Epistemology #4

Blindness, Authority and the Postmodern Dodge

                When it comes to the limitations of human intelligence, blindness is one the first and most important limitations we face.  The concept of blindness is captured in a lot of different ways.  It is central to the idea in quantum physics that there is a limit to what one measurement can tell.  In interpersonal communication classes it is part of the Johari window exercise designed to show students that there is always a part of themselves that they are not aware of when communicating with others.  The idea of a quadrant of blindness is also found in Ken Wilbur’s work on consciousness.  Maturana frames it in his axiom that everything that is said is said by an observer.  For Maturana there is no Objectivity that is the same for each observer.  Instead, he says that each of us have an (o)bectivity that we can only confirm as real and not delusional by sharing it with other (o)bjectivities.

                Blindness means that epistemology has to have a dialogical or relational metric to it.  No individual can, independent of others, produce a true statement.  Further, every ‘true’ statement is only true in the context of the connected whole.  The true can be wrong or threaten the structural coupling of the group to its environment, but it is still true.  The Western tradition of individual consciousness misses the role that shared observation, as Maturana would have it, plays in defining what is knowable.  In that sense, blindness never really is resolved, it just shifts to a cultural context that either confirms or denies what the individual thinks is real.

                In societies with a strong imagined order, blindness is counterbalanced by authority.  The individuals or institutions that hold authority can make it seem that what is known within that system is valid and complete.  The sanctioned view may – or may not – be accurate, which is one way that authority can be at risk.  But most of the time the authority sustained by the imagined order prevails.  Unless there is a disruption in the order – or a Foucault shows up – individual blindness is occluded by cultural blindness.

                One of the interesting things about this moment is that the imagined order and cultural authority are in disarray.  The intersection of cultural perspectives makes it impossible to take any one perspective as authoritative.  Some commentators blame this on what they call postmodernism (which in most cases is just short-hand for cultural relativism), but it seems highly unlikely that a group of geeky English and philosophy post-docs at a poorly attended conference in some major city had any impact on any of this.  What is really happening is that postmodernism (at least this version of it) is simply describing what is actually happening.  The authority generated in the long running narrative of what the West has called modernity is unravelling.  The election of 2016 is proof of that.  In those circumstances, with no real authority to counter it, individual blindness emerges and is fueled by the unsanctioned communication of the internet.

                A responsible epistemology has to return the concept of blindness to the individual.  In the absence of an imagined order that is sustainable with our biological couplings, the individual who knows is responsible, morally and ethically, for the act of knowing.  That is, the multiple (o)bjectives around us are also our responsibility.  Knowing, as Maturana says, is not trivial.  This epistemology must also navigate a new form of blindness, machine intelligence.  Not everything possible in a simulation or algorithm can be reconciled with the biological couplings of humans.  Not everything that can be simulated is human.

                We have an opportunity to see what blindness can teach us that was always prevented by the intrusion of the church, the state, and the school.   Blindness increases our connections to others and the planet when we act knowing that only in connection can we act wisely.