Eric Bleys
Philosophy
3/3/2016
David Shein Bard College
In this paper I will argue, in congruence with Quine, that the two dogmas which he depicts as greatly conditioning modern empiricism are not supported by sound philosophy. Firstly, I will begin by arguing against reduction-ism and its implications; I will explain the source of my rational disagreement with reduction-ism. And then I will proceed to explicate my disagreement with the separation between synthetic and analytic truths. Then I will express a counter argument against my position. And finally, I will respond to this counter argument to defend my position. The form of argumentation must involve the subject of the relation between the abstract functions of the mind and empirical experience.
Let me define the content of the statement above to demonstrate its significance for the paper. Quine's epistemological critique of empiricism involves a defense of the notion that knowledge formulated in reason is not reducible to derivations from experience. For Quine, the human intellect’s rationality adds its own component to the construction of true statements apart from experience. And therefore what is needed to argue in congruence with Quine is an analysis of the relationship between abstract functions of the mind and experience, abstract here meaning thought patterns with non empirical subjects which can analyze abstract notions like truth or create a blueprint for an infinite structure. These abstract functions, and their role in knowledge production, I hope, will demonstrate this aspect of knowledge production which, as Quine believed, added its own component to the construction of true statements. Thinking about this relation will help us unlock the solution to the question of how knowledge is created.
Quine describes reduction-ism in the following way, “The other dogma is reduction-ism: the belief that each meaningful statement is equivalent to some logical construct upon terms which refer to immediate experience” (From a logical point of view, 20). In order to respond to reduction-ism I would like to discuss the relationship between the empirical and the non-temporal ideas which allegedly exist. Empirical idea, here meaning thoughts derived directly from experience, and non-temporal ideas meaning ideas which refer to an existence or alleged existence which is timeless, and hence non empirical, due to the transitive property of our sensory experience.
At first sight, it would seem that empirical truths would have to have their verification partly constructed by their relation to abstract concepts. For example, in order to convince someone that evolutionary theory is true, they must relate the theory to the concept of truth, an idea, which within itself does not seem to be empirical, but rather a Platonic form. The purpose here is not to assert that truth is in fact a platonic form. For the evidence for such a position has not been presented above. However, what is being explicated is that the nature of the content of the idea itself seems to transcend the temporal for the following reason, truth could be God just as Aquinas believed, or truth may be a correspondence relation between a cognitive belief and an actual ontological reality, or possibly a correspondence relation between a cognitive belief and a mere empirical reality. However, in the sum of all such correspondences, or in the case of the possibility or reality of divine truth, there is a description, or image of a reality far greater than that which can be directly observed by one individual through his or her senses. For none of us alone can perceive in one empirical vision all of the correspondences of mind and reality between all minds and all reality. And so, the idea either refers to something similar to Platonic forms, to the concept of God, or it refers to a temporal structure so utterly vast and complex that it cannot be perceived (by one person empirically) in its entirety.
However, truth may only be an empirical construct. Or in other words, truth may be a logical construct derived from the empirical experience of consistency between beliefs and actualities in the empirical world. However, let us analyze the use of the word. The word true is a judgment which is applied to all statements which the mind deems to be accurate, in accordance with reality, or consistent with reality. And therefore, there is a seemingly limitless set of possible statements which could be accurately judged to be true. For the notion of reality within itself very likely possesses a limitless potential of applications.
This reminds me greatly of the concept of a function. The notion of a function, and its practical application proves that a relation which demands one output from one input can produce an infinite pattern of finite structures as long as the number of inputs is infinite. The infinite number of inputs need not come from a stream of numbers external to the function because the function can use the output of its previous application for each new use of the function. And therefore, in so far as new mathematical values can be produced from the function, a function is capable of producing an output for such a number. And the ability of the mind to create new numbers to use as inputs is limited by only the time constraints which draw humans inevitably towards death. But the relation itself, as a structure of thought, has the potential to produce an infinite pattern starting with only one finite input. And that which is infinite cannot be observed in its entirety by one individual. Can we not then say that the mind is capable of creating structures whose potentials can only be partially observed? Yes we can. And these logical constructs go well past an empirical foundation. And still they no doubt create meaningful statements, with wide ranging and essential uses in Computer Science.
But how does this capability of the mind relate back to our discussion of truth? Due to the human mind's ability to create rules which produce infinite yet only partly observable physical patterns, a truth about the pattern may be inferred from the rule without having any empirical access to that portion of the pattern. In a similar way, with an understanding of Newton’s law of universal gravitation, one could infer an approximation of the gravitational relationship between two hypothetical objects as long as the mass of the objects, and the distance between the objects, are understood. Truth, as we said above, is a concept which implied within itself is a reality far greater than the empirical observation of an individual; what is instead necessarily a part of this notion is the use of reason to abstract a quality of a particular phenomenon into a universal question. It seems then, there is a similarity between the necessity of the notion of truth in epistemology, and the reality that the human mind can create rules capable of establishing infinite patterns. The similarity is that both are knowledge structures, one theoretical, and the other creative. However, the fascinating thing is that theoretical knowledge, and the creation of such an infinite pattern, both share the quality of predictive power. An advanced theoretical abstraction, which describes the correspondence between mental states and realities, shares a predictive power. Perhaps predictive power itself should be driven into our very notion of truth. Because it seems to describe a correspondences which can be understood in a less time relative way than is typical in such descriptions.
Quine, in a similar way to the argument I presented above, asserted that logical constructs are not verified by the sense experience of one individual. Just as I asserted that the infinite pattern produced by one function would transcend the limitations of one person's observational skills, and that truth operates in a similar way, Quine asserted that our logical statements about the external world must be verified by the empirical experience of more than one individual. For instance, “The dogma of reduction-ism survives in the supposition that each statement, taken in isolation from its fellows, can admit of confirmation or information at all. My counterargument, issuing essentially from Carnap’s doctrine of the physical world in the Aufbau, is that our statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience not individually but only as a corporate body” (From a logical point of view, 41).
Because true linguistic statements cannot be drawn from one individual's experience alone, there is no strict separation of thinking of them analytically or synthetically from an individual standpoint. For the individual empirical experience is too limited to confirm the statement empirically, and therefore the thinking that is done about that statement is partly a conceptual investigation of the statement itself. The analytical and synthetic exist within themselves. For instance, if I think of the statement “the sky is blue,” I am not judging accurately based on my particular experience alone, but also I am thinking of the statements self contained implications. And these self contained implications and their compatibility with the experiences and true statements of others convinces me of the truth value of the statement. Quine stated that the two dogmas of empiricism are essentially the same at their core, “The two dogmas are, indeed, at root identical. We lately reflected that in general the truth of statements does obviously depend both upon language and upon extra-linguistic fact; and we noted that this obvious circumstances carries in its train, not logically but all too naturally, a feeling that the truth of a statement is somehow analyzable into a linguistic component and a factual component” (From a logical point of view, 41).
However one can argue that the first input is the result of empirical observation, and the whole infinite pattern derived from the function is a construct derived from experience. And in this way the position of empiricism is implicit in my proof in favor of Quine’s perspective. The mental construct that we call a number has its meaning in the categorizing of temporal experience. The physical separations and distinctions between apples allow us to see two apples as two separate apples. And thus the notion of the number 2 is derived from empirical experience. And so then, if we use the number 2 as the first input for a function which then uses the output of each previous application of the function as the new input, then an infinite pattern produced by that function originated in an empirical experience.
However, this proof is not actually incompatible with Quine’s epistemology. Quine never rejects the notion that knowledge begins with empirical experience. For example Quine stated, “The totality of our so called knowledge of beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience” (from a logical point of view, 42).
Furthermore, I want to provide sound evidence for my belief that empirical experience contains great ontological similarity to rationality, and that the structure of our bodies and minds in relation to stimulation work to compose the nature of the stimulation itself. To conceive of empirical experience as a unilateral perception of an external object is a falsehood. Experience does not flow from a monolithic and unresponsive mental system towards external objects. The perceptive capabilities are from the natural system, and they are in constant interaction with it. Empirical experience exists from subtle changes in the motion of our eyes as we observe an object to unknown motions of the brain in its cognition.
In summary, the more philosophically sophisticated position is to be held in agreement with Quine as opposed to the modern empiricism which he rejected. Not only are the abstract functions of the human mind necessary in the formation of essential epistemological notions such as truth, but they are also capable of producing realities which cannot be limited to the empirical experience of an individual. Additionally, even empirical experience is conditioned by the structure of the human mind and the human body. The relationship is not unitary but multidimensional. In order to avoid circular reasoning, and to hold realities in comparative relation to one another, allowing empirical and rational “thought” to alter one another into subtle gradations of one another will improve human understanding. And it is precisely this process, and not the process of reductionist empiricism, which provides us a sophisticated answer to the innately difficult and often mysterious problems of epistemology. The traditional definition of knowledge as true justified belief may be in need of revision. For instance, knowledge such as the ability to ride a bicycle does not typically have a language or reason oriented justification method. And yet it works consistently with predictive power. Perhaps, instead, we ought to construe knowledge as the internalization of reality in such a way that truth is formed within us. Because some element of that reality has been integrated into the human mind’s empirical and abstract thought patterns in such a way that corresponds the mind into harmony with that reality.