Faculty Knowledge

Faculty Knowledge

Empiricists and rationalists agree that we have a number of cognitive faculties: the five senses plus whatever else is needed to account for the totality of human knowledge (mathematics, ethics, etc.). But how do we know this—how do we know, for example, that the visual faculty exists? The empiricists and rationalists never discuss this question. But we can imagine their answer: by experience or innately. I know that I have a visual faculty (or a mathematical faculty) by experiencing it with my senses or by dint of my genetic endowment. I have an idea acquired by the senses or derived from my inborn nature—post-experience or pre-experience (a posteriori or a priori). I know it by perceiving it or by pure reasoning—by sense or reason. I know that the faculty exists this way and that it has certain characteristics—the knowledge arises by copying sensations or by employing the innate system. That is, I know my cognitive psychology according to one method or the other, according to epistemological predilection. But are these theories plausible? On the face it, they are not: I don’t have sensory impressions of my visual system (or my mathematical competence), and I don’t know it innately either. I don’t see my ability to see with my eyes and I don’t know it with my genes either. I don’t experience my cognitive faculties (as I experience the color red) and I don’t know them implicitly in the womb. I know them in some other way. But what way?

Danger lurks, epistemological danger. Either we have no theory at all or we have no knowledge of the kind in question: no explanation or no knowledge. Either we don’t know how we know our cognitive faculties, or we don’t have any knowledge of them at all. Empiricism and rationalism seem exhaustive, and skepticism is a last resort. Surely, I know that I have a faculty of vision, and yet we have no theory of how this is possible. You might think we know it by the old standby of copying: I have a visual experience and I copy this into an idea that counts as knowledge. That is, I know it by introspecting my experiences. But that can’t be right because an experience is not a faculty: I could introspect my visual experience but not know what vision is—that thing I do with my eyes. To know that I can see goes beyond being acquainted with my visual sensations; for seeing is an ability, a competence, a psychophysical capacity. The same is true for my other cognitive faculties, like my mathematical ability—I don’t just introspect my mathematical experiences; I know what I can do mathematically. When I know that I have a linguistic faculty, I don’t just know what words sound like. So, the empiricist theory, in its classic form, looks hopeless as a matter of principle. On the other hand, it sounds farfetched to claim that I have such knowledge innately: that I am born knowing the existence and nature of my various cognitive faculties. Somehow this knowledge makes its appearance later, as a result of…as a result of what exactly? I seem to just know it. I know that I have the ability to see (discounting the depredations of skepticism—the other option).

Here we might follow a traditional path: we weaken the empiricism to make it more tolerant of the limitations of direct perception. I infer the existence of my faculties by some method of theory construction, say inference to the best explanation (otherwise known as shooting in the dark); or I settle for having a theory that has not so far been refuted and that I like the sound of. I won’t go into the merits of these maneuvers; I will only remark that they don’t do justice to the primitive immediacy of the knowledge in question. I’m not guessing I have the ability to see or speak or calculate—I know it. It’s not like speculating about atoms or distant galaxies or dinosaurs. Thus, I know something that the standard theories can’t explain—I have faculty knowledge. Nor do we have any other theory to put in their place—do I know it magically, unaccountably? The knowledge looks suspiciously like telepathy—self-directed telepathy. I am just primitively and mysteriously aware of my cognitive faculties (mysterianism beckons). Maybe there could be knowledge that eludes our comprehension in this way, but what is troubling is that empiricism and rationalism seem like the only games in town—where else could knowledge come from? Nothing else could explain the origin of knowledge; we know these are the only two theoretical possibilities.

The irony is that we can’t explain the origin of knowledge of something that is supposed to explain all our knowledge. The sensory and rational faculties that define us as a knowing species have no intelligible explanation as to how they are known. This kind of knowledge is a counterexample to both empiricism and rationalism, or the conjunction of both. It is not knowledge by experience and it is not knowledge by innate endowment—yet it is really knowledge. Ouch. It might be thought that there is a way out of this conundrum, though hardly a cheering one, namely that it is a special case of knowledge of dispositions. That is, we know our cognitive faculties as we know dispositions in general, e.g., that salt is soluble in water. Knowledge of dispositions is notoriously difficult for empiricism, since possibilities (what things would do if) are not perceptible—dispositions don’t allow knowledge at all, just unjustified faith. It would follow that our faculty knowledge isn’t really knowledge at all—just conjecture. And yet that sounds completely wrong. Nor can rationalism save the day, since it is highly implausible to claim that we know that salt is water-soluble innately. Dispositional knowledge is difficult for both empiricism and rationalism. But a skeptical response will not serve the turn in the present case, since it undermines the theories it was intended to bolster—viz. that we know that empiricism or rationalism is true. For, if we can’t know that we have the faculties in question, we can’t know that all knowledge depends on them; we can only say that if these faculties exist, then they explain all knowledge. That is a dialectical disaster of epic proportions. It is self-refuting. We have to know that we have senses in order to assert that sensing is the origin of all knowledge, so we can’t admit that we don’t know that we have senses. The empiricist just assumes we know we have senses, especially vision, but this knowledge is not subject to the basic empiricist principle, viz. that all knowledge is based on experience. He was right not to bring this case up at the beginning, because it would have given the game away—he can’t even explain the existence of knowledge of the very faculties on which he is depending to explain all knowledge! He can’t, for example, explain how we know we can see, i.e., have a visual sense—in the ordinary sense of that phrase. Vision is something in the world that we can know, but empiricism can’t explain such knowledge (and neither can rationalism). So, we are in want of a general theory of human knowledge such as these two great epistemologies were intended to provide. The simple fact is that faculty knowledge violates both empiricism and rationalism. No wonder no one ever talked about it.[1]

[1] I do think we should consider the possibility that both empiricism and rationalism are both completely on the wrong track as generaltheories of knowledge, though the entire tradition is steeped in their precepts. There might be a way of knowing that simply doesn’t slot into these schemes, but employs quite different mechanisms. I am encouraged in this thought by the evident mysteries that surround human knowledge—mysteries of empirical knowledge (so-called) and mysteries of innate knowledge (also so-called). We really don’t understand how sense experience causes knowledge and we don’t know how innate genetic endowment can constitute knowledge (see my Problems in Philosophy and Inborn Knowledge). Our understanding of self-knowledge is particularly poor—is there any science of it? Isn’t knowledge that I can see a paradigm case of knowledge? And yet we don’t know how it’s possible. I don’t perceive my ability to see with my senses, or conjecturally construct this knowledge from what I perceive with my senses; and I don’t know it innately either. So, how do I know it? We have a kind of skeptical paradox here: what does this knowledge consist in?