In previous articles, we have discussed the problems associated with crowning the knowledge of Western sciences as the epistemological gold standard. Generally speaking, by limiting our conceptions of knowledge to that which can be verified by experimentation and scientific explanatory power, we fail to consider other important aspects of our world. Often, this is detrimental to forming the fullest possible conception of reality.
The sciences have a reply to our concern. Although other sources of knowledge, such as the Hopi creation story, can help us to discover the importance of certain values, they fail the test of correspondence truth. Western sciences typically espouse some version of scientific realism, which is the view that the claims of science accurately represent reality as it is, independently of our perceptions of it. Correspondence truth is just as it sounds. The claims of science are true because they correspond with the actual world-out-there. The Hopi story gives us an important practical notion that we are wise to think about, but evolution has the decided advantage of correspondence truth.
The obvious question remains, namely what exactly is so great about truth? Bruno Latour, a prominent science studies professor, points to the hybrid nature of many of our current problems. Climate change, for example, is a hybrid in that it is not simply a scientific problem, but also a social, political, religious, economic, etc. problem. To think of it as something that science alone can resolve is to utterly fail in grasping the nature of the problem. A scientific assessment of climate change, even if it corresponds with reality, does little with regard to addressing the aspects of this issue that do not lend themselves to a scientific solution.
Practical concerns represent an alternative to thinking about truth as simply correspondence with reality. After all, what do we really want science to do? Do we want to discover truth for its own sake, or do we want to solve problems and improve our lives? It seems that we want to do both, and limiting our notions of truth to correspondence is problematic in this regard.
While the scientists can explain why climate change is occurring, the Hopi seem better equipped to offer us a prescription for change. Hopi wisdom may lack the feature of correspondence, but it has decided advantages in offering a solution to aspects of problems like climate change that the sciences cannot even account for, never mind resolving them in any meaningful way.
Perhaps the distinction between practicality and truth-as-correspondence should remain, as there is clearly a distinct difference between the Hopi knowledge system and that of Western science. However, the practical fecundity of certain alternative systems of knowledge suggests that they may be on to something, and it does not seem wildly implausible to suggest that they are simply grasping at some other aspect of the world-as-it-is, which the sciences are missing.
It is not clear whether we should refer to this as truth, or correspondence truth, but it seems unwise to disregard knowledge that displays practical applicability as witchcraft or primitive mythology. As we continue our analysis of truth and knowledge, the lines of demarcation continue to blur, but our ability to address the hybrid problems of our world increases exponentially. We are perhaps best served by casting the net broadly with regard to what counts as knowledge. In doing so, we come closest to the Socratic ideal of approximating real truth, and of living the good life.
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