Arguments for objective knowledge: Part 2

This is going to be the second and last part of my blog series ‘‘Arguments for objective knowledge‘‘, in which I present arguments, which, if true, would mean that not only objective truth exists, but that we could have access to it and that our access would not be distorted, since we would have (at the very least indirect) access to the ‘‘things in themselves‘‘, also known as ‘‘noumena‘‘ (the things as they are outside of our perception of them, if an ‘‘outside‘‘ exists, that is).

In this part I will talk about the realist arguments.

Definition of realism:

The doctrine that matter as the object of perception has real existence and is neither reducible to universal mind or spirit nor dependent on a perceiving agent.

I am going to present arguments I came up with myself on the basis of prior already existing theories from famous philosophers, since I didn‘t find any convincing theories for realism that already exist. Most realists in philosophical history have just presupposed it, which is in my opinion not really a sufficient argument.

Since the arguments presented here (to my knowledge) can not be found anywhere else, definitely feel free to give me on it, if you want to. Also if you have seen similar arguments before, let me know where, but I can absolutely guarantee you, that I came up with the following arguments completely on my own.

Before I‘ll get to the arguments, I‘ll explain some things first, that are pretty much the same for all arguments I‘m going to present.

Lets start at a rather unusual place, the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus. As you may or may not know, Copernicus questioned the long held belief, that the sun turns around the earth (anthropocentric/geocentric model) and presented the theory that the earth turns around the sun (heliocentric model), which came to be known as the ‘‘copernican revolution‘‘. It turned out, that Copernicus was correct and that the earth does in fact turn around the sun and not the other way around. I‘ll come back to this a bit later.

Now lets go to a different person, the scottish philosopher David Hume. As you may or may not know, Hume was a skeptic (someone who doubts that we have access to anything but our perception). Hume was very unhappy with the dogmatists in philosophy, that were still dominant in his time, considering them not to be skeptical enough. David Hume went as far as saying, that we only have access to our perception of the world, not to the world itself. What he means is, that everything we perceive gets filtered through our senses and then the information gets sent to our brain, but what we end up seeing is at the very best a copy of reality, not actual reality. According to Hume, we can never know how accurate this copy is and we shouldn‘t simply presuppose, that it is accurate. He therefore didn‘t really make any claims about the world whatsoever, but only about our perception of it.

Lets jump to a figure that picked up this worldview from Hume, the philosopher Immanuel Kant. Kant gave names to the distinctions Hume made between our perception of reality and actual reality, which he called the ‘‘noumena‘‘ or ‘‘things in themselves‘‘

(actual reality) and ‘‘phenomena‘‘ or ‘‘things for themselves‘‘ (our perception of reality). However Kant noticed what seems to be a flaw in Hume‘s worldview. According to Hume, we perceive reality as having categories.

Definition of categories:

Each of a possibly exhaustive set of classes among which all things might be distributed.

I know this definition isn‘t extremely clear, but what is meant is like ‘‘In which states can things be in?‘‘. In other words, to give a few examples, things can be in time and space, things can be in unity (as in being one thing) or in plurality (as in being multiple things), furthermore things can be in dependency (as in depending on something else) to only name a few.

Now Kant noticed what actually seems to be a contradiction in David Hume. Hume believed categories exist, but they are only in our perception, not in reality. This causes a problem, because for Hume to even presuppose, that there is an external reality (seperate of our perception) in the first place, he necessarily must posit that actual reality causes our perceptions. If it doesn‘t, then there would be no relationship whatsoever between the two, which would make it completely useless to even make this distinction, respectively to posit there being an external world (seperate of our perception). If we want to posit such an external world, we must posit at least a single category, which you might call ‘‘causality‘‘ (something causes something else). This is exactly where the problem arises, since Hume didn‘t posit ‘‘causality‘‘ existing outside of his perception. Kant didn‘t want to abandon skepticism, so he had to come up with a solution and he did. Kant realized that Hume denied there being innate knowledge (knowledge we have from birth). If Hume didn‘t deny that however, then a solution could be found.

Now we are finally returning to Nicolaus Copernicus. Kant knew about the ‘‘copernican revolution‘‘, but he was asking himself whether he could do something similar in philosophy and he realized that he could. So instead of positing, that our minds have to abide by external reality, he posited that instead, external reality has to abide by our minds, which became known as ‘‘Kant’s copernican revolution’‘. I need to clarify what he meant with that however, since it can be easily misunderstood. Kant didn‘t mean, that reality is dependent on our minds, but that if categories don‘t exist in reality, then they have to exist in our minds and they must be innate from birth. In other words, Kant started believing that time and space, aswell as other categories only exist in our minds, as the sort of opperating system upon which ours minds perceive reality. So we perceive objects as being in time and space, among others. Keep in mind however, that Kant also said we couldn‘t make any claims about actual reality but only about our perception.

Kant coined a type of argument, which he called a ‘‘transcendental argument‘‘. This type of argument can already be found prior to him, but he made it popular and gave it its current name. What a transcendental argument essentially is, is a deductive philosophical argument, that tries to find the necessary conditions, that need to be in place for things to exist in the way they do. So what Kant is essentially asking himself is: ‘‘What needs to be the case, so that X (random variable) can be true‘‘. In other words, it is a type of argument that infers a necessary condition out of a fact. While Kant only used transcendental arguments to figure our how, according to him, our minds structure our perception of reality, it can and has also been used in the reverse sense, as in infering something about actual reality.

What my following arguments will thus be about, is reversing ‘‘Kant‘s copernican revolution’‘ again, in a way similar to the one of Schelling, which I will address a bit later in this blog. What this essentially means, is that I will once again start positing, that our perception has to abide by reality. In other words, I will try to find out the necessary conditions, that need to be the case in actual reality, so that we can perceive it in the way that we do.

With all of that said, now we can get to my arguments.

1) Simple transcendental argument for objective knowledge:

Now Fichte realized however, that Kant didn‘t solve Hume‘s problem at all. All he did is push the categories from our perception into our mind (in an innate way). However this still fails to explain how we can posit an external world. Fichte realized that Kant was contradicting himself, since he actually said at some points, that causality necessarily exists in actual reality, but at other points, he said categories can only exist in our minds. Fichte tried to solve this problem, but instead of positing, that we can posit causality in actual reality, he just denied actual reality to exist in the first place, so all that exists is mind dependent, since that would be the logical conclusion, if one doesn’t posit causality in external reality.

Now what would happen if we were to indeed posit causality in external reality? That would mean, that there is at the very least one category that necessarily exists in reality. Which in turn would also mean, that it is possible for categories to exist in reality and at the very least one of them also actually exists in practice.

My very first argument I ever came up with (I it it wasn‘t very good, but I‘ll share it nonetheless) looked something like this:

P1) If an external world exists, then that external world causes our perception

P2) An external world exists

C1: Therefore, an external world causes our perception

P3) If an external world causes our perception, then our perception is accurate

P4) An external world causes our perception

C2: Therefore, our perception is accurate

As I said already, this isn‘t a particularly good argument in my opinion. I nonetheless wanted to show you how my reasoning evolved over time, so I included it. I can definitely understand if this one didn‘t convince you, as it didn‘t really convince me either. Definitely give a chance to the following arguments however, that I have developed later on, as I consider them to have turned out much better.

2) Complex transcendental argument which doesn‘t presuppose innate knowledge:

I improved the first argument by doing the following:

P1) If we should presuppose innate knowledge, then we have a reason to presuppose innate knowledge

P2) We have no reason to presuppose innate knowledge

C1: Therefore, we should not presuppose innate knowledge

P3) If the categories we perceive exist in the mind, then we pressuppose innate knowledge

P4) We should not presuppose innate knowledge

C2: Therefore, the categories we perceive do not exist in the mind

P5) The categories we perceive exist either in reality or in the mind (or in both)

P6) The categories we perceive do not exist in the mind

C3: Therefore, the categories we perceive exist in reality

P7) If the categories we perceive exist in reality, then our perception is accurate

P8) The categories we perceive exist in reality

C4: Therefore, our perception is accurate

This one is personally my favourite argument to be honest.

I also made another one, which does presuppose innate knowledge, which will follow now. I personally don‘t think it turned out quite as good as this one however, but I‘ll let you be the judge.

3) Complex transcendental argument which presupposes innate knowledge:

The philosopher Schelling did something one could call ‘‘Kant’s reverse copernican revolution‘‘, in other words, he didn‘t ask himself ‘‘What must our minds be like, so that we can perceive reality the way we do?‘‘. Instead he asked himself ‘‘What must reality be like to give rise to minds like ours?‘‘.

This is what this argument will thus be about, however it will go in a different direction than Schelling, who ended up believing that reality is mind dependent. My argument on the other hand will attempt to show that reality is not mind dependent, but that we can still know what it fundamentally is like.

The argument goes as follows:

P1) If we perceive the categories, then the categories we perceive exist either in the mind or in reality (or in both)

P2) We perceive the categories

C1: Therefore, the categories we perceive exist either in the mind or in reality (or in both)

P3) If we should presuppose that the categories we perceive exist in reality, then we have a reason to presuppose that the categories we perceive exist in reality

P4) We do not have a reason to presuppose that the categories we perceive exist in reality

C2: Therefore, we should not presuppose that the categories we perceive exist in reality (yet)

P5) The categories we perceive exist either in the mind or in reality (or in both)

P6) We should not presuppose that the categories we perceive exist in reality

C3: Therefore, the categories we perceive exist in the mind

P7) If the categories we perceive exist in the mind, then reality itself must contain the categories we perceive aswell, in order to bring about minds like ours

P8) The categories we perceive exist in the mind

C4: Therefore, reality itself must contain the categories we perceive aswell, in order to bring about minds like ours

P9) If the categories we perceive exist in reality aswell, then our perception is accurate

P10) The categories we perceive exist in reality aswell

C5: Therefore, our perception is accurate

Technically a fourth argument could be made where the same reasoning from the third argument would be applied to the second argument aswell (while leaving away innate knowledge). Considering that this would in my opinion however only lead to a weaker version of the second argument, I decided not to explicitly put such a fourth argument here. I nonetheless wanted to make you aware that I did think about this possibility however.

In the hypothetical scenario, where John Locke‘s primary-secondary quality distinction (primary qualities like solidity, extension, motion, number and figure actually existing within objects themselves and secondary qualities such as colour, taste, smell and sound only existing in our perception) actually applies, that still wouldn‘t really make a difference to what has been said in this blog. This is because generally speaking philosophers don‘t really tend to be concerned with things such as colour, taste, smell and sound (because these things generally don‘t really impact philosophy and hence don‘t tend to really make a difference), except maybe phenomenologists, but for them it doesn‘t really make a difference either, considering that they only tend to analyze these things from the standpoint of our subjective perception.

Those were my 3 arguments, I hope you liked them and I‘m definitely excited for your . If you think they contain flaws, feel free to point them out. I do not want to believe in my opinions but in the truth and if my arguments contain serious irreconcibable flaws then they are not the truth.

My personal favourite is by far number 2, since I think number 2 is not a stretch and the conclusion actually follows from the premises, but let me know what you think.

I think all 3 arguments are overall in line with Hume‘s framework however, since all 3 of them it, that the only possible access to the ‘‘noumena‘‘ or ‘‘things in themselves‘‘ (actual reality) for us would be if the ‘‘phenomena‘‘ or ‘‘things for themselves‘‘ (our perception of reality) accurately depict actual reality.

I didn‘t put any rationalist arguments, since in a humean and/or kantian framework (in which the existence of a God/gods isn‘t necessarily assumed), it is very well possible, that the rationalists‘ innate deduction in fact doesn‘t make any statements about the actual world at all. For this very reason, I didn‘t put any rationalist arguments, since I wanted to find a foundation, that would give us an actual degree of certainity, that our statements are really refering to the actual world, which was the whole point of this blog series.

As always, I hope you liked this blog and feel free to share your opinion on it, if you want to.