On knowing and truth, pt. 2

In Notes from the Underground, Dostoyevsky remarks of our instinctive - and violent - aversion towards pure (scientific) objectivity:

And that is not all: even if man really were nothing but a piano-key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point... I believe in it, I answer for it, for the whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano-key! It may be at the cost of his skin, it may be by cannibalism! And this being so, can one help being tempted to rejoice that it has not yet come off, and that desire still depends on something we don't know?

One of my favourite bits from J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey goes:

“It was the worst of all in class, though,” she said with decision. “That was the worst. What happened was, I got the idea in my head – and I could not get it out – that college was just one more dopey, inane place in the world dedicated to piling up treasure on earth and everything. I mean treasure is treasure, for heaven’s sake. What’s the difference whether the treasure is money, or property, or even culture, or even just plain knowledge? It all seemed like exactly the same thing to me, if you take off the wrapping – and it still does! Sometimes I think that knowledge – when it’s knowledge for knowledge’s sake, anyway – is the worst of all. The least excusable, certainly.” 

Pilate said to him, “What is truth?”

Because truth, in its purest form, offends us. Its specificity startles us; it harbours an extreme devotion to itself - a degree of particularity unrivalled in all of nature. How can we know it? Surely in the face of such exceeding singularity we would cease to be individuals; we would be consumed whole, what would be left of us to call our own?

How narrow a way it seems from a distance! But if we dared approach it perhaps we would catch a glimpse of the broad expanse of path that lies just beyond its gate, stretching far and wide and deep into an infinite horizon (made up of many lines, all forming just one).

On knowing and truth, pt. 1

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I
 lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
 - Sylvia Plath, Mad Girl's Love Song

Two things, or maybe three. How fragile our minds - how fragile our world, in which we experience only through our minds. How limited. How incapable of reaching that great height, from which we can know anything to be true - except through faith of some sort. A leap. A knowing beyond knowing.

And can even the truest skeptic live without belief in the possibility that there are things worth knowing that have yet to be known?

***

Started thinking deeper into the concept of objectivity upon encountering R.D. Laing's The Divided Selfn. Laing writes:

In contrast to the reputable 'objective' or 'scientific', we have the disreputable 'subjective', 'intuitive' or worst of all, 'mystical' It is interesting, for example that one frequently encounters 'merely' before subjective, whereas it is almost inconceivable to speak of anyone being 'merely' objective. 

The first definition of subjectivity I came across online was this:

existing in the mind; belonging to the thinking subject rather than to the object of thought.

But what, then, isn't subjective? If it is only through our mind that we perceive anything at all. If our very existence is a purely subjective one, if subjectivity is not a crutch but the crux of all experience - how can we lay claim to any form, shape or type of objectivity?

Again, Laing writes:

We all know from our personal experience that we can be ourselves only in and through our world and there is a sense in which 'our' world will die with us although 'the' world will go on without us.

And I cannot help but think: Perhaps one day we will really come to believe we know all the answers, all the explanations, all for the reasons for everything, and I will be able to explain everything away - to science, to reason, to the laws that govern nature - but then, who and what will be left in all the universe, to explain me? 

***

Because now, what does it mean to know anything? It seems that to lay claim to knowledge one has to either admit ignorance, or be found guilty of it.

But what about things that can be assessed objectively? Studied, measured, calculated, deduced. In the grand court of Reason, is everything false until proven true?

If you were to make the claim that objective knowledge - quantifiable knowledge - is the only knowledge worth knowing, what evidence would you call up to the stand? Even if one could acquire the dimensions of the universe or a formula to predict every possible trajectory of the human mind an objective case would not be made.

Maybe we all have a little more faith than we realise.