The Changing Nature of Knowledge and New Directions for the Humanities

Table of Contents

(I) Expansion of the Notion of Knowledge
(II) Predicaments of Human Conditions and New Directions for the Humanities
(III) The Humanities: Gap Between Universities and Cultural Realities
(IV) Verbal Languages and Digital Languages in the Humanities


Paik Nam-june created an art piece called "Descartes" (Picture 1) which is exhibited at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Gwachun, a town adjacent to Seoul. The work seems to say "My brain processes digitally therefore I am". Paik represents the Descartes of Rationalist Dualism as a robot of Physicalist Digitalism. As Paik's digital processes threaten to replace Descartes' mental processes, one comes to wonder how long the human mind will be considered as an essential part of human existence. Whereas Descartes philosophized the long-held dualist tradition of the West through his rationalist language, Paik led attempts in the art world to show the ubiquity and plasticity of digital languages through a series of his video art works. Here I will focus on how the monistic epistemology of logocentrism gives way to pluralistic epistemologies and explore the implications this change might have for new directions in the humanities.

(I) Expansion of the Notion of Knowledge

Many of us are familiar with Plato's Cave metaphor or the Biblical saying that "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free". Both of these seem to presuppose a special notion of knowledge, namely, what may be called "knowledge as the mirror of the reality". This view is saying that what we experience in this world are mere phenomena and that genuine reality lies outside the world of experience. What proceeds from these phenomena are doxastic opinions, which will lead us into never ending debate and confusion. However, if only we could reach true reality it will grant us one wholistic system of knowledge, which would unite the entire human race and set us all free at last. Western traditions suggest two routes leading to this reality: reason and religion. But intellectual communities under the influence of Descartes preferred the former to the latter, apparently believing that reason will take us from manifold and mutable appearances of the world to the simple reality governed by the transparent logical order.

If we can name this view "a realistic theory of knowledge", I believe a contemporary version of the theory is known as the model of "knowledge as justified true belief". It is believed that a true belief can be transformed into knowledge by means of reason, evidence, or justification. The notion of reason as the bridge connecting the phenomenal world and the real world became the notion of reason as a device to show the connection of a certain belief and its truth. This instrumental reason is again replaced by empirical notions like evidence or contextual notions like justification. The celestial realism becomes a terrestrial realism. While knowledge requires a belief to be true, the notion of the truth can't help but be the unilateral and singular notion of truth of reality. If one can accept the truth realism of knowledge, the justified true belief will constitute the necessary and sufficient condition for knowledge.

The realism tradition of knowledge faces two challenges, the Gettier counter examples and some research in semantics. The Gettier examples show that one can satisfy the necessary and sufficient conditions for having knowledge as required by classical epistemology without reaching knowledge. The Gettier problem triggers various attempts to overcome the counter examples to maintain the formal conditions for knowledge. Notions like evidence, inference, and causality have been investigated and theories like reliabilism, evidentialism, foundtionalism, and coherentism were examined. But those attempts appear to be overshadowed by current research in semantics.

If Descartes turned the age of metaphysics into that of epistemology, then Frege-Wittgenstein seemed to change the generations of epistemology into those of the philosophy of language, at least for a while. Philosophers in language raised many issues in epistemology though not directly. Justified true beliefs cannot be expressed without using sentences. But what is a sentence? Suppose that a sentence can obtain its meaning by an ordered pair of two sets of conditions, namely, the one which consists of conditions where the sentence can be true and one where it is false. Then, the meaning of the sentence can be understood in terms of the sort of realism mentioned above and there wouldn't be a problem. But the concept of truth becomes problematic. While the truth of a sentence cannot be presented independently of the sentence, the meaning of the sentence should be given by the conditions of the truth of the sentence. Wittgenstein fills the vacuum, left behind by the notion of truth, by the notion of the forms of life that members of a linguistic community are engaged in.1)

The distinction between truth semantics and communal semantics suggests another distinction, namely, that between theory and discourse. When meaning of a language is to be successfully given in terms of the truth theory, there will be the one true theory in the final analysis which will explain any problem. The truth semantics justifies the notion of theory. But if we may suppose that the communal theory of meaning is plausible, then there is not much to constrain us toward the one single theory of all. Rather, we are likely to have various communal discourses on any special issue in the concrete contexts of our lives. For example, information would be one illustration of pluralistic epistemologies. One may take an understanding of the notion of information as a syntactical structure rather than as a true sentence. The former and not the latter allows anything to be information which is digitally processed. Computers make it possible that we can access not only to verbal languages but also to sounds and pictures if they could be rendered syntactically. Now movies and music can be reached anywhere if they satisfy that syntactical requirement.

Human languages have evolved in accordance with the gradual growth of the forms(plural) of life of human kinds.2) Though there are various forms of life in human communities, human species as a natural kind share some important form(singular) of life, by which they can translate one language to another. If we are to prefer the community based discourse to the truth based theory, the epistemology we should choose may be some sort of discourse which our communal interests dictate that we pursue. The activities of the discourse are bound to be dialectical or pluralistic. The discourse will be inclusive of the questions of intellectual lives, communal advancements, and completions of individuals.

(II) Predicaments of Human Conditions and New Directions for the Humanities

What are the humanities? There are many ways to formulate the notion of the humanities. One of them would be that humanities are basically a teleological anthropology in the sense that they are attempts to humanize the world, in which people or individuals live and of which they are part. Humanization itself is open to various interpretations. It would be natural, then, that there are various versions of humanities relative to a tradition of how a human being has been understood. It is worthwhile to mention just three traditions. Since the East Asian tradition took the notion of gentleman(君子) as central to its anthropology it regarded Gyounghak(經學) as the core of humanities. Ancient Greece taught humanities to the sons of her citizens in accordance with her orientation of what the sense of the rights and duties of free members of a city should be. Later, the western Renaissance molded a notion of the human from the perspective that people need to be independent from much of the influence of the church and the application of that notion resulted in a new direction in the humanities.

The three traditions had different views on the conditions of human beings. To some, confusion-order could be the dominant human predicament. To others, it could be war-peace, famine-wealth, or oppression-freedom. But the contemporary communities in the global village, though they adhere to different heritages, have much more in common than they did in the past. Work and leisure, environment, information, sensuality and fitness are some of the issues which are of most concern to contemporary communities. It would be reasonable to make a conjecture to the effect that as history evolves, the human conditions which each epoch regarded as crucial, changes from those of survival toward those of realizing the human potential. In this respect, the history of the evolution of human conditions may be summed up as the evolution of humanization.

If the evolution of humanization could be any guide, it could suggest for us how to approach the disciplines of the humanities in this age of involved transformations. It is not clear to what extent the classical humanities expressed an interest in the modern social conditions. Some of the transformations we witnessed in the 20th century were profound. The human intellectual environment went through radical changes. Social sciences and natural sciences seem to double their activities every 10 years, not only enlarging the possibilities within their own fields but also maximizing their contributions to societies at large. But today many of us in the humanities, which are losing some of the attractiveness they enjoyed in the heyday of BIG theories, are busy specializing in particular topics. If we isolate ourselves as technicians in a specialized filed in the humanities, and don't concern ourselves with doing useful and effective research on qualitative conditions of life for people at large, it is only reasonable to expect that society will ask the empirical sciences to help enlighten their condition and receive quantified assesment of the present situation.

Reflections on the original purpose of the classical humanities will throw some light on the role the current humanities can play in the contemporary world. Although many other explanations will be possible, the purpose can be briefly sketched as follows.

(1) The Humanities are an attempt, by means of the verbal or non-verbal language to broaden the possibilities of human freedom limited by natural or social constraints.

Proposition (1) does not reflect a particular tradition in the classical humanities, rather it summarizes a common theme which exists therein. If the proposition is plausible, then the goal of the classical humanities may be said to be to broaden the possibilities of human freedom. Apparently, the dominant human concern in the classical humanities was the categories of oppression and freedom.

It is not the case that all the activities of the classical humanities were performed by a verbal language. Non-verbal experiments and activities in natural sciences, social sciences and various arts were deeply involved in broadening human freedom and they can be considered disciplines of the humanities in that regard. But if we were to choose a paradigmatic activity of the classical humanities it should be "reading classics". Reading and understanding the classics were one sufficient condition for being a participant in the humanities. In this sense, the classical humanities may be called "understanding oriented humanities(u_humanities)".

What can we say about a new direction for the humanities considering the changed notion of knowledge and the different conditions of the contemporary world? Let me propose the following if I may.

(2) The humanities are an attempt, by means of language activities, verbal or non-verbal, to express what it is to be human.

I would like to give a name to the humanities which satisfies the conditions of (2), "expression oriented humanities(e_humanities)". What distinguishes the two types of humanities? They each have their own separate sufficient conditions for being a practitioner in the field of humanities: to maximize human freedom and to realize human potential. U_humanities successfully fulfilled the goals which they had set out to do through a long struggle. E_humanities take freedom as a necessary condition but not a sufficient one. E_humanities admit that there are still many people who are oppressed in various parts of the world but insist that freedom is no longer the most urgent value for the global community. There are new values which the humanities should concentrate on promoting at the present time. The humanities need to set new and higher objectives now that the ideal of freedom has, to the present extent, been realized.

What is expression as a new value of the humanities? The word "expression" has been used notably in three different senses. Firstly, the word was widely taken to denote some presentation of what was emotionally felt whereas "proposition" designated some contents of the conditions for the truth of a sentence. There seems to be an obvious dichotomy between emotion and reason, which is not acceptable. Secondly, "Expression" was often used to refer to those various units of language like phrases or sentences. There is no objection to such a use, but I don't think that this is to be the primary sense of the word. The part of the meaning of the word I would like to emphasize is its third meaning focused on the performative character. "Expression" is sometimes used to refer to some elements of action by which one shows her or his agency character, as in "Mary expressed her approval by nodding."

This notion of expression needs to be defined more concisely. Since it is apparent that all people are constantly expressing something in one sense or another, I would allow that human expression is ubiquitous. But the notion of expression may be open to the idea of the degree of its manifestation, for some people are able to express more humanly and richly than others.

The idea that the notion of expression is of ubiquity and of degree suggests need of the formulation of some principles. Otherwise the notion may not be too useful. Then I may propose a principle, which is, that the realization of oneself is fitted with realization of all others(成己成物). This proposition is vague as it stands but it may be developed further to be useful. I would take this to allow a perspective from which one may connect any sort of human expressions, being able to evaluate any of them. This may be one of many principles which can regulate human expressions as a means of providing new directions for the humanities.3)

(III) The Humanities: Gap Between Universities and Cultural Realities

I argued that our notions of knowledge and the humanities have been or need to be, changed. But I happen to believe, on the one hand, that there is a gap between the humanities taught in universities and cultural realities and, on the other, that social sciences and natural sciences have come to have direct relevance to changes in social realities. It is only the humanities that have not come far enough. This may be because the humanities have had verbal language as their primary language, and thus perhaps they have limited their activities only to the space of verbal languages.

Let us consider the proposition (2), that is, that humanities are an attempt, by means of language activities, verbal or non-verbal, to express what it is to be human. The question is how we can express this. People find themselves, at any given moment, located in a system, and the system, once established over a period of time, tends to oppress its weaker members. The social sciences attempt to describe and understand such phenomena by methods of descriptive analyses and try to solve the problems they have identified. The humanities, nevertheless, try to approach the same phenomena by imagining what else there could be which would allow all people freedom and to help them realize their potentials. If the social sciences are mainly an actualist endeavor, then the humanities are mostly attempts to imagine the best possible space for human realization. The humanities made use of verbal languages for this purpose in "imagining" what would be possible and have been successful in performing various linear thought experiments and syntheses. That may explain why some scholars in the humanities were tempted to go into what's called BIG discourses.

But the contemporary cultural realities cannot be limited to the realm of verbal languages. There are many non-verbal languages which are asking to be heard. Such languages create a pluralistic, complex, and rich culture. For example, the digital media claims to be language in its own right. The media already plays the dominant role in inducing people to consume information. And it is heading toward the point where it will help not only businesses, but also individuals to produce information. The interactive digital culture opens the age where "everyone produces information". The digital age is characterized by the universal consumption and production of information. One can agree that the humanities, in the realm of contemporary culture, are thriving and successful, and may wish that the humanities in the academia would likewise thrive.(Picture 2)

(IV) Verbal Languages and Digital Languages in the Humanities

If the humanities could become pluralistic in their employment of languages, this would open up territories for new disciplines in the humanities. For example, if they could accept verbal languages and digital languages, these two types of languages would come to have distinct roles.

Digital languages would make it possible to fuse the various independent topics of the different disciplines in the humanities into a more unified theme. Movies by directors like Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Woody Allen, JehKyu Kang (Picture 3), and Akira Kurosawa exemplify one perennial question, that is, what it means to be a human. These movies blend various areas in the humanities to present the total context where a human being struggles to locate himself. The plasticity of reality realized by digital languages is very welcome in the face of the recent regimentation of many disciplines in the humanities in the name of specialization.

Digital languages could play another important role as well. That is, the role of connecting the academic humanities with cultural humanities. It would be hard to expect a verbal language to fulfill such a role. The contemporary popular culture is already distancing itself from the culture of written language. Universities can not leave the future status of the humanities to the mercy of the cultural markets. Academicians should pay close attention to the social realities around them and offer assessments of them. It seems to me that the best way for scholars to participate in the social milieu is to produce digital contents. Digitally produced academic works can speak more eloquently about the future of the digital culture than traditional language-based works.

I don't intend to suggest that verbal languages will be totally replaced by digital languages. Verbal languages have been employed in the humanities to fulfill their traditional functions. They are imagination, interpretation, analysis, criticism, synthesis, memory and so on. I do not believe that there is a more powerful language than verbal language for such tasks. No wonder our predecessors have insisted on the primacy of this written language and tried to improve its effectiveness.

The tradition of the primacy of verbal languages in the humanities should be kept up in the future. This needs to be emphasized in light of the fact that the tradition has been challenged from various sectors. Pluralization of languages should be accepted but not at the cost of sacrificing the primacy of verbal language. Particular topics and specializations in the humanities can not be ignored in the age of popular digital culture and they need to be protected in terms of the total humanities communities.

In conclusion, the humanities require a balanced perspective on the use of languages, namely, the primacy of verbal language on the one hand and the utilization of other types of languages on the other. The verbal language will deepen our understanding of the human predicament and the pluralization of languages is going to enrich the human existence. Then, it is time to consider how to set a new goal on a higher level for the humanities.4)

Daihyun Chung, The Changing Nature of Knowledge and New Directions for the Humanities,
International Symposium on New Directions for the Humanities, UNESCO_South Korea & Korean Philosophical Association, December 12-13, 2002.