Let's Talk About Knowledge

How Do We Come To "Know" What We Claim to "Know"? And How Do We Verify Whether Information Is True Or Not?

(photo from publicdomainimages.net)

(Note: I typically use red lettering for my Newcomb Dominator Translator. Since Substack doesn’t have this feature, I am using bold font instead, e.g., “[domination].”)

____________________________________________________________________________

The verb “to know” is understood variously, as “to perceive directly; to recognize as distinct from something else; to discern the character of; to distinguish.” “Know” is a word that implies truth rather than falsehood. It encompasses both theoretical knowledge and practical experience.

For instance, I can read a manual on “how to ride a horse,” or I can ride a horse. Or I can watch a bunch of YouTube videos on “how to build a house,” or I can build a house. It is important to differentiate between theoretical knowledge and practical, experiential knowledge.

Some philosophers have divided human knowledge between politics and science. That distinction previously made more sense than it does now. These days, the line between politics and science has become blurred, because so much scientific research has become a tool of corporatocracy and oligarchy, and the “megadonor class.”

The theme of politics takes us back thousands of years. We are able, for example, to point to the Greek and Roman tradition of “the polis” (the body politic) expressed by, for example, Plato and Aristotle. In the Roman tradition you have sources such as the Roman historian and Senator Tacitus and the Roman thinker and statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero. The Western European intellectual tradition (the tradition of thought and inquiry) places tremendous focus on the nature of “power,” “the state,” and society (the social interactions of humans).

Jumping ahead to more recent times, in The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Its Genesis (University of Chicago Press, 1963) Leo Strauss says that eighteenth century English philosopher and political theorist Thomas Hobbes thought of “The whole body of knowledge” as being “divided into natural science on the one hand, and political philosophy on the other.”

Hobbes thought of political philosophy as independent of natural science, but he also used the discipline of the scientific method to work out and develop his ideas about the nature of knowledge, society, and “the State” [of domination].

When we spell the word “State” with an uppercase ‘S’, it is a technique used to express an elevated position of honor. The use of a capital ‘S’ on “State” is called “an honorific device.” The uppercase ‘S’ is a device of honor and elevation which is an outcome of an invisible structure in the English language: up/down, over/under, above/below. The phenomenon called “the state” (or “State”) is considered to always and without variation exist up, over, and above the people and things that are deemed subject to “the state.”

Those deemed “subject to” (“thrown under”) “the state” are without variation deemed or assumed to exist down, under, and below the power and authority of the individuals who control and operate behind the rubric of “the state” [of domination].

(Typically, as noted above, I would write the phrase “[of domination]” with red lettering but here on Substack bold lettering will do).

When we think about it, the term “state” is a word that can be used to refer to a particular “state of being,” such as “a state of joy” or “a state of bliss.” But in politics, the word “state” refers to “a state of domination.” It’s the domination aspect of the state that remains carefully hidden. Placing the word [domination] inside brackets makes us aware of this fact.

We find support for the association between the phrase “the state” and domination in the scholarship of nineteenth century political philosopher John W. Burgess. Burgess used a key term to label the nature of “the state,” and that term was “despotism,” which is quite obviously a synonym for domination.

In American Conservatives: The Political Thought of Francis Lieber and John W. Burgess (AMS Press,1967), Bernard Brown mentions one of “Burgess’ contribution to political theory.” It was Burgess’ view that “sovereignty” is the essence of that form of despotism called “the state.”

In Burgess’ view, says Brown, “The state is organized sovereignty.” Brown provides the example below of Burgess’ thought, which, by the way, also illustrates the over/under structure of the system of domination embedded in the English language:

“What,” asks Burgess, “now do we mean, by this all important term and principle, the sovereignty? I understand by it original, absolute, unlimited, universal power over the individual subject and over all associations of subjects” [emphasis added]

It was Burgess’ view that “This sovereignty furthermore, cannot be limited,” says Brown. He illustrates this point by quoting another statement by Burgess:

“. . . Power cannot be sovereign if it is limited; that [power] which imposes the limitation is sovereign; and not until we reach the power which is unlimited, or only self-limited, have we attained sovereignty.”

These ideas dovetail with Jonathon Havercroft’s definition of “sovereignty” (following from the ideas of Arendt, Foucault, Hart and Negri, and Agamben). In Captives of Sovereignty (Oxford University, 2011), Havercroft refers to “sovereignty” as “an unjust form of political domination that limits human freedom.”

For Indigenous nations and peoples, or what I prefer to call “original” nations and peoples, over which a given “state” has claimed a “right” of domination, “the state” represents what is believed to be a permanent state of tyranny and oppression, which is euphemistically called “democracy” by its proponents.

Within the state of domination, abbreviatedly called “the state,” what is termed “freedom” does not result in a free way of life for the average person. And, most certainly, the state of domination does not result in a free way of life for Indigenous peoples. The opposite is the case. Why? Because Indigenous peoples are defined as subject to the sovereign [dominating] power (sometimes termed “plenary power”) of the state of domination, and its system of property [domination].

In their 1985 legal textbook Property and Law, Liebman and Haar, state: “If property starts with the first establishment of socially approved physical domination over some part of the natural world, then the nature of that domination—often called ‘occupancy’ or ‘possession’—has importance.” They begin their first chapter with the heading “SOVEREIGNTY,” below which they add: “A. Chain of Title: European Versus Native American, and below that the chapter content begins with: "Johnson v. McIntosh 21 U.S. (8 Wheat.) 5543 (1823), a decision has been called “the cornerstone of property law in the United States.”

In the screenshot below, notice that when we pull up the U.S. Supreme Court website for the 1823 Johnson v. McIntosh ruling, at the top of the page we find “Annotation,” “PRIMARY HOLDING.” Below that heading, you’ll find the following sentence:

“When a tract of land has been acquired [obtained] through conquest [by domination], and the property [domination] of most people who live there arise from the conquest [domination], the people who have been conquered [nforced under domination] have a right to live on the land but cannot transfer title to the land.”

My Domination Code Translator bracketing technique brings into the foreground of our awareness what ordinarily remains in the background and thus out of focus. The ever-present domination patterning reveals what is ordinarily never noticed because it is not made explicit.

The domination of the free and independent existence of American Indian or “Indigenous” existence by the United States, is to this day habitual and routine. It remains something about which the average person knows next to nothing.

This brings us back to the central focus of this essay, which is the nature of knowledge, and the question of whether what we believe to be true is true. How do we go about verifying whether what we believe to be true, or what someone else tells us is true is indeed true?

It's obvious that we cannot factor into our mental repertoire information we have remained oblivious to because we were never taught anything about it. Nothing in our dominating society schooling taught us how to see and think about the system of domination. We’ve even conditioned to talk about “the system” instead of the complete thought, “the system of dominion.” As a result, we have not been able to know about it by that name, and yet we see evidence of the destructive and traumatic effects of domination on people, land, air, water, and ecological systems across the globe on a daily basis.

This brings us to a profound question: Once we have become aware of the existence of a domination system of thought and behavior that has caused and continues to cause the vast majority of problems that we face as homo sapiens on a daily basis, what shall we do about it? One starting point is to begin studying. and practicing earnestly and learning how to apply the domination framework of analysis in a manner that enables us to see what we previously could not see, and to know what we previously could not know, and to respond in a manner we previously could not.

With our new-found awareness, together at a minimum we can begin to say “no” to the claim of a right of domination in all its forms and manifestations.