Epistemological Relativism

The tough mind is sharp and penetrating, breaking through the crust of legends and myths and sifting the true from the false.

Who doubts that this toughness of mind is one of man’s greatest needs? Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think. 

Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love (Fortress Press, 1981) 14. 

Books, Thoughts

Yesterday while browsing the children’s books at my local Borders I spotted Rumpelstiltskin. While it is not the version I am used to, it is very nice to look at and captures the major plot points quite simply. I’m trying to figure out why it has taken me this long to get this tale and share it with my children, but I have no answer. When I read it last night my children gasped in horror at the king’s ultimatum given to the miller’s daughter. They gasped even louder as the straw-filled rooms grew in size after each night. It was great fun and I’m sure it will become a common bedtime request.

Stories, real or imagined, have incredible power. While I’m certain that the lectures I give my oldest are quickly forgotten, I know with equal certainty that after just one reading of Rumpelstiltkin that the story will be forever locked away in her memories. This is instructive in a number of ways. Using stories to communicate moral messages, values and beliefs can be found in some of the oldest documents in antiquity. I think that as a modern society where we are surrounded by “facts” and “laws”, we quickly forget the power of story. This is especially the case when we forget that most young children are not developmentally ready to hang “facts” and “laws” onto their neural hooks and use them appropriately. Stories have this magic ability to bypass the developmental requirements and plant themselves firmly within the child’s mind with all the associated moral messages. Are stories that contain the messages we value most more effective than other methods? I don’t know, but it would seem quite foolish to completely ignore the wisdom and traditions of previous generations.

Books, General, Homeschool, Thoughts

G.K. Chesterton in The Everlasting Man writes about the ultimate and unspoken aim in mythology. He describes it rather appropriately as an almost indirect, semi-conscious search for that something that we all know is out there, but at times are not too sure where to look or what to look for. Mythology’s stories are a way to imagine what things might be like, knowing that there is some deep connection, not between the objects of mythology itself, but between the ideas and themes they conjure and reality itself.

Every true artist does feel, consciously or unconsciously, that he is touching transcendental truths; that his images are shadows of things seen through the veil. In other words, the natural mystic does know that there is there; something behind the clouds or within the trees; but he believes that the pursuit of beauty is the way to find it; that imagination is a sort of incantation that can call it up.

Chesterton observes, quite accurately I might add, a type of experience an artist has when engaged in his craft. This “seeing through the veil” is something that at times can be articulated and at others remains just below the consciousness. I’ve never read any such treatment of this, but maybe I haven’t read enough.

Very deep things in our nature, some dim sense of dependence of great things upon small, some dark suggestion that the things nearest to us stretch far beyond our power, some sacramental feeling of magic in material substances, and many more emotions past finding out, are in an idea like that of the external soul.

I’ll just let you think about this one. I think it is fantastic.

In a word, mythology is a search; it is something that combines a recurrent desire with a recurrent doubt, mixing a most hungry sincerity in the idea of seeking for a place with a most dark and deep levity about all the places found.

I love this duality in mythology’s quest. The doubt and desire collide as the myths attempt to grasp at what is behind the veil.

Books

Last night we started another bed-time book. Always the romantic I try to find books that communicate the beauty of nature wrapped in an exciting and adventurous story. I hope to give the kids, at a worst, an appreciation for nature and, at best, a longing to be a part of it. Yes, unfortunately living in the concrete jungle in Southern California we have to resort to books instead of the real thing. I chose The Wind and The Willows. The large hardback edition that I purchased has fantastic illustrations by Michael Hague. The illustrations are great a jumpstart for the imagination. Since they are not on every page the illustrations aren’t too big of a distraction and keep the kids in suspense and attentive. The good news is that this text is public domain so you can always go here and download a copy to print. It won’t have the pictures, but that’s okay. So here is an great excerpt from the text. The Mole has just stumbled upon a river for the first time in his life.

Never in his life had he seen a river before–this sleek, sinuous, full-bodied animal, chasing and chuckling, gripping things with a gurgle and leaving them with a laugh, to fling itself on fresh playmates that shook themselves free, and were caught and held again. All was a-shake and a-shiver–glints and gleams and sparkles, rustle and swirl, chatter and bubble. The Mole was bewitched, entranced, fascinated. By the side of the river he trotted as one trots, when very small, by the side of a man who holds one spell-bound by exciting stories; and when tired at last, he sat on the bank, while the river still chattered on to him, a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea.

- Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows (1908)

Books

After reading the first thirty pages of “The Structure of Empirical Knowledge” by Laurence Bonjour I can say that I’m looking forward to listening to the author discuss the challenges that affect theories of epistemic justification. Epistemic justification is nothing more than the reasons (and the criteria which constitute valid reasons) which we possess for thinking that our beliefs are true. The simplicity misleads as Bonjour makes clear. As early as chapter one he attempts to define knowledge, justification, what a theory of justification should include and the challenges associated with each.

Bonjour uses the classic definition for determining what should “constitute a genuine instance of propositional knowledge”. He touches on the Gettier problem but insists that this definition is close enough. The definition looks like this:

(1) A must believe confidently that P,

(2) P must be true, and

(3) A’s belief that P must be adequately justified.

If you meet these three criteria then you are in possession of knowledge. Notice I didn’t say “true knowledge” as that is superfluous. When we say knowledge with this test in mind and we say that we are in possession of it, we know that it passed test number (2) and is therefore true.

(1) and (2) are somewhat straightforward, but in the back of everyone’s mind there is something curious about (3). We may ask, “What does adequately justified mean?”. Bonjour doesn’t waste time in answering by stating that (3) is “clearly the central concept in the whole theory of knowledge”. He attempts to define what epistemic justification is and how it is different from other types of justification. He answers the question by reflecting on why justification is sought and valued.

“What makes us cognitive beings at all is our capacity for belief, and the goal of our distinctively cognitive endeavors is truth: we want our beliefs to correctly and accurately depict the world.”

Too bad we don’t have immediate and precise access to this truth. Justification, says Bonjour, is

“..that of a means to truth, a more directly attainable mediating link between our subjective starting point and our objective goal.”

Justification provides us with good reasons for thinking we possess knowledge. And that, according to Bonjour, is what this is all about.

“The distinguishing characteristic of epistemic justification is this its essential or internal relation to the cognitive goal of truth. It follows that one’s cognitive endeavors are epistemically justified only if and to the extent that they are aimed at this goal, which means very roughly that one accepts all and only those beliefs which one has good reason to think are true.”

We want to have an accurate view of the world, but sometimes we fall victim to irresponsibility.

“To accept a belief in the absence of such a reason, however appealing or even mandatory such acceptance might be from some other standpoint, is to neglect the pursuit of truth; such acceptance is, one might say, epistemically irresponsible.”

The challenge remains, however, to come up with a criteria that produces epistemic justification. There’s more though. Our criteria must be shown to be “adequately truth-conducive”. In other words, we can’t just pick any criteria that suits us. We have to pick one that passes yet another test. This Bonjour calls “metajustification“. So, we need a criteria and reasons why our chosen criteria is the most truth-conducive. The rest of the text is devoted to these two considerations.

Books, Philosophy

My dingy, banged-up cardboard box arrived today from Amazon. After a couple of months sitting at the top of my wishlist I decided to take the plunge and purchase C. Behan McCullagh’s examination and defense of the objectivity of history. I’ve only skimmed the table of contents (for the 10th time) and read through a few pages of the introduction, but it looks promising. Here are a few quotes to give you an idea of why I’m looking forward to this read. Of course, it could be that I’m fascinated by the “knowledge problem” manifested in various forms across many disciplines.

“..the facts of cultural relativism and of the relation between language and reality require historians to give up any naive assumption that historical descriptions correspond exactly to the events which they describe in the past.”

It seems as though McCullagh understands the challenges of describing the past in ways that are reflective of the reality at the time.

“Nevertheless there is a sense, which I shall define, in which historical descriptions can be true of the past, allowing that they are always couched in the concepts of a particular culture.”

Again, he understands that both the writer and the historian are selective and constrained to varying degrees by their particular culture, ways of thinking and previous experiences. Coming to the table with this acknowledge goes a long way towards uncovering, as much as we are able, the truth about the past.

“It is normal for there to be more than one true characterization of an event or historical period. The variety of historical interpretations does not exclude the possibility of their truth.”

Behan is quickly responding to those the would claim that the plurality of interpretations is an indication that we cannot recover anything truthful from this enterprise.

Books

I finished Part One of A Marginal Jew which attempts to sketch the problem of reconstructing (or constructing if you’re new) the historical Jesus. Meier discusses categories, sources and criteria and concludes the section with a chapter titled “Why Bother?” where he addresses the theological motivations of such an exercise. I’ll leave anyone interested with a few excellent quotes. They address the benefit of such endeavors. The primary benefit being, in my opinion, a much needed corrective to the ideas, presumptions and creations offered by good-intentioned theologians. While perhaps not all wrong, they had their own challenges (culture, language, biases) that should cause us to critically evaluate some the conclusions these men arrived at.

Like good sociology, the historical Jesus subverts not just some ideologies, but all idealogies.. (p.199)

Indeed the usefulness of the historical Jsus to theology is that he ultimately eludes all our neat theological programs; he brings all of them into question by refusing to fit into the boxes we create for him. (p.199)

Properly understood, the historical Jesus is a bulwark against the reduction of Christian faith in general and christology in particular to “relevant” ideology of any stripe. His [Jesus] refusal to be held fast by any given school of thought is what drives theologians onward into new paths; hence the historical Jsus remains a constant stimulus to theological renewal. (p.200)

Books, Thoughts

It has been several months since I’ve read C.S. Lewis, but his advice regarding the reading of old books is timely. Rather than state what has already been presented succintly by Lewis himself I’ll just provide the quote.

Now this seems to me topsy-turvy. Naturally, since I myself am a writer, I do not wish the ordinary reader to read no modern books. But if he must read only the new or only the old, I would advise him to read the old. And I would give him this advice precisely because he is an amateur and therefore much less protected than the expert against the dangers of an exclusive contemporary diet. A new book is still on its trial and the amateur is not in a position to judge it. It has to be tested against the great body of Christian thought down the ages, and all its hidden implications (often unsuspected by the author himself) have to be brought to light. Often it cannot be fully understood without the knowledge of a good many other modern books. If you join at eleven o’clock a conversation which began at eight you will often not see the real bearing of what is said. Remarks which seem to you very ordinary will produce laughter or irritation and you will not see why—the reason, of course, being that the earlier stages of the conversation have given them a special point. In the same way sentences in a modern book which look quite ordinary may be directed at some other book; in this way you may be led to accept what you would have indignantly rejected if you knew its real significance. The only safety is to have a standard of plain, central Christianity (”mere Christianity” as Baxter called it) which puts the controversies of the moment in their proper perspective. Such a standard can be acquired only from the old books. It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.

–C.S. Lewis

Thanks to Between Two Worlds for jogging my memory. While Lewis presents this in a “Christian” context, I think the principle is easily applicable to all forms of knowledge, theories and ideas found in contemporary books. It is for this reason and a few others that I’ve begun the incredible journey of western thought starting from the pre-socratics. Understanding this continuum of tension and transformation is, in my view, a necessary component to fully understanding and responding to new and interesting ideas of our own day. The more familiar we are with the ideas of ages gone by the more we realize that many new ideas are not as new as they purport to be.

Books, Thoughts

I finally finished reading N.T. Wright’s large tome “New Testament and the People of God” about a month ago. I have to say there are lots of great ideas in that book. Of course, as any good book will do, there were times when I disagreed entirely with some of Wright’s points. At the same time there were other points during my reading where I was glad to hear someone come to the same conclusions. The book was very much a dialogue for me. I had many ideas, questions and musings that troubled me that I had been attempting to resolve through reflection. Wright seems to have had similar experiences and wrote about many of these same challenges. Of course I still have questions, but Wright did go a long way to communicate a relatively coherrent method of discovering possible and probable answers to some of these questions.

What is most striking to me is that in this work Wright has the luxury of stepping past the theological implications of his observations. I’m sure he’s addressed these elsewhere in other works, but as a case in point I’ll focus on the normative power of narrative texts. Simply , this is the question (and answer) of how texts about true events (a narrative) have the power to prescribe behavior. Wright clearly believes that many of the events documented in Christian and Jewish literature actually occurred. What he does not touch in his text is how this affects us, if at all in ways beyond the simple narrative information. In other words, he completely dodges what most would consider almost foundational. Sure, we’ve read the story, but what is descriptive (merely a story) and what, if anything, is prescriptive. Wright’s take on it is far beyond what is reasonable post about. What I can appreciate, though, is Wright’s historical method. I believe his intention was to approach the subject from this perspective alone and delay the theological implications.

Understanding, to the best of our ability, what people said, thought and hoped for will go along way towards understanding texts that have been subjectivized far too often for the gain of other people or groups. Wright’s method provides a possible lens for the correct understanding the works of the New Testament writers without forcing a priori assumptions upon them. This, I think, takes a lot of courage. As you can see there is a lot to like and a lot to dislike (or disagree if you prefer) about this book, but like any lively and intelligient debate, it is well worth the effort.

Books, Theology, Thoughts

It seems that many works of classic literature were meant for much more than aesthetic appeal. These works, no doubt, contain impressive aesthetic qualities such as vivid imagery, well structured prose and/or poetry and a compelling story. If it weren’t for these and many other elements I doubt these works would have and had such wide-ranging and lasting appeal. What is interesting to consider is that these works were predominantly used as vehicles to deliver moral, political and religious messages.

There is nothing wrong with enjoying a work of literature for this aesthetic appeal and one could spend a significant amount of time exploring and admiring this dimension of the text. We must remember, however, that the people who read or heard these works perhaps understood them in a way that exceeded this aesthetic dimension. We know that, for example, Plato loathed the poets for their irresponsible use power. There would be no reasonable explanation for Plato’s low view of this group if the works they produced were merely entertainment. The tales that the poets created and communicated carried with them very specific messages intended to subvert the minds of the audiences. This subversion was, of course, meant to draw the hearer into alignment with the poets view of the world.

Why does this matter? Or, perhaps more importantly, why do I bother with such distinctions? Because inasmuch as these are works of literature with aesthetic appeal they are also a reflection of the thoughts and ideas of ages gone by. We get a glimpse of some of these ideas as they circulated during their periods of authorship. Historical-critical analysis would sometimes use these works to see what types of stories people told in order to work backwards to determine beliefs, ideas and challenges. What we view as merely aesthetic appreciation or entertainment is much, much more. To embark on a mission of classical reading without a grasp of the wider world in which these works were authored is to miss the much larger dimension of the story the authors were trying to tell.

Can we get by with an entertainment only reading of these works? Of course we can and we will still grow in our understanding and appreciation of the authors and their cultures. But when we approach reading with the other dimensions in mind we experience a richer  aspect of the world in which the author and original readers lived. It interesting to note that we, for the most part, do this with modern works. These messages are not lost to us because we are much closer culturally and, at a minimum, temporally to the ideas. We can recognize with a fair degree of accuracy some of these moral, political and religious messages.

Books, Thoughts