Srila Acaryadeva gave this lecture on epistemology at the second ISKCON ACADEMY OF ARTS & SCIENCES CONFERENCE on December 15-17, 2007 in New Vrindaban

 

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Transcription:

 

If we study the intellectual or philosophical history especially of Western culture we find that a collapse of the traditional sources of certain knowledge such as religious authority and even a type of naive belief in empiricism and so on that more and more there has been a focus, at least among certain philosophers,  on epistemology – how do you know you know. Obviously there is a crucial relationship between epistemology and ontology based on what you consider to be a valid way of knowing and what you consider to be knowable. That will determine what kind of universe you are left with. One thing is to the credit of the Indian system often when they make their philosophical points they begin by stating their epistemology: These is what I consider to be valid ways of getting knowledge. In general in the academic academy your have all kinds of people in the sciences and humanities who are extremely naive and ignorant about epistemology. To get a degree in biology, physics, history, Sanskrit or whatever you don’t have to take a course in epistemology. So they make very nanve statements. I was reading a textbook, a survey of Hinduism. The author makes statements like “belief in Rama as a deity probably came because of these historical reasons….”. They are using the word “probably” in a completely amateur way. I a serious philosophical environment if you say probably it has to mean something very precise, something statistical, you have to have certain amount of information etc. So in general when people in the humanities and sciences make claims about what they proofed or this or that they often speak very ignorantly and have no serious training even in philosophy in general, not to speak of epistemology. I want to briefly survey the epistemological environment at the present time in the world and then make some comment how KC relates this.

In the West among people who for purposes of philosophizing or for their own serious life’s existential interest did not just blindly accept some religious authority or someone interpretation of a holy book or precept. They became concerned with certainty, in order words, justifying belief. We all believe things (Krsna says in the Gita “sattvanurapa sarvasya sraddha bhavati bharata” ( Bg 17.3) that faith arises in everyone according to the quality of their existence. So it is extremely nanve to think that some people have faith and some have reason: Everyone believes in something. To believe negatively, that something is not the case, is also a belief. The concern with epistemology is arrive at justified beliefs. Given that everyone beliefs something under what circumstances can we say that their belief is justified, that we are acting rationally by believing something is or isn’t the case. People who wanted to philosophize about it recognized that there is what they called a Trilemma: Whenever you claim you believe in something that is justified this claim can end in three problems:

1.      You can be pushed into an infinite regress (I claim water boils at 100 degree Celsius – proof it – how do you know if is pure water – you have to test the water testing chemicals, those have to be tested…) So whenever you state something, you have to give a justification for it, that justification has to be justified and you are pushing into an infinite regress in which you can never proof anything. So regress is not really an option.

2.      Another problem is that one can be pushed into circular reasoning. A scientist may say he is studying the world and that there really is a world out there which can be objectively studied outside of his mind. Someone can say,  “how do you know that there is a real world out there?” He may point out to a water bottle and drop it, which everyone can see. Circular reasoning means that the very thing I am trying to prove I assume as part of the argument to prove itself. Because only if there is an objective world outside my mind is this a real water bottle, so I can’t hold this up to prove that there is such a world. That would be circular reasoning.

3.      Another way of dealing with this is to simply state something is true dogmatically, like it says in some scripture. The question can be raised whether that stopping point is arbitrary. So someone may just say that there is a real world out there and if you don’t accept that, don’t talk to me. The question whether that point where you stop is arbitrary or you have some good reasons which make sense to stop there and simply declare that something is the case, so that it becomes a given. In Geometry if there is nothing given you have no geometry. To start the geometry you have to have something given. This recognition that you have to start somewhere led to a philosophical position which has a classical and modern form called foundationalism. 

 

Foundationalism, as commonly understood in modern philosophy, seems to claim that a system of thought, a belief etc, must begin with a self-evident proposition.

In classical foundationalism it is generally recognized that there are two types of foundation: one is rational, non-controversial that no one could argue about, and the other is empirical, in other words it was a given to assume that there is a world out there so that we can do science. The classic example of the rational type is Descartes, in his “Meditations” saying “cogito ergo sum” -  I  am thinking, therefore I exist. That was considered to be incorrigible: I can’t deny to myself that I am thinking. You may doubt that I exist or people exist outside your own mind but I cannot doubt that I am thinking right now, therefore I cannot doubt that I exist. That became his rational foundation.

 

This type of foundationalism is very limited because in the first case it limits you to studying the empirical world and rules out the metaphysical world which is where the real fun starts – metaphysical things like justice, beauty, god or the soul or yesterday which is no longer empirical available to us. And if you take things which everyone accepts as true, like I am thinking, therefore I am, if everyone has to agree with it, initial assumptions have a certain amount of contents, like a seed. Aristotle recognized that and gave the example of an army being pushed into retreat, it has to take a stand somewhere. He spoke about a self-evident starting point. However, if you take those self-evident starting points, you can’t derive much. The whole point of foundationalism is that you take your self-evident starting point and all other justified beliefs have to start from them. So the starting point is very narrow and small, you are not going to get very much.

Over time it appeared to many philosophers that something about this foundationalism is true and other things are not true. What I think is true is, whatever you want to reason or philosophize, you have to start somewhere. If people push you into a retreat at some point you have to take a stand and just say, for me this is given, this is a priori, self-evident. By declaring that something is self-evident you don’t have to bring in something else to prove it, so it stops the infinite regress. Lord Caitanya used this kind of evidence, svatah-pramana, a proof in itself. 

 

CC 2.6.137

 

Svatah-pramana veda satya yei kaya

 

‘laksana karile svatah-pramanya-hani haya

 

which says that the Vedas are evidence from themselves. So the acaryas use this language of self-evidence, but in a somewhat different way.

 

I will use the term foundationalism more generally to mean: one must begin with a self-evident proposition, or world view, sacred text etc. Thus Lord Caitanya claims that a body of sacred literature, Veda, is self-evident.

So what I think is true about foundationalism is that it has to start somewhere, what is not necessarily true is that the only acceptable foundations are non-controversial, empirical observations or very narrowly constructed self-evident rational principles. So people began to notice this and when philosophizing they noticed that the way we know things and come to understand is not necessarily through this type of propositional logic, such as the proposition that all men are mortal, Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal. There is also a different understanding of things about the world. We know that something is right or wrong, we know something is beautiful, we know we love someone, to know there is a God, to know that you are a soul. So there are certain things that you really know that cannot be reduced down to these narrow propositional type proofs.

There are some epistemological alternatives to foundationalism. They are given as anti- foundational positions, but I think that the people who proposed foundationalism fell in a trap of  thinking of the foundationalist sort of monopolized that general principle that we have to start somewhere because all these alternative epistemologies will start somewhere. So I think there is some type of universal foundationalism where everyone starts somewhere, but they want to get outside of their narrow box of empiricism or self-evident rational claim or in the modern period sometimes they left out empiricism as not being justified. Of these many alternatives one is called coherentism which starts with justified beliefs to claim that you know something. You have to have a belief which is properly basic, which means it is the foundation, you can start from there and then you derive other justified beliefs from them. Justified beliefs are all evidentially supported by other beliefs, but an infinite set of beliefs is not generated, because the chain of evidential support among beliefs isnot allowed to move in a circle. I talked about circular reasoning. The idea of circular is that the very thing you are trying to prove you employ as one your arguments.

Coherentism is a sort of holistic approach. I want to compare that to the Gita. Krishna makes a few statements in the Gita, i.e. he says in 4.39 sraddhavaÿ labhate jnanam tat-parah, that one who has faith gets knowledge. Then He says in 17.2-3 sarvasya çraddha bhavati svabhava-ja sattvanurupa that everyone has faith, but based on the quality of your existence in the modes of nature you have got a certain type of faith. So everyone is in the modes of nature. Krishna says that there is nothing in this world that is free of these modes on the material platform. These three modes of nature lead to a particular type of faith (srad – dha means to put your heart in a place is called faith). So based on your position in the modes there is a certain type of faith and this tri-guna-jna. Krishna explains in BG 18.20-21 

 

sarva-bhutesu yenaikam  bhavam avyayam iksate

avibhaktam vibhaktesu taj jnanam vidhi sattvikam

 

18.21

prthaktvena tu taj jnanam nana-bhavan prthag-vidhan 

vetti sarvesu bhutesu taj jnanam viddhi rajas am

 

The way Krsna uses this word jnan here is something like world view, a total perception of the nature of reality. So based on your position in the modes of nature you will see reality in a certain way. The mode of ignorance is a real loser, basically you go to work every day and can’t figure anything else out. In the mode of passion you see the prthag-bhava, the differences – different races, different genders, different countries, different people. The difference are fundamental. So this is a physical perception. Of course there is also categorical thinking – these are all horses, or mammals etc. but in general one sees things as being different. In the mode of goodness one sees as spiritual unity among all things, what Krishna calls ekam bhavam avyayam, a single state of existence which is unperishable. So it is sattvika jnana, the level of the mode of goodness that one comes a real metaphysical understanding.

The idea of coherentism as an epistemology is that you see the world a certain way and there are all these different facts that you know about, i.e. you have different relationships, you know what it means to love someone as opposed to lust after someone. You experience higher states of consciousness, beauty, justice, love. All these states support each other. It is not a circular propositional logic where A supports B, B supports C. It is actually a holistic system with mutual support where all the different fact about the world – physical and metaphysical contribute to a single unified understanding. 

 

There are two types of coherentism. One says that through this test of coherence you arrive at the truth. Another system says it is justified if you believe in something. It may be a justified belief, but it may not be true.

 

There are objections to coherentism, because there are objections to everything in this world. One may be called isolation of objection. Betram Russel said you can have all kinds of different people that have what to them is a justified belief system, but they may be different, so they may be mutually exclusive. Someone could coherently believe that something is and isn’t the case at the same time.

 

There is also an espistomological position called correspondence which says that our knowledge that has to correspond to a real objective state out in the world. It is not enough to say that it makes sense to me. The New Age movement says things like “If that works for you”. It is a kind of Feel-Good-Westcoast Pop-Coherentism.  The defenders of Coherentism would say, “that is not enough that something be internally consistant, it has to deal with reality.

 

Newtonion physics at a certain point was not coherent with certain features in the universe which people discovered. So the underlying assumption is that reality ultimately coheres. There is a single, unified reality and it all fits together. So if you hold a particular world view in the mode of passion would be according to the Gita aggressive, ambitious, proud or selfish. Ultimately it would not cohere with higher notions of virtue, self-realization etc. So people might hold religious views which are incoherent with their selfishness. You get a certain type of hypocrisy which is incoherent with their moral level. The idea is that ultimately the underlying foundation that reality is coherent and so people will move to a higher state of understanding just be the demands of coherence. According to the Gita you have knowledge in the mode of ignorance, passion, goodness or. These are all world views which make sense to the person experiencing them, but they are stacked on top of each other. So you move to progressively higher states of coherence and just the demands of this world as reality impinges itself upon you, you move to higher states of coherence and knowledge. 

 

Krsna says in BG 5.16

 

jnanena tu tad ajnanam yesam naçitam atmanah

tesam aditya-vaj jnanam prakaçayati tat param

He talks about aditya-vat jnanam, knowledge or awareness, which is like the sun. If you think of the sun rising, everything is illumined simultaneously. If you never saw the sun before, it would the quality of experience that you have, simultaneously it would affect everything.

 That coherence in a nutshell. Another alternative or attempt to refine classical and modern foundationism is a movement called reformed epistemology.

 

It is based on the teachings of Calvin who in the spirit of time did such noble things as persecuting violently his theological opponents. Reformed epistemology is lead by a certain group of very prominent modern epistemologists that say that belief in God be properly basic and hence justified. For example even though we may not be able to “proof it”, all of us accept that other minds exist. So our basic belief is that other people have minds, that they are conscious in an analogous way as we are conscious. We can’t proof that, so in the same way someone may accept that the mind of God exists. Basically reformed epistemology was type of epistemological civil rights movement. 

 

The university system in the Western world and all the academies began as a religious enterprise, it gradually had this revolution and became secular, almost like an adolescent who wants to differentiate himself from the parents and wants the opposite of what the parents say to do, and similarly there was this kind of war between secular knowledge and religion. One result of that was in the 18^th century when the intellectuals had all these salons in Paris and London where they discussed ideas. The best thinkers of the middle and late 18^th centuries were not even at the universities, they were at these salons. The reason is that even 100 years after Newton they were still teaching Ptolemy at the universities and there was type of fanatical conservatism at the academy which we see today. So even though there is a massive interest in the world in all kinds of metaphysical things, sometimes universities tend to be very restrictive. 

 

So reformed epistemology was form of civil rights movement, saying that we have to provide the same epistemological standards to spiritual knowledge that we do with other kinds of knowledge. So a mind is a metaphysical thing and so if we are justified it is properly basic to say that other minds exist, and it is also basic to someone to say that the mind of God exists. So that is another challenge to classical or modern foundationalism called reformed epistemology.

 

There is also reliabilism, which can be roughly stated as follows:

One knows that p (p stands for any proposition

--e.g., the sky is blue) if and only if p is true, one believes that p is true, and one has arrived at the belief that p through some reliable process.

 

Here is the idea. When we say that "I know

something," such as "I know the sky is blue," what are the necessary

conditions or circumstances that must be present in order for our statement

to be valid?

    Reliabilism gives this answer. Three conditions must be met in order for

someone to properly claim to know something.

1. Something is in fact true (eg: the sky really is blue), and

2. I believe the sky is blue, and

3. I came to this belief thru a 'reliable' process.

    If all 3 conditions are met, then it is valid or correct for me to say

that I KNOW that the sky is blue.

    For example, if I believe the sky is blue because I also believe that a

huge purple grasshopper popped out of my television set and told me that,

then even though the sky really is blue, and I believe it's blue, I came to

this belief thru a method that is not 'reliable.'

 

    On the other hand, if I believe the sky is blue because my eyes are

physiologically healthy, and I am emotionally stable, and I looked up at the

sky and saw that it was blue, and I wasn't on drugs etc etc, then in that

case I believe the sky is blue thru a reliable method. So the 3 conditions

are met for a valid claim of knowing something:

1. The claim is true.

2. I believe it is true.

3. My belief is based on a reliable method.

 

Obviously we also have elements of reliabilism because for us Prabhupada and Krishna are reliable.

 

There is one more philosophical doctrine which is very important to us, called Innatism:

Innatism holds that the mind is born with ideas/knowledge, and therefore the mind is not a ‘blank slate' at birth, as early empiricists such as John Locke claimed. It asserts therefore that not all knowledge obtained from experience and the senses.

In other words you can say how do I know something even if I don’t have a self-evident proposition or empirical proof. What if there is actually knowledge with us? That is the science of showing, the nature and nurture debate. Basically divine right monarchy and the European futile system which was very much a hereditary cast system was justified before the French revolution by saying just like India, whatever cast you are born into, God put you there. So if you rebel against your cast, if you are tying too hard for upward mobility, you are actually rebelling against God.  The idea being that nature, the way you are born, is everything.

There is an equal and opposite reaction to that saying, nature is nothing, nurture is everything. Your birth is totally irrelevant, everyone is a blank slate and everything about you as an adult is just what society wrote on that blank slate. This is the justification of public education. Give everyone the level playing field, give everyone the same opportunity. Everyone turns out the same.

So now the dialectal has moved back to the centre where it is a combination of nature and nurture, but in that center the nature part which survived is that we have certain knowledge. There are ethical truths. People who are not taught philosophical and ethical just feel that something is fair.

Here a list of certain things which are considered to be innate.

So there are innate ethical truths or convictions, the notion of causality which Hume challenged – that we believe certain things cause other things, notions of good and evil, certain logica and mathematical truths, metaphysical notions concerning objects like God or souls (certain people who are raised in very atheistic environments have religious experiences and feel called to God, feel that they are a soul.

There is a whole history that Descartes claimed that knowledge of God is innate in everyone, as product of faith, and there is Plato’s Meno where he talks about remembering knowledge.

Krsna in the Gita (6.43) talks about paurva-dehikam jnanam, that the fallen yogi recovers this knowledge from a paurva deham, a former body. So Krishna directly talks about knowledge from a previous body,  from previous yoga practice, purvabhyasena tenaiv(6.44)

 

 

And the Bhagavatam (SBh 4.28.53) Krishna coming to as a brahmana to Queen Vaidarbhi, the former Puranjana, now taking birth as a woman.

 

api smarasi catmanam avijnata-sakham sakhe

 hitva mam padam anvicchan bhauma-bhoga-rato gatah

 

”Do you remember Me, the Soul, my friend? You rejected Me and came to this material world” –  thus offering scriptural evidence that we were once with Krishna.

 And then again in CC 2.22.107”nitya-siddha krsna-prema”

Lord Caitanya says:  “Pure love for Krsna is eternally present.” That means at all past times, present and future, the love is always there established in the hearts of the living entities. “It is not something to be gained from another source. When the heart is purified by hearing and chanting, this love naturally awakens.”

So inattism is very important in our philosophy.

There is another kind of inattism which is called nativism.

It is an atheistic position based on genetic and different types of psychology. The natives say, “yes, we do have certain ideas within us, but it is genetic. It is not because God put them there or because of a previous life. It can be explained genetically and physiologically. So it is another explanation for why there are innate ideas. This is another challenge to foundationalism.

So the conclusion I want to come to is that if you look at Krishna Consciousness, it actually encompasses all these different epistemological theories. It integrates them all in a very natural way, it makes a very powerful contribution that your level of knowledge or understanding  is based on the quality of existence. You will see reality a certain way based on the quality of your existence. So ultimately we can make a strong argument.

 

My conclusion is that if you look at the epistemological landscape, I think we can make a cogent argument – not fanatical, not dogmatic, but actually a cogent argument that Krishna Consciousness encompasses, incorporates and integrates in the most powerful way all these different epistemological approaches all of which contribute something, and ultimately that Anselm – whose ontological argument is that God is that being then whom no greater being can be conceived. Rupa Goswami echos the same argument in a somewhat different way in the Bhakti-rasamrita-sindhu, saying that if we look at Krishna, Vishnu and Narayan, basically the greatest concept of God is the truest because God is infinitely great. Therefore the concept of Krishna ultimately is truest. You can derive the most knowledge because it is the biggest concept.

When I took a course on the history of Indic philosophy at UCLA the teacher said that Western thinkers often criticize Indian philosophy by saying it is not really neutral philosophy since it always aims at moksa, liberation. I think that is a very positive thing because it seems to me that the essence of science is that you have to produce something. If you have a scientific theory that produces nothing - it doesn’t give you any control over nature, it doesn’t give you any power to predict, it is not even explanatory, it is just something in your head – it has to produce!

Krsna says in Chapter 4.36  that knowledge overcomes suffering:

 

api ced asi papebhyah sarvebhyah papa-krt-tamah

 

sarvam jnana-plavenaiva vrjinam santarisyasi

If you are the greatest sinner in the boat or the raft of knowledge you will cross over all the sufferings and trouble of this world.

Krishna says it burn up our sin in 4.37:

 

yathaidhamsi samiddho ’gnir bhasma-sat kurute ’rjuna

 jnanagnih sarva-karmani bhasma-sat kurute tatha

Krishna says in 4.38 it purifies us:

 

na hi jnanena sadrsam pavitram iha vidyate

 tat svayam yoga-samsiddhah kalenatmani vindati

 

Knowledge also creates an awarenesss that transforms our life, our consciousness etc.

 

Krishna says in 7.19 that Knowledge of Krishna brings one to Krishna: jnanavan mam prapadyate vasudeva sarvam iti

 

also in 10.10 dadami buddhi-yogam tam yena mama upayanti te

 

15.19

 yo mam evam asammuòho janati purusottamam

 sa sarva-vid bhajati mam sarva-bhavena bharata

 

13.19

 

iti ksetram tatha jnanam jneyam coktam samasatah

mad-bhakta etad vijnaya mad-bhavayopapadyate

So there are all these results. Knowledge produces a different kind of behavior, a different kind of awareness; it is not just a theory. It is not just a well-crafted propositional argument, but actually it transforms life, it lifts you to a different state of existence. And I think that keeping this requirement as one of the criteria of knowledge forces knowledge to produce, to perform. It actually forces knowledge to be scientific in a sense of actually being able to have these transforming effects on the world. I think it ties into epistemology. A good theory of knowledge will require knowledge to be productive in significant ways.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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