Power is Knowledge: Part II

This is a continuation of the series on the essence of knowledge (epistemology) and its relation to power.

II) The Mystique of Power

Power is knowledge, and power has its mystique. The powerful knows something you do not. We can take as an example the mystique of the bureaucrat. The less you know of them, the more powerful they are. The more arcane their character, the more pointless their rules and regulations; the more removed they are from any logical, rational, tangible reality, the better for them and the worse for you. Their counter-intuitive rules are capable of entrenching themselves into the world of things and beings, until jumping through their hoops becomes an accepted facet of existence. Just by their strength alone (the strength of the State) they can carve themselves into reality.

The know-it-all is the smaller cousin of the bureaucrat. They do not express things for any useful end. They like appearing intelligent as a means of controlling others. They are an expression of power as knowledge – their power does not come from knowing anything, but from the pretention that they have an infinite well of knowledge to draw upon. Such a character, desperate to impress, understands the mystique of power. They are deceitful, epistemological sorcerers, who can produce nothing of value, attain no results, speak not a single truth, and yet still maintain power over others.

The mystique of power is what maintains its position. This is why the powerful present themselves as inevitable, eternal, inheritors of some legitimate reign. Power maintains itself when the powerless have no hope. Power hates imagination, because imagination quickly realizes the mystique. The powerless do not only need to know injustice - knowledge is not power. The powerless need imagination, to lead them to hope, and then to wage war against power, until it is vanquished, and knowledge freed from its tyranny.

III) Knowledge is part of us

Knowledge is not something removed from the whole human being. To think of knowledge as some dis-embodied (distanced from the body), floating, transcendent well of information is to forget that we are biological beings. Knowledge is literally attached to the human being, and this means it is entangled with everything that makes us what we are. For instance, the beliefs of a religious fundamentalist cannot be removed from their personhood, nor separated from their emotions. The two are bound together. Far have they carried their erroneous beliefs with them, a companion through the shift of time; a warm body to hold in the cold, existential night.

Knowledge can also become attached, quite literally, to an authority. For instance, in the patriarchal family unit the father is power and it is this power that allows him to dictate what is and isn't true. He is an embodiment of power; it is conflated with him.

Much of our never-ending journey to enlightenment consists in shedding off false-beliefs, with an occasional shift in world view (or rebirth). But evil (untruth) is literally contained inside of us, and that is why it can never wholly be vanquished. Philosophy can only go so far in equipping us with shields against untruth, and no spiritual fire can wholly scorch away our epistemological sins.

Selim Talat

‘The Difference Between Knowledge and Opinion…’

These days, everyone has an opinion. You could even say that this article you are reading is an opinion. With our incredible and unlimited access to the internet and all the media we are constantly presented with, we cannot help but be full of opinions. But opinions are not clear, they are not knowledge, they are subjective and they rarely tell us something about the thing that people are giving an opinion about. I believe there is a difference, a huge difference, between knowledge and opinion, and philosophy holds the key.

When you compare a decent news article to a thread on twitter, you can notice a slight difference between the two, cant you? But its hard to explain just what it is. Plato has a theory that helped me differentiate between the two. A good investigative journalist, similarly to a philosopher, is interested with what the things are, in themselves I mean. What is commonly known in Philosophy as the Love of knowledge. What happened? Why? Where does it all come from? The trouble I mean. A wish to understand the concepts. Plato would argue that a piece of news is a manifestation of what things are in themselves, in the same way that a beautiful landscape or a piece of art is a manifestation of beauty itself. Thus when you want to find out what the thing is in itself (go deeper) you are looking for knowledge. When you just look at the manifestation and say ‘that’s pretty’ or ‘that’s bad’ then you are just stating an opinion. The contrary to the love of knowledge is to just love beautiful things, or things, without thinking about the thing itself, only about the manifestation of it. Thus you give an opinion, almost like giving a superficial gaze.

This very populated land of opinion was placed by Plato, as a land right in between knowledge and ignorance. He claimed that to give an opinion, is a capacity, but not a very deep one, as to look for knowledge. So opinion is clearer than ignorance, because at least it looks at the manifestations of what things really are, but darker than knowledge, because knowledge wants to know what things really are.

To be fair to most of us who fill the internet with opinions, most of the media we are shown are manifestations of things. We are shown just and unjust actions, we are shown beautiful and ugly scenes… Thus we see the manifestations we can give an opinion about. Yet we have to dig deeper by ourselves to really find some knowledge about things, especially about what is going on in our world. To claim to have knowledge, we have to cultivate this knowledge, otherwise, we are just arbitrarily calling things good or bad, without understanding. And you might agree with me that it is incredibly annoying to see someone have an ignorant opinion on something you know or understand, so lets not do the same.

Eliza Veretilo

The Gooseythro: What is knowledge? - By Selim 'Selim' Talat

The Gooseythro: What is knowledge?

Badger wanders the market place (agora) alone, asking his philosophical questions to all those who pass by.

“Where are you headed on this bright day, dear Stoat?”

“Badger! I shall not talk with you, else you try to suck me into one of your long winded dialogues. Good day.”

“And to you, too. Ah, but who is this flapping down from his favourite oak tree. Owl, over here! Owl, come and land by me.”

“Badger! I am in such a rush I cannot even stay to preen my feathers. And even if I were not so hurried I would be suspicious that you will try to-”

“Oh never mind, away with you (some animals are so busy these days). Yet who is this cresting yonder hill -- a bard? Gooseythro, lo there Goose, where are you headed?”

“Badger! I was just going to play my lute by the beach. Should be a few hours of sun left yet. Will you join me?”

“I would, but I am engaged with something else. Perhaps you could help me?”

“But of course my friend, you need only ask.”

“Very well, Goose. You see, I was most perplexed this morning, having woken with something of an aching head. I fear some manner of disease has stolen from me memories I once safely stored up there. I can't, for all of my efforts, seem to remember what 'knowledge' is!”

“That is a most unlikely story Badger. It is almost as if you were trying to ask me a philosophical question about knowledge in a roundabout way. Nuh...hold your tongue, you don't need to apologise to me. I will just answer the question and then continue my gay quest to the beach. Knowledge is things that you know. There, you are cured and we can continue enjoying our lives.”

“Knowledge is what you know. Hhhm. But what about --”

“Now look here, Badger! I know this game. It's the one where you keep on asking questions indefinitely. I shall not indulge you any longer!”

“Good Goose, this is my last question, I promise. All I want to know is what knowing is.”

“Okay, fine! Knowing is when you have an understanding of something as being true. I know that I am carrying a lute. I know that I am in Athens in 458 BC. I know that I am going to the beach very, very soon and that you are coming with me to enjoy your life.”

“Yet these are all obvious enough truths and thus easy to grasp. If this were all knowledge is, everyone would be an expert of everything just through brute existence alone. Is knowledge merely our understanding of the obvious?”

 

“Yes, well I don't just know obvious things like the date. I know that two and two combined together make four, I know how to play elegant strains on my lute and I know that the gods alter the passage of stars and moon”

“Now let us not get carried away here Goose. How is it you know it is the gods who move the stars about?”

“Simple really. What else could it be?”

“Why, it could be any number of things!”

“But I have evidence on my side, Badger. Very powerful evidence.”

“Will you not share this with me before you depart?”

“Yes I will (for I must admit this is getting interesting). Every time the priesthood has struck upon the golden drum to wake the gods a new moon has followed. How can it be denied that the moon-change is created with the awakening of the gods?”

“The answer is quite simply to not strike the drum, and wait to see whether or not the moon emerges.”

“But then the moon shall not emerge and the tides shall wither!”

“How do you know this, Goose? I would love to know.”

“For the new moon turns only with the beating of the drum. It has been proven time and time again.”

“Perhaps it is not the drum that wakes the gods, but some other force we do not yet know about. Although let us not get bogged down here. I for one find it interesting that you tried to present evidence of your knowledge, as opposed to just stating a belief.”

“A foolish Goose I would be if I did that! I am certain a belief is not knowledge, no. It is just a belief. Once we have evidence for it, then it becomes knowledge.”

“So this means that only things we can confirm as true count for knowledge? So your memory of the song about the Pussycat and the Minotaur is knowledge, because you know how to play it, but the actual lyrics are not knowledge, as most of us  do not believe in ridiculous mythical creatures such as pussycats.”

“No, no, no. You misunderstand. The lyrics are knowledge of a story, but the story itself is false. Remember, that because the adventures are supposed to be illogical, it is alright to call them knowledge. But if I said three and two made seventeen, this would not be okay.”

“So what you are saying, Goose, is this: You know the song to be representative of a false, fantastical world of magic, but it still counts as knowledge, because songs are supposed to be fantastical.”

“Precisely, Badger – you put it more succinctly than I ever could.”

“I must disagree with you, dear Goose. You see, I would categorize your song as a work of art,' at this, Goose blushed, 'which is designed to operate on a different level to our everyday ideas of knowledge. For instance, I may know how to fix a sandal, but this is merely technical knowledge. I may know the meaning of life is to overcome the world of appearances in the search of perfect ideas, this is debatable philosophical knowledge. I may know that it is unlikely the gods concern themselves with piddling little moons, this is knowledge of what is not the case. And I may know how to sing a song about unlikely creatures such as possums, this is not really knowledge, but more an artistic expression.”

“Then that would mean that not everything I know is knowledge! Oh this is confusing me greatly, Badger. Although I do appreciate you dividing things up into categories, I would much rather think that everything in our heads that can be proven should be considered knowledge.”

“Oh, we move in circles like a donkey around the well! Tell me, dear Goose, if you were lost in the desert and you saw a mirage of an oasis, would that constitute knowledge?”

“Why not at all, Badger. I would think that I was being tricked. Just as when I dream about making love, I know the visions to be something different from real life. But even those illusions are still part of my being, part of my memory, and part of my knowledge. Oh I insist it!”

“Then, just as an illusion has no realness outside of your head; is it not fair to also call your song an illusion? Alluding to a reality that is not there, after all?”

“I suppose I shall have to give you that point, Badger. Are we finished now?”

“Not quite yet, I have one last question. Is the song a good song?”

“Why of course it is! Do you doubt my song-craft, Badger?”

“I do not. Yet Mule is not fond of your strains. Nor is Eel”

“What does Mule know about music?! And Eel hasn't ears – she has no right to judge.”

“Ah, so people have varying 'knowledge' about what is good music and what is bad. Mule dislikes your music because he does not know it is good.”

“Precisely! That poor deprived quadruped.”

“And why does he not know your music is good? Certainly he has heard it on many occasions. This means either one of two things: either everyone can eventually be taught to learn about what is good or not, or some things are not knowledge and are just down to the whims of the individual animal.”

“No, that is nonsense. My music is good because most people have said it is. This is my evidence – this justifies my belief and makes it true. Right, Badger?”

“I am not convinced, good Goosey, I’m not convinced at all. You are saying that knowledge is determined by the greatest number of animals assenting to it. Yet this means that if everyone said the sky was a dark shade of maroon, we would have to submit to it, in spite of our contrary evidence.”

“Now it is you who is being naughty, Badger! Earlier we established many different 'knowledges'. One was based on what we could see, 'the sky is blue' and then we all conclude that the sky is blue. Art however, must depend on some other type of knowledge – for all of us experience art, but not all of us come to the same conclusions. So in terms of the worth of song, I would say that it depends on the numbers who like it.”

“Well confound me, Goose – ye aesthetic avian! I did not come here to discuss matters of art and other trivia. I must say I am disappointed, with you and with myself for falling into such a trite dialogue.”

“Do not for a second blame me for all of this. You are the one who started it all.”

“I did, but not with the intention of falling into the nettles of trickery.”

“How have I tricked you?! If anything it is you who is the notorious, slippery irritant.”

“You said that mule did not have knowledge of your music being good, because he was lacking something. Then you said that what made your music good was that most people enjoyed it. However, everyone knows that mule is obsessed with gossip and tends to conform to what others say. The likelihood of mule not knowing that other people liked your music is not worth considering.”

“Oh. I had not considered that much.”

“Such a conclusion is ludicrous; that the way to know if something is 'good' is to know whether or not everyone likes it. There must be something else that determines such knowledge. Hhhmm. Aha, I have it. We are looking at the external reaction too much – we must look at the actual songs themselves to determine if they are good, removed from the tastes or whims of any audience, including our own tastes.”

“Very well, Badger, lead on. For I am ignorant of what else to say.”

“There must be elements of the bards song that determine its 'goodness'. Likewise with anything, be it a spear, a ship, a 'skin of wine, a canal. The knowledge of whether or not any of these things we create are 'good' is contained within the very thing itself – how well it achieves its purpose, and whatever people outside of it say is just so much noise!”

“Let us stick to the song example if we could. What makes a song good?”

“Well it is evident that you are the better bard between us, owing to my being tone-deaf (and these oversized badger paws). I would venture to say that you have more practice upon the lute and are familiar with it. Your spirit is more finely attuned to the sensitivities of sound and you are capable of weaving emotional tapestries with chords and melodies. You listen to many other examples of good barding and this allows you to discover and fulfil the purpose of music. All of these things combined make up knowledge of goodness.”

“But what if a song fulfils all of these criteria and yet a certain stubborn mule still refuses to acknowledge that the song is a master-work of craft, function and delivery? (If I may say so myself!)”

“Then there is evidently something amiss with the mule.”

“So it is then a case that mule does not know good from bad, and must be told what is good in order to appreciate it! That is no more ludicrous then suggesting one must know what is popular in order to know what is good.”

“Well...well...I never said this would be an easy process did I? Nor did I ever lay claim to any particular knowledge, most rampant goose!”

“Hold your bluff, Badger. You aren't burrowing out of this one quite so soon. You stopped me asking for answers, I tried to give you one and ended up being led along a dark, misty river with yourself at the helm. Now you have struck a rock and rather than admit it you try and blame me for this outcome. How perfidious!”

“I maintain it is no contradiction and you are at your perverse little word games once more. Look, you said that by knowing what is popular we can know what is good. I said that by knowing what makes up good we can find out what is good. My suggestion is that we use philosophical inquiry to determine this, you were just referring to the bulk herd.”

“But so are you, my astute companion. For consider this: You are still maintaining that the good of my song is still outside of my song, in the reactions people display toward it. It is surely inescapable that your 'knowledge' is influenced by what is considered popular or no, by what we call the classics, and so on.”

“No! Now you paint my tail red and accuse me of leaving a bloody trail across the fields of philosophy. The fact that people enjoy the classics is not where knowledge of the classics being classic comes from. The classics are classics for being classic, in and of themselves. Dig?”

“But you still know what is or is not classic because of-”

“Again with the red paint! Regardless of how much people exalt and enjoy the classics, the knowledge of their being good could be discovered independently. This is why bards are so afraid of declaring something a classic – for fear of being wrong. We know when something is good because it will fulfil goodness against any odds.”

“You soar with the clouds with your transcendent knowledge. An irony, as I am a mere land-goose in comparison, earthy and even headed.”

“Where else could we discover knowledge of 'good'? In the mass flow, in the fickle utterance of sparrow, or the shallow chatter of magpie? There is more to life than mere appearances and bulk numbers.”

“Tell me Badger, now that the sun has gone down and I have missed the bright beach, at least leave me with an answer. Was it contagious?”

“Contagious? Whatever do you mean?”

“The thought-disease that stole your knowledge of knowledge?”

“Ah that! Yes, evidently it was so.”

“Still, something of a contradiction isn't it?”

“Not at all. I know that I lack knowledge, for I know that there is something out there, some place where perfection resides. We all know this, surely. Although, not myself, not all the time, I have doubts too.”

“I am going home, Badger. I am going home and I want to be left alone for a very long time.”

'Very well, whimsical beast! Flutter off with you.”

“Yes, farewell my fluffy friend.”

“Ah, that was most exhilarating. But who is this, cluttering along the passway. Horse! What are you doing out so late dear Horse?”

“Badger! I'm in a rush to the stables, but even if I weren't...”

Thus concludes the dialogue.

Selim 'Selim' Talat

The Philosophy Takeaway Issue 49 'Open Topic'

Politics and Power - by Mark Dawson

Politics and Power

When Charles Bukowski was asked ‘Why don’t you ever write about politics and world affairs?’ his response was; ‘What for? Like, what’s new? --- everybody knows the bacon is burning’.

When we talk of politics and power, this is not in reference to physical power (energy transference), it is in reference to the power of influence. We have to assume that if we are considering the objects of both power and politics we must initially assume that they are one and the same; showing a figurative, and symbolic likeness. Through this mirror-like naming of things we do away with the real; it is the plague of the logically, visual-biased mind, as outlined by McLuhan, that leaves us with concepts minus percepts.

Post-modern philosophers believed that power developed from a decentralised point. As such, does power really exist or is it a simulacra? In Simulacra, that of the naming of things, assigns it a sign value, but Baudrillard stated that a mirrored sign cannot hold value. The mirroring of the rhetorical sign, through mass-media, has transferred our attention away from the signs of power and politics and therefore these signs have no link towards the ground or its centralisation. Therefore, what are power and politics but the appearance of capital in the form of desire and demand; the end of the obliged sign where there is no monopoly but only duopoly?

It could be argued that power and politics do not just exist in centralised signs such as the House of Commons, The White House, the politician, the bank etc, but in all situations of subjective analyses. Chomsky and Baudrillard would argue that this takes form in private duopolistic media as transference. In subjective analysis both the signifier and the signified lose their connection to the ground when they are reproduced and duplicated. A monopoly can be mirrored but a duopoly is more problematic, and may not be possible.

Who really knows what power is (in the political sense), do we fall back to Heidegger? He stated that power is held in standing-reserve. If so, who or what possesses the greatest standing- reserve of duplicating methodology; that which brings-forth a sign incarnated in apathy. This is, in essence, political power; the reproduction of the mundane, the comfort of the known. And who doesn’t like crispy bacon?

Here, we return to Bukowski. If power and politics are ‘the bacon’, as he refers to it, then how does it burn? Does it burn in clouds of atomic smoke or diatribes that facilitate standing-reserve as force without action. How can the concept of power and politics be tackled if we cannot first locate its source, describe where it came from, or how it exists. We could adopt a more structuralist approach, one that observes power and politics as being facilitated through capital, influence and closed association. As Marx stated ‘Nothing can have value without being an object of utility.’ However, the sign of utility has been duplicated and regressed into the form of fashion, the sign value par excellence, beyond the point of retrieving utility as value.

Merton said that media dialogue leads to nothing but a form of narcotising dysfunction; the replacement of knowledge for action. Knowledge is not action yet we are left with a conundrum in the taking of action; where does power lie? Is it centralised or decentralised? Can it be challenged, and if so how? Should we challenge it and what would be the purpose in doing so? We know that the bacon is burning but as we discuss the how’s and why’s of the situation, nothing changes. Therefore we, as Bukowski did, return to his answer: ‘What for? Like, what new?’

This attitude is a reaction to the counter-productivity of action, the narcotising dysfunction within modern society. Therefore, if our actions have no worth, we may just as well, as Bukowski chose to, adopt an attitude of apathy. As such, who better to conclude this article than Bukowski himself:

“Now if you'll forgive me, dear readers, I'll get back to the whores and the horses and the booze, while there's time. if these contain death, then, to me, it seems far less offensive to be responsible for your own death than the other kind which is brought to you fringed with phrases of Freedom and Democracy and Humanity and/or any of all that Bullshit. first post, 12:30. first drink, now. and the whores will always be around. Clara, Penny, Alice, Jo- eeny, meeney, miney, mo”

by Mark Dawson

Sophist’s World

It is commonly considered that knowledge is power. The argument goes something like this. The more you know the more you are able to control and predict events. The more you are able to control events the more power you must have. Now I will not disagree completely with this line of thought. It is obvious that knowledge does give you some power. However I am going to argue that there is another skill that can give you even more power than knowledge, and that is the power to persuade.

In the film Training day we find that famous quote, that’s its not “what you know, it’s what you can prove.” The reason why knowledge alone is not enough is because we are social beings. It was argued all the way back in Ancient Greece by Socrates that power is increased in number, that even the strongest man, can not defeat fifty average ones. This view can also been seen in Marx's call for solidarity. Now if we accept that man is stronger in a group than on his own, individual knowledge is not enough. You need the skill in order to persuade and convince others of your knowledge. Let me give you an example, a scientist discovers a way to cure pancreatic cancer. He discovers the cure on his own in the laboratory. The next day he is struck dumb and blind. He has no way to convince anyone else that he discovered that cure. He has the knowledge still, however it is useless. This example should show you that the power comes not from knowledge itself but from being able to show and convince others of this knowledge.

Now ever since Plato the act of persuasion has had a bad reputation. It has been seen as something sinister. However persuasion is basically communication. We often judge things for the way they are able to communicate things to us. Another example may be this. A woman discovers a code that can tell us the origin of the Universe. Now this code is so complex that only she can understand it. She has no previous reputation in the scientific world, and can only be judged by this code. If nobody else can understand it, then it has failed. She will not be taken seriously and thus her power will be diminished.

We need not see rhetoric as something scary. It is not a form of magic. Even the most trained sophist cannot convince you of just anything. Persuasion relies on plausibility. The greatest way to gain this plausibility is through using tools that people can understand. The most used tools are things such as logic and empirical data. If an idea does not have support from these tools then it will lack plausibility and will thus not be able to convince.

So my argument is thus. Real power rests in the ability to convince others of what you know. It’s about what you can prove. Prove up to the level that others are satisfied. This is because with persuasion, you are able to convey knowledge on a practical level. In fact, only knowledge that can be socially proven do we consider knowledge. Thus if we are to consider knowledge to be power, we must have the ability to persuade others of our knowledge. Thus persuasion must give us more power. Thus real power lies in persuading others that you have knowledge, not simply in the knowledge itself.

Lloyd Duddridge

A poem for skeptics - By Ellese Elliott

A poem for skeptics

No word can depict the manifold

In a single living being

No names can imagine Gold

Nor the phenomena of seeing

No sentence could ever grasp

One's inkling of eternity

No language could describe

The meaning of infinity

Our logic renders us static

When we speak of one we love

We may seek refuge within mathematics

But then threatened by philosophy

All our dreams explained away

By the force of the enlightenment

But our science remains a foetus

In the belly of epistemology

A note on the poem:

Epistemology is the section of philosophy dedicated to thinking about knowledge: What it is and how do we obtain it. Episteme was a type of knowledge which was said to be divine or of the Gods and which only the gods could possess, however Protagorus (a pre-socratic philosopher (before Socrates)) pointed out that we can't know what the Gods know because we cannot know anything about the gods. Since then there has been much debate about what we can know for certain. Many philosophers have concluded we can always play the skeptic. To doubt everything including scientific claims as they rest upon a fallacious logic; for example, just because I observe something 'X' amount of times does not therefore mean it is now a golden rule. This form of reason is called induction and was said to have been founded by Aristotle, Plato's student over 2000 years ago. Even now Philosophers debate what we can know for sure and little has changed. The debate continues and will probably continue for some years to come. 

By Ellese Elliott