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EPISTEMOLOGICAL REALISM: THE ALLEGED UBIQUITY OF THE KNOWLEDGE RELATION
I have pointed out that if perception be treated as a case of knowledge, knowledge of every form and kind must be treated as a case of a presentation to a knower. The alleged discipline of epistemology is then inevitable. In common usage, the term "knowledge" tends to be employed eulogistically; its meaning approaches the connotation of the term "science." More loosely, it is used, of course, to designate all beliefs and propositions that are held with assurance, especially with the implication that the assurance is reasonable, or grounded. In its practical sense, it is used as the equivalent of "knowing how," of skill or ability involving such acquaintance with things and persons as enables one to anticipate how they behave under certain conditions and to take steps accordingly. Such usages of the term are all differential; they all involve definite contrasts—with ungrounded conviction, or with doubt and mere guesswork, or with the inexpertness that accompanies lack of familiarity. In its epistemological use, the term "knowledge" has a blanket value which is absolutely unknown in common life. It covers any and every "presentation" of any and every thing to a knower, to an "awarer," if I may coin a word for the sake of avoiding some of the pitfalls of the term "consciousness." And, I repeat, this indiscriminate use of the term "knowledge," so foreign to science and daily life, is absolutely unavoidable if perception be regarded as, in itself, a mode of knowledge. And then—and only then—the problem of "the possibility, nature, and extent of knowledge in general" is also inevitable. I hope I shall not be regarded as offensively pragmatic if I suggest that this undesirable consequence is a good reason for not accepting the premise from which it follows, unless that premise be absolutely forced upon us.
At all events, upon the supposition of the ubiquity of the knowledge relation in respect to a self, presentative realism is compelled to accept the genuineness of the epistemological problem, and thus to convert itself into an epistemological realism, getting one more step away from both naïve and naturalistic realism. The problem is especially acute for a presentative realism because idealism has made precisely this ubiquity of relationship its axiom, its short-cut. One sample is as good as a thousand. Says Bain: "There is no possible knowledge of a world except in relation to our minds. Knowledge means a state of mind; the notion of material things is a mental fact. We are incapable even of discussing the existence of an independent material world; the very act is a contradiction. We can speak only of a world presented to our own minds."
On the supposition of the ubiquity of the relation, realism and idealism exhaust the alternatives; if the ubiquity of the relation is a myth, both doctrines are unreal, because there is no problem of which they are the solution. My first step in indicating the unreality of both "solutions" is formal. I shall try to show that if the knowledge relation of things to a self is the exhaustive and inclusive relation, there is no intelligible point at issue between idealism and realism; the differences between them are either verbal or else due to a failure on the part of one or the other to stick to their common premise.
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To my mind, Professor Perry rendered philosophic discussion a real service when he coined the phrase "ego-centric predicament." The phrase designated something which, whether or no it be real in itself, is very real in current discussion, and designating it rendered it more accessible to examination. In terming the alleged uniform complicity of a knower a predicament, it is intended, I take it, to suggest, among other things, that we have here a difficulty with which all schools of thought alike must reckon, so that it is a difficulty that cannot be used as an argument in behalf of one school and against another. If the relation be ubiquitous, it affects alike every view, every theory, every object experienced; it is no respecter of persons, no respecter of doctrines. Since it cannot make any difference to any particular object, to any particular logical assertion, or to any particular theory, it does not support an idealistic as against a realistic theory. Being a universal common denominator of all theories, it cancels out of all of them alike. It leaves the issue one of subject-matter, to be decided on the basis of that subject-matter, not on the basis of an unescapable attendant consideration that the subject-matter must be known in order to be discussed. In short, the moral is quite literally, "Forget it," or "Cut it out."
But the idealist may be imagined to reply somewhat as follows: "If the ubiquity were of any kind other than precisely the kind it is, the advice to disregard it as a mere attendant circumstance of discussion would be relevant. Thus, for example, we disregard gravitation when we are considering a particular chemical reaction; there is no ground for supposing that it affects a reaction in any way that modifies it as a chemical reaction. And if the 'ego-centric' relation were cited when the point at issue is something about one group of facts in distinction from another group, it ought certainly to be canceled from any statement about them. But since the point at issue is precisely the most universally defining trait of existence as known, the invitation deliberately to disregard the most universal trait is nothing more or less than an invitation to philosophic suicide."
If the idealist I have imagined as making the foregoing retort were up in recent realistic literature, he might add the following argument ad hominem: "You, my realistic opponent, say that the doctrine of the external relation of terms expresses a ubiquitous mark of every genuine proposition or relational complex, and that this ubiquity is a strong presumption in favor of realism. Why so uneven, so partial, in your attitude toward ubiquitous relations? Is it perchance that you were so uneasy at our possession of a ubiquitous relation that gives a short cut to idealism that you felt you must also have a short cut to realism?"