Category: Objective Knowledge

Oxford University Press: 1979.

Objective understanding

I have given here some reasons for the autonomous existence of an objective [World 3] because I hope to make a contribution to the theory of understanding (‘hermeneutics’), which has been much discussed by students of the humanities (‘Geisteswissenschaften’, ‘moral and mental sciences’). Here I will start from the assumption that it is the understanding of objects belonging to [World 3] which constitutes the central problem of the humanities. This, it appears, is a radical departure from the fundamental dogma accepted by almost all students of the humanities (as the term indicates), and especially by those who are interested in the problem of understanding. I mean of course the dogma that the objects of our understanding belong mainly to [World 2], or that they are at any rate to be ex­plained in psychological terms. [162]

Knowledge without a knower

My first thesis involves the existence of two different senses of knowledge or of thought: (1) knowledge or thought in the subjective sense, consisting of a state of mind or of consciousness or a disposition to behave or to react, and (2) know­ledge in an objective sense, consisting of problems, theories, and arguments as such. Knowledge in this objective sense is totally independent of anybody’s claim to know; also it is independent of anybody’s belief, or disposition to assent; or to assert, or to act. Knowledge in the objective sense is knowledge without a knower: it is knowledge without a knowing subject.

Of thought in the objective sense Frege wrote: ‘I understand by a thought not the subjective act of thinking but its objective content…’. [108-9]

Uninteresting theories

The a posteriori evaluation of a theory depends entirely upon the way it has stood up to severe and ingenious tests. But severe tests, in their turn, presuppose a high degree of a priori testability or content. Thus the a posteriori evaluation of a theory depends laregely upon its a priori value: theories which are a priori uninteresting—of little content—need not be tested because their low degree of testability excludes a priori the possibility that they may be subjected to really significant and interesting tests.

On the other hand, highly testable theories are interesting and important even if they fail to pass their test; we can learn immensely from their failure. Their failure may be fruitful, for it may actually suggest how to construct a better theory. [143-4]

Subjective and objective knowledge

The commonsense theory of knowledge, and with it all—or almost all—philosophers until at least Bolzano and Frege, took it for granted that there was only one kind of knowledge—knowledge possessed by some knowing subject.

I will call this kind of knowledge ‘subjective knowledge’, in spite of the fact that, as we shall see, genuine or unadulter­ated or purely subjective conscious knowledge simply does not exist.

The theory of subjective kowledge is very old; but it becomes explicit with Descartes: ‘knowing’ is an activity and pre­supposes the existence of a knowing subject. It is the subjective self who knows.

Now I wish to distinguish between two kinds of ‘knowledge’: subjective knowledge (which should better be called orga­nismic knowledge, since it consist of the dispositions of organisms); and objective knowledge, or knowledge in the objective sense, which consists of the logical content of our theories, conjectures, guesses (and, if we like, of the logical content of our genetic code). [73]

Letting our theories die in our stead

As opposed to this, traditional epistemology is interested in the second world [World 2]: in knowledge as a certain kind of belief—justifiable belief, such as belief based upon perception. As a consequence, this kind of belief philosophy cannot explain (and dos not even try to explain) the decisive phenomenon that scientists criticize their theories and so kill them. Scientists try to eliminate their false theories, they try to let them die in their stead. The believer—whether animal or man—perishes with his false beliefs.[122]

The evolution of problems

This consideration of the fact that theories or expectations are built into our very sense organs shows that the episte­mology of induction breaks down even before taking its first step. It cannot start from sense data or perceptions and build our theories upon them, since there are no such things a sense data or perceptions which are not built upon theories (or expectations—that is, the biological predecessors of linguistically formulated theories). Thus the ‘data’ are no basis of, no guarantee for, the theories. They are not more secure than any of our theories or ‘prejudices’ but, if anything, less so (assuming for argument’s sake that sense data exist and are not philosophers’ inventions). Sense organs incorporate the equivalent of primitive and uncritically accepted theories, which are less widely tested than scientific theories. …

Thus life proceeds, like scientific discovery, from old problems to the discovery of new and undreamt-of problems. And this process—that of invention and selection—contains in itself a rational theory of emergence. The steps of emergence which lead to a new level are in the first instance the new problems (P2) which are created by the error-elimination (EE) of a tentative theoretical solution (TT) of an old problem (P1). [146]

The most striking fact of evolution

What I regard as the most important point is not the sheer autonomy and anonymity of the third world, or the admittely very important point that was always owe almost everything to our predecessors and to the tradtion which they created: that we thus owe to the third world especially our rationality — that is, our subjective mind, the practice of critical and self-critical ways of thinking and the corresponding dispositions. More important than all this, I suggest, is the relation between ourselves and our work, and what can be gained for us from this relation.

[…] I suggest that everything depends upon the give-and-take between ourselves and our work; upon the product which we contribute to the third world, and upon that constant feed-back that can be amplified by conscious self-criticism. The incredible thing about life, evolution, and mental growth, is just this method of give-and-take, this inter­action between our actions and their results by which we constantly transcend ourselves, our talents, our gifts.

This self-transcendence is the most striking and important fact of all life and all evolution, and especially of human evolution. [147]

The bucket theory of the mind

The commonsense theory is simple. If you or I wish to know something not yet known about the world, we have to open our eyes and look around. And we have to open our ears and listen to noises, and especially to those made by other people. Thus our various senses are our sources of knowledge — the sources of the entries into our minds.

I have often called this the bucket theory of the mind. …

In the philosophical world this theory is better known under the more dignified name of the tabula rasa theory of the mind: our mind is an empty slate upon which the senses engrave their messages. But the main point of the tabula rasa theory goes beyond the commonsense bucket theory: I mean its emphasis on the perfect emptiness of the mind at birth. For our discussion this is merely a minor point of discrepancy between the two theories, for it does not matter whether we are or are not born with some ‘innate ideas’ in our bucket — more perhaps in the case of intelligent children, fewer in the case of morons. The important thesis of the bucket theory is that we learn most, if not all, of what we do learn through the entry of experience into our sense openings; so that all knowledge consists of information received through our senses; that is, by experience.

In this form, this thoroughly mistaken theory is still very much alive. It still plays a part in theores of teaching, or in ‘infor­mation theory’, for example … . [60-1]

The unity of method

Labouring the difference between science and the humanities has long been a fashion, and has become a bore. The method of problem solving, the method of conjecture and refutation, is practised by both. It is practised in reconstructing a damaged text as well as in constructing a theory of radioactivity. [185]