The fallacy of “experiential knowledge”
It is common for the unthinking occultist (and unthinking dullards in general) to champion the place of “experience” over “reason”, or “theory”, in the acquisition of knowledge. As we have said before, this is not merely mistaken; it is an outright category error.
Let us imagine that individual gets into a car accident, and by a stroke of fortune – as occasionally happens – escapes death or serious injury because he was not wearing a seat belt. This kind of experience is likely to be powerful, since it involves an encounter with mortality.
It should be clear to anyone that the individual who says “based on my experience, I know that not wearing a seat belt is safer than wearing a seat belt” is making a significant error. Here is a rough outline of the acquisition of such “knowledge”:
- I was in a car accident.
- I was not wearing a seat belt, and I escaped relatively unscathed.
- According to medical reports, if I had been wearing a seat belt, I would have been killed or seriously injured.
- Therefore, not wearing a seat belt probably saved my life.
- Therefore, not wearing a seat belt is safer than wearing a seat belt.
As we have said before, this “knowledge” does not arise from “experience” at all, because experience has no explanatory power. The “knowledge” is acquired by the individual reasoning on the basis of his experience. All knowledge is formed in this way. There is no such thing as “experiential knowledge”, only “rational knowledge”. Note that it is no escape to argue along the lines of “I know this thing here is a cat, but I can’t tell you why I know it’s a cat; I can’t define ‘cat’ very well, for you. Therefore this must be experiential knowledge, and not rational knowledge at all.” We have simply learned, through repetition and association, to attach the label “cat” to things that look (or smell) like that. We have no “direct experiential knowledge” that has somehow informed us what a cat is; we have just mechanically learned to attach such a label to such things.
The mistake in the seat belt reasoning case, of course, is that the individual is basing his reasoning solely upon his own experience, which is singular. The individual who “accepts experiential knowledge and eschews reason” is highly prone to falling into this trap, which is precisely why the person who says “I know God exists because I have experienced his presence” is so roundly mocked by his fellows.
The correct response is to recognise that all knowledge is rational knowledge, and to acknowledge that forming rational conclusions on the basis of isolated personal experiences is foolish. In the seat belt example, all we would have to do is to look at accident statistics to discover our error, and to realise that although not wearing a seat belt might have saved our life in this particular situation, it was an exception, and that even for us wearing a seat belt is still safer than not wearing one, even if we do run the risk of falling into just such an exception again.
When people talk about how the “experienced man” has better knowledge than the “theoretical man”, they are in fact not asserting “the superiority of experience to reason” at all. What they really mean is that the “experienced man” is basing his own theory on better, wider and more numerous experiences that the “theoretical man” is, who may be basing his theory on phenomena which he only thinks are real. Both the “experienced man” and the “theoretical man” are basing their knowledge purely on their reason, but the former – sometimes – is simply reasoning from better, more reliable and more proven information than the latter, and is therefore more likely to come to more appropriate conclusions. Of course, this is not always the case; it can and often does occur that the “experienced man” is just reasoning incorrectly off the back of better information, or in fact does not have access to better information, as would be true for the individual “experienced” purely in his one single car accident compared to the more knowledgeable road safety researcher.
The occultist who believes himself to have “experiential knowledge” which somehow “transcends reason” is therefore making a grave error, and any attempts to claim that his knowledge is “ineffable” is merely a convenient fiction to avoid coming to terms with the fact that he really doesn’t have any knowledge. It would behoove the aspiring Thelemite to accept these facts, and to recognise that if he thinks he has “knowledge which transcends reason” then he is simply deluding himself, and what he actually has is just some vague feelings that he doesn’t understand, regardless of how unattractive this may appear.
Of course, at some point somebody will raise the whole “reason is a lie” deal from AL II, 32, but this merely reveals a monumental misunderstanding of that verse and those around it. First of all, the fact that “reason is a lie” in no way implies the existence of some other form of “non-rational knowledge” that is not a lie. It merely states that knowledge is imperfect, which we already know, but imperfect knowledge is still knowledge, and it’s the only knowledge we have. Any person who is not a complete dullard already knows that we can never be 100% certain of anything, so this should be no revelation. Secondly, the five preceding verses which also deal with reason and the “pit of Because” are simply not talking about knowledge at all, but about action. The “curse upon Because and his kin” has nothing to do with statements such as “I know with a level of confidence not equal to, but very close to, certainty that the Sun will rise tomorrow morning because it has risen every morning with great regularity each and every day that I can remember being alive on this planet” but with statements such as “I should give money to the poor because it’s the right thing to do”, or “I should sit in my asana for five hours each day because performing such work is meritous”. The only “justification” required for any act under Thelema is that it be in accordance with will, so the word “because” in the latter two statements is simply out of place. The fact that AL II, 30-31 state:
If Will stops and cries Why, invoking Because, then Will stops & does nought.
If Power asks why, then is Power weakness.
should make this abundantly clear, but the tendency to selectively quote must be overcome in order to apprehend this kind of thing.
No more nonsense then, please, about “experiential knowledge” or “gnosis” being superior to “rational knowledge”, because the former two do not exist. “Gnosis” should be interpreted in the Biblical sense of one “knowing” one’s wife; one may “know” the taste of strawberries in this sense, and this is all well and good, but it is a category error to confuse this type of “knowledge” with the type of knowledge that informs one about what things actually are. The person who believes himself to “know” that, for instance, the theory of reincarnation is true because they have “direct knowledge” or “experiential knowledge” on the matter is quite simply horribly mistaken.
2 Comments on “The fallacy of “experiential knowledge””
I’m going to disagree with you, but I want to do it on grounds that are rational. It is obvious to anyone, as you say in your way, that people who live in a world that has no reference to common experience represent some of the worst cretins that live on the planet. That I agree with.
It also occurs to me though, as an example, that there are cretins that believe that because an experience is common, it must be real. Imagine America directly after 9/11, bawling their eyes out, by a strong majority I’d say, to their hero George W. Bush Jr., when that cretin happened to be a big part of the problem.
I would suggest that a sense of what “reality,” is has to do with an interaction between a person’s subjective world, like emotions, or fantasies, or what have you, and an objective world that is more than just a common realm. “A minority of 1 is not always wrong,” said Orwell, and unfortunately, if you’ve ever met a paranoid schizophrenic, you can only say, “that has probably happened, but no one can remember it happening.”
The problem I’m trying to explain is that it isn’t as simple as it seems. People don’t perceive reality very well at all by and large, and it has a lot to do… evading the loaded word “ego” with plain old vanity. Living in the “real world” is a matter of making choices, and at that some people are an utter failure.
So, not a direct contradiction of what you’re saying. It is indeed ridiculous to say, “Well, Vishnu came out of Heaven last night, made me a Buddha, and the apocalypse is coming tomorrow,” and then say “Gee, you just haven’t had that experience.” Total cretins. Take your Haldol guys. But, what is “real,” is not always simple.
It is obvious to anyone, as you say in your way, that people who live in a world that has no reference to common experience represent some of the worst cretins that live on the planet.
It is, but that’s not what I’m saying here. You’ll have seen some of those “worst cretins” that you refer to confuse the concept described here and on another recent post as “individual experience versus consensus experience”, or “consensus reality”. This just demonstrates that they have reading difficulties, because it’s not even remotely approaching what I’m saying.
The distinction I am making is between experience which is properly analysed, and experience which is ineptly analysed, or not analysed at all, but misdescribed as “knowledge” all the same. There are many things that individual experience alone – as opposed to “consensus experience” is perfectly capable of determining, providing that proper analysis is applied to it. There is no conceptual difference between one person’s experience and anothers; the value in comparing experiences really arises from the fact that you make your population of observations a lot higher that way. When you are dealing with things like serious car accidents, that’s the only way you can get a large enough population to apply your analysis to, but that’s not necessarily always the case. It would be sensible to conclude, for instance, that the sun will almost certainly rise tomorrow morning, and it would still be sensible to do it even if everybody else in the world thought you were crazy to suggest such a thing, because you have sufficient observations in your “individual experience” to be able to make such a simple prediction.
Aside from this, the real benefit in paying attention to the experience of others is merely to identify and highlight inept analysis, and to learn to analyse properly, just like the guy in the seat-belt example, and like all these “God speaks to me on a daily basis” religious fruitcakes. A conclusion such as “the sun will rise tomorrow” adds relatively little to the observed data, but conclusions such as “I had this experience, therefore reincarnation is real” bear absolutely no resemblence to the observations at all, and are purely the result of an overactive imagination.
In short, the problem is not that the cretin values individual experience over common experience, but that he is a total dimwit incapable of properly assessing even his own experience, let alone the experience of others. That’s the real issue being discussed, here.
It also occurs to me though, as an example, that there are cretins that believe that because an experience is common, it must be real.
Naturally; the old “one hundred million Christians can’t be wrong” nonsense, or all this alien “abductee” garbage. Again, this gibberish arises not from placing incorrect weight on various types of experience, but from being far too foolish to interpret those experiences correctly.
The source of this, other than sheer idiocy, is relatively simple to divine. If knowledge comes from analysis, then it’s easy to be correct. If knowledge comes from some “experience” which is impossible to verify, then everybody can believe themselves to be a master. So, being the clueless gimps that they are, they naturally plump for the latter, and the occultist is born. Avoiding criticism and having to demonstrate one’s outlandish and spurious claims by simply running away screaming from both is a time-honoured tradition in occultism.
The problem I’m trying to explain is that it isn’t as simple as it seems. People don’t perceive reality very well
And being able to perceive reality better is precisely the purpose behind studying a subject like this and is a necessary condition to the successful practice of Thelema. It’s not “simple”, and that’s exactly why people have to work at it. It’s just a lot easier to simply pretend one knows what’s what and avoid having to do this, so that’s what the vast bulk of these dolts do, convincing themselves that reality is whatever ridiculous “personal belief system” they choose to indulge themselves in on any given day.
It’s nothing but exceptionally transparent escapism. If you believe knowledge to come from “experience” rather than “reason”, then you simply declare a priori that you can never be wrong, declaring “truth” to be something “relative”. When you combine this with a claim to expertise in a subject – like occultism or theology – that has no real substance, then you can hide in your little dreamworld and avoid – ironically – the experiences that would highlight your errors potentially for ever, which is what most of these clowns do.