Ways of world knowing

I had a job interview I didn’t get the job, but I got to hang out with a childhood friend. So it all worked out nicely. the other day, and of the interviewers asked me what where my epistemological references. I didn’t really know what to answer so, as is tradition, I answered what I thought they wanted to hear.

A couple of months later, I still thought about that question. What do I think are conditions for knowing, and how did I get to that conclusion—i.e. who did I read?

There are a few approaches I like. They combine the symbolical, the technical and the social.

Symbolical thinking

My first encounter was with Nelson Goodman’s Languages of Art¹. For full disclosure, this was both an essential part of my PhD, but also a somewhat random choice. Goodman is a very good example of taking the arts (insofar as it is the chief discipline in communicative symbolism) very seriously.

His work is about establishing that we can know things through the symbol systems that underpin any artwork (whether good or bad) and that each of these symbol systems (which he calls languages of art) have specific modes of connotation, denomiation, exemplification, etc.

I like it because it is a rigorous theory of what seems to me the most obvious aspect of knowledge acquisition: through speech, letters, images, etc. We know because we see, because we hear, because we read. It also acknowledges symbolical affordances, so to speak—some things being easier to communicate, or to express, in one kind of symbol system rather than in another.

Even though it focuses only on the languages of art That is, the symbol systems that allows expression, rather than mere communication. , it also implies that knowledge is social. We know because there is a thing to know, a means to communicate it, and a person to interpret it. Each of these elements might be faulty (the thing itself might not be true, the means might be distorting it, or the interpreter might not be doing its job well), but they are nonetheless effective, as knowledge has been created and assimilated.

In short, it is an epistemology based on systems of sensual symbols convey ideas from, or about the world.

Technical thinking

For a symbol, or a combination of symbols, to exist, there needs to be a way to render it, to inscribe it. So symbols have a mutual dependency to technics (mutual since those symbols can end up representing those technics themselves). This is the standard view of anyone studying media, since this is also their bread and butter: why study media if they do not matter?

What is non-standard is the name that needs to be dropped in order to signify to your audience that what you are talking about is material epistemology. If you’re in Germany, hint at Kittler² and the determination of our condition. If you’re across the border in France, switch to Stiegler³ and hint at exosomatisation. If you’re feeling adventurous and hop on across the ocean to the U.S., then shift to Hayles⁴ and her considerations on the post-human for the more philosophically inclined, and Neil Postman⁵ for the more radically enclined.

In any case, the point remains. Those symbol systems exist materially through particular technologies, and these technologies affect the kinds of configurations of symbol systems As Postman put it, it’s trickier to do philosophy with clouds than with pen and paper .

There is also a second dimension to a technics frame of epistemology. One can communicate through technical artefacts, but one can also think with technical artefacts. This exteriorization is thus not only concerned with communicating things with someone else, but also exploring ideas with ourselves.

Social thinking

And finally, I think there is a relation between understanding and agreement. Knowledge is confirmation (otherwise it’s only belief), and that confirmation happens socially. We need other people to agree with us to confirm that whatever we believe is also correct. Sure, sometimes people seem to be in agreement, just as they are referring to the wrong thing. But I don’t think there can be a truth that will forever only be held by one single person, as long as it is being shared with other.

That’s why I like the second Wittgenstein⁶ (besides the fact that he refers to his past self in the third person!). Meaning is shared meaning, which pre-dates knowledge; agreeing on the same things means playing the same game. If, with Jean Renoir, we consider the bounding of human experience within social norms to be a form of game, that sociality is also what supports the creation of meaning, then language is always a kind of dialogue between humans, and between humans and the world⁷, or a kind of verification between humans[^ref-ranciere[.

We also find echoes of those marxist endeavors to establish truth in materiality when we look at how computer scientists consider reality as the ground truth against which artificial intelligent systems should be measured, or understood. While software can have very strong autotelic tendencies (particularly visible in functional programming), reference to this ground, this external foundation, is essential to confirm that the software operations and results actually make sense. Within broader scientific communities, this agreement of a shared reference is a form of consensus or negotiated truth—two terms which seem quite paradoxical at first, but summarize that position quite poetically⁸.

Cosmograms

And then finally, I think that these three (symbolical, technical and social) can be combined in particular configurations. Self-contained, dynamic, automated and interactive models which persuade users of the validity of their representations and, by transition of the validity of their claims over what their reference domains I’m thinking of smart city dashboards, health apps, logistics software or social media analysis platforms. . All of it combines into an update of ways of worldmaking⁹, added to the political ontologies of Mol¹⁰ (but reified). They’re also opposite to ideology in the sense that their material conditions and ideal representations are acknowledged to be tightly linked.

To be developed.