Chapter 11 Chapter 11 Theory of Epistemology

From August 1914 to the end of 1917 I was preoccupied with opposing the war.But by the beginning of 1918 I was convinced that I could do nothing further for the benefit of peace.As soon as I could, I wrote a book I had promised, called "The Road to Freedom."As soon as this book was finished, however, I returned to philosophical problems. I have dealt with the lectures on logical atomism in the previous chapter.These are the speeches I gave before I went to prison.In prison, I wrote first a polemical criticism of Dewey and then An Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy. After that, I found my thoughts turned to epistemology, to those parts of psychology and linguistics that seemed to be relevant to epistemology.This was a somewhat permanent shift in my philosophical interests.As far as my own thinking is concerned, the results of this change of interest are embodied in three books: An Analysis of the Mind (1921); An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth (1940); Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits "(1948).

At the beginning of this work, I did not have fixed beliefs, but only a few precepts and prejudices.I read a wide range, and finally found that, as in the case of reading before writing "Principles of Mathematics", most of what I read had nothing to do with my purpose. Of those initial preconceptions, I should list six that are particularly important: First, I think it would be best to emphasize the psychic continuity between animal and human.I find it common to object that animals behave rationally.I generally agree with this.But I think that the methods used to explain animal behavior are much wider in scope than are allowed in explaining what is called "thinking," "knowledge," or "reasoning" in humans.Because of this prejudice, I read a lot about animal psychology.Interestingly, there are two schools of thought in this regard, the most important representatives being Thorndike in the United States and Kohler in Germany.It seems that the way animals act always indicates the correctness of the observer's philosophy.This devastating discovery could be applied on a wider scale.In the 17th century, animals were always ferocious and cruel, but under the influence of Rousseau, people began to worship wild men, who believed that wild men were noble, and animals were also worshiped. Peacock once borrowed "Mr. Ulan Howden" ’ laughed at it.Throughout Queen Victoria's reign, all great apes were morally monogamous.But during the indulgent twenties their morals underwent a catastrophic decline.But this aspect of animal behavior doesn't concern me.All I care about is observing how animals learn.

The animals that Americans observe run around frantically until they stumble upon a solution.The animals the Germans observed sat still and scratched their heads, and then came up with a solution from within.I believe that both observations are entirely reliable, and that what an animal does depends on what kind of problem you ask it to solve.The results of my reading on this subject have made me very wary of applying any theory beyond what has been confirmed by observation. One area in which there is already a great deal of precise experimental knowledge is Pavlov's observation of conditioning in dogs.These experiments gave rise to a philosophy called behaviorism, which was once very popular.The point of this philosophy is that, in psychology, we are to rely entirely on external observation and never admit material obtained solely on introspection.As a philosophy, I have never been willing to accept this opinion.

But as a method to try to use, I think it is valuable.I decided in advance that I would push this approach as far as possible, while still believing that it had limits. Second, in addition to the prejudice in favor of the behaviorist method, there is another prejudice in favor of explaining it in terms of physics as much as possible.I have always been convinced that, from a cosmic point of view, life and experience are not important in the causality of things.The world of astronomy rules my mind.Compared with the Milky Way, I deeply feel the insignificance of our planet.In Lemousse's "Foundations of Mathematics", I found a paragraph that I didn't take seriously: "It seems that the difference between me and some friends is that the size of objects is not important. I don't feel the same when facing the boundless sky. Inferiority. The stars may be huge, but they can't think, they can't love. These qualities impress me much more than the size of the object. I don't feel any glory because I weigh nearly seventeen.

"My picture of the world is drawn in perspective, not like a true-to-scale model, with human beings in the foreground, and all the stars as small as three pennies. I don't really believe in astronomy, That is nothing more than a complicated account of part of the sensory processes of man (and perhaps of animals). I use my dioramas not only for space, but also for time. The world will cool when it comes, and everything will perish ; but it is far from that time. No discounts can be made for its current value.Don't detract from the value now because the future is blank.The human beings who occupy the foreground of my pictures I find interesting and, on the whole, admirable. "

How one feels about it is indisputable.By no means do I pretend that my feelings are better than those of Lemousse, but the difference is too great.It's unpleasant to think about human beings and the stupid things they do.I feel happier thinking about the nebula in the Andromeda constellation than thinking about Genghis Khan.I cannot put the moral law and the starry sky on the same plane as Kant did.The idea of ​​anthropomorphizing the universe (which forms the basis of idealism) offends me, and it has nothing to do with the question of whether this is right or not.I don't mean to think that the world came from Hegel's musings, or even from his "heavenly archetype."In any empirical subject, a thorough understanding reduces the more important laws of causality to the laws of physics.But if it's very complex, I doubt that simplification can actually be done.

Third, I feel that the concept of "experience" has always been overemphasized, especially in spiritualism, even in many forms of empiricism.When I started thinking about epistemology, I found that none of the philosophers who emphasized "experience" told us what they meant by the word.They seemed to think that it was an indefinable word whose meaning should be obvious.They have a tendency to think that we can only know that something is experienced as it exists, and that it is meaningless to assert that something exists that we do not know exists. I think this kind of opinion puts too much emphasis on knowledge, or it can be said that it puts too much emphasis on things similar to knowledge.I think those who hold this opinion do not realize the full implications of this opinion.Few philosophers seem to realize that we can know propositions of the form "every A is B" or "there are several A's" without knowing any individual A's.If you are on a beach with a lot of pebbles, you will be convinced that there are many pebbles on the beach that you have not seen or touched.In fact, everyone admits countless propositions about things that have not yet been experienced, but when people start to think about philosophy, they seem to think that they have to artificially make themselves stupid.At the same time I am willing to admit that it is difficult to explain how to acquire knowledge beyond experience, but I think that the idea that we do not have such knowledge is completely untenable.

Fourth, I had, and still have, another prejudice that runs counter to the one just discussed.I think that all knowledge of "what is in the world", if it is not a direct report of facts known through perception or memory, must be inferred from several premises, at least one of which is known through perception or memory. I don't believe that there is a completely a priori way of proving that things exist.But I do believe that there are some forms of probabilistic reasoning that we cannot but admit, even though they cannot be demonstrated by experience. Fifth, one of the things I realized in 1918 was that I hadn't paid enough attention to "meaning" and some problems of language in general.It was at that time that I became aware of many problems with the relationship between words and things.

The first is the classification of individual characters: proper names, adjectives, relative words, conjunctions, and words like "all" and "some".Then there is the question of the meaning of a sentence and how a sentence can have the duality of truth and falsehood.I have found that there are formalists in arithmetic who are content to lay down rules for doing arithmetic without considering that numbers must be used to count things; It is a matter of conformity to certain laws, not a matter of conformity with facts.Many philosophers criticize the "correspondence theory" of truth, but I always feel that except in logic and mathematics, any other theory is impossible to be true.

As I want to preserve the continuity of animal intelligence, I also think that, despite its enormous importance, language is overemphasized.It seems to me that belief and knowledge have prelinguistic forms.If this is not recognized, they cannot be properly analyzed. When I first became interested in languages, I did not expect the difficulty and complexity of the problem at all.At that time, I only felt that the language problem was very important, and I didn't know what those problems were at first.I don't claim to have acquired all the knowledge in this field, but, in any case, my thinking has become clearer, more defined, and more aware of the problems involved.

Sixthly, I come now to the last of my first preconceptions, which has perhaps always been the most important in my whole thought.It's about method.My method always begins with something vague and incomprehensible, which cannot be doubted, but which I cannot say exactly.The process I go through is like seeing something with the naked eye and then examining it with a microscope.I found that by concentrating attention, distinctions and distinctions appeared where nothing could be seen before, just as you can see bacilli in sewage through a microscope, but you cannot see them without a microscope.There are many who are against analytics.I have always thought that, as in the case of sewage, it is clear that analysis can impart new knowledge without detracting from existing knowledge.This applies not only to the construction of tangible things, but also to concepts.For example, "knowledge" as it is commonly used is a very imprecise term, encompassing many different things and many stages from sure to somewhat probable. It seems to me, in my experience, that philosophical research proceeds from that curious, dissatisfied state of being completely sure, but unable to say what it is. The process produced by long-term attention is like watching a thing that is getting closer and closer in a thick fog.At first it was only a vague black shape, but as it drew nearer it became clear that it was a man or a woman, a horse or a cow, and so on.I feel that those who oppose analysis are content to settle for the original black shadow.Confidence in that process is my strongest and firmest prejudice with regard to the method of doing philosophy.