This thread was lost, so here I am again.
Now, we have an epistemology, a theory of knowledge, and from this epistemology we say we know something. That is to say, the proposition P is true.
What is the status of the proposition P? And I mean this in several ways, though the ontological sense is what I am mostly aiming at here.
Consider that our knowledge—that is, the “set” (I use the term loosely) of propositions which have been assigned a value of “true” by our epistemology—is, as it were, a map of reality. And, quite literally, as we would point to a map of San Fransisco and say, “This street is here”, so, too, would we access our epistemological statements and say, “This [proposition] is true.”
And “true” here means, of course, corresponds to the real world (however it exists which would probably also be known epistemologically). And it is just this correspondence that gets to me.
How does a map correspond to a city? How does a proposition correspond to reality? I don’t necessarily intend this as a question about meaning. If we conceive of a (again, loosely described) knowledge-set as a map, then I think this question needs to be answered.
For what is important to me here is this: knowledge of objective reality (or even inter-subjective reality, as the case may be) is just that: objective. If I say “I know P” of course the issue here is P itself, and not even that. The issue isn’t the proposition, which we should like to say is only incidental, but rather the “referent” or “target” of the proposition. In the analogy of “map / territory”, we talk with and point at the map, but of course the map isn’t our concern. “This street is here” isn’t meant to say, “You will find a mark on this paper” but rather “In the city of San Fransisco if you enter in such a manner you will find a street there.”
Normally this doesn’t concern us. But some like to stress the notion that the map is not the territory (from the creator of General Semantics… thanks Duck Duck Goose, you’re a princess!). And now we start to run into problems, IMO.
Reality = territory. Knowledge-set = map of territory. Epistemology = map of the map of the territory. Proposition is a map of the map of the map? And if I say “P” and you hear “P” now do you hear the same thing I say, or is this a map of a map of … [etc].
I do not appreciate such limitless recursion, for one thing, and for the other this means that every “translation” that goes on further removes “what we know” from what we can say is the referent of what we know. This seems to paradoxically lead us to say that the more formal an epistemology is the less it says at all (which, now that I put it like that, spawns some other thoughts about the notion that the propositions of logic say nothing, but nevermind).
So, let’s back up here and look at where we stand. We have a metaphycial existent: me. We have another: that street. “I know that street is there,” sez I, and here we see that it doesn’t really matter whether I in fact am holding a literal map or not. The question is: what status does this statement have? If we take the map / territory tact we find maps everywhere, including the analysis of “what it is to correspond to something”. In other words, it gives us infinte recursion with “corresponding” being completely undefined or a priori (and I am not very keen on the a priori so I’d prefer to leave that option out).
Of course, we can also think of propositions like this. “I know p.” Now, can I also say, “I know that ‘I know P’” is true? Hofstader in Godel Escher Bach thought about such statements. If we extend the set-theoretical analogy we would sort of find ourselves discussing (perhaps) a sort of theory of types, and propositions about propositions are an order higher than propositions themselves. Which, I think, is one tolerable (though misleading IMO) way to tackle the issue, but…
…But this requires a sort of atomic proposition, now, doesn’t it? And this is the very thing.
Consider: a dictionary. A dictionary consists of words defined by words; however, most of the words we learn that are necessary to utilize a dictionary are, of course, not learned tautologically (which a dictionary essentially is) but rather by use and pointing. That is, the self referentiality (the infinte recursion of looking up a word, then looking up the words that are used in the definition, then looking up the words for that, and so on—a process that simply will not end though may become cyclical after a point) is only so when we think of the dictionary as defining language. Of course it doesn’t; we can only use a dictionary after we know a certain portion (which isn’t to mean a specific or explicitly definable vocabulary) of the language already. Language doesn’t “bottom out” on its own, but it bottoms out in experience of the real world (again, whatever that is).
So a dictionary is a map. But to view it like that is to miss the very point of “corresponding”, doesn’t it? Because a dictionary, like a map, is self-contained. It doesn’t have to attach to reality or correspond to reality in any way (consider maps in fantasy books).
“The map is not the territory.” Fine. So what is it? “I know P” isn’t used to say something about me, it is used to say something about P. So here is the proposition G: “I know P.” What is G? Does it have a sort of transcendent existence? Is it an immanent property of the speaker’s (in this case: me) consciousness? A map is a map of something… but what is this “of” consist in? The map attaches to reality in some sense. In what sense? If it doesn’t, then of course the map is not the territory: there is no territory. If it does, then this “correspondence” presents us with a sort of ontological problem.
At least, it presents me with one. What do we count as a representation? —Our sensations (the phenomena)? What do they represent—explanations end somewhere—and how do we know they do if our knowledge itself is only a representation? Somewhere we must have “the thing”, the bottoming out, if we look at knowledge as recursive.
Hopefully someone will stop by who can give a more thoughtful dissertation.
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