Pluralism, Uncertainty and the Axial Model

The period between 800 B.C.E. and 300 B.C.E. is what is known by some as the axial period, a time of great moral and especially spiritual awakening. During this period, a wide variety of explanations or models where put forth as descriptions of meaning, purpose and value in life. Of particular interest is not only that so many people across the globe experienced this awakening at more or less the same time, but rather that they all put forth models which greatly resembled each other in their structure. The inhabitants of Chine, India, Persia, Israel and Greece all put forth various forms of what we have called the axial model.

Three Models of Knowledge

In Plato’s dialogue The Sophist we are confronted with two competing theories of knowledge. On the one hand we have that of the sophists, which holds knowledge to simply be the label which we give to those probable opinions and beliefs which we are simply unwilling to doubt in one form or another. On the other hand we have that of Socrates which sees knowledge as being necessary and certain, beliefs which cannot possibly be wrong. In the last post on the subject I contrasted these two theories of knowledge with that of the standard definition of knowledge as justified true belief. The purpose of this post will be to clarify and articulate more clearly the thoughts from that post.

The Social Nature of Science Before Kuhn

As we have seen, since Thomas Hobbes, the historical and communal nature of science has been seen as impediments to necessary, certain and universal knowledge of the world. Thus we see most of the Platonic gods, as I have been calling those who defended such a conception of knowledge, have seen science as a primarily individual enterprise. Descartes advocated as radical individualism in which the individual mind stands entirely apart from the natural world and is able to look upon it, gaining knowledge by way of the private enterprise of deduction. Such a model of the mind leaves a wide and unbridgeable gap between objectivity and subjectivity. Similarly, Francis Bacon saw individual data collecting as the solution to the problems presented by the idols of the mind introduced to us by our society, language and culture.

Knowledge as Justified Belief… Period.

When it comes to defining knowledge there are many intuitions which we have on the matter, some of which seem to be in direct contradiction with each other. Among these are:

1. If something is false, it cannot be known to be true.
2. We know a lot of things.
3. Knowledge is determined and constituted purely by mental events and factors.

The tension which can be seen to exist, especially between (1) and (2), has been the source of much debate in philosophy, beginning with Plato’s gods and the earth-giants of the sophists. In this post, I will argue that not all of these intuitions can be correct at the same time. Furthermore, I will argue that the standard definition of knowledge, namely justified, true belief, simply cannot be correct.

The Affirmation of This Life

We have seen that the two strongest influences in Nietzsche’s though were probably Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard, although he disagreed rather strongly with the axiological accounts which each of them put forward. Whereas Schopenhauer felt that we should all say “no” to life due to the insatiable suffering which our wills caused us, Nietzsche said that we should all say “yes” to life in its entirety by embracing the life affirming force which is our will. While Kierkegaard saw a relationship with God as the only source of meaning in life, in a rather qualified embracing of the axial model, Nietzsche said that God was dead and that the axial model was altogether bogus. In this post we will continue to discuss Nietzsche’s complex views concerning truth, morals and meaning in life.

The Incompatibility of Scientific Realism and the New Physics

Despite the numerous and rather obvious shortcomings of Logical Positivism as an account of how science provides us with knowledge of the world which is necessary, certain and universal, the widespread conviction among both the general society as well as the scientific community was that of the realist. Indeed, scientific knowledge came to take on an imperialist position in the West as being the standard by which all other truth claims would be measured. This scientism, the conviction that science alone discovered and defined truth and reality, would go largely unchallenged (with a few exceptions) up until the 1960’s.

Ethical Musings

I just wanted to post some brief thoughts concerning the nature of ethical standards and the moral value which we assign to particular actions. In order to do this, I will pose two examples of actions which are loosely, if at all moral and assume that these cases can be generalized to other phenomena which are considered to carry greater moral weight.

The Death of God and the Wasteland it Left Behind

The philosophy of Kierkegaard can be seen as a sort of last gasp at attempting to establish some form of axial model as a source of meaning in life. This was certainly how Friedrich Nietzsche, living a generation after Kierkegaard, saw things, for the former seeing the latter’s project as failed would boldly proclaim the death of God. In this, Nietzsche means to claim that the axial model which, even to this very day, has dominated Western thinking is simply no longer credible or effective. It means the end of belief in a higher, unchanging reality of truth as well as a belief in a deeply hidden self that is both substantial and fixed. This world is all there is, and if we do not belong here then we do not belong anywhere.

Pragmatism and Logical Positivism

By 1930, science had achieved a status among the American public as not only as being a source of truth about reality, but as being the primary, or even in some circles the only source of truth about reality. Science was the authority over its domain, and its domain came to encompass all of reality. However, as has been pointed out many times, no criterion of truth, whereby scientific claims could be said to actually correspond to the way the world actually is, had ever been given.

Universality, Biology and Human Nature

The idea/claim that all people are essentially alike has a long and rich history. Indeed, this conviction has become so strong in many peoples minds that they view disagreement with it as being not only incorrect, but morally wrong. To imply that people are not all essentially alike would seem to undermine the claim that all people are equal. Nevertheless, similarity between the natures of two people does not entail the equal worth of these people or even an equal claim to individual rights, nor is the reverse true either. After all, similarity is not equality at all, and we do not assert that various people have merely similar claims to individual rights and worth. Instead, we paradoxically claim that people are equal, regardless of the differences which exist between them. The purpose of this post will be not to argue for political rights, but to see what sense can be attributed to the claim that all people are alike.