Reply to the response to Entry 293

"I must say that my failure to explain my position adequately has lead to some confusion. First of all, I do refuse to associate my position with either that of Roger McEvilly or with that of Kevin Ward. I hope that you will understand why as you read further.

You say:

‘1. the injection of knowledge from without is inconsistent with the notion of knowledge being derived from what we reason of past knowledge.’ (Excerpt from response)

I failed to make it clear in my original entry that my position was in total coherence with orthodox Christianity and Protestantism. The distinctively Calvinistic and Augustinian tradition of my views, I thought, was made clear by my use of the term ‘sensus divinitatis’. I pray that you interpret my position in the greater context of orthodox Christianity.

‘2. it does not follow how the Creator or anything else could have true knowledge itself and know it. (i.e. in order for the Creator to have true knowledge of ourselves and implant it, the Creator must have true knowledge of itself since it is the creator of ourselves. To create implies an act of infinity.)’ (Excerpt from response)

You seem to be offering an argument much like that offered against belief in the causa sui. If there were a Creator, would it not be irrational for us not to believe that He knew all about Himself and ourselves? Looking at His Holy Scripture, as well as the rest of His creation, I find it most natural to think that this not only was created by a rational God, but by one who knew exactly that which He created. It would seem the more irrational to think that a God who did not have such knowledge could be the creator of such a world as this.

Anyhow, this would only seem to be a problem if one conceived of God to be of the nature that we are--frail, ignorant, dependent, and finite. This, I believe, is the same problem that people have with accepting a causa sui. They argue, in effect, that if God be as man, then He cannot be God. This is what I like to speak of as a straw-god argument.

‘3. there is no empirical evidence of knowledge being injected into our minds (Also, how is this knowledge being implanted? In what form is the knowledge being implanted? How can we know within the bounds of reason that there is a Creator since it is apparently beyond our comprehension?)’ (Excerpt from response)

Here I would like to mention that this injection theory is viewed, by myself, as just one way to talk about matters so as to ease tensions and make things more interesting, by connecting hitherto unconnected dots, etc. This is not ‘what actually happens’, but rather, it is, I believe, potentially edifying in numerous ways.

Let it be pointed out here that there seems to exist a great difference between knowing of something, and comprehending something. The reasons that it is rational to believe in a Creator may exceed the interest of overcoming the proposition. What has happened, I believe, is that coming from where you are, this proposition present a seemingly unbreakable wall. However, from where I come, this does not. My other beliefs do not find this particular proposition to be greatly problematic. (That, of course, doesn't mean I can't learn from you.)

I apologize for not being more brief, but I believe this is necessary for clearing the confusion. The reason that I speak of ‘injection’ is, mainly, so that I can connect three central words in Christian belief (i.e., knowledge, life, and love). Furthermore, I want to draw the connection between the covenantal agape love of Christ toward his bride and the love also known as eros. The two are, as the Bible suggests, related in many ways. Life comes into the picture because I believe that at the moment of conception we become human beings. We know and live from the same point in time. Neither precedes the other. They are necessarily coexistent. Inter alia, I believe that they come together because both life and language, in a broad sense (and, thus, knowledge), are irreducibly complex. (For more on irreducible complexity, please view Michael J. Behe's _Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution_.) If our language and ‘mind’ is irreducibly complex then it would be most rational to think that just like life, which is irreducibly complex, knowledge comes by ‘injection’.

I did not touch upon the content of injection. It is definitely uncertain to a great extent. But, considering that people, even from the time in their mother's womb, react differently to stimuli it would be natural to conceive of this knowledge as, though basically similar (just like people's bodies are basically similar) individual. I do not think of the content of it as Plato's Forms, nor some other transcendental categories. Rather, it is that knowledge which allows us to know how to learn from and interpret stimuli. It is that which allows us to recognize similarity, to think, generally, in accordance with the rules of logic, and so on. Certainly I could not give some exhaustive list. I would here like the readers to think of it in relation to the ‘semen fidei’ that Orthodox Christians like to talk about. It is a convenient manner of speech, not an ‘actual process’. Perhaps we should speak of the Creator injecting into us the ‘semen scientiae’. This is not a ‘copy’ of God's knowledge. Rather, it is what we conveniently call ‘knowledge’ because it ‘is’ that which enable us to cope as rational beings in His world. It is what forms the patterns of our mind, just as it is through injection that our bodies begin to be formed. So, like our bodies, it is something that continues to grow and mature. Thus, I do not belief your criticism (1) to be a problem.

‘4. it does not follow how something can be directly transplanted into ourselves, without a relation being established between the thing transplanted and ourselves, so that what we know of the thing transplanted is mere representation of it. In other words, even implantation faces a relationship. One way around this point is to say that knowledge of who we are is inherently part of ourselves, but this leads back to the notion of implantation.’ (Excerpt from response)

There is no problem with there being a relationship between the Creator and the created. In the Bible, this is spoken of in terms of a ‘covenant’ (berith), which is one of love (agape). It is God's love and care for His creation that causes Him to implant in us a certain knowledge, and give us life. If only we could be more thankful to Him to whom we owe all and are moment by moment sustained. Then would peace and love conquer this world, and we would give freely just as we have received freely.

‘5. where does the Creator's true knowledge of ourselves come from? It appears that the knowledge must be representational, since it more reasonably cannot be ex nihilo (‘out of nothing’), and therefore the knowledge of ourselves, whether implanted or not, is not true knowledge.’ (Excerpt from response)

I do not have a clue why this knowledge must be ‘representational’. And, strictly speaking, I do not like to speak of ‘ex nihilo’. Strictly speaking, we were created ‘ex Deo’, but not from ‘material substance’ nor from some ‘divine substance’. I only use it because it is an orthodox term, and, thus, convenient. Asking where the Creator's knowledge comes from is much like asking where the Creator Himself comes from. I wish that all would take into consideration the fact that God is not as man. As St. Paul says, ‘God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar; as it is written, That thou mightiest be justified in thy sayings, and mightiest overcome when thou art judged’ (Rom. 3:4). I do not boast of a non-circular argument. Rather, I say that from my ‘circle’ things make sense--they are the more rational. This does not mean that I have overcome all difficulties. But, had we no faith in the uncertain, we would have no faith in the certain.

As I understand it, all that is required in overcoming the proposition ‘we cannot truly know who we are and be who we are at the same time’ is the holding to a noetic structure that would more rationally think of that as having been overcome than not. I believe I have overcome the proposition. However, I do not believe that I will successfully persuade you (the Inexpressible Committee) of the main portions of my noetic structure, which must be believed in order to overcome the proposition in the way that I have. I, ‘having neither wit, nor words, nor worth, action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech,’ am not able to be sufficiently cogent. Thus, doubtless had I been one of you I would have found all this immaturity nothing more than the ignorance of some teenager. All that I hope is that you may the more clearly understand my position, and why it is cogent to myself."

Berek Qinah Smith December 4 2001

Response:

You argue that "noetic structure", "what forms the patterns in our minds", "certain knowledge" is injected by the Creator into ourselves at conception, and we assume you mean part of that "certain knowledge" is knowledge of who we are. You contend further that life for a human being begins at conception, and that partly due to the "irreducible complexity" of both life and language/knowledge, they are co-existent with neither of them preceding the other.

We agree that in order to process information into conscious knowledge, there must be structure in place. Though the structure can only determine the framework for the knowledge, and not the knowledge itself, since the knowledge is apparently derived from sensorial, biochemical, neurological interactions, or any other interactions. Michael De in Entry 265 touches on the necessary structure/mechanism for knowledge, stating that "... arguments by Chomsky and others give convincing support for innate knowledge as a foundation for learning language - i.e. as some sort of, say, basic structural language for learning the syntactico-grammatical structures of language. There's further arguments for the innateness of ‘synthetic a priori’ knowledge - i.e. generative spatio-temporal knowledge (generating/projecting concepts of space-time in reality and thought) - and mechanisms for consolidating, mediating and processing sensory information (otherwise sensory information would go ‘in and out’ without some sort of initial knowledge base)."

However, it does not follow that the injection of knowledge is a logical necessity for us to have knowledge, and since you concede that the injection of knowledge is "not what actually happens", we will dismiss it as a serious contention. What we think is important is that though a structure/mechanism must be present in our brains and elsewhere to process information, it does not follow that the structure/mechanism actually contains purely innate knowledge. We concede that encoded knowledge is likely passed on from ancestors, but that does not establish the existence of purely innate knowledge. To do so, we would need to show how knowledge can originate ex nihilo (out of nothing), which leads to an insurmountable problem of showing ex nihilo because we can only know by imputing causality onto things.

Also, we agree that life and language/knowledge are "irreducibly complex", but the same can be said for anything if we delve deep enough into the nature of it. Though we think the notion of "irreducibly complex" is not entirely accurate because it implies that we could know things in entirety if it were not for their complexity. In our view, the real issue is that there is a limit on what we can truly know, so that things are not necessarily "irreducibly complex", but simply beyond our comprehension. We should add that the apparent fact that life and language/knowledge are co-existent at some level, does not show how we can truly know who we are. (i.e. co-existence does not necessarily equate with true knowledge.)

Though the reasons that it is rational to believe in a Creator may exceed the interest in overcoming the proposition, the reasons do not negate the fact that if the proposition is most reasonable, it contradicts the notion of Creator because our knowledge of a Creator, or anything else, stems from our conception of who we are, which in the case of the proposition is shown to have limited truth-value, and therefore, the concept of Creator or anything else will have limited truth-value as well. In other words, our identities act as the basis for everything we know, and therefore if it is more reasonably shown that our identities have limited truth-value, then everything else will have it as well. Hence, we do not see how you could rationally believe in a Creator while knowing/realizing that your identity has limited truth-value viz., if you can only establish that you exist without truly knowing who you are, it does not follow how you can rationalize, except through mere speculation, that you are a creation of a Creator.

You ask "if there were a Creator, would it not be rational for us to believe that He knew all about Himself and ourselves?" This question is asking something we cannot answer, because the notion of Creator is beyond our comprehension. Also, from our limited perspective, it does not follow how anything or anyone can know who they are, including a Creator, because by being the knower, they would have no space to know who they are, except if they get outside of themselves, and yet by doing so, they would cease to be who they are, thereby have no ground to know who they are, because who they are would no longer exist. Hence, whether as ourselves or outside of ourselves, it does not follow how we or anyone else, including a Creator, could truly know who we are.

Though even if there is a Creator of ourselves, it still does not follow how he can know who we are, because we would be an extension of him, and therefore the Creator would have to know himself in entirety to know ourselves in entirety, which we have shown above is not probable. Moreover, the notion of Creator from our perspective, is nonsensical, because there is no such thing as pure creation (ex nihilo), because the Creator is necessarily part of the creation of ourselves viz., there is a causal relationship between Creator and the created. Hence, in order to conceive a Creator, he must create ourselves through himself so that we become an extension of him rather than a creation. But how can anyone create something solely through oneself? There must be a basis or material for the creation, which leads the conclusion that we are an invention of an Inventor. But as mentioned, since we more reasonably cannot truly know who we are, at least at this stage of the competition, it follows that we cannot know we are an invention of an Inventor except through mere speculation.

308. Entry:

In dispute of the response to Entry 306

"In reading your response to my entry, I have the sense that you did not 'truly' understand my argument. It did begin with what you admit as the fact. ‘We agree that one way to overcome the proposition is to establish that there is no separation between the knower and known.’ Your following statement, however, completely mischaracterizes what I said.

‘However, you then argue that in order to know whether there is separation between the knower and known, we must experience it. But experience implies that we can only know from a position of separation between the knower and known, or you say ‘[we could only experience the non-separation between the knower and known] after the fact, [which is to bring the] separation of the knower and known into being.’ This point leads you to conclude that the proposition is ‘flawed’ because we can never truly know that there is no separation between the knower and known.’ (Excerpt from response)

I did not say that we could only experience the non-separation after the fact, I said that the experience could only be reflected upon after the fact. Since the experience is registered in memory to be reflected upon, it is known, even if, during the experiencing there were no knower. We know it happened because it has been registered in memory. We now know of a time, as we can know what we had for breakfast, in which there was no separation between the knower and the known. This knowing, in which we can compare the time of not knowing with this time of knowing, where we are reflecting upon that difference, is what I base my conclusion upon.

I did not conclude, as you said ‘that that the proposition is 'flawed' because we can never truly know that there is no separation between the knower and known.’ From the fact that such a state has been registered in memory, it can be known. If you resort to ‘truly know’ as meaning the knowing during the state, then of course there can be no knowing as there is no self-reference during that time of being. The second part of the proposition, in this case, is not necessary, so I must reasonably conclude that that is not what you meant. This is not, however, the flaw I was referring to.

You replied: ‘We disagree with your conclusion because the proposition is not asserted from a position of truly knowing or experiencing that the knower and known are separated, but from what we more reasonably know about the knower and known. Also, the competition is not asking for a true proof or experience that we can truly know who we are, but a more reasonable proof that we can truly know who we are.’

Again, I do not base my conclusion upon ‘truly knowing or experiencing that the knower and known are separated’ as you suggest. As to the rest of your statement, are you implying that reasonableness is more concrete than experience? If so, then overcoming means nothing more than what one deems the most reasonable, and if you deem the proposition the most reasonable, then there is no overcoming, ever. I took it that this is not what you meant, else all you are doing here is collecting entries to rebut.

You replied: ‘You may respond that the competition is flawed because it can never come to a true solution, so that there will always be doubt regarding any limited or more reasonable solution that is derived at. But we would respond that your argument is self-defeating because apparently no true solution can be derived at for anything, including your assertion that the competition is flawed.’

Yet again you mischaracterize what I said. I never said the competition was flawed; I said the proposition itself was flawed. I thought the purpose of the entry was to overturn the proposition. I said, ‘the proposition itself, in the light of that difference itself being capable of being reflected upon, would then be seen to be flawed and thus not necessary of being overcome.’ If you read that as an attack upon the competition, I would be interested in knowing why you so react. How do you see my argument as saying that no true solution can be derived for anything? Why do you see what I say as overthrowing everything? Is the proposition the lynch pin of your understanding?

And finally, you replied, ‘So based on your initial observation alone from a position of more reasonableness, it appears that the proposition is valid, because we would always be a step behind consciously experiencing the union of the knower and known,’ and went on to speak of an infinite regress as buttressing your case. This is where I see the flaw. When we have available the reflection which contains the experience of not-knowing, any reflection upon 'myself as myself' already contains the bottom of that bottomless well and the reflection stops at that first reflection, there no longer being the infinite regress. In other words, since one knows the bottom line, i.e., having acquired it, each reflection already contains the bottom line so is constant in respect to it; the unity of knower and known is established in each reflection.

Since ‘we agree that one way to overcome the proposition is to establish that there is no separation between the knower and known’ and since the knower as the known has been, and continues to be established with each reflection, we must agree that the proposition has been overcome mustn't we? We may now say that the proposition itself is then limited to the case where the bottom line is not available for reflection, where the experience has never been registered in memory, where, in fact, the reflection upon oneself does, and must, fall into the pit of infinite regress, or ‘recursive reflexivity.’ And even in that limited case, the proposition suffers from the flaw mentioned earlier of adding an unnecessary statement as a seemingly necessary statement."

Buster Price December 7 2001

Response:

You claim that experience is independent of reflection, in the sense that an experience can be "registered in memory" prior to reflection. From here, you claim that based on the temporal "difference" between what is registered in memory viz., non-separation between knower and known, and the reflection itself of the memory viz., separation between knower and known, we can truly know who we are. However, it does not make sense how you can separate experience, and its registration in memory, from reflection. In other words, how can we know we actually experience the non-separation of knower and known, when the non-separation of knower and known is apparently beyond our comprehension because it refers to a state of conscious oneness?! You appear to side-step this problem, without realizing that experience being a conscious phenomenon, is tied to what we know. (i.e. we can only experience what we are capable of knowing, otherwise we have no way of knowing we had the experience.)

As example, you claim that there is no fundamental difference between the memory of what we had for breakfast and the memory of non-separation between knower and known. Yet our memory of what we had for breakfast is based on what we consciously remember to have eaten, whether remembering the actual items on the menu or table, or remembering actually eating the items. However, it is unclear how we can actually remember when we ourselves as knower were united with what we knew, because unlike what we had for breakfast, the actual separation of knower and known is beyond our comprehension. viz., we can only reflect from a perceived separation of knower and known. You say that experience, and its registration in memory, overcomes this problem. But how?! Do we remember ourselves as knower united with what we knew like remembering the breakfast fruit on the table in front of us? No. We cannot remember the unity of knower and known because it is something we cannot comprehend. All we can remember is the experience of ourselves thinking that we had an experience of union of knower and known, without really knowing that we did. Therefore, even if experience is registered in memory, it does not necessarily follow that what the experience refers to really occurred.

In contrast, you appear to claim that an experience registered in memory is concrete, true, beyond doubt, viz., if an experience is registered in memory then it truly occurred. Or in your words, ".... when we have available the reflection which contains the experience of not-knowing, any reflection upon 'myself as myself' already contains the bottom of that bottomless well and the reflection stops at that first reflection, there no longer being the infinite regress." What you overlook is that even though the experience appears to have occurred at some level and in some form because it is registered in memory, it does not follow as mentioned that what the experience refers to actually occurred, and that the notions of "registered in memory" and "unity of knower and known" or an experience retrieved from our memory, as examples, are subject to infinite regress no different from any other thought.

In short, you merely claim that an experience of non-separation of knower and known shows that we can truly know who we are, without showing why the experience should be believed other than that it is registered in our memory. To support this position, you incorrectly claim that the reflection upon the memory of an experience, pertaining to unity of knower and known, is devoid of infinite regress because it is at its "bottom line". Without the anchor of registered memory as absolute truth-value, your position succumbs to arbitrariness, which leads to the fundamental question that needs to be answered: how can we more reasonably know that we can experience the unity of knower and known? In other words, what is it about our experience that allows us to know that we actually experience the unity of knower and known? (Note, Joel Wendt in Entries 238, 239 takes a similar position to your own, whereby he tries to separate experience from what we know, or in his words, ".... [the proposition] can only be overcome by experience. Experience can never be reduced to words, and words can only point a finger at experience.")

Other issues:

The competition is not about what one deems the most reasonable, but attaining the most reasonable position, whether for or against the proposition, based on the consistency and soundness of the reasons for positions. As we acknowledge in our response to Entry 302, the competition is not perfect because ultimately someone must make the final decision on what is the most reasonable position. Though to compensate for this unavoidable imperfection, which no system is immune from, we have made the competition transparent, and we have mechanisms for replies and disputes, not to mention a two week public forum on unresolvable disputes and potential successful entries.

We disagree that the second half of the proposition is unnecessary because it establishes a context for the first half of the proposition. For further discussion on the parts of the proposition, see Entries 286, 291, 295, 302.

Entries 303-306 Entries 309-312