What is Meant By The Study of Dialectical Epistemology?

Epistemology is the study of knowledge which is essentially the study of, and search for, truth. What is 'truth' but knowledge that we trust as being highly reliable or in the language of the courts, 'beyond reasonable doubt'. Indeed, we hear the word -- and concept -- of 'truth' most often when we are talking about what comes out of the mouths of people -- does it have credibility, reliability, substance, and congruence, or does it not?

'Subjectivism' for the most part, rules people's hearts, rules people's attitudes, and rules people's behavior. Subjectivism is also the biggest reason for what we might call 'distortions' of truth, 'manipulations' of truth, 'embellishments' of truth, and/or 'suppressions' of truth. Thus, the search and the study of truth has to reach behind the 'smoke and mirrors' of human subjectivism and bias in order to get to what we might call that promised land, that holy land, of 'objective and untarnished truth'. That is an extremely formidable task as most men and women spend much of their living day putting up smoke and mirror displays of what they are only pretending to think, feel, do, and/or be. Often, we do this in the name of 'politeness', 'discreetness', 'diplomacy', 'political correctness' and/or we do it in order to diguise and/or defend against our real subjective beliefs, feelings, impulses, biases, motives, and/or behaviors.

In short, human narcissism colors and distorts the search and study of 'truth' and 'objective knowledge (epistemology)' in a thousand and one different ways.


It is in this regard that I would like to intoduce an assortment of new terms and/or ideas that are all connected to a particular perspective on the study of truth and/or epistemology that might be called respectively: 'dialectical truth' and/or 'dialectical epistemology'.

Firstly, there are two types of dialectical truth: 'either/or truth'; and/or 'integrative (bi-polar, subjective-objective) truth'. The same can be said for both 'knowledge' and 'epistemology' -- i.e. we can talk about 'either/or knowledge' and/or 'integrative knowledge'; and we can talk about 'either/or epistemology' and/or 'integrative, bi-polar, subjective-objective epistemology'.

Example: A divorced husband and wife are in court fighting over support of the kids, access, money, property, rights, privildges, etc. The lawyer of the husband gets up and paints a particular picture of what exactly happened to lead to the breakup of this husband and wife relationship. Then the lawyer of the wife gets up and paints a totally different picture.

The judge is left with the rather formidable question here: Where is the truth? What really happened here?

Does the judge reach an 'either/or' dialectical judgment? Or does he/she reach an 'integrative, mixed, bi-polar and bi-partisan judgement? Is the judgment skewed to one side or the other based on either 'either/or' epistemology and/or by 'either/or' ethical-legal discriminatory-preferential templates? In this latter regard, does the judge tend to be an 'either/or' judge and/or an 'integrative' judge? Does the judge base his/her judgment on sexual stereotypes, sexual discrimination, sexual preferentialism, legal templates which themselves may contain sexual sterotypes, discriminations, preferentialisms, and the like. Or is the judge looking for a 'balanced, integrative judgment'?

A partly artifical and arbitrary -- but partly not -- distinction can also be drawn between what might be called 'subjective epistemology' vs. 'objective epistemology' with the dialectically integrative epistemologists like myself aiming to 'split the difference' and/or 'bridge the gap' between 'subjective' and 'objective' epistemology.

Who were the great 'subjective epistemologists'? Off the top of my head, the list might read something like this: Anaxamander, Plato, Hobbes, Voltaire, Kant, Schopenhauer, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Foucualt...

Who were the great 'objective epistemologists'? Again off the top of my head, the list might read something like this: Aristotle, Bacon, Newton, Locke, Darwin, Diderot, Ayn Rand...

Who were the great bi-polar, epistemological integrationists? Heraclitus, the Han Philosophers, Hegel, Korzybski, Einstein, Hayakawa, Derrida, (hopefully and ideally myself someday...)...

Let's call it a day for our introduction to 'dialectical truth' and 'DGB Dialectical Epistemology'.

dgb, jan. 26th, 2008.