June 17, 2008
Epistemological Confidence
I currently work at Milsoft Utility Solutions as a technical writer and software tester. Next week is a big week for Milsoft, as we have a conference attended by many of our users. These users consist entirely of utility company employees, as we design software for the mapping, modeling, and analysis of large scale electrical circuits (e.g. for a city). I’ve been editing papers and presentation notes that will be used in our upcoming conference, and came across this paragraph, which I find fascinating.
“Cartography or mapmaking is the study and practice of making representations of the Earth on a flat surface. Cartography combines science, aesthetics, and technical ability to create a balanced and readable representation that is capable of communicating information effectively and quickly. Cartographic representation involves the use of symbols and lines to illustrate geographic phenomena. The cartographic process rests on the premise that the world is measurable and that we can make reliable representations or models of that reality.” from a PowerPoint presentation by Shawn Bard titled “Cartography Tips & Tricks,” to be presented at Milsoft’s 2008 National Users Conference later this month.
Now, I don’t have a great interest in cartography, but I am interested in how confident Mr. Bard is that he can accurately model the real world using his cartographic techniques. I don’t doubt that he’s correct. What intrigues me is that nearly everyone in the US has a profound confidence in our ability to know the physical reality before us, but many are skeptical that we can have any knowledge of moral reality. We have restricted categories for what counts as knowledge. What can we know? If we didn’t learn it from one of our five senses, we say it isn’t true or isn’t dependable. But we believe we can know courage when we see it. We can know love. We can know these when we see them in others, and we can have experiential access to these in ourselves. When a man loves a woman, his affection is not merely the summation of his external actions. He can do everything right and yet have nefarious motives. His love cannot be known merely through an observation of his behavior. There is simply more to it than that. The same applies to morality. We can know that a man does wrong when he performs an upright act entirely for the sake of the praise he will receive. Something is faulty in such a soul. How do we know? Intuition, perhaps? Reflection? Revelation? What’s important to note is that our knowledge is not physical, nor arrived at through physical mechanisms. Yet it’s true. We know it as surely as we know the the world is real.
Written at 1:16 pm || Filed under: General
June 17th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Actually, our users also include vendors, services providers, consultants, and educators who work with electric utilities.
In the digital age, cartography is no longer limited to representing the earth on a flat surface. It can be fully represented in the three physical dimensions, the time dimension, and an unlimited number of qualitative, quantitative, and questionable attributes.
And, as an aside, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle applies here, does it not? If you know exactly where something is located, can you truly know its state . . . because you have to pin it down to know exactly where it is at any given moment.
As to the metaphysical musings, I don’t read the quoted text as claiming to be able to represent all that is real in the world, only what is physical. Clearly, the reality of a man cannot be mapped physically even though his location and physical attributes may be captured and represented in nearly infinite detail. There is much that is real in the world that is not physical, and it is not limited to emotions or intellect. We are at once physical and spiritual beings, and reality is the sum total of our relationships in both spheres. Perhaps God could map the spiritual, but I believe that there is a corollary in the spritual realm to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. If God were to precisely map (pre-determine) our spiritual reality, that would involve a constriction of the very thing that makes us in His image . . . our will . . . so, while He could indeed map our every detail, physical and spiritual, He instead chooses to let us find our way in both worlds . . . He is there to be found or avoided . . . and our spiritual reality is a result of our intent . . . to find Him or avoid Him . . . do we need a map?
June 18th, 2008 at 8:51 am
Steve, thanks for the comments. I readily admit my ignorance regarding the attendees of the conference, and appreciate the correction.
I agree that the quote doesn’t speak to anything but the physical. It wasn’t my intention to imply otherwise. What I did intend to highlight was that there is a prevailing mentality in American society that has no problem believing that cartographic methodologies are capable of accurately representing certain aspect of the physical world, but that moral knowledge falls into a different category, one that is slippery or beyond human comprehension or access. With this I disagree. We obviously do not have flawless knowledge of the moral realm, but that does not mean we have no access whatsoever.