knowledge, perception, thoughts on deception, attempt at establishing a basis for objectivity

[first posted 06/18/12]

[all of the following was originally a response/thought comment on a post]:

Well there's a difference in discussing the truth or validity of a thing, which assumes your ability to know in some way and then whether you can know specifically the thing in question; it's another thing to attack knowability itself, the ability for any knowledge or truth, or perception of anything beyond one's self- the very assertion of which defies itself by speaking about something other than itself, and even elsewise would be admitting something about the nature of that person's self. There could be an honest confusion that the person thinks that because everything they know is something that, in order to know, comes TO THEM they therefore don't perceive it in anyway beyond their self and therefore have no confidence that it is anything beyond their self; but it would seem that any measure of discernment admits, rather demonstrates, that that isn't the case entirely- for if in seeing those things coming to you and not knowing if they were ever apart from you (for example "is this all just my imagination?") and thus not being able to solidify any of those things as objective truth then your doubt itself would be dismissed by the same means since it's something arising from you and how then could it be ANYTHING (objective) in its claim about your situation- it would never "be the case" that you couldn't know. It would seem the only way to really be deceived is to not have any ability whatsoever to discern your deception- because for the moment you suspect you're entirely deceived, if you are, you have become aware of one true and undeceived point- that you're deceived- and if that were true then why not just believe the opposite of everything you believe? But maybe you're only deceived about some things, but then now you're admitting that there are even more things you're not deceived about, and if deception is trickery and knowledge is not, then you must not be tricked into knowing things that are true but really know them and if that's the case then there is a genuine means by which you know the things you do know, and so you should be able to think of what those things are- not that you have full and exhaustive knowledge of the things you know, but you have knowledge of something of them (and something that is not reduceable to just being a part of you but the thing outside you that you're perceiving). This perception of something might be, from what I'm gathering, what Aquinas would call a perception of "Ens" a word meaning something like "being" but captures the notion of the thing itself, of its essence- so maybe you aren't necessarily so readily perceiving a whole lot of "what it is" but you readily regard something of "that it is"; I could be wrong, I'm new to Aquinas and what he thought.

Let me address preemptively two possible concerns- 1, what if the things I know are actually known by trickery and so there's still no legitimate method for knowledge? 2, what if it's a greater deception to think that I know I'm not deceived because of my awareness of deception, but I actually am deceived?

1, for this I just have a couple thoughts. You may accept a true conclusion but for false reasons. And, you may know a true conclusion but not see it as a conclusion and have no need for its reasons. Accepting a true conclusion but on the basis of its false reasons, and having no experience or true reason for the conclusion otherwise, it would seem you don't know that the thing you accept is true. But you do accept it, and so as soon as you act on it and it is verified then now you actually have reasons to know the thing you accepted. So say someone says a magical bird put a ball in a basket, and so you believe there is a ball in that basket; say there actually is a ball there, you accept that there's a ball there but only because you heard that the magic bird put one there- so your accepting it depends on the reason for why you think it's there, then you don't know its there. But say you act on this acceptance and open the box and there's a ball, well now (to the extent that you perceive the ball, and that it is a ball) you know its there, and now you can dismiss those false reasons and know it based on these true reasons (that it's a ball and you have truly perceived it). But say that a good friend or trusted relative, who doesn't usually intend to mislead you, has told you this same story about the bird to get you to accept that there's a ball in the basket. Now you're not merely accepting the conclusion by those reasons alone, but because of the reason for those reasons being suggested- the former reason being that this trusted person tells you things to lead you to true thoughts. Now you accept the conclusion with mixed reasons, one of which is reliable and the other not- one being because your trusted person told you and the other being the reasons they told you (the magic bird); let it be noted that the trusted person's emphasis was on the conclusion and so the implication in this communication was obvious that he was wanting the conclusion to be accepted albeit the reason given was fanciful and doesn't line up with common experience. So now in this case you accept a true conclusion, but not for reasons that logically imply it but which do strongly suggest it- your trusted person's explanation; here I might say that one doesn't know the ball to be there but believes it, and the validity of the belief is correlated to the integrity of the reason for the belief- but not logical reason but social/relational/authoritative/trust/etc. reasons; and say you come to realize the story that person gave is false but it is understood it wasn't intended strongly to be the thing to accept then you pass it by knowing the implication of the suggestion was to accept the conclusion- now your belief is the same, and the reason for it, but it has been clarified; so though that there is logical reason to believe the conclusion and it is given to you by the same person now that you've grown and can better understand, now your belief has been strengthened, and if truly logically implied then to the extent that the premises are known then you know the conclusion; the same can be said for if you directly experience the conclusion- you see the ball in the basket (in this case I'm not sure there could be a logical implication for a material situation like that, but an experiential one is plausible). More could probably be said but I'll leave it there for now.

On to the second point, you may know a true conclusion but not see it as a conclusion and have no need for its reasons. Here I'm basically just narrowing in on a specific point of the first explanation- that if you truly perceive the real thing then you have knowledge of it, at least that it is and from there you may distinguish many more things about it (at least "that it is" it is something, and not just you in this case, and you're perceiving it; let me make a note on hallucination, you may say "what if I think I see something that isn't really there, a hallucination" then I would suggest that the error arises at the point you take that thing to be "something else"- something associated with things other than you; "how do I know that everything isn't a hallucination?" if it were you couldn't know it- but the fact that we know that if it were you couldn't know it seems to suggest that we truly know something about it, which suggests that it is in fact something, and something to know and thus not a hallucination- in fact I think that in a hallucination everything would seem more real, that is that you would accept everything without distinction or qualification, because everything is only appearances and nothing is distinct from anything else as "being something" but is all one collective illusion whereby no discernment would have a foothold for criticism; perhaps this is why dreams seem "so real" until we wake up, but notice you're not questioning the reality of things in your dream when you're dreaming; so the fact that we do perceive ourselves as existing and as distinct and that things seem to differ in what they are and how we know them, that we don't accept everything at face value be try to perceive what things are and understand what things might just be personal sentiment, etc., seems to suggest that we live in a real world where we are different from the things around us, and they from each other, but we and they are related to others (and in many ways dependent, generally and materially speaking: food, shelter, water, etc., which may also suggest a distinction between ourselves and those things, that we change/suffer/benefit/etc. in part when we do or don't have certain resources, and if it were illusion- illusions aren't things that have properties in relation to each other, unless you suggest that psychologically we formulate those properties and thus those things have rules in our mind, in that sense I would hope we could perceive the difference but I'd also say that what if everything in this world is an expression of the mind of God with it's correlating properties allotted to those things?))2, I think I've already answered this but I'll say that if our conviction of the inability of deception by things we experience that we consider contrary to the nature of a deception is itself a deception- then this is not anything more extensive than just to recast the problem in a more complex way, that we are deceived and there's no way to know it, but even if we are to accept that notion as true we would have to admit that we know something about the situation or possibility of how things might be (that we're deceived) in which case we aren't totally deceived. So if you want to defeat the possibility of deception, just consider every possible notion of the conditions of deception and you've then demonstrated that the most fundamental quality of deception is not real- namely its being hidden from us. Say then "it may be possible that in some or any way whatsoever that I am ultimately deceived, even in thinking this, and this, and this, or any possible subsequent abstraction of this thought, and even of the whole consideration that I have just laid down, ad infinitum, and then after that, ad nauseam" and you demonstrate that your awareness can constantly pull down the veil of ultimate deception, but there will always be things outside those considerations you say? Well what about the notion that wherever your mind is (that previous thought experiment, for example, or anywhere else where the suspicion of deception is possible) ultimate deception is not.This does not mean that you can't have false ideas or be wrong- but it means you're wrong or false about something- that you don't know what is, by believing what's not; so although one may be false in this way, ultimate reality fails to be- false, and remains what it is.