Helicopter Seeds

The New Positivism and Phenomenalism- An Editorial 

Is knowledge truth? Is truth objective?

There is an Indian fable about three blind guys and an elephant (obviously I’m referring to Indians from India, hence the elephant, which we can assume is an Indian elephant and not an African elephant, but metaphysical speculation should be avoided… I digress…). So, there’s this fable about these three guys (it should be noted that it’s not always three, in some versions it’s 10 or 12, in a famous poem written by a British guy it’s 6… I digress…)

So there’s this fable about these three guys. As you may well remember, they’re blind, and in the course of their sightless travels they encounter an Indian elephant, which isn’t as big and impressive as an African elephant, but to a blind guy in a sari it’s still pretty memorable. Blind guy number 1 runs up to the elephant, briefly grabs the elephant’s trunk and runs away again. Number 2 runs up, touches one of the elephant’s tusks, runs away. Number 3 is a little more zealous than the other two, runs headlong into the side of the elephant and falls over backwards. From that day on, 1 would attest that an elephant is like a giant snake, 2 would attest that an elephant is like a giant spear, and 3 would attest that an elephant is like a giant wall.

Somewhere within this tidy little allegory is some interesting insight into the ideologies of positivism and phenomenalism. Both attempt to weigh what is perceived against what is real, both try to differentiate between what is meaningful knowledge and what isn’t; and most interestingly (from a significantly wider scope), both are largely ignorant-of and dependent-on an outside observing entity, without which, the story breaks down.

In the case of the story about the blind Indians, the most important element isn’t the blind guys or even the elephant; it’s the omniscient third-person narrator that provides the fabric to which these seemingly disparate experiences are pinned. In the absence of the narrator, we’re left with three blind guys with incomplete assessments of elephants. However, within the finite reality of a given blind Indian, there is no ‘rest of the elephant,’ there is just the part that he experienced and one would be hard pressed to convince him otherwise (after all, he nearly soiled his sari just to touch that part…I digress…).

Positivism (and subsequently, Empiricism) and Phenomenalism both embrace and largely depend on the idea of a finite reality. Things like God, eternity, cosmology, metaphysics, etc. are to be avoided at all costs in favor of things that are immediately rational, tangible, and provable. Things are real if we can see them and touch them, they are meaningful if we can measure them and understand them. They are explained in the language of logic and mathematics.

The irony is that Logical Positivism and Phenomenalism rose to prominence in the time leading up to and just after World War 2, the same period of time that saw Newtonian Physics become obsolete and gave rise to Relativity and Quantum Theory. Those in the highest intellectual echelons were hypothesizing and eventually proving that our concepts of space and time, and our experiences therein, were incomplete and inaccurate. Logic and mathematics were now being used to show the things we can’t know and understand, including the idea that we somehow exist in an infinite reality full of things that we can’t measure, or see, or hear, or touch.

Both Positivism and Phenomenalism tend to break down once ‘reality’ is not a finite set. Since an infinite universe can never be fully understood unless one were God, Positivism falls victim to circularity; and since an infinite universe has no irreducible elements that can be experienced, Phenomenalism falls victim to Infinite Regress. Both end up being incomplete assessments of elephants. Enter the Infinite Omniscient Narrator who provides a fabric to which all these seemingly disparate ideas are pinned.

In my opinion, the most profound concept to emerge from Phenomenalism is the idea that the things we experience only exist as “data-bundles” somewhere within our consciousness. To some extent this is true- everything we experience is processed through a series of chemicals and electrical impulses in our brains, without which there would be no awareness; but on a much grander scale, EVERYTHING that EVERYONE experiences exists as a “data-bundle” within the consciousness of an omniscient third-person narrator.  As a person of faith, I call this narrator God.

I think it’s interesting to note how as our society evolves (to use a Comte coinage), we can look deeper into the universe, our math equations continue to grow more complex and revelatory, and those “highest intellectual echelons” that I mentioned earlier are beginning to discount God less and less. Stephen Hawking, the father of modern cosmology, leaves open the possibility of God in his famous rhetorical, “What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?” Brian Greene, one of today’s leading quantum physicists and outspoken atheist, concedes that given the infinite nature of time and space, the existence of some kind of higher power is not only possible, but mathematically probable.

Paul writes in Romans 1:20, “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead” Just as an artist is understood by his or her artwork, the way to understand God is to understand what He has made, realizing with humility that we can never have more than a finite understanding of an infinite God.

Is knowledge truth? Is truth objective? Yes, but only if you’re God I’m afraid.