PART II
The Key-and-Lock Model of Matching
I want to propose the “key-and-lock” concept of matching. This is a concept that defines matching the way we would say that a key matches a lock. They are not carbon copies of each other. They are different. In fact, they have to be different in order to work, in order to match. The one needn’t look anything like the other. They needn’t share any properties in common.
Keys and locks aren’t the only examples of how matching can work in this sense. Take, for example, dating services who try to find the right “match” for those seeking companionship, certain genotypes that match certain phenotypes, or personnel files that “match” actual people. In none of these cases does the sense of “matching” insinuate that the items of the pair are identical. It is necessary that they differ in certain ways in order to be matches at all. One may argue that in all these case, there must be something between the two that are copies of each other, some part, some property; it doesn’t have to be the whole object. Even in the case of keys and locks, the grooves and protrusions on the key must replicate the grooves and protrusions in the lock (though this is only true of the warded lock). I would say that even here, it is not a case of replication. It is a case of opposition. Every groove on the key must match up with a protrusions in the lock, and every protrusion on the key must match up with a groove in the lock. They are opposites, not copies.
In fact, we don’t even need analogies to drive the point home. The observant thinker can already see that concepts differ in certain respects from sensory experiences. Sensory experiences are vivid, they project as objects, they are undeniable and have a force all their own. Concepts, on the other hand, are clearly abstract and cognitive. They are visualized in our imagination, which we can clearly distinguish from sensation. And they are much more under our control than sensations. Clearly, they are not mere copies of each other. They differ in important ways. And what if one is not a subjectivist or an idealist? What if one is a realist? Well, even then, one will agree that a tree is different than the perception or thought of a tree. The former is a physical object that won’t even fit in one’s head, whereas the latter are clearly mental, dismissed immediately by looking away or thinking of something else. And a materialist? One who believes that mental processes are nothing more than neuro-chemical events? Same argument. Is a tree the same thing as neurons, chemicals, and electric signals being processed by the brain? Clearly not. There are obvious differences between them. Yet they match in such a way that we can rightfully say the perceptions and concepts–whether truly mental or neurological in character–are correct.
Hopefully, the reader can see how this resolves Kant’s dilemma. Kant requires that in order to be a proper conception of the thing-in-itself, the concept must be formed from the exact properties (or ingredients, or type-of-stuff) of the thing-in-itself. It cannot be formed by phenomenal properties. But since phenomenal properties are all we have, such a concept is impossible. This is essentially saying that in order for the concept of the thing-in-itself to be correct, it must be a copy of the thing-in-itself. But since we only have phenomena from which to form copies, we can’t form copies of noumenal things at all. But what if copies aren’t what’s important? What if we only had to form a concept that matched the thing-in-itself in the key-and-lock sense. Would we be so certain, in that case, that phenomena couldn’t do the trick? In fact, if noumena are unknowable and inconceivable, how would we know whether or not phenomena can match them in the key-and-lock sense?
The only caveat to be noted is that this still doesn’t allow us to reference the thing-in-itself. It doesn’t give us “direct access” to it. We are still limited to referencing our concepts and other experiences, things within our minds. But this is where the distinction we noted above becomes salient–the distinction between reference and concept. I am arguing that it’s possible to form the correct concept of the thing-in-itself (in the key-and-lock sense) without having to reference it. We are still limited to referencing only that which lies inside the boundaries of our minds, but that doesn’t mean that the concepts we form therein can’t match things outside those boundaries. We just can’t verify it.
Lucky for us, however, we sometimes can verify it. At least, that is, for things inside those boundaries. We are privileged to have access every day to a whole plethora of examples of concepts being formed of things that we do have access to. Our own minds are our laboratories. We form simple concepts of things well within the boundaries of our minds every day. I hear a new song on the radio, I form a concept of that song. I meet a new person, I form a concept of that person. These aren’t examples of deeply metaphysical exotic phenomena, they are concrete down-to-earth mundane things, things of which we have no reason to doubt our abilities to form concepts. So in order to understand how the mind forms concepts, and what it does to get them right and what it does when they fail, we have access to a smorgasbord of things we can reference. If there are any insights to glean from a study of observing this process, we might be able to generalize a few principles on which proper concepts are based, and then see if our concepts of noumenal things measure up.
But I’ll leave that for another post. In this post, I would like to flesh out this idea in a bit more detail. Some are, no doubt, wondering how a concept can match something in the outer world without referring to it. What is it referring to if not that of which it is a match? Well, concepts don’t refer… at all. They are the objects, the essence of objects, that define the “is-ness” of things. They are built to be referents. They are the referred. Take the concept of “cat” for example. What does it refer to? Is there a particular cat out there that it refers to? All cats? But then what does the concept of all cats refer to? The truth is, concepts don’t refer at all. They are simply understandings of what things are. They are definitions. What a cat is without having to refer to any particular cat.
So what counts as the reference? Statements! “The cat is on the mat,” is a statement referring to the cat and the mat. Statements are expressions of thought, of belief and knowledge. They are formed from concepts and assert relations between them. “[The cat][is on][the mat]” connects the two concepts [the cat] and [the mat] and specifies the type of relation they bear with the operator [is on] (I call this an operator, not a concept). This is not self-referentiality, in case the read is wondering. It might seem so since the concepts are part of the statement (or belief, or knowledge) and for the statement to refer to those concepts, it would have to refer to itself. But there is a difference between self-reference and referring to parts of one’s self. It is similar to referring to “me” and referring to “my hand”. The former is a case of self-reference whereas the latter is a case only of referring to something that happens to be a part of myself. So when I say “The cat is on the mat” refers to the concept of the “cat” and “mat”, this is not self-referentiality–the statement is not referring to itself–it is referring to concepts within itself.
And if concepts project as the “is-ness” of things, as their definition, what do statements (or beliefs/knowledge) project as? The point of statements is to establish truths about concepts. To say, “the cat is on the mat,” is to say, “It is true that the cat is on the mat.” As expressions of belief and knowledge, statements describe the projection of beliefs and knowledge. That is, they project truth.
But then we come up against the question: if we say of the thing-in-itself that it is irreferentiable while referencing it in the same breath, aren’t we committing the same Kantian error? Except that instead of talking about its conceivability, we’re talking about its referentiability? Not quite. The difference is subtle. First of all, the Kantian error says that when a thing is inconceivable, any concept thereof should be impossible. But it requires such a concept just to say that. This is not quite the same issue when stating that a thing cannot be referenced. For one thing, this doesn’t speak about the concept of the thing, only the thing itself. For another, the very reason the latter cannot be referenced is because we always end up inadvertently referencing the former instead. The former, “gets in our way,” so to speak. So the concept must be referenced in order to make the claim that the conceived is irreferentiable in the first place. In other words, the Kantian dilemma prohibits the concept of the inconceivable, whereas our dilemma necessitates the referentiability of the concept.
But then the next question arises: if we can only reference the concept, then how do our statements about it (like being irreferentiable) get applied to the conceptualized? Well, if we take a look at cases in which our referential reach can extend beyond concepts, we get an answer. For example, we might say, “the rock is hard,” but this doesn’t mean our concept of the rock is hard. We might say, “infinity is too big to fit in our heads,” but obviously this statement is not talking about the concept of infinity but infinitely large things. Insofar as the concept of infinity is concerned, it is not infinitely large at all, nor does it even have physical size, it’s just the definition of infinity, an understanding of what infinity is, which we have no reason to believe cannot fit inside our heads. What is happening here is that the concept of the thing (say a rock) is projected onto the experience of the thing. If the thing, the rock, is within sight, the concept projects as the rock’s essence, its “being-a-rock”, and gets infused into the rock itself, becoming that within the rock which makes it “the rock” (as opposed to a conglomeration of sensory features). Therefore, the rock and its essence become one. When we refer to the rock, we are still referring to the concept thereof, but because the concept is now part of the rock, we also reference the rock. It thereby acquires all the statements we make of the rock, making them true within our subjective realities.
But there are other cases in which we don’t immediately see the rock. Suppose, for example, I were recalling the rock I sat on the other day. Well, we still have our imaginations with which we can visualize the rock. That too can inherit an essence from our concepts. But of course, it requires something more to project in the real world, for I could imagine dragons and infuse them with the essence of “dragon-ness”, yet they remain imaginary for me. What images and their essences require in order to project as rocks and trees do (i.e. as objects in the physical world) are beliefs or knowledge, things that can be expressed as “rocks and trees exist.” Beliefs like this are an alternative to sensory experience in their ability to project their referents as things out in the physical world. Whereas sensory experiences place things in the physical world, beliefs in them make it true that they exist (it’s sort of a different path to the same place). Therefore, at least in our subjective realities, any statement we make about the rock becomes true of the rock.
There is a third case, however, that doesn’t enjoy the luxury of applying to our subjective realities, and that’s the case we’ve been dealing with in this post, the case of entities beyond our subjective realities to which we cannot refer. With the key-and-lock model of matching, we can say that our concepts thereof may be a good match for that to which we cannot refer, but how do our statements about them apply to the latter when we can only refer to the former? Well, if there is no way for our statements to project as truths about things outside our subjective realities, then they can at least project as part of the definition of those things. That is to say, when I refer to a concept and make statements about it, I am at least adding to or refining my definition of the conceptualized. If I am modifying (or adding to, or simply reinforcing) my concept by making statements about it, I am changing my understanding of what it is, how I define it. To say, “that rock is hard” is to add hardness to my definition of the rock. The hardness of the rock can then project as an actual feature or truth about actual rocks to which the definition applies. In the case of things beyond our subjective realities is concerned, we may not be able to refer to them, but the statements we make about them can (and do) contribute to their definition. What this means is that if our concepts of them map onto them (in the key-and-lock sense), then they are defined exactly according to our concepts, and therefore our statements about them, being part of their definition, apply to them as well. This is true of the prior two cases as well–the cases in which the referent exists in some mode within our subjective realities–and it’s just that our statements about them contribute to their definition first and then get applied to their instances after.
The point is, saying of the thing-in-itself or the non-human unimaginable experiences that they are irreferentiable is not a problem because this is not saying that we cannot form concepts of them nor that we cannot reference those concepts. Even though saying of a concept that we reference that it is irreferentiable is not to make a statement about the concept, it is to add something to the definition of the conceptualized, for a definition is all the concept is. And if that concept is lucky enough to map onto something actual in the real world (in the key-and-lock sense), that thing conforms to the definition and is therefore, as the definition says, irreferentiable.
The Solution in a Nutshell
So here is the solution to the Kantian dilemma of conceiving and knowing of an inconceivable unknowable thing-in-itself, or in the context of our theory, referring to unimaginable non-human experiences that we say are inconceivable and irreferentiable… in 4 easy steps:
1) To believe in a theory like our subjectivism or Kant’s Transcendental Idealism, according to the key-and-lock model of matching, is to assume one’s theory matches reality outside one’s mind not as a copy but as a particular key would match a particular lock.
2) Even though our referential reach is limited to only our minds, a) one can still speak of “reality outside one’s mind” (as I did in #1) if the “mind” in question refers to something in the model of one’s theory. In other words, the “mind” of which reality is said to be outside is the mind of the self-in-the-model. And b) the logic with which one, in articulating their theory, concludes that minds-in-the-model cannot conceive, know, or even refer to things outside their mind may be perfectly logical and avoids the infinite regress.
3) One can take the self-in-the-model as representative of the self-presenting-the-model (one’s actual self) and it remains possible that the relation that bears between the self-in-the-model and the supposed inconceivable, unknowable, irreferentiable thing-in-itself-in-the-model also bears between the self-presenting-the-model and whatever it is that the thing-in-itself-in-the-model represents via the same key-and-lock mapping. Such a relation may hold, in other words, even if the self-presenting-the-model cannot refer to that which the thing-in-itself-in-the-model represents.
4) Thus, the kind of relationship assumed to hold in #1 may in fact hold actually, and if it does, the theory is correct and belief in it justified.
But unfortunately, we still can’t refer beyond our concepts, we can only refer to our concepts. But the key-and-lock concept of matching allows us to say that these concepts may still match entities beyond our minds, and therefore beyond the limits of our referential capacity. Our inability to experience them, and thus refer to them, isn’t a barrier to getting our concept of them right. But we are still shooting in the dark. In constructing our concepts of them, we still have no way of getting beyond the concept in order to verify its suitability as a match for the real thing. So if we ever do get the concept right, it will have to rely solely on our capacity for careful reason and meticulous logic, and maybe a bit of luck, and even then we will have to settle for never knowing for sure. But at least the key-and-lock model of matching opens the door to the possibility, to the potential of stumbling upon a key that just happens to match a lock somewhere out there perfectly and flawlessly.
Now, this may not be so bad. Most philosophers have come to grips with the fact that philosophy, and metaphysics in particular, is not a road to truth. If you want truth, turn to science. When it comes to philosophy and metaphysics, however, all we have is reason and logic (and sometimes evidence), but if science has taught us anything, it’s that reason and logic alone are not enough to claim knowledge. You also need to test your logic against the real world with observation, measurement, and experimentation. If science cannot access that which your philosophy is purportedly about (i.e. it is irreferentiable, like the thing-in-itself), then philosophy and metaphysics are all that we have, and the best we can hope for is not knowledge but theories. This is the conclusion I’ve reached in this post and it seems that many philosophers before me have come to the same conclusion and accepted it. So despite these shortcomings, I feel I’m in good company.
One other insight I want to leave the reader with is this: the problem of other minds can be resolved the exact same way. It is the exact same problem, just applied to a more narrow case. It is a case of postulating the existence of particular minds beyond our ability to reference, as opposed to mind in general. So naturally, if my key-and-lock theory solves the Kantian problem of how to conceptualize and know (or believe in) the thing-in-itself, surely the problem of other minds is that much simpler. So we may not be able to refer beyond our own minds to get at other people’s minds, but we can form concepts thereof, and believe in them, that actually match other minds beyond ours. And even the inaccessibility of other minds isn’t as much of a barrier as the inaccessibility of the thing-in-itself or the unimaginable experiences that my theory proposes, for we probably have good reason to suppose other minds are somewhat like our own. With a real stretch, we could imagine that a person rearranges and reconfigures his own experiences to match that of another person precisely, and in that case we would say the first person literally has the other person’s experiences, and thus knows them precisely and directly.
Of course, the traditional problem of other minds known to philosophers is an epistemic problem. It is not the problem of how we can refer to other minds beyond our own (that’s unique to idealism), but how we can know they have minds. Knowledge is still a vexing problem, as explained above–we can never verify that our concepts are perfect matches for the supposed conceptualized when it lies beyond our reference–but solving the epistemic problem was never my intention in this post. And I’m okay leaving that be. Some things we just can’t know.
But when it comes to logical incoherences and contradictions, I think any theory worth its salt must address them to not only the reader’s satisfaction but the author’s. To propose the existence of an unknowable inconceivable entity beyond our experiential reach seems logically contradictory in a theory like Kant’s because he, in the same breath, conceives (maybe even claims to know) the thing-in-itself, the noumenal forms. And to propose the existence of unimaginable experiences we cannot even refer to (leading to an infinite regress) seems logically contradictory in a theory like mine because I am, in the same breath, referring to them. The key-and-lock model of matching works for Kant because it suggests that the divide between phenomena and noumena need not pose a barrier to the proper conception of things in the noumenal world, even from within the phenomenal world, as long as one accepts that any verification of the concept against the conceived remains impossible and no knowledge of the correctness of one’s concept can be established. Kant can maintain that the noumenal forms can never to be put in terms of phenomenal qualities, but this is only detrimental to the “copy” model of matching, not the key-and-lock model. But with key-and-lock modeling, Kant can say the thing-in-itself and the noumenal world may be conceivable after all.
The key-and-lock model works for my theory as well because it suggests that the inconceivability of the qualities of non-human experiences is not really a problem of inconceivability after all (though we will never be able to replicate those qualities in our imaginations) but of referentiality and verification. I will still talk of the qualities of certain experiences being unimaginable but this can be taken in the same vein as Kant’s thing-in-itself–namely, that no copies of these qualities can be made in our minds. But as for the concept, just the act of mentioning the qualities means I’ve got some concept thereof which at least has the potential to be right. So like Kant, it is possible that we have the right concepts for things beyond our minds, but we lack the ability to refer to the latter or to verify the correctness of the former. But the simple fact that we can create keys for locks that exist out there independently of our ability to refer to such locks solves the main paradox of this post–the infinite regress of referentiality (or the Kantian dilemma).