Last night I had one of my frequent philosophy meet-ups with a different group of students. This was a module 6 meet up on "epistemology" -- how do I know that I know what I think I know? To try to make it relevant, we usually talk about moving beyond binary thinking on most topics into what I call "spectrum thinking," which is realizing that there are usually more than two positions a person could take on any given issue.
Last week I thought I would start writing up snippets of a typical Ken philosophy class these days as I have these meetups. So here's a relevant piece below. It's a bit of a mixture of material from the first and sixth modules of my typical philosophy class.
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1.5 Unexamined Assumptions
1. I had a moment in high school where a thought hit me. "How amazing it is that I just happened to be born into a family that has all the right beliefs! What are the odds?"
I was totally serious. I suspect that most people who read such a comment would either laugh or think I was joking. Do you know how many different interpretations of even individual verses of the Bible there are? I have sometimes used a parable I created from the issue of baptism. [1]
Susie is born into a Roman Catholic family and is baptized as an infant by sprinkling. Then her family switches to a Greek Orthodox church where they rebaptize her still as an infant -- by immersion three times in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Then she becomes a Baptist as a teen. They certainly insist she rebaptize now as a believer. None of those other baptisms count. Then she joins a Christian Church -- which of course they say isn't really a denomination. But they insist her baptism in the Baptist church didn't count all the same, so she gets rebaptized again.
Then she goes to a Lutheran church. They are horrified that she has now been baptized four times! They used to put people to death for rebaptism of that sort! Finally, she goes to a Friends/Quaker church. She's almost afraid to ask. But it turns out that they don't baptize at all.
2. We all start off our philosophical journey in life -- whether we're in a philosophy class or not -- with unexamined assumptions. These are things we not only assume are true -- but it's never even occurred to us that there could be another way of looking at them.
"Of course you don't eat cat or dog!"
"But why?"
"Because I said so."
There are plenty of newly married stories about things you never realized might be done differently. "Everyone knows," a husband once told his new wife, "that you roll toilet paper from the top." He was basically calling her stupid for doing something differently than the way he grew up. "Everyone knows you roll toothpaste from the bottom rather than squeeze it from the middle.
You don't know what you don't know.
Often on the first day of a philosophy journey, I will tell students that my goal is not necessarily to change their opinions on a particular issue. It is much more to help them to choose their positions more freely. Here's what I mean.
If you only know one position on an issue, then you have not chosen that position. You have inherited it. You have inherited it from your parents or from your culture or from the random workings of your brain. But since you don't know of any other options, you are a slave to that choice.
Philosophy means to help you to see that there are almost certainly other ways of looking at almost everything. Then, if you choose the same position, you have made a choice for it. Then, just maybe, you have freely chosen it rather than being forced to choose it without even knowing it.
3. There are a couple footnotes to insert here that are important for the contexts in which I normally teach. One is that I am not advocating for a sort of relativism here. With regard to the question of knowledge, relativism is a sense that all positions on issues are equally valid on a personal level. In other words, "subjectivism" is the name of the game.
Subjectivism basically says that there is no significant universal truth. Rather truth is more or less subjective -- what I think it is or want it to be. In other words, you have your truth and I have mine.
I don't actually think anyone could be a total relativist. After all, the claim "All truth is relative" is an absolute statement. And if you fall off a tall building, I don't think your beliefs on what will happen when you hit the pavement are relative. I can tell you what's going to happen.
The problem, in my mind, is not the question of whether something is true or likely true. The problem is that I have a screwy brain. For one, it's relatively small. It's finite. If we could catch a glimpse of the vastness of God's mind, we would realize how absolutely and completely stupid we all are, relatively speaking.
Second, my mind is "fallen." It does not work perfectly even on the level that it does work. Everyone makes mistakes. Even the greatest genius is not correct on every question. Indeed, individuals who think on the highest levels of logic can lack perspective in the most basic of ways.
So the problem is not with truth itself. It's with us as knowers of the truth. Later on, I'll discuss how the Bible does not eliminate this situation because we have to interpret it... with our brains. The story about baptism above gives you a glimpse of this problem.
Eventually, I'll share that I am a "critical realist." That means that I believe the world and truth is real. The goal is intact. It is worth pursuing it. In the thousands of years of human conversation, I hope we've made some leeway toward some good answers. We have the revelation of Scripture to help us, assuming you are a believer.
But we are stuck in our heads. Our view of the world is inevitably skewed in ways of which we are unaware. If we knew what our unexamined assumptions were, we probably would have examined them. The tentativity is not about truth itself. It's about ourselves.
4. The early Christians had a concept of believing on a path toward understanding. In the 1000s, Anselm coined the phrase, "faith seeking understanding" (fides quaerens intellectum). The search for knowledge never begins with a blank slate. It always begins with assumptions.
It is perfectly appropriate to begin the journey toward reflection with faith -- indeed, with the faith you have. Don't throw anything out to start the quest. Assume your faith is right. If you need to expand or tweak some things, do so cautiously.
But we all start off the journey "unreflective." [2] The philosophical journey is a journey toward greater awareness of myself as a knower of the world. It is a journey toward at least partial self-reflectiveness. (We can never be completely relective, because there will always be areas where we don't know what we don't know.)
It is a journey toward freedom.
[1] I used it especially in Who Decides What the Bible Means?
[2] Some have called this stage "pre-modern" thinking. I have come to find that language less helpful, though we will see it again later.
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1.1 What is philosophy?
1.2 Can philosophy be Christian?
1.3 How do faith and reason fit together?
1.4 Unexamined assumptions (this post)
1.5 Socrates and the Unexamined Life
1.6 What is good thinking?
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