4. The Toolkit We Possess
We have a clear-cut challenge in our hands. We perceive a world. We can think. We have will. The goal is to explain them all in terms of the nature of reality(Ontology) and the kind of knowledge that is valid(Epistemology). As I mentioned in the previous chapter, Ontology and Epistemology are circularly dependent on each other. But we have to start somewhere.
We avoid starting with Ontology because there are almost infinite types of reality we can conceive, like the whole experience being a dream, or we living a Matrix, or we living inside a Matrix inside a Matrix, we living in a zoo watched by higher dimensional aliens and so on. But when it comes to the types of knowledge, we have limited types and we have already covered them. In fact, they were listed in the first paragraph of this page - We perceive a world. We can think.
Perceiving
This is the knowledge we gain through our senses, from our experience. In philosophical terms, it is called empiricism. If we admit empiricism as a valid form of knowledge about reality, it means that whatever you perceive gives you valid knowledge about reality. It sounds like I am stating the obvious. If you see a mountain in front of you, there is definitely a mountain in front of you. Why do we have philosophers argue about it? What if you were dreaming? What if you were hallucinating? What if it is an illusion?
Depending on the proposed ontology, your dreams and hallucinations themselves may be real or not real. In our day to day life, we consider dreams as unreal. That’s because we live our day-to-day life assuming that there is a real objective world out there. That is an Ontology in itself. And in this Ontology, dreams aren’t real. But what if the whole experience of what we call this “real world” is a dream? Why would one dream be more real than another dream? Don’t scoff at this. This is why I asked you to keep an open mind in the last chapter. There is going to be more of it.
Back to the topic of perceived/empirical knowledge. We get this type of knowledge in so many ways - Things we see, hear, smell, feel and taste. They are all part of empirical knowledge we receive. Should we consider empirical knowledge as a valid form of knowledge? Different philosophies have different opinions. The answer doesn’t have to be a binary yes/no.
Thinking
The next type of knowledge is the one we get by just thinking. In philosophical terms, it is called rationalism. Well not exactly. I am pretty sure some expert philosophers will have concerns about what I call rationalism. But let us stick to the term, for want of a better word and stick it to those philosophers. Our ability to think involves a few sub-types
Our ability to detect patterns
Logical reasoning
Inferences
Maybe I am missing a few. But these are the primary ones. Our ability to detect patterns is fairly straightforward to explain. We do this almost every second of our waking lives. We see a car coming from far in our direction and we know that it will come close to us soon. It is not suddenly going to turn into flowers. We expect sunny weather in the same months every year because we have seen the same pattern every year. Again, this sounds trivial. But to understand why this is special, imagine that you woke up one day and you don’t see the world like it is now. Instead, you see random kaleidoscopic images everywhere that don’t show any patterns. The fact that we live in a world that seems to have patterns makes our ability to detect these patterns incredibly valuable.
We also have the ability to do logical reasoning. There are two fundamental laws of logical reasoning.
The law of identity - A thing is identical to itself. A goat is a goat. It is not a sheep.
Law of non-contradiction - A thing cannot be both something and its opposite at the same time. A room cannot be both small and big. You cannot both love and hate a song.
There is another law called the law of excluded middle which says that any statement must be either true or false. But this one is a bit controversial as there are many philosophers who question this take. Some eastern philosophies, for example, state that something can be true, false, both true and false or neither true or false.
The last is our ability to make inferences. If two sides of a triangle are of lengths 3cm and 4cm, you infer that the third side must be less than 7cm because of mathematical laws. Formally speaking, there are 4 types of inferences
Deductive reasoning - This uses a Top-down logic.
All athletes are fit. Cristiano Ronaldo and Messi are athletes. So, they must be fit.
Inductive reasoning - This uses Bottom-up logic.
I talked to about ten British people and they were all polite. All British people must be polite.
Abductive reasoning - Finding the most possible explanation for something.
I heard my neighbour watching a football game with his friends and celebrating. His wife must be out of town.
Formal Logic
If A implies B and A is true, then B is true
If A implies B and B is false, then A is false
If A implies B and B implies C, then A implies C
If either A or B is true and A is false, then B is true
This is by no means complete. But this is enough to give you an idea of what rationalism is all about. It helps us validate if something is true or derive one statement from other statements. It also helps us to start with some statements which are true and derive other true statements from them. Like we do with Mathematics and Geometry. We start with axioms and we use rational thinking to derive theorems. We just have to follow the rules of logical reasoning and inferences.
Mixing them up
In our day-to-day lives, we mix them up a lot. Even in the examples I have mentioned under the Thinking section, I use experienced knowledge. For example, the fact that my neighbour was watching football is knowledge I gained out of perception. But concluding that his wife wasn’t around is knowledge I achieved by making an inference based on what I observed, which is rationalism.
But the most common way we mix things up is when we listen to other people. If your rich friend says that he went to a Michelin Star restaurant, you tend to believe it. The empirical knowledge here is you hearing your friend make that statement. The rational knowledge here is you making an inference that it is true because you know he is rich and there is no reason for him to lie.
On the other hand, if you are going on a hike and your guide says that the summit is just 1km away, you know not to trust that because he said the same thing an hour back. You hearing your guide saying it is empirical knowledge. You used rationalism to infer that it is probably not true.
Science itself is a mix of both as you use experimental evidence to verify the theories, which falls under empiricism but you use pattern detection, logical reasoning and Maths to arrive at the theories. Maths in isolation could be classified completely under rationalism.
Mysticism
Are rationalism and empiricism all kinds of knowledge we are capable of? Maybe the mystics and the saints who meditate do get access to some other kind of knowledge that normal people don’t have access to. Don’t scoff at it. Keep an open mind, remember? That’s what makes philosophy fun.
Mystic philosophies believe that there is a different type of knowledge we could potentially access, that takes us to the Absolute Truth or God. By definition, knowledge is not something we can explain with words to others, though the method to achieve this knowledge is generally shared and is obviously not easy.
Recommended books
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein
The Encyclopedia Logic by G.W.F Hegel
Both are about rationalism. I don’t have any books to recommend about empiricism. Just stay awake and experience the world and you are good.