Skeptics argue that because we cannot prove anything beyond all doubt, we cannot be certain of anything; we know nothing (or at least we know very little—the contents of our consciousness). However, most philosophers of epistemology believe that people can and do know many things (they are not lying or mistaken when they say “I know I have hands”) even though they cannot disprove the skeptical arguments. We are left with the idea that we can know things without proving them beyond all doubt. I wonder if we can get at what we actually do mean by knowledge, because of several implications I’ve been considering recently.
Man is communal; his nature is to relate to other persons. His nature is to have faith and trust in dealing with things he cannot prove (you never know for sure what another person is thinking, and you can either trust in their love and in your friendship and have a relationship that is good and fruitful and fulfilling, or you can distrust and slip into the skepticism of the rational logical maniac). Why then do we nonetheless have this hankering to prove everything, when nothing in our experience can be proven?
I believe that what we are seeing here is something akin to Augustine’s restless heart idea or CS Lewis’s ideas that having desires which cannot be fulfilled in this life points to fulfillment somewhere else.
It says in a song “then we shall know, even as we’re known, [that] You are Love Eternal.” I believe that it may be the case that in heaven, at the great Wedding Feast of the Lamb, when we come into full Communion, we shall somehow “know” with certainty beyond doubt—even as God who made us and is in us and maintains our existence knows us—that God is Love and He loves us, though perhaps it’ll be in a way that supersedes or comprehends our intellect. (in the Middle Ages, people talked about having sex as “knowing carnally”; in the context of JPII’s language of the body ideas, this not such an odd way of talking)
"God is Love and He loves us, though perhaps it’ll be in a way that supersedes or comprehends our intellect."
ReplyDeleteYes! that is why we must have faith, due to our lack of knowing beyond all doubt. I find we conceive of the idea of Love from the Supreme Lover and that we strive to understand it, in order to be happy. This is where I agree with Kant. "God, Freedom, and immortality: questions which reason is fated to ask, but which reason cannot satisfy"
I like your point about the possibility of some kind of hyper-knowledge in Heaven. I would like to add that if we still had to deal with doubt in Heaven, I wouldn't want to go.
ReplyDeletefirst of all, awesome qutoe by Kant, Bic.
ReplyDeletesecond I tend to think we look at certainty and knowledge in the wrong light, at least in the normal sense. when we gather and spout intellectual utterances, certainty (or lack of it) makes a strong show when talking about knowledge, but in idle chat and everyday life we don't care about it. It is not that recognize that lack of it and say Pah! who cares, but rather we just don't include it in our talk of knowing, what matters to us is the revelant circumstances of our knowing i.e. the ones that are actually live options in our being able to state knowledge. Certainty doesn't factor in. To say "I know i have hands" is kind of a nonsense sentance, it is not the type of thing that would ever be said outside of a very very specific context or a philosophy class, in every day speech it has no real meaning. Or saying "I know my name is Jason" knowing something implies that I could be mistaken of it, it implies that it can be doubted. Statements of that kind cannot be doubted, they just aren't the type of thing that doubt pertains to.
This issues only tend to arrise in situations demanding unreasonablly high standards i.e. philosophical thought, and do not come up in normal life. Which leads me to think that the issue is really a non issue; it only arrises from some kind of philosophical construction.
I don't think knowing is about certainty, or about no being certain I think (perhaps as joe illuded to with carnal knowing) that it is about something entirely different.
a) I'm a little confused. Wouldn't it be better to respond as posts on the Blog...?
ReplyDeleteb) Basil Stag Hare (BSH) makes some great points. I'd like to add one or two ontological qualifications to his sun-roasted brew of rich, caffeinated epistemology. The main one being, yes man is social by nature, but he is also rational. I would go so far as to say that these two attributes are co-fundamental and equally definitive of man qua man. Furthermore, the nature of each is to resist satiety: relationships can always grow deeper jsut as there is always another question to be asked; there will always be something left to discover just as we can always love more fully.
Now if we believe (as Lewis does) that in heavn we become most human or most real, than it would seem that these co-fundamental attributes of man, qualified as they both are by a persitent desiring of "more", would not suddenly cease and find satiety but rather expand indefinitively. In other words, heaven would be the constant sequence of satiety and an expanding desire. There are statements of this in Lewis: as soon as we can love fully our potential to love increases. Heaven therefore is not a static state of contentment, but a dynamic exercise of desire and fulfillment.
It seems this must be the case if only becuase its opposite were true--if all desire for relationship and knowledge were satieted--than we would literally "know" God in his entirety both relationally and rationally and Im not sure I believe this is philosophicaly or theologicaly tenable. It seems it is in the nature of the divine to remain at least somewhat other.
I certainly want to echo the last comment, Heaven cannot be static since the nature of Love demanded dynamism. It is a giving over and against a gift, and as such cannot be understood as a static thing. Also a static afterlife would just be plain old boring.
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