Grace Chin
Paper #2
Intro to Philosophy, Phil-2-2503
Dr. Fjeld
October 7, 2010

The Unbridgeable Gap

Over centuries, the epistemological gap has been an issue of debate and controversy among deep philosophical thinkers. This very gap refers to the gap between “subject” and “object”, and it is this very gap that provoked the question of true objectivity. Can we reach true objectivity and in essence, know an object in itself? Although many philosophers found their own ways of bridging the epistemological gap and proposed many intellectual explanations, I found that for myself personally, none of the theories settled quite perfectly for me. There was always a lingering question among the theories as their own separate entities, and so as a believer of a mélange of different ideas and philosophies, I must say that I do not believe that the epistemological gap can be bridged. Plato first began to tackle the epistemological gap by presenting the idea of “Forms”. He insisted that through love here in existence, we are pointed to the perfect forms above, with each step up being a step closer to the higher Forms. He believed that all things in existence participated in the perfections above us. For example, anything beautiful here on earth partakes in the bigger, higher Form of “Beauty” in the heavens. Plato gives the cave parable in his dialectical The Republic to further explain the pathway from denseness to clear. All people on earth view only the shadows reflected off the wall of a cave, while real life is going on outside in the mouth of a cave. Between mankind and the mouth of the cave is a cascading fire that casts the shadows of the real and true Forms outside. Plato mentions a divine creator Demiurge, who shaped the world from preexisting chaos, using archetypal Forms, in which the Forms provided the model for the world. Because Plato believed that the flesh causes a person to forget what the soul knows about the forms, remembering and education leads to enlightening a soul to “just know” the Forms. This is where “knowing and objectivity becomes obscure for the average thinker. How do you know that you know? How can you prove to someone else that you know? How clearly and accurately does your soul “remember” the Forms in the flesh? Even if you reach a small sense of enlightenment through remembering there is still such a vast amount of unknown and things not yet remembered. Hence, the existence of the gap still exists. We move on to Plato’s long time pupil, Aristotle. Although, Aristotle also believed in the Forms, he assessed three minute details that he felt were contrary to Plato’s idea of the Forms: the precise relationship between the Forms and the things of the world that they represent, the relationship between the forms, and the location or place of the Forms. Aristotle bring the Forms back to earth and “grounds” them out of the heavens and into our existence. He believed in various levels of knowledge, varying from sense perception to higher knowledge explained as a product of pursuing wisdom. The importance of Aristotle’s beliefs is his notion that “becoming” is not real, and only “being” can be true. He explains “becoming” through entelechy, defined as that which has arrived to its end, but ultimately holds the idea of potentiality and actuality. A baby, for instance, is actually a baby, but is also a potential man or woman. Aristotle states that we can know the Forms through objects on earth and that although, all things are moving towards a goal, underneath all the change, lies “substance”, or the unchanging sub-strata of all existence. The idea that though matter and its forms may change, the substance endures and is permanent does not ultimately get subject to know object. Aristotle has brought the Forms down closer, but my question is then, among all the changes, how do you know the core of the core of the core of the core? How do you get to the “substance” in itself and even if you do, how much of your own experiences and ideas taint the view of the “substance”. Berkeley was a man of Idealism and believed that everything we look at and know comes to us as an “idea”, in that what we have aren’t actual things, but merely ideas in our heads. His specific view was a example of subjective Idealism, where we can only know our own ideas, and the only thing that exists are our minds and our views; this is how Berkeley explained that God held all the ideas. Another view of Idealism, known as Transcendental Idealism, was adopted by Kant. He believed that appearances are simply representations and not the things in itself. For Kant, we receive the data of the world through our senses, but without a filter, all the thoughts would be unorganized and chaos. We are born with the ability to organize thoughts and are designed and equipped to know the world in our minds, not necessarily “out there”. In Kant’s take on Idealism, Plato’s Forms are replaced by God, where all things are known by Him, the Creator, and through Kant, we are born with the bridge of knowledge. Moving on to Eastern Philosophy, Buddhists such as Hui Neng and Suzuki, simply start at a place of no gap. They believed that humans are free when we are selfless and that ultimately, we are all connected and separateness fails to exist. Through my interpretations of each philosophical view, I found myself to believe that the epistemological gap cannot be closed. My reasoning is simply based on the stance that the epistemological gap cannot be bridged partially. You cannot know some things in itself and only see some things objectively, while other things are up in the air. Charles Sanders Peirce, in his distinction between doubt and belief, explains that “To satisfy our doubts, therefore, it is necessary that a method should be found by which our beliefs may be determined by nothing human, but by some external permanency – by something upon which our thinking has no effect.” (Pierce: Packet, pg.75). He stresses the importance of the scientific method in bridging the gap and says that something can be true when no one else can refute it. He believes that if you have the ability to reason and have enough experience, you can come to a true conclusion and see things as they really are. Though I must agree that through the scientific method we have deduced “truths” about things in our world, such as that a virus is indeed different from a bacteria, but I argue that simply making accurate observations time and time again cannot be considered truly “knowing” something as the modern philosophers believed. Through science and observation we, as humans have put titles on the different layers of our skin, we have named the different organs in our body and have thoroughly studied its functions. However, can we say that the most well educated and experienced neurosurgeon in the world actually “knows” the human brain in itself? Does the brain surgeon really see the brain objectively and know it outside his or her own thoughts? My answer is no. Even if we say that the neurosurgeon can indeed know the brain in itself, because there is a grand, immeasurable amount of questions unanswered and unknown in the field of science, we cannot say that through some specific “known” cases, that the gap is fully bridged. There is nothing to base this knowledge and nothing to compare the depth of “truth” to because there is so much around the world that is far and unknown like that of Plato’s Forms. Sandra Harding also makes a very good point in her writings of Is Science Multicultural? when she says that even science is biased. Humans are effected in one way or another by their experiences and their environment. This is true in Anthropological studies as well as Psychological studies in its “nature vs. nurture” debate. We view are world, with our own tainted lenses, and even what we consider to be science, according to Harding is just like looking through Euro-centric lenses. She states, “Europeans and their civilization are fundamentally self-generated, owing little or nothing to the institutions, practices, conceptual schemes, or peoples of other part of the world.” (Harding: PQ. Pg.85) There is a reason why we make a distinction between western and eastern medicine, and Harding’s statement is valid in saying that even science is not as objective as most people think it is. Many well educated and highly experienced doctors in eastern Asian countries believe in acupuncture and herbal medicine. In some places, these doctrines are irrefutable. Would it then be considered an objective and true science? If science is even subjective, then how can it properly be a valid method of objectivity? Mutahari takes a religious spin on objectivity and says that the scientific view only gives us a block or two of a big city. He believes that science does not answer all the immediate questions of “Good and Evil” or whether there is an afterlife, but is good for practical things. Although, he has good points on the strengths of religion, such as that religions gives meaning to life and has the power to sanctify humans, but ultimately seems irrelevant to bridging the epistemological gap. My personal belief is that all things are known through God and that he is the creator of all things. I believe that the gap is there for a reason and that we are merely created beings living among created objects. Only the Creator can fully know and understand the things in themselves and only the Creator can think and know objectively. My views would most identify with Berkeley, however, I do not merely state that God is the bridge to epistemological gap; I am not saying that through knowing God, we can then, through him, know things in themselves. To me, God is the reason there even is a gap to begin with. How can created things know the true essence of other created things? We cannot know, and some things science will never discover assertively, but because our flesh craves knowledge and truth, we have built our own epistemological gap. For the Creator, the gap does not even exist. There is no quest in seeking and knowing the truth in itself because God is omniscient and created all things.
In a nutshell, after all the readings of many philosophical thinkers, debate about methods of objectivity and validity in our own personal views of objects in themselves, I say that the gap cannot be closed, simply based on faith. I know that might seem like my stance repudiates my whole argument on the objectivity of science, but that is my stance.