111. Exploring the Enigma of Knowing - How do we know what we know? : Dr. Esther Lightcap Meek (Philosopher and Author)

Send us a text

How do we truly know what we know? Are we relying on the right sources of knowledge in our lives? Join us in this thought-provoking episode with our special guest, philosopher, and author, Dr. Esther Lightcap Meek, as we tackle these fascinating questions and unravel the complex nature of knowing.

Together, we'll explore the concept of subsidiary-focal integration, which proposes that our understanding of reality hinges on our ability to interpret clues and make meaningful connections. Dr. Meek walks us through real-life examples from sports, music, and reading to demonstrate how this approach can expand our perception of the world around us. We'll also discuss the impact of social media on mental health, particularly among teenage girls, and delve into the idea of the 'loving gaze of the other' as a tool for self-discovery.

Tune in for this enlightening conversation and walk away with valuable insights that could change the way you view yourself and your relationship with knowledge. We'll also share practical advice for teenagers on exploring their philosophical questions and navigating the complex world of college life. Don't miss this opportunity to challenge your understanding of reality and transform your perspective on what it means to truly know something!

Topics:

• Philosophical Questions and Knowing
• The Importance of Indwelling Knowledge
• Philosophy, Mental Health, and Social Media
• Philosophy for Teenagers
• "What books have had an impact on you?"
• "What advice do you have for teenagers?"

Esther Lightcap Meek (BA Cedarville College; MA Western Kentucky University; PhD Temple University) is Professor of Philosophy emeritus at Geneva College, in Western Pennsylvania. She is also Senior Scholar with the Seattle School for Theology and Psychology, a Fujimura Institute Scholar, an Associate Fellow with the Kirby Laing Center for Public Theology, and a member of the Polanyi Society. Meek’s books include Longing to Know: The Philosophy of Knowledge for Ordinary People (Brazos, 2003); Loving to Know: Introducing Covenant Epistemology (Cascade, 2011); A Little Manual for Knowing (Cascade, 2014); and Contact With Reality: Michael Polanyi’s Realism and Why It Matters (Cascade, 2017). Her forthcoming book is Doorway to Artistry: Attuning Your Philosophy to Enhance Your Creativity (Cascade, 2023).

An author and public speaker, Meek develops and offers everyday philosophizing that matters to all of us. Her website is www.estherlightcapmeek.com. Follow her on Facebook (estherlightcapmeek), Instagram (estherlightcapmeek), and Twitter (esther_l_meek). Esther lives in Steubenville, Ohio.

Socials! -

Lessons from Interesting People substack: https://taylorbledsoe.substack.com/

Website: https://www.aimingforthemoon.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aiming4moon/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Aiming4Moon

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aiming4moon

Taylor's Blog: https://www.taylorgbledsoe.com/

YouTube:
Thank you for reaching out tome, of course.
So you have a very fascinatingquestion that I think a lot of
people struggle with but don'tnecessarily sometimes express
that they struggle with it.
You kind of talk about how dowe know things and how do we
know what we know even, andoftentimes people get kind of

(00:25):
either upset at themselves ifthey don't understand, or they
kind of get stuck in thisloophole of well, maybe I don't
know what I actually know.
So could you set and set thestage on some of these questions
that people ask themselves?

Speaker 2 (00:37):
Sure, well, i probably am an odd duck, but I
think everybody's odd like me.
They just haven't found thatout yet, but I spend.
I always start out by trying tohelp people realize that you
can't duck doing philosophy,because it's unavoidable And so

(01:00):
to talk about it a little bit isa good thing.
And especially people coming upto college age, that is just
such the time as you're, youknow, moving to adulthood to
think about philosophicalquestions.
And when I think about whatphilosophy is, they're these
really simple questions, like Ihave called them the big, hairy

(01:21):
questions, because they're youdon't usually, you don't often
think about them, but they alsopermeate absolutely everything
that you do.
So one has to do with how weknow, whatever it is we know.
One is what reality is, anotheris what is right and good, and
another is who am I?

(01:43):
What does it mean to be human?
Those are fundamentallyphilosophical questions and we
can't take a step without livingout some kind of response to
all of them, all in aninterpenetrating way.
So I got my start because I hadthese strange questions, like a

(02:06):
skeptical question.
So I think of myself now ashaving and being an adolescent
onset skeptic.
So I had these questions when Iwas 13.
I didn't exactly talk aboutthem because I was embarrassed
of them, but one was how do Iknow that God exists?
And the other is how do I knowthat anything outside my mind

(02:27):
exists, you know, am I just ableto be certain and in contact
with what is inside me?
And how do I know that there'sreally a reality out there and
that I'm actually connectingwith it?
when I know And it took me someyears to find out that those
questions were philosophical andthat responses to them had

(02:48):
shaped whole cultural epicsacross the disciplines.
That just fired my imaginationto study things in our
disciplinary and study ideaswhich have such huge consequence
.
But I didn't even know at thatpoint that you could actually
study philosophy.
So when I found that out when Iwas in college, it took me 12

(03:12):
hours to change my life topursue it, and I did because it
felt like these were the mostimportant questions, because
they impacted everything else.
So how am I doing with regardto your question?

Speaker 1 (03:27):
Yeah, you're doing very well.
So, as we kind of discussed,people don't always know how
they're responding to thesequestions, or even that they're
asking them.
So what are common responsesthat you see throughout our
culture?
How do people try to answerthese for themselves, even if
they don't necessarily knowthey're answering it this way?

Speaker 2 (03:44):
Yeah, and it's a good .
Actually it's a philosophicalpoint that you can be answering
them without knowing you'reanswering them.
That means you need anepistemology and account of
knowing.
That makes sense of knowingwhat you can't put into words,
which is one of the reasons Ihave chosen the approach that I

(04:06):
do.
You have to have an account ofthat If you're going to move
toward knowing from not knowing.
You have to have an account ofthat.
How can you have a halfunderstanding?
But back to your question livingin our age, in our time, which

(04:27):
I refer to as the modern age,and I believe it begins in the
1600s and it comes to thepresent and it's only getting
stronger, more strident.
But part of what defines themodern age is presumption and
implicit presumption about whatknowing is.
And if you were to talk to mostpeople on the street, they

(04:51):
would just say that what knowingis is information.
It's facts and information anddata that you collect And your
goal is to get comprehensiveinformation.
So it's connected with otherideals of modernity like utility
or pragmatic, you know,exalting what works, and so we

(05:18):
want just knowledge that willgive us power.
So there's a very much a powermove that goes on with knowledge
as information.
It's transferable, you cancommodify it, you can sell it
And our internet prowess now cantacitly kind of underscore that

(05:41):
idea that it's collecting bitsof information and you're
putting it together And you canbe involved in that, whether you
are sure that reality is thereor not.
So we've got a whole lot ofskepticism.
That means not sure, right, alot of doubt that we can
actually know reality in itself.

(06:02):
So I would say those are commonresponses.
You might have some response tothat yourself, do you think?
does that sound?

Speaker 1 (06:12):
Yeah, i think it's very interesting.
I think that is true becauseyou see a lot of people who kind
of go about well, that seems tobe a trend of technology, for
example.
So why do we do science at all?
Well, it seems to be so that westart innovating more.
You see that a lot, and so howdo we research next?
Okay, whatever makes the mostmoney, for example, over
sometimes What is the mostinteresting or might be the most

(06:33):
revolutionary later.
And the other thing is, i'msure a lot of people are
listening and going, okay, butisn't that what knowledge is?
Is knowledge not justinformation?
So how is what was thedefinition pre-1600s?

Speaker 2 (06:49):
Well, you know, I'm not so much of a scholar on that
though I go back and useresources there.
But what happened for me isthat I found my way to this
philosopher who was a premierscientific discoverer in the
20th century And his name isMichael Polanyi, And he, as a
scientist, thought about howdiscovery happens And he said

(07:17):
that if knowledge wasinformation and if the method
was the scientific method, noscientific discovery could ever
happen.
But it does.
So maybe you need to fix yourepistemology.
And so he proposed an approachto knowing or an account of

(07:37):
knowing, which we actually can'thelp but carry out because
we're humans.
It's unavoidable.
Even if you were going to tryto deny it, You'd have to use it
to deny it Right.
And so, as I've learned that,I've come to kind of embrace
that approach to understandingknowing, And it starts with

(08:02):
saying that it's not the casethat we're focused on knowledge
as information.
We're focused.
We need to see that what we'redoing is a skill of coming to
know, And when you're trying tomove toward what you do not yet
know, it takes an art, an artfulskill that is an information

(08:25):
collection, And it's not lineareither And it's very.
You can see that you do this ifyou just look at any skill that
you have, And so starting withsimple ones like bike riding and
car driving and those sorts ofthings, things where you have a
musical instrument or a ball youknow or something that involves

(08:50):
a skill Or if you think abouthow your perception works.
Sometimes too, it's notadditive.
So when my father started toteach me to ride a bike, it was
very uncomfortable And focusingon the information would have
kept me blind to the performanceRight.

(09:12):
So somehow I need to climbinside some things that it
wouldn't work for me just tolook at.
I had to kind of get inside andlook from them and invite a
farther pattern, And there canbe.
There needs to be a kind of ashift so that this
transformative pattern makessense of the clues that you've

(09:35):
been riding on.
So Polanyi uses the word clue awhole lot, And the neat thing
about the word clue is you canonly rely on a clue at the point
that you have understand it.
It's not information Right Now,or it might be information, but
somehow you've got to havegotten your body inside of it.

(09:55):
Somehow You have to rely on it,get inside of it, try to see
the world from it and invite afarther pattern that you can't
access in a linear way.
So I talk a lot about the ahamoment.
You know that the flash ofinsight where you have an in
breaking pattern that transformseverything that you were

(10:19):
struggling to make sense of.
You know, my father actuallyput me on my on the bike and
pushed me, And I think hethought that when I got to the
bottom of the hill I'd be riding.
You know that the integrationthat's Polanyi's, were the
coming together of the patternof the performance, would have

(10:39):
somehow happened magically bythe end of the hill.
Well, I am a bike rider, I justcan't remember the bottom of
the hill.
But there comes this pointwhere you say I get it, I get it
.
And no teacher can guarantee,for example, that you will be a
successful reader.

(10:59):
You know, if you think of firstgrade teachers, they could.
There's still the question ofhow to teach a reading is a very
live question, But it's thefact is there's no linear way to
guarantee that somebody will bea reader.
So so what a good teacher hasto do is put out maxims or guide

(11:20):
guidelines, you know, toactually help a kid's body feel
what they're supposed to feelAnd it's it's way more creative
and artful.
But the cool thing is here.
You know I'm back.
This is the former skeptic.
The cool thing is that Polanyisaid you can make contact with

(11:45):
reality.
And you know you've madecontact with reality when you
have this sense of futurepossibilities that you can't
name.
And the fact is, when you getit together to ride a bike and
you realize you've succeeded atgetting that, the world then
comes to you.
In so many bike paths, You knowthere's all these places that

(12:07):
you can go, You know.
So what opens up the world andis this its contact is like too
thin of a word.
It's just like the worldexplodes because you have been
able to get on board with theskill of coming to know whatever
it is, And that's a way morefun and we do it all the time.

(12:35):
It's very human but it'spractically magical and it roots
us in the world.
I mean I love, you know, runningon from bike riding to.
I'm not an athlete but I'm aPittsburgher, I root for the
pirates and I root for theSteelers and all of that
athleticism and music too.

(12:56):
I love music.
All of that is subsidiary,focal integration, which those
were Polanyi's words, that yourely on and climb inside or
indwell All these clues toinvite this pattern subsidiary,
focal integration.
Well, you see that in allathletic performance It's a

(13:19):
beautiful thing to see andthere's no way that somebody
could be a star third basemanand have a knowledge as
information epistemology.
You just couldn't do it.

Speaker 1 (13:34):
So kind of to conceptualize this a little bit.
I think I understand, at leastmaybe a tad.
Correct me if I'm wrong here.
So in some ways, knowing skilllet me see how I exactly want to
put this Being a finelygrasping knowledge, if we wanted
to find knowledge as not justinformation, so skills,

(13:56):
relationships and otherattributes allows you to unlock
different spheres of the worldand involve and know more about
the world itself.
So by in some senseunderstanding aspects of the
world and learning different,we're going to say the word
items, but that's not going tobe a good word.
Items of the world allows you tosee more of the reality in

(14:16):
which you live, is that?

Speaker 2 (14:19):
It's richer than that .
It's definitely sounds richer,yeah.
So take something likegardening, or take something
like chemistry.
There is a whole lot of stuffyou got to learn like items, but
then what you like, they don'teven start to mean anything

(14:43):
until somehow you climb insidethem.
Reading is exactly the same way.
You know, if I were lookingdown at Chinese characters on a
page, i'd think they were pretty, but they would not open up in
meaning until I could read them.
So what happens when you learnto read is somehow you are able

(15:06):
to stop looking at it and lookfrom it to a farther pattern,
and so it's like the page andyour body become one.
You indwell the text and thenyou're thinking about the
meaning.
So it's just like riding a biketoo.

Speaker 1 (15:26):
It's almost like when you learn this information.
it becomes part of you in someway and allows you to learn more
about the world around youbecause you see it through that
lens Reading, for example.

Speaker 2 (15:37):
We have to say that learning is not a massing
information.
I mean, think about thedifference between knowledge and
wisdom.
If knowledge is information,there is no account of wisdom.
But what you need if you are achemistry person, it's almost

(16:01):
like you've got to wear theperiodic table of elements.
It's like it becomes part ofyour body and then you see from
it and then you would see allthe elements you know that way
And it opens the world to you,right?
So it's almost like, if youthink of the idea of wearing it,

(16:23):
polani's word was indwelling.
And the trick is that, if youthink, if you have the knowledge
as information, preset of whatyou think knowledge is it's, you
know, you can be aperfectionist, you can collect
all the information, you canregurgitate it on the test and
then you can get a degreebecause you're educated.

(16:45):
But oh no, that's just sosurface, it's so surface.
And you know, a lot of peoplethink in terms of information
and application, and I want tokind of blow up that kind of an
either or right or a one to andsay, look, no, you have got to.

(17:06):
Yes, there's going to be somesome collecting of the
information, but you have to,you've got to get yourself
inside it, to see from it, toopen the world, just like with
reading, just like bike rider.
And so words like trust andreliance on clue I mean what?

(17:26):
what would the word clue evenmean?
on a knowledge is information,mindset, it just, it just
wouldn't even have a meaning.
And so and another very coolthing is and I got this from
Michael Polanyi to because ifyou're a discoverer, you have
got to trust what you haveunderstand, and you might be

(17:47):
wrong, right, but, but you haveto accredit what you can't fully
say just yet, right.
So you need an account ofknowing that makes sense of that
, because if you don't, there'sno way you could have, you could
have discoveries happen.

Speaker 1 (18:09):
I want to shift gears a little bit for those who
aren't as philosophicallyinclined and have never really
been exposed to some of thesephilosophical ideas.
I'm sure they're thinking okay,so we have an idea of
epistemology, and then so youhave this, let's call it a
theory.
For example, you have thistheory of how it works.
Why, why do I even care aboutthis?
Like, i mean, on a practicallevel, i don't have to.

(18:31):
I don't always think about okay, this is the way in which I
know things.
Does this apply to me at all?
And it seems to be now, correctme if I'm wrong here but we see
epistemology and the way peopleunderstand it throughout all of
culture, even if they don'tnecessarily say that we see it.
I mean, the big thing is likewho am I as a teenager?
How do you understand who youare as a person in that way?

(18:52):
And then, of course, you see itall throughout politics.
Now, I hate politics, I don'twant to talk about that, but you
see all kinds of differenttopics there And there's this
idea of well, how do we, how arewe certain about certain things
And how am I certain about whoI am, How am I certain about
whether I'm friends with thisperson?
What?
are some of these practicalways in which our theories and

(19:13):
our philosophy aboutepistemology excuse me relates
to kind of for lack of a betterterm the real world as people
refer to it.

Speaker 2 (19:22):
What I would say is, if you are working from a
knowledge as information mindset, which we all tend to be, it
has baggage And the baggage canreally be hurting you And you
know switching to actually tobusiness terms it can be bad for

(19:43):
your bottom line And it can bereally bad for your self
identity, because if knowledgeis information, somehow it's
disconnected from you and itdisconnects you from the world,
and so if you don't have thosekinds of connected connections,
you don't know who you are, andso and it plays to bad stuff

(20:06):
like anxiety and boredom andcynicism and checked out
indifference, and it's damagingthe universe.
It's called the environmentalcrisis.
I mean, we just have to lookoutside and see the wreckage

(20:28):
that has come about because ofthe modern age's presumption
that I can do anything I want inthe way of utility by just
collecting information.
If a knowledge is informationapproach really another thing.
It doesn't have a person in it,it doesn't have responsibility
in it either, you know.

(20:49):
So we have this idea.
Well, you know, information Ican, i can collect and I have no
obligation, even after I'm donecollecting it.
Then I can decide whether Iwant to buy in or not.
Well, all of that is just nothow reality that's going to kill
.
Reality is going to kill you.

(21:10):
And so there's a lot ofespecially young people,
especially people your agecoming up on college or coming
into college that have thesecrises that obviously you know
other things are involved, butthere's this philosophical
component that nobody'sdiagnosing And I have taught

(21:31):
this for semesters at collegeand I've seen healing and
transformation and peoplereleased from this baggage.
You know, and they didn't evenknow they'd never had a
philosophy course before.
And I have to say, taylor, thatyou know, if, because of this,

(21:59):
this conversation, some of yourlisteners might say, oh, i need
to take philosophy, which wouldbe a good thing, there's no
guarantee that the philosophycourse that you're going to get
into is going to address this.
And that's why, you know, hereI am in my 70th year.
You know, this has been a lifequest for me and I did not learn

(22:23):
Michael Polanyi's work in aphilosophy class.
Why?
Because a lot of philosophy inthe modern age has rejected what
he is saying just without evenlistening to it.
So I'm sad about that, but I'veworked hard to come up with the
proposals that I do, and it'snot just any old philosophizing

(22:50):
that'll get you to it, but I dohave some books I'd be happy to
share.

Speaker 1 (22:57):
Yes, go check out Dr Meeks books.
They're really brilliant.

Speaker 2 (23:01):
One of the things that I've read high schoolers.
That's the other thing too.
I mean, there's high schoolsaround the country who use them
as texts.

Speaker 1 (23:10):
Well, it's a great resource to get into the
philosophical questions that westruggle with.
Even if we don't necessarilyknow, it's very interesting.
So one of the big problems thatpeople talk about with mental
health is social media, and oneof the number one things people
look at is the like button andhow the like button specifically
teenage girls changes yourself-esteem.

(23:32):
This seems to be Now I could beignorant just about this But it
seems to be that this kind ofinformation as power,
information as utility only, isvery connected to this idea of
social media and thenself-esteem.
If you see yourself to thislens of the information, of the
like button for example, thatthat would affect your social
identity as well, do you see anyconnection between some of this

(23:53):
mental health crisis I mean,you already mentioned anxiety
and some of the technology thatwe use daily.

Speaker 2 (24:01):
Well, great question, and I would say that, like
button, if it's a problem forany of us, no matter the age, we
need to treat it like you would, an addiction.
And you know there's just timesin life that you say, look,

(24:25):
this is not good for me.
And part of what I talk aboutin my epistemology that the
things that I do develop is therole, the critical role, of
authoritative guides in yourknowing, in any knowing, and
then also the critical role thisis in a big book I wrote called

(24:47):
Loving to Know of the lovinggaze of the other And in
particular, like your motherwhen you're first born.
But then there's theseoperative faces in your life
that you actually have to see.
Them seeing you in rapture anddelight, and find and see

(25:09):
yourself in their rapture's gaze.
So you have to see yourselfbeing seen by somebody who
adores you.
Right, and part of wisdom islearning to choose the right
faces.
Well, the faces on Facebookdon't count, they're just not

(25:29):
faces.
I mean, taylor, i'm looking atyou know, this beautiful screen,
it's better than the icon, butyou know you ought to.
You know, look to the keyfriends in your life and
colleagues and family memberswho see you so that you can see
yourself in them.

(25:50):
That's how you have a sense ofof who you are, is to see
yourself reflected in the gazeof the other.
And you've got that.
You know whatever is going onin social media in the way of
whatever, that's not the mainact.
But except we all you knowwe're vulnerable to addictions

(26:10):
and devices And we all need tosay, okay, i'm done with that.
I need to put that away forright now And not choose who you
listen to.
You have to.
That's like everybody's had todo that for millennia before
there was social media.

Speaker 1 (26:26):
It's really fascinating that you, in order
to understand yourself, in a lotof ways we have to see your
reflection in other people andthe reflection of people's
opinions about you, and that'show you understand yourself.
Yeah, choose the people youlook at.
That's the other thing, and itseems to be a lot of the
problems, kind of circling backto the social media thing, is
we're equivocating actual peoplein their opinion of us with

(26:46):
these icons that maybe actualpeople interact with.
But in reality, how much doesthat kind of going back to the
epistemological question doessocial media and the reactions
to what we say there actuallyhow much is that connected to
the real world, stuff like that?

Speaker 2 (27:02):
Yeah, and it's actually.
You know, technology reallydoes lend itself to fabrication,
which is kind of making stuffup.
That's true, you know, quiteagain, quite honestly, i'm old
enough to know that you don'tneed technology to fabricate.

Speaker 1 (27:23):
Unfortunately we have to wrap up our conversation,
but what a great line to end on.
We have two more questions, andthe first one is what books do
you have an impact?
What books have had an impacton you?

Speaker 2 (27:35):
Well, obviously, when I found Michael Polanyi's work,
that was the beginning of thegetting to my skepticism,
because I looked at that And Ithought, and it just it made
sense.
I'm a Christian believer.
It made sense of how I think Iknow God.

(27:56):
It just makes sense of knowingin every field.
So that was a big one.
And another person I've beenworking with recently and I'm
not, you know, i'm a novicelearning to read DC Schindler's

(28:16):
work, but I'm going to spend therest of my life happily
learning to read it.
So DC Schindler's DC.
And then his last name is S C,h I N D L E R.
And you have to say DC becausehis father, who's recently
deceased, was D L D L SchindlerAnd he also is a great

(28:37):
philosopher too.
But I, dc Schindler has a bookyou might want to look at called
listen to this title Love andthe Postmodern Predicament.
But I call it machine gunmetaphysics.
It is dense, but he isbrilliant.

(28:57):
He might be the most importantphilosopher in the 21st century.

Speaker 1 (29:03):
What a wonderful term machine gun metaphysics.

Speaker 2 (29:09):
Oh my gosh, i've studied it with my students and,
because of my epistemology, itgives courage in the area of
half understanding.
So I plunge them into deep end.
And I'm not looking forexactitude with regard to
comprehensive understanding, i'mlooking for splashing around

(29:30):
exuberantly in a bottomlessreality.

Speaker 1 (29:36):
So what is your advice to teenagers?

Speaker 2 (29:40):
Well I would say, take seriously the questions
that come up as you move throughadolescence into adulthood and
realize that a good number ofthem are philosophical and you
are a philosophical being andyou need to find a way to

(30:01):
address those meaningfully.
And I think lots of teenagersnever even get to hear or take a
philosophy course, because themodern age is also
anti-philosophical because it'sabout exalting utility.
So I've seen, as I've watchedmy own children go through these

(30:23):
years and stuff like that, itoften is that the thinky types
end up in the drama departmentand the literature area, which
is fine, except that they alsoneed to know that there's this
philosophical dimension that hasto be addressed.
So that's my advice.
And then I wrote longing toknow for people teenage and up

(30:48):
for sure.
And then I wrote little manualfor knowing as how to, for
knowing in any field, and itought to double as a orientation
to college.
So keep that in mind too.

Speaker 1 (31:03):
I will definitely well start recommending it too.
Well, thank you so much, drMeek, for coming on the podcast.

Speaker 2 (31:09):
I really enjoyed our discussion.
I'm so glad to have made youracquaintance, taylor, and I'll
look forward to futureconnections.