Common Sense Knowledge and Science

international | worker & community struggles and protests | opinion/analysis Tuesday April 26, 2011 15:24 by Paddy Hackett - none paraichackett at gmail dot com

The relationship between these two kinds of knowledge.

Both common sense knowledge and science involve belief.

Common Sense and Natural Science

The common sense beliefs of people mean that they experience things as existing independently of themselves as individuals. What we call commonsense belief is based on instinct and not upon a philosophical argument that can be logically proven. This means that tables, chairs, rocks etc. are believed to have an existence independently of humanity. This is the instinctive knowledge that defines humanity. Instinctive knowledge is otherwise known as common sense knowledge or folk knowledge. Yet folk knowledge qualifies as valid knowledge. It is an instinctive form of knowledge embedded in the human brain since the emergence of Stone Age Homo sapiens sapiens. It forms the basis for the emergence of the physical sciences.

Now this common sense knowledge, in a sense, serves humanity well in its quotidian struggle for existence. On the basis of these instinctual beliefs people, according to Bertrand Russell, transform knowledge by acquaintance into knowledge by description. Knowledge by description is, ipso facto, social knowledge or shared knowledge. Because it necessarily transcends the person’s private knowledge it is thereby social or public knowledge. It is thereby shared public knowledge that is communicatively accessible. Scientific inquiry is a more systematic form of public knowledge.

Common sense knowledge forms part of the knowledge necessary for the struggle for survival of the human species – primarily the securing of food and shelter. This knowledge is inherently grounded in certain forms of action such as the use of technology in the control and manipulation of nature. This is the original basis of the natural sciences. Socially conscious labour is a central feature of praxis.

Nature,Society and Meaning

Humans actively engage with nature in the context of meaningful social relations of production. They do not just investigate the physical world per se. The physical world is scientifically investigated in the context of meaningful social relations --however intangible the latter may be. This being so we can claim, then, that all scientific inquiry is ultimately meaningful. Subjecting phenomena to scientific inquiry is not necessarily to reify and instrumentalise them, as Critical Theory (and some mainstream Marxists) mistakenly claims, since meaning is still an integral aspect of the entire unified process of praxis. Humanity engages in scientific activity as part of conscious social struggle with nature which forms a significant part of historical development. Meaning underlies all physical and scientific action with respect to nature. It is the societal aspect of scientific knowledge that renders it meaningful. Thereupon it cannot be said that natural phenomena such as atomic and subatomic particles are meaningless. Nature and history form part of an integral meaningful life process.
However history and nature are related to causal relations and regularities. Atoms don’t have intentions and thought processes whereas people do. Arguably they may have such cerebral properties when they are combined together under specific configurations. Consequently the actions of people are not simply circumscribed by regularity and the natural laws. Their actions are largely caused by motivation based in purpose. The actions of people then are a complex product of natural laws, social laws and individual purpose.

Kantian Transcendentalism

Kant’s transcendental approach to questions of knowledge involves investigation of the epistemological conditions that must be in place in order to render knowledge secure. What is that makes it possible for a human being to have knowledge of the world? Kant’s answer appealed to the way in which the human mind processes the experiences that it receives from the senses. Kant saw the emergence of knowledge as something that appeared in a pure unadulterated way independently of concrete reality – a philosophical phenomenon. By contrast the more historical (or perhaps ‘quasi-transcendental’) approach looks to the development of humanity as a biological and cultural species driven by revolutionary praxis.

As I have heretofore indicated knowledge cannot be characterised, as Kant mistakenly believed, as an unfiltered epistemological process. It (non transcendentally) emerged out of concrete struggle which gave it, especially in the initial stages, an adulterated form. Science is not a Fichtean-like pure activity metaphysically divorced from the venal praxis of the great unwashed masses. Rather it has its roots in the practices of industrial workers, craftsmen and farm workers and in the practice of anybody who solves everyday practical problems in the context of the exchange process. The sciences are thus a distilled and disciplined aspect of the everyday capacity that humans have for engaging in consciously social labour.

Hermeneutics

There is an hermeneutical dimension to historiography. This is because it endeavours to make sense of use values, architecture, artefacts, texts, institutions, social residues and social relations that orevious generations bequeathedd to us. The methods of the natural sciences are of no direct use to historiography. Social and historical events are also quite different sorts of objects than those studied by the natural scientist. The natural scientist does not ask what an atom means and what motivation it might have. The natural scientist simply confines her/himself to pursuing the causal relationships in which the atom is involved.

But the hermeneutics exercised by historians on objects such as books, institutions documents and architecture consists of the physical world which is subject to the same laws of nature. Books and other use values is a product of the human social struggle to survive and develop. However this struggle is paradoxically undertaken on the basis of a physical or natural environment. This struggle is influenced, even determined, by the regularities and properties of the physical world. For example success in understanding the historic significance of specific buildings and other artefacts is partly due to the ability of nature to influence buildings and books. The degree of human success in socially and consciously struggling with nature will demonstrate this in relation to the kind of architecture or use-values made available. Indeed, as Foucault might argue, many architectural constructions are incarnations of ideology. Ideology is hardwired into them. This is what lends them their inherent hegemonic character. Generally these functioning buildings cannot be liberated from their oppressive character. Oppressive social relations are inscribed in them. Artefacts, under analysis, manifest the kind of past social relations obtaining then. We can undertake an hermeneutical exercise on such objects precisely because it is conscious social struggle with nature that led to the production of these artefacts. The intricacies of this struggle generated production. The struggle implies both the discovery and manipulation of natural laws; the social relations under which these laws are manipulated together with the consciousness involved in this intricate process. Each factor in the process has a bearing on what is produced and how it is produced and to what degree. Without the production process interpretation and understanding are impossible. The process of production is then the basis for the materialist conception of history. It is the basis for interpretation and understanding. It is the basis too for the discovery of the laws of nature and for the physical sciences. The human production process is the basis for the existence of human history. It produces history. This history leaves behind diverse residues from the past. These take the form of architectural objects, records, documents and diverse texts, use-values from the past. But we must also include residual social relations of production and institutions from the past. To understand history we must interpret these things primarily on the basis or within the framework of the capitalist production process. Because this has a certain configuration we produce our understanding of history within specific parameters. These limits prevent us from fictionalising or fantasising the past.

History must then follow certain structures or forms that correspond with the specific nature of the contemporary production process. The understanding of history then is determined by the contemporary production process or mode of production and secondly past residual production processes or modes of production. Both poles determine our interpretation of history. But the outcome of the study of history cannot have a speculative character or predetermined result since the things (and by things here I include social production relations and institutions) of history are primary evidence in the historical process and prescribe our capacity to understand history. We cannot understand history without evidence. These things (this evidence) are of critical significance in our endeavour to provide a correct understanding of history. It is these things (evidence) that make all the difference. Because the things (evidence) discovered in the West are significantly different from the historical things (evidence) accessible in the East we get different respective histories. And this is despite the fact that the production process is the source of history. In short there is an indispensable empirical character to the understanding of history.

Social Relations and Agency

Social science is based on the process of production. To understand social relations and the human agency lodged in them we must understand them within the context of the production process. The character of the production process determines the character of the existing structure of social relations and their human agents. Consequently to understand the existing social relations and its corresponding agents we must understand the nature of the mode of production. To achieve this we must analyse the use values, architecture and the things that are involved with human agency. This constitutes a form of reverse engineering. The creation of use-values by concrete human labour within society entails the endowment of nature with meaning. This signifies that nature is meaningful for human agency. This suggests that we cannot validly claim that nature, sub-atomic particles etc are meaningless. Divested of meaning there would be no motive to acquire knowledge of nature. Indeed the scientific study of the building blocks of nature such as sub-atomic and atomic particles are meaningless in the absence of a meaningful physical nature. It follows that if physical science is meaningless then it is unknowable and thereby nihilistic. All meaning relates to human beings. Consequently nature must have meaning. If it was divested of meaning we would not endeavour to acquire knowledge of nature and then there would be no natural science.

We must examine too the specific institutions that contemporary society produces. By studying these things within the context of the production process we arrive at a model of the social relations and their agents. The process of production produces these things including social relations. Again it is production that determines the character of these social things that explain contemporary society. These things are the evidence by which understanding is sustained. The understanding of contemporary social being is not predetermined in some overly deterministic fashion without the requirement of evidence. Things that exist or are produced convey to us the character of society. Evidence is critical here. Results must be supported by evidence or facts.

Hypothesis Testing

The hypothesis that communists advance is that humans act on nature in a socially conscious (purposive) mediated way. This communist hypothesis has been repeatedly tested against the facts. Yet no relevant facts have ever falsified it. Given this it can be regarded as a secure theory. It is a hypothesis that is highly testable and never been falsified. Thereby identifying it as a law of social science is valid. I call it the fundamental principal of communism. It is a simple, coherent and credible hypothesis. Nothing is certain. There are just degrees of probability in science.

The physical sciences have their context in humanity’s socially mediated conscious action on nature. As already intimated knowledge of the natural laws is a product of this process –the capitalist production process. The natural sciences then are a product of the production process. This means that the natural sciences cannot exist independently from the social relations and thereby the social sciences. They are mediated by these relations. The character of a society is a reflection, in a sense, of the character of its inquiry into nature or its claims about nature. By studying the claims about nature or natural science we can reconstruct the nature of the capitalist production process and the society that produced it. The aforementioned is known as reverse engineering. The claims made concerning nature today have acquired the form of scientific knowledge. This epistemological form has a specific character, labelled scientific, determined by the character of the production process and society.

The critical emancipatory capacity of certain intellectual forms have their roots embedded in common sense knowledge. When humans act consciously in a socially mediated way on nature in their production of use values they inevitably reflect critically upon this process. In their reflections they may discover errors, defects and inefficiencies. As a result of this reflective activity they can affect a more advanced way of progressing. This more advanced way of progressing is proof of its correctness. Similarly in reflections on the nature of society humans also reflect on its contradictions and draw conclusions as to how these limits can be historically transcended thereby yielding self-emancipation from the social shackles of reality. The critical capacity, a legacy from the Stone Age, is hardwired into our brains. It is inextricably lodged in our socially mediated link to nature.It is what makes us Homo sapiens sapiens.

The Antinomy between subject and object

In this short critique I seek to overcome, in a sense, the antinomy between subject and object. My piece encompassed the objective aspect of reality by recognising the important role of nature together with its natural scientific investigation. The subjective plane involves focusing on human agency and meaning. Now I discussed nature and society in such a way as to transcend the antinomy that is irreconcilably posited between the two. In the past logical positivism focused on knowledge qua knowledge of the objective world. It thereby focused on the physical sciences. Consequently structures such as causality were more its concern. Matters such as morality and meaning transcended its epistemological dimensions.

Cartesian philosophy focuses on subjectivity. Consequently it discusses such matters as meaning and morality. This renders it impossible to make sense of reality since there obtained an irreconcilable antinomy between these two fundamental ontological aspects of reality. This renders accounts of both the physical sciences and social sciences very incomplete and contradictory.Hegel unsuccessfully sought to transcend this ontological contradiction while Marx largely succeeded.

Conclusion

The brief critique is not based on claims to my having any privileged access to reality:

“However it is based on seeking to arrive at a reasoned picture of what there really is. The philosopher is not a god surveying and assessing human activities and checking them off against some absolute standard of existence and truth. The philosopher remains a human being. His only activities, including philosophical ones, are human activities and the comparisons and assessments he makes are bound by this fact. Philosophy differs from other human activities not by presuming a grasp of standards higher than those implicit in non-philosophical activities, but only in the way philosophers reflect consciously on the standards implicit in other activities and effect comparisons between them. The fact that we can only get at reality through the sort of things we are inclined to say and think about it mean that part of the work of philosophy involves examining whether a given area of discourse --such as physics, religion, history or astrology – meets certain minimum standards of coherence, clarity and credibility.” (Anthony O Hear, What Philosophy Is, pp 13-14).