Beliefs vs. Rational Knowledge
yet more in an attempt to get to the bottom of a difference between the two
Knowledge is sufficiently verified information, where the person receiving the information is the judge of “sufficiently” and “information” is any input to a person’s consciousness, anything — material or immaterial — of which a person obtains a conscious awareness. Of that much, I am certain. (People can be affected by inputs of which they are never consciously aware, but such inputs do not count as ‘information’.)
Whether is it the fault of Postmodernism or some form of mass insanity, we humans as a group no longer distinguish between beliefs and rational knowledge. To insist that there is such a thing as rational knowledge is to be rebuked with the absolute certainty that one merely believes that rational knowledge exists apart from from beliefs. Even claiming that knowledge derived rationally from information pertaining to material existence is fundamentally different from beliefs is said to be nothing but a ‘perspective’ a person arbitrarily ‘privileges’ over other forms of belief.
Here I want to try to establish firmly a fundamental divide between knowledge of material existence, as a form of rational knowledge, and beliefs (as a form of immaterial knowledge). After all, if we refuse to acknowledge the particular significance of knowledge of material existence and act rationally on the basis of that knowledge, there can be no doubt that material disaster will (eventually, at least) ensue.
Immanuel Kant posited two realms as sources of knowledge. One is the phenomenal realm: material reality (which includes other people as potential sources of information). The other is the noumenal realm: immateriality, the realm of the will, intuitions, spirituality, etc. It is the realm of things taken to be true on Kierkergaardian Leaps of Faith: as the Bible puts it (in my favorite Book, The Letter to the Hebrews), “the assurance of things hoped for, the belief in things not seen.” That applies to secular beliefs as well as sacral beliefs.
Kant went to great lengths to establish how we can judge (at least some of the) information received from that realm. That is a fool’s errand. Acknowledging that only an individual receiving information from that realm — or receiving such information from another person — can judge for oneself whether such information is sufficiently verified or not is both practically accurate and practical in the sense of relieving us from having to establish universal standards for valid judgements of that kind — an impossible undertaking.
Still, it is of the utmost importance that noumenal information is potential knowledge on a par with phenomenal knowledge. Knowledge is knowledge.
The conscious, rational faculty of human beings is the bridge between the two realms. One difference between the two realms is how we decide whether information received is true or not: is sufficiently verified to count as knowledge or not.
We do not employ our rational faculty in judging noumenal information. Who can say whether such a thing as ‘a will’ actually exists? Who can explain why one believes in God?
Noumenal information is accepted as knowledge extra-rationally. We do not reason our way to an acceptance of such knowledge, nor do we base our acceptance of it on what is experienced by our physical senses: sight, sound, etc. (People — including this author — have ‘seen’ visions of things in the noumenal realm, but people ‘seeing’ them always acknowledge that it is non-physical, that “seeing” is an approximation of what was experienced.) In short, we do not choose to accept this or that noumenal information as true knowledge; we simply find that we understand it to be true knowledge.
Such understanding is profoundly, radically subjective. No matter how many people might share an acceptance of any such knowledge, it is still always, in every case, utterly personal.
We can reason from such knowledge. We can draw inferences and other conclusions based on it. We can also seek evidence of it in material reality and in other ways use our rational faculty to ‘prove’ such knowledge. In the end, though, all such attempts to bring the rational faculty to bear on such knowledge are ex post: they follow from the acceptance of such knowledge.
Phenomenal knowledge, on the other hand, is consciously chosen to count as knowledge. The information for it comes from material existence. It is sufficiently verified to count as knowledge using the rational faculty.
There can still be disagreements. Any individual can insist, no matter how many other people might disagree, that this or that bit of information is not sufficiently verified to count as knowledge. That much agrees with Postmodernism.
Regarding some potential phenomenal knowledge, it is also the case, as with noumenal knowledge, that to accept it as knowledge requires taking someone else’s word for the validity of the information. That is true of much scientific information as well as engineering — though any person with the necessary education and equipment could check the results.
There is always the difference between the two realms of knowledge, however, that the source of the information for phenomenal knowledge is material existence, not the noumenal realm. The fact that scientists and engineers are dealing with material existence gives the knowledge they pursue a fundamentally different character. Among them there are standards governing what can count as knowledge. While conjecture can and often does precede findings of scientists and engineers, the rational faculty is employed to ascertain the validity of those conjectures. They are not accepted as knowledge until that has been done.
Even then, unlike noumenal knowledge, it is understood (if sometimes forgotten by some of the mere humans who are engaged in such activities) that all such knowledge is contingent, that none of it is ever an absolute, final truth. The whole point of much if not all purported noumenal knowledge is that it is precisely knowledge of that kind.
In short, potential phenomenal knowledge can be rationally disproven as well as rejected without being disproven. If it is not disproven, it can be accepted as knowledge as long as it is not. Potential noumenal knowledge cannot be rationally proven or disproven, only accepted or rejected. To accept it is to render it ‘true knowledge’ for as long as any individual who has accepted it continues to do so.
Finally (for now), it is the case that there is phenomenal knowledge that all human beings have no choice but to accept by virtue of our experience of material existence: e.g., periods of light (‘day’) and darkness (‘night’) regularly follow one another. Such information has a commonality that no noumenal knowledge can ever have. Such knowledge is true for all people at all times and in all places. It is universal knowledge.
So there is a valid, meaningful difference between beliefs and knowledge of material existence. We must keep that in mind as we seek as a group to negotiate the material existence in which we find ourselves living.