Subjective Knowledge
I have created a video of the following article. It can be found here.
All knowledge is conjectural. It could possibly be false. We are fallible human beings - flawed and prone to error. Moreover the laws of physics mandate that we cannot possibly have knowledge of all possible factors that might come to bear on any situation (this is a consequence of quantum theory) and also, things decay (a consequence of the second law of thermodynamics). So our knowledge is necessarily incomplete and subject to errors creeping in over time.
So the laws of physics constrain what it is possible to know, and how. “There is no royal road to truth” - knowledge is hard won. And the method by which it is won is by a critical method. Our guesses about reality are tested out there in the physical world. Subject to scrutiny and experiment, argument and a collision with natural phenomenon. Our buildings instantiate our knowledge of engineering and when the Earth moves in an earthquake our theories of construction are put through trials. If the building collapses in a way unforeseen - we learn something (the hard way!)
Knowledge is objective in two senses. First in the ontological sense. The objects “out there” have a real existence. They are separate from us and not mere products of our mind. Stars would continue to shine and birds tweet even if no people had ever evolved anywhere in the universe to observe any of it. Knowledge is “out there” in objects. In the DNA of a bird exists the knowledge to build a bird. In our built environment we instantiate our knowledge of how matter can be shaped and controlled to bend to our will. So we take silicon and craft it into lenses and metal and form it into cylinders and we places the lenses at just the right distance and we build a telescope. We “instantiate” the knowledge - literally the laws of optics (as well as some chemistry) - into the physical world. Into the telescope. The knowledge is out there in the world - not merely our own minds.
Were all the people who ever learned to build telescopes suddenly lost to us, but not the telescopes, all the knowledge of “how to build a telescope” would not be lost. An interested child, coming across such a device - this metal cylinder with a few bits of shaped glass and perhaps some mirrors inside, could find that it could bring into focus distant objects when correctly aligned and fiddled with. And with more investigation determine that the lenses have special shapes and are a careful distance apart and the cylinder serves a purpose and so on. In other words - almost all the knowledge to build a telescope is right there in the telescope. Sure - maybe there are some matters of geology if the child wanted to start from absolute scratch and gather the silicon and metal from their ores and maybe there is some inexplicit knowledge in the building of a telescope that might make things easier. But in truth, in principle (and in practise) anyone really curious who came across a telescope could learn to build a telescope even if there was no one else alive who knew or was interested in doing so (and this is ignoring that anyone so interested would have access to libraries and the internet and all the resources ever accumulated on “telescope building”.)
So this laboured point is just to say: knowledge is out there in objects. It is objective in that sense. Subjectivity exists (that is our experience of the world - a synonym for that poorly understood concept “consciousness”) but subjective knowledge insofar as it is in there at all, is not of the same type. We shall come to that momentarily.
There is another sense in which knowledge is objective. Knowledge is tested by a critical method. When someone makes a claim there are tests, criticisms and criteria against which we judge the knowledge claim. The tests can be more or less rigorous but valid critical tests are not mere matters of opinion but rather encounters with reality and with other knowledge already out there. A scientist claims that they have determined a way for humans to move through space beyond the speed of light. We can test this claim. Indeed we can try to build there device (or implement their theory) and test the claim. If the test shows the claim to be false - so much for the claim.
We can also put the claim alongside the best alternative theory (which for now is Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity (we could use the General also - but I will ignore this).) That theory explains what happens as speeds increase near the speed of light. Time outside of the moving frame slows down with respect to time for the person who is moving. An object moving at the speed of light (like light itself) gets places in zero time. Time outside the frame of a photon of light has stopped. So going faster than this would mean going back in time and that raises problems which the new claim may not solve. Moreover moving a mass, like a person, to the speed of light requires an infinite amount of energy. So that is another criticism of the new claim. So the new claim is going to fail any test, it’s going to be unable to answer questions about what happens to time and energy and it is simply going to fare as an exceedingly poor rival to Special Relativity. So it’s “encounter with the world” has refuted it by an objective set of criteria. It has failed to do what it purported to and this is no one individuals mere opinion - it is a fact about what has happened in reality with that new claim.
This is “objectivity” in the epistemological sense. Not a matter of opinion or bias - that would be subjective in the epistemological sense - and who desires knowledge in that sense? Opinion and bias? Whatever those things are they are not “knowledge”.
The idea that there exists a kind of knowledge (useful information) that is in some way not in some way created by an encounter with reality - with the physical world out there - is “subjectivism”. The misconception of “subjective knowledge”.
But this doesn’t entirely rule out “subjective knowledge” entirely. But we need to be cautious here. Because “subjectivity” exists (we have a mind - an internal life - a consciousness) - our thoughts and expectations confined solely to our own minds are in a sense “subjective knowledge”. But what is its nature?
What is subjective knowledge?
Subjective knowledge, we will come to see, is knowledge that exists solely within a single organism in some way. And we will come to this picture shortly - suffice it to say that for now, it’s not knowledge of a “conscious” sort, but rather an unconscious kind (such as in DNA). We will see that conscious subjective knowledge does not exist. But it is also important to dwell upon the idea that subjective knowledge of the kind expounded by many philosophers is simply mistake handed down from Plato and, in many ways, uncritically consumed by generations of teachers, academics, scientists and other “thinkers” ever since. Plato was the one who demanded that knowledge to count as knowledge needed to be “Justified True Belief” (JTB hereon). Now elsewhere I do deal with why knowledge cannot be “justified” why we should not expect it to be “true” and also why it cannot be about “belief” (see here).
But for now I want to concentrate just on the “belief” part and explore this notion both more deeply and widely. Belief, if it is anything, is something that people can have - or “conscious creatures” but not something books or telescopes can. As we have already seen - objects out there in the real world from DNA, to books, buildings and telescopes instantiate knowledge. DNA instantiates the knowledge of how to build an organism. It does not have “beliefs”. Telescopes instantiate knowledge about how to gather and focus light. They do not have beliefs. So at the bare minimum the knowledge there has absolutely nothing whatever to do with “belief”. So we have already ruled out this JTB conception of knowledge.
But what about “belief” in people. Now without mentioning him by name, all of the proceeding remarks have in some way been inspired by the philosopher Karl Popper, the most underrated philosopher of the 20th century (although recent years, with the rise of critical rational groups of the internet, a delightful surge in interest has been seen). Now Popper is often dismissed as something like “that guy who said science was about falsification not confirmation”. But he did remarkably more than this. Let us turn now to some of his remarks on belief and subjective knowledge and I will make comments where I think they might be useful. These quotes are all from the book “Objective Knowledge - An evolutionary approach” (1983 edition).
“What we have to do is start from the fact that objective scientific knowledge is conjectural and then look for its analogue in the field of objective knowledge. This analogue can be easily identified. It is my thesis that subjective knowledge is part of a highly complex and intricate but (in a healthy organism) astonishingly accurate apparatus of adjustment, and that it works, in the main, like objective conjectural knowledge: by the method of trial and elimination of error or by conjecture, refutation and self correction (autocorrection).” p 77 and then
“I used to take pride in the fact that I am not a belief philosopher: I am primarily interested in ideas, in theories, and I find it comparatively unimportant whether or not anybody “believes” in them. And I suspect that the interest of philosophers in belief arises from that mistaken philosophy which I call “inductivism”. They are theorists of knowledge, and starting from subjective experiences they fail to distinguish between objective and subjective knowledge. This leads them to believe in belief as the genus of which knowledge is a species (“justification” or perhaps a “criterion of truth” such as clarity and distinctness or vivacity or “sufficient reason” providing the specific difference).
This is why, like E. M Forster, I do not believe in belief.” Which should give some philosophers, like Daniel Dennett, pause. (Dennett is one who has argued, that as an atheist, he nevertheless believes in belief - it is a good thing for the masses or for individuals to guide their lives or some such. What might be a better way to construct this idea is to endorse the importance of tradition and culture.)
Popper then goes on to explain how there are other reasons for being skeptical of belief. He admits there are psychological states that might be called “expectations” and there are shades of these where we might expect things in some bright sense (the bus is about to come any minute as it’s 3:22pm and the timetable says it’s due) or some darker sense (I expect I’ll get seriously ill at some point before I die). So things are immediate and press on the mind strongly. Some less so. Popper says these things do not amount to beliefs but will be taken seriously by someone who takes induction seriously. And of course he does not.
On p 71 Popper then fleshes out his thoughts on subjective knowledge some more. Here he speaks about how subjective knowledge is “dispositional and expectational”. And that this knowledge which exists in the genes of the organism is, in large measure inborn.
And that what “All acquired knowledge, all learning consists of” (is) “the modification (possibly the rejection) of some form of knowledge or disposition, which was there previously; and in the last instance of inborn dispositions”.
This idea is of course a retort to the blank slate idea. Popper has developed an argument for its rejection decades prior to Pinker or any other psychologist tackled the subject.
Popper then writes “From the point of view here reached, we must reject as completely baseless any subjectivist epistemology which proposes to choose as a starting point what appears to it quite unproblematic; that is, our “direct” or “immediate” observational experiences…they are not absolutely reliable.”
Here let us leave Popper for a moment and come to the present day (May 18, 2018). The internet has been abuzz in recent days with a number of auditory “illusions”. I provide here my favorite.
Watch the clip. You should watch it at least 4 times.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pRY3wlKwm8
First listen out for “Brain Storm”
Then “Green Needle”
Then “Brain Needle”
Then “Green Storm”
Almost everyone (I’ve tested this on scores so far) seems to be able to hear all 4 permutations with more or less effort. What’s this suggest?It shows our observations are “theory laden” to use Popper’s jargon. Or to return to our present analysis - we have some expectations. These expectations are at root something to do with inborn ideas - a genetic wiring that causes our hearing to be sensitive to particular frequencies. We modified those as we learned language. They are now deeply ingrained and so in context, as an English speaker, we can be primed to hear certain things. We have expectations - theories and those theories affect what is observed. The real world is out there for us to test but the meaning we find is shaped by our interpretations of it.
Let me now return to Popper (p 72) where he has just said we can reject this idea that we must begin our creation of knowledge with “our “direct” or “immediate” observational experiences…they are not absolutely reliable.”.
As we have just seen. After all - what did you hear? What you heard depends entirely upon the theory operating in your mind at any given moment. You may even hear something else again if you try. Popper says (on p 73 now) “our observations are highly complex and not always reliable though astonishingly excellent decodings of the signals that reach us from the environment. They must not therefore be elevated to a starting point in the sense of a standard of truth. Thus what appeared as an apparently presupposition-free subjectivist epistemology or tabula rasa theory disintegrates completely. In its place we have to erect a theory of knowledge in which the knowing subject, the observer, plays an important but only a very restricted role.”
Next section: “Knowledge in the Objective Sense”
“The commonsense theory of knowledge, and with it all - or almost all - philosophers until at least Bolzano and Frege, took it for granted that there was only one kind of knowledge - knowledge possessed by some knowing subject. I will call this kind of knowledge “subjective knowledge” in spite of the fact that, as we shall see, genuine or unadulterated or purely subjective conscious knowledge simply does not exist.”
Subjective knowledge in the unconscious sense consists of the dispositions of an organism. So, for example, when you hear “Brain Storm” in the above - your sensation of this is subjective. It cannot be shared. But you know you heard it, right? And yet you can also be mistaken about what you heard because a moment later and you hear the same thing but it’s “Green Needle”. There’s an unconscious dimension to this. Consciously you can tell yourself “Ok, listen for Brain Storm” and you hear brain storm. You consciously tell your unconscious to do your bidding in this way.
Objective knowledge is “out there” in the world. Objective knowledge is published in books and instantiated in objects like cars and technology. It is the kind of thing that can be transmitted. Your personal sensation of the “brain storm” thing, not quite. It’s what’s called a “qualia”.
In Chapter 3 of “Objective Knowledge” beginning on page 106, Popper has a chapter titled “Epistemology Without a Knowing Subject”. Here Popper defends a conception of reality where (1) we can consider the existence of objects out there in the physical world, (2) we can consider our own mental states and finally (3) objective knowledge - explanations published in books and so on that articulate the connections between things. This part (3) is the domain of not only science but also mathematics and art and poetry. It is things apart from just our conscious experience of them. Things that have an existence - but they are more than the mere matter in which they appear. So a poem isn’t just marks of ink on paper, or light and pixels on a computer screen, or sound waves in the air when someone recites it, or movement of electrons in a wire when someone amplifies, transmits and records it. The poem has an existence that is simply not reducible to its physical instantiation in any particular copy. But the poem itself is identical no matter what the instantiation is (error aside). Knowledge is really about (3) and not about (2). Mental states - experiences - consciousness - are real. Just as real as (1) - the physical world. But in a very analogous way in which knowledge cannot be found “in” the physical world as nothing but atoms or particles or vibrations (it instead has an abstract nature - it is a pattern in those things, but not reducible to forces of physics or motion of particles) it also cannot be found solely in mental experience. In short it is neither pure matter nor pure mental. And indeed looking in either of those places - attempting to reduce knowledge to either of those things is a mistake.
In both cases - physical objects and mental experiences - we find crucial components for the creation, representation and use of knowledge. The physical objects form the media upon which we record our knowledge and also is the raw materials in which we instantiate our knowledge. The city grows from the rocks and forests and resources only in the presence of the right knowledge. And the mental world of our experience - the consciousness of people - is where the knowledge is experienced and used to solve problems both personally and broadly.
Somebody asked me “Why is subjectivity considered a risk to knowledge? What assumptions underlie this claim?" and
"How and in what ways does subjectivity impact knowledge acquisition? (or name an Area of Knowledge or two)”
Subjectivity isn’t a risk - knowledge is, after all objective so it’s impervious to someone’s personal subjectivity. But the claim or rather the demand that knowledge be considered as subjective is dangerous because it leads to relativism. In the epistemological sense, subjective knowledge is just your opinion - so if knowledge is like that then our attempts to converge upon the truth will fail. We will all just be going our own way with no criteria for making progress and sorting what is true from what is false or what is good from what is evil and so on. There is a harmless way in which there is a species of knowledge which is subjective. All organisms have their own individual DNA - so your DNA is different to mine and both of ours is different to a cats’ which is different to a fishes’. This genetic knowledge provides us with our experience of the world. For example I can see a blue sky and the colour I see depends on the concentration and operation of cones and rods in the retina of my eye. This concentration and operation is determined by my peculiar and individual genetic make up. Maybe I have 6, 234, 454 cones. Maybe you have 6, 984, 566 cones. This is because of our DNA. So you know you see a certain colour blue when you see the sky. But mine will be ever so slightly different because our apparatus for detecting colour will be different.
Hence also the way we hear that “Brain Storm/Green Needle” thing. Our ears will also be different (different number of, say, cilia - sensitive hair cells that detect sound in the cochlea).
Popper dealt with how subjectivity impacts knowledge acquisition. He said “All acquired knowledge, all learning consists of” (is) “the modification (possibly the rejection) of some form of knowledge or disposition, which was there previously; and in the last instance of inborn dispositions”.
So we start with some inborn ideas and then we adapt these over time as we learn more and more. That this happens in our conscious mind is the subjective component. Of course the actual learning is an encounter with the real world - the physical world kicks back and our ideas are sometimes refuted and by that means we learn. But that encounter with the real physical world of objects out there is an objective process. It’s not your mere opinion that it turned out you were quite wrong about leaving the toast on for 5 minutes. The black, burned, charred bread is not just your opinion. You’ve learned 5 minutes is too long.
Acquisition - learning - of this kind is subtly different to that which goes on in science. Or though acquisition begins in a mind, subjectively, of course. So science begins in the mind of the scientist with creative conjecture. But then when it is subject to robust criticism from other people and from the world it is no longer a personal subjective matter. It is objective.
And it is only objective knowledge, through it’s encounters with the real world - the kicking back from things outside of our mind - that can improve. I cannot improve my knowledge of the colour of the sky by simply staring more and more at it. That subjective experience is just a part of me. My subjective state of mind. I can be mistaken about it, of course. But it is within. If I want to improve it, I’ll need to communicate with others and try to refute my idea. But for now qualia - sensations of “blue” for example cannot be communicated. But this is no great obstacle for most of the questions that occupy us for now. David Deutsch, following Kael Popper has emphasized how objective knowledge is what allows progress - and progress that is unbounded. This growth of knowledge has nothing to do with “belief” - thinking something is actually true or somehow guessing that something is likely to be the case. No, none of that is require - knowledge always remains provisional even though it is objective. Indeed because it is objective it can always be subject to error and correction and thus able to be improved. Popper and Deutsch really have given us an optimistic vision of how knowledge grows. We should take their ideas seriously.
I have created a video of the following article. It can be found here.
All knowledge is conjectural. It could possibly be false. We are fallible human beings - flawed and prone to error. Moreover the laws of physics mandate that we cannot possibly have knowledge of all possible factors that might come to bear on any situation (this is a consequence of quantum theory) and also, things decay (a consequence of the second law of thermodynamics). So our knowledge is necessarily incomplete and subject to errors creeping in over time.
So the laws of physics constrain what it is possible to know, and how. “There is no royal road to truth” - knowledge is hard won. And the method by which it is won is by a critical method. Our guesses about reality are tested out there in the physical world. Subject to scrutiny and experiment, argument and a collision with natural phenomenon. Our buildings instantiate our knowledge of engineering and when the Earth moves in an earthquake our theories of construction are put through trials. If the building collapses in a way unforeseen - we learn something (the hard way!)
Knowledge is objective in two senses. First in the ontological sense. The objects “out there” have a real existence. They are separate from us and not mere products of our mind. Stars would continue to shine and birds tweet even if no people had ever evolved anywhere in the universe to observe any of it. Knowledge is “out there” in objects. In the DNA of a bird exists the knowledge to build a bird. In our built environment we instantiate our knowledge of how matter can be shaped and controlled to bend to our will. So we take silicon and craft it into lenses and metal and form it into cylinders and we places the lenses at just the right distance and we build a telescope. We “instantiate” the knowledge - literally the laws of optics (as well as some chemistry) - into the physical world. Into the telescope. The knowledge is out there in the world - not merely our own minds.
Were all the people who ever learned to build telescopes suddenly lost to us, but not the telescopes, all the knowledge of “how to build a telescope” would not be lost. An interested child, coming across such a device - this metal cylinder with a few bits of shaped glass and perhaps some mirrors inside, could find that it could bring into focus distant objects when correctly aligned and fiddled with. And with more investigation determine that the lenses have special shapes and are a careful distance apart and the cylinder serves a purpose and so on. In other words - almost all the knowledge to build a telescope is right there in the telescope. Sure - maybe there are some matters of geology if the child wanted to start from absolute scratch and gather the silicon and metal from their ores and maybe there is some inexplicit knowledge in the building of a telescope that might make things easier. But in truth, in principle (and in practise) anyone really curious who came across a telescope could learn to build a telescope even if there was no one else alive who knew or was interested in doing so (and this is ignoring that anyone so interested would have access to libraries and the internet and all the resources ever accumulated on “telescope building”.)
So this laboured point is just to say: knowledge is out there in objects. It is objective in that sense. Subjectivity exists (that is our experience of the world - a synonym for that poorly understood concept “consciousness”) but subjective knowledge insofar as it is in there at all, is not of the same type. We shall come to that momentarily.
There is another sense in which knowledge is objective. Knowledge is tested by a critical method. When someone makes a claim there are tests, criticisms and criteria against which we judge the knowledge claim. The tests can be more or less rigorous but valid critical tests are not mere matters of opinion but rather encounters with reality and with other knowledge already out there. A scientist claims that they have determined a way for humans to move through space beyond the speed of light. We can test this claim. Indeed we can try to build there device (or implement their theory) and test the claim. If the test shows the claim to be false - so much for the claim.
We can also put the claim alongside the best alternative theory (which for now is Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity (we could use the General also - but I will ignore this).) That theory explains what happens as speeds increase near the speed of light. Time outside of the moving frame slows down with respect to time for the person who is moving. An object moving at the speed of light (like light itself) gets places in zero time. Time outside the frame of a photon of light has stopped. So going faster than this would mean going back in time and that raises problems which the new claim may not solve. Moreover moving a mass, like a person, to the speed of light requires an infinite amount of energy. So that is another criticism of the new claim. So the new claim is going to fail any test, it’s going to be unable to answer questions about what happens to time and energy and it is simply going to fare as an exceedingly poor rival to Special Relativity. So it’s “encounter with the world” has refuted it by an objective set of criteria. It has failed to do what it purported to and this is no one individuals mere opinion - it is a fact about what has happened in reality with that new claim.
This is “objectivity” in the epistemological sense. Not a matter of opinion or bias - that would be subjective in the epistemological sense - and who desires knowledge in that sense? Opinion and bias? Whatever those things are they are not “knowledge”.
The idea that there exists a kind of knowledge (useful information) that is in some way not in some way created by an encounter with reality - with the physical world out there - is “subjectivism”. The misconception of “subjective knowledge”.
But this doesn’t entirely rule out “subjective knowledge” entirely. But we need to be cautious here. Because “subjectivity” exists (we have a mind - an internal life - a consciousness) - our thoughts and expectations confined solely to our own minds are in a sense “subjective knowledge”. But what is its nature?
What is subjective knowledge?
Subjective knowledge, we will come to see, is knowledge that exists solely within a single organism in some way. And we will come to this picture shortly - suffice it to say that for now, it’s not knowledge of a “conscious” sort, but rather an unconscious kind (such as in DNA). We will see that conscious subjective knowledge does not exist. But it is also important to dwell upon the idea that subjective knowledge of the kind expounded by many philosophers is simply mistake handed down from Plato and, in many ways, uncritically consumed by generations of teachers, academics, scientists and other “thinkers” ever since. Plato was the one who demanded that knowledge to count as knowledge needed to be “Justified True Belief” (JTB hereon). Now elsewhere I do deal with why knowledge cannot be “justified” why we should not expect it to be “true” and also why it cannot be about “belief” (see here).
But for now I want to concentrate just on the “belief” part and explore this notion both more deeply and widely. Belief, if it is anything, is something that people can have - or “conscious creatures” but not something books or telescopes can. As we have already seen - objects out there in the real world from DNA, to books, buildings and telescopes instantiate knowledge. DNA instantiates the knowledge of how to build an organism. It does not have “beliefs”. Telescopes instantiate knowledge about how to gather and focus light. They do not have beliefs. So at the bare minimum the knowledge there has absolutely nothing whatever to do with “belief”. So we have already ruled out this JTB conception of knowledge.
But what about “belief” in people. Now without mentioning him by name, all of the proceeding remarks have in some way been inspired by the philosopher Karl Popper, the most underrated philosopher of the 20th century (although recent years, with the rise of critical rational groups of the internet, a delightful surge in interest has been seen). Now Popper is often dismissed as something like “that guy who said science was about falsification not confirmation”. But he did remarkably more than this. Let us turn now to some of his remarks on belief and subjective knowledge and I will make comments where I think they might be useful. These quotes are all from the book “Objective Knowledge - An evolutionary approach” (1983 edition).
“What we have to do is start from the fact that objective scientific knowledge is conjectural and then look for its analogue in the field of objective knowledge. This analogue can be easily identified. It is my thesis that subjective knowledge is part of a highly complex and intricate but (in a healthy organism) astonishingly accurate apparatus of adjustment, and that it works, in the main, like objective conjectural knowledge: by the method of trial and elimination of error or by conjecture, refutation and self correction (autocorrection).” p 77 and then
“I used to take pride in the fact that I am not a belief philosopher: I am primarily interested in ideas, in theories, and I find it comparatively unimportant whether or not anybody “believes” in them. And I suspect that the interest of philosophers in belief arises from that mistaken philosophy which I call “inductivism”. They are theorists of knowledge, and starting from subjective experiences they fail to distinguish between objective and subjective knowledge. This leads them to believe in belief as the genus of which knowledge is a species (“justification” or perhaps a “criterion of truth” such as clarity and distinctness or vivacity or “sufficient reason” providing the specific difference).
This is why, like E. M Forster, I do not believe in belief.” Which should give some philosophers, like Daniel Dennett, pause. (Dennett is one who has argued, that as an atheist, he nevertheless believes in belief - it is a good thing for the masses or for individuals to guide their lives or some such. What might be a better way to construct this idea is to endorse the importance of tradition and culture.)
Popper then goes on to explain how there are other reasons for being skeptical of belief. He admits there are psychological states that might be called “expectations” and there are shades of these where we might expect things in some bright sense (the bus is about to come any minute as it’s 3:22pm and the timetable says it’s due) or some darker sense (I expect I’ll get seriously ill at some point before I die). So things are immediate and press on the mind strongly. Some less so. Popper says these things do not amount to beliefs but will be taken seriously by someone who takes induction seriously. And of course he does not.
On p 71 Popper then fleshes out his thoughts on subjective knowledge some more. Here he speaks about how subjective knowledge is “dispositional and expectational”. And that this knowledge which exists in the genes of the organism is, in large measure inborn.
And that what “All acquired knowledge, all learning consists of” (is) “the modification (possibly the rejection) of some form of knowledge or disposition, which was there previously; and in the last instance of inborn dispositions”.
This idea is of course a retort to the blank slate idea. Popper has developed an argument for its rejection decades prior to Pinker or any other psychologist tackled the subject.
Popper then writes “From the point of view here reached, we must reject as completely baseless any subjectivist epistemology which proposes to choose as a starting point what appears to it quite unproblematic; that is, our “direct” or “immediate” observational experiences…they are not absolutely reliable.”
Here let us leave Popper for a moment and come to the present day (May 18, 2018). The internet has been abuzz in recent days with a number of auditory “illusions”. I provide here my favorite.
Watch the clip. You should watch it at least 4 times.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pRY3wlKwm8
First listen out for “Brain Storm”
Then “Green Needle”
Then “Brain Needle”
Then “Green Storm”
Almost everyone (I’ve tested this on scores so far) seems to be able to hear all 4 permutations with more or less effort. What’s this suggest?It shows our observations are “theory laden” to use Popper’s jargon. Or to return to our present analysis - we have some expectations. These expectations are at root something to do with inborn ideas - a genetic wiring that causes our hearing to be sensitive to particular frequencies. We modified those as we learned language. They are now deeply ingrained and so in context, as an English speaker, we can be primed to hear certain things. We have expectations - theories and those theories affect what is observed. The real world is out there for us to test but the meaning we find is shaped by our interpretations of it.
Let me now return to Popper (p 72) where he has just said we can reject this idea that we must begin our creation of knowledge with “our “direct” or “immediate” observational experiences…they are not absolutely reliable.”.
As we have just seen. After all - what did you hear? What you heard depends entirely upon the theory operating in your mind at any given moment. You may even hear something else again if you try. Popper says (on p 73 now) “our observations are highly complex and not always reliable though astonishingly excellent decodings of the signals that reach us from the environment. They must not therefore be elevated to a starting point in the sense of a standard of truth. Thus what appeared as an apparently presupposition-free subjectivist epistemology or tabula rasa theory disintegrates completely. In its place we have to erect a theory of knowledge in which the knowing subject, the observer, plays an important but only a very restricted role.”
Next section: “Knowledge in the Objective Sense”
“The commonsense theory of knowledge, and with it all - or almost all - philosophers until at least Bolzano and Frege, took it for granted that there was only one kind of knowledge - knowledge possessed by some knowing subject. I will call this kind of knowledge “subjective knowledge” in spite of the fact that, as we shall see, genuine or unadulterated or purely subjective conscious knowledge simply does not exist.”
Subjective knowledge in the unconscious sense consists of the dispositions of an organism. So, for example, when you hear “Brain Storm” in the above - your sensation of this is subjective. It cannot be shared. But you know you heard it, right? And yet you can also be mistaken about what you heard because a moment later and you hear the same thing but it’s “Green Needle”. There’s an unconscious dimension to this. Consciously you can tell yourself “Ok, listen for Brain Storm” and you hear brain storm. You consciously tell your unconscious to do your bidding in this way.
Objective knowledge is “out there” in the world. Objective knowledge is published in books and instantiated in objects like cars and technology. It is the kind of thing that can be transmitted. Your personal sensation of the “brain storm” thing, not quite. It’s what’s called a “qualia”.
In Chapter 3 of “Objective Knowledge” beginning on page 106, Popper has a chapter titled “Epistemology Without a Knowing Subject”. Here Popper defends a conception of reality where (1) we can consider the existence of objects out there in the physical world, (2) we can consider our own mental states and finally (3) objective knowledge - explanations published in books and so on that articulate the connections between things. This part (3) is the domain of not only science but also mathematics and art and poetry. It is things apart from just our conscious experience of them. Things that have an existence - but they are more than the mere matter in which they appear. So a poem isn’t just marks of ink on paper, or light and pixels on a computer screen, or sound waves in the air when someone recites it, or movement of electrons in a wire when someone amplifies, transmits and records it. The poem has an existence that is simply not reducible to its physical instantiation in any particular copy. But the poem itself is identical no matter what the instantiation is (error aside). Knowledge is really about (3) and not about (2). Mental states - experiences - consciousness - are real. Just as real as (1) - the physical world. But in a very analogous way in which knowledge cannot be found “in” the physical world as nothing but atoms or particles or vibrations (it instead has an abstract nature - it is a pattern in those things, but not reducible to forces of physics or motion of particles) it also cannot be found solely in mental experience. In short it is neither pure matter nor pure mental. And indeed looking in either of those places - attempting to reduce knowledge to either of those things is a mistake.
In both cases - physical objects and mental experiences - we find crucial components for the creation, representation and use of knowledge. The physical objects form the media upon which we record our knowledge and also is the raw materials in which we instantiate our knowledge. The city grows from the rocks and forests and resources only in the presence of the right knowledge. And the mental world of our experience - the consciousness of people - is where the knowledge is experienced and used to solve problems both personally and broadly.
Somebody asked me “Why is subjectivity considered a risk to knowledge? What assumptions underlie this claim?" and
"How and in what ways does subjectivity impact knowledge acquisition? (or name an Area of Knowledge or two)”
Subjectivity isn’t a risk - knowledge is, after all objective so it’s impervious to someone’s personal subjectivity. But the claim or rather the demand that knowledge be considered as subjective is dangerous because it leads to relativism. In the epistemological sense, subjective knowledge is just your opinion - so if knowledge is like that then our attempts to converge upon the truth will fail. We will all just be going our own way with no criteria for making progress and sorting what is true from what is false or what is good from what is evil and so on. There is a harmless way in which there is a species of knowledge which is subjective. All organisms have their own individual DNA - so your DNA is different to mine and both of ours is different to a cats’ which is different to a fishes’. This genetic knowledge provides us with our experience of the world. For example I can see a blue sky and the colour I see depends on the concentration and operation of cones and rods in the retina of my eye. This concentration and operation is determined by my peculiar and individual genetic make up. Maybe I have 6, 234, 454 cones. Maybe you have 6, 984, 566 cones. This is because of our DNA. So you know you see a certain colour blue when you see the sky. But mine will be ever so slightly different because our apparatus for detecting colour will be different.
Hence also the way we hear that “Brain Storm/Green Needle” thing. Our ears will also be different (different number of, say, cilia - sensitive hair cells that detect sound in the cochlea).
Popper dealt with how subjectivity impacts knowledge acquisition. He said “All acquired knowledge, all learning consists of” (is) “the modification (possibly the rejection) of some form of knowledge or disposition, which was there previously; and in the last instance of inborn dispositions”.
So we start with some inborn ideas and then we adapt these over time as we learn more and more. That this happens in our conscious mind is the subjective component. Of course the actual learning is an encounter with the real world - the physical world kicks back and our ideas are sometimes refuted and by that means we learn. But that encounter with the real physical world of objects out there is an objective process. It’s not your mere opinion that it turned out you were quite wrong about leaving the toast on for 5 minutes. The black, burned, charred bread is not just your opinion. You’ve learned 5 minutes is too long.
Acquisition - learning - of this kind is subtly different to that which goes on in science. Or though acquisition begins in a mind, subjectively, of course. So science begins in the mind of the scientist with creative conjecture. But then when it is subject to robust criticism from other people and from the world it is no longer a personal subjective matter. It is objective.
And it is only objective knowledge, through it’s encounters with the real world - the kicking back from things outside of our mind - that can improve. I cannot improve my knowledge of the colour of the sky by simply staring more and more at it. That subjective experience is just a part of me. My subjective state of mind. I can be mistaken about it, of course. But it is within. If I want to improve it, I’ll need to communicate with others and try to refute my idea. But for now qualia - sensations of “blue” for example cannot be communicated. But this is no great obstacle for most of the questions that occupy us for now. David Deutsch, following Kael Popper has emphasized how objective knowledge is what allows progress - and progress that is unbounded. This growth of knowledge has nothing to do with “belief” - thinking something is actually true or somehow guessing that something is likely to be the case. No, none of that is require - knowledge always remains provisional even though it is objective. Indeed because it is objective it can always be subject to error and correction and thus able to be improved. Popper and Deutsch really have given us an optimistic vision of how knowledge grows. We should take their ideas seriously.