The Methodology of Knowledge
On the value of truth and uncertainty in Philosophy
“This sentence is false.“
With the risk of coming across as cliché, we can begin to define Philosophy, by its semantic root, as the love of wisdom. Therefore, it is not unreasonable why many decide to equate it with the pursuit of knowledge.
To this definition, I most certainly adhere as well. However, knowledge in itself is a rather equivocal term, as opposed to one that is well-defined and consolidated. Yet, across many different bodies of work, it has a strong, seemingly inseparable link to the concept of truth.
In other words, it is widely held that knowledge is useful when it constitutes the pursuit of truth and the elimination of falsehood. This is apparent throughout many methodological traditions characteristic to Science in general, but also Philosophy.
In spite of this, I see the pursuit of truth as more of a hindrance to the acquisition of knowledge, rather than a useful, fundamental metric of value. This is an opinion that I hold only with respect to Philosophy, and not other hard sciences, at least to some degree.
Thus, in this article, I aim to explain my conception of what philosophical knowledge entails, as well as what methodological grounds I consider to be coherent with my general perspective on the human condition.
Truth and Falsehood as Binary Logic
At its most fundamental level, any instance of knowledge is an instance of information. It can be conveyed in many different forms, for many different purposes.
Any vehicle of knowledge has a particular form, and no 2 vehicles are the same, even when referring to the same object. A description of an apple is different from a picture of an apple, which is different from the tactile feeling of an apple.
Nevertheless, all vehicles of information bear the purpose of describing, of explaining certain aspects of an object, or its interaction with other objects. Therefore, there exists a relationship embedded in instances of knowledge, between the vehicle of information and the object in itself. On the basis of this relationship has the idea of truth been founded.
More concretely, truth is a binary measurement of the accuracy of the relationship between the vehicle of knowledge and the object or event being described. If the accuracy is perfect, we can say that the description of the object is true. Otherwise, it is false.
Binary logic is rather straightforward in this regard. An instance of knowledge can be true or false, with a single case being the former, and a myriad of others being the latter. That is to say, truth is exclusive with falsehood, and there can only be one truth for any given system or object considered. This is what we will hence reference as absolute truth.
On the grounds of binary logic, the scientific method has been created as a way to evaluate the truth of an instance of knowledge. The verification is experimental in nature, and it posits that, should a hypothesis hold true, the results of an experiment that verifies it will be the same at all times, given that no underlying premise changes.
The methodology of truth relations has proven tremendously useful for Science, where it would be unimaginable to build the kind of civilization we have without relying on demonstrated truths in Physics, Chemistry, or Mathematics.
Still, we do not possess absolute truth in any regard as of now. Physics, for instance, is one of the most studied subjects in the world, across the entirety of history, but it still cannot reconcile quantum mechanics with general relativity.
Both theories have been proven true by means of the scientific method, yet they describe very different effects that do not seem to share common ground. On this note, what we can infer is that there is a deeper layer of absolute truth that does allow for this reconciliation. It is called Quantum Gravity, and it has not yet been satisfactorily explained.
Thus, from this example, we can infer that, while certain descriptions can be accurate, even to overwhelming extents, they still do not constitute absolute truth. The absolute can only be reached when a theory is able to describe the entire system, accounting for any and all differences across multiple scales.
This means that, while using a binary system of truth for our judgements of value, approximate truths and abject falsehoods are one and the same thing. In the real world, I find there to be many approximate truths, more akin to a gradient than a binary taxonomy, and that all these approximate truths hold value in themselves by virtue of what little they reveal about an object.
Furthermore, even falsehoods are valuable in this regard, as revealing that which is untrue about an object is a means of description as well. We may recall the Michelson-Morley experiment as a grave failure in Physics, or we can recall it as one of the most bold statements on the nature of matter and reality, albeit unintentionally.
As we move on from Physics to Philosophy, the role of truth in the process of value judgements only blurs further.
On the Value of Truth in Philosophy
As the skeptic tradition has taught us, truth is a judgement that, more often than not, can be contested. To a significant extent, the reason why this is the case is that empirical measurements used in Science can seldom be applied to Philosophy, especially in fields such as Metaphysics.
Many concepts of interest in Philosophy cannot realistically be tested due to the stark lack of experimental capacities we possess when faced with them. Thus, it has emerged that the fundamental tool of analysis for concepts reaching beyond our means is, once again, logic.
Embodying the same truth-positive approach, logic has long been used to dissect complex problems of thought, through various methodologies that extrapolate from what we know and construct into the unknown, using similar patterns. Its mathematical expression of ideas, along with the blanket application of binary truth relations, has proven tremendously useful for thought experiments or hypothetical scenarios.
However, logic too cannot escape the abyssal problem at the center of all knowledge pursuits. That problem is precisely the rebellious presence of the human condition. In the realm of binary truth relations, the human condition represents a systemic paradox.
The subject matter of the pursuit of truth is, as outlined above, the revelation of the absolute, of a theory of everything that reconciles and explains all the phenomena surrounding us. In spite of this ambitious creed, the human condition interjects by means of its own existence.
Each and every human is born with a unique position in the Universe, both physically and intellectually. We experience a certain physical reality, we build up our thinking in the shape of various intellectual currents we’ve read and studied. We are all exposed to a unique, exclusive set of information, and we process and interpret information in accordance with this position, inescapably, no matter how much we try otherwise.
Irrespective of how much one learns, trains, and tries, we are all bound by the unbreakable shackles of our own ephemeral and transitory being. Our time here is infinitely small compared to the eternal questions of meaning. Our perspectives are too narrow to grasp the horizon of absolute truth, and pretending that it is not is nothing more than mere fantasy. The combination of ephemerality and perspectivism constitutes the demarcation line between us and the absolute.
It is this positionality that burdens the pursuit of truth, both for any one of us individually, but also for us as a species. The only entity that can know the absolute must be absolute itself, and humans are anything but.
Logic, reason, science, all are built atop the shared experience that many humans have had, linked by the continuity of knowledge across history. And, while knowledge itself as a force is impersonal, its achievements could never rise above the fundamental unit that constitutes and furthers it. Until the day humans enhance their own bodies with many orders of magnitude of processing power, the finality of Philosophy will never be the acquisition of absolute truth.
But if this were to be the case, what is the point in what I’m doing? What use are articles and writings pursuant to the creation and furthering of knowledge if not for the sake of truth?
Well, I have a different methodology when it comes to the purpose of Philosophy, and I will share it in the next section.
Lucian Blaga and Knowledge for the Sake of Mystery
Before the instauration of the communist regime in Romania, there lived a philosopher with a very interesting conception on the nature of knowledge. His name was Lucian Blaga, and his contributions to Philosophy, especially Epistemology and Metaphysics, were cut short due to the communist regime’s crackdown on intellectualism.
Nevertheless, Blaga articulated a very nuanced and circumventive perspective on the acquisition of knowledge. For it to make sense, it’s important to mention the transcendental censorship that was part of his philosophical system.
In his conception, there must be a hard line of demarcation separating the unknown divine from the known physical world. Built into our condition as humans, this barrier to knowledge would come to constitute the ultimate unpassable threshold to absolute truth. We could aspire toward the divine by means of knowledge, but we could never touch upon it due to this transcendental censorship.
Therefore, this metaphysical limitation led to the formation of 2 very different kinds of knowledge, labeled Paradisal and Luciferian knowledge (rough translation disclaimer). The former is what we are all too familiar with, the pursuit of absolute truth by means of logic and the employment of reason.
To Blaga, as to myself (through different considerations), Paradisal knowledge is riddled with the problem of the absolute, the fundamental impossibility of elevating knowledge outside of the human condition. Such a pursuit is methodological, rigid, cold, and precise, yet it fails to understand the grander picture, as outlined above.
Luciferian knowledge, on the other hand, makes full use of our status as both humans and knowledge creatures. It states that, because we are unable to ever grasp absolute truth, our purpose is to generate knowledge that deepens the mysteries of the world, rather than solve them.
In Blaga’s conception, the valuable part of knowledge is the inquisition, the curiosity intrinsically linked to a world posing more questions than we could answer. Through Luciferian knowledge, it’s possible to both offer answers and generate more questions at the same time, akin to shining a spotlight on one face of a glacier, leaving us to wonder what is on the other side.
One of the metaphors I see as most representative of this idea is that of the Moon, being a celestial body that we can see, a piece of the puzzle of the sky that we have solved by default. Yet, the Moon’s bright light serves not to reveal the rest of the sky, but rather to show just how much more infinity there lies unknown outside of it.
In a concrete sense, one instance of Luciferian knowledge was the revelation of the wave-particle nature of light, a breakthrough which happened during Blaga’s life. Although this epiphany managed to answer a very important question regarding the functionality of light, it also deepened the mystery of how matter works on a fundamental level.
This position I find to be tremendously valuable in light of the truth-positive approach to Philosophy that is so common in the academic sphere. I find that truth, as described above, cannot be the finality of knowledge, but rather the perpetuation of the recursive process of knowing and not knowing.
Although I do draw a lot from Blaga in regards to these conceptions, I find it necessary for this shift in finality to also determine a shift in the way I elaborate and develop pieces of writing. Finally, I will turn to this now.
Final Remarks - Perspectivism in Writing
To me, the faults of the application of binary truth logic to knowledge are primarily regarding the process. Emulating hard science and following rigorous means of research, to me, cut back on one’s capacity to fully delve and revel into the mystery.
Instead, I think that the most important step to take in the development and furthering of a corpus of Philosophy is not only the acceptance, but the full implication of perspectivism. As outlined above, the human condition implies an inseparable link of one’s knowledge capacity to one’s position and perspective.
This transforms the relation of knowledge from object-description to object-information-perspective. In the pursuit of absolute truth, perspective ought not to matter. But in the realm of Luciferian knowledge, I find it to be the sole aspect that matters.
A unique perspective is an irrevocable truth of knowledge, given our ephemeral condition, thus it is pointless to try to systematically eliminate it. Rather, it is perspectivism itself that gives Luciferian knowledge its value. A single perspective cannot ever be enough for absolute truth, but it already is for a single, subjective fragment of knowledge.
Everyone has their own views on certain matters, similar to each shining their own flashlight on different sides of a mountain. While seekers of truth may try to find the angle from which the whole mountain is visible, this is futile, as any single position invariably excludes the opposing side.
So, my task here is to shine my own light on what I find interesting and noble, to fully accept that my position is not absolute and will never be, and to wear a euphoric smile whenever I viscerally realize the sheer immensity of the unknown that lies on the outskirts of my own conception.
This, to me, is the true purpose of Philosophy.