In today's post I want to add to the previous post Literature and Truth by taking a phenomenological approach to knowledge. For those who don't know the term 'phenomenology', I shall give a rough definition. Phenomenology is the study of consciousness from a first-person point of view. A phenomenologist like Husserl might look at a chair and then describe what it is like to look at the chair from his own perspective. In doing so he performs an act called epoch or transcendental reduction - he brackets out the issue of whether the object he observes is real or not. Instead he focusses on his experience of looking. In the phenomenological account I am intending to give I am not exactly going to bracket out the issue of truth and falsehood. The purpose of the essay is to talk precisely about these things. Rather I am going to give some account of how one decides what is true or not.
I wake in the morning, having dreamt that I was talking to Che Guevara. For a moment, when I awake, I do not know if the dream was real or not. Then reality reasserts itself: Che Guevara was a real person once but my conversation with him did not really occur. It was only a dream. I am now in reality. I get up and read the paper. I read that there has been a massacre in Nice, the French city. I know Nice is real - in fact, I have been there. Because I have memories of Nice I know it exists. But even if I had never visited Nice, I know from TV and newspapers, from books and from the accounts of friends who have visited it, that Nice exists. I could put my faith in credible hearsay, even if I had no memories of it. I read that a massacre has occurred. I regard the newspaper I am reading as a trustworthy source of information about the world and so I choose to believe that this massacre actually happened. It would not surprise me if some small details were wrong - no journalist is perfect. But it is likely that what I read is true.
I read a chapter of the novel I borrowed from the library, Hystopia by David Means. One of the protagonists is a character called Singleton. I know that Singleton does not exist and has never existed. He is only a character in a novel. I conclude that he does not exist based on a great deal of circumstantial evidence. The work I am reading gives all indications of being a novel, and novels are fictions that deal with fictional characters. Consequently Singleton must be fictional. The novel is set in an alternative America in which JFK has survived multiple assassination attempts and is serving his third term. I know that JFK was a real person. I know this from newspapers, conversations with friends and from historical textbooks. But I also know that the real JFK died during his first term. In my world there are two JFKs, the real one and the one invented by David Means. The first is (was) real; the second is fictional.
I go for a walk down real streets and past real people. I visit a library which my senses tell me is palpable and real and not some phantom library in a dream. I think of the phrase by William Blake; "How do you know but every Bird that cuts the airy way,/ Is an immense world of delight, clos'd by your senses five?" In the library, I pick up an old copy of The National Enquirer and read the front page article that reports that Ted Cruz's father was involved in the JFK assassination. I judge this story false. I judge it false for a number of reasons: I know that The National Enquirer is not a reliable source of information, I know that its readers often like conspiracy theories and that this paper tries to pander to its audience, I suspect that the coincidence (Cruz having been a presidential candidate) is too great for this story to be plausible. Too great a coincidence often disqualifies something from being true. I know, furthermore, that other more reputable news sources have rubbished this claim about Ted Cruz's father. Having read this article, I reflect that Donald Trump chose to believe it, and reflect furthermore that in Trump's world The National Enquirer is a reliable source of information even though in my world it is not.
I return home and watch Bill Maher on Youtube. I believe that Maher really exists and is really called Maher. Maher makes the following joke about Trump: he says (in part) that it is obvious that Trump is "an abandoned, frightened child swirling in black emptiness". I do not know if this assessment of Trump's personality is true or false but it seems plausible. I could choose to believe it if I want. I think of Obama's refusal to use the phrase "Islamic terrorism" - I suspect that this phrase could name a true phenomenon but I do not believe that West is engaged in a war against Islam. However many others do. How can one make up one's mind about a great abstract idea like "Islam"? Or "love" or "war" or "freedom"?
The point I am trying to make is that the world is full of objects and propositions, some of which are real and some of which aren't, some of which are true and other false, some of which it is impossible to know whether true of false. When we engage in the world we are constantly attributing reality to, or withholding it from, the various things we encounter. From a phenomenological perspective, existence is a property. Now, traditional analytic philosophy does not consider existence a property; rather it is considered the instantiation of properties. Analytic philosophy denies the existence of fictional objects. But the problem with this perspective is that philosophers (and scientists and psychiatrists) who say this are implicitly assuming an omniscience that is not justified, an objectivity that is unwarranted. Reality is subjective, not objective. We do not all live in the same world. Rational philosophers do not have unproblematic access to an objective reality. Every individual lives in a different world, "clos'd by your senses five". This is the lesson of phenomenology. We do not base most of our knowledge on empirical observation; rather almost everything we know comes to us from others, from hearsay. For instance, I choose to believe Einstein over Newton, not because I have performed the necessary experiments, but because I accept the scientific consensus. The test of intelligence is the ability to judge who to believe and who not to believe, whose opinion to accept and whose to discard. This conclusion may be depressing. But is better for intellectuals to step off their pedestals and admit fallibility, then to adhere to dogma. We may all live in different worlds but our worlds are connected. The alternative to phenomenology is fundamentalism. Or even totalitarianism.
No comments:
Post a Comment