Knowing Anything

In all of the discussions I have had as a result of this blog and all of the other philosophical discussions I have had over the last few years there is one phrase which never fails to bug the hell out of me.

“Well, you can’t really know anything.”

People always feel very clever when they roll this one out. It is, they feel a knockout blow to any declarative statement, logical progression or even simple list of facts. “You can’t really know anything.” That’s it. They win.

This phrase, and other’s like it (“Everything is subjective.” “You can’t disprove the existence of God.” etc.) are not conversation starters but rather conversation enders.

Of course, on some level, they’re right.

Are we incredibly limited creatures who’s only ability to understand the world around us is through the conduit of our own narrow senses? Yes. Is it possible that those senses are lying to us? Yes. Are we subjective creatures who perceive reality through the filter of our background, desires and prejudices? Yes. Is it possible that our perception of reality is entirely manufactured? Yes.

We could be locked in a chemical coma with our brains hot-wired, as in The Matrix, or lying in a padded cell in a mental institution. It is even possible that we don’t exist at all.

In fact, once you start going down this road absolutely anything is possible.

And that’s the problem.

If you can’t really know anything, then the sun could rise in the north tomorrow. Pigs could fly and fire could freeze. How could we survive in a world where we can’t know anything?

I’m not saying that ideas like this should never be discussed. Any idea which forces us to rethink our perceptions and preconceptions is a useful tool. Asking the question “Can we really know anything?” is the beginning of a wonderful conversation. Although in my opinion a much more interesting conversation can be had by asking, as my friend, Mike Hoover, does, “How do we know what we know?” There is a lot of mileage and introspection to be got out of that one.

However stating that nothing can be known is in my opinion both irresponsible and even dangerous.

Here’s why:

1. It’s not scientific. Disprovability, is in many ways a more, important, scientific criteria than provability. People often say, “You can’t disprove the existence of God.” Which is true, but so what? As Bertrand Russell used to say. “You also can’t disprove the existence of a flying, invisible, spaghetti monster.” In fact, there are an infinite number of things which I cannot disprove. Science is interested in those things which could be disproved. I could disprove evolution right now. All I have to do is find a porcupine that gives birth to a cactus. However, there is no experiment on earth, or mathematical equation I can produce, or even logical argument I can create to disprove the existence of God or the spaghetti monsters or anything else. If the same statement can be used to argue for or against anything, it has no scientific value.

2. It’s Lazy. Anyone can say it, at any time. It requires no work, no education. There is no research involved or years of labor. It requires no intelligence or discipline. It is, in my opinion, the last argument of a lazy mind and represents, the desire to close, not only the eyes of the speaker, but the eyes of the world.

3. It isn’t useful. And this is really the big one. “You can’t really know anything.” Puts us back in the caves without even a fire to keep us warm.

Imagine two primitive men back in the ice age. One says, “I don’t know why those wooly mammoths come back to the same watering hole every year but I know that they do, so let’s set a trap.” The other says,”Well you can’t really know anything.” Which one of them is more likely to feed his family? Which one of them is more likely to learn why the mammoths return each year? Which one of them will pass that knowledge onto his children and, more importantly, the knowledge that you can, in fact, know some things? In short, which one of them will survive and grow and which one of them will remain stagnant and probably die?

Try saying “You can’t really know anything.” the next time you fly in airplane, drive across a bridge or go to the pharmacy to pick up your antibiotics. Those things, and many others were created by people who believed that knowledge was something that could be gained and used for the betterment of themselves and the rest of the human race.

“You can’t really know anything.” Has the wonderful advantage of sounding, smart, cynical, and superior all at once but it is, in my opinion, a very clever dead end. We can’t know everything. That’s true. The pursuit of knowledge, however, begins with the idea that we can know some things and that knowledge, itself, is worth pursuing.