Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Starting Points
A brief essay on the conditions for the possibility that philosophy is not complete bullshit:
Epistemology may be practiced as a subdivision of metaphysics, inquiring after the ontological dimensions of knowledge, or it may be motivated by a practical concern for actually having knowledge. In the former capacity, it is dependent on the fundamental findings of metaphysics. In the latter, it is prerequisite to the sure success of metaphysics itself.
While this order may seem circular, it is not viciously so: epistemology as a pursuit of method does not necessarily require a comprehensive metaphysical self-interpretation, just as one does not need to understand the physical principles of buoyancy, muscle flexion, and action and reaction in order to learn how to swim. On the other side, metaphysics can make positive progress even before its methods are perfectly established, in something of the way the earliest astronomers began to gather observations about the celestial sphere.
To insist on a comprehensive interrelation of metaphysics and epistemology would indeed create a vicious circle and force the whole enterprise of philosophy to collapse. Thus, an understanding of the independence of epistemology from metaphysics is essential for the justification of epistemology and ultimately of an epistemologically funded metaphysics (if that is desirable), which would include the metaphysics of knowledge itself.
Should this epistemologically funded metaphysics of knowledge turn out to undermine or problematize the independence of epistemology by producing methodologically significant conclusions, this cannot be allowed to destroy the legitimacy of the starting point. Thus, the independence of methodologically oriented epistemology must be defined in such a way that its viability does not depend on its comprehensiveness or accuracy.
The point of all this is…well…something to do with Hegel, I think.
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"While this order may seem circular, it is not viciously so: epistemology as a pursuit of method does not necessarily require a comprehensive metaphysical self-interpretation, just as one does not need to understand the physical principles of buoyancy, muscle flexion, and action and reaction in order to learn how to swim."
ReplyDeleteThe last part of this quote is of course highly reminiscent of the Hegel's point regarding method in his famous "Introduction" at the beginning of his Phenomenology of Spirit, so at least it seems that you have "something to do with Hegel" here...however it seems sort of like you wrote a reactionary post AGAINST Hegel even though you share his point regarding the initial impossibility of method. The way I'm reading your post, you are resisting the conclusion Hegel draws that method must ultimately be the same as that for which it is a method (Absolute Science) by arguing for the legitimacy of leaving room for an independent or autonomous "epistemology", for example, how some people understand what Kant's first Kritik does. What I find interesting is that Hegel argues for the opposite stance on the springboard of the same basic observation that "one does not need to understand the physical principles of buoyancy,muscle flexion, and action and reaction in order to learn how to swim." In his smaller Logic he even uses the 'colorful' example of a man who may yet be capable of digestion without the least acquaintance with gastroenterology or anatomy. Hegel finds this to ultimately be evidence for the fact that what we know already entails the process of what we know (the Concept *of* Becoming).
The real question, as far as I can see, regarding your point above, is whether you offer an accurate analogy. Does epistemology really share the likeness you want it to when you liken it to the naivete of performing actions or arts such as swimming? Is there something about epistemology, about its inherent trajectory and ambitions, that thwarts this likeness? One of the reasons for such a conclusion may lie in the fact that knowing and inquiry necessarily proceed initially without explicit self-direction or self-interpretation, yet always with implicit self-understandings. But epistemology, if we understand it as a pursuit of method entirely independent of (what is to be known) ontology/metaphysics, removes itself from reliance on this peculiar implicit realm, and yet does so still relying on implicit understandings while explicitly denying this fact. Thus the irony of something trying to secure the sure success of metaphysics simultaneously falling into error with its first attempt at assistance. As Hegel says:
Meanwhile, if the fear of falling into error introduces an element of distrust into science, which without any
scruples of that sort goes to work and actually does know, it is not easy to understand why, conversely, a
distrust should not be placed in this very distrust, and why we should not take care lest the fear of error is not just the initial error. As a matter of fact, this fear presupposes something, indeed a great deal, as truth, and supports its scruples and consequences on what should itself be examined beforehand to see whether it is truth. It starts with ideas of knowledge as an instrument, and as a medium; and presupposes a distinction of ourselves from this knowledge...
I am not capable of resisting any conclusions that Hegel may have drawn. For all I have spent months and years of my life studying him I don't really know what conclusions he drew about anything. Maybe you can point me to the place where he draws the conclusion you describe:
ReplyDelete"that method must ultimately be the same as that for which it is a method (Absolute Science)"
I also couldn't remark on Kant's version of the independence of epistemology. So I'll focus on your paragraph about the swimming analogy. You say that if epistemology claims for itself independence of metaphysical understanding, it "does so still relying on implicit understandings while explicitly denying this fact." I think this is either irrelevant or begs the question, since I am claiming that one can ask about how to approach metaphysics scientifically without having the conclusions of metaphysics already cognitively in hand, not without having any kind of contact with reality. Are you saying that in order to be independent of the completion of metaphysics epistemology also needs to be independent of even implicit starting points? I don't see why this should be.