Cause and Effect
In the last post, it was asked whether we could know cause and effect through the S/A theory of knowledge. Hume claimed cause and effect were unknowable. Hume seemed to state we essentially see the world in moments, or what I like to call snapshots. Hume's claim is we can only know things from those snapshots, and any claim of necessary connection between those snapshots over time must be formed apart from our experience. To Hume, we could only know things which we learned through experience. Any connection between those snapshots which we form is not learned through experience, but by our own mind, or nature, and is something we cannot truly know.
I do not want to dive into the intricacies of Hume, but the basic problem that I see with Hume’s argument is it does not go far enough. Hume claims we can know what we perceive, or experience, yet how is it possible that we discriminate among what we perceive? A camera by nature does not discriminate among what it “perceives”. It cannot attempt to show that this part of the picture is a table while that part of the picture is a lamp. If Hume claims we can know things only from experience, that knowledge must come from our ability to be aware of discrete experiences in a whole. This ability cannot simply arrive from experience. If the initial ability to discriminate among existence is not formed from experience, yet we truly know things from our ability to identify these discriminate experiences, then we could not know anything from our experience. Thus, if Hume’s argument is taken to its logical end, if we cannot know of cause and effect from lack of experience, we also have no recourse to know anything by our perceptions either, as the ability to discriminate among perceptions is an ability ingrained within us.
Hume himself would have derided such a skepticism, as such skepticism allows no insight into how we actually experience and interpret the world. If we are to buy into such skepticism, then we are left with nothing. Under the synthetic/analytic (S/A) distinction of knowledge I can know what I perceive, and I can know what I experience. I both can analytically and synthetically know the perceptions I experience, and the cause and effect I experience. When I label a discrete experience, part of that label is how that discrete experience fits in with the rest of the world. A leg interacts with the world by pushing off the ground to propel its body. Cause and effect are built into much of our analytic knowledge, and all we need to do to synthetically know cause and effect is to necessarily justify it in our experience. If cause is what allows an event, or effect to occur, I only need to give necessary justification that the leg pushing off of the ground caused the body to move. If I can do so, I have given steps of necessary justification to cause and effect, making them viable terms to use within knowledge.
Yet, I do respect Hume for noting there are certain things we cannot synthetically know. I cannot personally synthetically know the sun will rise tomorrow. Someone may argue that with measurements and math we as a society can know the sun will rise tomorrow. This is very true, IF the laws upon which we base the measurement of the universe stay the same. Hume countered that there is no way to know that what we have synthetically experienced before will ever be synthetically experienced again. We all analytically and synthetically know of a thing called “change”. This is the fact that our experiences at one moment will not be the same as the next moment. However, fortunately for us no one has ever been necessarily justified in demonstrating the known laws of the universe change. Someone has always demonstrated that what we thought were laws were incorrect, but to our knowledge, the discovered function of matter and the universe has remained unchanged.
This means that science does not have to be a process of induction, but of necessary justification. Within the context of society, we know the law of conservation of mass and energy. Within the context of society we can know, with the proper instrumentation and measurements, how fast something will drop in a vacuum up to a certain degree of accuracy. G.E. Moore once claimed he could prove two hands existed in the world because he pointed to his right hand, then his left. Many people laughed at him, including myself. Yet with the understanding of the S/A distinction within knowledge, Moore's claim, though not enunciated in the concepts above, was not so far off the mark.
With the S/A distinction of knowledge, we can know everything? Unfortunately, there are still many situations in which we do not have the tools or time to necessarily justify a claimed event. I see a car pulling up to a stop sign and think, “The car is going to stop.” The car may, the car may not. Especially with regards to the future, how can we as humans attempt to claim necessary justified belief? Though we may have to resort to induction, induction that does not have a firm base of knowledge behind it is no more then guess work. This leads us to the next step in necessary justification; necessary justified induction.
Necessary Justified Induction
Though I have claimed synthetic knowledge is possible, and science tries to discover necessary justification first, sometimes within science and math we reach a limit to knowledge. We see a storm which could produce lighting, yet we can't precisely show the path the lighting will take at any particular time. If I am to calculate such a probability of the path of the lighting, it must be done with incomplete synthetic knowledge. This inductive decision is forced upon us due to a limit to possible experience, and limiting the science involved simply because there is a limit to our knowledge would end the possibly of further useful discoveries. Quantum physics comes to mind. Do you like cell phones? Without quantum physics, a theory which has a fair amount of induction in it, cell phones never would have been invented.
An induction is a guess at a situation. Yet an induction that we feel is closer to the truth is one which has a reason behind its guess. If I say, “That man is a bachelor because he doesn't have a wedding ring on his finger,” you will be more inclined to agree with me than if I stated, “That man is a bachelor because his breath smells.” Both are inductions, but one induction sounds more plausible than the other.
Within math and science, arguably the most respected form of induction is probability. Probability is an attempt to determine the likelihood of an event that is outside of our means of necessary justification, but with convincing arguments as to why this probability can occur. For example, if one could know all the forces which would be exerted on a coin when it was flipped, one would know that it would either land heads or tails. However, a person cannot know all of the forces involved, so a probability is formed to give us a better chance of predicting what will happen. Even though the exact forces of a pennies flip are not synthetically known, we can still establish a cogent probability from the synthetic knowledge we have.
In the case of the coin, we can synthetically know that the force of a thumb flick will send the penny tumbling through the air. Further, we synthetically know that a penny is relatively well balanced, so the flip rotation is uniform. Finally, we synthetically know that it is almost impossible for a person to flip a penny from the same height with the same force uniformly, and even a slight variation in the forces can cause the penny to land facing another side. Due to these things which we are necessarily justified in believing, we formulate the odds of a penny being flipped as having a 50% chance of landing on either heads or tails, as none of the forces that we know are involved influence one side being face up over the other.
Though one may calculate these odds, what if I flip the penny ten times and it comes up ten times as heads? The reason for the formulation of the odds was because of the necessarily justified information we used above. If the information involved in the penny flip is the same as above, then the odds should be 50%, even though all ten tries the penny flipped to heads. It is a low chance that with 50% odds, a penny would flip onto one side ten times, but this does not necessarily justify that the odds aren’t 50%. Any refutation of necessarily justified odds must be necessarily justified as well.
How would one go about refuting odds? If the premises one used to construct the odds in the first place are necessarily justified, then new information introduced which would invalidate this necessary justification would most likely impact the odds. Thus the same challenges to synthetic knowledge apply to the challenges to odds. For example, let us say a person has mastered how to flip a penny so that it will come up heads 99 out of every 100 flips. If this is the case, notice this eliminates the consideration within the calculated odds that people will not be able to control how they can flip the coin. With the new information of a person being able to control the flip, the odds of 50% are not necessarily justified, and refuted when this person is involved. Thus, odds are changed when a necessarily justified refutation of earlier claims enters into play.
The S/A theory of knowledge leads us not only to a necessary justification, but also a means to valid cogency. As many of our decisions are inductive, I find this to be an invaluable contribution, and believe the tool of valid cogency is one of the best consequences of the theory.
Personal Identity
The last point of S/A distinct knowledge I will address is the specific identity that leads into personal identity. A specific identity is when an identity is classified as someway separate from all other identities. The most basic form of a specific identity is a specific “that”. A specific “that,” is a very a non-general identity which is different from all other thats. What causes us to first label a specific“that”? It is the fact that a specific“that” interacts with the existence around it in a unique way.
Specific identities come about when we want to keep an identity in our head as something different from all other actual and potential identities. As an example, let us say that I see two identical metallic orbs. While I am facing North, one is to the right of myself, the other is to the left of myself. To give a specific “that”, I must find something which makes one orb distinct from the other. The only property that is different between the orbs is their location. Their location is their relation to one another and other existences, and what they are interacting with at the time. Currently, it seems that the important difference about each orb is only the property of its location. Yet what if each orb changed exact locations? Someone moves them very precisely as I watch. Is the orb on my right not exactly the same as the that on my left? If such a perfect mirror could exist in nature, there is still one thing which we use to distinguish a “that over there”; its past.
There are two ways in which we may form a personal identity. We determine a personal identity from the fact that one identity is separate from all other existences that we know of, synthetically or analytically, by its current properties. The second way, is we include the past of the existence within the identity. I can enter into an antique shop, find a table with a particular flower pattern on it, and label it as “that pretty table in the antique shop”. This analytically entails a definiens which is a personal identity. I know “that pretty table in the antique shop” without any reference to its past, but simply by the fact that it is an identity in the shop which is different from any other identity at the time.
After stating that I synthetically and analytically know “that pretty table in the shop”, I go up to the store keeper who has worked there for over five years. We talk about the table, and the store owner tells me the table's past. The table used to belong to a grandmother of his, and its proper name (what the analytic context of those knowledgeable about tables label these types of tables) is a mahogany jasper, as the table is made of mahogany, and the flower design are jaspers. In fact, his grandmother liked the table so much, she called it “Betty”. His grandmother used to have the table set up by the front door, and she would always put her famous chocolate chip cookies on it in the evening for guests to help themselves to when they walked in.
Now that I have such information, I can include this information in with “that pretty table in the shop”, by now calling it “Betty”. However, after learning the further past of Betty, I ask myself, “Did I really know Betty to begin with?” It depends on what type of context I am talking about when I stated I knew Betty. Within my context of my first experience with the table, I did indeed know what the table was at that time. I also knew enough about that particular table to set it apart from all other types of tables within that room. What I could not know was its past according to certain peoples experiences. When I first labeled such a table, the past was inconsequential, so further knowledge of the past does not negate my knowledge of the table, but only adds to the knowledge of the tables past.
This is important to note because I can say that I know something very specifically without intending to communicate that I know everything about it. There is nothing wrong with stating I know Betty, but that I know Betty differently then other people. The only way I could misstate my synthetic knowledge of Betty is if part of its definiens would be contradicted by further experience of the table, or the synthetic reality of the table did not correctly match my analytic definition of the table. Thus, in an alternative example, if I examined the table more closely and found it to be a dresser, than I would be forced to admit I wasn't necessarily justified in it being a table by making a snap judgement.
Thinking back, how is it that I and the store owner reconciled our two different analytic contexts of Betty? The analytic context about the identity may be different, but two people's different contexts of a specific“that” have certain properties about a specific“that”'s definiens which makes up the identity that each of us must necessarily link to the same existence. The main factor was that we were both referencing the same table in the corner of the shop. As we have evidence that we are discussing the same existence, our identities can be put out for each other to increase or change the knowledge of the table.
Yet the above examinations of specific identities are still simple. One tricky problem within philosophy that questions specific identity is: Theseus' ship. Theseus buys a ship and sails the seven seas with it. However, as he sails, planks of the ship begin to rot. One plank is replaced with another over the years, until one day, not a single plank of the original ship makes up the current ship. The big question is, is this still Theseus' ship?
If what we have explored above about specific identity is correct, a change in the existence of an identity only adds to our understanding of the identity, and does not take away from it. Notice that Betty had actually changed over the years before I encountered it in the shop. At one time the tables colors were more vibrant. But the past of the table does not negate my identity of the table, only adds to my knowledge of the identities past. It may be true that the existence of the table has changed, but the existence of the table has not changed so much that the identity or classification of Betty is destroyed. I can learn new things about Betty, the fact it was used as a place for cookies by a grandmother, then later the fact that it has a gash on its underside. This information only adds to, and does not negate the original identity of “that pretty table in the antique shop”.
The same goes with Theseus' ship. I could board Theseus' ship for the first time one year after Theseus has bought it. By this time, several of the original planks have been replaced. If I walked around with one of the swabbies and he told me, “Yar, this here mast were blown down in a hurricane!” I would understand that the context of “this mast” would not be the original masts existence, but the identity of the ship's mast in general. Neither the fact that the entire mast was replaced, nor the fact that this had changed the existence of Theseus' ship from when he bought it, would make myself, or Theseus for that matter, state that the ship I am currently on in the story is no longer Theseus' ship.
Yet this is not really the truly tricky part. Let us further imagine that as the planks of Theseus' ship are removed and replaced, but the original planks are kept in a storeroom. Once all of the original planks are replaced, the original planks are taken out of the storeroom and rebuilt exactly as they originally were. Which ship is Theseus' ship?
When we ask this question, we are essentially asking, “What do we analytically mean when we say, 'Theseus' ship'”? Fortunately, once we define what we mean by Theseus' ship, we have our answer. If we define Theseus' ship as the one Theseus currently uses, then his ship is simply the one Theseus synthetically uses. If we define it by ownership, we say both ships are Theseus', if he still owns the planks. If we say Theseus' ship is the original existence minus the new nails, then the rebuilt ship is his. Of course if we state Theseus' ship is the original identity, how long into the identity do we consider the identity “the original”? As soon as Theseus bought it? As soon as a plank had noticeably aged?
The answer is, “It's up to us.” Theseus' ship and personal identity is not really an issue of synthetic knowledge. It is a problem of identifying the appropriate analytic knowledge. The appropriate analytic knowledge is that which would enable the best communication and usefulness of the term within the analytic and synthetic context one is in. If I'm sailing on Theseus's ship one year after Theseus' bought it, stating the ship is not really his ship as the existence has changed, creates an identity which disagrees with the general use of ownership and the current reality. Such a statement only confuses communication and goes against the current analytic context. I'm sure Theseus lawyers would also agree.
However, if Theseus laments after repeated replacements of planks, “Its not really my ship anymore,” then we understand Theseus considers the repairs to have destroyed the original existence of the ship to where it can no longer be called by its original identity. Thus Theseus' ship now and in the past become important identities.
With specific identities explored, personal identity is found to be simply a specific identity. Who am I? What do I mean by this? Who I am right now? Ten years ago? Do I mean the existence, or the identity? Theseus' ship relates to us well as scientists have discovered that every single atom in your body is replaced over the course of eight years. If we took those original atoms and reconstructed yourself as you were eight years ago, which person would be you?
Like Theseus' ship, how you wish to establish your own identity is up to you. Me? I'm not the same person I was eight years ago. I have memories of that dead existence. All I can do is honor that existence's memory and his wishes for the future. In my definition of personal identity, I am synthetically justified in stating I am not the man I was eight years ago. Yet if I define myself as being the same as I was eight years ago as long as I have some of the memories of myself eight years ago, then I am necessarily justified in believing I am the same person as I was eight years ago in that way.
Thus if someone says they know me, yet they only met me today, I understand what they mean. They don't mean they know my past, they don't mean they know every single thing about my existence, they simply know me enough at that time to be necessarily justified in separating my identity from the rest of the identities in the world. Any further experience of me will simply increase their knowledge of me. I am the same as a “Betty”.
This ends the coverage and basic application of the S/A theory of knowledge. The last section is an examination of some of the general critiques thrown at theories of knowledge, and an examination of where philosophy can go from here if this theory is correct. I hope you've enjoyed the read so far, and I appreciate all the feedback! (Continued in S/A Knowledge Part 5 Final Critique)