The Forms of Knowledge and the Methods of their Acquisition

1. Knowledge is apprehended in various forms, serving a variety of functions.

a. Knowledge acts as a reliable descriptor of the world. It offers what we may call
“facts” about the world.
b. A fact is the way in which objects in the world are organised.
c. The task of knowledge is to describe facts and explain the relations between objects
that lead to the emergence of these facts.
d. Knowledge is also a repository of solutions to practical problems, problems such
as hunting, or driving, or acquiring a means of livelihood.
e. It seems then that knowledge has a variety of functions, sometimes to solve
practical problems in our lives, at other times to describe a fact about the world,
such as “it is 27 degrees today” and to further explain why such a fact exists.
i. What makes “it is 27 degrees today” fact but not “it is hot”? One states the
measure of temperature, which sensibly two individuals can agree upon as
having the same meaning.
ii. It would be invalidated by the measurement of the temperature by a machine
which differs from the statement.
iii. The feeling of heat, while communicable given both individuals know what
it feels like to be hot, experience that feeling under different subjective
conditions. There is no falsifiability of their statement.
f. All the above implies that knowledge must come in a form that is communicable.
If one cannot communicate what they mean by a set of propositions, that set of
propositions is “nonsense”.
2. This necessarily means that knowledge must correlate with “truth”. A “true” statement is
one which reflects precisely the way objects in the world are related. In the sciences, one
tests the truth of a proposition through experiments which test for positive evidence, as
well as for falsifiability.
3. The statement “all swans are white” is validated by the widespread existence of white
swans. It possesses a falsifying criterion - the existence of a swan that is not white.
4. Knowledge must be predictively successful. The statement “all swans are white” implies
that all swans in the future will also be white.
5. Take the case of a non-white swan. “Why was this particular swan not white”. To answer
this is the secondary task of knowledge. To determine what causes the arrangement of
objects in the world which present themselves as the facts we see.
6. The answer to the question “why was the swan not white” might be found in the existence
of an object that acted as a “cause” and the whiteness consequently being a resulting
“effect” of the existence of this object.
7. The statement may now be amended to “all swans containing this object, will be white”.
The existence of a non-white swan containing the object causing whiteness, is the new
falsifying criterion.
8. This approach presupposes that the picture of the world we see is a passive recipient of
atomic objects which are the causally active components of this system. In the example
above, the object, for instance the presence of a genetic trait, is what caused the whiteness
of the swan.
9. Consider a more practical instance. Instead of telling my friend the colour of swans, I wish
to tell them about the best way in which to hunt. The problem is thus: “How may I best kill
the animals in the territory I find myself in”. The best methods of hunting animals
invariably are the ones that provide most success, and it would then be knowledge that this
specific method of hunting is best for killing animals. This question is revisited later in
more detail.
10. Knowledge can be thought of as a set of proposed solutions to questions we may have
about the world. From questions as simple as “what is a chair” to ones as complex as “why
do stars come into existence”.
11. The essential characteristics of knowledge are the existence of positive substantive
evidence while also having easily verifiable negative evidence. The establishment of the
truth value of any knowledge is done through a proof.
12. A proof is a demonstration of truth. It explains why a claim about the world is true, either
through evidence or through reasoning, often through both.
13. All knowledge is structured around axioms. Each domain of knowledge has base
assumptions of what is true and what is not, and from these assumptions follow methods
which are used to produce new knowledge. Axioms can be thought of as a “toolkit”, a
repository of conceptual tools a discipline may deploy in order to solve a problem.
 14. The first axiom is the statement of a discipline’s principal problem. It determines what
tools one decides to prioritise. For instance, it would be pertinent to ask if the question
economics aims to solve is that of constrained optimisation, or one of forming a consistent
theory of production and profit. The questions a discipline chooses to prioritise in turn
define the kinds of knowledge the discipline will create.
15. The second question is methodological. Take for instance the subject economics once
more. If an axiom of economics is that demand and supply conditions are what determine
price and rate of profit, the implication is that the causally active components, I.e.,
consumers and producers are the only stakeholders to be understood.
16. Beliefs or assumptions about the nature of the problem being addressed define the methods
used to solve the problem.
17. The collection of methods to solve problems is a conceptual framework. Disciplines or
areas of knowledge are better thought of as conceptual frameworks which have overlapping
subject matter rather than as isolated knowledge systems.
18. The conclusions of different disciplines might overlap but what is distinctive about them
is the principal problem they attempt to solve, and the methodology they adopt to solve a
problem.

Phenomenal Forms of Knowledge:

19. Objects are perceived by living subjects in the world, and one form of knowledge is that of
the objects that surround us. Another form of knowledge is one which pertains to
understanding the subjects that surround us.
20. There exist forms of knowledge that describe relations between objects which would be
true irrespective of our observation. The forms of knowledge with which this is possible
are phenomenal forms of knowledge.
21. Phenomenal forms of knowledge explain phenomena observed by conscious subjects.
a. Phenomenal forms of knowledge are explained causally. The approach taken to
understanding the phenomena around us is a causal one.
b. Causality is the rational principle on which phenomenal forms of knowledge
operate. This causality is often understood empirically, through observations.

Models and Objective Languages:

22. The identification of causality and the explanation for why the causal relation takes a
particular form is tested by models.
a. To test one’s theory of something, one must have certain assumptions.
b. Describing these assumptions and mapping out predictive outcomes based on these
assumptions tests for the universality of the claim made.
c. Take once more the case of the non-white swan. The model in developing an
understanding of the colour of swans was one which stated that genes played the
key part in determining the colour of a swan.
d. A successful model presents an understanding of underlying processes driving
relations between objects and facts.
23. Models must be communicable. For one to understand a model describing the colour of
swans as being caused by a gene, one must know how to communicate the meanings of the
words swan, gene, and the relation between these two objects.
24. Some models, particularly in the physical sciences, use objective language.
25. Objective languages have terminology to describe one, and only one object. In the
conceptual space then, meaning is perfectly correlated with the object under discussion.
Hydrofluoric acid is denoted by a formula, and all instances and only instances of
molecules of hydrofluoric acid would match the description given by the formula.
26. Objective languages allow us to describe the relationship between two objects as observed
by an individual but would remain true even in the absence of the individual observing.
27. The skeptical rejoinder, that knowledge would not exist without a conscious perceiver, is
irrelevant. One can isolate properties of an object as causally active and describe this object
with clarity.
28. This means that when describing the relations between these objects and the facts they
convey about the world, one can be assured that the model the objective language offers us
is one that would remain true without the existence of the observer. Primary traits are
aspects of an object that can be drawn out independently. This is discussed further below
in the example of ancestrality.
29. Objective languages then allow us to draw accurate, and clear links between objects in the
real world and concepts in the linguistic world and allows us to describe those relations
with clarity.
 30. Mathematics forms the language of the physical sciences. Principles of mathematics can
be thought of as the grammar in which the physical world we observe seems to be
organised. We have constructed the grammar of mathematics such that it describes
accurately the physical world we live in.
31. The relations described by objective languages are ones which hold true universally, for
they universally signify the same thing.
32. An objective language can describe processes with or without the direct perception of those
processes. It can describe qualities of the object which lie beyond the sensible, through a
set of relations.
33. For instance, a set of mathematical relations can describe phenomena such as blackholes
or quasars, even without our ability to perceive them.
34. Furthermore, science can talk about things that happened before the givenness of any
consciousness, such as the creation of the universe, or the creation of the earth, events
which quite clearly are ancestral.
35. The predictable response is that this perception of things which occurred prior to givenness
have been retrojected from the present. However, science can talk of a time where there
was no givenness at all, I.e., it was prior to the existence of being altogether, and this is
only possible through the existence of objective languages. How else could one talk about
things which one did not perceive at all with any degree of certainty?
36. Phenomenal forms of knowledge are those which describe processes independent of
perception. There are limitations to this as well. Properties which may be mathematizable
are describable only in a limited frame.
37. The sensible properties of objects, properties that may be more relevant in developing an
understanding of things around us likely cannot be described by objective languages.
38. What they can describe are measurable properties such as age, length, and the way these
properties may interact with other properties, for instance the trajectory of a ball. 1

1This now is an issue faced by quantum mechanics. Unlike other forms of measuring physical objects, in quantum
mechanics, the observer indeed influences the result and, in this domain, the traditional atomising tendencies of
science have failed to explain this behavior known as “quantum entanglement”. This poses methodological
challenges in the domain of the sciences, and will be discussed in further detail on the following notes on
“phenomenological forms of knowledge”.
 39. We may call those traits which are inherent and measurable primary properties. Secondary
properties can be thought of as those which reveal themselves upon interaction with a
consciousness, such as taste.

Phenomenological Forms of Knowledge:

40. The second form of knowledge we will consider are phenomenological forms of
knowledge.
41. These forms of knowledge arise directly out of the existence of human consciousness and
human life.
42. What precisely do we mean when we are referring to consciousness? Let us think of
examples of characteristics conscious beings possess.
a. It is the condition for perception, I.e., that which allows us to perceive.
b. It is also what allows for self-reflection and awareness of one’s surroundings.
c. We know this given we ourselves think of consciousness as a “problem” to solve,
not a condition of our experience.
43. Consciousness, then, can be thought of as what allows the thinking subject to reflect on
one’s own consciousness. Given that consciousness is a condition for perception, it isn’t
an object, for an object cannot be a condition.
44. However, given that consciousness is also tied intrinsically to the body, one which is
material and indeed an object, the conscious subject is often viewed as an object, and
herein lies the problem the social sciences have faced.

Natural Languages:

45. Natural languages are learned through “recursive processes”.

46. The meaning of a chair is not discerned through listing out to a child the characteristics
all chairs and only chairs possess, but through pointing to an example of a chair. The
child applies the meaning of the word chair to the object, while the object at the same
time is what lends meaning to the word.
47. The chair is only understood as a chair when the circuit between object and concept is
complete. At the same time, the definition of a “chair” is always negotiated, there must be
a rough correlation bidirectionally between the concept and the object.
48. This is why one is, for instance, able to debate the definition of a tomato as a fruit or
vegetable.
 a. Due to the tomato’s widespread use in savoury foods and the sparse use of fruits
in the making of savoury foods, one’s natural inclination is to assign the meaning
“vegetable” to the tomato.
b. However, per its proper definition, a tomato is a fruit, and this is due to it
satisfying properties that all fruits have and only fruits have.
c. The important insight here is that tomatoes continue to popularly be referred to as
vegetables.
49. The meaning of the chair or the tomato is derived not from the chairs or tomatoes
inherent properties, but from the system of objects they find themselves in.
50. However, a chair is also only a chair in relation to other objects. If the only object to exist
in the world were a chair, it would be rather fruitless to draw a distinction between it and
other objects.
51. The essential property of a chair then is that it is not a table, not a tree, not a ball, and so
on. It is possible to understand the meaning of the word “chair” simply through observing
the overlapping traits that many objects we sit upon share.
52. The word “chair” imbues the object with meaning, but the object too in turn imbues the
word with meaning.
53. The recursive nature of languages allows the relation of inner experiences to articulable
outer experiences.
54. The gesture is the perfect self-referential object.
55. A gesture in isolation means nothing. However, when placed in the cultural context it is
found the gesture is abundant with meaning. It has no logical correlate in the world, yet it
conveys meaning to the receiver.
56. Meaning is anchored in the relative position of one object to the other objects in that
system.
57. Consequently, a map of the system itself is perhaps more useful to the individual attempting
to understand it than definitions of individual objects in the system.
58. This allows us to discuss subjective physical states such as warmth or coldness too. For
instance, one observes that when another is feeling cold, they wrap themselves in warm
clothes, perhaps shiver if they do not, and generally exhibit behaviors that I would too if I
was feeling the same way.
 59. In this way, I associate with the word “coldness” the symptoms I experience when feeling
“cold” and assume others will exhibit the same or similar symptoms when experiencing
coldness. However, it is not necessary that the same external condition produces the same
feelings of coldness in everyone, the same weather might be comfortable for one and chilly
for another.
60. Our understanding of others’ worlds comes from a relation of concepts in their world to
that of ours. One assumes that the word green means the same for an individual I have met
and myself, as long as both of us point to all objects that are green and only objects that are
green when thinking of the word green. It would also require that one is able to sensibly
communicate to another when an object is not green.
61. Beyond belief, there is no other way to verify that the two experiences we have of the
colour green, or the feeling of hotness are the same.
62. Any articulation of inner experience is imbued with meaning by correlating it with external
characteristics.
63. The feeling of happiness is symbolized perhaps by a smile, the feeling of anger by shouting,
the feeling of sadness through crying, and so on.
64. The relation of our inner experiences often consists of relaying behavioral symptoms of the
same, of “feeling better” or “being more outgoing”.
65. It is not possible however to verify that what a stranger and I describe as happiness is
experienced in the same way.
66. Therefore, the definition of words in subjective languages is not always clear, for their
meaning, while evolving, is often understood recursively. The organisation of this meaning
can be done through what Wittgenstein called “Family resemblance”. Conceptually similar
objects sharing overlapping traits may be grouped together, and sub-categories may be
made where relevant.

On Methodology:

67. What atomism allows one to do is create a repository of laws which explain the relations
of objects to each other which will occur under universal conditions.
68. These become a special subset of “facts”, universal relations between objects which will
form the basis for the understanding of more complex relations between objects.
 69. Newton’s laws of motion or the laws of thermodynamics can be thought of as these
special facts. These are facts which pertain not only to the objects in the system, but to
the system itself.
70. Atomism allows us to do this for if one understands the nature of the atoms, then one can
universally demonstrate laws by which these atoms behave when interacting with a
system.
71. This was a method that had served the natural sciences exceedingly well. To isolate
systems of knowledge to better understand the behavior of objects in specific contexts,
meant that insights about objects were rooted uniquely in methodological approaches
despite overlapping material in terms of their focus of study.2
72. The current methodological paradigm in the social sciences is as stated above.
73. The social scientist has desired to uncover a repository of laws which would allow them
to demystify the natural world, which would allow the social scientist to systematically
explain the social world.

On Phenomenology:

74. There is no “representation” of the picture that the viewer forms in their mind, instead
they apprehend the picture as is.
75. The idea of a “representation” is a linguistic game.
76. Language allows us to form representations of facts in the world, and it is these
representations we communicate.
77. The linguistic sign associated with a particular object is associated consequently with the
object, and thus we form a representation which is correlated with the bject.

2It is important to note that the atomistic project in the realm of the physical sciences gave the
ability to better manipulate and control the physical world around us as well. The scientific
revolution placed an emphasis on an atomistic understanding of how things worked
mechanistically, emphasizing more on the process of how things work rather than the final
outcome. This is to say, that science itself transformed from a reflective process of understanding
the world around us better, to one which attempted to leverage this understanding of the world
around us to transform it, which is what technology is. While science for its own sake still does
exist, the vast majority of resources are now devoted to technological progress, with lesser and
lesser importance being given to the pure understanding of concepts around us. This is the
functional turn we have witnessed in many disciplines over the last century or so.
 78. We use language to form representations which we may communicate to others, but our
own cognition is not one which forms representations in order to understand the world
around us.
79. The formation of representations then is better understood as a communicative function,
rather than as a cognitive function.
80. A picture is apprehended in its totality and immediately, there is no reconstruction of the
picture in the mind.
81. The observation of constituent elements of the picture happens only post apprehension of
the total picture.
82. Objects in the picture are not put together to form the picture, instead the picture is
apprehended as a whole, and the objects then are noticed and organised later.
83. The picture is said to be well described not when one is able to in detail explain the
nature of the objects in the picture, but is instead able to explain the relative position of
objects in relation to each other, to finally describe a coherent whole.

On Natural Languages and the Relation of our Inner World:

84. The use of languages has an evolutionary aspect.

85. New concepts are birthed through the use of language.
86. The relation of our inner world to our outer world is difficult without the ability to model
such an experience.
87. Take for instance the feeling of love. It is impossible to describe, universally what love is
but nevertheless we are able to describe the feeling to others through metaphors.
88. The inner experience of a feeling of hotness is understood outwardly through behavioral
or physical responses to feeling hot which are widely common. Meaning is derived
similarly for gestures.
89. The inner experience of an emotion as abstract as love is modelled, through gestures,
through actions, through poetry, and through art.
90. There remains no specific logical correlate to a word such as love, but we remain capable
of intelligibly discussing words such as love and relating our own experiences of it
through natural languages.
91. Given the descriptive ability of language, one is able to draw relations between objects in
a system which previously did not exist.
 92. This is how natural languages are evolutionary, they evolve to find ways to describe the
picture.
93. The picture is describable only insofar as it is possible to remodel the picture.
94. If one does not comprehend a picture, take for instance a picture with far too many
objects for the human mind to cognize, then one is unable to remember such a picture.
95. The generative use of language allows for the birthing of new concepts.
96. A metaphor used to describe an otherwise unrelated concept draws a generative relation
between two objects that previously logically did not exist.
97. In a linguistic sense however, the two objects are correlated within that system, allowing
for the birth of new concepts within fields of knowledge which use natural languages.

On the Observer

98. The observer is the observed.

99. The key distinction between the social and the natural sciences is that in the social
sciences, the observer is always the observed, the analyst is always the analysed.
100. No subject can be thought of as independent from the system they find themselves
in.
101. The subject is a node in a system. Think of a shape, the points on that shape are
“meaningless” in isolation, however, when one establishes a system which relates the
different points on a space, the dots are no longer mundane objects but points/nodes of a
system/shape.
102. Coherent systems are symmetric.
103. This means that the relations between objects in the system are well defined.
104. The strength of the relation between two objects determines the coherence of the
system, while the description of the object aids our ability to determine which other objects
they might be related to.
105. The description of a man as a father draws a relation between him and a
son/daughter, while also acting as a descriptor of the man’s parental status.
106. The clarity of the relation between one object to other objects in the system leads
to not only a better understanding of the system, but to a better understanding of the
individual objects as well.
107. The meaning/properties of objects in social systems are derived not from the
objects themselves, but from the systems they find themselves in.
 108. The objects interactions with the system determines the nature of the system, but
in turn the system exerts its own influence on the object, i.e., the nature of the object is
dependent on its place in the system.
109. Knowledge in this domain can be considered reflexive then. The analyst and the
analysed are both the same, and the

Notes:

1. Objective languages possess what we shall primarily call relational capabilities, while
natural languages possess descriptive capabilities.
2. This does not imply then that objective languages are incapable of description, or that
natural languages are incapable of relations
3. It is impossible, necessarily for us to have an objective language describe our inner states.
4. This is not to say that our inner experiences/qualia are not isomorphic to objects which
may be described objectively (symmetric geometric shapes for instance), simply that the
process of sense-making is done through natural languages.
5. The statement “x qualia is isomorphic to symmetric shapes” means very little if the
individual does not know the reason the isomorphism is relevant.
6. To tell a person that positive qualia are isomorphic to symmetric shapes will not explain
the qualitative experience of what it means to experience said qualia.

It was through a rejection of Aristotelian teleology, wherein the ends no longer mattered, or the
purpose things were meant to serve no longer mattered in developing an understanding of them,
which helped the natural sciences make the leaps in knowledge that it did. Rather, inverting this
principle to understand how things worked from a bottom-up approach is what served the domain
of the natural sciences exceedingly well.

Seeing the success of this method, the social sciences too would dispense with any attempt at
understanding motives or feelings attached to the actions of individuals, instead attempting to
attain a causal understanding of what drove the individual atomistic elements of a society to act in
a particular way, mechanically. The objective of this method too was all too clear, with the idea
being that an understanding of the mechanistic elements would further help in the manipulation
and structuring of society along more orderly lines. This would allow the social sciences to create
a repository of laws which govern the functioning of a certain societal structure, much in the ways
natural laws help govern the natural world. While this was the intent of such a project, it was
destined to fail.

This movement away from Aristotelian teleology also signaled a move away from a desire to
understand better how society functioned to a more technocratic understanding, one which desired
not to understand better how the world of subjects worked, but to better understand how the world
of subjects could be modified in order to construct a more orderly society. As society would go on
to be dismissed as “untrue” by the later naturalist social thinkers, wherein the only true entity in
any society is the individual himself (a byproduct of the atomistic approach), political life was no
longer directed towards the creation of better characters, but towards gaining a better control of
society. The new social project hence would be unable to differentiate between a reflective
understanding of society or human beings, and the manipulative control which comes about as a
consequence of it, with both instead going hand in hand.

The ways in which this leads to problems, of course, can be seen in the myriad problems economic
and psychological models face in explaining human phenomena. The emphasis of math in
economics, for instance, has revealed a candid inability to consistently predict what should be
predictable phenomena such as an economic crash or recession. Furthermore, there have now been
distinctions drawn between computable general equilibrium and general equilibrium, with the
former being one which takes into account multiple assumptions about the economy as well as
acknowledging certain gaps such as the lack of clearing of the labour market (unemployment),
something that never happens when an economy is in a theoretical state of general equilibrium.
The solution that is advocated in the face of these problems, of course, isn’t to move towards a
different form of explanation altogether, but to double down on the same approach which results
in flawed outcomes. The result of this of course is clear for all to see. For computable general
equilibrium to work as we desire it to work, the data one extracts from a system needs to be fed
back into the very system to generate desirable outcomes, as mentioned in the previous paragraph,
as a form of social engineering. This can be seen in the instance of Cambridge Analytica, where
data collected about individuals was fed back into the very system to engineer very specific results
in the 2016 election. This form of social engineering can also be seen through data regarding
consumer spending habits being aggregated to help form targeted ads, or their social media activity
being used to create such ads. The existence of data being fed back into such a system will help
create more predictable, and predictively successful outcomes.
The question to answer then, is how can one develop an understanding of phenomenological forms
of knowledge without a desire to socially engineer outcomes, but to develop an understanding of
how it works? The results of the current project in the social sciences have revealed very clearly
the logical end of this process, one of totalizing control to help generate more socially desirable
outcomes, a society which will remain quite akin to the one Huxley envisioned in Brave New
World.

The logic on which the phenomenological forms of knowledge operate can be thought of as an
aesthetic one. This is to say, the form of understanding we must prioritize must be less causal, and
more contextual. For instance, we can consider human beings as story-telling animals. This can be
seen through how even the mere impulse to understand the natural world around us was understood
through a narrative sequencing of the events that took place around us, through God or other extra-
terrestrial means. While this method of understanding proved deficient in the domain of the
phenomenal world, it could prove incredibly useful in understanding the phenomenological world,
or the world of the subject. This can be exemplified, for instance, by the approach taken by
psychoanalysis. There is a contextual, story-telling element involved in the works of the two major
psychoanalytic thinkers Freud and Jung, ones which can be placed within a certain historical and
cultural context. Literature too, will prove to be indispensable in understanding the logic on which
people operate, and Freudian theory too can be thought of as structured similarly to a Greek tragedy
(not in the least due to the Oedipus complex, a literal Greek tragedy).

A story-telling process, for instance, does not attempt to universalize. While the theories that do
follow this form attempt to come up with universal forms of explanations, the attempt is done not
to arrive at a universal truth, but to arrive at a framework which helps better explain human
behavior. This is what psychoanalysis attempted to do, wherein instead of giving a set of laws,
there were a set of descriptions, and if the patient fit the set of descriptions given for a disorder,
there was an attempt to understand the story the human had to say. This was done through an
understanding of the context from which they came, why they feel the way they often do, and only
then is the patient’s problem fully understood. As opposed to giving a set of laws which would be
universally applicable, this approach instead focusses on the context, and merely prescribes a set
of approaches that may prove useful in uncovering some sort of truth.

This story-telling impulse, one which was powerfully repudiated by the physical sciences as
inaccurate (rightly so), however may not be as deficient an approach in helping us better
understand the world we live in as subjects. The social sciences thus likely will never be able to
provide us with explanations which will have a stock of general law like assertions which will
remain true in all circumstances, but this should not be the aim of the social sciences either. Instead,
the aim should be to develop a contextually grounded understanding of the world of subjects, with
broad guidelines that may help us form such an understanding, guidelines which can be found in
the stories that the people belonging to such societies may have to tell us.