Is man the measure of all things? Or at least, are creatures with subjective internal consciousness the measure of all things? In ancient Greece, the Sophists answered yes. In so doing, they inaugurated Western reflection on a perennial question that stretches throughout both theoretical and practical philosophy, epistemology and ethics.
I’ve briefly discussed this question before, with a focus on ethics. Afterwards, following James Doull, I examined how it gets works out in the history of Western philosophy after the Sophists – in ethics. But as Doull knew, there is an epistemological story that parallels the ethical. God in the Hebrew Bible is the arbiter of truth as well as ethics; the Sophists reduce not merely justice and goodness, but truth, to the subject that knows them. (In a similar way, for Doull, Plato’s Sophist dialogue makes essentially the same point as the Statesman, even though it would appear that one is entirely about metaphysics and the other about politics; both are asking how ideals can relate to physical reality.)
In ethics, as I noted in the earlier post, analytic philosophers tend to use the terms internalism and externalism to describe the opposing positions on this question. In ethics, internalists say that genuine reasons for action must come from our own motivations or desires; externalists say there can be reasons that come from outside us. To use Doull’s examples, the Sophists are the ultimate ethical internalists, the Hebrew Bible the ultimate ethical externalist text. (Consider Ecclesiastes, which repeatedly advises us to fear God and follow his commandments even though it repeatedly denies the possibility of our attaining any benefit for doing so, in this life or the next.)
Now, as well as in ethics, analytic philosophers also use the terms “internalism” and “externalism” to describe positions in epistemology (the theory of knowledge). Ethan Mills discussed this other form of the distinction in comments on a recent post, and I’ve been trying to learn some more about it. What follows is some preliminary attempts of mine to think through the distinction between internalism and externalism in epistemology, and relate it to the distinction in ethics. Apologies if the results are somewhat unclear, as I’m still thinking it through.
Before reading this analytical literature, I had already saw an important internal/external distinction of sorts in epistemology, parallel to the one in ethics. (Doull influenced my thinking here too.) In ethics, we may ask whether we acting subjects are the measure of goodness; just so, in epistemology, we may ask whether we knowing subjects are the measure of knowledge. Ethical internalists say our reasons for action must all come from within us, from our motivations; ethical externalists say we can have reasons to act independent of our motivations. There seems to be a parallel set of questions in epistemology: can the reasons for our beliefs be independent of the ways we come to know them? For example, can we logically speak of a truth that no subject is capable of knowing? Or as the Sophists would put it: is man the measure of truth?
It is not quite clear to me, though, that these questions are what analytic philosophers mean when they speak of “internalist” and “externalist” epistemologies. In Ethan’s comment, the key question dividing internalism and externalism is: Can we really be said to know something if we don’t or can’t know why we know it? Externalists say we can, internalists say we can’t. In online introductory works on internalism and externalism, the problem is phrased in terms of justification rather than knowledge: can our beliefs be justified even in cases where we don’t or can’t know why we hold them?
Now, when the distinction was put in this way, it was not immediately clear to me why these positions were even called “internalism” and “externalism.” In ethics the terminology seems clear enough to me: internalists say that any reasons for action must come from our motivations, which are inside us. But what is “inside us” about knowing how we know or knowing why we hold our beliefs, the hallmark of epistemological “internalism” in the analytic sense? Another article, by Joe Cruz and John Pollock, helped clarify. Internalism on Cruz and Pollock’s view “is the view that all the factors relevant to the justification of a belief are importantly internal to the believer”; our knowing how we know or why we hold our beliefs is itself internal to us. An example of the contrasting, externalist view would be “reliabilism”: the view that a belief is justified if it comes from a source that is in its nature likely to be correct, even if we don’t know that it comes from that source. (So in recent debates “common sense” was defended on the grounds that it is
“reliable.”) The distinction might be illustrated with an example from Laurence BonJour:
Norman, under certain conditions that usually obtain, is a completely reliable clairvoyant with respect to certain kinds of subject matter. He possesses no evidence or reasons of any kind for or against the general possibility of such a cognitive power, or for or against the thesis that he possesses it. One day Norman comes to believe that the President is in New York City, though he has no evidence either for or against his belief. In fact the belief is true and results from his clairvoyant power, under circumstances in which it is completely reliable.
A reliabilist would need to say that Norman’s belief that the President is in New York City is justified, because his clairvoyant power is reliable – even though Norman doesn’t know it’s reliable. (Perhaps it’s one of the first few times the power has manifested.) By contrast, an internalist, like BonJour, says that in such a case Norman’s belief is not justified – even though it’s true. Which is to say, I think, that Norman has no reason to believe the President is in New York.
It’s on this matter of “reasons to believe” that I suspect the two analytical internalism/externalism distinctions dovetail the most. The internalism/externalism question in epistemological justification asks: what counts as a good reason to believe something? In ethics, it asks: what counts as a good reason to do something? In both cases, the internalist says that the good reason must be within us.
Ethan notes in his comments that the South Asian Nyāya school is similar to the reliabilists: what matters is that knowledge is formed by the right kind of process, not anything within us. We can know without knowing how we know. So they are effectively externalists in the analytical sense at issue here. Yet at the same time, the Nyāya have a slogan that “whatever exists is nameable and knowable” – for something to exist objectively, it must be available to subjective knowledge. To speak of something which exists but we couldn’t know – that is meaningless. Here, man (or other subjective knowers) is in some sense the measure of truth, as the Sophists would have wanted to have it. On this score, the Nyāya view seems more comparable to ethical internalism, the view that good reasons must come from within us – truth is in some sense within us knowers as well. Perhaps one could describe the Nyāya as externalists epistemologically, but internalists metaphysically or ontologically?
Maybe Bonjour is trying to drive a wedge between knowledge as a result of factors which are internal to the clairvoyant, a special power, and the external factors, i.e. the elaborate disinformation put out by the Gov. which should be reliable. Reliability in this case is thrown back to the internal sphere, the implication being that this is always the case. I have to admit that I find this a puzzling scenario and a flagrant misrepresentation of clairvoyance. Again a symptom of the desire to create a ‘killer’ thought experiment which obscures more than it clarifies.
In any case reliabilism as I understand it is more to do with our natural constitution which Thos. Reid wrote about and Moore put up his hands for.
Knowing why I know that P, i.e., knowing the reasons for holding that I know that P, is not necessarily identical to knowing how I know that P, i.e., the process which yields me knowledge that P.
It suffices that a person who makes a genuine knowledge claim (in contrast to guesswork, conjecture, speculation, or mere belief) also knows how to justify it.
For instance, I know that I have two hands because I can see and feel them, others can see them and feel them, I can perform tasks with them, etc. These are all reasons justifying my claim to know that I have two hands.
But this is not identical to knowing the physical mechanisms and processes which underlie seeing and feeling my two hands and the performance of actions or tasks with those hands.
Another example. I claim to know a language and my ability to speak and write in that language provides a justification for that claim. But this does not imply that I know the complex physical and cognitive processes underlying my knowledge and use of that language.
It has to do with the ambiguity of “how I know”. It could mean “why I know”, i.e., the justification or reasons for claiming to know, or the whole process of knowing.
What I am saying is that a knowledge-claim only requires knowing the justification for it and not the whole process underlying that knowledge.
“Is man the measure of all things? Or at least, are creatures with subjective internal consciousness the measure of all things?”
What does the question mean? The word “measure” could mean, in this context, “standard”. If we use “measure” in the sense of “standard”, the question then is “Standard for what?”. Standards are used for evaluation, for comparisons, and so forth. And then the next question is: “Evaluation of what?” or “Comparison of what?”. I suppose the answer is “all things”.
Is man the standard of comparison of all things? Is man the standard of evaluation of all things? What do these questions mean?
In one sense, they could mean that man IS the standard in terms of which all things are compared and evaluated. In another sense, they could mean that man provides the standard of comparison and evaluation of all things.
The first sense leads to absurdities. How is a mountain to be compared to man and evaluated in terms of this comparison? It makes no sense.
Hence, it must be the second sense which is meaningful: man provides the standard(s) of comparison and evaluation of all things.
Comparison and evaluation is a function of an advanced form of intelligence, and, hence, consciousness. Since only humans have this advanced form of intelligence and consciousness on this planet, certainly they are the only beings on this planet which can formulate and provide the standards of comparison and evaluation of all things.
It does not follow from this, of course, that they are the only beings which do so. In the face of the high probability that there are beings elsewhere in the universe whose intelligence is at least equal to humans, humility requires that we simply say that beings with advanced intelligence are the only kind of beings which can formulate standards for comparing and evaluating all things.
“All things”? If anything is known to exist, then a highly intelligent being is the only kind of being which can compare it with other known things and evaluate it, but this is perfectly consistent with acknowledging that there may be things or facts which will remain unknown to any and all highly intelligent beings since even a high level if intelligence does not entail omniscience.
So, a highly intelligent being such as man is the measure(r) of, or provides the standards of comparison and evaluation of, only the things which are known by it to exist.
None of this supports the absurd notion that the existence of all things depends on man or that man’s knowledge is the measure of reality.
Amod can answer better than I can what he means in asking whether creatures with a subjective internal consciousness are the measure of all things.
This is my take on it: To measure requires two things, (i) an object to measure, and (ii) a knower that creates a reference point for measuring. As an example, I hear that there are boiling mineral springs in the Western desert where some varieties of shrimp live. Our perception of these springs is that they are acalding hot, undrinkable and uninhabitable. The animals that live in the springs would view them as temperate and as an ideal home with all that is necessary for life.
One take away from Amod’s question is whether we can say that any knowledge (in the sense of measurement and comparison) can be said to exist in an objective sense. And if our understanding of the world is always based on subjective perception, whether we can say that an external world exists that is not conditioned on our internal, subjective experience.
I don’t think that Amod was necessarily limiting his question to man only — or to other beings that can formulate abstract standards for evaluation and comparison.
Lack of clarity on the key expression “measure of” is likely to produce confusion here.
No man is a measure of anything in the literal sense of “measure”. But, of course, every man is a “measurer” of this or that and employs standards of measurement to do that.
This is all trite. Rocks cannot do that and animals cannot possibly measure or judge whether a claim is true or false, or whether an action is morally good or bad.
“In ethics, we may ask whether we acting subjects are the measure of goodness; just so, in epistemology, we may ask whether we knowing subjects are the measure of knowledge.”
What is the point of asking whether we acting subjects are the measure of goodness if the question only makes sense if it means “whether we acting subjects are measurers of goodness”? Who else is there to measure the goodness of our actions? God or gods or ET’s? In that case, the question should be whether there is a God or whether there are Gods or ET’s who can measure the goodness of our actions.
The same applies to the epistemological question. Who else is there to measure knowledge other than knowing subjects who also have the capacity to reflect on their knowledge?
In philosophy, the meaning of the question itself is the central problem!
“can we logically speak of a truth that no subject is capable of knowing?”
We can certainly and coherently claim that there are countless truths which any subject capable of knowledge does not know at any given time.
But to say that there are truths which no subject is capable of knowing, i.e., there are truths which no subject can ever know? What sort an argument would show this claim to be plausible?
In both cases, we cannot, obviously, state what these truths are since that would imply that we already know them!
The obscuring philosophical clouds can be driven away by putting the point simply: there are many facts of which we have no knowledge at any given time. This will always be the case. Therefore, our knowledge will never be exhaustive of reality or the totality of facts.
“Or as the Sophists would put it: is man the measure of truth?” What does the question mean?
“But to say that there are truths which no subject is capable of knowing, i.e., there are truths which no subject can ever know? What sort of an argument would show this claim to be plausible?”
This isn’t a serious problem. All you need to do is to take a problem or issue which is too big or too complex for any finite knowing subject, too big or complex for its faculties, and you have a way of showing that the entity is not capable of knowing the answer to that problem or issue. Thus, the answer to the question “can we logically speak of a truth that no subject is capable of knowing?” is not only that we can, but that it is demonstrably so.
There are kinds of entities on this planet and in the universe which are innumerable, but not infinite. What is the exact number of fishes on this planet? What is the exact number of stars in the universe? At any given time, it is certainly true that there is an exact number of fishes on this planet or an exact number of stars in the universe. But this truth is certainly beyond the scope of any finite knowing subject, e.g., man, gods, ET’s, to determine.
McGinn proposed the idea of cognitive closure for consciousness. Are there things that we realize but cannot know. W.B.Yeats once said ‘man can embody truth but he cannot know it’.
What is the difference between realizing and knowing? Could you give examples?
He / She realized the Greek ideal of beauty/the good life/ arete. Dr. Bovary realized that his marriage was an illusion. A Change of Context can be a realization in which nothing in particular has been changed but everything has been changed. In Aristotle the idea of connaturality i.e. What the good man does is the ‘good’. He himself may not be able to draw down a rubric but there it is, that’s good.
From War and Peace:
“Oh, well, of course, folks are different. One man lives for his own wants and nothing else, like Mituh, he only thinks of filling his belly, but Fokanitch, is a righteous man. He lives for his soul. He does not forget God.”
“How thinks of God? How does he live for his soul?” Levin almost shouted.
“Why, to be sure, in truth, in God’s way. Folks are different. Take you now, you wouldn’t wrong a man ……”
“Yes, yes, good-bye!” said Levin, breathless with excitement, and turning round he took his stick and walked quickly away towards home. At the peasant’s words that Fokanitch lived for his soul, in truth, in God’s way, undefined but significant ideas seemed to burst out as though they had been locked up, and all striving towards one goal, they thronged whirling through his head, blinding him with their light.
What do you mean?
“Realize” is ambiguous. It could mean “know” or “understand”, e.g., “I realize that it is extremely hot outside.”. In this sense, obviously, there is no distinction between saying that “I realize that it is extremely hot outside.” and “I know that it is extremely hot outside.”
But “realize” has another meaning. It could also mean “attain”, e.g., “I’ve realized my goal of becoming an accomplished Poker player.”
Can this be done with stick figures? It would involve a cast of thousands. Still let’s have a go. The stranger in front of you in the queue drops money out of his pocket. You pick it up and hand it to him. (a) you do this without thinking and (b) having considered the ethical implications of taking what is not yours you hand him the money. Is (a) the Aristotelian good person who has realized the good and (b) the Confucian (?) rule follower. Would (b) be a safer man as a citizen than the spontaneous (a) even indeed a more ethical person? However “. I mean, say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, at least it’s an ethos.”(Walter, The Big Lebowski) If I gave up the money after feeling the temptation to keep it would that be more meritorious in that it is a move towards realization?
There’s a nice wikipedia article on ‘embodied cognition’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_cognition
What do you (all) think of the idea that there may be truths which are not knowable for more fundamental reasons? If there were aliens with differently-structured brains, or truly conscious artificial intelligences, might there be truths that they could know, and we cannot? There are famous arguments about knowing what it’s like to be a bat, but how about what it’s like to be software code? If such a different mind can exist, it may never be able to adequately explain its reasoning/justification to us humans (and vice versa).
I imagine that the universe does not solely comprise things that fit into our conscious/conceptual/neural capabilities. However, I’m well aware that this opinion is pure speculation, so I’d be interested in hearing others’ thoughts.
When will Amod employ his considerable intellectual powers to devote himself or stick to questions which really matter.
If you want to understand the process by which humans have gained real knowledge, it’s better to take an established field of knowledge, craft, or technology, e.g., astronomy, physics, violin-making, bridge-building, or medicine, and devote one’s precious time to understanding the painstaking inquiries, labor, and personal sacrifices of great minds over centuries which has led to the accumulation of real knowledge instead of wasting time on intellectually “thin” or lightweight questions for which there are obvious answers, i.e., “Do we know anything?”, “How do we know anything?”, “If we know something, do we also know the way to justify the knowledge claim?”, “Is there reliable knowledge?”, etc.
By the way, apropos the much-vaunted “perennial questions”, why isn’t it foolish to keep asking the same questions again and again despite the answers provided by great minds? And if the questions can’t be solved or answered conclusively even by great minds, again why isn’t it foolish to waste one’s time on those questions?
Neocarvaka, there are already other blogs out there devoted to astronomy, physics, medicine, and probably violin-making and bridge-building. If you are convinced that the questions characteristically asked on this blog do not really matter, then perhaps commenting on it is not the most fruitful use of your time.
I was talking about drawing out epistemological implications from a careful study of a field in which there has been a steady accumulation of knowledge.
My comment had to do specifically with your approach to knowledge and I did not mean to convey the impression that your philosophical concerns on this blog were not important.
I’m flattered to be mentioned in this week’s blog! Thanks!
I think the Cruz and Pollock definition of internalism sounds right. The way I think of it is that the factors that make something justified (or whatever other ingredient of knowledge you might use) are cognitively available to the agent. This doesn’t mean the agent actually does access the factors, just that s/he *could* access them. Externalism is simply a denial of that (some of the factors might be available, but not all of them have to be). The “psychic Norman” thought experiment is a classic. Another one from real life are “chicken sexers,” people who can tell the sex of a baby chick just by looking at it (which is apparently a lot harder than you’d think). Chicken sexers have some relatively reliable process of sexing the chicks, but if you ask them HOW they do it, they can’t tell you. They “just know.” Do they really know or is it a lucky guess? Conflicting intuitions on this and other thought experiments pretty much fuel the whole debate.
The comparison of internalism/externalism in ethics and epistemology is interesting. I had always assumed they were unrelated, but the idea of the source of the reason makes sense. I wonder if this is an issue: you could (as I do) lean toward externalism in epistemolgy and internalism in ethics. Am I just confused? Or are these senses not all that related after all?
As for Nyāya, I think their “verificationist realism” is fascinating and seems not to have ever occurred to anyone in Western philosophy. Usually it’s assumed that verificationists are idealists or anti-realists whereas realists are committed to the idea that there are unverifiable truths, but Nyāya muddies these assumptions. Another great reason to study Nyāya!
Any account of knowledge, or any extension of the application of the word “know”, which obliterates the clear distinction between knowing and guessing, i.e., not knowing, is undermined by an obvious reductio ad absurdum.
Of course, Ethan. Your comments are helpful, thoughtful and interesting, and I’m glad to have you around.
Even if I’m right that there’s a link between internalism/externalism in epistemology and in ethics, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re confused. It would depend on whether there’s actually a relevant difference between the two fields – between theoretical and practical reasoning, perhaps.
Ethan:
It’s interesting that the Nyaya folk regard precognition as an extraordinary perception which it is. The internalist/externalist dichotomy is of relatively recent origin given the geologic speed at which problem fields in philosophy move and one might be inclined to think that it is a lightly disguised drift back to representationalism and idealism. For instance if I say that I see an elm tree in the yard, does asking ‘What is your evidence for that’, make any sense? Would believing the evidence of my senses be an answer? As a locution does it add anything? As well the concept of evidence implies that it can be overlooked as well as found. It is broad daylight, my sight is normal, I happen to have studied the identification of trees, so out of that foundation I can say ‘that’s an elm in the yard’. The sense-data position may be useful as a working hypothesis for Psychology whilst being metaphysically unsustainable.
John Greco in his paper on ‘Moore’s Hand or How to Reid Moore’ brings out the Reidean cast of the famous deictic demonstration. He does not treat of the paradox called Moore’s which states ‘It is raining but I don’t believe it’ which seems to me to have the Reid seal of common sense to it also. In some cases belief is not appropriate, justified or otherwise, in the words of the truism ‘ I know what I know’. This may be similar to the Advaitin/Nyaya position of the ‘abadhita’(uncontradicted) position. Yes a large topic indeed.
Hey “Michael”, these skeptics, “irrealists”, “anti-realists”, “idealists”, Nature-is-our construction-ists” and other specimens of intellectual pathology were nowhere to be seen in the face of Irene’s onslaught.
Faced with the awesome real force of Irene, they were cowering in their lairs like the common man and all their philosophical pretensions temporarily evaporated.