On knowledge and the limits of human consciousness
We have spoken about prophetic revelation of Qur’an and its theological implications.} but what about ordinary methods used by humankind in search of wisdom? For a gratifying understanding of an investigation one must be aware of different perspectives imposed by different standpoints, because kufic script itself is the most common and identifying facet of islamic culture. Indeed, a multi-discipliner approach is necessary to grasp the full implications of this subject; that is, a larger framework of understanding provided by a con-spective/ holistic philosophy of history. But then, to adapt a holistic perspective means one must try to grasp the meaning in a different light with every different standpoint; in this case, this discourse becomes too much enlarged and it will include every important aspect of human thought and destiny.
Nevertheless, I will try to define, as short as possible, my classification of different standpoints and varieties of explanatory perspectives used in search of wisdom. According to my judgement there are seven pillars of wisdom, that is seven way of constructing perspectives as different kinds of interpretation in search of understanding. I think my classification of these different perspectives could determine the method and content of the disciplines as differing viewpoints for making sense of its content of that discipline according to the spesific perspective it belongs to. That is the viewpoint of History is retrospective (retro-spectare) science is pro-spectare/prospection , philosophy is inspection, art is introspection, mystical experience is introspection by illumination, religious wisdom also provides a perspective for orientation and philosophy of history should have taken a holistic perspective ; i.e., ‘t should take into account all of these different perspectives trying to merge them as a holistic “con-spection”. The purpose of my classification of disciplines according to a perspective is to show the limits of capabilities of every discipline by its differing perspective and limited angle of its standpoint. In short, every kind of knowledge or understanding should be assured that there are many different perspectives for making sense of a subject; all of these understanding styles need to be filtered and re-examined and also re-evaluated by a holistic philosophy of history conspectively for a real understanding. So be it! And this is why I am trying to comprehend all of the aspects of kufic scripture from this holistic perspective of my philosophy of history.
But according to my philosophy of history not only these perspectives of understanding and reasoning tools of humanity are all considered some limited ways of comprehension, but also human understanding of reality is a narrow angle beginning from the “consciousness-capacity” of humankind.
Perhaps, I have to speak here little bit more about human consciousness, because, what we know about any culture or what we enjoy or hate in the world, all knowledge depends on our consciousness. And there are many unsolved facets of human consciousness. Later on comes the semantical problems of human languages and also problem of knowledge and defects of human reasoning. Yet, in spite of mankind’s limited ability of comprehension, we have to make sense of our studies taking into consideration every different perspective about the nature of those studied subjects, to be sure, as far as possible for in the limits of human abilities. Later on comes the evaluation of those mentioned sven disciplines and human knowledge in general. According to my understanding philosophy of history should provide a holistic understanding of wisdom to provide an orientation and a projective vision of future about the destiny of humankind, if it is going to be fruitful.
There is this verse in The Bible, Corinthians 13:11: “Videmus nunc per speculum in aenigmate: tunc autem facie ad faciem. Nunc cognosco ex parte: tunc autem cognoscam sicut et cognitus sum.”: For now, we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” This verse is rephrased by St Jerome, and he says: “per speculum videmus in aenigmate; et ex parte cognoscimus, et ex parte prophetamus”; that is, ”we see in an enigma through the looking glass in the dark: we comprehend in part, and in part we prophetize to foreshow events.” In fact, this is a statement that compares knowledge and belief. But consciousness also reflects the reality just like that. My consciousness is the mirror of my mind, and the reality is some enigmatic light rays reflected by the eye to the mirror of the mind, but they are reflected only in part, i.e., only visible light frequencies between 400-800nanometers. Indeed, most of the photons of the visible light again infiltrated twice by the two layers of the retina of the human eye. Then processed as ionized electro-chmic events separately with so many brain neurons to be perceived at last; as movement, color, shape etc. And then th’s partial sense datums are united again constructed by the mind as the picture of reality. In such a way, we are made aware of this enigma of the world in our speculum mentis, within the mirror of the mind. It is clear that the mind cannot touch to that enigmatic reality itself directly, but the mind can build only an impression of reality by its consciousness. Although that dictum had been said in a context of theology, it is also a beautiful and terse description about human knowledge and the position of historians and historical knowledge.
That is, consciousness aware of the outside world only by sensory inputs. I cannot doubt from the contents of my own consciousness, but let us remember that there is more than that impression which is reflected in the mirror of the mind. I can never doubt that it is my consciousness, it belongs to myself, and I am made aware of myself with my self-consciousness and same consciousness makes sense of the foreign natural forces or realities; like electromagnetic force which touches and disturbs my eye’s retina as light photons, or the weak and strong forces of atoms as material, touchable and sensible objects, either soft liquid or hard solid materials, and also gravity because of the inner ear’s sense of balance. They are not me, not myself, but some foreign forces of reality/nature that affect me. Thanks to my consciousness, I am made aware of those natural forces as an alien reality which is independent and not related to my-self. Metaphorically speaking, our skulls/cranium resembles the speculum of St Jerome, let us suppose that the eyes are the doors of cranium, then it also seems plausible to compare it with the Cave Metaphor of Plato. My consciousness and my Mind resides in the cranium of my head like a caveman; It senses only very limited and weak part of some light spectrum which comes throughout the eye’s door., I can see only a dim light ray reflected in the mirror of my mind or let me say, on the walls of the cave. If only I could go outside the cave, then I would see a very different reality than the shadows on the wall of the cave, or reflected in my mind’s mirror. From this metaphor comes the discussion of the world of ideas world and reality.
But can we leave the cave and go to see the outside world? My self or my mind cannot walk and go outside from the cave of its cranium/skull and make a direct contact with reality. In this case, the mind is forced to make an inference from what it senses about reality, a second-hand inferenced knowledge about the alien outside world by using the mirror/ wall of its consciousness, some impressions about the reality as the reflected shadows on the wall of a cave. It really resembles Plato’s famous cave metaphor or St Jerome’s dark mirror. I think Donald Hoffman’s metaphor of interface is also very good consciousness really resembles the computer interface we see on the desktop of a computer. Consciousness is an interface or an illusion of reality created by mind.
But then, if our consciousness also is a second-hand knowledge, what we can know directly about reality-in-itself? What we know for sure? The only thing I can not doubt is that I am Consciouss and also that consciousness belongs to me (it is not necessary now to speak about many different consciousness modes). That is, the most undisputable thing is not consciousness but rather the self-awareness attribute of that consciousness. According to the modern physicalist viewpoint of consciousness, even that self-awareness also is a construction of the mind. Sure as a Philosopher I can doubt and debate everything. But if you do not accept the validity of selfhood also then there is no dependable or unsusceptible ground on which we can stand and debate with each other. According to my judgment that self-awareness is the most basic and undebatable identity principle. There can be no logic without identity. Ego sum qui sum: I am that I am. that is a tautology that refers to itself with identity principle,and all logical rules depends on the identity. Anything is what it is! But our rational reasoning instruments has also their limitations and aberrations. I only mention here that, according to my judgement, Logic, language and math- these rational reasoning tools also have their intrinsic paradoxes and limitations which we can not eliminate easily. As once Wittensgenstein also said: ‘Philosophy is a struggle against the language which is deceiving the mind’..
On Language and Meaning
If only, I could speak in large details about all of these related subjects. I envy those ardent writers who wrote large volumes of books; and I say, ‘if only’, because, even though I have already written some books about my own philosophy of history; they all remained as incomplete works lacking some aspects of the history here and there. Such an endeavor was a “never-ending story” which had never satisfied me. As it is said by Salomon in Ecclesiastes: ‘cunctae res difficiles non potest eas homo explicare sermone non saturatur oculus visuauris impletur auditu’ : All things are difficult and wearisome; Man is not able to tell it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, Nor is the ear filled with hearing.’ (Ecclesiastes I-8) In short, every word is incomplete, man is not capable speaking.
Let us return to semantics and speak once again about the language itself. I have to tell what I think about the capacity of human languages too. Here I will mention briefly my judgements about some general aspects of human languages.
For now, ı will articulate some of my ideas as short judgements only jurisdictively: human languages are not capable of conveying truth, such as being a fully trustworthy description of living reality, because of the limits of, not only human consciousness, but also so many great flaws inherent in every human language. First of all every language categorizes things according to its own historical development and its own grammatical construction; i.e., every language describes passage of time differently. For example, Arabic grammar has only three different time tense: past present and future (mazi, muzari, istikbal). Yet I remember, though I can not recall the source of this saying now, once I had read that a scholar of semitic languages says that arabic language also has ‘imperfect tense’. May be it can not be a grammatical tense but could be a way of telling an imperfect time tense with some descriptive phrases. Anyway, Man can not understand the Time perfectly; we do not even know “what is time”, so it is only natural that human languages have many different time tenses.
Let us remember that Human languages are full of abstract, universal concepts. Man could not think if there was not any universal concept, but let us again remember that all universals are dubious like every generalization is. Sure I can not discuss at large all the arguments of platonists, realists, nominalists or conceptualists here, but universals are not really exists in the world extensionally. In addition, every human language is full of biased phrases such as judgements of intensional logic because of the conditioning nature of every human culture. More over, a judgement of intensional logic is not valid from the perspective of logic; but perhaps 80 per cent of every human language is made up with these universals and so many biased phrases that is articulated with an intensional logic. Logical propositions should be expressed as extensional logic if it refers at all to a to a concrete thing. If so, then the linguistic descriptions are always dubious because they always distort the reality and mislead thoughts and conducts of man.
Let us add that, not only universals but every word of language might be considered deceitful because of distorting reality more or less; because a word can be only a representation of some reality, a word is merely a metaphysical symbol and as Semanticist Alfred Korzybsky put it :’ The map is not territory.’ Likewise, “the word is not the thing”. To name something with a word does not necessarily imply that the referred thing, named thing, really exists either intensionally or res extensa. A name may designate a thing, and writing also metaphorically represents a thing. But a thing is not necessarily signified truthfully by a linguistic name, sign or symbol. As Immanuel Kant put it: ‘the thing in itself can not be known’, we know only appearances (phenomenon). Let us also remember that, there are many criters of truth in philosophy, not only semantical or coherent theory of truth but also many others, such as correspondence theory of truth and pragmatical, performative, sentential theories etc. All in all, as Salomon put it in eccesiastes, cunctae res difficiles, non potest eas homo explicare sermone… All things are difficult and wearisome; Man is not able to tell it.
I wish to remind here the famous ‘regress argument’ of Sextus Empiricus:
‘Those who claim for themselves to judge the truth are bound to possess a criterion of truth. This criterion, then, either is without a judge’s approval or has been approved. But if it is without approval, whence comes it that it is truthworthy? For no matter of dispute is to be trusted without judging. And, if it has been approved, that which approves it, in turn, either has been approved or has not been approved, and so on ad infinitum.[4]
- Sextus Empiricus. Against the Logicians trans. R.G. Bury (Loeb edn) (London: W. Heinemann, 1935) p. 179
Some additional remarks about art, science, philosophy, religion and mysticism
Art is art; it does not have a claim of truth, but beauty and harmony. So art is free to create something whimsically; but again, history is something else though it might be told in some art form of narration. Historian is not free to imagine historical events fictionally likewise historical novels. History in fact, is only a historiography; because the historical events themselves which occurred in the past time can not be known really and satisfactorily even by the actors of those events. Let us imagine we have sufficient knowledge about some historical events, but could we articulate and describe those events of history as satisfactory as, for example, like Tolstoy’s War and Peace? I think, to describe the whole series of events and people as truely as that masterpiece, exceeded even the capacity of human mind. Unfortunately, only through dubious historical knowledge one may understand little bit what is the experience of humanity about the progress of events and their ultimate results. I will not speak more about History here, because, I have already published my thoughts about the epistemology of historiography in a long article; so, I think it is enough to add that article at the end of this book as an annex for the more curious reader. See annex II.
Then comes Science on the stage and it claims that the scientific subjects can be tested and being so experimental, at least “inductively” shows that the scientific claims are more trustworthy. Science is about physical nature of matter, so that, it is all about the nature and of conceivable dead matter. Whenever scientists wish to strengten their scientific arguments theoretically, they use mathematics as far as possible, because mathematical formulas are provable; and because they depend on deductive reasoning, math is stronger than the inductive reasoning of scientific methods. Yet, ‘math is a first class metaphysic’ quote= Oswald Spengler; that means, to strenghten theoretical physic we use the metaphysical language of math though science tends to deny inconceivable metaphysical issues.
When it comes to Philosophy, first of all it means theoretical thought, and now I remember the saying of aristotle in his poetika, ‘istoria/history is all about unique special events and is not a suitable subject for making theoria; even poetry is more general than history’. Philosophers make wonderful systematic theories of everything in a logically consistent way but all of their sayings remain in the scope of some semantical analyses of linguistic concepts. According to my judgement some magnificient philosophical systems might be very consistently constructed, but because they use simple two valued aristotle logic as the reasoning instrument, it can not touch and understand even physical reality. Because contemporary Quantum mechanics of physic can not compromise with that two-valued aristotelian logic. Because as Heisenberg saidin his book “Physic and Philosophy” “imppossibility of the third option rule of logic does not apply in quantum mechanics”, that is, even the solid matter of microphysics can not be comprehended by philosophy. Only the physics of daily life, i.e., newtonian physic, is comprehensible by the philosophers but neither quantum mechanics nor cosmology. But philosophy is all about making consistent constructions of theories though it is forced to remain in semantical realms of language. Yet it teaches one how to think and how to doubt. Even though, because of the scepticism about old systematical philosophies, contemporary philosophy also tend to be analytical and epistemological instead of being synthetical as meaningful philosophy should be. Yet ‘philosophical principles can only be understood in their concrete expression in history” quote tolstoy. Without enough philosophical understanding, one tends to believe everyhing without doubt. That is why without philosopical/dialectical maturity, one can not think consistently and can not doubt ideas even whenever it is surely necessary to question them. In short Philosophy is absolutely necessary to make you alert in front of dubious issues.
For example latins say: ‘sapiens nihil affirmat quod non probet!’ But as a very sceptical philosopher, I can doubt even mathematical proofs questioning its fundamenatal axioms or postulats; saying only two words ‘petitio principii!’ which means, ‘your fundamental principles as axioms or postulats need to be proven at first!’ If I do not accept the euclidian axiom that ‘the shortest distance between two points is a straight line’, though it seems very plausible and convincing to our eyes and consciousness; then the euclidian proofs of the geometry depending on that postulate collapses. That is why come into existence so many different geometries, (Lobachevsky, Riemann, Poincare, Hilbert geoetries and so on) beginning from the 18th century. In addition, though most of the mathematical reasoning depends on two-valued aristotelian logic and built on consistency of mathematical reasoning, even math includes some reasoning problems like Cantor’s famous continuum hyphothesis and Goedel’ls theorem.
As for Religion or Theology, they are very important historical beliefs of human societies which bonds individuals of society to each other as a strong instrument of social cohesion. Religion inspired men to act all together to build a civilization, it was the reason and cause of many great events of history, so a good historian should respect the religions. Grand theological explanations and constructions of a religion comes into existence in time but then this constructed theology and many different sectarian viewpoints of that theology can change or re-evaluate or sometimes reconstruct the history of its own religion. Since it is all about history of that religion and its metaphysical beliefs, in time, it might become a very developed thelogical system and discusses all the matters of humanity in its scope and methodology, sometimes logically inferring absolute results and judgements, inferring from the beliefs of the religion. Theological reasoning can make different interpretations of even core beliefs of religion for the sake of the consistency of a theological system. It seems meaningful to theologians if the discussed matter remains in the scope of those theological studies. But beliefs tend to be assured of itself, and theologians forced to speak according to a credo, so they speak as if their belief system is an absolute truth and it can be proved logically. In fact, their arguments are only a debate, a reasoning style which uses only some inferences according to the rules aristotelian logic about the historical inheritence of the beliefs of a society. (In Western cİvilization and İslamic Civilization other civilizations are something else), This is why I consider some historical accounts dubious when it depends on some theological considerations. After all, a man or a society may believe anything whether it is believable or absurd, belief is neither math nor science, theology is only a sytematic knowledge of historical beliefs; so it can not be proven. After all it is possible to say “credo quia absurdum” or as St anselm says,“credo ut intelligam”. As my readers should have noticed, I have raised a very tough critisism even about mathematical proofs arguing by the famous phrase ‘petitio principii’. This is why I consider some statements of historians and theologians as dubious statements; and so I do not wish to accept thelogical implications of kufic script at face value as true statements. Anyway there are many different sectarian views of theological matters which are related with the history of the Qur’an.
There remains only Mystical Experience as a different claim of experiencing existence, in my classification of disciplines. If one has such kind of experience, it may convince him about the trustworthines of some metaphysical experiences like Revealation/vahy or other extra ordinary metaphysical events. Mystical experience is not a normal daily life consciousness of humanity but an “altered state” of consciousness. There are many kinds of conscious states, and even pragmatist William James acknowledges that mystical experiences usually make a strong and permanent imprint on the person who experience it, in his book ‘The Varities of Religious Experience’. And According To Henry Bergson, religious beliefs of orthodoxy is the static religion as an establishment, but the mystical interpretation of it is a dynamical religion. Great artists any mystics are aware of the illuminations coming from spiritual realms so they may have some more understanding about the claim of revelation such as Qur’an. In any way mystical experience is a different consciousness state which is an intensive experience of reality comparing to the ordinary , awaken life consciousness.