1. THE FOUNDATIONS OF KNOWLEDGE
1.1 In this location we will explore some of the
most well known problems in the analysis of the foundations of knowledge
through a consideration of the work of Rene Descartes. However, in the first
two sections I consider questions of knowledge more broadly. You will find an
account of reading Descartes which draws on this contextualisation in the
Descartes workspace.
1.2 I start with a brief radical commentary on the
general area of knowledge and then show how certain lines of thought have led
both towards and away from this point:
What is the point of striving after knowledge
(savoir) if it ensures only the acquisition of knowledges (connaissances) and
not, in a certain way and to the greatest extent possible, the disorientation of
he who knows?.... What is philosophy today - I mean philosophical activity - if
not the critical work of thought upon thought, if it does not, rather than
legitimising what one already knows, consists of an attempt to know how and to
what extent it is possible to think differently?
These lines come from Foucault's L'Usage des
plaisirs and were read by the philosopher Gilles Deleuze at Foucault's
funeral in 1984. You will find more detail on this quotation and its
significance in the booklets on Foucault but for now I want to outline in a
preliminary way some of the points Foucault makes.
Throughout his work Foucault (1926-1984) as a social
theorist uses the distinction marked in French as a contrast between savoir and
connaitre/connaissance. Savoir refers to knowledge in general - the
totality of what can be known in any general or historical sense. Connaissance
refers to specific forms or fields of knowledge. In English we do not make this
distinction. Foucault's argument is that we set out with the belief that we
will uncover the secrets of knowledge in general, that we will be able to
distinguish between true and false knowledge, that we can even hope to
distinguish between true knowledge and ideology. For Foucault this an illusion.
What we end up with is knowledge of a specific field or set of techniques. The
promise of an overall knowledge is illusory. Foucault suggests that
philosophers have spent their time searching for an underlying, eternal truth
and have run away from critique. While Marx made the same point he showed how
important the work of the philosopher Hegel was. For the classical tradition of
sociology there has always been a close, indissoluble link between philosophy
and the analysis of social action. Foucault suggests that philosophy must move
beyond telling us what we already know even if we do not seem to have the
knowledge at our finger tips. Philosophy must enable us to think differently
and to do that it must change us as people. To philosophise is a political act.
We can now move to explore the tradition of thought against which Foucault made
his analysis. This brings us face to face with major figures in western,
specifically European philosophy.
1.3 LOCATING
MODERNITY
The tradition Foucault questions is that of what
might be termed modernity. The materials on Foucault will suggest that we
should not simply read off a position of postmodern(ity) from his work. But for
now I will take the question of the foundations of knowledge from the
Renaissance and not from the classical period. There are materials on classical
approaches elsewhere in your reading pack. Francis Bacon in his First Book
of Aphorisms (1620) as cited in Hollis (1994:23) provides a useful summary
of two contrasting traditions:
There are and can be only two ways of searching into
and discovering truth. The one flies from the senses and particulars to the
most general axioms, and from these principles, the truth of which it takes for
settled and immovable, proceeds to judgement and the discovery of middle axioms.
And this way is now in fashion. The other derives axioms from the senses and
particulars, rising by a gradual and unbroken ascent, so that it arrives at the
most general axioms last of all. This is the true way, but as yet untried.
Bacon's first way is what we know as rationalism
while the second refers to what we would understand as empiricism. For Bacon
classical thought , i.e. the work of Plato, and more particularly Aristotle as
developed through the medieval period is particularly associated with
rationalism. Bacon believes that a search for the foundations of knowledge
belongs to empiricism and our account of positivism below will contribute to
this. However, the first modern thinker we consider here is Rene Descartes.
You will find other sections on Descartes work in the student material.
1.4 RENE DESCARTES
(1596-1650)
In this discussion I will only address certain
themes from Descartes work. I suggest you explore the brief section on
Descartes life. One reason why it is appropriate to consider Descartes here is
that while he recognised that Galileo had pioneered a geometrical approach to
physics he had not done so with sufficient rigour, 'He has built without a
foundation'. Descartes saw his task as one of supplying the firm foundations
for the pursuit of knowledge.
1.4.1
The theme of method will run through this particular
presentation of Descartes's work. In his Discourse on Method Descartes set out
to establish a single method that would supersede the complicated separate
methods of logic, algebra and geometry. We should remember that Descartes's
pursuit of such a scientific method flew in the face of scholastic thought
established in the medieval world. Scholastic thought took the principles of
Aristotle reworked to fit in with the Roman Catholic faith as beyond reproach.
To challenge Aristotle was to challenge the Church and Descartes as a
contemporary of Galileo was in no mind to face the horrors of the Inquisition.
He took elaborate precautions to prevent such a fate as we shall see below.
Descartes did not see himself as a total sceptic,
i.e. a thinker who tried to cast doubt on all knowledge. But he did feel the
individual thinker should try to "rebuild his house" by which he meant
they should only believe that which could be accepted with certainty. For
Descartes a method had to involve a small number of general principles and rules
which could be applied under all circumstances. If you think about research
methods today you will find this principle in force. A statement of a null
hypothesis is one example. The selection of an appropriate statistical test
depending on the type of data at hand is another. If you have category or
nominal data you might apply chi square whether your data came from the fields
of health, education, or an inquiry into a group's religious beliefs. To apply
a parametric test with such data would be wrong because the data does not have a
ratio. This is an example of the use of rules to establish certainty in
scientific thought which really we owe to Descartes and other mathematicians of
his period.
There are a number of precepts to the method and
they are given in different parts of the Discourse on Method. They are also
located in Rules for the Direction of the Mind (Regulae). For our purposes they
have the following characteristics:
- method rather than curiosity should guide an
inquiry.
- Complicated and obscure propositions should be
reduced to simpler ones.
- Starting from an intuition of the simplest
propositions the researcher should try to ascend through the same steps to reach
the starting point which is now secured by method.
1.4.2 INTERPRETING
DESCARTES ON METHOD
What does Descartes mean by simpler propositions?
Within the examples he worked with himself we find that he argued that problems
of optics go beyond the power of light to the notion of a natural power.
In the Regulae he writes:
I call 'absolute' whatever has within it the pure
and simple nature in question; that is, what is viewed as being independent, a
cause, simple, universal, single, equal, similar, straight, and other qualities
of that sort.
An absolute is therefore a pure form in Plato's
sense. It lies behind and is independent of sense perception. This is an
example of what Bacon means by a general axiom and principle. The absolutes
have length, weight, i.e. mathematical properties. These are distinct from the
sense impressions we may have of an object.
Descartes describes the laws of nature in terms of
the way matter must behave given that it has length, depth and breadth and
movement. In the Regulae he writes 'we should attend only to those objects of
which our minds seem capable of having certain and dubitable cognition'. This
is the source of Descartes most famous and well known pronouncement 'Cogito ergo
sum': ' I think therefore I am'.
1.5 MOVING TOWARDS
DUALISM
Prior to Descartes philosophers and scientists
thought that human beings possessed both intellect (mind) and sense (particulars
of experience). The argument went that we met sense experience. i.e. had
contact with experiences in the world and from this our mind worked on these
experiences. Ideal forms of the objects we experienced in the world could be
abstracted from our sense experiences. This obviously raised the question of
how you knew this to be the case. Would some objects reveal more of an
underlying form than others and if so, how and why? Where did ideal forms come
from? How could you prove their existence?
Descartes makes a break with this kind of thinking
by making a separation between the mind and the body. Descartes preserves an
ancient distinction between phenomena and reality. Phenomena (comes from the
Greek word for appearances) and in Descartes's thinking phenomena belong to our
minds as observers. Reality by contrast refers to whatever there is in the
universe that causes such phenomena. If we see a car we may notice shape, type
and probably different observers will notice different things. But for
Descartes the car has properties given mathematically, i.e. its shape and size
depend upon shape, number, mass and motion and mathematical relations between
such features. These features are not observable. But they lie within the mind
which is separate from the body. In Descartes's anatomical approach the body
and the mind were joined at the pineal gland in the head. If an experience in
the world is transmitted successfully to the mind and interpreted the experience
represents the car. We shall meet the term representation again. Descartes
insists that representation does not have to be pictorial and this clearly
important if we consider language as a means of representation. I develop this
point below.
Descartes's underlying world is a mathematical one.
It is this which furnishes the mind. An object such as a knife possesses shape
and size. I.e. its mechanical attributes. The fact that it may be shiny and
sharp is a function of the way in which it interacts with particles of light.
At first sight there may be little to commend this view of an underlying
mechanical model.
1.5.1 DESCARTES'S
ARGUMENT IN SUMMARY
We should consider carefully the implications of
Descartes's argument:
the medieval Aristotelian view posited a complex
array of causes, meanings, functions. In the end such an account merely gave a
description of an event rather than an explanation. Descartes's model provides
an explanation of phenomena in the world.
Descartes posits a realm of underlying mechanisms
that go beyond immediate sense experience. This is clearly useful in
considering social scientific explanations. Terms such as 'relations of
production', 'superstructure', 'social structure', 'kinship system' all refer to
non-directly observable phenomena whose effects can be seen in the world. Such
theoretical entities can provide a form of explanation which enables us to
answer questions on how some event occurs in the world. Descartes's mathematical
solution avoids confusion between meaning systems and causal mechanisms.
Descartes's approach places the human subject centre
stage. He began with scepticism and a philosophy of doubt by which he doubted
everything in the world. The sceptic takes as false anything in the world that
seems uncertain to an inquiring mind. Descartes argued that one thing he could
not doubt was that he could think. In the Meditations he imagines himself in
the grip of a powerful demon capable of making him believe nothing but
falsehoods. The fact that the thoughts might be false was less important. The
one thing the demon could not change was that Descartes was the thinking
subject. If the reality of thinking was beyond doubt so too was the presence of
a subject to do the thinking. Thus we arrive at 'I think, therefore I am'.
From Descartes's work the thinking human subject is created. A notion of
authorial intent is born. We shall consider elsewhere the more recent notion of
'the death of the subject' as a response to Descartes and humanist thinkers.
We should note that Descartes's human subject is a
curiously disembodied one. It is not Rene Descartes as a person, neither is it
you or me. It is a subject position rather than an individual. It is exactly
this notion of a general subject position that informs Althusser's work, e.g. on
education and subjection. This aspect is taken up more fully in Reading
Descartes.
I will conclude this section by considering an
important development on linguistics that has drawn directly on Descartes's
work. This is followed by briefer reference to two theoretical developments in
social science - ethnomethodology and kinship structures. The latter is
considered more fully under Structuralism.
1.6 AN APPROACH
TO LINGUISTICS
The American linguist Noam Chomsky drew considerable
inspiration from the work of Descartes and a group of 17th century grammarians
called the Port Royale Grammarians. For Chomsky in his text Language and Mind
(1971) there are two powerful reasons for believing in Cartesian rationalism:
a person is able to utter a sentence that no one has
ever uttered before and other people can understand it. If you read a book to
explore a topic in social theory (or any other subject) for the first time you
will come across sentences that you have never seen before and they may be quite
unlike any sentences you have ever met! The fact that you can understand them,
possibly after some effort depends on your having an underlying language
structure and capacity to make mental representations of ideas and events for
yourself.
Chomsky's second argument is that children acquire
the ability to use language in a subtle way amazingly quickly and a behaviourist
argument based purely on personal experience of language is insufficient to
account for this. If we relied solely on actual experience of language and the
vocabulary children hear we would have no means of explaining how children
readily acquire grammatical competence.
Both these claims by Chomsky have been disputed but
I want to develop the line of argument rather than consider the criticisms since
the argument can make an interesting contribution to social theory.
We have the ability to make ourselves understood in
all sorts of new situations. At its most obvious we can be in a different
country, unable to speak the local language but still able to communicate, e.g.
through gestures, sign language. Of course we may be in a country where
visitors from our country are frequent and the local people may have acquired
familiarity with our means of communication. But this need not be the case.
After all, while they differ significantly in design and scope rituals of
various sorts are widely found throughout the world. So too are myths. The
French anthropologist Levi-Strauss argued that myth possesses an underlying
common structure. In all myths we find notions of a hero, wicked deeds,
intervention and rescue. Since the myths are from around the world and the
groups themselves have never met or had any dealings with each other so
Levi-Strauss holds there is a rationalist, underlying human structure of myth
and language.
Ethnomethodologists argue that behind or beneath
surface manifestations of action and behaviour lies an unobservable world of
presuppositions and common sense rules which are held in common by people. The
newcomer to a group or area has to learn these rules but once they are learned
they become shared. Just think how you can describe a lecture or tutor very
quickly to other students! You have built up a pattern of expectations
expressed in language which you do not have to make explicit.
Both Levi-Strauss's argument over myth and his
subsequent development of an analysis of kinship systems depends upon this
underlying theorisation of a rationalist approach. The same argument is invoked
in ethnomethodology. Part of the power of the explanation lies in the economic
form of explanation that the theories yield. From an underlying competence a
wide variety of surface performances can be derived. The assertion is not
causal. The underlying structure does not cause the surface event but it
constrains and enables what may happen. Of course a rationalist approach can
reach a point where no form of free will and individual action is conceivable
since everything is the outcome of a generative structure. A strong genetic
argument would take this approach. It has certainly characterised some of the
extreme claims over intelligence and ethnic group. See the work of Lynn, Jensen.
The structuralist argument does not take this
extreme position. What it does do is to posit an underlying mathematical model
based on pairings and oppositions. But it allows for local, regional and other
differences. See the work on structuralism to develop this point.
My final point is that Descartes was well aware of
his audience. He wrote many of his texts as debates about dreams, demons,
fantasies in which he the author was a key figure. Does he represent all
thinking people of his time? In Reading Descartes I suggest this is not the
case. You should explore the suggestions for reading Descartes and make up your
own mind on my suggested approaches to a reading of his texts. Leave your
comments at my email address and we can then take up a dialogue.