Epistemology Through Historicism: A Rational View of the Quest for Knowledge

by Dave Paulsen

dave@reststop.net

Copyright© 1992, all rights reserved

Epistemology is a branch of philosophy of mind. To be complete, it must include the pluralistic view that there are many levels of understanding reality, including, but not limited to: science and its assumptions of causes, methods, and concepts of laws and verification; the rationalistic view that thinking and reason can lead to knowledge of reality; phenomenalism and its view that appearances can lead to knowledge; empiricism's view that sensory experience through experimentation and observation can give rise to knowledge; and historicism, the view that what we know at any given time is based on or dependent of the cultural milieu and the foundation of knowledge and the scientific methods in use at the time. All of these views have extreme forms that reject all other views as having any possibility of effectively determining knowledge, and I reject these extreme views outright. Hopefully I will be able to show that this does not leave us with the extreme relativistic view that Truth or Facts can never be known and that all views are equally valid in determining knowledge.

Historicism

The up front definition I'll be using for historicism is that of defining epistemology and how we come to our epistemic views. How we have arrived at our current state of knowledge, and how the building blocks of this knowledge were arrived at in previous historical settings.

Historicism is a developmental, or stage, theory of the acquisition of knowledge. By taking the stance that there are no essential concepts that remain the same over time, we have epistemology through historicism and this definition of epistemology subsumes historicism in the assumption that knowledge progressively builds and is refined through time. History is change, so history changes and the view becomes a cultural evolutionary one.

It seems the best way to view this cultural evolutionary stance is as a fluctuating expansion that generally grows, but on occasion shrinks as old views are discarded and a theory is refined. By keeping open the possibility that what can usefully add to a body of knowledge can come from any number of viewpoints and fields of inquiry, there is an implicit embracing of general systems theory. This view of historicism would then hold that any complex structure-and fields of scientific endeavor and philosophical problems are complex structures-cannot be reduced to their constituent parts for a complete understanding of the subject matter, as that will always understate all the relevant inputs. The triad of physical, natural, and social sciences all play a part in our understanding and knowledge of phenomena and structures, both past and present.

Science

The above leads directly to the scientific view. In our continual search for knowledge and understanding new stages, which can be seen to be unique fluctuations, develop out of and incorporate the lessons of earlier stages. This process is progressive and open-ended; it is goal directed in that we are seeking higher levels of abstraction in the process of increasing the organizational complexity of our knowledge; it is not teleological from the essentialist view of true laws being discoverable that are complete in the search for absolute truth.

Science then can be seen as a methodology which puts forth a research program of theory building and testing. This contains the instrumentalist view of theories as tools, rather than Truth. The theories and the methodology can then be seen as really nothing more than the assignation of probability values to Truth, in arriving at a common agreement on a priori assumptions and axioms which allow criticism and modification. This is what keeps science from becoming a religious or metaphysical belief structure.

The theory of knowledge, known as epistemology, concerns not only what we know, but how we came to know it, and what we may come to know in the future. In planning our future goals, and in trying to predict a course: Which way do we go, and who's view of the Truth do we follow?

Empiricism

Empiricism, which is often confused with science, makes sense only in a stable Newtonian universe, and indeed no small part of our world does fit and work in this mode, but only part. In trying to determine if our knowledge is indeed factual, empiricism's reliance on experimental observation does generally lead to an increase in knowledge, but also erroneously holds that facts are independent of theory, are certain, and are independent of other facts. While this does tend to lead to an advantageous inductivism in constructing theories, it also tends towards objectivity through constriction.

In contrast, the scientific view of facts acknowledges that facts are ambiguous in that they can refer both to linguistically based data and to phenomena in the world and mind. In the construction of hypotheses and theories phenomena are independent of theories and data are dependent upon the theory being advanced; theories directly explain data and indirectly explain phenomena. This leads to objectivity through breadth by encompassing different viewpoints and levels of abstraction in unifying different theories, as evidenced by the preponderance of Grand Unification Theories.

Rationality

One of the ways we can actively increase our knowledge is through a methodology of rationality. Reason and the capability of humans to logically reflect upon themselves and their actions is an internal view of the acquisition of knowledge. While this does let introspection in the door, it is only by way of part of the check-and-balance system of determining validity which can be, and often is, overruled by empirical observation and phenomena.

Language and other communicative symbologies allow rational methods of describing things and the further evolution of scientific methods and discoveries. This leads to understanding with modifiers, both qualitative and quantitative. To justify our beliefs in a systematic way coherent with logical induction, but also in a heuristic manner that doesn't discount phenomenon that can't be empirically measured.

Phenomenalism

My view of phenomenalism derives almost exclusively from William James and his view that mental concepts and their appearances simply cannot be ignored. The evolutionary aspects of epistemology show the phenomena of change over time and the phenomena of continuity in the methodology of validation, or the rational selection of those hypotheses that have a purposive efficacy. Appearances give us an aspect of reality that our intuition can then use to narrow down choices to those that have a higher probability of success and these can then be tested by the various scientific methods.

When Karl Popper wants theories tested as a whole with all of the concepts the theory is built on, this is a good idea. But when he then posits that the origin is irrelevant he seriously undermines the attempt to gain predictive adequacy or understanding in our knowledge of the world. The origin of a phenomena is important because it allows us to more fully understand the phenomena and its basis. This basis is what then allows us to make predictions of the cause and effect relationships with other phenomena and how these various concepts and phenomena work together and lead to more powerful abstractions.

The Growth of Knowledge

Epistemology is a systems science. Part of this system is the culture that determines what is knowable at any given time in history. The worry that speculation will overrule data tries to keep cultural considerations out of scientific inquiry. Past motivations and purposes play a part in understanding, and even though all phenomena may be natural processes, there is no need for the social sciences to reduce their laws to those of the natural sciences. This reductionism is what I feel is one of the main problems of empiricist science, in that it seriously underdetermines almost any general theory it puts forth in its reductionism to measurable facts only, or in the words of Ervin Laszlo, ". . . it sacrifices coherence at the alter of facticity."

A more logically rational view of epistemology acknowledges both facts and the cultural heritage that deduced those facts, and this gives us an idea of the limits and boundaries of our knowledge. In the predictive sense, absolute certainty of finding Truth with a capital T is difficult at best, and the social milieu and state of scientific understanding and methodologies possible at any given time determine what new theories may arise or what refinements are possible to existing theories.

This gives rise to evolutionary epistemology. By calling man the rational animal we arrive at the conclusion that what makes man truly distinct are the twin concepts of intelligence and knowledge that underlie rationality, and the recursive manner in which these two concepts build upon each other.

The biological underpinnings of intelligence account for our possession of intelligence in the first place, and the evolutionary aspects account for its growth. This growth is more in the methods and contents of knowledge and its acquisition, as compared to the now almost evolutionary static mechanisms and faculties that intelligence is based on.

Probably the main aspect that has allowed man to evolve as far as he has is his intelligence. Man's physical strength, speed, and natural armor are sorely lacking compared to other species in the animal kingdom. Our main method of survival, and making it through the natural selection process is our cunning, thought processes, ability to plan, and to adapt nature to ourselves.

The most important point, in my opinion, in accounting for the rapid spread of knowledge and the growth of intelligence is man's desire of and need for knowledge. The quest for knowledge is as important as sex and food, and man cannot survive without knowledge of his surroundings. Man can barely function without the information processing capabilities of the mind and its advanced intelligence. As Nicholas Rescher so aptly points out, "Cognitive vacuity, dissonance, or disorientation can be as distressing to us as physical pain."

We therefore have cognitive Darwinism as a survival tool. We have the ability to pass on values and beliefs to succeeding generations by purposeful variations as opposed to biological randomness, and we can select these values and beliefs by rational means in contrast to biological natural selection. What we have and know is based on the past, and what we add is passed on to the future. To quote Rescher again, "Thinking people are by and large just as interested in the future fate of their ideas as in the future fate of their descendents: the survival of their values is no less significant for them than that of their genes."

In accounting for the growth of knowledge and scientific inquiry, I think if we modify Popper by leaving the word "blind" out in conjectures, we see that the growth is not so miraculous. We must also assume, as Rescher does, that the methods are even more important than a random selection between all possibilities. There are indeed endless possibilities as Popper says, but rational selection can eliminate most to only those that are viable. If all possible ideas and hypotheses had to compete, scientific progress would be much too slow to have gotten us to where we now are, so it seems a rational conclusion that we have not been blindly groping for the right ideas and answers, but we have been experientially guided through an innate capability for induction.

Conclusion

Hypotheses emerge from the intelligent use of empirical data to narrow down the choices among competing ideas based on a methodological foundation of rational induction. It is then induction which is one of the selective principles that operate on the multitude of possibilities, and is guided by rational thought based on our experiences of various phenomenon.

It is by these means that extreme relativism is kept from rearing its ugly head in epistemology. While many ideas are relative to the time and knowledge base available, they still give a view of reality that is purposive and progressive, and is true for the purposes we desire in allowing prediction and planning. Not all views are equally valid or able to stand the test of time, and as our knowledge grows, these snippets of the truth of reality as we know it are refined as we gain a greater epistemological understanding of our interactions with the universe and ourselves.