> I am oddly attached to the idea that what is knowable is not communicable. Like the subject, what we know is unique to our own singular experiences. Knowing something, whatever it is, is a lonely endeavor.
> It is only in so far as we are similar that we can construct something like shared knowledge or common practices. Being able to do so is a product of power and politics. What we call knowledge and truth is a political instrument build for the preservation and transmission of power across time and space.
Bodies of scientific knowledge (not Truth, because they're continually evolving) might be a counter-example to the unsharable truths of subjective personal experience only -- but they are products of power and politics, so they do not escape your classification.
It would be interesting to put Foucault and Arendt in conversation about power and politics vis a vis attempts to share knowledge and subjective truths. Arendt was highly positive about it, if it could be possible again (long after the Greeks in the polis).
I agree that we can't communicate or share without constructed knowledge and practices (what I've called "techne"), and I agree these are products of power and politics and political instruments built for a purpose. I think it's an open question whether some techne (not all), even as they preserve and transmit power over time and space, might not do some net good, even for those not in power.
Another interesting interlocutor might be James C. Scott, especially his Seeing Like a State. Also perhaps also Wengrow and Graeber (Dawn of Everything), who see broad flexibility in the human repertoire for experimenting with social and political systems, much broader than is usually countenanced.
The most obvious pre-existing oppression truth liberates us from is ignorance of truth itself. It's the age-long myth of the cave of Platonic origin. According to this realist tradition, truth and knowledge are absolute goods for human beings, given the kind of rational ceatures we essentially are.
About your example, just knowing the truth regarding women's subordinate roles as compared to men in itself might not be liberating. However, the value of truth in this case is to be accompanied by a theory of action that sees liberation from subordination as a value. A presupposition of being successful in pursuing such value is obviously acquiring the relevant (true) facts concerning women's condition.
In regard to knowledge from personal experience, this is just a kind of knowledge, whose cartesian foundations have quite rationally led to the Hume's skepticism.
However, be this as it may, it remains unclear how this kind of knowledge or its implications regarding truth, is relevant to my request for clarification of the claim you seem to make that possessing some hard truths is likened to imprisonment.
More generally, for the sake of argument, let's concede that knowing the truth doesn't liberate at all, either because there's nothing we need to free ourselves from or because truth isn't the appropriate tool for it. This by itself doesn't mean that knowing something true imprisons us.
It seems to me, the claim that knowing the truth is like imprisonment would still need further clarification.
Just wondering whether the article is for A) strong relativism, B) outright skepticism, or C) just honest epistemic humility given the cognitive limitations of our human condition.
"Any hard truths that we manage to find become prisons in which we live, however we chose to decorate and redecorate them."
The quote above seems to suggest C, as you claim that there are some hard truths we manage to find, although it's not specified which ones or in which field, or by which epistemic route.
However, I thought that truth would be liberating, while the quote refers to those truths as "prisons".
Why do we feel that truth is, or should be, liberating? What in your experience tells you that what you think you know (be it a small-relative-t truth or a capital-T Truth) has increased your liberation?
The language of liberation is interesting, as it presupposes a pre-existing oppression from which we can be liberated through knowledge. So let's take gender-based oppression as an example. I know that as a woman I make a fraction of what my male counterparts will make for the same or comparable work. Let's even say that is documentable truth, so objective enough that we can say it's scientifically capital-T Truth, they highest quality tested over decades of research. That knowledge that I posses is not in and in itself liberating. Arguably, Internalizing that knowledge as a social and economic reality is the opposite. We are made comfortable even in distasteful truths, and reminded to comply on the daily, so this knowledge we become attached to ... a psychological panopticon. So something is missing in the liberation piece, and it's not knowledge.
Here is a cool exercise that was first given to me by NancyTuana in an epistemology seminar: what is one thing that you know based on your own experience? This would be different than the above piece of knowledge, the accepted and scientifically studied wage gap phenomenon. That thing you know from your own experience, how do you know it? Finally, try to make the link from this knowledge to your freedom, or even just your increased satisfaction. What kind of stories can we tell about what knowledge does for us, at this personal scale?
This is worth a long ponder.
> I am oddly attached to the idea that what is knowable is not communicable. Like the subject, what we know is unique to our own singular experiences. Knowing something, whatever it is, is a lonely endeavor.
> It is only in so far as we are similar that we can construct something like shared knowledge or common practices. Being able to do so is a product of power and politics. What we call knowledge and truth is a political instrument build for the preservation and transmission of power across time and space.
Bodies of scientific knowledge (not Truth, because they're continually evolving) might be a counter-example to the unsharable truths of subjective personal experience only -- but they are products of power and politics, so they do not escape your classification.
It would be interesting to put Foucault and Arendt in conversation about power and politics vis a vis attempts to share knowledge and subjective truths. Arendt was highly positive about it, if it could be possible again (long after the Greeks in the polis).
I agree that we can't communicate or share without constructed knowledge and practices (what I've called "techne"), and I agree these are products of power and politics and political instruments built for a purpose. I think it's an open question whether some techne (not all), even as they preserve and transmit power over time and space, might not do some net good, even for those not in power.
Another interesting interlocutor might be James C. Scott, especially his Seeing Like a State. Also perhaps also Wengrow and Graeber (Dawn of Everything), who see broad flexibility in the human repertoire for experimenting with social and political systems, much broader than is usually countenanced.
The most obvious pre-existing oppression truth liberates us from is ignorance of truth itself. It's the age-long myth of the cave of Platonic origin. According to this realist tradition, truth and knowledge are absolute goods for human beings, given the kind of rational ceatures we essentially are.
About your example, just knowing the truth regarding women's subordinate roles as compared to men in itself might not be liberating. However, the value of truth in this case is to be accompanied by a theory of action that sees liberation from subordination as a value. A presupposition of being successful in pursuing such value is obviously acquiring the relevant (true) facts concerning women's condition.
In regard to knowledge from personal experience, this is just a kind of knowledge, whose cartesian foundations have quite rationally led to the Hume's skepticism.
However, be this as it may, it remains unclear how this kind of knowledge or its implications regarding truth, is relevant to my request for clarification of the claim you seem to make that possessing some hard truths is likened to imprisonment.
More generally, for the sake of argument, let's concede that knowing the truth doesn't liberate at all, either because there's nothing we need to free ourselves from or because truth isn't the appropriate tool for it. This by itself doesn't mean that knowing something true imprisons us.
It seems to me, the claim that knowing the truth is like imprisonment would still need further clarification.
Interesting article.
Just wondering whether the article is for A) strong relativism, B) outright skepticism, or C) just honest epistemic humility given the cognitive limitations of our human condition.
"Any hard truths that we manage to find become prisons in which we live, however we chose to decorate and redecorate them."
The quote above seems to suggest C, as you claim that there are some hard truths we manage to find, although it's not specified which ones or in which field, or by which epistemic route.
However, I thought that truth would be liberating, while the quote refers to those truths as "prisons".
Perhaps, you might want to elaborate on that.
Why do we feel that truth is, or should be, liberating? What in your experience tells you that what you think you know (be it a small-relative-t truth or a capital-T Truth) has increased your liberation?
The language of liberation is interesting, as it presupposes a pre-existing oppression from which we can be liberated through knowledge. So let's take gender-based oppression as an example. I know that as a woman I make a fraction of what my male counterparts will make for the same or comparable work. Let's even say that is documentable truth, so objective enough that we can say it's scientifically capital-T Truth, they highest quality tested over decades of research. That knowledge that I posses is not in and in itself liberating. Arguably, Internalizing that knowledge as a social and economic reality is the opposite. We are made comfortable even in distasteful truths, and reminded to comply on the daily, so this knowledge we become attached to ... a psychological panopticon. So something is missing in the liberation piece, and it's not knowledge.
Here is a cool exercise that was first given to me by NancyTuana in an epistemology seminar: what is one thing that you know based on your own experience? This would be different than the above piece of knowledge, the accepted and scientifically studied wage gap phenomenon. That thing you know from your own experience, how do you know it? Finally, try to make the link from this knowledge to your freedom, or even just your increased satisfaction. What kind of stories can we tell about what knowledge does for us, at this personal scale?