Propositional Knowledge in a World Where Ideas Are Not Experiences

A Section from The Life of Faith and Reason

Photo by Matt Baron-Thompson

A related topic to the tension between reason and faith, but here we can touch on what could be called “the problem of propositional knowledge,” which loosely here is “the problem that ideas are not experiences” (alluding to The Conflict of Mind), in other words that people are not usually motivated by ideas like they are experiences. This becomes a central problem for O.G. Rose, but if that is true and we can associate Reason with “ideas” and Revelation more with “experience” (I acknowledge the division isn’t so clean), then what is the point of reasoning? It doesn’t motivate and change people like does “personal knowledge” (as Michael Polanyi discusses), and also doesn’t Reason risk us falling into “is-ness” and away from “such-ness,” as has been discussed throughout O.G. Rose with David Hume? If that’s all so, even if the tension between Reason and Revelation can be resolved (as we have attempted in O.G. Rose), why risk it? The risk seems to have little hope of any worthy return.

It is true that reasoning and philosophy more generally run the risk of destroying us—“the greatest problem of philosophy is philosophy,” after all (to allude to a piece in Belonging Again). However, as brought out by the great Dr. Livingston, we also learn in Hume that we require philosophy for self-defense and to avoid manipulation, for if we can’t think for ourselves, it’s only a matter of time before we end up in some “banality of evil” (Arendt) or unable to protect our loved ones from bad ideas and a dehumanizing zeitgeist (A/A), perhaps losing Beauty (discussed by Thomas Jockin). Reason is risky, and it alone cannot change us, but it is also necessary. Also, personally, I have found that every time I thought I had “reached the end of philosophy,” I came to realize that I had hardly started, and furthermore I came to (yet again) learn that which was incredibly consequential for me practically and personally. It is true that ideas do not change us like experiences, but ideas can lead to experiences we otherwise would not have, and furthermore can impact how we qualitatively undergo them, interpret them, prove open to them, and remember them. “Ideas have consequences,” as Weaver famously put it, for though they do not change us like experiences, they dramatically impact what and how we experience what we do.

I’ll offer here another reason beyond just self-defense: I have found propositional knowledge utterly invaluable for sustaining what I learn from what I experience, to help me not forget (and please note the stress of Plato and Socrates on “memory” in philosophy). Michelle and I often discuss that thinking, writing, and speaking are about the transformation of something we know into something we understand, which is to say we submit an intuition, insight, and/or experience to “conceptual meditation,” which basically means we seek to generate “propositional knowledge” about it. Why is that important? Because otherwise we tend to forget the insight. We don’t sustain. We lose it, and then we forget we lost it. And then we are “enclosed” (“locked from the inside”). Likewise, if we have an experience “of faith,” without reason, we can’t translate that experience into something we better understand to better live it, and furthermore, by failing to put it well into practice, we will then habituate ourselves, one day at a day, out of it. (“Remember the Lord God who…”—the Torah says.)

There is a long tradition in theology on the idea that “God sustains being,” and what I am suggesting here is that Reason with “propositional knowledge” is on the side of remembering and sustaining what we experience and gain by “personal knowledge.” It is true that thinking alone doesn’t change our lives, but the experiences that do change us will prove unable to sustain that change without thinking. Furthermore, thinking can help “unfold the fullness” of our experiences, insights, institutions…it helps us “bring out” what was latent in them that we didn’t fully realize at the time. Thinking also helps us share our lives with others: “propositional knowledge” can shed light on how we can be with others best, and I believe that kind of knowledge is especially needed in Global Pluralism, where it is not “given” how best we should relate. Considering this, faith without reason is likely to be lost with time and something we fail to share.

“Propositional knowledge” is necessary for “keeping a hold on” what we know, for by making what we know something we understand, we prove more able to believe in it when it is hard and not forget about it. If something is true but we lack understanding of it, when we face hardship, challenge, people who doubt us, etc. it is likely we will forget what we know and start to question it, possibly putting us in great jeopardy. No, reason alone isn’t enough, but without it, when times are tough, we are likely to lose and forget what matters. Also, reason could impact “what comes before our eyes” (to use a term Jockin highlights in Aristotle), which is to say “what stands out to us” and “grabs our attention” could be influenced by what we have thought, wrestled with, articulated, and the like. In this way, reason could impact what knowledge is personal to us. It does change us, but it does so indirectly, seeming irrelevant, but that is a mistake to assume.

Other reasons “propositional knowledge” matters arise when we are faced with limits in time, money, knowledge, and the like: if I am “limited” in what experiences I can have and/or I must choose between experiences, then reasoning can help me decide which experiences are most likely to generate valuable “personal knowledge.” Perhaps if I was “like God” and unlimited, I wouldn’t need reason, because everything would be “personal knowledge” relative to me, but since we are finite, we must tarry with “the necessary tragedy of propositional knowledge,” per se. “I cannot know everything,” is basically to say, “I cannot have personal knowledge of everything,” in not being God, and the role of Reason arises precisely from our finitude. Also, Reason can help us not get trapped in “a language game” and from losing the ability to think outside that schema. Language structures our thinking not just represent it, and if we are “enclosed” in a language, Symbolic, and/or “way of understanding,” that can prove practically consequential in our lives—a role of philosophy and say “nihilation” (Heidegger) or “negation” (Hegel) is to keep that from happening. We are “always already” speaking, so it is not an option to avoid language altogether: the question is only if we might think about our words and how we use them to keep them from over-determining us (consider “Meaningful and Metaphoric Tendencies”)—a lifelong effort. If “in faith” we discard Reason, the quality of our choices and our capacity to avoid over-determination are both likely to lessen.

Lastly, and perhaps the most important reason “propositional knowledge” matters, is that we are “always already” closing ourselves off from experience, and we need reason to keep that from happening. What do I mean? Well, our brains are in the business of saving energy, and we naturally and gradually come to experience the world in the least energy-using way, which means we simplify, overlook nuance, reduce complexity to simple binaries, and the like. In a complex world of Global Pluralism, this sets us up for misunderstanding and reductionism, which can render Pluralism unworkable, make us see ourselves as inferior to Artificial Intelligence, and other consequences. Aligned with this point, as Jockin has emphasized (“The Net (181)”), we need philosophy and spaces of discussion because we are not (necessarily) free. Far from philosophy getting us stuck in ideas, the problem is that we’re “always already” stuck in our “(good) ideas,” and we need philosophy to free ourselves from them. Philosophy uses ideas to free us from ideas, which makes it seem like “all it ever does is get lost in ideas,” when really it makes visible the ideas we’re “always already” lost in. As those truly in despair don’t know they’re in despair for Kierkegaard, so those trapped in ideas doesn’t think about ideas—they’re “enclosed” (in “obviousness”), destined for (Kafkalike) “gutters,” as Javier and I discussed (#239 with II.1). Also, the one who seems to be in despair isn’t, as the one who seems lost in ideas isn’t unable to escape them—we must seem trapped to escape. Yes, the “bad philosopher” Hume warns about is “lost in ideas” in a sense (though “lost” here means something more like “damnation”), but so is the one who doesn’t philosophize at all: as we must go through despair in Kierkegaard, so we must go through ideas for freedom. (But do we want freedom? Perhaps not…)

As we’ve discussed throughout O.G. Rose, we are naturally “toward” understanding reality as A/A, and if we don’t think about it, we will conclude A/A is the case, cutting us off from A/B. Our experience of reality alone does not “wear on its face” (alluding to Cardinal Newman again) if it is metaphysically “identity-based” (A/A) or “relational/situational” (A/B)—we have to make that Absolute Choice—and if we don’t think about it, we will likely simply “absorb” a position, say A/A (which is ultimately self-effacing and autocannibalistic). Yes, reason itself could contribute to and solidify that enclosure (A/A), but at least reason has a chance of keeping us “open” (A/B) and we’re “always already” self-enclosing, so what do we have to lose that we’re not already in the process of losing?

Reason is necessary if we are to realize and choose that “lacks are not nothing” (A/B), as Jockin and I have discussed, and in this sense, reason plays a role just as important as “personal knowledge.” Without it, we will naturally end up believing “lacks are nothing” (A/A), and no matter how much “personal knowledge” changes us, it will not change us in kind from A/A to A/B. Why? Because we cannot experience that “lacks are not nothing” — we instead experience “lacks (are (not) nothing)” and then decide what they mean. Phenomenology can entail a dream that it is possible to arrive at “a full presence,” but even if a phenomenon could be “fully immediate,” it would not in that disclose to us if it the metaphysics of Kant or Hegel was best (for example). As Hegel stresses, there is a point where conceptual meditation is necessary—to avoid thought is to think what comes most naturally, which is naturally self-effacing.

A thing cannot in its presence “in-form us” what mode we should see and interpret it through: we must decide “the glasses we will wear,” and that decision must involve thinking. “Lacks” cannot give us by their “presence” and experience of A/A or A/B; rather, a “lack” can only give us an experience of “a both-ness” (a “Buridan Donkey”) that we then decide is either A/A or A/B. How we might realize “the both-ness of lack” into either A/A or A/B must come to us as an abstraction, for experience itself will not “give us this choice,” and hence we need reason for the “toward-ness” of our “personal knowledge” — but all of this requires elaboration…

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