듀이의 경험론에서 본 지식의 총체성과 탐구의 성격 : 메논의 패러독스 해소방안

Abstract

The essay intends to discuss and bring out the nature of inquiry. According to Meno, inquiry or learning by inquiring is not only impossible but also unnecessary. To put it in more detail way, a man either knows or do not know what he seeks to know. He cannot try to discover either what he knows or what he does not know. He would not search what he knows, for there is no need of inquiry since he already knows it. It is impossible to inquire what he does not know, for in that case it is impossible to ascertain that what he is going to find out by the result of inquiry is just what he wants to look for. Meno's paradox is acceptable under this severe and unreal assumption that a man either have a 'complete' knowing or 'entire' ignorance of those which he encounters. The assumption can be justified only under the support of the metaphysics and epistemology of traditional philosophy. From this standpoint, all the existences have the fixed substances which are unchanging, permanent, and proper; these are the objects of knowledge. Therefore inquiry is to search for and bring out the proper nature of the objects distinct from that of other things. The assumption entails a more basic supposition that all the existences are existent independently and have their own peculiarity distinguished from the others. The paradox emerges out of the two assumptions(and related others) which the traditional metaphysics and epistemology assumes clearly or suggestively. An alternative view of metaphysical existence and the nature of knowledge can be quested from Dewey's theory of experience. For Dewey, all the existences transact with one another; also they are existent inevitably in a certain-situation. Things in nature is not isolated and independent. They are interrelated and interwined with and interdependent upon one another. The basic metaphysical unit of nature is not isolated things, but transactional situation including the knowing subject and the known objects, where both of them can be neither discriminable nor distinct in a meaningful way before the closing of inquiry. The situation involves a complex of transactions, so it is integrated and incorporated with transactions as the separate objects of knowledge. A human being pursues a whole knowledge which integrates a number of knowledge and various branches of knowledge, along with separate and individual knowledge. He encounters things with the whole knowledge in the mind. The moment when things run into the mind, they do stay neither with complete knowing nor with entire ignorance any more. Rather, they do change by colliding and transacting with the latter and stay between complete knowing and entire ignorance. Therefore, it is possible and necessary to inquire into them. More importantly knowledge inquired is meaning, not truth. The meaning of the same object is dependent on the situation and changing according to its interrelationship within a situation, while truth is permanent, unchanging, and fixed beyond and irrespective of changing situations.