Knowledge and the Known: Historical Perspectives in Epistemology

255 Pages·1991·6.989 MB·English

by  Jaakko Hintikka (auth.)

KNOWLEDG E AND THE KNOWN
The New Synthese Historical Library
Texts and Studies in the History of Philosophy
VOLUME 11
Series Editor:
NORMAN KRETZMANN, Cornell University
Associate Editors:
DANIEL ELLIOT GARBER, University o/Chicago
SIMO KNuUTTILA, University 0/ Helsinki
RICHARD SORABJI, University 0/ London
Editorial Consultants:
JAN A. AERTSEN, Free University, Amsterdam
ROGER ARIEW, Virginia Polytechnic Institute
E. JENNIFER ASHWORTH, University o/Waterloo
MICHAEL AYERS, Wadham College, Oxford
GAIL FINE, Cornell University
R. J. HANKINSON, University o/Texas
JAAKKO HINTIKKA, Boston University, Finnish Academy
PAUL HOFFMAN, Massachusetts Institute o/Technology
DAVID KONSTAN, Brown University
RICHARD H. KRAUT, University 0/ Illinois, Chicago
ALAIN DE LmERA, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Sorbonne
DAVIDFATENoRTON,McGilI University
LUCA OBERTELLO, Universita degli Studi di Genova
ELEONORE STUMP, Virginia Polytechnic Institute
ALLEN WOOD, Cornell University
The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume.
JAAKKO HINTIKKA
KNOWLEDGE
AND THE KNOWN
Historical Perspectives in Epistemology
KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS
DORDRECHT / BOSTON / LONDON
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: 74-76473
Book Information:
First edition: 1974, D. Reidel Publishing Company,
Dordrecht, the Netherlands
Second edition: 1991, Kluwer Academic Publishers,
Dordrecht / London / Boston
ISBN-13: 978-94-010-2219-4 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-010-2217-0
DOl: 10.1007/978-94-010-2217-0
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Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1991
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction VII
On the Origin of the Essays XI
CHAPTER 1 / Knowledge and Its Objects in Plato
CHAPTER 2/ Plato on Knowing How, Knowing That, and
Knowing What 31
CHAPTER 3/ Time, Truth, and Knowledge in Aristotle and
Other Greek Philosophers 50
CHAPTER 4/ Practical vs. Theoretical Reason - An Ambiguous
Legacy 80
CHAPTER 5/ 'Cogito, Ergo Sum': Inference or Performance? 98
CHAPTER 6/ Kant's 'New Method of Thought' and His Theory
of Mathematics 126
CHAPTER 7/ Are Logical Truths Analytic? 135
CHAPTER 8/ Kant on the Mathematical Method 160
CHAPTER 9/ A Priori Truths and Things-In-Themselves 184
CHAPTER 10/ 'Dinge an sich' Revisited 197
CHAPTER II/Knowledge by Acquaintance - Individuation by
Acquaintance 212
Index of Names 235
Index of Subjects 238
INTRODUCTION
A word of warning concerning the aims of this volume is in order. Other
wise some readers might be unpleasantly surprised by the fact that two
of the chapters of an ostensibly historical book are largely topical rather
than historical. They are Chapters 7 and 9, respectively entitled 'Are
Logical Truths Analytic?' and 'A Priori Truths and Things-In-Them
selves'. Moreover, the history dealt with in Chapter 11 is so recent as to
have more critical than antiquarian interest. This mixture of materials
may seem all the more surprising as I shall myself criticize (in Chapter I)
too facile assimilations of earlier thinkers' concepts and problems to
later ones.
There is no inconsistency here, it seems to me. The aims of the present
volume are historical, and for that very purpose, for the purpose of
understanding and evaluating earlier thinkers it is vital to know the
conceptual landscape in which they were moving. A crude analogy may
be helpful here. No military historian can afford to neglect the topo
graphy of the battles he is studying. If he does not know in some detail
what kind of pass Thermopylae is or on what sort of ridge the battle of
Bussaco was fought, he has no business of discussing these battles, even
if this topographical information alone does not yet amount to historical
knowledge. Likewise, a historian of ideas is in the most favourable in
stance seriously handicapped if he does not master the topical aspects of
the problems with which earlier philosophers were grappling, and at worst
he is incapable of doing justice to his predecessors. To be more specific, a
discussion of Kant's claim that most mathematical truths are synthetic
cannot be successful, it seems to me, if it is not based on knowledge of the
sense or senses in which deductive truths can in fact be informative
('synthetic'). Nor can an analysis of a philosopher's attitude to the dis
tinction between knowledge of facts (knowing that) and knowledge of
objects (knowing + direct object) be definitive unless its author under
stands what the logic of this distinction really is. For such reasons,
historical inquiries often vitally need the backing of analytical and
VIII KNOWLEDGE AND THE KNOWN
critical studies even when they have a purely historical aim. I believe that
the interrelations of the several essays collected in this volume illustrate
this need. For the same reason I have called my essays historical perspec
tives in epistemology rather than studies in the history of epistemology.
My emphasis on our knowledge of conceptual topography is compati
ble with the belief that earlier philosophers' maps of this intellectual
landscape were frequently drawn in accordance with principles entirely
unlike ours. If anything, I have been impressed by certain large-scale
differences between the epistemological and conceptual assumptions of
the old Greeks and ourselves. (Since these presuppositions often remained
tacit, they should perhaps be called ways of thinking rather than as
sumptions.) According to my lights, the most interesting features of
Plato's or Aristotle's epistemology are not anticipations of Frege or
Wittgenstein, but hints of underlying differences between their conceptual
system and ours. The first three chapters of this book are accordingly
attempts to delineate some of these peculiarities of the ancient Greeks as
they appear in the epistemological thought of the Socratic school. It is
clear that the limits of applicability of whatever results are obtained in
these chapters need further investigation. It already seems clear to me,
however, that we cannot begin to appreciate the epistemology of Plato
and of Aristotle if we are not aware of the peculiarities noted here.
Chapter 4 is an all too brief sketch of an important epistemological
idea whose perennial significance is underestimated in our days, an idea
a
which connects knowledge with power la Bacon but unlike him tends
to think of the latter as a precondition of the former, and not vice versa.
One of the most important adherents of this tradition was Kant, to whom
most of Chapters 6-10 are devoted. It is there argued, or at least suggested,
that important new avenues into his thought are opened by such recent
studies in epistemological and logical analysis as concern deductive
information and perceptual cross-identification (cross-identification by
acquaintance). The ubiquity of the latter subject is illustrated in Chapter
11 where the same problem is argued to form the gist of Russell's concern
with 'knowledge by acquaintance'. An unexpected connection with the
Greek predilection of viewing knowledge as some sort of direct acquain
tance is also reached there.
It is hopeless to try to anticipate all criticisms of essays which are
intended to be just that- essays in the old sense of experiments. How-
INTRODUCTION IX
ever, I have encountered one particular type of misunderstanding too
often to let it pass. I propose to dub it the fallacy of monolithic concepts.
It amounts to the assumption that an interpretation or a rational re
construction of an earlier thinker's concept (distinction, argument,
assumption, or whatnot) is ipso facto mistaken if it does not cover
everything he said of it. This assumption is fallacious because a philos
opher's concepts and arguments are rarely monolithic in the last analysis.
On the contrary, one of the most frequent discoveries a serious student
is likely to make on a closer scrutiny of a historical figure's conceptual
map is that several different features are run together in it. A major
argument or distinction we find in conceptual history is often a conglom
erate of several superimposed arguments or distinctions. In such cases, it
simply cannot be given a uniform interpretation. Yet the contrary is
being assumed when (to take an actual rather than a synthetic example)
my partial reconstruction of Kant's famous definition of analytic and
synthetic truths is criticized by reference to simple truths of the kind
W. V. Quine would call analytical but not logical. (For a case in point,
see the review of my book Logic, Language-Games, and Information in
the TLS, 20 July, 1973.) I had explained Kant's distinction as applied
within the class of logical and mathematical truths in terms of a need of
importing new individuals into the argument for these truths. (Cf.
Chapter 8 below.) Of course this does not imply that Kant drew the
distinction according to the same principles when it came to judgments
of an entirely different sort, for instance the step from 'all bodies are
extended' to 'all bodies are heavy'. Or, rather, the imputation of such an
implication depends on the fallacious premise that Kant drew his
distinction in accordance with the same principles always and every
where. This premise is implausible a priori and is easily disproved by a
closer examination of the evidence. Likewise, I seem to detect the same
fallacy of monolithic concepts in more than one earlier criticism of my
interpretations of such ideas as Descartes' cog ito-argument (cf. Chapter 5
below), W. D. Ross' distinction between prima facie obligations and
absolute obligations (presented in the last chapter of my Models for
Modalities, D. Reidel, Dordrecht, 1969), and Kant's notion of Ding an
sich (cf. Chapter 9 below), to mention only a few. In all these cases, it
seems to me, the original argument, distinction, or concept is too many
splendoured a thing to admit of a unique interpretation. A partial
x KNOWLEDGE AND THE KNOWN
interpretation therefore ought not to be criticized only because it catches
only one facet of the original. Further examples of the same sort are
easily found. I am more upset by this kind of criticism than I perhaps
ought to be because it seems to me to involve a form of ahistoricity which
is particularly pernicious because it tries to hide under the guise of
historical accuracy. I cannot help feeling that a failure to recognize the
ambiguities of the history of philosophical ideas is an especially danger
ous form of anachronism. I hope that I shall in future encounter it less
often.
The earlier history of the different chapters of this book is indicated in
a separate note below. Some of the intellectual debts incurred in working
on them are indicated in them or are apparent from them. Others must
unfortunately be left unacknowledged. In editing these essays for
republication .. and in some cases in writing them in the first place - I have
enjoyed the help of Mr. Juha Manninen and Mr. Unto Remes. This help,
like virtually all my recent research opportunities, has been made possible
by the support of the Academy of Finland.
Finally, I hope that Marjorie Grene will forgive me for stealing the
best part of the marvellous title of her epistemological book, The Knower
and the Known The temptation was simply overwhelming.
Helsinki. November 1973
ON THE ORIGIN OF THE ESSAYS
Chapter 1 first appeared in Ajatus 33 (1971) 168-200, and was subse
quently reprinted, with small corrections, in Patterns in Plato's Thought,
edited by Julius M. E. Moravcsik (Synthese Historical Library, D. Reidel
Publishing Company, Dordrecht and Boston, 1973), pp. 1-30. It is
reproduced here with the permission of the Philosophical Society of
Finland.
Chapter 2 is a greatly expanded version of my contribution to Modality,
Morality, and Other Problems of Sense and Nonsense: Essays Dedicated
to Soren Hallden, edited by Bengt Hansson (CWK Gleerup BokfOrlag,
Lund, 1973), pp. 1--12, with the title 'Knowing How, Knowing That, and
Knowing What: Observations on Their Relation in Plato and Other
Greek Philosophers'. The earlier material is reprinted here with the per
mission of the Editorial Committee for the Festschrift to Soren Hallden.
I have covered some of the same ground in a still earlier paper, 'Tieto,
taito ja paamaar~i' ('Knowledge, Skill, and Purpose', in Finnish), Ajatus
27 (1965) 49-67. Although the present paper is a new start, a few of its
sentences are translated from that earlier Finnish version.
Chapter 3 first appeared in the American Philosophical Quarterly 4
(1967) 1-14, under the title 'Time, Truth, and Knowledge in Ancient
Greek Philosophy' .. It is reprinted here with the permission of the Editor
of the American Philosophical Quarterly. The present version incorpo
rates the additional material which first saw the light of day when this
paper reappeared (under its present title) as Chapter 4 of my book, Time
and Necessity' Studies in Aristotle's Theory of Modality (Clarendon
Press, Oxford. 1973), pp. 62-92. The Clarendon Press has authorized
the republication of this material.
Chapter 4 is an expanded version of my contribution to the 1972
Bristol Colloquium on Practical Reason. It is due to appear in the
Proceedings of that meeting, edited by Stephan Korner (Basil Blackwell,
Oxford, 1974), pp. 83--102. It is reprinted here with the permission of
Professor Korner and of Basil Blackwell, Publisher.