Entanglement Epistemology

Entanglement Epistemology

Is there any alternative to empiricism and rationalism—experience and reason, impressions and innate ideas?[1] In particular, do we need to have experiences of everything we know? Can empirical knowledge (as opposed to the a priori kind) be constituted by anything other than sense impressions of the thing known? One might hope so, because many things in the world are not directly experienced. Can we just know a thing without needing to experience it? What else could provide knowledge apart from experience? I am going to suggest that the empiricist conception of empirical knowledge is fundamentally mistaken; such knowledge has a quite different nature or essence. The concept of experience is not the right concept to capture it. I will build up to this slowly.

We already have ideas floating around that imply a non-experiential conception of knowledge. One idea is correspondence or correlation: to know a fact is to have a mental state (possibly a belief) that corresponds to a fact or correlates with a fact; here is the belief and there is the fact, and the two are in a relation of correspondence or correlation. There is a mental bit and a worldly bit, and one bit fits the other: my belief that snow is white corresponds to, or is correlated with, the fact that snow is white—so I know that fact. But this simple theory runs into trouble because the two need to be connected not just correlated: it has to be becauseof the fact that snow is white that I believe that snow is white. Notice that this theory says nothing about experience; it is more abstract than that. The natural next step is to introduce the concept of causation: to know a fact is to be in a state that is caused by that fact (or a related one). Thus, we obtain a causal theory of knowledge: all empirical knowledge is caused by external facts; there is no non-causal knowledge of the world. Instead of saying that all knowledge depends on experience, we say that all knowledge depends on causation (then we go on to specify what kind of causation). This is a non-empiricist theory of knowledge (also non-rationalist). It may not be much good as a theory, but it isn’t empiricist in the classic sense; experience doesn’t come into it and may not even be present in the knowing subject. It can handle knowledge acquired unconsciously, as in subliminal perception and blindsight, and it doesn’t require that all knowledge be based on direct experience of the thing known. It allows for knowledge in beings that lack sensory experience (“zombies”) but are still hooked up to reality causally. It makes room for the possibility that conscious experience is epiphenomenal and so never the cause of empirical beliefs (brains states are). It puts experience in its place epistemically.

We can sophisticate this simple causal theory, keeping its anti-empiricist flavor. Thus, we get reliability theories: to know a fact is to be reliably connected to facts in general. This ensures that the truth of one’s belief is not just a fluke; the subject is reliably right about relevant things (remember the red barn example). He is reliably connected to the facts. All knowledge is based on reliable connections between beliefs and facts, possibly backed by causal connections. Knowledge is reliable (causal) connection. Nothing experiential has been mentioned here. In the same vein we might bring the concept of impingement into the picture: knowledge arises from, and depends upon, the impingement of the world on the mind.[2] This is the essence of knowledge, its conceptual heart. And it is suitably general and capacious: we can allow for unconscious knowledge and knowledge of things we can’t directly experience (as well as blindsight knowledge). We thus improve upon classic experience-based empiricism; this is a kind of non-experiential empiricism (denial of rationalism). All knowledge is acquired post-natally by means of worldly impingement, but experience (a certain kind of mental state) need play no role. If you don’t believe in experiences, you can still be a kind of empiricist—you can still believe that all knowledge comes from interactions with things outside the mind. You may admit that the theory is rather crude and oversimplified (and promise to work on improving it), and you may also accept that knowledge is somewhat mysterious as so conceived; but you are certainly not a classic experience-obsessed empiricist, like Locke and Hume. You reject the notion of phenomenal experiential foundations (the “given”) and inferences therefrom. Yet you hold that knowledge is all about being impinged upon by the world outside. Experience comes into it, if it comes in at all, only per accidens; it is just one way of being impinged upon. You are what might be called a connectionist about knowledge not a phenomenalist: knowledge is all about objectively connecting to external reality, not about subjectively experiencing from within. Inner feeling (sensation) is strictly irrelevant to knowledge per se. What your mind can connect to determines what you can know, not what can come before it phenomenally.

Where does entanglement come in? Perhaps it will surprise (and alarm) the reader if I say that the idea of quantum entanglement is being invoked. For I wish to suggest that knowledge is a form of entanglement in roughly the sense that particles can be entangled in quantum physics. That is, particles can be inextricably linked to other particles in ways that defy easy comprehension—yet they are so linked. Similarly, minds can be inextricably linked to other things in a curious and sometimes baffling manner—yet they are so linked. For example, your mind can be connected (entangled) with dispositions, possibilities, space, time, the self, other minds, and moral values, in ways that defy ordinary conceptions (mainly mechanical conceptions). The entanglement is mysterious relative to our intuitive commonsense ideas about how things work in nature (like gravity). But it happens; it’s real. The OED gives us “to make tangled” for “entangle” and for “tangle” we have “twist together into a confused mass”. But things can be twisted together otherwise than into a confused mass, e.g., braiding and rope. The word “entanglement” in physics does not connote confusion or chaos (it is perfectly lawlike), but it does signify a kind of spooky joining together or union. Just so, mind and world get yoked together in instances of knowledge, improbably and weirdly. Your thoughts get linked to dispositions (say), even though it is hard to see how you can properly conceive of their existence (because of their imperceptible counterfactual implications). The mind ought not to be able to form such thoughts (and hence knowledge), but evidently it does. You can think about space and time, even though you are baffled about what they are. You can know other minds, but by rights you ought not to be able to (you have no direct experience of other minds). Somehow you can know about numbers, but have never seen one. There is epistemic entanglement of a puzzling (indeed uncanny) nature. It’s not like balls of string, where you expect them to get entangled. There is a strange kind of connection that contravenes empiricist principles (“no knowledge without direct experience”). Knowledge is a kind of mystifying connection (compare intentionality).

This knowledge just happens, even if we don’t know how or why. In effect, we have mysterious epistemic connectivity. Classic empiricism purported to give us a clear, intelligible, almost mechanical, picture of how knowledge is formed and constituted; but in reality, it is more mysterious and mind-stretching than the empiricists thought. It is a puzzling entanglement, but real enough. As a consolation, knowledge is more easily obtained than empiricist principles allow: there is an awful lot we don’t know according to these principles, which we patently do know. It is fair to report that empiricism has been regarded as a bad theory inasmuch as it fails to account for a good deal of human knowledge—but it has been reluctantly accepted largely because no other theory suggests itself. But now we see that there is another theory that is more empirically adequate, though less pellucid. And how pellucid is classic empiricism anyway—what is experience, and how is belief based on it? How exactly does the alleged “inference” work? We have to rethink human (and animal) knowledge from the ground up, recognizing its peculiarities. Epistemology is as perplexing as quantum physics (well, maybe not quite as perplexing). We need an entanglement theory combined with a dose of mysterianism. Mind and brain are connected, despite the puzzling nature of their connection; mind and world are also connected in the phenomenon of knowledge, despite the puzzling nature of the connection. We should be connectionists about both, though perplexed connectionists.

But we shouldn’t feel totally defeated in the case of knowledge, since it is quite evident that we know various things that our traditional theories say we can’t know, e.g., that we have specific sensory faculties. Knowledge is eminently possible, despite skeptical protests. I just do know stuff that I can’t directly experience, okay. Not everything I know about gives rise to sense impressions in me (atoms, numbers, selves), that’s a fact. In cases of knowledge mind and world get spliced together in remarkable ways, get used to it. Epistemologically, we exist in an entangled state of nature. The thoroughly modern empiricist should be saying that all knowledge is a result of epistemic entanglement with nature—not derived from hallowed tradition or God or our omniscient genes. Experience might come into it at various points, but it is not the be-all and end-all. The basic concept of knowledge is not an experiential concept. My knowing mind can become epistemically entangled with color by perceiving it, but it can also become entangled with the faculty of sight by my possessing that faculty, by embodying it. Similarly, my mind can get tangled up (twisted together, intertwined) with dispositions, space, time, selves, numbers, values, etc., without perceiving them with any of my five senses. We are thus not condemned to an experiential reduction of all knowledge in the manner or classic empiricism (or its more or less faithful descendants). Knowledge is what it is and not some other thing.[3]

[1] This paper follows on from my “Faculty Knowledge”.

[2] See my “A New Definition of Knowledge”.

[3] In case you haven’t noticed, this paper is a rapid-fire survey of the history of epistemology up to the present day. The aim is to reinvent the subject by forging a new path. We are tremendously in the grip of traditional empiricism (less so rationalism) and it takes an effort of will to see through it. I intend my use of the word “entanglement” to create a new way to approach the subject, though a way not without precedents. We are always looking for the right words, and the English language will only take us so far. Knowledge is not easy to describe, or even conceptualize—like many things.