Human Knowledge and Epistemology

As viewers of Lynch’s work, we are frequently invited to decipher plot through coded messages delivered in the form of characters’ dreams (or dreamlike experiences), but the example of Cooper reveals that there are also occasions where Lynch’s characters themselves are required to examine their dreams as a way of gaining knowledge. This idea of there being a particular way or, more generally, various ways that knowledge can be gained is one studied by epistemologists. An understanding of this area of philosophy will therefore enable us to gain a deeper understanding of Twin Peaks because it raises an important epistemological question: Can evidence from dreams provide human beings with a legitimate way of gaining knowledge?

When considering this question, it is important to emphasize the distinction between gaining knowledge of the external world and gaining knowledge of one’s own mental states. Freud’s work on dream interpretation reveals how dreams might be understood as providing us with knowledge about ourselves, but this is not the central issue in Twin Peaks. Rather, what makes Cooper such an interesting character, and his method of detection so compelling, is the fact that dreams appear to provide him with knowledge of the world outside of his mind. For it seems plausible that dreams might provide us with knowledge of ourselves, but how dreams are supposed to provide us with knowledge of the world external to our minds seems to be a genuine mystery.

Authorities in a wide range of academic fields study the topic of human knowledge. It is of interest to psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists and linguists, to give just a few examples. Distinctively philosophical questions about human knowledge however are commonly arranged into those that consider the broadly metaphysical issue of the precise nature of what we know and those that consider the broadly epistemological issue of how we know what we know. Notice that the key words to identify on each side of this arrangement are what and how: when we consider the issue of what we know, we are addressing a question about what knowledge human beings possess or about what human beings can be truly said to know. The metaphysical task is generally held to account for the collected body of human knowledge. The epistemological issue of how we know what we know, on the other hand, considers how the knowledge possessed by human beings is acquired: how people come to know—and continue to know—the things that they know.

The idea of how we know in a given case of knowledge might be termed the way of knowing. So in any single instance of a person’s knowledge—for example, a proposition that the person knows—analysis of the way of knowing reveals how the person knows the proposition of which he or she has knowledge. Note that when I refer to a person’s knowledge, I am exclusively concerned with what philosophers call propositional knowledge, rather than practical knowledge. Propositional knowledge, as it is often put, is knowledge that rather than knowledge how. So the fact that Cooper knows that Laura Palmer is dead is an example of his propositional knowledge, whereas the fact that he knows how to operate the tape-recording machine in his continual updates to his never-seen assistant Diane is an example of his practical knowledge. As the contemporary British philosopher Crispin Wright puts it, propositional knowledge is “knowledge of truths,” where “truths” simply means “true propositions,” and so is not the kind of knowledge one might associate with practical know-how.11

So how should we understand such ways of knowing, where they pertain specifically to true propositions like “Laura Palmer is dead”? We might begin by saying that if a person knows something, then there is a specific way in which they know. Another contemporary British philosopher, Quassim Cassam, has a way of articulating this idea. On his formulation of the issue, a question with regard to how a person comes to know a given proposition p is “a question about the source of his knowledge or his route to the knowledge that p.”12

In the pilot episode of Twin Peaks, consider how Cooper comes to know that Laura’s secret boyfriend, James Hurley, was at the picnic recorded in the home movie. He sees the reflection of his motorcycle in the camera lens. Consider how Cooper connects Laura’s murder to that of Teresa Banks (Pamela Gidley). He remembers the letter inserted under the fingernail in the Banks murder case. Seeing that p or remembering that p may therefore be specific ways of knowing that p. This methodological approach highlights a person’s knowing that p in a specific instance and, by association, the specific way by which one knows that p.

To fully explain specific ways of knowing, we might need to understand how it is possible to gain the kind of knowledge that is possessed. Questions that ask how a certain kind of knowledge is possible are epistemological examples of what Cassam calls “how-possible questions.” Of course, questions of the “how is it possible?” variety need not apply exclusively to knowledge. It is feasible to ask, “How is it possible?” on a range of topics. “How is it possible that Ronette Pulowski (Phoebe Augustine) managed to escape?” and “How is it possible for Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn) to work at One-Eyed Jacks?” are examples of nonepistemological how-possible questions. And, as Cassam observes, how-possible questions imply an obstacle to the possibility of the deed in question. So epistemologists may ask how it is possible to gain a particular kind of knowledge. Of course, there are various ways of knowing, and there may be many ways to know a single proposition. We are not limited to just seeing and remembering. The contemporary American philosopher Alvin Goldman articulates the point in terms of what he calls “pathways to knowledge”: “I do not conceive of knowledge as being attained by just a single pathway, or even a handful of pathways, but by a wide variety of sometimes independent and sometimes interconnected pathways. The upshot is that epistemology, by my lights, is not a narrow subject but a highly rich and diversified subject.”13

Imagine the many ways that a person might gain knowledge. From the brain-wracking remembering of Mulholland Dr.’s amnesiac Rita, to the surreptitious seeing and hearing of Blue Velvet’s wardrobe spy Jeff rey, accounting for these many pathways is a large and complex project beyond the scope of any single essay. However, epistemologists throughout the history of philosophy have invoked the role of experience in connection with understanding how knowledge is gained. They argue that whether it is gained in a way that is either dependent on or independent of experience is of crucial importance when classifying types of knowledge.14

11. Crispin Wright, “Intuition, Entitlement and the Epistemology of Logical Laws,” Dialectica 58, no. 1 (2004): 156. For the knowledge how/knowledge that distinction, see Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (London: Penguin, 2000). For a recent challenge to this distinction, see Jason Stanley and Timothy Williamson, “Knowing How,” Journal of Philosophy 98, no. 8 (2001). For general reading on propositions, see Mathew McGrath, “Propositions,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, May 29, 2007, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/propositions/.

12. Quassim Cassam, The Possibility of Knowledge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 5, my italics.

13. Alvin I. Goldman, Pathways to Knowledge (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), xi.

14. In fact, this classification in terms of experience is one of the central issues according to which philosophers have drawn the traditional distinction between rationalism and empiricism. For further reading on rationalism, see the writings of Descartes (1596–1650), Spinoza (1632–1677) and Leibniz (1646–1716). See Laurence BonJour, In Defense of Pure Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); and Christopher Peacocke, The Realm of Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) for a contemporary defense of rationalism. For further reading on empiricism, see the writings of Locke (1632–1704), Berkeley (1685–1753), and Hume (1711–1776); and in the twentieth century, the logical positivists of the Vienna Circle. See A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (London: Penguin, 2001) for a well-known expression and defense of the logical positivist view.

En The philosophy of David Lynch, editado por William J. Devlin y Shai Biderman.