Long before Scottish  philosopher David Hume (1711- 1776 ) "argued that the total content of the mind can be reduced to data produced by sensory experiences, or perceptions," Winnebago philosophers of an other age were warning there listeners, "Don't trust your perceptions!   If you do, you will cause yourself great pain."  This warning is especially relevant today because empiricism as a "scientific" path to true knowledge is promoted by some evangelical anthropologists and linguists of the academic community

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The Winnebago warning not to trust one's sense perceptions is embedded in the following Trickster story.

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                                  Don't Trust Your Sense Perceptions

As Trickster was engaged in cleaning himself up,  he happened to look into the water and

much to his surprise he saw many plums there.  He surveyed them very carefully and then

he dived down into the water to get some.  But only the stones did he bring back in his hands. 

Again he dived down into the water.  But his time he knocked himself unconscious against

a rock at the bottom. After a while he floated up and gradually came to.  He was lying in the

water flat on his back, when he came to and, as he opened his eyes, there on top of the bank

he saw many plums.  What he had seen in the water was only a reflection.  Then he realized

what he had done.  “Oh my, what a stupid fellow I must be!  I should have recognized this. 

Here I have caused myself a great pain.”

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Trickster, characterized as an empiricist,  assumes that nothing can be more certain than that which his five senses tell him, especially his eyes.  What he sees in the water is the real thing. Perceptions are reality. So he dives into the water to get some plums and gets rocks instead.  Convinced that his perceptions have not deceived him, he repeats the process and finally knocks himself unconscious.

 

When Trickster comes to, opens his eyes, and looks up, he begins to realize that what he saw in the water were rocks, not plums.   Coming to his senses, he cries out, “Oh my, what a stupid fellow I must be!  I should have recognized this.  Here I have caused myself a great pain [by trusting my senses].”

 

What these Winnebago wisemen were warning against was the idea voiced by Leonardo de  Vince (1452-1519) who declared: "All knowledge has its origins in perceptions."   And more recently, by anthropologist-missiologist Charles Kraft who would add the words "spirit-guided" to the word "perceptions,"  and by SIL-WBT linguist Kenneth McElhanon who believes "human knowledge is grounded in experience" and that the existence of two contrasting epistemologies have provided us with two divergent truth claims.

 

There are the truth claims of a bottom-up, outside-in epistemology and the truth claims of a top-down, inside-out epistemology. The one is grounded in empiricism and the thesis that "human knowledge is grounded in experience"; the other, in mentalism or idealism and that "no epistemology can succeed without something like Platonic Ideas."  

 

To my surprise, these contrasting epistemologies are revealed in the Japanese proverb  "All married women are not wives."  In this case, knowledge grounded in experience actually supports the Japanese perception that "married women are not wives."   

 

For the Japanese, no married women is a wife but rather a mother-in-law's servant.  Now for Kraft, such a relationship would be classified as being "appropriate" because "it is the meaning attached by people to the customs they practice that should be the  primary concern to people".   For Kraft, no cultural form has an inherent meaning that can be triggered and brought to consciousness.  Instead, "Meanings belong to the people," including the meaning of wife.

 

But the concept-innatist asks: How did the Japanese know what the role of the wife was, that is,  to be her husband's helpmate rather than his mother's servant?  Likewise, how did Chácobo sages know that the role of a wife was to be her husband's helpmate rather than her mothers? 

 

The concept-innatist's answer is: There exists a Universal Lexicon encoded in the subconscious in which the meaning of wife can be "triggered" and brought to consciousness in a socio-linguistic environment.  This means the meaning of wife is not a learned social construct grounded in experience, but rather, a meaning existing in a Universal Lexicon  which can be triggered and brought to consciousness. 

 

The role of a wife has also been revealed in Genesis 2:14 where it is written "the LORD declared: I will make Adam a helper as his complement".  Whether a society agrees or not, every husband needs a "helper" as his complement.  Sadly, it is a role which evangelical empiricists find difficult to accept. But logically, empiricism and revelation (the Bible) are mutually exclusive. They cannot be merged.

 

Since empiricism rules out concept-innatism, the empiricist simply has no answer to the question: How did the Japanese know that the role of a wife was to be her husband's helpmate?  And in order to maintain the "appropriate relationship"  between sons and mothers and husbands and wives, Japanese mothers-in-laws inform their married sons: "If you love your wife, you spoil your mother’s servant."  Only at the death of the mother-in-law will the daughter-in-law be able to take on the role of wife and be "allowed to cook for her husband and raise her children in her own way." 

 

Now  “If all knowledge is based on experience alone, then there can be no knowledge of any necessary truth.”  This means that whatever meaning a society attaches to forms like family, husband, and wife, its meaning will contrast with other meanings. A primary feature of these new meanings will be their capacity to suppress and keep the "one flesh" principle of husband-wife from becoming the dominant dyad in the nuclear family. 

 

The empiricist also has no answer as to how experiences can be converted into knowledge. Before experiences can be converted into knowledge,  they must first be classified under concepts and concepts under categories. And this knowledge creating process cannot be done without a set of unlearned a priori concepts which are independent from empirical data, concepts like SAME and DIFFERENT,  GOOD and BAD, SOMEONE and SOMETHING, and HUSBAND and WIFE.   In other words, there exists knowledge which is not grounded in experience. 

 

And only people, because they have been created in the "image of God," have this a priori set of concepts that enable them to classify their experiences and create knowledge.    In the words of the late philosopher R. C. Sproul, "The best the senses can do  is to awaken the consciousness to what it already knows," like the role of every married women. 

 

Nevertheless there are empirical "evangelicals" who strongly  believe "we can only understand it [the role of a wife] through experience, and that our experience is influenced by the nature of our bodies." But Winnebago philosophers of an other age would strongly disagree. They warned their fellow tribes man that the epistemological ideas  of empiricism could not lead to universal truths. 

 

Convictions

1. Nothing could be truer than statement of agnostic philosopher Jerry Foder (1935 -    ). He declared, “Empiricism isn't true, and it is time to put away childish things."

2. Before one can classify a married woman as a wife, one must know what the qualities of a wife are.  These abstract qualities are not learned; instead, they are inherent. Knowing the inherent qualities of what constitutes a wife are acquired by a triggering process which brings them to consciousness.

3. A godless society has the capacity to reject and distort the triggered inherent meaning that is brought to consciousness. Instead, such meanings are derived from SOCIAL EXISTENCE. 

4. The empiricist must deny the existence of innate, a priori knowledge, for not to do so would imply there exists a knowledge which is not derived from sense perceptions. 

5. Clark Gordon was correct when he wrote: "The Christian view of God, man, and language does not fit any empirical philosophy.  It is rather  a type of a priori rationalism.  Man's mind is not initially blank.  It is structured". 

6.  If meanings can become innate as some empiricists propose, then no child is an "image bearer of God" and all meanings "belong to the people."

7. I totally agree with philosopher Peter Carruthers statement: "Our universal [innate] concepts can be thought of as prerequisites for successful social life", and appropriate relationships.

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