognize the extension of the world in both space and time even before being able to conceptualize space and time themselves. Names of objects together with the recognition that objects are related to each other and can be manipulated in different ways, in different spaces, and in different times allowed humans to develop a language that can describe events. This more complex form of language allowed further enhancement of survival chances. This more advanced form of language, again, had to follow rules so that it can be useful in communication.

The development of a complex form of language that can name objects or constituents of perceptual experience, and in addition can describe events, allowed humans to conceptualize objects and actions. With the concepts of objects and actions now available to human beings, they became able to construct an even more complex form of language. They have developed a language that can describe the basic form of behavior of the world and of other human beings. This form of language is not just an instrument anymore but it became what can be called a common folk scientific and psychological theory. It is important here to notice the importance of realizing that language can be thought of as some kind of a theory.

This unfamiliar claim can be clarified through the following example. A human being with a primitive form of language can name seasons such as summer and winter. With more complex forms of language, he can state that winter follows summer and that summer follows winter. However, in a language that constitutes a folk scientific theory, man can claim that there is such thing as a year in which one summer and one winter comes following each other. A year is not an object or a state of affair that can be experienced. Instead it is a linguistic concept that aids in describing the behavior of this world. As I have mentioned repeatedly, a language must have rules to allow communication. A language describing the behavior of the world or the behavior of others must have rules as well. Those rules must be recognized by all those who speak the same language so that they can gain the benefits of this language. Certainly, a language describing the repetitive expected behavior of the world and of others was of tremendous effect in enhancing our survival.

Many different languages have evolved in different parts of the globe. However, it is still one world that we share. That's why when it came to languages describing the behavior of the world; the rules of those different languages were more or less similar to each other. Encounters among different societies allowed further approximation of those rules. The folk scientific theories shared by early human societies were more or less alike. The rules used in this theory or in this more complex form of language made up the basis of human rationality.

It might be best to describe language in the way Quine did. He argued that language can be thought of as a spherical web of terms and statements. On the periphery of this sphere, there are the terms used to name objects and constituents of our perceptual experience. As we move inward, we first meet statements describing relationships among those object, constituents of perceptual experiences, time and space. Then we find statements describing events. More inward, we find statements describing the behavior of the world in a more abstract way. In the center of the sphere we find statements describing the rules of logic. How those statements are linked to each other is governed by the rules which the users of this language have agreed upon. It is those rules, which when conceptualized in abstract from any observational content, that constitute the logic in the center of the sphere of our language. It is this logic which represents our rationality in its purest possible sense.

This conception of language reveals that contrary to the common thought, human rationality is not something distinct from humans. It doesn't consist of laws which are enforced upon humans and which they might fail or succeed in realizing. Instead, rationality is formed of rules which were formed by humans themselves through centuries of mutual cooperation. Rationality evolved synchronously with the evolution of our language. It evolved as a requirement of having language as a useful instrument to enhance the survival of human beings. Rationality might have been developed as a requirement for having a language we can communicate with. However, this doesn't reduce the value of rationality. It is still required more than ever today. Without the rules of rationality or the rules of language use, knowledge can never be achieved.

Within the sphere of our language, we can construct various theories. We can link so many different statements together to construct many different theories. We can construct theories of science, religions, astrology, fiction and so much more. As the statements of this theory don't break any rule of language use and thus doesn't violate consistency, the theory can be considered as coherent. However, only one, among those many different theories we can construct, can amount to be considered knowledge. This is the theory which upon strict examination of the links between its constituent statements would not reveal any inconsistency. It is the theory which can include either any statement or its negation without any threat to consistency. It is the theory which can't be but accepted by any one of the language users who applies the rules of this language or the rules of the rationality. Finally, it is the theory which allows the achievement of the main goals for which language has been developed in the first place, namely survival and what ever else that we needed language for. A theory which can satisfy all those criteria is the theory that all of its statements can be called true and it is the theory which constitutes knowledge.

Up till now, no single theory has ever managed to satisfy all of those criteria. However, there is only one which seems more promising than others. It is the theory of science.

What is so revealing about conceptualizing knowledge in this way is to realize that knowledge is a shared social activity. What distinguish knowledge from fiction are rules inherent in our language which has been formed by our ancestors through very long time. Whenever, you attempt to acquire knowledge you have no choice but appealing to those rules.

Realism: Metaphysical or Epistemological?

There are lots of philosophers who rejected realism. among those philosophers are Putnam, Wittegenstein, Rorty, and Davidson. Their rejection of realism was based upon the claim that it is problematic, that it raises too many difficulties, and that it leads into paradox and confusion. however, this reason can't be considered as an adequate grounding for refutation of realism. it might be a motivation to do so, but it can't be a justifiable reason for asserting that realism is wrong. However, Grayling seems to argue that the reason why those philosophers failed in providing an adequate account to refute realism is that they misconceived realism as a metaphysical view, while it should be conceived as an epistemological view.

Putnam did in fact attach the term "metaphysical" to realism to name the view he rejected. Putnam argued that metaphysical realism is the view that commits us to take objects we identify to be mind independent entities. in his own terms, a realist would claim that the world consists of a fixed totality of mind-independent objects. Putnam continued to argued that such a conception would lead us into thinking of truth as a matter of correspondence between what we say about the world and how things are in that world. Therefore, according to Putnam, a realist is committed to the uniqueness of truth; that there is one description of how things are in the world that is true. In addition, a realist is committed to the principle of bivalence which states that any meaningful statement is determinately either true or false. accordingly, a realist is someone who accepts the principle of correspondence, uniqueness, and bivalence in addition to the independent existence of objects. accepting such principles would clearly have metaphysical consequences. They would lead a realist into thinking that words have a fixed reference to objects. a statements such as "electrons are negatively charged" must be either true or false. its truth value would depend upon whether electrons are in fact negatively charged or not. accordingly its truth value is a matter of correspondence with this fact. on the other hand, if this statement is true, then electrons can't be but negatively charged, since a true description is unique, and we can't have but one true description of the charge of electrons. Putnam rejected those assumption because they , as i have mentioned before, lead us into taking words to have fixed reference. in the previous example, the conclusions we have made are premised on taking the term "electron" to have a fixed reference to particular entities in the world. so, accepting what is entailed by realism when it comes to the statement "electrons are negatively charged" would implicitly commit us to unnecessary metaphysical point of view, namely that there are electrons out there in the world with a particular kind of charge. it would be clarified that this is an un necessary metaphysical commitment when we remind ourselves that it is us who conceptualized or theorized the existence of electrons in the first place. this is the point that Putnam is mainly attempting to make; that reference is only made within the conceptual scheme of the users of a referring term.

however, Grayling argued that realism is not mainly a metaphysical point of view. a realist is only committed metaphysically to the principle of independent existence of entities. a realist can claim that there is a class of objects which exist independently from our mind. however, a realist might still remain a realist if he accepted the idea that even though there are objects which exist independent from our mind or from us knowing that they exist, the objects we take to exist depend at least on some part on how we conceive them to exist. accordingly, a realist might be committed to acceptance of the principle of independent existence of a class of entities but he doesn't have to be committed to the other principles of correspondence, bivalence, and uniqueness. so, the metaphysical commitments made by the statement in the previous example can be escaped by someone who would still be a realist.

the arguments offered by Putnam to refute realism were mainly directed against the metaphysical consequences of accepting the principles of correspondence, uniqueness, and bivalence. as we have clarified, those arguments would not represent a problem to realism. other arguments against realism offered by Putnam were directed against the problems imposed by realism. we have argued in the beginning of this article that this can't be accepted as a justifiable reason for rejection of realism. Grayling seems to argued that an adequate account against realism can be established by conceiving it to be mainly an epistemological point of view rather than a metaphysical one.

there is a final point which i would like to make regarding Putnam which i think is so inspiring. Putnam rejected the metaphysical consequences we have mentioned before because he argued that any metaphysical view that commits us to dividing the world into objects, entities, events, and causes can never makes any sense. it is us who divide the world into those different entities for the sake of our own interest and purpose. if you were asked to mention the contents of a room, you would divide the contents of this room into furniture, books, papers and so on. this division is based on your own perspective and it can't be based on any thing else.

Putnam had very interesting point about the metaphysics about reality. However, according to Grayling those points can't be used against realism since it is mainly an epistemological point of view rather than a metaphysical one.

Are philosophical concepts indefinable?

Providing a satisfactory definition of philosophical concepts is the main task of philosophy. However, this task is so difficult to accomplish. This difficult led some philosophers into claiming that those philosophical concepts are indefinable. Davidson was among those philosophers. His claim of the indefinability of the philosophical concepts was mainly raised to deal with the problems related to a particular one of those concepts namely the concept of truth. Davidson argued that the concept of truth is indefinable. He argued that the concept of truth like other significant concepts in philosophy is so fundamental and basic that it is indefinable. Davidson claimed that the only way by which we can provide a definition of a concept is by reducing it or breaking it down to simpler clearer and more basic concepts. However, concepts like truth are so basic and fundamental that they can't be reduced into simpler or more fundamental concepts.

I am so interested in this thesis since it expresses the opinion of lots of common people when they deal with philosophical questions like what is truth?, what is knowledge? Or what is meaning? Most people would respond to such questions by arguing that things are clear when it comes to such concepts, those concepts can be easily grasped and that any attempt to define them would be so difficult that it should be ignored.

However, Davidson account can be defeated and therefore such a common opinion is defeatable as well.

a concept which is indefinable is too permissive. In other words, it allows too much in the way of inference. If we can't determine the borders of application of a concept, then it can be used in any way we like to infer whatever we like. In an example offered by Grayling, he argued that if we considered a principle such as "an all-powerful god" to be so fundamental that it is indefinable would allow us to infer everything like this God being able to eat himself for breakfast. Clearly, this kind of inference is absurd. Even if in attempt to avoid absurd conclusions, we adopted the weaker claim that an indefinable concept allows almost everything rather than allowing everything, problems would still be encountered. For example if we took the same concept of "an all-powerful god" to be indefinable, we would be able to conclude something less controversial like this god being able to break the natural laws of the universe. However, clearly such god is not breaking those rules; accordingly we need to draw a boundary for such a concept to at least explain why this god is not breaking those rules even though he is capable of breaking them. Accordingly, a concept without a definition is a concept which we don't know how to use.



On the other hand, one can't simply claim that a concept like truth is indefinable without supporting such a claim with an argument. We all agree that concepts like truth are significant when it comes to philosophy, however, not all of the philosophers agree on the point that those concepts are indefinable. There are philosophers who argue that truth can be defined by appeal to other more fundamental concepts like coherence, correspondence or even by appeal to many evaluatory concepts individuated by discourse. Accordingly, some one who argues that truth is an indefinable concept has to face the question; why does he think so while others think otherwise? You can't answer this question by arguing that this is simply the case. This would only beg the question. You can't answer this question without offering an argument to support the claim that truth is indefinable.



Davidson argued that the reason why we are interested in concepts like truth, knowledge, and so on is that those concepts are so fundamental and it is because those concepts are so fundamental that we can't define them. This argument bares a resemblance to what common people would say about this dilemma. They would argue that those concepts are so fundamental that we can’t provide a definition of them. Adopting such a kind argument as a reason for taking truth to be indefinable is to accept what is called argument from impotence. Descartes for example argued that the best solution to solve the body-mind problem is to ignore it. McGinn argued that humans are continuously barred from knowing how consciousness arises from brain functions; therefore we have to neglect this problem. The argument from impotence releases us from attempting to solve allegedly unsolvable problems. However, the difficulty of answering a question can never be a justifiable cause for neglecting such a question. As we have argued before, we need to define any concept so that we can use it. Therefore, even if this question was difficult we still have to search for an answer to it.



On the other hand, the claim that concepts which can't be analyzed into simpler concepts are indefinable needs further consideration. It can be argued that even if a concept can't be provided a definition by analysis. It can still be defined by extensional paradigm. In other words, instead of offering a strict definition, we can provide examples which would allow us to understand when such a concept can be used and when it can't be used. Through providing examples of the focal cases and of the non focal cases and of the border line cases, a normally intelligent person would grasp the use of such a concept. In such a case we can determine whether the user of this concept uses the concept properly or not and accordingly understand the concept or not. So, concepts like truth can be defined after all, even if not through providing a strict definition.



Davidson provided a response to those issues. The answer is so technical. I might provide it later. However, his response face problems and therefore the theory of indefinability of truth is generally considered to be implausible after all.