Timothy Delay A Critique of Modern Epistemology Via Postmodern Holism PH530: Murphy Research Paper 2.7.

2011

A Critique of Modern Epistemology Via Postmodern Holism Introduction The Cartesian formula for epistemological certainty, cogito ergo sum, came to symbolize the project of modern rationalism and foundationalism. For a variety of reasons, not the least of which were scientific, theological, and political shifts away from traditional societal structures, Europe in the 17th century was transitioning into an era in which epistemological certainty and a pure rationalism, untainted by culture (e.g. Kant) or even religion (e.g. Hume), was the telos of the philosophical and ethical project. The appeal of this foundationalist zeitgeist was a universal schema for political and interpersonal ethics as well as a provisional method to reorder the seats of knowledge and power between the church, the state, and the academy with her sciences. Just how one could know anything beyond a doubt was the essential question of the day, a pylon on which all further knowledge sets and reason must be supported by. In retrospect, this formula for a base of knowledge represents an initial reductionistic atomism that would come to dominate the sciences and create any number of problems for the humanities and theology. Moreover, the drive towards absolute foundationalism appears now to many philosophers not only as suspicious in its agenda for certainty, but also self-deceptive in its ever-present quandary of approaching a line of absolute rationalism and certainty like an asymptotic equation; the closer we reach towards an absolute foundation, the more we begin to realize the project of pure foundationalism is futile. It is this failure of modern epistemology that I will address in this paper. The purpose of this paper is to explain a number of points at which the modern epistemological project has failed and begun to

collapse. My objective will be to critique three categories wherein modern epistemology erred from the point of view of post-foundational epistemological holism.

The Failure to Find Foundation Rene Descartes (d. 1650) signified the beginning of foundationalism via skepticism of everything but that which he believed could not be doubted.1 Purporting to place no trust in the senses, he reasoned in his Discourse on Method that thought must be constructed with foundations like a building, and that the only thing he could be certain of was that he was in fact thinking. Even should all reality be a dream or his thoughts be controlled by a demon, he reasoned, it could still not be doubted that he was consciously aware and reasoning.2 From this came his first foundation, je pense, donc je suis, or in Latin, cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am). But as philosopher Nancy Murphy observes, As in the case of empirical foundations, there is a tradeoff between utility for justifying important claims and indubitability.3 In short order, Descartes believed he had demonstrated Gods existence by an ontological proof somewhat reminiscent of St. Anslems proof. The virtue of an ontological argument is that it generally exists outside of reach of contradictory evidence or argument. To be sure, the Cartesian ontological argument for Gods existence appears formally valid but is wholly supported on the tautological structure of the argument itself, opening itself to the criticism that, while formally valid, its conclusion may yet be equally
1 2

Nancey Murphy, Introduction, (class lecture, Fuller Theological Seminary, January 3, 2011). Nancey Murphy, Anglo-American Postmodernity: Philosophical Perspectives of Science, Religion, and Ethics (Boulder: Westview Press, 1997), 9,10. 3 Nancey Murphy, Beyond Liberalism and Fundamentalism: How Modern and Postmodern Philosophy Set the Theological Agenda (New York: Continuum International Publishing Group Inc, 2007), 91.

incorrect. Descartes argued that if he could conceive of god, and that his conception was beyond anything he could have invented himself, then there must exist a God who created this idea in him. The presumption that he could not have created this image of God by himself proved to be a flimsy foundation unable stand up under the linguistic and ethical critiques of Nietzsche and Feuerbach, among others. What is more, the God of the Enlightenment theists such as Descartes and Locke (who attempted to argue that theology was validated by the foundations of miracles and prophecy)4 seemed to be applied as a foundation for reason even as reason was purported to be the foundation for belief in God.5 It is this type of tautological argument, whose conclusions rest on deceptively subtle a priori implied arguments, which creates the asymptotic predicament of modern epistemological certainty. The desire for a secure foundation was only one end of a dipolar spectrum. On the other end, David Hume was to become a symbol of total skepticism as a result of arguing that the foundationalist project had failed to yield total certainty. Where no foundation can be ascertained beyond doubt, skepticism is the sole position that can be argued from. 6 Herein we see the predicament of the foundationalism; one is compelled to choose between either an untenable certainty or an impractical, total skepticism. I claim neither of these positions reflect human experience; skeptical though we may be of either polar thesis, our resolution rarely gravitates entirely towards the antithesis (even the Hobbes skepticism claimed more to make a point against false certainty than against claims in general). Instead, we tend to adopt an unfounded middle ground for a variety of
4

Nancy Murphy, Modern Foundations and Its Consequences for Theology, (class lecture, Fuller Theological Seminary, January 10, 2011). 5 Nancey Murphy, Beyond Liberalism and Fundamentalism, 92 6 Nancy Murphy, The Shift From Modern to Anglo-American Postmodern Philosophy, (class lecture, Fuller Theological Seminary, January 5, 2011).

reasons (i.e. practicality, tradition). It is this contextualized location of truth which neoAristotelian and postmodern philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre argues for in his conception of tradition-based holism. If the dipolar ends of the modern epistemological project were foundationalism and skepticism, the dipolar ends of postmodern holism lay between absolutism and relativism.7 MacIntyre argues that each tradition creates its own standards of rationality which cannot be accounted for sans this tradition. MacIntyres tradition-encapsulated truth becomes a more complete picture in conjunction with the earlier work of W.V.O. Quine, an emerging philosopher of science who conceived of our conscious truth in a network of interrelated experience. In this network of experience, common themes coalesce and interconnect to support each other in a way which gives certain ideas primacy in the webs integrity.8 The truth claims made by this model of epistemological holism are rightfully accused of carrying a different lexical definition from that of the foundationalism model (given that truth claims are no longer grounded in a realm of trans-traditional certainty), but the postmodern holist claims this traditionlaced truth is, in fact, how everyone experiences truth claims already, whether it is recognized or not. This should not be mistaken for relativism, which can more pointedly be said to be a product of the late-modern logical positivist movement that took the next logical step after Freges sense-reference (Sinn-Bedeutung) linguistic theory9 to embrace expressivism.10 The expressivism of the logical positivists and early analytic philosophers was rooted in the idea that a meaningful statement must have a clear, objective referent. A statement without an objective referent to be externally verified (i.e.
7 8

Nancey Murphy, Anglo-American Postmodernity, 49 Nancey Murphy, Beyond Liberalism and Fundamentalism, 94. 9 Nancey Murphy, Anglo-American Postmodernity,11. 10 Nancy Murphy, The Shift From Modern to Anglo-American Postmodern Philosophy, (class lecture, Fuller Theological Seminary, January 5, 2011).

moral claims, aesthetic opinions) is meaningless.11 This is late modern philosophical relativism in its purest form; it is not that all moral claims are equally true, but that moral claims are of a class of expressions that fails to qualify as true or false. It is this latemodern progression into relativism that MacIntyre acknowledges and fiercely disagrees with. Following Nietzsche, MacIntyre counters this potential for relativism by arguing our epistemology must allow for exclusive truth claims (because otherwise the epistemology remains a variant of the weak, late-modern expressivist relativism),12 and that a better tradition will be able to predict and explain the problems of inferior tradition as it experiences epistemological crisis.13 While I agree with this counterargument, my concern is that MacIntyres counter allows for the accused inferior tradition to counter yet again with what I claim is an infinite possibility for denial. As an example of this conundrum, are we to blame the horror of Auschwitz on Nazism in particular, nationalism in general, or perhaps only (given Germanys almost entirely Christian, majority Protestant population) Christianity in general or Protestantism in particular? I claim postmodern holism should further include issues of parapsychology and sociology to be equipped to counter the duplicitous creativity traditions may display (as a displacement of responsibility) to counter accusations of inferiority. Even in light of this concern, I claim that postmodern epistemological holism accounts for a potent way forward beyond foundationalism in our desire to account for human experience and truth claims.
11

Placher, William. Unapologetic Theology: A Christian Voice in a Pluralistic Conversation (Louisville: Westminister/John Knox Press, 1989), 26. 12 Alasdair MacIntyre and Kelvin Knight, ed., The MacIntyre Reader (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998), 208. 13 Nancy Murphy, Theological Appropriations of Holist Epistemology, (class lecture, Fuller Theological Seminary, January 24, 2011).

Epistemological Reductionism Via Atomism and Upward Causation While this current discussion is confined to epistemology, modern philosophy of science and reductionistic metaphysics had clear correlation with the advent of reductionism in epistemology. Given this influence, a brief survey of modern reductionism within science and metaphysics is necessary. The Newtonian era of scientific revolutions bled into the philosophical dialogue quite naturally and, I argue, detrimentally. The humanities, especially philosophical and religious studies, were subsumed into the rationalist metaphysical claim that all interactions were a sum of atomic parts. Any appearance of downward causation was assumed to be an illusion; sociology merely reduced to psychology, which reduced to biology, which reduced to chemistry, which reduced to physics. This is the atomist claim, being that that base-level, primary (reductionist, foundationalist) interactions resulted in meta-properties (such as mind) which were not novel, but in fact could be completely accounted for by base properties of matter as a sum of parts. This paired well with foundationalism, as the corpuscle or atomic unit presented a physical foundation from which all else could be derived. Thomas Hobbes, a contemporary of Descartes, represented this conception of metaphysics and epistemology in its purest form, arguing for a complete reduction of human experience to physical interaction. The broader society must be seen as the sum of interactions among individuals with uniform rights that take priority over the collective.14 Immanuel Kant reinforced this atomic perspective in his emphatic dogma of individualism and universal rationality and ethics, from which his categorical imperative is derived (in any given situation, the individual must act as he would wish any other
14

Nancey Murphy, Anglo-American Postmodernity, 29

rational person to behave in the same circumstance, i.e. no exceptions to the rule).15 On the other hand, a desire to keep life or will separate can be seen in the vitalist movement and in Descartes, who had previously created a dualistic ontology to keep the mind separate from matter. In light of reductionistic atomism, we see a dominant argument in the Enlightenment era concerning the nature of free will; even where I perceive an experience of free will, my experience is an illusion which can be accounted for via physics. This reductionistic motif remained dominant throughout the modern era, even evidenced in the late-modern 20th century work of Einstein. Einsteins work in general and specific relativity of physics seemed to call for independent theoretical laws, but who nonetheless stressed the telos of physics to be a unification theory that could account for both the abnormal inconsistencies of his equations along and the greater project of all physics. However, in the latter half of the twentieth century, philosophers of science (Quine, Lakatos, Kuhn, Campbell) began to take seriously the possibility that an emergent property could exist which was more than the sum of its parts. Along with an emergent property (e.g. conscious mind), which supervened upon the whole, came new theories of downward causation which act with at least some level of independence from upward influence.16 No longer do we consider it a settled matter that causation is entirely bottom-up and not vice versa. In similar fashion, we no longer perceive data to be objectively independent of our theories of instrumentation nor is the drive to collect certain data samples independent of the hypothesis which drives its collection in the first place. Instead of the Cartesian model of knowledge resting on foundation like the levels
15

Nancy Murphy, Theological Appropriations of Holist Epistemology, (class lecture, Fuller Theological Seminary, January 24, 2011). 16 Nancey Murphy, Anglo-American Postmodernity, 30,31

of a building, we understand that knowledge works within a network of interrelated theorems which mutually reshape each other and which will be adjusted as conflicting experience is perceived. Imre Lakatos improved on the Quinean epistemological network by describing his approach to scientific inquiry as a research program in which a hard core theory is supported by an auxiliary hypothesis, which is in turn supported by a theory of instrumentation to analyze data. In his model, data which conflicts with the hard core theory must cause us to reconsider theories of instrumentation and auxiliary hypotheses before we alter the hard core theory. This protects us from altering a core theory prematurely before exhaustive falsification has been completed.17 However, if data, theories of instrumentation, and auxiliary hypothesis cannot be altered to account for the hard core theory, then a new hard core theory will take its place. Thomas Kuhn describes the crisis resulting in the replacement of a core theory as a scientific revolution, which comes as a leap rather than a slow adjustment of theory new discovery.18 In much the same way that Enlightenment physics reshaped modern epistemology, this postmodern approach to scientific claims is having the same effect within Anglo-American postmodern epistemology. W.V.O. Quine and Alasdair MacIntyre have done extensive work to demonstrate how truth-as-network/tradition accounts for both upward and downward causation in a holist approach, mirroring the progression of postmodern scientific theory. Reductionism/atomism has not and will not account for emergent properties, nor will it account for revolutionary progress in science, philosophy, and culture. As this fault demonstrates an anomaly that modern
17

Nancy Murphy, Postmodern Holism II: MacIntyre, (class lecture, Fuller Theological Seminary, January 19, 2011).
18

Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 3 rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).

epistemology cannot account for, but that postmodern holist epistemology can both predict and account for, I claim along with MacIntyre that the more parsimonious and superior epistemology in this case is holistic epistemology.

The Violent Illusion of Foundationalism There is an unmistakable and unavoidable violence in rational foundationalism. I here use the term violence, not in the sense of physical aggression denoted in common parlance, but instead in the philosophical sense of aggression toward the epistemology of the Other (here I use Other in the sense of the excluded, monstrous foreign object, as seen in the work of Emmanuel Levinas) and, ultimately, towards ones own epistemology as well. Again drawing from the dipolar symbols of Enlightenment epistemology, certainty (i.e. Descartes) and skepticism (i.e. Hume) must always be at conflict with each other. If we presuppose that there is a Kantian universal rationalism available to any reasonable mind, then we presuppose the necessitated irrationality of the Other with whom we differ. But even this juxtaposing of Descartes and Hume is an oversimplification in two significant ways. First, Humes skepticism remains bound to foundationalism every bit as much as Descartes; Hume only arrives at a position of absolute indecidability with regard to what a foundation should be (we cannot know such-and-such, therefore we should make no claim to know).19 Secondly, I claim Descartes foundationalism was a farcical illusion which he was all to ready to give himself to. As I have argued above, Descartes cogito ergo sum has faced any number of accusations as a presumptive argument, and it has not stood up well to these accusations. Furthermore, we see

19

Nancey Murphy, Anglo-American Postmodernity, 18

Descartes desire to offer a proof of God fundamentally morphing the strength of his argument into a tautology based on the a priori God which is both premise for and conclusion of his certainty. Even if the all elements of the argument were known to be true and the structure of the argument valid, it is still illusory that philosophical progress has been made. The argument itself, in this case for rational foundationalism, creates the illusion of rationality that allows the a priori hypothesis/conclusion to appear objective and progressive. The title of MacIntyres work Whos Justice, Which Rationality?20 displays the common problem of this violence inherent in foundationalism, a violence which permeates all relationships. I use here the example of religious tradition. We see this problem at a meta-level in interreligious conflict between totally alien traditions (which I do not claim we should ignore), but I claim this problem does not progressively resolve as we turn inward toward ones own tradition downward to the level of the individual. If we isolate the Christian tradition (sans any problem of trans-traditional dialogue with a competing religious tradition), we see the exact same question of foundation between Catholic and Protestant, between Protestant liberals emphasizing experience and Protestant conservatives emphasizing text, all the way down to the level of dialogue between two individuals. The foundationalist claim is that if one has truth, then the differing Other, as best, has made an irrational conclusion in their own beliefs. But I claim this foundationalist violence is not resolved even if there is no dialogue at all. In the case of the singular individuals epistemology, there is always the Cartesian illusion I described above; our foundations are a farce because we do not truly believe in them. A claim that one has arrived at a point of foundational certainty is fundamentally a claim
20

Nancey Murphy, Anglo-American Postmodernity, 120.

arising from insecurity. Our foundations only exist for us so long as they support the conclusions we are comfortable with arriving at. The postmodern holist approach claims that there is no ultimate Foundation; there are only foundations encapsulated in traditions that must make no claim to universality. In Christianity, we receive theology as a combination of experiences and personal opinion, competing doctrines we are taught via the tradition, the text itself, etc. But all of these things only manifest themselves in the network of knowledge because they are encapsulated within the tradition that the currently arranged knowledge network emerges from. The text of scripture forms points on the epistemological web to support doctrines and opinions the Christian has, but the text itself is an emergent property of the tradition. Therefore the text is an inescapable part of the Christian network of knowledge precisely because to be Christian is to be part of the tradition that formed (and was formed by) the text. Competing traditions must judge others only insofar as they are able to better account for the competitors inability to account for crises. I argue MacIntyres approach to judging between competitors, which I have here described, is superior not only in its ability to explain the violent problems of foundationalism, but also because it mitigates violence toward the claims of differing traditions. Essentially, no tradition holds this seat of pure rationality, any deviation from which indicates an inferior Other; instead, all rationalities and illusions of certainty come as products of traditions which critique the Other within an egalitarian discourse. This is the true potential for multiculturalism and dialogue, not that we make no truth claims but rather that we realize our rationality and opinion of the Other is shaped by context and is therefore in no way Kantian, universal objectivity.

Conclusion I have demonstrated modern epistemologys failure to find a pure universally rational foundation and have surmised a way forward via the postmodern epistemology of holism. The most often heard criticism of postmodern epistemology is that it creates a theoretical apology for relativism. Much as this common charge comes from a nave understanding of postmodern philosophy, the argument is nevertheless present, and I have great confidence that as postmodern theory matures over the coming decades and centuries, it will mature further in its ability to critique both modernism and its own early epistemological shortcomings. There is no Foundation (Cartesian, certain), but instead there are only foundations (Quinean, nodes within networks); there is no Rationality (Kantian, universal), only rationalities encapsulated in traditions (MacIntyrean). As this realization becomes more rooted within our global awareness and our desire for dialogue with the Other, it should provide an impetus to make even bolder claims from within our tradition, rather than resorting to the glossed, inoffensive claims we so often resort to within bourgeois academia. And it is this bold claim, with the condition of sincere desire for dialogue, which will provide the ground for continuing dialectical history.