Question Your Epistemology
Epistemology, or the study of knowledge, is a very important thing to understand. What do we know? How do we know what we know? And how do we know what we know is worth knowing?
The first thing to address is how we acquire knowledge in the first place. Looking towards philosophical schools from India, eight general categories of validly measuring knowledge known as evidences (pramanas) are described. Sense perception (pratyaksha), inference (anumana), comparison (upamana), authoritative source (shabda), presumption (arthapatti), discernment by absence (anupalabdhi), inclusion(sambhava), and traditional or knowledge generally accepted or acknowledged without a clear source (aitihya).
Although these eight are there, different schools of thought will accept or reject certain ones for different reasons. Hare Krishna philosophers over the centuries found that these eight pramanas can all fit easily into just three: sense perception, inference and authority. The other five pramanas either fit into sense perception or inference somehow, but authority or shabda is the most unique of them all. For example, anupalabdhi or discernment by absence is just negative pratyaksha or sense perception. All knowledge can be ultimately gathered through the foremost three pramanas.
With these three pramanas, all things physical and metaphysical can be discerned. When it comes to understanding metaphysical things, the efficacy of these pramanas comes into question. In this regard, the prominent sixteenth century Hare Krishna philosopher and theologian Jiva Goswami discloses the following passage in his the first of his six Sandarbhas, the Tattva Sandarbha:
Human beings are bound to have four defects: they are subject to delusion, they make mistakes, they tend to cheat, and they have imperfect senses. Thus their direct perception, inference, and so forth are deficient, especially since these means of acquiring knowing cannot help them gain access to the inconceivable spiritual reality.
Sandarbha in Sanskrit means a piece of literature meant to disclose the confidential meaning of a subject, incorporate its essence, explain its supremacy, and convey its importance. The six Sandarbhas by Jiva Goswami are disclosing, incorporating, explaining, and advocating for the ultimate understanding of reality and its source which he describes as: “the inconceivable spiritual reality.” In order to get to the perception of real reality, one has to start to investigate the efficacy of their selected pramanas. To facilitate this for the sincere seeker, Jiva Goswami has introduced the concept of the four defects.
The four defects in human beings described by Jiva Goswami are: their subject to delusion, tendency to make mistakes, tendency to cheat, and imperfect senses. These defects are simultaneously independent and corollary. Because people have imperfect senses, they fall into illusion- they don’t perceive reality as it is, and then they make mistakes in their dealings in the world. Because of these mistakes, they cheat others directly or indirectly. We can explore the causation between these four things in almost any combination.
The point Jiva Goswami makes in this excerpt is that due to these defects, one cannot rationally expect that sense perception and inference can relay all of the proper information about reality to oneself. The metaphysical- the more subtle and sophisticated aspects of the way that reality is constructed will be missed due to the four defects.
The example of knowing one’s father is apt in describing this limitation of the two former pramanas. One cannot understand who their father is simply by inference or sense perception. A child obviously cannot be there at the time of conception to identify their father because they do not exist yet, and once they are born they might assume that the man they call “papa” is their birth-father. However, if their birth father becomes absent before they are born and their mother finds a new partner, if the child’s real father is a paramour of the mother, or if any other circumstances occur to obscure the position of the birth father raising the child, then the child’s inference would be incorrect. The only way that the child can truly know their father’s identity is from the word of the mother, all of the other methods of trying to understand are flawed.
One might argue: “what if the mother is incorrect also?” to which I would say: “bravo! You are an intelligent fellow for inquiring in this way.” However, we must understand that all analogies are limited in some way or another. At some point we have to accept something with faith, and in this example, the mother’s account is the best means of knowing the identity of one’s father.
Shabda or authoritative source is compared to the mother. The only way to understand the finer parts of the universe: its origin, substance, and purpose, and any other important information that one needs to know. The original authorities, known as the Vedas (which literally means “knowledge” in Sanskrit), are ancient scriptures from India, older than any other literature in the world, and the source of all of the philosophical ideas discussed in this article- which doesn’t even scratch the surface of the depth and breadth of the content of these texts. Principal among these texts is its summary, the Vedanta Sutra. The Vedanta Sutra is sufficient in itself to understand the aforementioned ideas about the universe, but it has been corroborated with a commentary on its content known as the Shrimad Bhagavatam.
Jiva Goswami, through his six Sandharbas, establishes how the Bhagavatam is the king of all literature, and consequently, its ultimate revelation of the identity of that inconceivable spiritual reality, described also as the absolute truth, the source of everything, and the Supreme Personality of Godhead: Krishna.
Thus, unless one understands the functions and limitations of the ways of acquiring knowledge, and thus uses such pramanas appropriately, one can miss the whole point of life. Perceiving the world with imperfect senses, making mistakes, cheating oneself and others, and falling deep into illusion, people in this world go around disoriented, not knowing what is truly the point of it all. Putting faith in the temporary pleasures of the world that can be perceived using only their senses, or incomplete, unsatisfying philosophies of the world, people deprive themselves of the higher taste of understanding the nature of reality and reawakening their proper relationship with the person behind it all, Krishna.