When we attempt to aquire knowledge, are we finding real truths? Or is it only possible to gain knowledge of our perceptions? Empirical knowledge can always be questioned since it is implicitly subjective. But, is our a priori knowledge actualy truth, or just the minds interpretation of reality through the metaphysical categories of space, time, and causality?
Maurice Merleau-Ponty speaks of a pre-noetic perception. A perception which precedes thought and language. Through his articulation of corporeal existence he was able to posit that we "see the things themselves, " that is the visibles, or sensibles, of which my body is a part. The body effaces itself in the process of ‘seeing,’ which takes place in a silence before words. There is something, which my eyes come across which is not a thought, not a process of thinking, but a viewing, a seeing and being seen. The things in the world impose themselves upon us, which in turn we seek to articulate, or perhaps, articulates. In thinking and speaking we are always already responding to our imperative to speak the world.
Thought does not come before speech, rather, in speaking we become aware of our thought in the act itself. We only have an illusion of an inner life, which is nothing more than the retention of previous acts of speech, which we maintain, as so many different styles which we possess.
As to your original question, I do not think that we aquire knowledge in the quest for actual truth, rather we aquire a certain style of speaking the world which allows us to understand ourselves and be understood by others. Truth is nothing more than particular sedimentations of speech, or perhaps ideally writing, which function as orientational devices until such sedimentations are proven faulty, or perhaps, better explained, or understood, through new patterns of speech or writing.
Metaphysical notions of time, space, causality, are part of a certain gestalt which seems functional in terms of offerring a background into which we lend our particular styles of thought, which are not truly particular, although they come from a particular perspective. There would be no understanding without a ‘world,’ there is no a priori knowledge, only the world and perception.
Asbelow - do you mean that space, time, and causality are metaphysical categories, or that space, time and causality contain metaphysical categories? I consider either formulation equally nonsensical, so I am having a tough time discerning your meaning.
I do in fact mean “metaphysical categories”. Im not sure what you find confusing in that statement. Kant, while developing his Copernican theory, argued that there is an epistemic distinciton between the world we percieve and reality, the ding an sich. This is not an extension of indirect realism, we are not simply doubting the senses or empirical truths. Kant is saying that we dont experience the world as it is but only as we impose the categories of the mind onto it; namely those of space, time, and causality. Those are the mental instruments we have to make sense of reality. That is all we have to work with, and even the most fantastic imagination cannot shed them. I can concieve of almost anything, but I cant even begin to understand boundless space. Im no closer to comprehending an infinite causal chain than I am to an uncaused action. These categories are simply the minds attempt to decipher reality. As Schopenhauer said, “The world is my representation.”
a priori “knowledge” can tell you nothing about the world…
the world can’t even tell you about the world…
“throw it to the flames!”
-Imp
Maybe there could be some galactic Roseta Stone. And your ideas have some meaning outside our tiny little world. But then again, “If a lion could speak…”