Truth and Knowledge

What is truth?
Truth consists in the agreement between what we think and what is in the world, what is real.

How about the works of art?
Poetic truth is of a totally different kind. Poetic truth lies most in its significance rather than in its factual accuracy.

What distinction between objective truth and subjective truth?
Objective truth is truth that is independent of individual differences, differences in circumstance, time and place. What is objectively true is always true and true for all men everywhere at all times.

What is the difference between truth and reality?
Truth is a property of our thought and reality is what measures that property.
“True” and “false” are adjectives that apply to the acts of our mind — our judgments, our opinions, our thoughts or our statements. Reality is what those thoughts, opinions or statements are about. And when the statements, thoughts or opinions we have agree with reality as tested by the pragmatic consequences of acting on our judgments, then reality, which is independent of our minds, and is what it is regardless of what we think about it, sometimes supports our action when we think truly — and lets us go on — and when we think falsely it blocks us, frustrates us, and often does us in.

“If a given statement is ever objectively true, it is true forever and immutably true.” What does that mean?
This an example. For centuries, most men and even most scientists thought that the earth was the center of the solar system. That the sun, the moon and the planets revolved around a stationary earth. That was Ptolemy’s astronomy, and the Greek astronomy — Aristotle’s astronomy. And Copernicus came up with the opposite view — the so-called heliocentric view — that in our solar system, not in the universe at large, the sun is the center and the moon and the planets including the earth revolve in orbits around the sun. It then took some time to prove the correctness of the Copernican theory. It took the time until we got to the Foucault pendulum, which really registers the motion of the earth. Now, that didn’t suddenly become true — it always was true. For all the centuries when men thought otherwise it was true that the earth revolved around the sun even though it took until the 17th and 18th centuries for us to come to know that to be true and generally acknowledge it. The truth is always the same when we know it — when we have it. The fact that men change their minds, that what scientists and other men think is true at a time when it is wrong, doesn’t make it true.

What determines whether a statement is true or false?
ADLER: As in this case, the evidence, the evidence of the Foucault pendulum absolutely shows the rotation of the earth.

Can there be false knowledge?
No, there can’t be. There can be true and false opinions; but knowledge, by its very nature, carries the connotation of truth. So when the ancients said the world is flat, it was not knowledge at all, it was false opinion.

Why do we prefer the opinions to which we are attached on emotional, not rational, grounds?
Well, it’s simply that our emotional attachments are strong. We like to attach ourselves to opinions that favor our feelings, that favor our desire, that favor our temperamental inclinations.

So opinion is stronger than truth?
Yes, in many cases, opinion is stronger than truth. In fact, stronger than even ordinary opinions are deep-set prejudices, much stronger. For example, even when we know that all men are created equal, and all men are by nature equal, we retain our prejudice that some men are inferior to others.

Why is truth so often the victim?
Because men in general are not given to using their minds as instruments for rational assessment of what is true and false. Most men just simply are persons who harbor opinions, cherish opinions, and don’t submit them to tests or investigation.

The pursuit of truth is a continual process of correcting errors, enlarging inadequate grasps of the truth. There we two ways, by the way, in which the pursuit of truth is carried on. On the one hand, an error is corrected, a falsehood is rejected and is replaced by a truer statement; truer, not absolutely true or finally true, because every statement except for the self-evident ones are in the realm of doubt and are subject to enlargement and correction by better evidence and better reasoning in the future.

In matters of religion, there is no way to decide which is true and which is not?
About all matters of faith, articles of religious faith are beyond argument. If there were any way, if there were any way at all to offer evidence or reasons in support of one faith or another, it wouldn’t be faith. Faith is that which goes beyond the evidence of things seen.

So, in the final analysis, who determines truth?
There is no answer to that question; no one determines truth. Truth is always a matter of the arbitrament of men arguing with one another. No one determines — the truth is determined — the truth of opinions is determined by reality; when two men disagree about what they think is true, that must be submitted to argument, to evidence, to observation, to reason.

So the pursuit of truth is not a destination; it’s a process?
Precisely. And one that will go on to the end of time. It never will stop. If we live the 100 million years the planet will endure, that we will accumulate more and more truth, correct more and more error, enlarge our grasp of the truth. But we will always fall short, we’ll always fall short of the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

All men, Aristotle said, by nature desire to know. There are but few who do not regard knowledge as desirable, as a good to be prized, and a good without limit — the more, the better.

It is generally understood that those who have knowledge about anything are in the possession of the truth about it. Individuals may at times be incorrect in their claim that they do have knowledge, but if they do, then they have some hold on the truth. The phrase “false knowledge” is a contradiction in terms; “true knowledge” is manifestly redundant. Opinions can be true or false, as knowledge cannot be. When individuals claim to have knowledge about something that turns out not to be knowledge at all because it is false, what they mistook for knowledge was only opinion.

Closely connected with this distinction between knowledge and opinion are two other distinctions. One is the distinction between the things about which we can have certitude — beyond any shadow of a doubt — and things about which some doubt remains. We may be persuaded by them beyond a reasonable doubt, but that does not take them entirely out of the realm of doubt. Some doubt lingers.
The other distinction is that between the corrigible and mutable and the incorrigible and immutable. When we have certitude about anything, we have a hold on truth that is both incorrigible and immutable. When anything remains in doubt, to even the slightest degree, it is both mutable and corrigible. We should recognize that we may change our minds about it and correct whatever was wrong.

By these criteria for distinguishing between knowledge and opinion, how much knowledge do any of us have? Most of us would admit that we have precious little. Most of us are aware that in the history of science even the most revered formulations have been subject to change and correction.

The solution, it seems to me, lies in recognizing the sense in which the word “knowledge” signifies something that is quite distinct from anything that can be called an opinion, and the sense in which a certain type of opinion can also quite properly be called knowledge. That would leave another type of opinion, quite distinct from knowledge, which should properly be called mere opinion.

Examples of knowledge in this extreme sense of the term are a small number of self-evident truths. A self-evident truth is one that states something the opposite of which it is impossible to think. It can also be called a necessary truth because its opposite is impossible.

That a finite whole is greater than any of its component parts and that each part of a finite whole is less than the whole are self-evident, necessary truths.

Sometimes definitions enter into our grasp of self-evident truths. We define a triangle as a three-sided plane figure. We define a diagonal as a line drawn between nonadjacent angles in a regular plane polygon. We know that, being three-sided, a triangle has no nonadjacent angles. Therefore, we know with certitude that it is necessarily true that there can be no diagonals in triangles, as there can be in squares, pentagons, and the like.

Whether they know it or not, those who say that we have precious little knowledge that has such certitude may not realize that the little knowledge we have of this kind consists of a handful of self-evident or necessary truths like those just noted.

Is everything else opinion, then? Yes and no; yes, if we insist upon the criteria of certitude, incorrigibility, and immutability of the truth known; no, if we relax those criteria and recognize that there are opinions we can affirm on the basis of evidence and reasons that have sufficient probative force to justify our claiming at the time that the opinion affirmed is true.

We should be prepared to say that such corrigible, mutable opinions are knowledge — knowledge of truths that have a future in which they may undergo correction or alteration and even rejection.

As against opinions that deserve the status of knowledge in this sense of the term, there remain what must be called mere opinions because they are asserted without any basis at all in evidence or reason. Our personal prejudices are such mere opinions. We assert them stoutly and often stubbornly, even though we cannot point to a single piece of evidence in support of them or offer a single reason for claiming that they are true. This is also true of some of the beliefs we harbor and cherish.

Sometimes we use the word “belief” to signify that we have some measure of doubt about the opinion we claim to be true on the basis of evidence and reasons. In that case, it is not incorrect to say that we know it (because we have sufficient grounds for affirming it to be true). However, at other times, we use the word “belief” to signify total lack of evidence or reasons for asserting an opinion. Then we should never say that we know.

There is another special use, or misuse, of the word “knowing.” It involves the distinction between two acts of the mind – apprehension and judgment.
The first act of the mind is simple apprehension. Some object is apprehended but we should not use the word “knowledge” for such apprehensions. Except for perceptual apprehensions, which cannot be separated from perceptual judgments, all other apprehensions are totally devoid of any judgment about the object apprehended. Devoid of such judgments, an apprehension is not knowledge because there is nothing true or false about it. True and false enter the picture only with the act of judging, and only then do we go beyond apprehension to what, strictly speaking, can be called knowledge.

The word that most of us use to signify the independent character of the knowable is the word “reality.” If there were no reality, nothing the existence and character of which is independent of the knowing mind, there would be nothing knowable. Reality is that which exists whether we think about it or not, and has the character that it has no matter how we think about it.

The reality that is the knowable may or may not be physical. It may or may not consist solely of things perceptible to our senses. But whatever its character, its existence must be public, not private. It must be knowable by two or more persons. Nothing that is knowable by one person alone can have the status of knowledge. Whatever can be genuinely known by any one person must be capable of being known by others.

I will be using the word “knowledge” to cover the necessary and self-evident truths we know with certitude and also the opinions we are able to assert on the basis of sufficient evidence and reasons to outweigh any contrary opinions. I will be using it to cover things about which we can say both that we know them and also that we believe them, because some measure of doubt remains about them. I will be using it always for judgments that are either true or false, but never for apprehensions that are neither true nor false. And I will use the phrase “mere opinion” for whatever is deemed by anyone not to be knowledge in any of the foregoing senses.

In summary, we have self-evident truths that have certitude and incorrigibility; and we also have truths that are still subject to doubt but that are supported by evidence and reasons to a degree that puts them beyond reasonable doubt or at least gives them predominance over contrary views. All else is mere opinion — with no claim to being knowledge or having any hold on truth.

There is no question that the findings and conclusions of historical research are knowledge in this sense; no question that the findings and conclusions of the experimental or empirical sciences, both natural and social, are knowledge in this sense.

As contrasted with such knowledge, which is knowledge of reality or, as Hume would say, knowledge of matters of fact and real existence, mathematics and logic are also knowledge, but not of reality. They are not experimental or empirical knowledge. They do not depend upon investigative research for their findings and conclusions.

The question that remains to be answered is the one that, in my judgment, Hume and Kant answered erroneously, an answer that has persisted in various forms down to our own day. Where does speculative or theoretical philosophy (by which I mean philosophical physics, metaphysics, and philosophical theology) stand in this picture? Is it mere opinion or is it genuine knowledge, knowledge that, like the empirical sciences, is knowledge of reality?

According to Sir Karl Popper, one of the most eminent philosophers of science in our time, the line of demarcation between knowledge and mere opinion is determined by one criterion: falsifiability by empirical evidence, by observed phenomena. An opinion, a view, a theory, that cannot be thus falsified is not knowledge, but mere opinion, neither true nor false in any objective sense of those terms. Drawing this line of demarcation, Popper places the experimental and empirical sciences on one side of the line, and theoretical philosophy (covering what I have indicated above) on the other side of the line. Popper thus repeats the conclusion Hume reached in his Enquiry.

I, on the other hand, have reached the opposite conclusion. The reasons are as follows.

In the first place, what has been overlooked is the distinction between common and special experience. The empirical evidence to which science and history appeal is special experience that consists of observed data produced by methodical investigation, using all the devices and instrumentation of the laboratory and the observatory. Such observed data are no part of the experience of ordinary individuals who do not engage in scientific or historical investigation.

In sharp contrast to such special experience, there is the everyday, ordinary experience that all of us have during the waking hours of our life. This experience comes to us simply by our being awake and having our senses acted on. We make no effort to get it; we are not seeking to answer questions by means of it, we employ no methods to refine it; we use no instruments of observation to obtain it. Within the range of such experience there lies a core that constitutes the common experience of mankind - experience that is the same for all human beings at all times and places.

With this distinction in mind, between special and common experience, between experience resulting from investigation efforts and experience enjoyed without such efforts, we can distinguish between bodies of knowledge that rely on different types of experience.

Speculative or theoretical philosophy is a body of knowledge that can be produced in an arm chair or at a desk. The only experience that the philosopher needs for the development of his theories or the support of his conclusions is the common experience of mankind. Reflecting on such experience and proceeding by means of rational analysis and argument, the philosopher reaches conclusions in a manner that resembles the procedure of the mathematician, not that of the empirical scientist. However, like empirical science, theoretical philosophy claims to be knowledge of reality.

In the light of what has just been said, we can divide the sphere of knowledge into (1) bodies of knowledge that are methodically investigative and (2) bodies of knowledge that are noninvestigative and that employ only common, not special, experience. To the first group belong history, geography, and all the empirical sciences, both natural and social. To the second group belong mathematics, logic, and theoretical philosophy.

If the division is made in terms of whether the body of knowledge claims to have a hold on truth about reality, then theoretical philosophy, even though it is noninvestigative in method, belongs with history, geography, and the empirical sciences.

Each of these disciplines, according to its distinctive character, has a method peculiarly its own and, according to the limitations of that method, can answer only certain questions, not others. The kind of questions that the philosopher can answer without any empirical investigation whatsoever cannot be answered by the empirical scientist, and, conversely, the kind of questions that the scientist can answer by his methods of investigation cannot be answered by the philosopher.

The line of demarcation between all these bodies of knowledge and mere opinion involves criteria other than the one proposed by Popper. Falsifiability by experience — whether it be the observed data of scientific investigation or the substance of common experience — is certainly one criterion by which we separate genuine knowledge from mere opinion. But it is not the only one.

Another is refutability by rational argument. The only irrefutable truths we possess are the very few self-evident propositions that have certitude, finality, incorrigibility. Since our knowledge of reality, whether scientific or philosophical, does not consist exclusively of self-evident truths nor does it consist of conclusions demonstrated to be true by deduction from premises that are self-evidently true, scientific and philosophical theories or conclusions must be refutable in three ways.

One way is falsification by experience, which produces evidence contrary to the evidence that has been employed to support the opinion that claims to be true and to have the status of knowledge. A second way is by rational argument, which advances reasons that correct and replace the reasons advanced to support the opinion that claims to be true and have the status of knowledge. The third way is a combination of the first and the second — new and better evidence, together with new and better reasons for holding a view contrary to the one that has been refuted.

Opinions that cannot be refuted in one or another of these three ways are not knowledge, but mere opinion. Were this not so, this essay would be fraudulent in its claim to point out philosophical mistakes and to correct them by offering evidence and reasons to expose their errors. Nor could we replace them with views that are true or more nearly true.

If philosophy were mere opinion there would be no philosophical mistakes, erroneous views, false doctrines. There would be no way of substituting views or doctrines more nearly true because they employed insights and appealed to distinctions that for one reason or another were not in the possession of those who made the mistakes.

The foregoing analysis has not been exhaustive. It does not include bodies of knowledge that result from scholarly research in fields such as philology, the comparative study of religion, or the fine arts. If these bodies of knowledge rely upon methodical investigation they belong with the empirical sciences, not philosophy. The other question to be decided is whether or not they are knowledge of reality.

Reference to religious belief or faith has also been omitted. It claims to be knowledge and would lose all its efficacy if it were reduced to mere opinion. But the grounds on which it makes such a claim are so utterly different from the criteria we have employed to divide genuine knowledge from mere opinion that it is impossible within the brief scope of this discussion to put religious faith or belief into the picture we now have before us.

On the basis of the common experience that all of us possess, we have commonsense knowledge about matters of fact and real existence, knowledge that is neither scientific nor philosophical. There is, however, a relation between such commonsense knowledge and theoretical philosophy that does not exist between it and empirical science.

Theoretical philosophy is an analytical and reflective refinement of what we know by common sense in the light of common experience. Our commonsense knowledge is deepened, illuminated, and elaborated by philosophical thought. There is little if any sound philosophy that conflicts with our commonsense knowledge, for both are based on the common human experience out of which they emerge.

That is why I have reiterated again and again that philosophy, unlike the investigative sciences, historical research, or mathematics, is everybody’s business. All the latter are fields that tend toward greater and greater specialization and become the province of a wide variety of specialist experts. Philosophy alone, because of its intimate connection with the commonsense knowledge of the ordinary individual, remains unspecialized — the province of the generalist, the business of everybody.

The importance of refuting the errors made by Hume and Kant, errors that are widely prevalent in the twentieth century, is that the relegation of theoretical philosophy to the realm of mere opinion amounts to a cultural disaster in an age that is so dominated by increasing specialization in all other fields of learning. If philosophical speculation is not respected in its claim to have a hold upon the truth about reality, our culture will cease to have generalists.

Knowledge is not the highest of the intellectual goods. Of higher value is understanding and, beyond that, wisdom. These are goods that, to whatever extent they can be achieved, become ours through philosophical thought, not scientific knowledge. Philosophy makes it’s contribution not only as a body of knowledge, but also because it is through philosophical thought that we are able to understand everything else that we know. We are justified in hoping that from such understanding, with maturity of judgment and wide experience, some measure of wisdom will ultimately be attained.

The philosophical mistakes about knowledge and opinion

The authors of the two philosophical mistakes with which we are here concerned are David Hume and Immanuel Kant. The influence that, historically, Hume had upon Kant, conceded by Kant to have prompted the philosophical edifice he constructed in order to avoid the conclusions reached by Hume (which he thought untenable, even disastrous), throws some light on the relation of the two mistakes.

Looked at one way, the two mistakes represent opposite extremes. Looked at another way, they represent opposite faces of the same error. The error in both cases has to do with the role that sense-experience plays with regard to the origin and limits of knowledge. The two mistakes are opposed to one another by reason of the fact that they take opposite stands with regard to the certitude, immutability, and incorrigibility that does or does not belong to knowledge.

Hume’s mistake had its roots or origin in earlier mistakes, and especially the mistakes made by John Locke with regard to the senses and the intellect and with regard to ideas as objects we directly apprehend. On the other hand, Kant’s mistake had its origin in the mistake made by Hume. He might have avoided his own mistake by pointing out that the conclusions Hume reached, which he found so repugnant, were based on false premises.

Had he rejected those premises, that by itself would have sufficed to avoid Hume’s conclusions. But he did not do so. Instead, he invented and erected a subtle and intricate philosophical structure in an effort to reach and support conclusions the very opposite of Hume’s, and just as incorrect.

Let us begin with David Hume. David Hume concedes that we do have knowledge of two sorts.

One is the kind of knowledge to be found in mathematics. He refers to this as “abstract science” because it involves no assertions or judgments about matters of fact or real existence. It deals only with the relation between our own ideas — our ideas of quantity and number. Here it is possible to have demonstration and a measure of certitude.

Hume then tells us that judgments about matters of fact and real existence, if they can be supported by evidence and reasons, constitute knowledge, not mere opinion; but they are always the knowledge that lacks certitude and falls within the sphere of doubt — the sphere of the corrigible and the mutable.

Such knowledge depends upon our sense-experience. “It is only experience,” Hume writes, “which teaches us the nature and bounds of cause and effect, and enables us to infer the existence of one object from that of another.” According to these criteria, Hume admits into the sphere of empirical knowledge (as contrasted with abstract science) such things as history, geography, and astronomy, and also the sciences “which treat of general facts, i.e., politics, natural philosophy, physics, chemistry, etc.” This brings him to his thundering conclusion in the last paragraph of the Enquiry:
When we run over our libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, “Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number?" No. "Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matters of fact and existence?" No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.

The line that divides what deserves to be honored and respected as genuine knowledge from what should be dismissed as mere opinion (or worse, as sophistry and illusion) is determined by two criteria. (1) It is knowledge and can be called science if it deals solely with abstractions and involves no judgments about matters of fact or real existence. Here we have mathematics and, together with it, the science of logic. (2) It is knowledge, if it deals with particular facts, as history and geography do, or with general facts, as physics and chemistry do.

In both cases, it is knowledge only to the extent that it is based upon experimental reasoning, involving empirical investigations of the kind that occur in laboratories and observatories, or methodical investigations of the kind conducted by historians and geographers.

What did Hume exclude from the realm of knowledge? He refers to what he calls “natural philosophy”, as well as metaphysics and philosophical theology.

This view of knowledge and opinion comes down to us in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the form of a doctrine that has been variously called positivism or scientism. The twentieth-century form of scientism or positivism thus came to be called “logical positivism.”

Here we have one facet of the mistake about knowledge and opinion, the other facet of which is to be found in Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. The latter is by far the more serious and the more far-reaching in its consequences.

Kant tells us that David Hume awakened him from his dogmatic slumbers. His prior dogmatism, as well as Hume’s skepticism, which Kant also found repugnant, was replaced by the critical philosophy that he developed. It is also sometimes called a transcendental philosophy because of its transcendence with regard to experience.

In order to understand this, it is necessary, first, to pay attention to two distinctions that are operative in Kant’s thinking. One is the distinction between the a priori and the a posteriori. The other is the distinction between the analytic and the synthetic.

The a priori, according to Kant, includes whatever is in the mind prior to any sense-experience and also whatever judgments it can make that are not based upon sense experience. The a posteriori is, of course, the opposite in both respects.

The analytic consists of judgments the truth of which depends entirely upon definitions. Clearly, such analytical judgments can be, in fact must be, a priori. Their truth depends solely upon a definition of terms, not upon sense-experience. Hume would have regarded such analytical judgments as truths that deal with the relation of our own ideas, not with matters of fact and existence. John Locke, before him, regarded them as mere verbal tautologies; in his words, judgments that are “trifling and uninstructive.” Locke, in my judgment, is correct in dismissing them as unworthy of serious consideration.

Earlier in this essay, I explained the character of self-evident truths, truths that have certitude and incorrigibility because it is impossible for us to think their opposites. Such a truth as a finite whole is greater than any of its parts is not analytical in Kant’s sense: its focal terms — whole and part — are indefinable. Nor is it a priori in Kant’s sense: its truth depends upon our understanding of the terms whole and part, an understanding that is derived from a single experience, such as tearing a piece of paper into pieces, thus dividing a whole into parts.

Philosophers since Kant have misconceived what an earlier tradition in philosophy had understood to be self-evident truths or axioms. They have mistakenly accepted Kant’s restriction of such truths to verbal tautologies, to trifling and uninstructive statements.

But this is not the worst of Kant’s mistakes. Much worse is his view about synthetic judgments a priori. A synthetic judgment is not trifling or uninstructive. It does not depend upon an arbitrary definition of terms. It is the kind of judgment that Hume regarded as a truth about matters of fact or real existence. In every such case, the opposite of what is asserted is possible — thinkable, conceivable. But for Hume, the very fact that a judgment is synthetic involves its dependence on experience of one sort or another. It cannot, therefore, be a priori — independent of sense experience.

To maintain that there are synthetic judgments a priori, as Kant does, is, perhaps, the single most revolutionary step that he took to overcome the conclusions reached by Hume that he found repugnant. What was his driving purpose in doing so? It was to establish Euclidean geometry and traditional arithmetic as sciences that not only have certitude, but also contain truths that are applicable to the world of our experience. It was also to give the same status to Newtonian physics.

To do this, Kant endowed the human mind with transcendental forms of sense-apprehension or intuition (the forms of space and time), and also with the transcendental categories of the understanding. The mind brings these transcendental forms and categories to experience, thereby constituting the shape and character of the experience we have.

According to Kant, the mind is not (as John Locke rightly insisted it was in his refutation of Cartesian innate ideas) a tabula rasa— a total blank — until it acquires ideas initially from sense-experience. Locke rightly subscribed to the mediaeval maxim that there is nothing in the mind that does not somehow derive from sense-experience. It was this maxim that Kant rejected.

The transcendental forms of sense-apprehension and the transcendental categories of the understanding are inherent in the mind and constitute its structure prior to any sense-experience. The common experience that all of us share has the character it does have because it has been given that character by the transcendental structure of the human mind. It has been formed and constituted by it. This elaborate machinery invented by Kant enabled him to think that he had succeeded in establishing and explaining the certitude and incorrigibility of Euclidean geometry, simple arithmetic, and Newtonian physics.
(Note: I agree with Dr. Adler that Kant was wrong if he maintained the certitude and incorrigibility of Euclidean geometry, simple arithmetic, and Newtonian physics.)

Three historic events suffice to show how illusory was the view that he had succeeded in doing that. The discovery and development of the non-Euclidean geometries and of modern number theory should suffice to show how utterly factitious was Kant’s invention of the transcendental forms of space and time as controlling our sense-apprehensions and giving certitude and reality to Euclidean geometry and simple arithmetic. Similarly, the replacement of Newtonian physics by modern relativistic physics, the addition of probabilistic or statistical laws to causal laws, the development of elementary particle physics and of quantum mechanics, should also suffice to show how utterly factitious was Kant’s invention of the transcendental categories of the understanding to give Newtonian physics certitude and incorrigibility. How anyone in the twentieth century can take Kant’s transcendental philosophy seriously is baffling, even though it may always remain admirable in certain respects as an extraordinarily elaborate and ingenious intellectual invention. So much for the illusory character of what Kant claimed for his transcendental philosophy as an attempt to give mathematics and natural science a certitude and incorrigibility that they do not possess.
(Note: This is the part that I disagree with Dr. Adler. It is the inherent universality of Kant’s transcendental forms of sense-apprehension and the transcendental categories of the understanding that allow us to have objective view of our ordinary sense-experience. However, its simple structure does not permit us to directly apprehend the intellectual world of non-Euclidean geometry, relativistic physics, and quantum mechanics.)

What about the critical character that Kant claimed for his philosophy — critical in the sense that it would save us from the dogmatism of traditional metaphysics, especially its cosmology and natural theology?

Kant argues for the exclusion of traditional metaphysics from the realm of genuine knowledge on the grounds that it must employ concepts derived from experience to make assertions that go beyond experience — the experience that is constituted by the a priori structure of the human mind. Where Hume dismissed traditional metaphysics as sophistry or illusion, Kant dismissed it as trans-empirical.

However, all the ideas used in metaphysics are not empirical concepts. The idea of God, for example, and the idea of the cosmos as a whole are not concepts derived from sense-experience. They are instead theoretical constructs. There is, therefore, nothing invalid about employing such an idea even if it goes beyond all the sense-experience available to us. Let me add here that, unlike an empirical concept, a theoretical construct does not and cannot have any perceived particular instances.

What I have just said about such metaphysical concepts as God and the cosmos as a whole applies equally to some of the most important ideas in twentieth-century theoretical physics, such ideas as the idea of quark, of certain elementary particles, such as mesons, or of black holes. All of these are theoretical constructs, not empirical concepts.
(Note: Here I agree with Dr. Adler. Indeed, the simplicity of Kant’s transcendental forms of sense-apprehension and the transcendental categories of the understanding does not permit us to directly apprehend the intellectual constructs of non-Euclidean geometry, relativistic physics, and quantum mechanics as well as the metaphysical concepts.)

Kant had no awareness of the distinction between empirical concepts and theoretical constructs. His reasons for dismissing traditional metaphysics as devoid of the validity appropriate to genuine knowledge would apply equally to much of twentieth-century physics. Here, once more, we have grounds for not taking much stock in Kant’s claims for the critical character of his philosophy.
(Here, I disagree with Dr. Adler.)

Finally, we come to what is, perhaps, the most serious mistake that modern philosophy inherited from Kant — the mistake of substituting idealism for realism. Even though Locke and his successor Hume made the mistake of thinking that the ideas in our minds are the only objects we directly apprehend, they somehow (albeit not without contradicting themselves) regarded us as having knowledge of a reality that is independent of our minds. Not so with Kant.
The valid knowledge that we have is always and only knowledge of a world we experience. But precisely because it is a world as experienced by us, it is not, according to Kant, a world independent of our minds. It is not independent, as we have already seen, because experience is constituted by the transcendental or a priori structure of our minds — its forms of intuition or apprehension and its categories of understanding. Not being independent of our minds, it can hardly be regarded as reality, for the essential characteristic of the real is independence of the human mind.
(Here, again, I disagree with Dr. Adler. The inherent universality of Kant’s transcendental forms of sense-apprehension and the transcendental categories of the understanding allow us to have objective view of our ordinary sense-experience. Kant did not say that the world is in our minds. It is still out there. It just appears to us the way it is because of the imposition of transcendental structure of human mind. Animals, having different transcendental structures of mind, apprehend the world differently from us and between species. So, what is the “Dinge an sich” of the real world? Who knows? We just want to know who shot JFK - the truth. Dr. Adler defines truth as the correspondence of the mind with reality. It is Lee Harvey Oswald who shot JFK and that is the reality. But "Oswald shot JFK" is not Kant's “Dinge an sich”, neither is his motive. The “Dinge an sich” in this case is the basic structure or essence of human nature that makes someone, like Oswald, a killer. Well, according to Kant, we can never know, for sure.)

For Kant the only things that are independent of the human mind are, in his words, “Dinge an sich” — things in themselves that are intrinsically unknowable. This is tantamount to saying that the real is the unknowable, and the knowable is ideal in the sense that it is invested with the ideas that our minds bring to it to make it what it is. (I will let Dr. Adler has the last words because I agree with him all other points he makes about “knowledge and opinion”, including metaphysics claims to have a hold on truth about reality, as well as the stand he takes in “What is an idea” and "The Intellect and the Senses".)

The positivism or scientism that has its roots in Hume’s philosophical mistakes, and the idealism and critical constraints that have their roots in Kant’s philosophical mistakes, generate many embarrassing consequences that have plagued modern thought since their day. In almost every case, the trouble has consisted in the fact that later thinkers tried to avoid the consequences without correcting the errors or mistakes that generated them.

Truth and Certainty

The Three Primary Truths
There are three truths which must be accepted at the beginning of any investigation into the problem of knowledge and truth:
•The First Fact: The fact of our existence. “I exist.”
•The First Principle: The principle of contradiction. “A thing can not be and not-be at the same time in the same respect.”
•The First Condition: The essential capability of the mind to know truth. “My intellect can reason and discover truth.”
These primary truths cannot be “proved” by a positive demonstration because they are presupposed and involved in every demonstration. They are so evident that any attempt to doubt or deny them would already mean they have been affirmed and accepted. They are, therefore, fully grounded in reason and no reasonable person can dispute them consistently.
In fact, if anyone questions you as to their truth, simply ask: “What will you accept as proof for the truth of these three primary truths?” Put the challenge to the opponent. No opponent can even tell you what form of proof he would find acceptable without accepting the truth of the three primary truths in the first place! ...
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The Truth and the Good – Is and Ought (Mortimer J. Adler)

The judgment that something is good or bad — or that it is better or worse than something else — is one we make every day, often many times a day. It is implicit in every choice we make. It is expressed every time we appraise anything or estimate its value for us. That is why judgments that attribute goodness or some degree of goodness to things have come to be called “value judgments.” ...
When we talk about the pursuit of truth, we are regarding truth as an object of desire and, in doing so, we are in effect attributing goodness to truth. ...
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It is commonly said that the great scientific fact of the nineteenth century was the establishment of the theory of biological evolution. This theory has influenced all branches of thought, not excepting philosophy. ….. Knowledge, like all other human things, has grown up in the struggle for existence. And this reflection has led to the belief that the structure of knowledge and its inner nature, like the structure of the physical organism, has been determined by biological needs. Bergson, William James, Vaihinger, and the pragmatists have emphasized different aspects of this view. And it has come to be thought that, in one way or another, knowledge is the handmaid of practical activity.

This was a new thought in philosophy, a thought which was not to be found in the classical systems of pre-evolution days. For Plato and Aristotle, for Berkeley, Hume, and Kant, knowledge was something ..... which might have come into existence with a bang, ready made and complete. It was regarded as wholly theoretical, and its theoretical character kept it in a water-tight compartment separated completely from the practical activities of life. …..

This new thought is likely to be abiding in its influence. The theory of knowledge can never return to its pre-evolution attitude. Any epistemology which in the future does not reflect, at least in some measure, the new insight, is likely to stand self-condemned as unscientific. The philosophies of Bergson and the pragmatists may well be no more, in the forms in which their authors have shaped them, than transient phenomena, symptoms of the passing age. They contain much that is not likely to remain for long acceptable to the scientific mind. But the influence of the thought that action at least in some measure governs knowledge will spread and will become incorporated in the philosophies of the future.

It frequently happens that the originators of a new idea ride it to death, and bring it, for the time being, into disrepute. And this, I fear, has been the tendency of the more extreme among the pragmatists. They have so subordinated knowledge to action that they have destroyed the basis of knowledge. And this has been instinctively perceived by the plain unphilosophical man who conceives that the definition of truth as any belief which 'works' is likely to lead to fantastic results. It would seem, therefore, that a balanced and sane examination of the issues is one of the chief needs of to-day in the theory of knowledge.

For knowledge has been conceived in the past as a value. I use the word value here in a special sense, and as practically equivalent to what some philosophers have called 'absolute value'. We commonly speak of food, money, clothes, houses, health, or anything else which we desire, as possessing value. But in the special sense in which I am electing to use the word they do not possess it. When it is said, in common parlance, that such things have value for us, it is meant only that they are things after which we strive because they satisfy our various needs and desires. It is true that the exact psychology of the matter has been the subject of much dispute. But the statement just made is good enough for our present purposes. In addition to the many things which we happen to desire and strive after there exist a few things which we feel are more exalted, and which we ought to strive after, whether in fact we do so or not. Common examples are goodness, beauty, and truth or knowledge. (There is a distinction between truth and knowledge, but that may be neglected for the moment.) The value of these things is believed to differ from the values of all other things in that there is in them an inherent rightness or excellence which imposes upon us an 'ought', an obligation to pursue and strive after them. Some people like meat; others prefer fish. But whichever your preference may happen to be, you do not assert that your preference is 'right' and the opposite liking 'wrong'. You do not think that all men 'ought' to prefer fish or meat as the case may be. You do not think that it is their duty to strive after meat or fish. These are matters of taste. De gustibus . . . But we do think that we 'ought' to prefer the good, the beautiful, and the true, to the evif, the unbeautiful, and the false. It is not here a matter of personal taste, but of one thing being inherently and in itself more excellent than another. The possession of this quality is what Ihere call value. And from this point of view I say that goodness, beauty, and knowledge possess, or are believed to possess, value; but that butter, eggs, clothes, houses, and the like do not possess it. It will readily be seen that by value I mean much the same as what is commonly meant by the word 'ideal'. Most people would admit that truth is an ideal. But no one would assert that butter is.

Now what I said was that, in the past, knowledge has generally been regarded as a value in this sense. It has been thought of as being an end in itself, as being valuable even when it cannot be shown to have any practical utility. Or at least it has been thought that if a proposition is true, it still remains true even if the knowledge of its truth is useless. That truth is something independent of our wishes and our needs; .... that truth is truth whether we like it or not; that it remains what it is whether it forwards or hinders the success of our practical undertakings ; these thoughts have seemed to men to possess genuine validity. And they stand in unyielding contradiction to the theory of knowledge as completely subordinated to action.

One question seems to have been insufficiently pondered by the upholders of the extreme pragmatic view. If knowledge has no purpose except action, what then is the purpose of action? The consideration of this question would carry them outside the bounds of epistemology into the sphere of ethics, which is perhaps not their strong point. And yet they cannot decline the issue. For it is they who have connected knowledge to action. It is they who have insisted that the two cannot be separate. And it is too late therefore to protest that ethical considerations must be given no weight in the theory of knowledge.

...... . The justification of knowledge, pragmatists tell us, is success in action, and its value — though they do not always say this — is a survival value. The criterion of right thinking is the successful satisfaction of biological needs. Will not the criterion of right action be also biological success? And will not moral ideas have no more than a survival value? Right action, we shall have to think, can only be defined as action which in the long run satisfies human desires. And what are these desires? Not the desire for knowledge, and not the desire for moral goodness. For to think this would be to argue in a circle. If moral conceptions only come into existence for the purpose of satisfying human desires, then those desires (which are the aim and end of life) must be prior to and independent of moral conceptions. And the same applies to knowledge. If knowledge is only an instrument, then it is not an end. What other ends can be suggested? The satisfaction of our aesthetic desires? But no one is likely to say that the desires for the satisfaction of which knowledge and morality have been evolved in the struggle for existence are the aesthetic desires. And certainly that is not the answer commonly given by pragmatism.

What desires, then, are left ? None, so far as I can see, except the brute desires of the body. I am far from wishing to decry as low or contemptible the body and its desires. They have their proper place in life, and an honourable place it is. But what I wish to point out is that theories of knowledge and ethics which reduce both truth and morality to a striving after the satisfaction of the non- spiritual desires destroy completely the conception of value which was explained above. Knowledge, in that case, has no aim except to help towards success in action; and action has no aim except the satisfaction of desires. And since these desires cannot be the desires for truth, goodness, or beauty, they can only be the desires for food, sex, health, wealth, power, and the like. These must be our sole ideals, these the final aim and justification of our lives. But I say that to admit this is to destroy all value and to make life purposeless.

….. The unqualified acceptance of successful action as the sole criterion of truth will destroy, not only truth, but moral and aesthetic values as well. If reason, logic, and science lead to this conclusion, we must loyally accept it, even though it devastate our hopes and our ideals. …… Whether reason, logic, and science do in fact lead to this conclusion is, however, not yet clear, and is precisely the question to be examined. And therefore we must have the issue clear to start with. Either there must be some other criterion of true knowledge besides that of success in action, or else we must submit to the destruction of all values and ideals and admit that our life has no higher purpose than the satisfaction of our desires to go on living, to live softly, pleasantly, or powerfully. If value is destroyed there can, of course, be no higher or lower in anything in life. For all judgements of 'higher' and 'lower' are judgements of value. Man will be no higher than the brute. Beautiful art will be no higher than eating and drinking. Socrates will be no better than the pig……

Of course it may be possible to take up for the moment the position that the function of knowledge is success in action, but that action itself is or ought to be governed by some absolute end other than mere success or survival. We might try to adopt, for example, some realistic theory of goodness as an objective quality of the external world (or of the internal world) on a par with qualities of things such as redness, spatiality, or other such. But in the first place such a position would not be consistent. For our belief in the existence of objective qualities would itself be a piece of knowledge which would have to be explained as a function of practical activity. And secondly, such a position is obviously one in which philosophy could not rest. The inevitable outcome of taking successful activity as the sole criterion of truth is to make it also the sole criterion of morals. We may set up some such half-and-half philosophy as a temporary dam against the value-destroying flood. But the flood will carry it away.

……….. We must either give up our belief in value, or we must find some criterion of truth which is not wholly dependent upon practical activity. We cannot have it both ways. …………..

That truth is something to be sought for its own sake. and not for its practical utility, is a belief which has been the spur of science and philosophy in the past. Great discoveries have for the most part been made m those civilizations in which the disinterested pursuit of truth, regardless of practical issues, has been an honoured ideal. And if this spirit should die, it is probable that science would die with it. In such civilizations as that of India knowledge for its own sake is not highly valued. Neither philosophical nor scientific problems are thought out for their own sakes as problems. Indians have never puzzled their heads, as the early Greeks did, about the motions of the heavenly bodies or their physical composition. Their only interest in the stars was astrological, i.e. they were only concerned to know whether the stars had any practical influence on life. If Europeans had been similarly practical-minded, astronomy would never have been born. It is the same in philosophy. The European is anxious to solve philosophical problems for their own sakes. Hence the wealth of European philosophical thought. The Indian only values philosophical knowledge if it can be put to practical use in freeing the soul from 'the wheel of things', in attaining Nirvana, union with Brahma, or some other such self-regarding end. And the result of this attitude is that science has never come into existence at all, and that philosophy, which has never separated itself properly from religion, has, after a brief early career, stagnated for centuries. And the people— in spite of Yoga philosophies and the like — have remained steeped in ignorance, error, and superstition.

These considerations show, at any rate, that belief in truth as one of the genuine values is deep-set in the human spirit. They show also that this belief has been of service to the human race, from which it would seem to follow that on pragmatic grounds it ought to be regarded as true! It may, nevertheless, be a delusion. But it is at least not a recommendation to a philosophy that it flies in the face of man's deepest ideals and aspirations. And when one remembers that the pragmatic view of knowledge has been belauded by some of its followers on the very ground that it enables man to have faith, through the 'will to believe', in his own ideals, the ironical nature of the position becomes clear. We have been told that since truth is what works, we can repose faith in our religious and moral aspirations if we find that they assist us in life. The delusive character of this hope should now be clear. It proposes to support our values by first destroying them.

We had thought that in some way moral activity was good and right because it is rational, because reason validates it. But we cannot have it both ways. If practical action validates reason, as these philosophers would have us think, then reason cannot validate practical action. If rational knowledge has no validity except as a guide to successful action, then the validity of right action cannot be founded on reason. On the pragmatist view reason has for its end action. And action has for its end what? Nothing, so far as I can see, except the satisfaction of desire. And then value disappears.

The same point may be put otherwise. According to the pragmatist view, if it is followed to its logical conclusion, not only truth but all values are for the sake of action. What then is action for the sake of? The answer is an absolute blank. But the opposite view is possible, and does not leave us with a blank at the end of our inquiries. This view consists in asserting that instead of value being for the sake of action, action is, on the contrary, for the sake of value. Our lives are then no longer purposeless. Knowledge is not something that has no meaning and no value except in so far as it helps us to ward off dangers, to obtain food, to keep on living our useless lives. It is a real ideal to strive for. Art is not to be sought after merely because it satisfies some idle and transient desire which is of such a nature that we should be just as well off if (like the pig) we did not have the desire at all. Art too is something to live for. Moral goodness is not the mere success of the species in the wearisome and fatuous business of keeping alive, a means to an end which is in itself purposeless, but it is an aspiration to an end which is really and genuinely higher and better than the lives we are leading. We live and strive for the absolute ends of truthf beauty, and goodness. We are not artists, saints, scientists, and philosophers merely in order to live. Much easier and probably pleasanter to live by being pork butchers. But we live, even the pork butchers among us, in the hope of becoming artists, saints, scientists, and philosophers. Such a view validates value, just as the pragmatist view destroys it.

If it is true, as I have urged elsewhere, that truth and reason lie at the heart of both beauty and moral goodness; and that truth is rational thinking, beauty rational feeling, and goodness rational action, then it is clear that in epistemology lies the whole crux of man's spiritual situation. We have to look to the theory of knowledge either to validate or to condemn not only truth-value, but moral and aesthetic values as well. And the question upon which this whole problem of man's spiritual life turns is this. Has rational knowledge, has truth, any justification apart from its use as a guide to successful action? If it has, then man's spiritual life is founded on a rock. If it has not, then all human ideals are vain.

I said at the beginning of this chapter that any future epistemology which fails to incorporate the thought that the development and structure of knowledge have been in some measure determined by biological needs, i.e. by the practical problem of living, must stand self-condemned. The pragmatic view rests upon a genuine insight, embodies a truth not again to be ignored with impunity. It is not therefore a simple question of finding arguments to dispute the pragmatic view in the interests of human values. The problem is rather to found an epistemology which reconciles the two sides of the dilemma, which gives due weight to the pragmatic element in knowledge without condemning knowledge to fatuity.

And we can see at once that the apparent contradiction is not absolute. Because knowledge has a biological value, it does not follow that it has no other value. Because its origin is in biological needs, it does not follow that it ends in them. It is an ancient and venerable insight that the essence of a thing, and its value, are not to be determined by any considerations regarding its historical origin and development. The flower is something other than the mud and dung out of which it grows. …….. Morality may have come into being through the struggle for existence and the biological advantages of co-operative effort. But it does not follow that morality is nothing but intelligent selfishness. Selfishness may at first have dictated to us a policy of fair treatment to others as well as to ourselves. And we may afterwards have come to see that the unselfishness which was thereby engendered is good in itself, apart from the selfish motive which was its origin. We may well believe that out of the stress and struggle of living, out of the evolution of life, there have emerged values which transcend their lowly origins. This may be true both of knowledge and of the other values. And a detailed examination of the structure of knowledge may perhaps support this view.

It will be objected perhaps that in the foregoing discussion we have not allowed a sufficiently wide interpretation of the pragmatist point of view. In order to do it anything like justice, one must not attach too narrow a meaning to such words as 'action', 'useful', 'working', which so constantly appear in its vocabulary. One must not think that 'action' is confined to purely practical activities. Thinking itself, even when purely theoretical, is an action. The manipulation of the retort by the chemist, the adjustment of the telescope by the astronomer, even when they are directed to the making of discoveries apparently remote from the common affairs of life, are yet actions. The 'useful' is not merely that which satisfies our lower physical or other desires, but rather that which is instrumental towards any desired end, including ideal ends such as knowledge for its own sake. A mathematical device is 'useful' if it helps to solve the problem with which the mathematician is concerned, notwithstanding that this problem may have, or appear to have, no practical bearing of any kind. Similar remarks apply to the conception of what 'works'. Einstein's theory of relativity 'works' if it solves the problem which it is intended to solve. The proposition 'Queen Anne is dead' is true and 'works' because it fits in with the evidence, and to believe it does not bring about any untoward practical or theoretical consequences.

We must certainly bear in mind these admirable professions of intention. But the position appears to be as follows,: (i) If the narrower interpretation is given to the terms which we have just been discussing, if knowledge is conceived as relative to practical activities, then pragmatism may remain self-consistent, but at the cost of destroying the concept of value. (2) If the more extended meanings suggested in the last paragraph are given to the pragmatist's stock words, then pragmatism becomes self- contradictory, and will be compelled to admit the reality of a truth which is independent of action and independent of any kind of usefulness.

……… Pragmatist writers tell us that knowledge, like anything else, can be treated as an end in itself. But this needs analysis. Suppose that the proposition P is true. On pragmatist principles this can only mean that its truth consists in the fact that it constitutes a successful means to some end other than its own truth.True propositions cannot be defined as propositions which are successful in being means to truth. Such a definition is circular and self-contradictory. It makes truth dependent on truth. In effect it makes truth absolute and self-dependent and independent of being a successful means to anything. It is therefore inconsistent with pragmatism. When it is said, therefore, that knowledge may be made an end in itself, all that the pragmatist can consistently mean by this assertion is that the knowledge of the proposition P may as a matter of psychological fact be treated by individual minds as an end in itself, but that its truth, whether it is so treated or not, still depends entirely upon its being useful as a means to some end other than itself. Truth is not true 'in itself'. It is only true as subserving some end other than truth, i.e. some end which is not theoretical but practical. So we come back to the same old position. If pragmatism defines truth in terms of purely practical ends, it destroys value. If it attempts to rise above this and to admit knowledge as a values it is self-contradictory and destroys itself.

So we see pragmatism doing what we are all apt to do when we have been so unfortunate as to take up a false position. It attempts to maintain itself by twisting. It takes up first a position based on the concepts of practical activities, biological needs, &c. It soon begins to feel this position uncomfortable because it is dimly perceived to be inconsistent with any belief in value. It therefore tries to shift its position while nevertheless using the same words. It endeavours somehow to foist into its conceptions of the 'useful', of 'what works', and of what leads to successful 'action', the quite alien conceptions of the theoretic value of truth, of knowledge as an end in itself, and so on. Hence arises that loose, ambiguous, and elusive use of such words as 'useful' and 'works' which has always been characteristic of pragmatists. The ambiguity of language is used to conceal the essential inconsistency of thought. And if we try to tie down the meaning of the terms to anything definite, the pragmatist will at once complain that he is misunderstood', that our interpretation of his terms is too narrow, &c.

But we began by admitting that the pragmatic point of view contains a genuine insight. The insight is that the structure and even the validity of knowledge must have been moulded in some way by practical needs in the course of the evolution of the species. We have to work out a sane theory of truth, a theory which includes this insight while at the same time avoiding the errors of pragmatism. It is time that the less irresponsible elements in the philosophical world began to seek out a satisfactory theory, a theory which must be characterized by judgement and balance, and not by paradox and cheap cleverness.