15.16. Empirical Concepts vs. Non-Empirical (Metaphysical) Concepts

This is going to be a 'David Hume-like' essay -- but with a difference. I don't throw out metaphysical concepts -- or 'commit them to flames' -- quite as easily as Hume did.

Epistemology can start off very simple but then get complicated real quickly.

Example: I get out of my chair here that I am sitting on. My chair has a physical presence. I can 'empirically' verify its existence by 'pointing at it' and by 'phyically touching it'.

Now here is where we do a 'cognitive dialectical split'. This is the age old 'subjective/objective' split.

My chair can be viewed as a 'subjective phenomenon' that has a presence as a part of my 'perceived phenomenal field of immediate, empirical, sensory contact -- seeing, touching...'.

When I leave the room and step into the kitchen, the chair ceases to be a 'sensory, phenomenal object' for me. However, this does not mean that the chair ceases to exist, a la Berkeley who tried to argue that 'perception equals existence'. He quickly ran into trouble with this point of view: specifically, 'What happens when there is no-one present to perceive something? Does that mean that the 'thing not being perceived' does not exist? Berkeley's response to this was: It still exists because 'God can still perceive it'.

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

George Berkeley (pronounced /ˈbɑrkli/, like Bark-Lee) (12 March 1685 – 14 January 1753), also known as Bishop Berkeley, was an Irish philosopher. His primary philosophical achievement was the advancement of a theory he called "immaterialism" (later referred to as "subjective idealism" by others). This theory, summed up in his dictum, "Esse est percipi" ("To be is to be perceived"), contends that individuals can only directly know sensations and ideas of objects, not abstractions such as "matter."

Berkeley's theorizing was empiricism at its most extreme. In his first publication, regarding vision, he stated that we only really perceive two spatial dimensions, height and width. The third spatial dimension of depth is not directly known; rather, it is inferred by the mind. As a young man, Berkeley theorized that individuals cannot know if an object is, individuals can only know if an object is perceived by a mind. He stated that individuals cannot think or talk about an object's being but rather think or talk about an object's being perceived by someone; individuals cannot know any "real" object or matter "behind" the object as they perceive it, which "causes" their perceptions. He thus concludes that all that individuals know about an object is their perception of it.

Under his empiricism, the object individuals perceive is the only object that they know and experience. If individuals need to speak at all of the "real" or "material" object, the latter in particular being a confused term which Berkeley sought to dispose of, it is this perceived object to which all such names should exclusively refer.

This raises the question whether this perceived object is "objective" in the sense of being "the same" for fellow humans, in fact if even the concept of other human beings, beyond individual perception of them, is valid. Berkeley argues that since an individual experiences other humans in the way they speak to him —something which is not originating from any activity of his own —and since they learn that their view of the world is consistent with his, he can believe in their existence and in the world being identical or similar for everyone.

It follows that:

Any knowledge of the empirical world is to be obtained only through direct perception.
Error comes about through thinking about what individuals perceive.
Knowledge of the empirical world of people and things and actions around them may be purified and perfected merely by stripping away all thought, and with it language, from their pure perceptions.
From this it follows that:

The ideal form of scientific knowledge is to be obtained by pursuing pure de-intellectualized perceptions.
If individuals would pursue these, we would be able to obtain the deepest insights into the natural world and the world of human thought and action which is available to man.
The goal of all science, therefore, is to de-intellectualize or de-conceptualize, and thereby purify, human perceptions.
Theologically, one consequence of Berkeley's views is that they require God to be present as an immediate cause of all our experiences. God is not the distant engineer of Newtonian machinery that in the fullness of time led to the growth of a tree in the university's quadrangle. Rather, my perception of the tree is an idea that God's mind has produced in mine, and the tree continues to exist in the Quad when "nobody" is there simply because God is an infinite mind that perceives all.

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Now according to DGB epistemology, the chair -- even when it is no longer in my field of empirical vision -- still has a subject presence for me, a subjective existence, only now it is an 'assumptive or inferred existence'. We can also say that the chair has an 'objective (noumenal) existence in its own right but this is a metaphyical concept because it is a concept -- and assumed phenomenon -- that lies outside of the realm of my, or anyone else's, empirical senses. 'Objective (noumenal) reality is an assumed or inferred reality that lies beyond the emplirical senses and potential for verification by man'. Thus, it is a metaphysical concept -- lying beyond physics and more importantly beyond the possiblity of human empirical verification.

Now let us imagine the following scenario. Most of you have probably watched 'American Justice' or 'Cold Case Files'.

Let us say that a man was convicted of a sexual crime. He declares that he is innocent and appeals his conviction. The man was convicted before the arrival and usage of DNA. Fifteen years later DNA from the crime scene is linked to another known sex offender who it is now apparent committed the crime. The first man who it is now clear was convicted falsely, is released. We can say that based on better empirical evidence, the courts now could make a better 'truth-assertion' or 'truth-assumption' relative to who committed the murder.

What kind of conclusions can we build from this?

1. The 'truth' is very rarely 'final'.

2. The 'truth' is subjective to 'historical revisionism'.

3. One hopes that the 'truth' is being 'honored' and/or 'improved upon' based on any form of historical revisionism; not distorted, mamipulated, and/or falsified.

4. Empirical, observational, and/or physical evidence remains the strongest basis for asserting, inferring, and/or assuming 'truth'; any other form of 'circumstantial', 'inferential' and/or 'assumptive' evidence is much more amenable to multiple interpretations of 'truth' -- and should never be declared 'final'.

5. Subjective testimony is particularly susceptible to narcissistic bias and distortion of truth.

6. The more courts of law prioritize subjective testimony at the expense of emprical and physcial evidence, the more they become susceptible to 'overconvicting the innocent'. Indeed, even courts of law can become 'tainted' by narcissistic bias based on preferential treatment of some and underprotection of others. These are factors that need to be weeded ot if we are to keep our courts -- which should set the highest standards for 'epistemological truth' -- 'epistemologically clean'. If the epistemology is not clean in a court of law, then neither will be the judgment.
(See my blogsites on civil rights, equal rights, legal narcissistic biases, 'The Gaze', family justice, and sexual justice.)


dgb, dec. 30th-31st, 2007.