How do we know what we know? A conversation with my brother about the scientific method, knowledge, gnosis, and truth

Welcome back to Gnostic Insights and the Gnostic Reformation on Substack. I have another treat for you this week, a conversation with my brother Bill and myself concerning what is knowledge? How do we know what is true? This is a field of philosophy known as epistemology. My brother Bill was a philosophy professor. He taught this at the university level for many years. I hope you enjoy this conversation and you learn something from it.

[Cyd] 

Okay, recording in progress. Here we are. Hi, Bill. Welcome back to Gnostic Insights.

[Bill]

Well, it’s nice to be back. I thought of a topic here that we’ve considered for a while. Let’s get it done.

[Cyd]

All right!

[Bill]

Okay. So the question is, what is knowledge? And what is it to really know something to be the case?

[Cyd]

Wait a minute. Is this epistemology? Is that what is meant by epistemology?

[Bill]

That’s right. Theory of knowledge, epistemology. It’s as old as the hills. In fact, the conflict was back with Plato and Aristotle. Aristotle’s saying we can get knowledge, and I’ll explain kind of how we do it, theoretically do that. Plato said, no, you can’t get it that way. You have to know it from the beginning. How about that? That’s what we call our gnosis, right?

[Cyd]

Right. That’s why Plato is included in the scrolls of the Nag Hammadi. Yes.

[Bill]

So the question is, where does gnosis fit in with regard to the knowledge? Okay. That’s the point. So I thought, okay, let’s just take it from the point of the scientific position, because the presumption is, isn’t it, that science gives us knowledge, right? That’s the presumption. So the debates that take place out there, someone says, well, that’s not science, and so therefore they’re negating what’s being said. Okay, let’s get this one answered.

It’s a common belief that scientists believe that scientific method gives us knowledge. And so anything that is gained outside of science is not known. In other words, the word sometimes is dogma, right? The idea, you hold a position, but you can’t verify it scientifically, but you hold it, so you’re being so dogmatic. So let me make this point here.

Here it is. The best that science can really give us is well-founded belief, and I’m going to argue that. So that’s the best. So why do I say that? Well, the scientific method is based on logical principles of modus ponens and modus tollens, okay? And let me explain what that means.

[Cyd]

How do you spell that?

[Bill]

M-O-D-U-S, modus ponens, P-O-N-E-N-S, okay? And tollens, T-O-L-L-E-N-S.

Now, symbolically, okay, I’m going to use words like this, and you’ll get it. You’ll get it for your listeners, by the standards. If P gets you Q, and if you have P, then you have Q. That’s modus ponens. The idea, conditional. If P gets you Q, and you got P, then you have Q. That’s the conclusion.

[Cyd]

You’re saying if P is obliged to bring Q along, then if you don’t have Q, you don’t have P.

[Bill]

Exactly, that’s well said. So in science, the problem occurs, you could put it this way. A problem is created, say that the science, there’s a problem out there that science is trying to resolve. And so it creates a hypothesis, in other words, an explanation for a problem that’s occurring out there, okay? And then science says we test the implications of that hypothesis. What does it tell us to look for?

Okay, so we go looking for that. And it tells you, you got it, okay, you should find an R, an S, a T, a Q, or whatever, right? Whatever it needs. So you’ll go out looking for those implications, and they show up, they’re there, okay. So what you’re doing is supporting the hypothesis. The reason being, how this is, remember back, if P gets you Q, and you don’t have Q, you don’t have P, we understand that. But if P gets you Q, and you have Q, you can’t conclude you have P, you can’t come backwards.

Example, if it’s raining, then the streets are wet. Oh, look, the streets are wet. Well, it must be raining. No, because they can get wet other ways. You can’t come backwards on the conditional, right?

So if the hypothesis implies a bunch of things, and those things are found, you’re supporting your hypothesis, but you can’t come all the way back and say it’s true.

[Cyd]

Hmmm. You’re supporting it, but not proving it?

[Bill]

That’s it exactly, that’s beautifully stated.

All right. So what then occurs, thinking about this now, is that that’s the case for any hypothesis that science proposes, is it can be rich with consequences. It can be rich with what to find. And so what happens is, okay, it’s, look, it’s working out. That implies that, and look, it’s there, and it’s there, and it’s there, it’s there, anything you put, it’s there. So what’s happening, you’re supporting your hypothesis, but you still aren’t proving it.

So the idea is a well-founded, a well-founded hypothesis becomes a theory at best. It becomes a well-founded theory because it continues to work out, but you’ll never get the theory to utter truth. You’ll never know it to be the case.

So that’s the logic of the scientific method. But what happens is this—scientists come up with hypotheses, they become theories, they become really well-founded theories. And then what they do is they, they get a hold of it and say, oh, oh, we can’t let this happen. So they turn their theories into dogma. That’s not science! So you pick any major theory, like general theory of relativity, oh, it’s beautifully supported, right? Some will say, you ask a scientist, oh yeah, it worked. Guess what? There may be a consequence down the line that defeats it. That’s why it’s a great theory so far. It hasn’t been defeated.

Quantum mechanics, to point that out, quantum theory and so forth. They’re just theories. They are, they are possibly false.

[Cyd]

Now you’re saying that this is by definition the way science works and hypotheses and whatnot. It’s not just that you’re some sort of naysayer that doesn’t want to accept conclusions.

[Bill]

No, what I will say is that you will rarely meet a scientist that’s willing to give up a theory. That’s really, in other words, a theory that’s holding on. For example, how about climate change? They’re not willing to give up, give up climate change because it’s become dogmatic. When in fact it should be open continuously for investigation, implications being found and tested. So science by its very nature at its best gives us well-founded theories that may later turn out to be false. That’s science.

But scientists generally won’t, they don’t want that because they don’t want defeatablity of something that they absolutely love. If I told you, if I asked a scientist, so someday, you know, general theory of relativity may turn out to be false. It may turn out to be false. And they say, what? I don’t think so. Well, of course they don’t think so. So again, that’s the dogmatic point.

So what critics of the Gnostic gospel would say, well, this is not science. You can’t prove the Gnostic gospel. You can’t prove everything you got into the works there, Cyd. Your answer is, I don’t have to prove it because it is dogma. They say, oh, you used the word dogma. So it may not be true. That’s right. It’s Gnostic—meaning we knew it all along. Back to the Plato point.

Plato said, you can’t have knowledge unless you’ve known it all along. Aristotle would say, we can do it. We can prove it. So he would believe in the scientific method. Aristotle would believe in that. He would talk about consequences, testability and all that. Verification, how much do you need to verify? And that became the problem in epistemology is how much do you need in order to prove something to be the case? You can’t. The way I just described it, you can’t. So Plato, sitting here, eh, you’ve known it all along, if you know. So knowledge has to be known all along, had to be known all along, but it’s not possible to say that you’ve achieved knowledge from a belief. You can support a belief. You can build on it.

Now, when I say there is some knowledge that we would say is provable—that would be logic, mathematical proofs, follow? Those kinds of things. Yeah, we can know a certain logical position or certain mathematical proof. That’s fine at that level. Because it’s working within a system. But what we’re describing out here in terms of the world or what science does, it’s going beyond the mathematics. It’s saying this is the way the universe is. And as such, therefore, it’ll never be known through science.

[Cyd]

Okay. Now back to the Plato and Aristotle idea. How would, okay, Plato says you can’t really know it unless you have the gnosis of it from the beginning.

[Bill]

Yes.

[Cyd]

But how does a person know that they had that? I mean, maybe they picked it up somewhere along the line.

[Bill]

Well, that’s what the scientists will throw at you. That’s the point. That’s the battle. How do you know that it’s gnosis? No simple answer to that, except, you know it.

[Cyd]

So when someone says it’s obvious, that gives you a clue that it’s actually known. Well, like sometimes, sometimes there are scientific experiments on ridiculous things, like do dogs like to have treats? And so you’ll spend all this money and set up these things to see if dogs like treats, but other people might say, well, you didn’t even ever have to do that because obviously dogs like treats. Is this at all applicable to our discussion or is that something else?

[Bill]

No, no, that’s, that’s good. Now, of course the debate would be about that, right? Maybe some dogs don’t. It takes just one dog to not like a treat. But see, that’s the way they’d respond to it. Or the word obvious in the general context—when somebody says it’s obvious, the joke is, well, obviously, meaning you should get it or not. That’s generally how it’s used in that loose term.

But if in the more profound way, which you were describing, something is obvious means yes, it’s known, period. Yeah. And that’s where the discussion comes in.

[Cyd]

Well, okay. So what, so give me an example of something that is obvious and that is known that would be irrefutably platonic.

[Bill]

The Gnostic gospel.

[Cyd]

(laughing) Says a true believer.

[Bill]

Well, true believer. See, the point is, why does one be a true believer? Unless, you know, it might be true.

See, that’s the debate. There’s plenty of dogma out in the world that is not the case. It’s just dogmatic. I mean, I just gave you one–climate change. They won’t give it up. It’s dogma if they’re not going to test the theory.

Yeah. So we’re in an arena here.  You either get it or you know. Yes. Right. But that would always be the question, Cyd, that would be thrown at the Gnostic gospels. You’re going to have those out there, they’re going to say it’s not proven. And so what do you need to prove? How are you going to prove it if it’s unprovable and just known? And that’s the gnosis part. Okay. So there it’s a conflict.

[Cyd]

That’s the debate out there. Well, it does seem to boil down to just a felt belief, but that doesn’t seem to be good enough. Correct. Uh, how can it just be a felt sense? Because if that were the case, then all the deluded people would have a validity in their delusions.

[Bill]

Well, yeah. See, you’re raising the point and that’s where scientists come back at you. Yeah. When they come back at you, you say, well, guess what? You, you don’t give us knowledge either. So where are you going?

Well, we’re testable.

(laughing) Okay, fine. But you still can’t get to knowledge.

That’s thousands of years old what we’re describing. That’s epistemology. How do you know what you know. And, so the claim is if you actually know, you know it inherently.

[Cyd]

Well, I know that’s what I’m saying, that’s what I mean when I’m saying it, it’s obvious or self-evident, but then again, anybody who’s deluded would say the same thing.

[Bill]

Sure. But again, that’s at that level. Now when you use the word obvious, I gave you the two distinctions—there is the colloquially obvious and then there’s the profound obvious. And I said, well, how do you distinguish? How do you distinguish someone that’s delusional from someone that’s got some credible insight?

Yeah. And what is the word? What’s the word insight? Think about it. In-sight. Yeah. Gnosis.

Gnostic. Right. So, yes, Cyd, the Gnostic gospel is not per se provable the same way that Aristotle’s position about knowledge couldn’t get provability either. So we’re back to Plato.

[Cyd]

Ah, so that’s the great conflict. Hmm. Hmm. So you’re saying that our position is as valid as anybody’s scientific position.

[Bill]

We’re claiming it. Certainly. Now here’s something about the Gnostic gospel, that’s a nice, beautiful mix is that it logically follows. See, once you take the position, it’s Gnosis and known, everything else follows. It follows logically. So it’s using logical principle. You would follow modus ponens and modus tollen. I mean the logic. So it’s not just, you know, so ephemeral. No. Once you’ve got the basic point where it follows and it follows and it goes and it goes and it becomes clearer and clearer. The Gnosis is there.

[Cyd]

Yeah. So my book, A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel, for example, begins with that beginning belief that consciousness is inherent and is the base state of everything. And then the question is, how does it get down to us? And, uh, are we conscious? Are the dogs conscious? And it’s logical because it keeps showing how it is that it travels—that it travels down. And then the way we behave as a result of that consciousness and all of the various claims, virtue versus vice, for example. Now where does virtue versus vice fall in this level of epistemology? Is that a… that would seem to me to be a self evident claim.

[Bill]

Yes, it is. That’s right. There’s no provability to what it’s not. You’re not proving what is the virtue and what is the vice. You don’t have to. It’s obvious.

[Cyd]

Yes. And the results from virtue versus vice are so different. They’re so polar opposite that, that it seems to prove it’s obvious. It seems to prove itself, but how is it that it doesn’t prove itself?

[Bill]

Well, again, it’s obvious. (laughing)  So, again, these are not provability points because what do you have to prove? See, we’re moving in the arena of ethics now—ethical theories. There are many attempted ethical theories. I used to teach ethics, you know, ethical theories and conclusions from ethical theories–utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism and majority approval and all of that. The one that landed was moral intuition –there’s that word intuition. So the virtues would come out of morally intuitive individuals.

[Cyd]

Ah, so you’re saying that intuition is a chief tool of gnosis.

[Bill]

Yes! Right. And we can expand the notion of intuition and say, we believe in the Gnostic gospel because it’s intuitive.

[Cyd]

Yes. Now, what about people that don’t believe it and don’t recognize it intuitively?

[Bill]

Well, yeah. Our answer from a Gnostic position is, oh, those memes around that shroud—that shroud is really covering that ego there, isn’t it?

[Cyd]

The egoic shroud is blanking out the truth.

[Bill]

Yes. Yeah. In fact, gosh—look at the Demiurge.

[Cyd]

He’s in the same boat, poor guy.

[Bill]

Yes, same boat! In fact, he can do some nasty things, right? So he’s really, he’s shrouded out there a little bit.

[Cyd]

Yeah. That’s interesting. Well, I’m wondering what part of our psychological makeup houses the intuition. Is it part of the Self? Is it the better half of Logos? Is it excluded from the ego? Does the ego have no intuition?  I would think it would.

[Bill]

Okay. Great point. Yes. The virtue and all that comes from Self. That’s top down. That’s the soul…

[Cyd]

The embodiment of the body. The Fullness.

[Bill]

Yah. So that’s that.  The ego we come in with is our identity. Right.

[Cyd]

And what’s intuition, where does it live?

[Bill]

Uh, well, an intuition is a tapping in of the ego to the Self. I mean, remember, we want a coherent combination. So here we are this hybrid—we have an ego and we have a Self.  

[Cyd]

And we have a physical, as well.

[Bill]

Yes. And a physical—that’s the hybridized aspect. And we say that when our egos are consistent with the Self, that is, what the Self brings us—that when we’re at that point we’re balanced. We have that understanding at that point. As we gain the memes and delusions,  deluded memes and so forth like that, what that does, it sort of separates us from our Self. And that’s why people say, gee, I’m in conflict with my Self. Notice that when I say I’m in conflict with my Self is exactly right.

[Cyd]

Right. They’re in conflict with their Self says the ego. Yeah, exactly.

[Bill]

Right.

[Cyd]

But yet we, I doubt that it’s a by-product of the capabilities of the body of the material in any sense.

[Bill]

No, no.

[Cyd]

So you’re thinking it arises from our Self. No—it arises from our ego as it searches for this…

[Bill]

We come as a unit. So we don’t, we don’t come disconnected. We come in as a unit here. And, but it’s the ego in this fallen world that has the potential to drop away. That’s all.

[Cyd]

But I’m just wondering about the intuition. Well, where does it live? Is it the Self pulling ego up? You know, we think of intuition as us seeking—as an outward expression—but maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s the higher Self pulling the ego toward it. You know, I think of these things as in and outs. Does that make any sense to you the way I’m putting it?

[Bill]

Yeah. Well, this question we’re raising here is the same for the Aeons. They have an ego and they have a Self. Now, they’re coherent, beautifully coherent.

[Cyd]

I don’t think they need intuition because it’s all so obvious in the Fullness.

[Bill]

Well, they are pure intuition. There’s no distinction to be made. And ultimately in the third economy, when we’re all back up there again, ego and our Self will be just beautifully connected…

[Cyd}

… united and our intuition will be going full blast. I’m starting to think that the intuition is actually housed in the higher Self and that it’s the drawing. It’s the drawing towards. It’s Logos continuing to hold onto the Demiurge, even though the Demiurge doesn’t feel it or recognize it.

[Bill]

I agree. And that would be that the fractals in our case, where we don’t recognize that our Selves are doing it for us.

[Cyd]

Right. Right. But definitely it’s a higher thing into it.

[Bill]

Okay.

[Cyd]

And did, did Plato actually use the word intuition or anything like that? Did he talk about this?

[Bill]

(laughing) I don’t know, even in translation.

[Cyd]

All right.

[Bill]

All right. But, but you see what he did, to have knowledge, it has to be inherent.  And of course the reaction to Plato—Aristotle went on from there and science comes out of Aristotle to a point. And then of course, it’s not entirely there. He’s got his issues and mistakes, theoretically.  So, naturally Aristotle was the one that caught on because he would talk about what is knowledge and how we can get it and how we can gain it and all of that. And therefore scientists latch onto that point. Here’s how we get it. Here’s how we get it. So it’s very modernized Aristotle in the present era.

Plato didn’t come along afterwards. People aren’t going, well, I actually see that. Actually it’s inherent. And yet, where is knowledge? Well, Plato, you know, he believed it’s direct. That’s where it comes from. It’s inherent.

[Cyd]

(laughing) Hey, all right. So let me, we had discussed this earlier and I have some notes. Let me see if I’ve got it all.

Okay. Science is theory only not knowledge. Okay.

[Bill]

Science gives us theory, right? Scientific method gives us theory.

[Cyd]

All right. And scientific method has no capability of verifying consciousness because there is no experiment that can prove consciousness.

[Bill]

Right. But, let’s add an interesting point to that–even within the realm of scientists, notice they are beginning to talk about the grounding of consciousness. Now we would say they’re getting their insight, their cells are starting to click into more. There are scientists, at least physicists are beginning to see that maybe consciousness is the ground. But you can’t prove it. And therefore it’s not known per se.

[Cyd]

I read an article just this morning that’s in this week’s science news concerning consciousness, concerning proving consciousness and these different scientists, what they think consciousness begins with and what is required for consciousness and all this kind of stuff. It’s so sad. One of the points in the article was that premature babies were never given anesthetics during operations because they were thought to be unconscious.  And when they showed signs of pain and distress, it was chalked up as just reflex. I’ve heard that so often.

[Bill]

And none of that was based on knowledge. See, they were assuming certain things.

[Cyd]

They were assuming, right. Right, because what could it be based on? Did you see that article?

[Bill]

Oh, I did. I used to, with my birthing and bonding and early child development stuff, I brought that notion—how you treat a baby. You don’t do it that way and so forth because the kind of surgical things they would do to babies and so forth without anesthetics.

[Cyd]

Well, well, for example, by the way, second and third term abortions, where they cut up the baby inside the mother to suck it out, that baby is conscious and feeling. Yes. The reflexes indicate, you know, as he’s being dismembered.

[Bill]

Yes. In order for them to justify the point, they therefore have to say they can’t be conscious. See, it’s like, it’s their justification for not worrying about it. But that’s not known. And so they’re acting, now let’s use the word, they’re not acting scientifically.

[Cyd]

No, they’re not acting scientifically.

[Bill]

Yeah. That’s right. They are dogmatic.

[Cyd]

They’re rationalizing things that can’t be known at all in order to assuage their conscience.

[Bill]

Yeah. Well, the thing is, good point, assuage their conscience. They try to keep themselves separate from their Self, right?

[Cyd]

Yes. And of course, not just babies, but lab animals, it’s the whole same thing.

[Bill]

Oh, it’s the whole thing. That’s right, Cyd.

[Cyd]

All right. Well, we are nearing the end of this Zoom session, Bill, believe it or not, already. But do you have any last thoughts that we should add in before we close it?

[Bill]

Uh, no. We’ve opened doors. I mean, some of your listeners are gonna hopefully respond and say, well, well, well, question this, question that.

[Cyd]

Okay. Would you repeat for me the definition of those two Latin phrases you opened with that I asked for the spelling?

[Bill]

Modus ponens and modus tollens?

[Cyd]

Yes, that is completely unfamiliar to me. Say it once more and we’ll close with that.

[Bill]

Okay. Modus ponens is the logical position that if P gets you Q, and you have P, then you get Q. If P implies Q, you’ve got P, then you have Q. That’s modus ponens. Modus tollens says, if P implies Q, oh, we don’t have Q, well, then we can’t have P. Otherwise we’d have Q. See, if P gets you Q and you don’t have Q, then it means you don’t have P.

[Cyd]

All right. And are those both valid positions? What does that have to do with the scientific method?

[Bill]

Those are logical truths that are at the heart of the scientific method. Let me repeat the scientific method. A problem occurs, a hypothesis is created as an explanation. We test the hypothesis using modus ponens. If the hypothesis is true, then we can expect this, and this, and this. These are implications.

[Cyd]

Those are all the Qs. The P is the hypothesis, and the Q is the things you’re looking for.

[Bill]

So we go and look for them. What happens when you’re looking, okay, and they’re working out, but that doesn’t prove the hypothesis because you can’t come backwards on a conditional. In other words, if P gets you Q, and you have Q, you can’t conclude you have P.

[Cyd]

So there’s not an equivalent. You’re saying that’s an illogical position. Whereas those first two, ponens and tollens, are logical and self-evidentiary.

[Bill]

That’s right. They’re at the absolute heart of logic, yes.

[Cyd]

And by the way, in this Gnosticism that we discuss here at Gnostic Insights, we talk about Logos, the Aeon known as Logos, which is the same word for logic. So logic is one of these self-evidentiary pieces of gnosis that obviously Plato would approve of.

[Bill]

Absolutely, and Logos would apply the modus ponens and modus tollens, yes.

[Cyd]

Okay, but he would, and Logos would say, but you can’t go backwards and conclude that anything about P, if you…

[Bill]

If you, see, if P gets you Q—But if you have Q, it doesn’t prove that you have P.

Right, now watch this again. Okay. If P gets you—if it’s raining, then the streets are wet. The streets are wet. Oh, we can conclude it’s raining. No, the streets can get wet other ways. You can’t come backwards.

[Cyd]

Okay. So can we use logic to conclude the presence of the Fullness of God?

[Bill]

Probably not technically, because our ground point is the Father is consciousness. That’s our starting point, and that’s not provable. It’s inherent. It is intuitive, but it’s not scientifically provable.

[Cyd]

Okay, but that’s nothing to be ashamed of. (laughing)

[Bill]

(laughing) That is nothing to be ashamed of, and that’s what knowledge is. It’s known for being… it’s inherent, and that’s the debate against it. They say, well, again, you raised it. What makes someone delusional and someone else knowledgeable, right?

And the only answer we can give, you get it? Is gnosis is known.

[Cyd]

That’s it. Well, Jesus talked about, let’s see, how did he put it? That you shall know them by their fruits.

So Jesus said, if you know God, and you are one who walks with God, then the fruits of your efforts will be qualitatively different than the fruits of the efforts of those who do not know God.

[Bill]

A qualitative difference is another way of saying, inherent—you know because you know.

[Cyd]

Okay, all right, good. Well, we’re doing the best we can to explain this. This is hard, but I’m sure that most people and most listeners, when we hear things about P gets you Q, our eyes just cross, and sadly enough for you logicians.

But I think, but you know, you can understand. Yeah.

[Bill]

That’s there, you understand.

[Cyd]

(laughing) Yes, I understand, because I follow Logos. I like Plato. All right, very good, Bill.

Well, thank you so much for sharing this with us. I look forward to hearing what the listeners think. Listen, people, what do you all think? Are you getting this? Do you have any other questions to ask Bill?

[Bill]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, when you hear, there should be questions. Okay, that’s great.

[Cyd]

Well, please tell me what you thought of this conversation. Until next week, God bless us all, and onward and upward.