A Bit Like Shelving

From time to time people ask me, “How do you pronounce Le Penseur Réfléchit?” That is an excellent question; many, in fact, think that the latter part rhymes with a slang phrase for scatological specimens when in fact it actually rhymes with the words “he,” “sea,” “bee,” and “tree” and most closely ends with the sound “she.” I reasoned to myself that I could spend days and nights writing phonetic guides until I live no more, but the best thing to do would be to let everyone hear the pronunciation firsthand for themselves. For that reason, if you go to the About This Site page and peruse the second paragraph, you will see a small bronze square. Clicking on that twelve-by-twelve pixel shape is your key to hearing the name many know by sight but not by sound—at least if you have the free Macromedia Flash plug-in installed, that is. (Most people do.) I was particularly proud of condensing the name down into a mere fourteen to fifteen kilobytes. :)

Another thing people have been asking recently is how shopping for graduate schools is going and to that I can only say that it is very taxing but thankfully it is beginning to come to an end. My family and I—my parents, one of my cousins and her family, another cousin and myself—celebrated Christmas in Winfield, Kansas, where my brother and sister-in-law live. They graciously offered me the use of one of their computers and I was able to complete most of the application process there; I still have a few days to tidy my drafts and get my statements of purpose written. Of course, even after I have submitted, it will be some time before any results become available, but simply getting my steps ordered—applications filled out, papers written, recommendations collected and all else involved in the process—helps me feel a sense of accomplishment. Once people learn (if they did not know) that I am planning on pursuing a doctorate in philosophy, they often ask what area of philosophy I am most interested in researching. It should surprise no one who has been on this mailing list for any length of time to learn that epistemology is a first pick with classical philosophy a near second: epistemology, from epistēmē (“knowledge,” “truth”), because the driving force of my life has long been to discover what is true about the world in which we live, and classical philosophy because reading the writings of the ancient Greeks inspires me to be better than I am. I have long suspected that the Apostle Paul was more schooled in the Greek classics than is often admitted short of the brief gloss in the book of Acts; parts of his epistles are very reminiscent of, say, the stoic Epictetus and the Encheiridion that pays tribute to his name, Aristotle and the Nicomachean Ethics, or the religious-like zeal of the cynics whose uncouth behavior earned them the name kun, or “dog” (the Latinized version of the Greek kunikos yields cynicus).

There are, of course, those who question the validity of philosophy and not without a degree of reason. One of the most common criticisms of philosophy is that it has no practical, real-world application. Of course, that depends, for philosophy can be as practical or as frivolous as we make it: at times it can admittedly make a great to-do over nothing but it can also open our eyes a little wider and knock off some of the rust that tends to corrode when our lives are left unexamined. There are those who say that “just the facts” is what we need: just the facts and nothing more. But what can a fact say about itself? We spoke on this matter some in the previous The Color of Emily’s Bedroom: facts say nothing about themselves but require some kind of framework to organize them and give them unity. We commonly call such a structure a person’s worldview, paradigm, ideology, or half a dozen other terms without really giving the matter much further thought and attention.

This past semester we had a professor who told us on several occasions throughout the course that philosophy was unique in that it did not have its own subject matter. It was not until the final week of class that he clarified what he meant by that statement: it is philosophy’s job to compare things and it must have two or three instances of a given subject of inquiry before it can function. It is, if you like, a means to an end rather than an end in itself. Or, as I told my political theory professor who admits that the discipline is a bit off her beaten path, philosophy is a bit like shelving. It provides a framework (as I pointed to the bookcase shelves in her office) that can be used to catalog and display ideas, organizing them and making them easier to reach, much like the wisdom of the Tao Te Ching we cited in Circles in a World of Squares where we noted that a cart, a vase, and a room are all useful objects precisely because they contain a lot of empty space. Likewise, the usefulness of philosophy is not generally in what it says about itself as its own subject but in what it can unearth about other subjects of interest. It can usefully fit other ideas within itself, receding into the background while the subject of inquiry is given our full attention. Or, to employ a metaphor I have used often in keeping with my epistemological leanings, philosophy provides a set of truth-seeking tools that we can carry around with us, using them to probe and pry into difficult subjects with great dexterity once we have become adept at wielding them.

Within the fields of science, the purpose of a theory is often to provide a provisional framework to organize and harmonize empirical data. It does not have to be proven to be effective, for it is often little more than a starting point, perhaps stating an expected outcome from a given experiment that is usually modified with additional testing. Such a framework is rarely intended to be universal in scope. It cannot say what might be the ultimate truth about the universe because it is designed only to work within the small spaces of the immediate present. That is not always the case with science, of course, but the Einsteins of the world do not come around every day and when they do, they are appealing to far more than simple empiricism to make their hypotheses hang together. No, much of what makes a big, far-reaching hypothesis hang together is the stuff of philosophy, for it is a discipline concerned with the relationship between things, constantly trying to wrap its mind around more and more of the world and sometimes turning in on itself a morbid introspection to determine why such a quest is inherently limited and at times apparently futile. Even when it takes itself as its own subject matter, it is receding into its own background to make the central questions of the usefulness of philosophy come to the fore. The answer regarding the apparent futility of philosophy, I suppose, is as close as man himself: man, the finite creature who can only go so far and do so much no matter how elaborate his tools or the shelving with which he arranges his universe.

We said in The Color of Emily’s Bedroom that there was a difference between truth and reality: that reality simply was what it was and that truth was the “re-presenting” of that reality within the human mind and by natural extension, the “re-presenting” from mind to mind. That kind of distinction is good insofar as it goes, but it can also assume a sort of fatalism. That is, truth becomes the passive participant in an unchanging reality that we cannot affect or influence in any way. “Reality is just what it is” could easily have the extra idea tacked on the end of it “and therefore there is nothing that we can do to change it.” But if we do change reality in some way, are we then said to be “creating our own truth”? Or is one of the truths about the world the fact that human beings can influence one another and their environment and that there is such a thing as subjective reality in addition to elements of objective reality, such as globes and atlases representative of the earth? Maybe we could say that truth accurately reflects reality at any given point in time; however, we also have minds that will and they can effect change which can in turn be seen for what it is, truth still the accurate reflection or representation of this changing reality. Perhaps that is why people sometimes make a distinction between objective and subjective truth, hoping to bring clarity to the question. The epiphany for me, however, was not whether or not truth can be created (I suspect that teasing out a precise definition of “created” would clear up a great deal of confusion) but simply that truth abides in the realm of the mind whereas reality is external to the mind, forming the subject matter that is accurately represented in some way within the mind. Of course, we could say that the mind might be its own subject matter (in which case the reality it is examining does not seem obviously external to itself), but then it would be treating itself as an object of study: that is, it would not be studying itself per se (an impossibility), but merely a re-presentation of itself. It could be mistaken. It could have an inaccurate perception of itself and thus arrive at erroneous conclusions.

How can one ever know that what is “re-presented” is an accurate representation? Such is but one of the perennial problem areas epistemology tackles. At least according to American philosopher Stephen C. Pepper (who we glossed in the previous issue), a given representation of reality can only be accessed on its own terms from the inside out. What can it say about itself, the world, and other theories? If it is nearly universal in scope and sufficiently precise—if it is both very wide and very deep—then it is a contender for the list of relatively adequate world hypotheses. Part of the means of determining if it meets these requirements is to ask how plausibly it can explain a breadth of subjects and how intricately it can drill down into any one of a range of particulars. This kind of examination has been refined over the centuries as certain problem areas predictably emerge. Practiced philosophers and other thinkers are more experienced and key in on these hot spots much more quickly, better determining whether a given theory can carry its own weight. But no matter how much training a person has undergone and no matter how great one’s natural aptitude, there still has to be some criteria by which plausibility is measured. What sort of things comprise plausibility? Pepper answers this question by stating that the “stuff” of plausibility is common sense.

The thing that makes common sense common is consensus: a given thing has proven itself more or less reliable and by widespread consent within a given culture it eventually becomes conventional wisdom. The beauty of common sense, suggests Pepper, is that there is no shortage of it. One of its downfalls, however, is that it is not always reliable and can be maddeningly contrary and contradictory without so much as blushing. In its better moments, its contradictions are quite simple: “Haste makes waste,” but “the early bird gets the worm.” In worse moments, what one group of people considers to be self-evident another group denies. The one factor that common sense has in common is that it remains uncriticized. By contrast, what makes refined knowledge refined is the careful study of common-sense reality: putting things to various tests, analyzing them, sorting them, setting them on shelves for display. Our two innocent phrases, for example, are not actually contradictory after more reflective analysis, they simply apply to different situations and must be parsed for these particulars. As uncriticized common sense they are contradictory; once analyzed they pass over into the realm of reflection. To be fair, it is likely that when we tell someone “haste makes waste,” we have intuitively adjusted our meaning to fit the particular instance whereas when we say “the early bird gets the worm,” a different set of circumstances reigns in which such an expression is more appropriate. Such conventional wisdom, however intuitively adjusted to fit the moment, is often glibly offered and not carefully thought through. Yet the stuff of refined knowledge is common-sense reality and it is entirely possible for a theory to spin itself so thin it must go rushing back again to embrace common sense, thereby attempting to regain a sense of purpose and meaning. It might even try to drag common sense back with it, pronouncing it to be some kind of self-evident truth. One way or another, refined knowledge and common sense tango, the one needing the other and the other needing the one. Some day, suggests Pepper, the two might become one, but not today, not for a while, not with the limitations of human knowledge being what they are at present.

“Just use your head!” might be the common-sense admonition a well-meaning friend offers us when we are puzzling over some strange claim. That is not bad advice at all, for we are making the most of what we have and trying to be reasonable, seeking what is true or at least plausible and what is dubious if not plainly false. Yet there is that age-old question no amount of common sense or refined knowledge ever seems to solve: “How do we know what we know? How do we even know that we know it?” Within Christianity, we may be tempted to say that we know what we know on the basis of faith and revelation. Yet there must be some underlying reason why we believe and why we trust that revelation. We would be very foolish indeed to place our faith in something we did not believe in at all; we must think we have good reasons for believing or at least some reason for believing. In fact, the same professor who talked about philosophy not having its own subject matter played out the etymology of the word “truth,” noting that it is very closely related to the word “trust”—truth is that which we trust or that in which we place our trust. Also in the same family is tryst, troth, and betrothal, all of which imply in one way or another the idea of trust, sometimes a trust that runs counter to one’s better judgment and common-sense notions.

What is there about faith in particular that seems so enigmatic at times? For it is not so far removed from trust—truth—and yet we so often separate the two: faith and reason, we say. We talk about a “knowing” which is really a very strong sense of certainty. And that strong sense is often correct, for that matter, though it does not have to be. Pepper has no qualms with us here, though he would caution us against placing too much faith in an authority figure. When we say that so-and-so is an authority on anthropology, for example, we do not mean—or at least we ought not mean—that she is an infallible spokeswoman on the subject and that if she says it, it is true for that very reason, as though in the mere act of passing through her lips words are automatically sanctified somehow. Rather, if we say, “she said it, therefore I believe it” what we are really saying is that she has consistently been known to be trustworthy—her presentation of truth has accurately aligned itself with reality—and thus we place our confidence in her. The source of our trust does not originate in the woman herself but rather in the woman’s track record of aligning herself with reality, speaking with clarity, truth, and insight.

It is often wise to mentally separate persons from the things that they say and do, whether that be in the example of considering what a renowned anthropologist has to say or in automatically dismissing the words of a person known for lying. It is entirely possible that a chronic liar might sometimes say something that is true and it might also be the case that a brilliant anthropologist might say something that is false. If our interest is in finding what is true, it is only of secondary consideration to us whether the person had pure or impure motives: if the liar told the truth out of spite or if the anthropologist was misspoken does not concern the question of truth but instead lands over into the nearby philosophical realm of ethics. That does not mean that ethics are unimportant or that we should not admire a man or woman of integrity—it does not even mean that the prior track record of the truthfulness of a given person should not be a part of our overall evaluation. It does mean that we should evaluate ideas based on their own merits and not set people on pedestals or close our minds to the possibility that even a very notorious person might at times say something insightful. That is an excellent point to emphasize, by the way. We should always give people room to surprise us—and to disappoint us as well. People are very likely to do either.

Archive note: See also the discussion forum thread regarding this newsletter.

So then, truth is that which accurately represents or otherwise corresponds to reality and as such, it is not so much different than faith, for we pin our hopes on the belief that it too accurately represents what is real and what is commendable. If we did not believe that our faith represented that which was true, we would have no basis for practicing it. If our faith has given us every reason to believe in times past, we should be cautious in throwing it all out when the seasons grow dark and the blustery winds assail. To hold fast for the season is to invest a certain (and not uncritical) trust in that which has carried us through thus far, and we have already noted how closely trust and truth correlate. There is not one of us who has the final answers, but we can and do learn from one another. Taking it a step further, as believers, we trust that the Holy Spirit guides us and that Christ shines out from all to greater or lesser degree; we can see reflections of Him in every face we meet.

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