Frameworks

Knowledge is often a matter of discovery. But when the nature of an enquiry itself is at question, it is an act of creation

NB: Physical reality is one thing, the ethical domain another. Sometimes the two intersect, as in global warming. But in either case, the ‘framing inquiry’ is about something – otherwise the inquiry would not be an inquiry. Even a dream requires someone to be awake in order – and if we wish – to interpret it. We may invent the ‘framework’ – but it must address itself to something which is not itself contained by the framework. The complete speech, or the set of all sets is a self-cancelling idea. Our values do indeed differ, but they exist because there is something for us to evaluate. DS

Céline Henne

How could gaining knowledge amount to anything other than discovering what was already there? How could the truth of a statement or a theory be anything but its correspondence to facts that were fixed before we started investigating them?

Some philosophers have argued that, despite widespread intuitions to the contrary, knowledge is not merely a matter of representation but also of construction, and that truth cannot be completely detached from human needs and interests. John Dewey, for example, argued that the object of knowledge is the product of enquiry and not something that exists independently of that enquiry. But this can’t be right. After all, scientists discovered DNA, distant planets and gravity, they did not create them. Facts are facts. Any other view seems disastrous, from the vague assertion that we all create our own truth to the Nietzschean claim that it’s interpretations all the way down. Without a shared target that we all aim at getting right, rational discussion is no longer possible. So what were these philosophers getting at, exactly?

The realist view, which sees enquiry as a process of revelation and knowledge as a representation of antecedent facts, is intuitively compelling. Think of a murder investigation. To be sure, the investigators might need a creative imagination in thinking about possible solutions and ways of looking for evidence, but their knowledge of the killer’s identity does not involve any creation on their part. On the contrary: someone killed the victim, and nothing that the investigators do during their inquiries could alter that fact. Knowledge consists in having the right beliefs about that fact, based on the right evidence.

These kinds of examples are useful for philosophers: they are simple, familiar and they generate powerful intuitions. But, precisely because of their simplicity, they can be misleading. Not all enquiries are like whodunnit investigations. In fact, if we want to know what knowledge is, we should also look at more complex cases, in which the object of investigation itself is articulated only as enquiry progresses. Depending on the type of enquiry we examine, we might find that it is more appropriate to talk of articulation than representation, creation rather than revelation.

Some enquiries are indeed like whodunnits. We start with specific questions, and these questions come with predetermined sets of possible answers. Our goal is to land on the correct answer. Sometimes – hopefully, more often than not – we succeed; but nothing we actually do during our investigation determines what the correct answer is. This is the tragedy of the judicial system. Innocent lives are ruined while the real culprits get away with murder. Some cold cases remain cold forever, and the truth is buried with the corpse. To a certain extent, many of our scientific enquiries could be understood in this way….

https://aeon.co/essays/the-realist-vs-the-pragmatist-view-of-epistemology

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Socrates, the soul and the cosmos

Was He Apollo’s Son?

Friedrich Nietzsche on German hostility to the Enlightenment (1881) / Zeev Sternhell on the price to be paid for cultural differentialism

Tae-Yeoun Keum: Why philosophy needs myth

The Intellectual We Deserve (2018)

What is truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer

Treason of the Intellectuals

A World After Liberalism: the Radical Right and the dream of tradition

So history didn’t end after all

‘The Poets of Rapallo’ Review: Ezra Pound’s Fascist Paradise