Epistemology

In some respects, it's interesting how many of my own studies coincide with events as they happen in others' lives, also. So as I read through Job, I have been confronted with different views of substitution, for example. I find again, reading through a pre-print manuscript for a book that Job has appeared again, this time in the realm of epistemology.

A family friend has written about his own search for a valid epistemology (his words, not mine) and sent the book to my father, who has loaned it to me. I don't intend to review the book here, but perhaps to regurgitate some of the questions it asks. How we know what we know is an interesting question, and not an easy one to answer.

What I have enjoyed in the reading is getting to know a different side of a man I've known by name most of my life. His questions often parallel mine and always provoke thought. In the past several months, I have found myself confronting the same questions he asks and searching for an adequate means to answer them. I have found friends in distress and been asked to answer some of their questions.


It is extremely difficult for me to write coherently on this subject. Epistemology really begins with infinite regress. We pose a question, "How can I know that the answers to my questions are true?" Unfortunately, the answer to this question must validate itself. This sort of self-reference is a recipe for broken systems; Gödel had something to say about that with his Incompleteness Theorem.

At least to a degree, the answer to that question lies for me in Realism. I suppose my brand is a bit different than Plato's and his students'. Christianity has, however, a very realist bend. We see glimpses of it in Hebrews, where Moses was instructed to create an earthly tabernacle (the particular) based on a heavenly pattern (the universal). We see it in the doctrine of redemption, in which corruption (the particular) is subsumed by incorruption (the universal). We see it, too, in the writings against Gnosticism. There is a spiritual corporeality to Christianity that I find extremely persuasive.

Lewis argued in Surprised by Joy that materialism (contemplation) could not explain what he experienced (enjoyed). The mere act of thinking about Joy distanced himself from the experience; he could not simultaneously experience Joy and think about it. It was this that convinced him, I think, of the truth of Realism. That experience should be separate from thought does not at first blush seem that profound. But it was, I think, the realization that he couldn't manufacture Joy that convinced him it existed objectively.

Once this is admitted, the floodgates open, and we find ourselves ready to begin, I think.


I am pushed further towards the realist position by discontent with the anti-realist one. One of the difficulties with the postmodern truth-is-relative approach is that it has to argue from a perspective that there is at least one objective truth: that all other truths are relative. The obvious contradiction here is that the postmodern anti-realist has already admitted first, that there is a frame of reference that holds all observers, and second, that there is at least one truth in that frame of reference that holds for all observers.

The problem here is that this line of thinking must be accepted a priori. Axioms are a good thing, normally; they're what made Euclid's geometry so powerful. But in this case, the axiom dismantles the framework in which the observer operates. If I am to accept that there is a universal frame of reference, then why should I accept that this axiom, and this axiom only, holds for it? Postmodern anti-realism begins and ends with this point; it can't go any farther.


For some, this is probably comforting because of their own fears about what is Real. But I have only ever seen it as a haven for the cowardly.

One of the other reasons I think some trend away from Realism are the results of scientific investigation. Heisenburg told us that we change the outcome of an experiment by observing it. Gödel told us that we have mathematical systems that contain true theorems that aren't provable. There is inherent uncertainty, in other words, in materialism.

What did not happen, however, was that previous understanding was invalidated. Euclidean geometry didn't suddenly become invalid when Gödel published his groundbreaking paper (I believe it is easily the most significant mathematical achievement of the 20th century). What did happen was that the mathematical community realized that the goal they were seeking—a complete and consistent mathematical system—was impossible.

The postmodern axiom has neither the force nor the conviction of the Uncertainty Principle or the Incompleteness Theorem. While uncertainty is a part of empiricism, it is not the catastrophic sort that we find in postmodernism. We find statistical boundaries and tolerances, but never P and not-P.


When we come back to where we begin with epistemology, I think we have a good ground for knowing what is True. We can start with the assumption at the least that there is something—and in our case, Someone—to know.

The case developed here is rather short, and doesn't really answer the question that the study of knowledge poses; but at least, I think, it argues that we can answer it to at least some degree.