The textbook is co-financed by the European Union from the European Social Fund.

Transcription

1 The textbook is co-financed by the European Union from the European Social Fund.

2 EPISTEMOLOGY

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4 Andrzej Chmielecki, Ewa Chmielecka EPISTEMOLOGY English translation: Tadeusz Z. Wolański

5 This textbook was prepared for the purposes of International Doctoral Programme in Management and Economics organized within the Collegium of World Economy at Warsaw School of Economics. The textbook is co-financed by the European Union from the European Social Fund. This textbook is distributed free of charge.

6 Contents Foreword from the authors Introduction. Why does an economist need philosophy? Chapter one. General characteristics of philosophy Chapter two. The ontological foundations of epistemology Chapter three. Introduction to epistemology Chapter four. The category of information and its higher-order derivatives Chapter five. Cognition as semiosis Chapter six. What is truth? Bibliography

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8 Foreword from the authors We are making available to you the first of three booklets that have been planned to help you with the acquisition of knowledge during your classes in epistemology, methodology and axiology. The titles of the texts correspond with the titles of the lectures. The first two ( Epistemology and Methodology ) contain information constituting a general theoretical introduction to a more detailed methodological problems of science. The third text ( Axiology ) will introduce you to the issues of the general theory of values as such constituting a vital premise for an understanding of the more specific, cognitive values, their location in the hierarchy of values, and also for an understanding, so significant in economics, of the connection between descriptive and normative judgements and, furthermore, to the fundamental problems of the ethics of science. Our booklets will not have the nature of a textbook. Firstly, in philosophy this is basically impossible, because there is no significant body of universally accepted approaches and solutions herein. In this situation, it is merely possible to have either a survey perspective, reporting the views appearing in particular cases, or an authorial one. The former, given the constraints of the space at our disposal, would have to be somewhat superficial. That is why we have decided on the authorial perspective, the more so because and this is the second reason the aim of these lectures is not to increase your erudition, but to arouse and develop your sensitivity to the philosophical aspects of your vocational education and research work, for which the systematic presentation of one viewpoint is fully sufficient. The fact that the surnames of the authors are the same is no coincidence we are in fact married. Both of us are engaged in philosophy although each of us is interested in different fields. Andrzej Chmielecki is interested in the fundamental problems of ontology, epistemology and axiology, and is trying to solve them on the basis of integral ontology, a concept devised by himself. Ewa Chmielecka, apart from general epistemological reflection, concentrates on the problems of the methodology and philosophy of science and on issues connected with the academic ethos and its transformations. These interests and competences indicate the authorship of particular chapters in this text. Generally speaking, the purely theoretical part was written by Andrzej Chmielecki. The more practically oriented part was written by Ewa Chmielecka, who is also the author of the conceptual view of the whole. Both of us oversaw the cohesion and the didactic side of the whole text. Although the lectures will be given by Ewa Chmielecka, a member of the Department of Philosophy at the Warsaw School of Economics, they will draw on material written by both of the authors. The authors Warsaw, September

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10 INTRODUCTION Why does an economist need philosophy? The programme of doctoral studies, which we will be realising together, contains a considerable dose of humanistic subjects, including philosophical ones epistemology, general methodology of science, axiology, and the foundations of the ethics of science. We will try at the beginning to justify this selection by referring to three general aims of education the transmission of knowledge, the development of abilities and the forming of attitudes made concrete by reference to the educating of economists and future scientific workers. Let us start from an unquestionable fact: it is the possession by people of intellect and free will that constitutes the essence of human life. Thanks to the first of these attributes, we are able to acquire knowledge about various fragments of reality and use it to realise our aims. Thanks to the second, we can set these aims ourselves (because you do not get to know your aims but you establish them). For this, however, to be possible, we need something else, because the question arises: on what does it depend that we set ourselves these and no other aims? If we ignore in this respect the so-called natural needs (for we are talking here about that which is specifically human), then the most general answer to this question would be the following: it is values we acknowledge. It is they which set us in motion and give that motion direction. More precisely: not the values themselves, but the beliefs which concern them and the evaluations and attitudes based upon them. Now, there arises a question: is it possible and if so, how is it possible to have knowledge of values at all, since values are not something we can get to know with the help of everyday experience, and beliefs are not yet knowledge? We will try to give answers to these questions next year during the axiology course. Here we would only like to state that if such knowledge is possible, then it definitely belongs to the competence of the humanities; in accordance with the well-known neo-kantian distinction of Natur- and Geisteswissenschaften, it 9

11 Why does an economist need philosophy? is in fact its defining feature, because the latter were defined by neo-kantians as research into objects having reference to values. The main reason for the presence of humanistic discourse in the programme of your studies is precisely the inseparable nexus between actions and values, since economic sciences are precisely sciences about certain kinds of human actions. (By the way, it is just from economics that the very term value having there a much narrower meaning, of course made its way into axiology, i.e. the theory of values as such). Let us indicate as examples several areas connected with the presence of values in our lives. Firstly, it is a question of the sense of our existence, which can be given to it only by something which we treat as a value. Secondly, it is a question of responsibility, being in a way the other side of the coin connected with the aforementioned attributes of humanity. Indeed, thanks to the intellect which allows us to predict the consequences of our actions (or their lack) and to the possession of free will which allows us to say both yes or no we are responsible for our decisions and our actions, because their consequences usually affect other people as well, and thus have a social dimension, and often an ethical one as well. Thirdly, when we talk about values there inevitably appears the question of their hierarchy. The basic distinction in this respect is the differentiation of autotelic (or intrinsic) values, shining, as it were, with their own light, and instrumental values, shining with light reflected from the former, which means that it is a mistake both to treat the former (e.g. honesty) instrumentally and to make the latter (e.g. gain) autotelic. In order to avoid such mistakes, we should know which values are and which are not autotelic. Fourthly, since values are not objects, which we can get to know empirically in such way we can only get to know what people value or their beliefs concerning values we need some kind of theory of value that will indicate whether and what kind of cognition can lead us to get to know them. This in turn requires a knowledge of the fundamental notions and proposals of epistemology, because to be able to determine whether knowledge of values is possible (whether we can get to know them), we first have to understand what knowledge in general is and what cognition consists in. (There is some feedback here, though, because obviously in each cognitive enterprise we are directed by the desire to attain some cognitive values be it the depth of explanations, the predictive power of a theory, or the possibility of its practical application). Try to imagine a researcher who does not understand what nature the objects of cognition have, who cannot evaluate whether and why the obtained results are cognitively valuable, who does not understand what value cognition itself has, who does not feel the need to ask himself these kinds of questions at all. Then there arises the question about the motivations that are driving him to undertake cognitive activity. They will most probably have a utilitarian and self-interested nature: the obtaining of more scientific degrees, the pursuit of a career or at least the maintenance of a research position, fame, financial 10

12 Why does an economist need philosophy? benefits, or other practical effects. Motivations of this kind may not diminish the effectiveness of his work, but he will be defenceless in the face of the often appearing attempts at the instrumental treatment of cognition in the name of some extra-cognitive considerations economic, ideological, political, worldview, religious, etc. and, thus, of the destruction of the academic ethos, whose foundations are precisely self-knowledge and the affirmation of the autotelic nature of cognitive values. If, therefore, we are to be more than ants in an anthill or bees in a hive which automatically perform various actions with no understanding of why they should act in this way and not in another, and what they do this for we have to go beyond narrow pragmatism. After these examples, let us return to the starting-point of our argumentation, i.e. to the statement that in human actions we meet an organic mixture of knowledge, abilities for practical action based on that knowledge, and the evaluating stance towards various aspects of reality appearing in the form of steady attitudes adopted by us as a result of internalisation of some system of values. That is, the set of the same elements, which constitute the aims of each institutionalised education once accurately called public enlightenment by our forefathers. Depending on the level of education, the content of these three ingredients differs. Teaching during doctoral studies at an institution of higher education mainly consists in the transmission of theoretical knowledge, training of research skills and forming attitudes of self-dependence and responsibility of graduates regarding future social roles of graduates, mainly at management level. We would like, however, to pay attention to another feature characteristic of education at institutions of higher (and the highest) education, connected with the fact that the participants in this process are adults not in the formal sense of birth certificates, but in the material sense of intellectual and emotional maturity. The maturity equals to being a person a self-dependent subject of actions who bases his behaviours and decisions on understanding, i.e. grasping a sense. (More will be said on this subject in one of the forthcoming lectures). This brings with it numerous consequences, of which the most important is the fact that education in an institution of higher education has or at least should have the character of an argumentative dialogue, i.e. a discourse, in which the supreme authority is not the institutional position of the teacher but the authority of knowledge and abilities, including the ability for substantive argumentation and an assessment of its validity both on the part of the teacher and on the part of the taught. It is obvious that in this respect one has to possess appropriate epistemological and methodological competence, because theoretical knowing does not speak directly about the experienced reality, but constructs idealised models of it, and, therefore, requires more subtle tools of assessment than empirical verification. What is of paramount significance for a fruitful discourse is an understanding of the message, i.e. an adequate interpretation of both the intention motivating it and 11

13 Why does an economist need philosophy? its objective content. Understanding not only brings the light of knowledge (the afore-mentioned enlightenment), it also forms us as persons, setting the foundation for the growing of reason, which consists not in the acquisition of technical skills of thinking or reasoning because it is not the skills, which constitute the distinguishing feature of the aforementioned maturity but in the will to make decisions on the basis of understanding, including understanding of values. Knowledge of values has a specific nature, to a certain extent similar to the socalled performatives utterances, which do not so much describe states of affair independent of them, as produce them a promise does not appear, for example, until we state, in an appropriate context, in speech or in writing, the formula I promise; and when a mathematician uses the formula let there be a set, then, by the very sense of this formula, the set is given. It is similar with knowledge of values if I know what some value (e.g. justice or wisdom) consists in, then I will value it and will strive for its realisation (the first to notice this, making it the foundation of his ethics of virtue, was Socrates). It is, therefore, knowledge that engages us; we appear in it not as disinterested observers but as committed participants. Thus, knowledge of values changes us as persons, forming within us certain permanent dispositions towards behaviours realising these values. Such dispositions are nothing other than the aforementioned attitudes. The forming of attitudes cannot be a subject of professional education, because science according to the well-known distinction talks about how it is and not how it ought to be. That is why the problem of attitudes can only be taken into consideration by an appropriately broadened curriculum, including inquiries concerning values both cognitive ones and others with which the former remain in various conjunctions. We can, after all, make use of knowledge in a good or bad way, in a wise way or not. Wishing to aim for benefit rather than for damage, we have not only to predict accurately and cognitively (on the basis of knowledge) but also to evaluate our aims well. Therefore, to pure and axiologically neutral knowledge we have to add evaluating reflection indicating its appropriate applications. In contrast to knowledge and abilities, you cannot pass on attitudes in the form of a lecture (which is possible in the case of the transmission of knowledge); neither like abilities can you teach them in the form of classes. They demand the internal readiness of the participants in the educational process to form themselves in accordance with values, to use the Rev. Professor Tischner s expression. The problem of upbringing is not how to steer a person well, to persuade him to go after the best solutions, he said in his Gorce sermons. The problem is to arouse within him the spirit of freedom. How to make him want to freely, wisely, and responsibly decide about himself. In pedagogical sciences one will not find a single answer to the question about the way of forming attitudes. Three possibilities in this respect are suggested: imitation (setting a good example), the so-called coerced (inspired) commitment and a humanistic education. All three aid the internalisation of value systems 12

14 Why does an economist need philosophy? and, therefore, forming of attitudes of the students, and can to this end be exploited during the course of education. Let us, however, leave imitation and inspired commitment apart and remain with humanistic education, since this is what our current deliberations concern. Humanistic education is not indoctrination or a grafting of some particular system of attitudes and values via some type of persuasive operations (rhetoric, eristic, brainwashing etc.); its aim is to bring about an understanding of what a human being is and of what constitutes humanity. Therefore, humanistic education should not be treated as a counterweight to instrumentally oriented vocational education, but as its humanistic grounding. Considered in this way, humanistic education does not situate itself alongside vocational education as its supplement or complement, fulfilling thus the role of the proverbial square peg in a round hole, but it lies at its heart, constituting its genuine sense, i.e. its axiological foundation. The need to form attitudes of the people engaged with the development and application of economic sciences has appeared recently in a particularly clear way. The bankruptcies of great companies caused by the low-level responsibility of the people managing them (despite their instrumental competence), the globalisation bringing with itself the need to take responsibility for supra-national consequences of the spreading economies and life-styles of Western societies, the financial crisis of recent years, the awareness of the social obligations of companies and other challenges of our times demand from contemporary economists qualifications, which go far beyond purely professional abilities. They should not only understand the economic and social processes taking place in the world (knowledge) and have an effective armoury of means to affect them (knowledge and abilities), but also feel responsible for the direction in which they are heading (attitudes). The need to form attitudes of future researchers and teachers, members of the academic community, is also urgent and important in times when institutions of higher education around the world are redefining their missions, and when the traditional academic ethos is undergoing a dramatic transformation. The academic ethos whose supreme value is truth seeking it in research work, endurance and courage in expressing it while teaching, transferring it into the sphere of social practice for centuries was the regulator of the behaviours of the academic community. Its erosion, which is taking place before our very eyes, is one of the most important threats to the identity of the academic milieu. The destruction of the academic ethos has many causes. In the first place, there are such factors as the mass character and commercialisation of education, which have a direct influence on both the activities of academic institutions and the attitudes of their staffs and students. These institutions, rather than being ivory towers with researchers disinterestedly seeking the truth, are now becoming institutions with tasks designated also by their social surroundings, subordinated to market principles. These processes cannot be slowed down because behind 13

15 Why does an economist need philosophy? them are important needs connected with the development of communities and economies of knowledge; but this does not have to mean giving in to these trends without reflection and completely losing the identity of academic communities. In order to redefine the academic mission sensibly, we have to understand the identity of research work, the kind of pressure exerted by the social surroundings; we need to reflect on the purely cognitive as well as other aims of science; finally, we have to arouse in the academic community a rational motivation for the setting up of boundaries of internal intervention in connection with responsibility for the well-being of the institution s surroundings. And here we have attitudes in their purest version. (We will deal with these issues in the lectures devoted to axiology and ethics in science). Some attitudes are always formed in the process of education, this element cannot be avoided; you can only do this more or less consciously, in a better or worse way. If the school deliberately does not conduct activities aimed at forming attitudes, e.g. openly conducting a humanistic discourse, then it will in any case pass on to its students an indicator forming their attitudes, namely that this sphere of reflection is not important and that success in professional, social and personal life and the solution of all problems can be obtained solely with the use of vocational knowledge and professional abilities. With the rejection of the humanities there comes hidden, concealed indoctrination, giving the conviction that instrumental values exhaust the collection of all significant motivations. Open education in the sphere of the humanities is always threatened by indoctrination, which can, however, be defeated; its absence is also indoctrination, just concealed. 14 * * * Ortega y Gasset a year before the Second World War wrote in The Revolt of the Masses that we live in an epoch with enormous possibilities of realisation but we do not really know what we should realise; in an epoch, which has mastered things, but has not mastered itself. Today we could express this in the following way: we are living in an epoch of information and knowledge, but not of wisdom. Another great humanist Immanuel Kant stated that during the Enlightenment humanity achieved maturity, having in mind the supremacy of reason that was characteristic of the epoch the will to decide based on knowledge giving understanding, including knowledge of the universally valid values and their hierarchy, i.e. precisely wisdom. Today one can get the impression that societies are regressing to childishness, amusing themselves to death (Neil Postman), i.e. pushing to the forefront hedonistic and utilitarian values those lowest in the hierarchy. Let us not allow, in the name of that which is best in us, for this to become a permanent and universal norm. Sapere aude!

16 CHAPTER ONE General characteristics of philosophy Philosophy does not belong to the corpus of economic sciences, nor is it related to them in any significant way. Therefore, the question may be asked why is it a part of your syllabus? Here is our short answer. Firstly, because of the logical and methodological issues (traditionally belonging to philosophy), which concern all the knowledgeforming procedures, it is a necessary component of any researcher s skills. Secondly, no science can within the framework of its competence examine itself its foundations, its characteristics, the cognitive value of its methods etc. and such critical self-knowledge is an essential part of a scientific attitude. Thirdly, many philosophical issues have their concrete equivalents in all scientific domains e.g. the distinction between appearance and reality, the cognitive status of valuations and the modal status of law-like statements. It is, therefore, worth knowing their general scope and suggested ways of resolving them. Fourthly, philosophy provides us with a kind of a general map of reality, constructed in a unified system of coordinates, which enables us to explore it and to communicate with the representatives of different disciplines. This is particularly important concerning research problems situated on the border of the areas studied by various sciences e.g. psychology and neurophysiology (the issue of perception, emotions, free will) or economics and psychology (e.g. the problem of rationality) which cannot be explored by any of the sciences alone, because it would have to enter the field reserved for another science. In most cases they can neither do this in an interdisciplinary way, owing to the incommensurability of their conceptual systems. Now, philosophy or at least a certain way of doing it, as discussed further below can achieve this, as it is, so to speak, an inquiry without boundaries. Last but not least especially in the context of economic science by considering the axiological issue of the relation between is and ought to, 15

17 General characteristics of philosophy philosophy provides the foundations for rational assessment and the making of choices. Our presentation of philosophical themes will consist in dealing with problems rather than presenting ready-made products of philosophical thinking. It will, therefore, be a view from the kitchen rather than the dining-room, where the prepared meals are served, since our aim is to show how to think philosophically and not merely to adopt the results of somebody else s thinking. In case of philosophy there is yet another important reason for knowing how to proceed to arrive at sound conclusions: philosophical theses, because of their level of generality and abstraction, cannot be empirically verified and, therefore, justified in this way. Therefore, one of the means to assess validity of such theses is to scrutinize the way leading to them to identify the assumptions being made, to assess if concepts employed were adequate relative to their subject-matter, to track evidence in favour of them, etc. We do not think there is a magic wand, i.e. a method or a way of cognition that would determine the philosophical nature of the inquiry (some philosophers, though, like Bergson or Husserl, thought the opposite). No objective sphere defines it, because the subject of philosophical reflection can be anything e.g. how is it possible that we can move a toe in our shoe, because this can be seen as a problem of free will. In philosophy it is not the subject-matter of consideration that is significant, but the way of approaching it the kind of interest, the questions asked of it, the general aim that we want to achieve. Although there is no single way of doing philosophy for what is common to Plato and Carnap, Aristotle and Camus, Spinoza and the postmodernists, Hegel and Ayer, Hartmann and Habermas? there was always present in it the intention to embrace everything with thought (vide: the first names in the pairs above). Philosophy understood in this way aims at a complete and ultimate (i.e. based on the first principles) understanding of reality. The problem of the fi rst philosophy In view of the systemic nature of philosophy thus understood on the one hand, and its traditional division into branches and disciplines such as the theory of being (ontology), the theory of cognition (epistemology), the theory of value (axiology) on the other, there appears the question about their mutual relations, i.e. whether they can be pursued independently from each other, or if one of them is (and if so which one?) the foundation for the others; in other words which one is the first philosophy. 1 1 By analogy: all natural sciences assume physics as the basic science of the physical world, and all mathematics the set theory. 16

18 The problem of the fi rst philosophy The concept of the first philosophy was introduced by Aristotle, who defined it in a twofold way, as: 1. the study of being as such and its attributes and 2. the study of the first causes. 2 According to the former, philosophy should provide us with the most general notions which can be applied to all entities. Among notions of this kind, the distinction into categorical (a common distinguishing feature of a whole class, i.e. of a distributive set of some elements) and extracategorical terms appears. 3 Such a discipline is not yet a theory of reality but rather a very general description of it, or its abstract articulation. On the other hand, its primacy (to any inquiry of more narrowed subject) is only logical, because what is general is logically prior to the particular. The first philosophy so understood is, therefore, analytical in character, which means that the truth of its statements is warranted by the sense of concepts it employs. The second version, on the contrary, is explanatory, and therefore theoretical, and not descriptive in character. It is no longer the study of being as such, but of reality and its becoming a distinction very important for the Greeks. Theory is supposed to give an explanation for what is being observed (facts or phenomena). Explanation is regressive in nature; it is made by pointing out the cause of what one wants to explain. The cause of something has its own cause, therefore when studying causes we go back to the earlier and earlier causes. The string of causes, however, cannot go on endlessly, what indicates that there are first causes. The Aristotle s second project of the first philosophy was just the study of the first causes, which he also called principles. The study of the first principles (of everything) furnishes us with a theory of reality, and therefore its priority to any other inquiries is objective in character because it concerns 1. what was the earliest in the order of becoming (the problem of arche the Beginning), 2. what is the foundation (the primary substrate hypokeimenon) of everything that exists. Thus, the aim of the first philosophy is to equip one with the most fundamental and general theory of everything i.e., of reality which is to be the basis for more detailed investigations and the ultimate justification of more specific beliefs. Not all great philosophers gave their explicit opinion as to what kind of inquiry should serve as the first philosophy, although they inevitably were treating something as such while constructing their systems. To identify what a certain thinker treats as the first philosophy is to reconstruct logical structure of his theory rather than to point out the problems he investigates as a starting point of his theoretical reflection. In other words, one has to distinguish between the 2 He distinguished four causes: material, efficient, formal and final one. Today s definition of a cause is much narrower corresponding to the efficient cause. What Aristotle termed the first philosophy, later was named metaphysics, which in the modern era was dubbed by introducing the term ontology (from Greek to on in plural: onta meaning a being). 3 In the Middle Ages, the former were named universals (genera, kinds, properties, relations) and the latter transcendentals (being, essence, existence, matter, form, i.e. terms that can refer to anything) concepts that go beyond any category, hence the name, from the Latin transcendere. 17

19 General characteristics of philosophy order of the research and the order of the exposition, the reasons and ways by which the thinker achieves his theses (the so-called context of discovery), and the structure of the system of his thought (the context of justification). The first philosophy is to be understood in terms of the context of justification and not discovery, i.e. as a base of the logical structure of the system (being its foundation), not as a first stage in the process of creating the system. The main problem with the first philosophy is as follows: its theses, as they are very general and assume the first principles, cannot be justified, on the contrary it is they that are to serve as the ultimate justification for everything else. 4 And if so, then it is not possible to prove they are true. Therefore, they are right candidates to a sceptical accusation of dogmatism, i.e. that they are not more certain than their opposites. 5 Facing the unjustifiableness of the first principles, attempts were made to find a twofold antidote. Firstly, to oppose the dogmatic attitude with a critical one, which cares not only for the justification of the thesis, but also for the way leading to it. Secondly, in the form of a requirement that the first principles should be obvious and, therefore, need no justification. The author of such an antidote was Descartes, who tried to beat scepticism at its own game, namely by rejecting everything one can doubt. Now, it is impossible to doubt that you doubt, because it still means you doubt. Doubt is a form of thinking. And if I think, therefore I am (that is the obvious). And what am I? A thinking being (res cogitans), because this is the only attribute, which one cannot question. In this way, what is first became the subject and the states reported directly by his consciousness. On this certain ground Descartes began to build his philosophy in a deductive way, which is characterised by the fact that if the premises are true, so are its conclusions. Many objections can be put against the realisation of that deductive program by Descartes himself, nevertheless from his time on a requirement of a criticism in philosophical inquiry has been widely acknowledged, meaning that one should care one s procedures to be legitimate. The issue of legitimacy is the problem of the adequacy or the appropriateness of the means used to the 4 Justification stands for all the substantial arguments in favour of some position, so that it does not remain groundless. Justification does not enhance the knowledge of the world (in contrast to, for example, explanation), does not give any new information, its function is to change the cognitive value of the beliefs towards greater certainty. If the condition is not fulfilled, we deal with views, beliefs, guesses not knowledge. This will be discussed on further lectures. 5 This is analogical to the status of axioms in mathematics. Let us consider this, therefore, on the basis of an example from mathematics. For a long time the fifth postulate of Euclidean geometry (the parallel postulate) was questioned by trying to draw it out from other postulates, i.e. justify it. This proved impossible it is independent from others. Then, in the 19 th century geometries were constructed which neglected this postulate, replacing it with two versions of its negation (through a point not placed on a straight line 1. no parallel line is drawn 2. there are many parallel lines drawn). It turned out that one of the non-euclidean geometries describes the structure of the space in mega-scale better than the Euclidean version. It therefore shows that there was something right in the sceptics argumentation. 18

20 The problem of the fi rst philosophy intended purpose and object of cognition. It is not the theses of a given cognitive discipline which constitute such means, but the concepts, views, methods, ways of argumentation; generally speaking the tools for acquiring knowledge. Due to this it is often claimed that epistemology and not ontology should serve as the first philosophy, for as one learns the instruments used in gaining the knowledge, then one can avoid the misuse of them. This gave rise to the programme of grounding knowledge through criticism of the cognitive powers (Kant, Husserl, inter alia). We consider this to be a misunderstanding epistemology in no way can be such primary discipline. It cannot start without some assumptions concerning what the world is like. How to tell what is subjective from what is out there? appearance from reality? knowledge from mere belief? How to decide which concepts are cognitively adequate and which are not? To be able to answer such questions one should already know a lot about reality and about himself. Cognition is the way of being of certain beings (namely those endowed with minds), after all, and thus is a legitimate area of ontological inquiry. And epistemology can only be an application of some ontology to a subset of the ontological domain. To conclude: only some kind of ontology and not epistemology or anything else can stand as the first philosophy. And what with the aforementioned sceptical accusation of dogmatism, addressed to any ontology? Well, it can be neutralised to some extent. The argumentation is as follows. Since ontology is the theory of everything, it has to include in its notions and statements the basic problems of epistemology. And as it is itself a form of episteme, it falls within the scope of its own research. It therefore should comply with its own theses. 6 In other words, ontology should be self-reflexive. This is the most important condition of its legitimacy. To be an integral theory of reality as a whole, ontology should also be a theory of becoming. In this respect it will be legitimate if, on the basis of adopted first principles, it can generate a coherent model of the Whole, proceeding stepwise bottom up, i.e. conceptualizing and solving its problems without referring to categories and mechanisms specific to later stages of becoming. 7 In the next chapter we will try to outline such ontology. 6 This would not be possible if ontology led to a naturalist or pragmatic concept of cognition, which reject the classical concept of truth, or if it led to sceptical conclusions. 7 For example, mind cannot be defined as an organ whose states have semantics, because the phenomena of the meaning and reference may appear only on the grounds of an already existing mind. Similar situation is concerning the thesis that the DNA structure encodes information of the organism s phenotype, because then the information is understood as a kind of knowledge, which is far from the stage of molecular mechanisms. 19

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22 CHAPTER TWO The ontological foundations of epistemology Introductory considerations Only a philosophy commensurate with scientific outlook can provide grounds for the particular sciences, which means, among other things, accepting the thesis of the natural origin of the human mind and its inseparable connection with the body. That is why it is impossible to consider properly the epistemological issues without previously having taken a position concerning the so-called mindbody problem a set of questions about the character of the relation between the mind and the biological organism, in particular the brain. 8 Here is a brief argument why this is so. Firstly, since we gather the majority if not all of the cognitive information about the outside world through the senses, which are bodily organs, therefore it is crucial to explain how the outside world s physical influence on the sensory receptors transposes into what we find in our minds. Secondly, it should be explained how, in spite of the mind being undoubtedly dependent on the brain, some autonomy of the former which expresses itself in categories such as the objectivity of knowledge, the truth of statements, the validity of arguments etc is possible. Thirdly, since people act on the basis of their knowledge, the question arises as to how the mind can reflexively influence the behaviour of the body on which it itself depends. 8 The basic difference in this matter is between the monistic stance (only one element is the substance, i.e. is capable of a separate existence) and the dualistic stance (both the body and the mind are substances). Contemporary professional philosophers mostly hold a physicalist variety of the monistic stance, for which the main difficulty is to explain the purported autonomy of the mental sphere as irreducible to what is physical. The dualistic approach had its most outstanding representative in Descartes, who divided beings into two realms: res extensa and res cogitans. He, however, was unable to solve the problem of the mutual influence on each other of the two substances. 21

23 The ontological foundations of epistemology The mind-body problem refers to the problem of the relation between the entities of a different nature therefore it cannot be solved by means of any particular science. If it can be solved at all, it is only by measures characteristic of ontology. Thus, epistemology, at least in this respect, requires the support from ontology; without such support, it becomes groundless ideology. We term own position in this matter as integral ontology, because 1. it is characterised by holistic thinking, i.e. thinking in terms of the parts and the whole; 2. it is not a theory of being as such, but the most general theory of reality as a whole, within the framework of which each being is recognised as an element of greater whole, on which it depends (and vice versa); 3. it is universal enough to enable ontological conceptualisation not only of the traditional theory of what there is, but also epistemological and axiological issues, treating cognition and evaluation as the mode of being of certain beings, namely persons. As stated, by ontology we understand the most general theory of reality as a Whole (with a capital W because the notion of a whole and its twin notion of a part are relative). A whole is not an extensive set (a sum) of some elements, but a structure, i.e. a system of elements of different kinds, connected by various kinds of relations. This means that we should think about reality both in terms of distributive sets (because of kinds ) as well as of collective ones (because of whole ). Let us take a closer look at the above distinction, as it will matter greatly in our further considerations. The notion of a set is a primitive concept and therefore it is indefinable. Georg Cantor, the author of the set theory, i.e. the theory of distributive (abstract) sets, understood a set as a multiplicity of elements conceived as unity, the set being determined either when all its elements are overtly listed (which is possible only with finite sets) or when the rule is given (usually in the form of a predicate, i.e. an expression that assigns attributes to some objects), which allows us to decide whether a certain object is an element of a given set or not. In other words, a distributive set is a collection of referents (= extension) of some predicate; nothing more is needed for them to constitute a set. A set of all pines can serve as an example no matter where and when they happen to grow, and no matter if they form a wood, being a pine suffice. If they did form a wood, this would be set in another, collective sense. The theory of such sets that is conceived as wholes consisting of parts the so-called mereology was first proposed by Stanisław Leśniewski. The basic difference between these two kinds of sets is that in the case of collective sets the membership relation is transitive (if A is a part of B, and B is a part of C, then A is a part of C, too) and in the case of distributive sets it is not. 9 9 Other differences lie in the fact that, for mereology, the notion of an empty set does not make sense; also it does not distinguish between an element and a set containing only this element. 22

24 Introductory considerations Let us introduce some appropriate terminology. A kind is a distributive set of some individuals (i.e. entities that in a given context are not treated as sets), possessing some common property; it should be added that all the individuals having those properties are members of the set. In this sense, a kind is a set of all people, a set of all women, a set of all the living organisms, a set of all the carbon atoms etc. As you see, some sets may be subsets of other sets, as is the case with women and living organisms. There are, therefore, sets of different degrees of generality, differing in extension. 10 In ontology the lowest kind is called a species, and the highest a category (of being). 11 In other words, the categories of being are the widest distributive sets, all of whose elements have some characteristic feature in common. One of the most important issues in ontology is to answer the question of what repertoire of such categories to accept and what are their mutual relations. The first philosophy traditionally understood as the theory of being as such, implicitly uses the set-theoretical approach. On the contrary, the first philosophy understood as a theory of reality and its becoming is founded upon the collective notion of a set, i.e. on the notion of a whole or more specifically structured whole. A holistic understanding can be achieved only through holistic thinking. Holistic thinking is not thinking about everything, because this cannot be done, but it is thinking in (relative) categories of a part and a whole, thus being able to take into account the increasingly broader contexts or domains, and in this sense to cross the boundaries, as mentioned in the introduction. To make this possible, you have to make use of notions expressing relations that are transitive in character, because only then can you, without changing the sense of the relation, extend its use to ever broader fragments of reality, of which the previously considered whole becomes a part. In other words, only the members of the relation change, while its very identity is preserved. 12 Let us now have a closer look at sets in the collective sense. As an example consider the sequence of following objects: the Earth the Solar System the Milky Way the Universe, in which every previous element is included in the following one, being a part of it, with respect to which the latter constitutes a (relative) whole. This is the conceptualisation of reality characteristic of astronomy or cosmology as the sciences of the whole physical universe the Universum. But our Earth can also be treated as a universum; that is the (relatively) broadest 10 Such sets e.g. the human race are not real, they are abstract. A human being as such (= the essence of a human), i.e. universals, are not real, either. This does not mean that abstracts do not exist, because the real mode of existence is only one of the several possibilities, which will be mentioned later on. 11 This is an extensional sense of categories. An intensional way of understanding them is to see them as the most general forms of being. 12 Notice that this is not the case with the distributive sets, which are extensions of some predicates. Given that such set consist of objects having some property, when we want to treat the same set as element of some broader set (being thus the set of sets), the broader one must be generated by some other predicate, therefore it requires a different notion. 23

25 The ontological foundations of epistemology whole of the following sequence: place region country > continent Earth. Here we come up with a conceptualisation characteristic of geography. Or consider the case of a man. On the one hand we have a sequence: a man (i.e. a human being) family clan (a tribe) nation mankind, characteristic of sociology. On the other hand we have: elements molecules organic compounds tissues organs organism a man, appropriate for biology. The question arises as to what conceptualisation in terms of collective sets is appropriate for ontology. Now, the mereological analogue of the differentiation of reality into specific categories of being is the division of the reality into domains of the same nature, 13 which you can do by, for example, dividing it into the inanimate objects (physical domain), the domain of living organisms, the spiritual domain (specifically human activities and their creations) and the supernatural domain (if it is claimed to exist). 14 In other words, the domains of beings of the same nature are from an ontological point of view the most comprehensive subsets ( parts ) of reality conceived as a collective set of its elements. In this context, we can speak about the structure of reality, in particular its nomological structure, understanding by this a system of relations and dependencies between domains of a different nature. The above questions concerned what are the various components of reality their properties, their mutual relations, the regularities they undergo etc. What is close to these kinds of issues in ontology is the question of how they are, i.e. the topic of the modes of being (is, can be, must be, ought to be etc.). This aspect cannot be reduced to the former, though it is organically connected with them. Generally, then, the overall space problem of ontology is, so to speak, threedimensional. These three dimensions or aspects, which only together allow us to fully characterise something ontologically, are: 1. essence, 2. nature, 3. mode of being (of something). The dimensions can be described as categorial (distributive sets), structural-dynamic (collective sets) and modal. 15 The concept of a being As a general theory of reality, ontology needs notions that can be used with respect to everything. These are the aforementioned transcendentals, i.e. supracategorial terms, whose extension is everything. One of them is a being 13 The nature (of things) consists of the genesis (the conditions and the mechanism of becoming) and the way it functions (the type of regularity it undergoes). 14 As we will see further on, the notion of nature can also be expressed by the notion of category, but this time category in the mathematical not the ontological sense. 15 The three dimensions appear for the first time in Aristotle s Metaphysics, where we can see the three-fold account of the form as the determining factor: eidos (= the essence, distributive sets), morphe (= structure, collective sets), and energeia (actualisation of the potential, the problem of modality). 24

26 The concept of a being the philosophical equivalent of the common language word something. In colloquial speech we do not pay attention to a definition, precision, its being unequivocal etc.; an intuitive approach or context awareness is enough to use a given word. However, if a given term is becoming a part of some scientific jargon, it should be defined more precisely. It requires explication (clarification, specification) of the implicitly assumed meaning. 16 Let us attempt such an explication. The noun being derives from the verb to be. From the grammatical point of view this verb can be transitive, i.e. it requires an object, or intransitive. As a transitive verb, it means or rather implies to be something determinate (e.g. I am a teacher ); one may call it its attributive sense. As an intransitive verb, it concerns the existence (e.g. I think therefore I am ), so this is its existential sense. Now we define a being as entity that includes both the senses, i.e. that is both something determinate and somehow (in a way) exists. 17 Let us try to analyse further the first of the two aspects of being, i.e. being something determinate. 1. When trying to determine (or qualify) something, we may mean (a) its belonging to some kind of beings, i.e. its generic identity (e.g. being a stone, a lemon, a mind, a geometrical shape/figure), and (b) its having some property/ attribute (respectively: heavy, sour, intelligent, flat). In the first case, the qualification concerns the entire being; in the second one, it is one of its many properties. Among the properties of any being, we can distinguish between those which are essential for it, that is which are necessary for it to be what it is (e.g. having flesh in the case of fruit) they are called attributes; and which are inessential called accidents (e.g. round shape of the fruit). Attributes determine the essence and nature of a given being, i.e. decide about the being s belonging to some kind (a set in a distributive sense) or to some domain of beings of similar origin and function (a set in a collective sense). 2. Being something determinate consists not only on having a generic identity, but also on having a definite formal identity. In the second sense, being something means belonging to a definite category of beings e.g. a thing, a quality (non-relational property), relation, a state of affairs, a process, or an event. All beings fall into one of such formal categories, though ontologists do not agree as to what categories of beings should be distinguished and how they are related to each other Explication should not be mistaken for explanation, i.e. the procedure of explaining. The former is concerned with the meaning of terms, therefore words; the latter is concerned with seeking answers to some objective problem. 17 Then, if two objects are identical in respect of being something determinate but they exist in two different ways, they are not identical e.g. sphere as a physical object and as a mathematical object. 18 In the Aristotelian tradition it is claimed, for example, that the basic category is the category 25