Fundamental Concepts in Metaphysics and Epistemology
1. Ultimate Reality
Ultimate reality is one of the most basic features of metaphysics. It represents the latest attempt to reach the issues, the response of those who do not keep asking for more support. Philosophers refer to metaphysics as the study of first principles and first causes.
2. Interests Driving Knowledge
- Theoretical Interest: To achieve the perfect logic of knowledge. Hence arises the knowledge of nature.
- Practical Interest: To discover what we should do and what we can expect if we act correctly. Hence arises the knowledge about freedom that gives rise to ethics and religion.
- Technical Interest: To dominate and exploit nature, which serves as a guide to empirical-analytical sciences.
- Practical Interest in Communication: Oriented towards communication and understanding between beings capable of communicating; this guides historical-hermeneutical sciences.
- Emancipatory Interest: To liberate human beings from domination and repression, leading to critical social science.
3. Approaches to Knowledge
- Dogmatism: A naive confidence in our ability to know, presupposing the capacity of our cognitive faculties.
- Subjectivism: Denies the possibility of achieving universally valid truths. Truth, according to subjectivism, depends on each subject.
- Criticism: An intermediate position between dogmatism and skepticism. It posits that it is possible to obtain some knowledge, but we must always perform at least one of the following tasks: either we try to clarify the limits of our faculty of knowing, or we try to compare our knowledge critically with reality. The first type is Kantian criticism, a critique of reason to discover where knowledge can reach.
- Perspectivism: Proposed by José Ortega y Gasset, it suggests that we can gain knowledge of reality by combining different perspectives, because each of us and every generation has their own vision of reality.
4. Reality and Interpretation
- Realism: Defines reality, the object of knowing, as existing independently of the subject. Objective knowledge is considered particularly relevant, more fundamental than the subject. According to this conception, humans can only capture or know reality, but not alter or modify it. For realism, we can know things in themselves, as they are.
- Hermeneutics: Aims to understand human actions and historical reality by interpreting every event in its uniqueness, trying to grasp its meaning. It argues that there are no bare facts, as intended by pure phenomenology, but only interpretations. We always understand from a historical situation, from a village, from a family tradition, starting from biases acquired prior to education, culture, socialization, etc. Hermeneutics believes that biases are constitutive of knowledge and that reason is not pure, but impure, because when we know, we cannot eliminate social, cultural, emotional, linguistic factors, etc.
5. Criteria for Truth
- Correspondence: A thought is true if it corresponds with empirical reality. Since thought is expressed in language, the criterion is to establish appropriateness or correspondence between what is said and what is. Experimental verification is a way to achieve this adjustment.
- Evidence: The fundamental criterion. Something is evident when it appears as indisputable, as intuitively true, although it is often necessary to demonstrate it through reasoning. The first principles, the principle of identity and non-contradiction (rational evidence), and the data of the senses (sensitive evidence) have been considered evident.
- Logical Consistency: A logical-mathematical criterion, which is to verify that there is no contradiction between statements that belong to the same system, and that they necessarily derive from the established axioms or principles.
- Tradition: Takes as true that which over time has been accepted as true and enjoys popular or institutional support.
6. Theories of Truth
- Consensual Theory: Advocated by Habermas, it stresses the need for dialogue as a framework for cooperatively discovering the truth of propositions. When we say something is true, we imply that we have sufficient reasons to convince others of the truth of this proposition, provided we can talk freely about the issue, without external pressure, in search of truth itself. This is how scientific communities cooperatively seek truth. Thus, scientific truths are always revisable. The basic contribution of this theory is to show that humans have no other way of accessing truth than by arguing and listening to other reasons, with the aim of achieving consensus regarding the matter at hand.
- Pragmatist Theory: William James understood appropriateness as adaptation: a statement is true if it is suitable for solving problems or meeting needs. It is a dynamic conception of truth, not as a property acquired once and for all, but as the result of a process: an idea is verified, it becomes true, if action shows its utility or effectiveness. Utility means, on the one hand, solving operational problems, in this way approximating truth to success in action. On the other hand, utility also means beneficial consequences, so that only true ideas bring reason to keep them. In this sense, it approximates truth to gratification.
7. Types of Reality
- Contingent Reality: Refers to something that exists now but could cease to exist or might never have existed. For example, my own existence is real at this time, but it was not before birth and might never have been.
- Necessary Reality: Refers to something that is absolutely real, that exists and cannot not exist or be any other way. In our culture, this mode of reality has traditionally been attributed to God. For example, because a figure is a triangle, its angles must necessarily add up to 180 degrees.
- Physical Reality: What we perceive through the senses.
- Psychic Reality: Describes the reality of our thoughts, imaginations, desires, ideas, memories, doubts, fears, etc. Here we distinguish two different aspects: firstly, the activity of thinking, imagining, speculating, etc.; secondly, the content referred to by this activity. For example, if I think of a gold mountain, the act of thinking is real, but the content of my thought is not.
8. States of Knowledge
- Opinion: A state of knowledge in which the subject believes something to be true but lacks certainty.
- Belief: Someone is convinced that what they think is true but cannot provide a justification that can be accepted by all. Security is only subjective; the belief lacks sufficient objective justification.
- Knowledge: In the strict sense, is an opinion based both subjectively and objectively.
9. States of Mind Regarding Truth
- Ignorance: A state of mind where one admits ignorance about a subject matter.
- Doubt: A state in which we cannot affirm or deny the truth of a judgment because the reasons in favor and against are quite similar.
- Subjective Certainty: A state of mind in which one affirms the truth of a judgment without admitting any possibility of error.
10. Possibility and Reality
We can speak of reality in reference to what is possible. In a way, what is possible is not yet real, does not exist: my future profession is not yet a reality. But it is something that could be because the conditions for it to be true in the future exist now. So when we say that something is possible, it is already planned or anticipated. It is totally impossible to square a circle; discovering the cause of cancer one day is a possibility. Therefore, something possible is already true in a certain way.