In a message dated 4/5/2016 1:55:24 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, McEvoy
quotes from Xenophanes.
McEvoy:
"Fragments quoted by Popper provide an earlier formulation of what is a
linchpin of the non-justificationist approach: Xenophanes points out that as
for truth no human has known it (in a justified sense), and even if we were
to utter a truth (correctly) we would never know it (in a justified
sense)."
Indeed. Popper claims to have discovered the method of conjecture and
refutation "in use" at the outset of the ancient Grecian (or Griceian)
Enlightenment (for this 'enlightment' is Popper's rather ambiguous phrase for
the
philosophical movement that
began in Ionia and culminated in the work and methods of Socrates) most
particularly in the thought and the writings of Xenophanes of Colophon.
Popper refers to this philosopher as ‘The Unknown Xenophanes’, since
surely 'The Known Xenophanes' sounds otiose.
Xenophanes spent some years at Elea, a city on the Italian coast south of
Napoli.
Xenophanes was a philosopher, whose reputation, like Grice's has been
unjustly calumnified ("by the anti-Griceians," Grice adds).
Xenophanes held that the earth is infinite in extent.
Analogously, Grice used to say, "As far as I know, not too far I gather,
there are infinitely many stars."
Xenophanes also held that the because the earth is infinite, the sun never
sets, and has to be created anew each day.
Simplicius doubted that Xenophanes believed that, because the earth was
infinite in extent, a sun has to be created anew each day.
Xenophanes rejects the theory of his fellow Ionian cosmologist Anaximenes,
according to whom, that the Earth, the Sun, the Moon and the stars float
in air.
Xenophanes writes: "At our feet we can see how the Earth with her uppermost
limit borders on air; with her lowest, she reaches down to Apeiron."
Xenophanes could here be rejecting the theory of Anaximenes expressly in
favour of a version of that of Anaximander.
He could be saying not that the Earth is infinite, but that it reaches down
to ‘the Apeiron’ of Anaximander, an ether-like fluid which according to
Xenophanes surrounds both the Earth and the air above it.
This would be an intelligent conjecture, even to Grice.
Xenophanes believed that there is a truth to be known, independent of human
beliefs and perceptions (the stance that Popper calls ‘realism’), and
that it is known to god, and originally to god alone.
Another way of putting this is that, for Xenophon, reality or the truth is
what the gods know.
Human beings, by contrast, have to struggle to find it.
Here, then, is Xenophon's fragment on revelation, non-revelation and
progress.
Xenophon writes (or, as Geary, and perhaps Helm, prefer, "sang"):
"The gods did not reveal, from the beginning,
All things to the mortals; but in the course of time,
Through seeking they may get to know things better."
Some of the implicatures of this verse can be set on one side for the time
being.
But it at least bears out Xenophanes’ realism (his belief that truth is
independent of human beliefs and perceptions).
Xenophanes also sang:
"But as for certain truth, no man has known it,
Nor will he know it; neither of the gods
Nor yet of all the things of which I speak.
And even if by chance he were to utter
The perfect truth, he would himself not know it
For all is but a woven web of guesses."
Xenophon's word for "...guess..." (δóκοs) has been translated by others as
‘seeming’, and, as Popper remarks, it could also be translated as ‘
conjecture’. Grice once translated as 'implicature', but it did not stick.
Xenophanes's verse goes beyond asserting the conjectural character of human
knowledge, and presents a theory of objective knowledge, for which, even
if you or I may say something true, neither you nor I nor anyone will know
that it is true.
Truth is objective in a way that makes it independent of claims and
beliefs, and depends only upon the facts.
At the same time these lines hint at a difference between objective truth
and subjective certainty, or at the distinction Grice makes between:
i. It is certain that p.
ii. I am certain that p.
However certain we may be about our beliefs, says Popper, ‘we can never, or
hardly ever, be really sure we are not mistaken; our reasons are never
fully sufficient’ (30).
Popper’s insertion of ‘hardly ever’ invites the implicature that one would
allow certain possible exceptions, such as maybe knowledge of the more
accessible of necessary truths, and possibly knowledge of one’s own
intentions.
If Xenophanes was following Grice's conversational maxim, be brief, he
(Xenophanes) might have envisaged such exceptions as these, but surely we can
hardly expect a minstrel to have specified them when composing Greek
hexameters for public recitation.
But since it might seem reasonable to read philosophical scepticism into
this fragment, Popper hastens to add that Xenophanes was not a philosophical
pessimist.
"Which does not make him an optimist, either" -- Grice adds with sarcasm.
Xenophanes believes that in the course of time our attempts at knowledge
can improve or get better.
Xenophanes sang:
"The gods did not reveal, from the beginning,
All things to the mortals; but in the course of time,
Through seeking they may get to know things better."
What Xenophanes means by “to know things better” seems clear in
implicatural terms.
Xenophanes seems to mean the approximation to objective truth: closeness
to truth, affinity with truth.
Xenophanes sang:
"Let us conjecture that these things are like the truth."
Here, Xenophanes's ‘these things’ probably refers to some of his own
teachings. ("That's how _I_ use "these things,"" Geary notes).
For Xenophanes, truth is objective.
For Xenophanes, also, even when we express the most perfect truth, we
cannot know this – that is we cannot know it with certainty. We can never have
sufficient reasons.
Since ‘knowledge’ in the common usage of the word in Grecian and Griceian
is ‘certain knowledge’, there can be no knowledge.
There can only be conjectural knowledge.
For all is but a woven web of guesses.
It is controversial that factual knowledge held when the holder is unaware
of having it can hardly be regarded as involving claims to certainty.
In our conjectural knowledge there can be progress to something better.
"Better knowledge" is a better approximation to the truth.
Cfr. Grice on the implicature of "... knows best".
But it always remains conjectural knowledge – a web of guesses.
Let us consider whether Xenophanes was really committed to the methodology
of conjectures and refutations.
Can we be sure that Xenophanes was a rationalist, and would have shared
Popper’s antipathy to inductivism?
Much turns on what Xenophanes would have counted as ‘getting to know things
better’ in the progress fragment.
Xenophanes sang:
"The gods did not reveal, from the beginning,
All things to the mortals; but in the course of time,
Through seeking they may get to know things better."
On the one hand Xenophanes could have intended an accumulation of
conjectures, refined by ever more sophisticated adjustments when the initial
conjectures were refuted or proved inconsistent.
But Xenophanes may not have restricted himself to such a strictly
Popperian approach, and could have held that ‘getting to know things better’
can
sometimes be achieved through inductions based on experience.
What little evidence we have suggests that Xenophanes was prepared to
compare some human experiences with others in point of accuracy, and conclude
that some give us a better basis for belief than others.
Xenophanes sang:
"If God never had chosen to make the light-yellow honey,
Many a man would think of figs as being much sweeter."
Here we have to interpret ‘much sweeter’ to implicate ‘much sweeter than
figs appear to him now, because the comparison with honey reduces the
impact of the sweetness of figs.
Xenophanes is teaching us not to be content with first impressions, since
subsequent experience often corrects them.
It should be admitted that Xenophanes would have resisted claims to
knowledge based on induction, in view of the possibility that any theory
whatever
may need to be revised.
Yet Xenophanes probably did hold that theories based on broader experience
are better, in the sense of more reliable, than ones based on limited
experience, and that an example of this is to be found in the beliefs about
sweetness of people who have experienced both figs and honey.
And if so, Xenophanes's methodology will have favoured NOT ONLY
conjectures and refutations, but inductions based on accumulations of
experience.
In addition, Xenophanes would have insisted on the power of negative
instances, as when the theory that nothing is sweeter than figs is overturned
through experience of honey.
Xenophanes was not distinctively committed to Popper’s method of
conjectures and refutations, being potentially able to sympathise with
inductivism
and abductivism as well, as his own practice shows.
Etc.
Cheers,
Speranza
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