Dr. Seuss and Philosophy
Page 12
Suppose instead that Mrs. Umbroso made the claim, “To get to McElligot’s Pool, Eskimo fish travel farther than Tibetan parachuting fish.” The truth of this claim is contingent. Its truth is dependent upon a number of factors: the least of which is that Eskimo fish do in fact travel farther. But its contingent nature runs far deeper than that. Let’s say that the Eskimo fish begin their journey at the southern tip of Baffin Island while the Tibetan parachuting fish begin theirs in a stream in the exact center of Tibet. Other things being equal, the statement’s truth depends on just where McElligot’s Pool is located. Imagine three worlds just like ours except that McElligot’s Pool is in a different place on each one: in Norway, in Myanmar, and at an unnamed university in central Arkansas. The truth of “Eskimo fish travel farther than the Tibetan parachuting fish” changes depending upon which of the three versions of earth we are considering. This sort of “possible worlds” consideration is just as useful to pinpoint necessary truths: could the Thing-A-Ma-Jigger simultaneously be yellow all over and purple all over in any possible scenario? No—because the meanings of “simultaneously,” “all over,” “purple,” and “yellow” doesn’t change with the move from world to world. Similarly, the aforementioned triangles will have three sides in every world, and in each bachelors will still be unmarried. Statements like those concerning the Thing-A-Ma-Jigger’s color, the number of sides to a triangle, and the marital status of bachelors are called “analytic truths”—statements that are true simply in virtue of their meaning. By contrast, statements that are not are called “synthetic truths.”13
For rationalist epistemology, a very practical problem is that the knowledge attained is not always particularly interesting: “triangles have three sides,” “fish are animals,” “something which is all yellow cannot at the same time also be all purple,” “bachelors are unmarried men,” etc., can only get you so far. While the rationalist may know these analytic truths, they are at a loss when we consider access to knowledge of synthetic truths—propositions that we must empirically test. Claims like “universal health care will raise the average quality of life,” “Dr. Seuss draws funny-looking animals,” and “hot dogs are made largely of waste swept from the slaughterhouse floor” seem to require an empirical investigation to establish their truth (or lack thereof), and this is not a tool in the rationalist’s toolbox. And so, the rationalist would be unable to know any of these things.
Rationalism, like idealism and empiricism, is an attempt to escape from the clutches of skepticism. Each seems to be a coherent but less than satisfactory attempt to ground our knowledge in some set of foundational beliefs. While wrestling with these issues remains a large part of contemporary epistemology, a small but growing number of philosophers—particularly feminist epistemologists in recent years—have found themselves critiquing the presuppositions of epistemology’s status quo.
Knowledge in a Different Voice
This pool might be bigger
Than you or I know! (Pool)
The epistemologies above dominate the Western philosophical tradition. While each has its own strengths and weaknesses, there has also been a countertradition arguing that the assumptions underlying these theories of knowledge are seriously flawed. To borrow from philosopher Robin May Schott (1954– ),
Feminist epistemologies are typically critical of the presuppositions of mainstream theories: (1) That the subject of knowledge is an individual who is essentially identical to and substitutable with other individuals; (2) That the object of knowledge is a natural object known by propositional knowledge, expressed in the form S-knows-that-p; (3) That objective knowledge is impartial and value free.14
Consider each of these criticisms in turn.
(1) [Mainstream epistemologies presume] that the subject of knowledge is an individual who is essentially identical to and substitutable with other individuals.
As we have discussed epistemology thus far, the person doing the knowing seems to lack any identity beyond that he holds a true belief that is justified in the correct way (whatever that happens to be). This “generic person,” though, lacks something important that each of us has and that participates in our having knowledge. He lacks actual experience of the world with its range of differing qualities; we vary in our psychology, in our physical bodies, and in our cultural norms and practices. These differences matter. Put simply, “knowers” are inescapably embodied, social creatures. This “situatedness” is not to say that the world is different for each viewer, but rather that each of us sees the world partially and through our own differently tinted glasses. Marco cannot help but to come to know things with a body and mind shaped by circumstances: he’s a boy, is literate, has leisure time, and was born in a particular place at a particular time to particular people.
To have experiences upon which to base our knowledge requires that we perceive with our senses and that our minds give meaning and order to that information. Comprehension is the result of these mental concepts mixing with our perceptions, what philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) calls “intuitions.” Our concepts require experiential content on which to work, and that information is gibberish without concepts to order it. According to Kant, “Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.”15 Our concepts can’t be separated from our lived experiences, so this experience shapes and colors our “knowledge.”
(2) [Mainstream epistemologies presume] that the object of knowledge is a natural object known by propositional knowledge, expressed in the form S-knows-that-p.
The form “S-knows-that-p” does capture much of what we call “knowledge”—you know that you are reading, I know that snow is white, the farmer knows that when people have junk they throw it in McElligot’s pool. In fact, a person may not only know something but may also know that she knows it (You know that you know you are reading!). Given this ability to reflect, even if we could list all the things we know, we certainly could never list all the things we know that we know or know that we know that we know or . . . you get the idea.
An epistemology that structures knowledge in this way makes knowledge an all-or-nothing matter: Marco either knows that the residents of Sneeden’s Hotel play croquet or he doesn’t. And yet often our knowledge of the world is partial or “in progress.” One simply doesn’t always have or not have knowledge: a month prior to a recital we might say that the pianist doesn’t know how to play Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. To gain this sort of knowledge requires practice in the first instance and experience in the second. Similarly, brand-new parents may rush their infant to the hospital each time she cries, but those same parents will quickly learn that some kinds of crying are not signaling a medical emergency but rather that the baby is hungry (or just needs a good belch).
(3) [Mainstream epistemologies presume] that objective knowledge is impartial and value free.
We must remember that it’s only within the context of social beings that judgments regarding matters of knowledge can be made. Given we are the sorts of creatures we are, evidence offered to justify a belief is both a matter of discovery and of decision. That we have a gender and are born into a particular socioeconomic class and that we have (or lack) healthy bodies and are the products of unique histories means that our differing values are going to impact our knowledge as well as our theory of knowledge. As the far-from feminist Friedrich Nietzsche puts it in his On the Genealogy of Morals,
Let us, for now on, be on our guard against the hallowed philosophers’ myth of a “pure, will-less, painless, timeless knower”; let us beware of the tentacles of such contradictory notions as “pure reason,” “absolute knowledge,” “absolute intelligence.” All these concepts presuppose an eye such as no living being can imagine, an eye required to have no direction, to abrogate its active and interpretive powers—precisely those powers that alone make seeing, seeing something. All seeing is essentially perspective, and so is all knowing.16
Despite rejecting the idea that knowledge is something i
mpartial and value free, recognizing this social aspect of epistemology may actually increase our chances of gaining objective knowledge. Recognizing that we each have a perspective means that each of these different sets of eyes sees something a little bit differently, and it may be through the integration of these differing bits that we can have objective knowledge. As with the old story from the thirteenth-century Persian poet Rumi, in the night each man who touched the elephant reports something very different about the thing they have touched: one says a pillar, another a water spout, a third a fan, a fourth a throne. As Rumi writes, “The sensual eye is just like the palm of the hand. The palm has not the means of covering the whole of the beast.”17 While the poet left it unstated in his “The Elephant in the Dark,” were these men to share their impressions each would gain fuller knowledge of what he had experienced. After experiencing Marco’s point of view the farmer at the end has a look, as if maybe there might be fish in McElligot’s Pool. Similarly, Marco has already expanded his own understanding of the possibilities in his situation by reading the book, and his optimism might be tempered a bit by discussing the pool’s condition with the farmer.
Or Even a Fish Made of Strawberry Jelly
For there is only one sort of ill fare—the deprivation of knowledge.
—Plato, Protagoras (345b)
In this chapter, we have mostly concerned ourselves with normative epistemology; theories of knowledge that take the quality of the justification as what makes knowledge out of our “mere” true beliefs. While empiricism and rationalism dominate the study of knowledge, there are other foundational approaches that were not touched upon, such as Plato’s theory that we are born already in possession of the basic foundational blocks for knowledge and through proper education we come to remember these things.
A very different approach to epistemology that has gained traction recently is called “naturalized epistemology.” This holds that a belief counts as knowledge if it is the result of an appropriate causal history. In other words, the process by which one comes to have a belief is essential for knowledge. Credited largely to philosopher W. V. O. Quine (1908–2000), naturalized epistemology is in part a response to the failure of various normative epistemologies to answer the problem of skepticism. Quine suggests that epistemologists alter focus from “is there a proper supporting relation between evidence and belief?” to “How does the one cause the other?” According to Quine: “The stimulation of his sensory receptors is all the evidence anybody has had to go on, ultimately, in arriving at his picture of the world. Why not just see how this construction really proceeds? Why not settle for psychology?”18 In other words, the process by which one comes to have a belief is essential for knowledge. Sketching in just what these proper causal conditions are is a large part of this approach to epistemology. Given the correct conditions, reliable sources may include sense perception and reasoning as with empiricism and rationalism, as well as testimony from a sufficiently reliable authority, like the book that mentions underground brooks.
One might say that epistemology is a history of responses to skepticism. Skepticism—taken seriously—would seem to lead to a certain detachment from the world; that is, to solipsism. Solipsism is the idea that the self is the only thing that can be known, essentially that “I am reality.” This denies one’s place as a member of a community of persons. Persons who also are wrestling with the human condition: a condition that demands we make sense of the world around us but offers few hints as to where to begin, no signs at the many forks in the road, and no guarantee that anyone has a chance of getting anywhere despite our best and sincerest efforts. Epistemology at its best is hardly a remedy for the human condition, but it can be a foundation for good analysis, better decisions, and right action along the way. Or, as Marco reminds the farmer,
And that’s why I think
That I’m not such a fool
When I sit here and fish
In McElligot’s Pool!
Any kind! Any shape! Any color or size!
I might catch some fish that would open your eyes! (Pool)
CHAPTER SEVEN
On Beyond Modernity, or Conrad and a Postmodern Alphabet
Jacob M. Held
It’s always dangerous to summarize a trend or tradition in philosophy, especially in one short chapter. It would be equivalent to explaining Dr. Seuss to the uninitiated with one stanza of one work and a paragraph of explanation. Simply stating that The Lorax is about environmental responsibility and then quoting The Lorax once or twice can’t do justice to the work or Dr. Seuss. But summaries are this way; they must convey a great deal of information in a small space. Authors of summaries know they will fail to convey the necessary depth or breadth for a thorough or perhaps even adequate understanding of the material they wish to summarize. The goal is almost merely to not fail too spectacularly. A summary in philosophy is especially difficult. In order to summarize a tradition of thought one must presume a continuous thread of reasoning or shared pool of ideas among a disparate group of thinkers, each with a unique perspective. In what follows I am going to attempt to provide a quick introduction to Postmodernity, and I only hope I don’t fail too egregiously, but if I do at least there’ll be some Dr. Seuss sprinkled throughout.
To put it simply, Postmodernity is a movement, one marked by an “incredulity toward metanarratives.”1 If one understands this phrase, one grasps a major thought that defines the postmodern—the driving force according to which I will define it. So this chapter will focus on explaining what it means to be incredulous toward metanarratives by defining metanarratives and “the modern” and then explaining and motivating incredulity, or disbelief. And although there can be debate about who is postmodern, I will focus on two prominent thinkers with unimpeachable postmodern credentials: Jean-François Lyotard (1924–1998) and Michel Foucault (1926–1984).
So Now I Know Everything Anyone Knows
The subtitle for this section is taken from Dr. Seuss’s On Beyond Zebra! In this book we follow the narrator and his little friend Conrad Cornelius o’Donald o’Dell. Conrad has just mastered the alphabet. He knows each letter; the sound it makes and what it stands for. “The A is for Ape. And the B is for Bear” (Zebra). He knows all the letters this way, and so he claims to know everything anyone else can know. Why is Conrad so confident? Well, if there are only twenty-six letters, and they are rule bound to make certain sounds and stand for certain things, then knowing them all and their rules would mean one knew everything anyone could possibly know about the alphabet. There would be nothing else to know beyond “Z is for Zebra.” The alphabet and its rules, therefore, form a kind of metanarrative, the rules from which all other statements, utterances, or games with letters must follow. If you want to play “I Spy,” the rules of the alphabet dictate what letter you’ll pick. You can’t spy something that begins with “C” and a dog at the same time. All games using the alphabet will follow the alphabet’s metanarrative, even if they have their own rules. But it’s not just the alphabet that is like this; all language is rule bound and so all discourses, all discussions, are merely so many language games. Every statement is a move in a game. And each game has rules about what can be said, and when, and how it will be understood. Consider Conrad’s insight, “So now I know everything anyone knows / From beginning to end. From the start to the close” (Zebra). What we can know, that is, what we can legitimate as knowledge is determined by what we can say, and what we say is determined by the kind of language game we are playing. So the rules of the language game, the rules of our discourses, determine what our world is allowed to look like and consist of. If there is one overarching rule for all the games, it is a metanarrative.
A metanarrative is the set of rules or guidelines for legitimating any utterance or statement. As such it would determine how all the other narratives or stories of our lives could be told. It’s the mark of modernity to maintain that there is a metanarrative, one Truth that governs all other statements. It’s this beli
ef in one Truth that Lyotard wants us to doubt. The existence of or demand for a metanarrative is the demand to subsume all truths under one standard, under one set of rules, and Lyotard finds such a project problematic. Just as the narrator of On Beyond Zebra! refuses to be constrained by Conrad’s twenty-six letters and makes up his own to go beyond Zebra to Yuzz, Snee, and Floob, so does Lyotard want to expand language beyond its borders to allow for the expression of things currently inexpressible. “The postmodern would be that which, in the modern, puts forward the unpresentable in presentation itself . . .”2 Assuming there were animals like the Yuzz-a-ma-Tuzz, Glikker, and Wumbus, then the letters Yuzz, Glikk, and Wum would be all that allowed us to express their existence and natures. Without these letters they would be unpresentable; we wouldn’t be able to say anything about them, not even that they exist. To restrict our language to twenty-six letters would be to close ourselves off to the reality of Yuzz-a-ma-Tuzzes and their cohorts. If we stopped at twenty-six letters we’d never be able to discuss them, to think about them, to know them. Our world would be smaller and more limited due to our language’s inability to capture or express the nature of these things. Our language would fail to express the fecundity of our world. Now we know there are no such things as Glikkers, Wumbuses (or is it Wumbi?), and so forth. But there are experiences people have, there are things they feel, value, or conceive, that they may want to give voice to but can’t because our current language lacks the phrases or idioms by which they could express these things. The claim that one narrative, one story could encapsulate and communicate the totality of human experiences greatly underestimates the depth and breadth of the human condition. But to really begin understanding the importance of the function of metanarratives and the need to go beyond them, let’s look at the tradition to which Lyotard is responding: modernity. And let’s focus on one of its most prominent thinkers: Kant.