What is knowledge and how do we know mind?
By: Kanishk Kalra
Tags: Knowledge, Epistemology, Nihilism, Philosophy, Mind

Introduction

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word “know” means to have information in your mind as a result of experience or because you have learned or been told it [1]. There are several keywords in this definition that need to be properly examined such as “mind”, “experience”, and so on. In this essay, I sought to dissect this concept of knowing through the many philosophical enquiries that have been done into it, and use these theories to understand “mind”.

The field of philosophy that deals with knowledge is called epistemology. Philosophers have been pondering over the question of knowledge and mind for centuries and have come up with several ideas that are thought provoking as well as non-intuitive at times. Alcmaeon of Croton, who was an early Greek medical writer and philosopher-scientist, is said to have written the following around 570–500 BC: “The seat of sensations is in the brain. This contains the governing faculty…..This power of the brain to synthesize sensations makes it also the seat of thought: the storing up of perceptions gives memory and belief, and when these are stabilized you get knowledge.” Since ancient times, knowledge has been linked to our perception, our beliefs, and our experiences. But does knowing and believing mean the same thing?

Knowledge Explained

Obviously, this is not true. So, we need to define precisely what knowing means, i.e., what are the features of knowledge? One intuitive distinction between belief and knowledge is that knowledge must be factual or truthful. Sitting in a sound-proof room without any windows doors, you can believe that it is raining outside but you can never know that it is raining outside or not. So, we can say that “true belief” is knowledge. But consider the same scenario of the sound-proof room and your belief that it is raining outside again. It just so happens that it is actually raining outside. So, your belief is true. But can we say that you knew that it was raining outside? Of Course not. You just got lucky. There has to be some kind of a good-basis to your belief for it to be considered knowledge. If you weren’t in a sound-proof room and claimed that it was raining by the sound of the rain, this could be considered knowledge as your true belief is ‘justified’. For a long time, justified true belief was considered knowledge until a philosopher called Gettier came up with a counter example using a thought experiment. Later all problems to justified true belief hypothesis have been formalized and are called gettier problems. An example is that you look at a clock and claim that it is 12 o’ clock. You didn’t know that the clock was broken but coincidentally time was actually 12. This is justified true belief which can’t be considered knowledge. [2,3,4]

Skepticism

For a long time, epistemological philosophers have been looking for what to add to true belief to have an objective definition of knowledge. Consequently, there has been immense skepticism about our ability to know anything at all in the first place. Nobody can be sure what “justification” of belief would be considered enough for the belief to become knowledge. What if you were sleeping and dreaming about the rain and the sound-proof room? Can you ever know whether it was a dream or not? What if you are nothing but a brain in a vat connected to a computer simulator that is artificially manufacturing specific experiences and sensations in the brain to give rise to your perceptions of rain and the sound-proof room? Nobody can ever prove otherwise. Or consider the classic cartesian evil genius argument that a powerful mind is dedicated to deceive you into thinking that you know and believe some things without them necessarily being true. Descartes claimed that in this scenario, the only thing that you can know exists is you because you are the thinking agent. No other knowledge is possible. One could argue that by this reasoning nobody can prove or disprove anything. Nobody can know whether there are unicorns or not, whether God exists or not, whether there is a giant celestial teapot between Mars and Jupiter, and so on. Yes, in principle, knowledge is impossible. [5,6]

Methods of acquiring Knowledge

Let us now examine what method we use to acquire “knowledge”, in the colloquial sense, and we will return to this “epistemological nihilism” continuously along the way. Some ways by which we acquire knowledge include perception and experience, testimony, intuition, and demonstration/explicit reasoning. I believe that Australia exists because people who have gone to Australia have testified that it does. But do I really know that Australia exists solely from their testimony? I intuitively believe that murder is wrong? But do I know that? Could anyone ever come up with a situation in which murder is not wrong? Is capital punishment wrong? We intuitively believe that our wills are free but arguably, this is an illusion. Clearly, we can’t know things for sure from intuition. The most reliable source of knowledge today is reason which can be divided into rationalism and empiricism. Rationalism is the concept of apriori innate ideas, reason, and deduction. Empiricism is the concept of induction, sense perception and is referred to as aposteriori. The scientific empiricist method, although is very useful and has transformed our lives for the better, cannot confirm real knowledge in the philosophical sense. We can never “know” that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow. Similarly, the rationalist philosophical theories directly lead to the depressing impossibility of knowledge. [5,7]

Nihilism and Back to Basics

I wish to now consider some scientific explanations of some of the concepts highlighted above and evaluate them against the nihilistic arguments given. From an evolutionary perspective, we have good evidence to believe that the only purpose of evolution is to maximize one’s genes in the next generation. Now, some might argue that we have come to this conclusion form an inductive reasoning from evidence. So, can we really know this for sure? But it does not matter because science works! So, we have not evolved for truth, but for survival. So, taking this as a premise, can we really trust any of our mental faculties and any of our abilities to “know the Truth”? Chimps would never be able to understand the general theory of relativity, how can we be sure that we would ever be able to understand quantum gravity or multi-verses? Or can we really be sure that whatever we know till now is the “truth” and not just “useful” for survival? What is truth anyway? Whatever helps me live my life well is truer to me and my existence than anything else [8].

For these reasons, I submit that knowledge is impossible. We can never know anything and it does not matter. This quest for “true knowledge” is inconsequential to our existence. This pragmatist point of view is the antidote to the nihilistic reality of our existence. I know that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow because physics works.

Knowing Mind?

According to Aristotle, “the word mind describes our perceptions of ourselves as having unitary consciousness despite recognizing that the brain is composed of many parts.” This means that the mind is just a representation of the accumulative functions of our brain. Now, the question is how do we use the framework elucidated above to know about the mind. But as we have established above, knowledge is impossible, we can never know anything about anything in the truest philosophical sense. But we can construct theories that are useful, evidence based, and that work. One such theory comes from the evolutionary argument that we are just material beings composed of particles that were formed in the stars in the early stages of the universe and we are continuously evolving by natural selection to better continue our genes in the next generations. As a consequence of our evolving brain structures, we have evolved consciousness, the sense of self, awareness, and so on which are simply epiphenomena. Hence what we refer to as mind, is nothing but an abstract concept referring to our brain-function. It is very much a part of our body. [5,9]

Remarks

Our minds are just biological processes and nothing more than that. I received an email just today that Elon Musk’s Neuralink have already started testing their device in pig’s brain and the email read, “Would you let Elon Musk plant a chip into your brain?” Our minds are controlled on a regular basis by big corporations using our personal data on the internet in the form of advertising and other things. One small conversation with a neuroscientist would reveal to you how little control you have on your mind and how it is all simply movement of particles according to the laws of physics. Does our philosophical knowledge of mind matter today? Is it of any consequence? Question for the philosophers!

References

[1] Oxford English Dictionary. Retrieved from https://www.oed.com/. Accessed 04–09–20.

[2] PHILOSOPHY — Epistemology: Introduction to Theory of Knowledge. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_Y3utIeTPg&list=PLtKNX4SfKpzUxuye9OdaRfL5fbpGa3bH5&index=1. Accessed 04–09–20.

[3] Ichikawa, Jonathan Jenkins and Matthias Steup, “The Analysis of Knowledge”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/knowledge-analysis/>.

[4] Hetherington, Stephen . “Gettier Problems”. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved from https://iep.utm.edu/gettier/. Accessed 04–09–20.

[5] Introduction to Philosophy by Philip A. Pecorino. “Epistemology”. Retrieved from https://www.qcc.cuny.edu/SocialSciences/ppecorino/INTRO_TEXT/Chapter%205%20Epistemology/CONTENTS.htm. Accessed 04–09–20.

[6] Newman, Lex, “Descartes’ Epistemology”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2019/entries/descartes-epistemology/>.

[7] Rationalism Vs Empiricism. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1g8wjsEQyw. Accessed 04–09–20.

[8] Jordan Peterson on “The Truth”. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzIGGKJCdJI&list=PLDljcUYACmyeBMNv40yznQJytZuOzj-hp&index=54&ab_channel=PowerfulJRE. Accessed 04–09–20.

[9] Introduction to Philosophy by Philip A. Pecorino. “The Mind-Body Problem”. Retrieved from https://www.qcc.cuny.edu/SocialSciences/ppecorino/INTRO_TEXT/Chapter%206%20Mind-Body/CONTENTS.htm. Accessed 04–0920.