Aiming for the Moon
Aiming for the Moon
111. Exploring the Enigma of Knowing - How do we know what we know? : Dr. Esther Lightcap Meek (Philosopher and Author)
How do we truly know what we know? Are we relying on the right sources of knowledge in our lives? Join us in this thought-provoking episode with our special guest, philosopher, and author, Dr. Esther Lightcap Meek, as we tackle these fascinating questions and unravel the complex nature of knowing.
Together, we'll explore the concept of subsidiary-focal integration, which proposes that our understanding of reality hinges on our ability to interpret clues and make meaningful connections. Dr. Meek walks us through real-life examples from sports, music, and reading to demonstrate how this approach can expand our perception of the world around us. We'll also discuss the impact of social media on mental health, particularly among teenage girls, and delve into the idea of the 'loving gaze of the other' as a tool for self-discovery.
Tune in for this enlightening conversation and walk away with valuable insights that could change the way you view yourself and your relationship with knowledge. We'll also share practical advice for teenagers on exploring their philosophical questions and navigating the complex world of college life. Don't miss this opportunity to challenge your understanding of reality and transform your perspective on what it means to truly know something!
Topics:
- Philosophical Questions and Knowing
- The Importance of Indwelling Knowledge
- Philosophy, Mental Health, and Social Media
- Philosophy for Teenagers
- "What books have had an impact on you?"
- "What advice do you have for teenagers?"
Esther Lightcap Meek (BA Cedarville College; MA Western Kentucky University; PhD Temple University) is Professor of Philosophy emeritus at Geneva College, in Western Pennsylvania. She is also Senior Scholar with the Seattle School for Theology and Psychology, a Fujimura Institute Scholar, an Associate Fellow with the Kirby Laing Center for Public Theology, and a member of the Polanyi Society. Meek’s books include Longing to Know: The Philosophy of Knowledge for Ordinary People (Brazos, 2003); Loving to Know: Introducing Covenant Epistemology (Cascade, 2011); A Little Manual for Knowing (Cascade, 2014); and Contact With Reality: Michael Polanyi’s Realism and Why It Matters (Cascade, 2017). Her forthcoming book is Doorway to Artistry: Attuning Your Philosophy to Enhance Your Creativity (Cascade, 2023).
An author and public speaker, Meek develops and offers everyday philosophizing that matters to all of us. Her website is www.estherlightcapmeek.com. Follow her on Facebook (estherlightcapmeek), Instagram (estherlightcapmeek), and Twitter (esther_l_meek). Esther lives in Steubenville, Ohio.
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Well, welcome, dr Meek, to the interview. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. You're so welcome. Thank you for reaching out to me, of course. So you have a very fascinating question that I think a lot of people struggle with but don't necessarily sometimes express that they struggle with it. You kind of talk about how do we know things and how do we know what we know even, and oftentimes people get kind of either upset at themselves if they don't understand, or they kind of get stuck in this loophole of well, maybe I don't know what I actually know. So could you set and set the stage on some of these questions that people ask themselves?
Speaker 2:Sure, well, i probably am an odd duck, but I think everybody's odd like me. They just haven't found that out yet, but I spend. I always start out by trying to help people realize that you can't duck doing philosophy, because it's unavoidable And so to talk about it a little bit is a good thing. And especially people coming up to college age, that is just such the time as you're, you know, moving to adulthood to think about philosophical questions. And when I think about what philosophy is, they're these really simple questions, like I have called them the big, hairy questions, because they're you don't usually, you don't often think about them, but they also permeate absolutely everything that you do. So one has to do with how we know, whatever it is we know. One is what reality is, another is what is right and good, and another is who am I? What does it mean to be human? Those are fundamentally philosophical questions and we can't take a step without living out some kind of response to all of them, all in an interpenetrating way.
Speaker 2:So I got my start because I had these strange questions, like a skeptical question. So I think of myself now as having and being an adolescent onset skeptic. So I had these questions when I was 13. I didn't exactly talk about them because I was embarrassed of them, but one was how do I know that God exists? And the other is how do I know that anything outside my mind exists, you know, am I just able to be certain and in contact with what is inside me? And how do I know that there's really a reality out there and that I'm actually connecting with it? when I know And it took me some years to find out that those questions were philosophical and that responses to them had shaped whole cultural epics across the disciplines.
Speaker 2:That just fired my imagination to study things in our disciplinary and study ideas which have such huge consequence. But I didn't even know at that point that you could actually study philosophy. So when I found that out when I was in college, it took me 12 hours to change my life to pursue it, and I did because it felt like these were the most important questions, because they impacted everything else. So how am I doing with regard to your question?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're doing very well. So, as we kind of discussed, people don't always know how they're responding to these questions, or even that they're asking them. So what are common responses that you see throughout our culture? How do people try to answer these for themselves, even if they don't necessarily know they're answering it this way?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's a good. Actually it's a philosophical point that you can be answering them without knowing you're answering them. That means you need an epistemology and account of knowing. That makes sense of knowing what you can't put into words, which is one of the reasons I have chosen the approach that I do. You have to have an account of that If you're going to move toward knowing from not knowing. You have to have an account of that. How can you have a half understanding?
Speaker 2:But back to your question living in our age, in our time, which I refer to as the modern age, and I believe it begins in the 1600s and it comes to the present and it's only getting stronger, more strident. But part of what defines the modern age is presumption and implicit presumption about what knowing is. And if you were to talk to most people on the street, they would just say that what knowing is is information. It's facts and information and data that you collect And your goal is to get comprehensive information. So it's connected with other ideals of modernity like utility or pragmatic, you know, exalting what works, and so we want just knowledge that will give us power. So there's a very much a power move that goes on with knowledge as information.
Speaker 2:It's transferable, you can commodify it, you can sell it And our internet prowess now can tacitly kind of underscore that idea that it's collecting bits of information and you're putting it together And you can be involved in that, whether you are sure that reality is there or not. So we've got a whole lot of skepticism. That means not sure, right, a lot of doubt that we can actually know reality in itself. So I would say those are common responses. You might have some response to that yourself, do you think? does that sound?
Speaker 1:Yeah, i think it's very interesting. I think that is true because you see a lot of people who kind of go about well, that seems to be a trend of technology, for example. So why do we do science at all? Well, it seems to be so that we start innovating more. You see that a lot, and so how do we research next? Okay, whatever makes the most money, for example, over sometimes What is the most interesting or might be the most revolutionary later. And the other thing is, i'm sure a lot of people are listening and going, okay, but isn't that what knowledge is? Is knowledge not just information? So how is what was the definition pre-1600s?
Speaker 2:Well, you know, I'm not so much of a scholar on that though I go back and use resources there. But what happened for me is that I found my way to this philosopher who was a premier scientific discoverer in the 20th century And his name is Michael Polanyi, And he, as a scientist, thought about how discovery happens And he said that if knowledge was information and if the method was the scientific method, no scientific discovery could ever happen. But it does. So maybe you need to fix your epistemology. And so he proposed an approach to knowing or an account of knowing, which we actually can't help but carry out because we're humans. It's unavoidable. Even if you were going to try to deny it, You'd have to use it to deny it Right.
Speaker 2:And so, as I've learned that, I've come to kind of embrace that approach to understanding knowing, And it starts with saying that it's not the case that we're focused on knowledge as information. We're focused. We need to see that what we're doing is a skill of coming to know, And when you're trying to move toward what you do not yet know, it takes an art, an artful skill that is an information collection, And it's not linear either And it's very. You can see that you do this if you just look at any skill that you have, And so starting with simple ones like bike riding and car driving and those sorts of things, things where you have a musical instrument or a ball you know or something that involves a skill Or if you think about how your perception works. Sometimes too, it's not additive. So when my father started to teach me to ride a bike, it was very uncomfortable And focusing on the information would have kept me blind to the performance Right. So somehow I need to climb inside some things that it wouldn't work for me just to look at. I had to kind of get inside and look from them and invite a farther pattern, And there can be. There needs to be a kind of a shift so that this transformative pattern makes sense of the clues that you've been riding on.
Speaker 2:So Polanyi uses the word clue a whole lot, And the neat thing about the word clue is you can only rely on a clue at the point that you have understand it. It's not information Right Now, or it might be information, but somehow you've got to have gotten your body inside of it. Somehow You have to rely on it, get inside of it, try to see the world from it and invite a farther pattern that you can't access in a linear way. So I talk a lot about the aha moment. You know that the flash of insight where you have an in breaking pattern that transforms everything that you were struggling to make sense of. You know, my father actually put me on my on the bike and pushed me, And I think he thought that when I got to the bottom of the hill I'd be riding. You know that the integration that's Polanyi's, were the coming together of the pattern of the performance, would have somehow happened magically by the end of the hill. Well, I am a bike rider, I just can't remember the bottom of the hill. But there comes this point where you say I get it, I get it.
Speaker 2:And no teacher can guarantee, for example, that you will be a successful reader. You know, if you think of first grade teachers, they could. There's still the question of how to teach a reading is a very live question, But it's the fact is there's no linear way to guarantee that somebody will be a reader. So so what a good teacher has to do is put out maxims or guide guidelines, you know, to actually help a kid's body feel what they're supposed to feel And it's it's way more creative and artful. But the cool thing is here. You know I'm back.
Speaker 2:This is the former skeptic. The cool thing is that Polanyi said you can make contact with reality. And you know you've made contact with reality when you have this sense of future possibilities that you can't name. And the fact is, when you get it together to ride a bike and you realize you've succeeded at getting that, the world then comes to you. In so many bike paths, You know there's all these places that you can go, You know. So what opens up the world and is this its contact is like too thin of a word. It's just like the world explodes because you have been able to get on board with the skill of coming to know whatever it is, And that's a way more fun and we do it all the time. It's very human but it's practically magical and it roots us in the world.
Speaker 2:I mean I love, you know, running on from bike riding to. I'm not an athlete but I'm a Pittsburgher, I root for the pirates and I root for the Steelers and all of that athleticism and music too. I love music. All of that is subsidiary, focal integration, which those were Polanyi's words, that you rely on and climb inside or indwell All these clues to invite this pattern subsidiary, focal integration. Well, you see that in all athletic performance It's a beautiful thing to see and there's no way that somebody could be a star third baseman and have a knowledge as information epistemology. You just couldn't do it.
Speaker 1:So kind of to conceptualize this a little bit. I think I understand, at least maybe a tad. Correct me if I'm wrong here. So in some ways, knowing skill let me see how I exactly want to put this Being a finely grasping knowledge, if we wanted to find knowledge as not just information, so skills, relationships and other attributes allows you to unlock different spheres of the world and involve and know more about the world itself. So by in some sense understanding aspects of the world and learning different, we're going to say the word items, but that's not going to be a good word.
Speaker 1:Items of the world allows you to see more of the reality in which you live, is that?
Speaker 2:It's richer than that. It's definitely sounds richer, yeah. So take something like gardening, or take something like chemistry. There is a whole lot of stuff you got to learn like items, but then what you like, they don't even start to mean anything until somehow you climb inside them. Reading is exactly the same way. You know, if I were looking down at Chinese characters on a page, i'd think they were pretty, but they would not open up in meaning until I could read them. So what happens when you learn to read is somehow you are able to stop looking at it and look from it to a farther pattern, and so it's like the page and your body become one. You indwell the text and then you're thinking about the meaning. So it's just like riding a bike too.
Speaker 1:It's almost like when you learn this information. it becomes part of you in some way and allows you to learn more about the world around you because you see it through that lens Reading, for example.
Speaker 2:We have to say that learning is not a massing information. I mean, think about the difference between knowledge and wisdom. If knowledge is information, there is no account of wisdom. But what you need if you are a chemistry person, it's almost like you've got to wear the periodic table of elements. It's like it becomes part of your body and then you see from it and then you would see all the elements you know that way And it opens the world to you, right? So it's almost like, if you think of the idea of wearing it, polani's word was indwelling.
Speaker 2:And the trick is that, if you think, if you have the knowledge as information, preset of what you think knowledge is it's, you know, you can be a perfectionist, you can collect all the information, you can regurgitate it on the test and then you can get a degree because you're educated.
Speaker 2:But oh no, that's just so surface, it's so surface.
Speaker 2:And you know, a lot of people think in terms of information and application, and I want to kind of blow up that kind of an either or right or a one to and say, look, no, you have got to. Yes, there's going to be some some collecting of the information, but you have to, you've got to get yourself inside it, to see from it, to open the world, just like with reading, just like bike rider. And so words like trust and reliance on clue I mean what? what would the word clue even mean? on a knowledge is information, mindset, it just, it just wouldn't even have a meaning. And so and another very cool thing is and I got this from Michael Polanyi to because if you're a discoverer, you have got to trust what you have understand, and you might be wrong, right, but, but you have to accredit what you can't fully say just yet, right. So you need an account of knowing that makes sense of that, because if you don't, there's no way you could have, you could have discoveries happen.
Speaker 1:I want to shift gears a little bit for those who aren't as philosophically inclined and have never really been exposed to some of these philosophical ideas. I'm sure they're thinking okay, so we have an idea of epistemology, and then so you have this, let's call it a theory. For example, you have this theory of how it works. Why, why do I even care about this? Like, i mean, on a practical level, i don't have to. I don't always think about okay, this is the way in which I know things. Does this apply to me at all? And it seems to be now, correct me if I'm wrong here but we see epistemology and the way people understand it throughout all of culture, even if they don't necessarily say that we see it. I mean, the big thing is like who am I as a teenager? How do you understand who you are as a person in that way? And then, of course, you see it all throughout politics.
Speaker 1:Now, I hate politics, I don't want to talk about that, but you see all kinds of different topics there And there's this idea of well, how do we, how are we certain about certain things And how am I certain about who I am, How am I certain about whether I'm friends with this person? What? are some of these practical ways in which our theories and our philosophy about epistemology excuse me relates to kind of for lack of a better term the real world as people refer to it.
Speaker 2:What I would say is, if you are working from a knowledge as information mindset, which we all tend to be, it has baggage And the baggage can really be hurting you And you know switching to actually to business terms it can be bad for your bottom line And it can be really bad for your self identity, because if knowledge is information, somehow it's disconnected from you and it disconnects you from the world, and so if you don't have those kinds of connected connections, you don't know who you are, and so and it plays to bad stuff like anxiety and boredom and cynicism and checked out indifference, and it's damaging the universe. It's called the environmental crisis. I mean, we just have to look outside and see the wreckage that has come about because of the modern age's presumption that I can do anything I want in the way of utility by just collecting information. If a knowledge is information approach really another thing. It doesn't have a person in it, it doesn't have responsibility in it either, you know. So we have this idea. Well, you know, information I can, i can collect and I have no obligation, even after I'm done collecting it. Then I can decide whether I want to buy in or not. Well, all of that is just not how reality that's going to kill. Reality is going to kill you.
Speaker 2:And so there's a lot of especially young people, especially people your age coming up on college or coming into college that have these crises that obviously you know other things are involved, but there's this philosophical component that nobody's diagnosing And I have taught this for semesters at college and I've seen healing and transformation and people released from this baggage.
Speaker 2:You know, and they didn't even know they'd never had a philosophy course before. And I have to say, taylor, that you know, if, because of this, this conversation, some of your listeners might say, oh, i need to take philosophy, which would be a good thing, there's no guarantee that the philosophy course that you're going to get into is going to address this. And that's why, you know, here I am in my 70th year. You know, this has been a life quest for me and I did not learn Michael Polanyi's work in a philosophy class. Why? Because a lot of philosophy in the modern age has rejected what he is saying just without even listening to it. So I'm sad about that, but I've worked hard to come up with the proposals that I do, and it's not just any old philosophizing that'll get you to it, but I do have some books I'd be happy to share.
Speaker 1:Yes, go check out Dr Meeks books. They're really brilliant.
Speaker 2:One of the things that I've read high schoolers. That's the other thing too. I mean, there's high schools around the country who use them as texts.
Speaker 1:Well, it's a great resource to get into the philosophical questions that we struggle with. Even if we don't necessarily know, it's very interesting. So one of the big problems that people talk about with mental health is social media, and one of the number one things people look at is the like button and how the like button specifically teenage girls changes your self-esteem. This seems to be Now I could be ignorant just about this But it seems to be that this kind of information as power, information as utility only, is very connected to this idea of social media and then self-esteem. If you see yourself to this lens of the information, of the like button for example, that that would affect your social identity as well, do you see any connection between some of this mental health crisis I mean, you already mentioned anxiety and some of the technology that we use daily.
Speaker 2:Well, great question, and I would say that, like button, if it's a problem for any of us, no matter the age, we need to treat it like you would, an addiction. And you know there's just times in life that you say, look, this is not good for me. And part of what I talk about in my epistemology that the things that I do develop is the role, the critical role, of authoritative guides in your knowing, in any knowing, and then also the critical role this is in a big book I wrote called Loving to Know of the loving gaze of the other And in particular, like your mother when you're first born. But then there's these operative faces in your life that you actually have to see. Them seeing you in rapture and delight, and find and see yourself in their rapture's gaze. So you have to see yourself being seen by somebody who adores you. Right, and part of wisdom is learning to choose the right faces.
Speaker 2:Well, the faces on Facebook don't count, they're just not faces. I mean, taylor, i'm looking at you know, this beautiful screen, it's better than the icon, but you know you ought to. You know, look to the key friends in your life and colleagues and family members who see you so that you can see yourself in them. That's how you have a sense of of who you are, is to see yourself reflected in the gaze of the other. And you've got that. You know whatever is going on in social media in the way of whatever, that's not the main act. But except we all you know we're vulnerable to addictions and devices And we all need to say, okay, i'm done with that. I need to put that away for right now And not choose who you listen to. You have to. That's like everybody's had to do that for millennia before there was social media.
Speaker 1:It's really fascinating that you, in order to understand yourself, in a lot of ways we have to see your reflection in other people and the reflection of people's opinions about you, and that's how you understand yourself. Yeah, choose the people you look at. That's the other thing, and it seems to be a lot of the problems, kind of circling back to the social media thing, is we're equivocating actual people in their opinion of us with these icons that maybe actual people interact with. But in reality, how much does that kind of going back to the epistemological question does social media and the reactions to what we say there actually how much is that connected to the real world, stuff like that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's actually. You know, technology really does lend itself to fabrication, which is kind of making stuff up. That's true, you know, quite again, quite honestly, i'm old enough to know that you don't need technology to fabricate.
Speaker 1:Unfortunately we have to wrap up our conversation, but what a great line to end on. We have two more questions, and the first one is what books do you have an impact? What books have had an impact on you?
Speaker 2:Well, obviously, when I found Michael Polanyi's work, that was the beginning of the getting to my skepticism, because I looked at that And I thought, and it just it made sense. I'm a Christian believer. It made sense of how I think I know God. It just makes sense of knowing in every field. So that was a big one. And another person I've been working with recently and I'm not, you know, i'm a novice learning to read DC Schindler's work, but I'm going to spend the rest of my life happily learning to read it. So DC Schindler's DC. And then his last name is S C, h I N D L E R. And you have to say DC because his father, who's recently deceased, was D L D L Schindler And he also is a great philosopher too. But I, dc Schindler has a book you might want to look at called listen to this title Love and the Postmodern Predicament. But I call it machine gun metaphysics. It is dense, but he is brilliant. He might be the most important philosopher in the 21st century.
Speaker 1:What a wonderful term machine gun metaphysics.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, i've studied it with my students and, because of my epistemology, it gives courage in the area of half understanding. So I plunge them into deep end. And I'm not looking for exactitude with regard to comprehensive understanding, i'm looking for splashing around exuberantly in a bottomless reality.
Speaker 1:So what is your advice to teenagers?
Speaker 2:Well I would say, take seriously the questions that come up as you move through adolescence into adulthood and realize that a good number of them are philosophical and you are a philosophical being and you need to find a way to address those meaningfully. And I think lots of teenagers never even get to hear or take a philosophy course, because the modern age is also anti-philosophical because it's about exalting utility. So I've seen, as I've watched my own children go through these years and stuff like that, it often is that the thinky types end up in the drama department and the literature area, which is fine, except that they also need to know that there's this philosophical dimension that has to be addressed. So that's my advice. And then I wrote longing to know for people teenage and up for sure. And then I wrote little manual for knowing as how to, for knowing in any field, and it ought to double as a orientation to college. So keep that in mind too.
Speaker 1:I will definitely well start recommending it too. Well, thank you so much, dr Meek, for coming on the podcast.
Speaker 2:I really enjoyed our discussion. I'm so glad to have made your acquaintance, taylor, and I'll look forward to future connections.
