The Nature of Knowing

Epistemology was a word that I heard a few times in college.  I think I heard it originally from a humanities teacher, and the idea that he attempted to communicate to us about it intrigued me immensely-- although my mind did not or could not wrap itself around the concept immediately.  In that limbo of half-understanding I even managed to write an essay about Michel de Montaigne's interest in epistemology.  The opening lines of that term paper were the following:

"Montaigne’s opening statement to his essay “Of Experience” shows his interest in epistemology, or the nature of knowing by commenting on humanity’s innate desire to obtain knowledge:  “There is no desire more natural than that of knowledge.  We try all ways that can lead us to it; where reason is wanting, we therein employ experience … which is a means much more weak and cheap; but truth is so great a thing that we ought not to disdain any mediation that will guide us to it” (emphasis added)."

Montaigne, when talking about trying "different ways" of obtaining knowledge, is speaking epistemologically. Epistemology, if you break it down to its Greek roots, means "the study of understanding", which is perhaps why my own understanding of it as a concept was a little slow in coming-- it's as "meta-" as you can get.  You step back and question the very fabric of everything you think is certain.

You not only question, but parse and classify what you know.  How do you know what you know; what was the source; what are the limits/reliability of such knowledge; and so forth.  I feel like my grasp of an important aspect of epistemology that was key to the aforementioned essay I wrote was only solidified as much as two years after that humanities class.  I took a D&C (Doctrine & Covenants) class during my 2011 spring term at BYU, taught by one of the best religion teachers I've had-- a lowly doctorate student whose name I don't even remember, who was just teaching at BYU during the summer while doing his post-grad work elsewhere.

I just spent some time searching for my notes from that class, and they must be back in Bothell.  But regardless, I think I'll be able to speak to the point.  My teacher-- his name was David Golding (maybe I'll email him about this?)-- brought up epistemology in regard to the Atonement.  It was from Professor Golding (maybe he's a Dr. now?) that I heard the idea of experiential knowledge as opposed to theoretical knowledge.  

Bertrand Russell would have called the former "knowledge by acquaintance" and the latter "knowledge by description".  Example: I know that breaking your femur bone hurts.  I know this by description, but I don't know it by acquaintance/experience.  From Brian Regan's description, I know that breaking your femur is a 10 on the pain scale... and I broke my finger once and it kinda hurt.  But I do not know what it feels like to have a broken femur.  I do not know what it is like-- not with physical, bodily knowledge.  See how we're already splitting the knowledges apart?  Just like you may know what a kiss is, but you don't know what it's like until you've kissed someone.

You don't know what it's like.  That phrase seems to be key to understanding the difference between knowledge by description and knowledge by experience (what I'm going to call "knowledge by acquaintance" from here on out).  Without attaching a word as cumbersome as "epistemology" to it, people innately get the difference between experiential knowledge and other types of knowledge.  They understand that you can never really know what salt tastes like until it has physically touched your tongue.

Back to my D&C class.  My teacher brought up epistemology and different types of knowledge to broaden our understanding of what the Atonement is and what it does-- not just for us, but what it did for Christ himself.  If this bothers anyone, feel free to express your thoughts in the comments, but I think it makes sense.  Christ may have understood many, many more things that we can ever fathom before completing the Atonement, but he had not yet-- as I understand it-- understood with his body and by personal experience all of the thousands of millions of physical sensations, aches, pains, emotions, mental states, illnesses and afflictions that have ever been experienced.  It was after completing the Atonement that Christ could say to Joseph Smith, with his now-obtained perfect experiential knowledge, that if Joseph didn't repent, then his guilt and suffering over his sins would be sore: "how sore you know not, how exquisite you know not, yea, how hard to bear you know not."  You don't know what it's like.  And you don't really want to know: "Which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit."  There is so much physical, experiential imagery and description going on there; the Atonement was as much corporeal understanding as cerebral.

And I'm not saying that experiential knowledge is the be-all, end-all of the different knowledges;  Montaigne himself said that experience was "a means much more weak and cheap" of obtaining knowledge than reason.  Maybe he thought it was cheap because it didn't compare with all the time and effort he had to put into being so well-read and learned.  I'm inclined to believe that experiential knowledge isn't the only thing necessary for development; indeed, the whole purpose of the Atonement was to make it so that we don't have to go through the agony that Christ experienced, with his mind and with his body.  That being said, I believe as a practicing Mormon that one of the main purposes of living life is to experience things for myself--with my body. I existed before, but my knowledge was imperfect because it wasn't multifaceted.  I needed experiential and physical knowledge, too.

Which then begs the question, whether we should really be so sure of what we know.  A dose of doubt can be healthy; it promotes introspection, self-awareness, and humility.  As Montaigne points out, knowledge can be fallible in ways one might not suspect. And if there's one thing that some healthy philosophical skepticism should provide, it's empathy.  We could use a lot more of that in society.