Heidegger and Epistemology

Posted on July 28, 2010
Filed Under Derrida, Heidegger, Peirce | 4 Comments

One thing I’ve long wondered about is how to think about epistemology. On the one hand some of the approaches to epistemology common in the analytic tradition seem a bit off to me. I’ve not gone through the details of how this affects the practical reasoning, but clearly some of the critiques that Heidegger leveled against the general Cartesian project apply to epistemology as typically conducted.

My usual replacement for epistemology is the Peircean and Derridean one of continued inquiry and seeing what beliefs remain stable after conducting inquiry. Peirce’s defense of this is that reality hits us on the head forcing our ideas into certain areas. Given enough time inquiry will lead to the correct answers as stable in the face of reality. In more Heideggarian terms we have the strife between earth and world where what unfolds for us is partially determined by earth (roughly reality as we’re speaking of it). Derrida largely follows Peirce, albeit with a bit of a Nietzschean twist. Truth is the selection by greater forces.

All of this I can buy but this focus on semiotics, hermeneutics and dialectic seems to avoid a central issue. What does it mean to inquire after knowledge? It seems to me the value in epistemology (and I read a lot of epistemological writings) is that it forces us to question when something is or isn’t knowledge. Even if the reasons aren’t ultimately completely persuasive (which is why there are so many positions within epistemology) there appears some prima facie reasons to inquire after these things.

It seems to me that the Peirce/Heidegger critique is valid as far as it goes but that the thinking in epistemology is very valuable.

I came upon by accident an old thesis from 1985 by William James Bartels, “The Status of Epistemology in the Thought of Martin Heidegger.” I’ve not read it yet but it looks intriguing if only to get me thinking of some of these issue.

Certainly one big change between the earlier Heidegger and the later Heidegger is a move towards artistic insight as constitutive of knowledge rather than rational investigation. This is roughly the Peirce/Derrida move. However it seems to me that, if only as a tool for an artist, rational investigation brings a lot. I’ve tended to rethink many things on the basis of various epistemology papers I’ve read. Peirce clearly valued a careful logical investigation of the issues as well. Even if, as the later Heidegger notes, there are ungrounded premises for our reasons, the way we arrive at those premises will be significantly affected by our general inquiry.

As Peirce says, don’t cut off inquiry.

Related posts:

  1. Heidegger and Epistemology II
  2. Religious Belief & Reformed Epistemology
  3. Philosophy is Inquiry
  4. Heidegger and Science
  5. Game Theory as Epistemology
  6. What is a Trump?

Comments

4 Responses to “Heidegger and Epistemology”

I disagree with Bartels on that “artistic insight” is what the later Heidegger was up to, unless that’s just a metaphor. Heidegger is always about ontology. Bartels is right that Heidegger was disinterested in grounding epistemology, but I don’t think the younger Heidegger cared much about tha either.

I’d paraphrase the passages on science in Contributions as saying that rational investigation does a fine job of grounding scientific knowledge. On the other hand, rational investigation is grounded by a particular understanding of being, so if you want to do ontology, you’ll need more than rational investigation. Heidegger would point out that ratio-nal is about measuring things, and he’s concerned about what makes rational investigation, and both art and science, possible.

I’ve only glanced through the thesis. The way he takes the later Heidegger I tend to disagree with. However I think artistic insight is a bit of a metaphor. At least that’s how I took it. Where I disagree with him is that I don’t think he quite gets the ontological difference right nor the transition from this to Beyng quite right. But I’ve not read enough to be sure of what he’s saying yet.

Regarding artistic insight, I think he’s more talking about how Heidegger’s focus on truth transitions from the early period to the later period. Artistic insight as an expansion from phenomenology seemed like a fairly good way of putting it to me. But perhaps he’s adding some connotations I won’t necessarily agree with. It resonated with me precisely because of the move from phenomenology to thought (as Richardson puts it) with the later being wrapped up with poetry, painting, language and the like. It’s very hard to describe what an artist is doing in the earlier Heidegger’s emphasis on phenomenology but I think the latter Heidegger’s emphasis does justice not only to the artist but to scientific thinking (which is much more art-like than I think it tends to get credit for).

Once again I have to be wary not to pragmatize Heidegger too much. But as I glanced through Bartel’s thesis I kept thinking of Peirce’s notion of abduction and Heidegger’s notions of Truth and started to see more affinity between them than I’d noticed before.

Well, not sure Peirce is correct that continuous inquiry would lead to something like Truth. Why should it lead there? Why can’t it be wandering around and end up nowhere? The underlying assumption is that we as individuals, contemporary groups, or historical groups, can evaluate the world and come to conclusions about it that are progressively closer to what the world really is. But (1) we don’t know whether our cognitive ability can really assess it as it is, if for lack of a better reason because (2) we can’t ever know what it really is since we don’t have a gold standard (aka, a God’s eye). The fact that we get better and better at certain things such as technology has nothing to do with Truth or Reality, but simply means that we are sometimes good at making things that work for our practical purposes that our human cognition tell us that it is worth pursuing.

This is probably why Richard Rorty said that metaphysical questions such as the quest to define Truth and Reality should just simply stop, and we should look for something more useful to do with our time. Of importance, Rorty doesn’t question the small case truth, concepts such as the ones used in formal logic or when we use the term in casual conversations. Same applies to reality vs. Reality.

I think Peirce’s position allows for things that lead nowhere. Also note that for Peirce this “convergenece” is due to the universe acting (i.e. the selection by forces) but Peirce is under no illusion this could happen in finite time. This is one of those places where Peirce’s notion of truth as a regulative idea is still wrapped up in his conception of infinity. (See Kelly Park’s The Continuity of Peirce’s Thought) If it doesn’t converge though then Peirce has an answer for that as well. (See for example this post from the old blog on Peirce and Truth)

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