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Some Important Issues in Philosophy |
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by Celestine N. Bittle, O.F.M.Cap.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
In their endeavor to discover a criterion of truth, philosophers advance various theories. Quite naturally, their view are influenced to a very great extent, if not completely, by their general theory of knowledge. Scientists as a rule, when engaged in the practical work of research, submit to the guidance of the objective evidence of reality; they demand that every hypothesis and discovery be tested by "experiment," and that is nothing less nor more than an appeal to objective evidence. But even scientists, when they enter the speculative field of philosophy, at times advocate theories at variance with their practical views. Professional philosophers, of course, attempt the solution of the problem of truth and certitude by reasoning from the principles of knowledge in general. As a result, diverse theories have arisen, and these demand our attention. Some criteria are "intellectual," and some are "non-intellectual," in character. By showing their inadequacy, "objective evidence" as the criterion of truth, which is the criterion accepted and demanded by commonsense classical philosophical realism, will be indirectly confirmed. (See Dr. Jonathan Dolhenty's essays Truth and Certainty and The Criterion of Truth for a discussion of objective evidence.) Descartes, Malebranche, Rosmini According to Descartes the things of which we have a clear and distinct idea are true. He accepted his own existence as true, because he had a clear and distinct idea of it. This, then, became for him the criterion of truth. (See The Philosophy of René Descartes and What is Wrong With Descartes' Philosophy?) Now, the clearness and distinctness or our ideas can be taken subjectively and objectively. Taken subjectively, it means that the idea as a subjective product of the intellect is clearly and distinctly conceived; it is clear and distinct to the intellect. But this does not give us a guarantee that this idea corresponds to reality, and that the reality represented in the idea actually exists. I can have, for instance, a very clear and distinct idea of a centaur or a fairy or a mythological deity; but does that mean that such beings exist? To distinguish between such beings and real beings I need some criterion different from the subjectively clear and distinct ideas of them. Taken objectively, it means that the idea is clear and distinct as an interpretative representation of reality; the idea is such, because the reality itself is clear and distinct before the mind. In that case, however, we have immediate, objective evidence of reality as the criterion of truth, and not the mere clearness and distinctness of the idea as such. Descartes, however, took this criterion in a subjective sense, because he maintained that the external world cannot be presented to the spiritual mind. As such, his criterion of a clear and distinct idea is inadequate, since it can never show us whether our judgments agree with reality. Malebranche, accepting Descartes' view that we cannot acquire a direct knowledge of the material world through sense-perception, tried to explain this knowledge by assuming that we have an intuition of reality in the Mind of God; we see all things in God. The Mind of God, then, is our criterion of truth. This, of course, is contrary to experience. We have absolutely no consciousness of an intuition of God in any form. And if we had, error would be utterly impossible, otherwise God himself would have erroneous ideas of things. Though Rosmini (1797-1855) differs from Malebranche in details, fundamentally his view is the same. We have a direct intuition of Being in its transcendental ideality, and this innate concept or intuition makes the soul intelligent. Real knowledge, therefore, is derived from this intuition of Ideal Being. The objection against Malebranche's view applies here also; we have no consciousness of such an intuition, and error would be unaccountable, because impossible. The theories of Malebranche and Rosmini are a form of ontologism. Gioberti (1801-1852) maintained a similar doctrine. Idealistic monism of the Hegelian type does not accept the view that, in order to be true, judgments must correspond with extra-mental reality. There is simple reason for this: since thought and thing, ideal and real, Ego and non-Ego, are fundamentally identical in the Absolute, there exists no extra-mental reality with which judgments could correspond. The truth of a judgment, then, must be its coherence, or consistency, with the whole system of knowledge previously recognized as true. When the whole system of accepted judgments is true, any particular judgment in harmony with it will be true; otherwise it will be false. After all, reality is reality for us only in so far as it is known by us; and this knowledge is expressed by us in a systematic body of judgments acknowledged to be a correct interpretation of our experiences. This criterion of truth, namely the coherence of a particular judgment with our general system of knowledge, is inadequate and therefore of little value for judging the truth of our mental pronouncements. It is, of course, correct that "All true judgments are mutually coherent"; but for that reason we cannot simply turn the statement around and say that "All mutually coherent judgments are true." Even the tyro in the science of correct thinking knows that a simple conversion of this sort is bad logic; the only permissible conversion must state that "Some mutually coherent judgments are true." But this means that consistency or coherence as such is not necessarily a guarantee of all truth. Idealism, for instance, as a system of thought may have coherence in itself, but idealism is based on the initial fallacy of the idealist postulate that we cannot transcend our mental states; of what value, then, is its internal coherence as a system? (For a critique of the "idealist postulate" see The Fallacy of Epistemological Idealism.) The Ptolemaic theory of a geocentric planet-system was also coherent, but astronomy has definitely established that it is false and that the Copernican theory of a heliocentric system is correct. Consequently, the mere coherence of a particular judgment with a general system of knowledge is not in itself sufficient to establish its particular truth. Since idealism as a system is false, the criterion of coherence, based on it, is also false. Furthermore, ordinary existential judgments cannot be distinguished as true or false by their coherence with a general system of coordinated judgments. Consider judgments like the following: "It is snowing today"; "I feel chilly"; "this paper is white"; "my pen is out of order." In what possible way could such mental pronouncements be judged to be true or false by examining their coherence with the systematic body of truths contained in physics, chemistry, biology, astrophysics, or philosophy? Yet they must be true or false. The criterion of coherence, however, will never enable me to decide whether they are true or not. Now, the greatest number of our judgments concern everyday matters like the above; they are inconsequential in themselves, but we must be able to decide whether they agree with reality and as such are true or false. The criterion of coherence is thus seen to be useless. If driven to its logical conclusion, the theory of coherence will demand that we must have an almost omniscient knowledge, otherwise a particular judgment might be in coherence with one system and not in coherence with another. Or shall we say that it must only be consistent with our own system? Then the criterion is purely subjectivistic and relativistic, but that is precisely what a criterion of truth is not supposed to be, because its function should be to tell us whether our judgment is in accordance with the reality we are interpreting and not merely with our preconceived and subjective idea of it. Coherence, therefore, is inadequate as the criterion of truth. Some thinkers, anxious to stem the tide of mental anarchy resulting from the philosophy of Descartes, discredited the power of human reason to reach truth without the aid of some external criterion. They defended the theory that faith or tradition must furnish the ultimate guarantee of the truth of our knowledge. Pascal (1623-1662), though not a skeptic, maintained that reason was too impotent to arrive at any certitude regarding the great truths which shape the destiny of man, like the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, revelation, and Christianity; we must being our knowledge with an act of faith. Huet (1630-1721) demanded the acceptance of Divine Revelation as a basis of certitude; reason can give nothing more than probability in knowledge. That is traditional or historical fideism. This view is extreme. Concerning supernatural truths for the believing religious theist, it is indeed correct to say that a revelation is required in order to be certain of them (within religion or theology); but it is absurd to think that a divine manifestation is necessary for natural truths of the ordinary kind. Why should we need revelation to obtain certitude that "wood floats," "water freezes," "light travels with a speed of over 186,000 miles a second," "fire burns," and a thousand similar facts of the material and natural order? Besides, if we are to believe in a divine revelation, we must have prior certitude that God really exists and that He has actually revealed certain truths; otherwise our act of faith would be blind and lack a rational foundation. The existence of God, however, cannot be clear to our intellect except through a process of reasoning based on the objective evidence of the Principle of Causality as applied to the world around us. Consequently, objective evidence, not faith, is the ultimate criterion of truth in the order of natural knowledge. Traditionalism owes its origin to De Bonald (1754-1840). According to his view God gave a primitive Revelation to mankind which is handed down as a tradition from generation to generation. This belief of mankind reveals itself particularly in language, which is not the product of man's rational thinking, but a direct gift from God. Without tradition man can know nothing; all knowledge is derived from it. The ultimate criterion is, therefore, the revelation and authority of God. De Lamennais (1782-1854) sought the criterion of truth in the general agreement of mankind because that is the voice of God transmitting the primitive Revelation to the individual mind. Bautain (1795-1867), Bonnetty (1798-1879), Ventura (1792-1861), and Ubaghs (1800-1875), held similar views. All agree in this that the fundamental act of knowledge consists in belief. Such a belief, however, cannot be the ultimate criterion of truth. The argument against fideism applies here also; we must first have evidence that God exists, that He has revealed truths, that these truths have reached us unchanged, and that the instrument of its transmission is tradition or the universal agreement of mankind. Authority, whether it be that of faith in revelation, tradition, or the general verdict of mankind, is an external criterion, and its validity must first be proved by independent reasons before it can be accepted as trustworthy and true. But this means that objective evidence is the real criterion of truth. Spencer, Mill, and their followers, maintained that evolution produced in man's mind certain fixed modes of thought in virtue of which the mind makes necessary judgments, such as "2+2=4," "the whole is greater than any of its parts," "every effect must have a cause," "a circle is round," and so forth. In consequence of this fixed grooving of the mind in a definite direction, such judgments are considered to be necessarily true because their opposites are inconceivable. "2+2" must be judged to be "4," not because the terms of this judgment are self-evident in themselves, but because we cannot conceive that "2+2" would "3" or "5" or any other number. If evolution had developed our minds in a different way, "2+2" might be "3" or "5" or any other number; but it so happened that now the inconceivability of "2+2=3" or "2+2=5" makes the judgment "2+2=4" to be true. And the same applies to every true judgment; it is true because its opposite is inconceivable. This inconceivability of the opposite is, then, the ultimate criterion of truth. This theory hardly needs refutation. Evolution cannot give an adequate explanation of the absolute necessity of our axiomatic judgments. It is the intellectual insight into the self-evident relation existing between the ideas of such judgments in themselves which compels our assent to them as necessarily true. Consequently, it is not through their opposites that we perceive them to be true. Take the judgment, "A circle is round." If and when I know that "A circle is a plane figure, comprehended by a single curved line, each part of which is equidistant from a common center," then I know also that it must be round, because that is what is meant by the concept round. I do not need to compare the figure of a circle with a triangle, or a square, or a parallelogram, or a hexagon, or a parallelopipedon; all that is required is that I understand the terms contained in the judgment "A circle is round," in order to see that it is true. Were Spencer's criterion correct, I would first have to compare the figure of a circle with every other geometrical figure and see that is inconceivable that the circle be this or that or the other figure, before I could know that the circle itself is round. The reverse is true: I perceive clearly that the judgment "A circle is square" is inconceivable, because I see it to be self-evident that "A circle must be round"; it is only after I know that "roundness" is contained in the idea of "circle" that I realize that any other figure, like a square, triangle, etc., is not contained in the idea of "circle." In other words, the Principle of Contradiction is based on the Principle of Identity, and not vice versa. Hence, the self-evidence of the judgments themselves, and not the inconceivability of their contradictories, is the ultimate criterion criterion of truth. Neo-realism, in its effort to escape from idealism, went to the opposite extreme; it advocated an epistemological monism which is pan-objectivistic, because it ends by identifying the knowing mind with the known object. When things are known, they are ideas of the mind. Ideas are only things in a certain relation; or, things, in respect of being known, are ideas. The difference between knowledge and things, like that between mind and body, is a relational and functional difference, and not a difference of content. We have become wedded or indeed welded to the phrase -- "my thought is of an object -- when we ought to say and mean -- my thought is a portion of the object -- or better still -- a portion of the object is my thought: -- exactly as a portion of the sky is the zenith. Consciousness itself is merely a "class of things"; consciousness is not of things, but things themselves are conscious by the mere fact that they are responded to by another entity. In this manner, according to the Neo-realists, consciousness is numerically identical with the object of which we are conscious, the Ego with the non-Ego, the mind with nature, the ideas with the things thought of. This makes the problem of knowledge extremely simple, because it eliminates the mind entirely from the process of knowledge; the only existent realities are the things themselves. Knowledge must always correspond to reality in this theory, because they are both identical. But therein Neo-realism refutes itself. If we are certain of anything through our consciousness, it is of the fact that we are not identical with the objects of which we are conscious. When I am aware of the photograph or paper on my desk, it is futile for me to think that it is not I who am conscious of the photograph and paper, but that it is the photograph itself and the paper itself which is conscious. It is a fact that mind and matter, Ego and non-Ego, the mental and extra-mental, are distinct realities which are not identical in being; to eliminate the mind will never solve the problem of knowledge. If our consciousness is identical with the objects of which we are conscious, then, of course, our judgments should always correspond to reality and be true. But that is not the whole of the problem of knowledge; we must also explain the possibility and fact of error. When, however, we assert that the knowledge of objects and the objects of knowledge are identical in being, there is simply no possibility of error in judgments; and that is contrary to fact and experience. Neo-realists are not always consistent in their teachings. They frequently speak of the mind and the world as really distinct in being. When, however, they explain the nature of the mind and identify it with the objects known (as they do), they deprive both truth and error of all meaning; because under such circumstances any conformity or disconformity between mind and reality is out of the question. A theory that can give no intelligible explanation of truth and error is false and untenable. The criteria investigated above are of the intellectual type. Others are non-intellectual in character, in as much as they are not founded on the intellectual nature of man. The Scottish School places the criterion of truth in the common sense of man. Thomas Reid (1710-1796), the real founder of this school of thought, insisted that our knowledge is based on principle which are evident and are recognized as such by the common sense of man; from these principles man derives a body of primordial "truths of common sense" which serve as a sort of general fund of knowledge for mankind. So far no objection can be raised against him and his followers, because this view conforms to the doctrine of "objective evidence" as the criterion of truth. At times, however, the Scottish philosophers seem to teach very plainly that these fundamental principles are accepted through an instinctive impulse of human nature, rather than through an intellectual insight into the objective truth. In that case, then, the ultimate criterion would consist in some sort of belief in the rationality of this impulse, and not in the self-evidence of reality manifesting itself to the mind. Other adherents of the "common sense" doctrine are James Oswald (1727-1793), James Beattie (1735-1803), Dugald Stewart (1753-1828), and Thomas Brown (1778-1820). If "common sense" be interpreted as a kind of instinctive belief, it is obviously only a subjective criterion of truth and motive of certitude, and as such it is inadequate. Belief necessarily presupposes an insight into the grounds of this belief, before it can be used as an intelligent guide. We must be sure beforehand on indisputable evidence that such an instinct exists in our nature, that it is reliable and not prone to error, and that it can give us intellectual certitude. If these conditions are not present and known to be present, we can have assurance that our knowledge is true; we would indeed feel the subjective necessity to judge as we do, but we could never verify our judgments and see whether they agree with reality. Now, either we know the grounds of this belief, or we are ignorant of them. If we are ignorant of them, our instinctive belief is blind and without rational foundation; and then it is useless as a criterion of truth, because it is contrary to the nature of the mind as an essentially "cognitive" faculty to be determined in its knowledge by a blind instinct. And if we know the grounds of this belief, then the "objective evidence" of these grounds, and not the belief itself, is the ultimate criterion. Critical realists make a clear distinction between the knowing mind and the objects known: mind and world are diverse realities. The world is known by the mind by means of certain "characters" or "essences." These latter imply, according to A.K. Rogers in his What is Truth?, "a reference to, and an acceptance of, a real, extra-experiential universe of existents. It is not that we reason to, or infer, such a fact beyond experience. The belief is rather an assumption which we make by instinct, since it is only by taking for granted that we are in relation to realities on which the needs of life depend that we are able to maintain ourselves alive at all...An 'object,' therefore, is constituted by a group of characters with which psychological experience makes us familiar, plus the instinctive sense that there is something present of which we have to take account, the latter aspect being the outcome of that state of muscular tension which is conditioned by our nature as active beings dependent on an environing world, while the characters are used, also instinctively, to give this a specific form." (Bold type not in original.) We intuit the "characters" or "essences" directly, and these we refer to a physically existing object by means of an instinctive impulse of our nature. The ultimate criterion of truth is, therefore, not the objective evidence of reality as such, but a belief and an assumption, make by instinct, that these "characters" or "essences" reveal reality as it is. J.E. Turner, in his A Theory of Direct Realism, very pointedly sums up the situation for critical realism as follows: "All realisms...must finally rest, exactly as naive realism does, upon the process and content of perception -- upon this content as more keenly criticized and more rigidly tested; and this analysis must be pursued to a final verdict. If then this content is regarded as not in itself physical, two alternatives arise: either physical reality is never ontologically identical with perceived content, and therefore, since there is no other mode of directly apprehending it, this reality is noumenal; or realism must fall back on an instinctive, but non-philosophic, belief in the known existence of physical reality. This dilemma faces critical realism. If it maintains its universal distinction between physical things themselves beyond our consciousness, and their perceived or apparent sense-characters, then it becomes a noumenalism. But, if, on the other hand, it founds its affirmations on instinctive belief, it forfeits all title to be regarded as a philosophic system, whatever other merits it may possess. Or at best it can become a philosophy only of the content of perception as distinct from physical reality itself." In neither alternative can we have a rational foundation for our certitude that our judgments correspond to reality; our ultimate criterion of truth would be either blind instinct or an unproved and unprovable assumption. But such a criterion is subjectivistic and useless.
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