I may have posted this before, but I came across a copy of it, and wanted to make sure:
No adequate answer to the question of how we validate the knowledge-acquisition role of sensory input has ever been found. It may be a “mad” (Wittgenstein) question, but it is very hard – embarrassingly hard, for traditional sensory empiricism – to say why. And it needs to say why, if it is to give the kind of account of knowledge acquisition suggested by the paradigm case.
In fact, however, it is quite easy to demonstrate that no account of this kind can be given. Consider the following thought experiment:
The central characters are some newly discovered aliens. These aliens actually look surprisingly human, except for some obvious differences that I will come to. They walk on two legs, they speak languages that we can translate and they have many social, technical, and artistic accomplishments which, though superficially strange to us, are entirely recognisable to us for what they are. They are our new friends in a friendless universe.
The difference between these aliens and ourselves is that they have no discernible sense organs of any kind, and their language is entirely devoid of elements that depend on or refer to sensory perception. Instead of saying “I see the painting on the wall” they say, instead, “There is a painting on the wall”. Instead of “I hear beautiful music playing” they say “There is beautiful music playing”. If we ask them how they know about these things, they are entirely puzzled - surely they just “know” them. How can there be a process preceding knowledge?
After some interaction with us, and a great deal of epistemological discussion between their philosophers and our philosophers, we are able to establish the following facts about their knowledge-acquisition processes:
(1) They are likely to know more about things that are physically close to them than about things that are far away, although there are many exceptions to this rule.
(2) They sometimes believe that they know things, and later turn out to be wrong. Aliens that do this a lot receive community support from other Aliens.
(3) Some of them have specialist knowledge - they know things that others do not. Some who have specialist knowledge are acknowledged among their kind as having unusual talents. Others have it because they have spent a lot of time thinking about things, talking to aliens that have different knowledge from theirs, and working out new relationships between different kinds of knowledge.
Perplexed by this limited understanding our philosophers write to their philosophers with the following helpful advice. They say:
"It is not possible to know things directly - you have to find them out somehow. There must be some process by which you acquire knowledge from the world. Look at us - we have eyes to see the world with, ears to hear it with, we can taste it, smell it, and feel it. This is how we know about the world. If we were like you, and couldn't account for our knowledge, we would be extremely insecure - we would be afraid of getting things wrong.
"We advise you to discover the basis of your knowledge - there must be some hidden connection between the world and your understanding, some sensory apparatus, perhaps complex and mysterious, which you and we have not yet discovered. Until you discover it, your knowledge must always be qualified and uncertain. Put your best brains on it immediately!"
At the same time as our philosophers are licking the stamp on this communication and putting in the intergalactic post, their philosophers are sending us the following message:
"We know about your sensory apparatus - you have ears to hear with and eyes to see with. You can taste smell and feel the world around you. But you are entirely mistaken about the role these have in knowledge determination - surely you must understand that knowing comes before sensing, that your sensory apparatus would be useless to you if you didn't already know that it was reliable. Without a secure knowing, your senses would provide you only with unreliable sensations - not much better than entertainment.
“And you cannot found your knowledge of the reliability of your senses on the evidence of your senses - this would be a non-sequitur of the most elementary kind. Only on secure knowledge can you build other knowledge.
“This is obvious to the youngest child among us!"
On receipt of these pieces of advice, the philosophers on both sides fall into two different camps. One camp says:
"Those people are defective. They cannot have real knowledge of the world because they [humans: can't relate it to any reliable sensory input / aliens: think sensory input is more reliable than secure knowledge]. They may appear to be making sense, but we know their heads are filled with nonsense because [humans: their knowledge isn't supported by anything / aliens: they allow the most egregious question-begging to pass as reliable theory]."
The other camp says:
"Despite appearances, and entirely mysteriously, we know from the way they talk that these people seem to have acquired real knowledge of the world, despite the fact that [humans: they cannot base it on sensory input / aliens: they think sensory input is more reliable than definite knowledge]."
And, of course, it is the second camp that has it right.
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