LOVECRAFT'S EPISTEMOLOGY?

by Henrik Harksen © 2005/2006

It is interesting to note that the only of the central philosophical subject-matters that hasn't received much attention in Lovecraft studies is his epistemology; his theory of knowledge. This is easily overlooked because of the massive amount of material that has been extensively commented down the years. Aside from the obligatory nod to the opening lines of e.g. "The Call of Cthulhu" (1926) -

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightened position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the                                                     peace and safety of a new dark age." (DH, p. 125.)

- not much attention has been paid to epistemology. Especially not in regard to what HPL says in letters and essays. In fact, often it's been argued from i.e. this opening line that HPL's views on knowledge are gloomy and that he didn't approve of knowledge, see e.g. Setiya's comment, "What is this, if not a warning against the "dangers of knowledge"?" (LS 24, p. 22.) Standing alone, this opening line might give a reader good reasons to put forth such an argument; in light of the evidence of his personal views on the matter and elsewhere in his output, however, it just doesn't hold water.

Don't get me wrong, here. There are good reasons for this "downplaying" of epistemology in Lovecraft studies. As e.g. HPL scholar S. T. Joshi has stated, the theory of knowledge wasn't among HPL's prime interests, and, which is a strickingly curious position, "[the] role of knowledge is in Lovecraft not primarily an epistemical or even a metaphysical issue, but [...] an ethical one." (Decline of the West, p. 42.) This, we must conceed, is true. So when you take a look at the table of contents in Joshi's Decline of the West, an excellent introduction to HPL's philosophy, it is for good reasons you find careful treatments of metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, and political philosophy. All issues HPL addressed more often, directly, and thoroughly.

Nevertheless, after having read his stories, many of the essays, and quite a chunk of the published letters, a growing suspicion sparked in me if not something more could be said on the matter; if not some new aspect could be added to this; something that could supplement our knowledge of the maze that is HPL's thoughts? The outlines you're about to read are, in a small way, an attempt to supply one such supplement.

When dealing with knowledge in Lovecraft, two of the term keys are 'curiosity' and 'science' (cf. e.g. ibid., p. 107). This is also of utmost importance in connection with HPL's ethics - as well as his aesthetics - but I will look at it from a strictly epistemic point of view... as far as that can be done, that is. In this process I try to extract what he says on the matters of relevance, more than trying to place the thoughts in some specific topological context; the latter I keep to a minimum. After all, that has been done by many a formidable scholar already. It is my claim that when we see the outlines of HPL's probabilistic theory, we also see the basics of an epistemology. Of course, I concede that what I am about to present is, by and large, only a rough outline of the subjects touched.

In the traditional, academic discussion of epistemology there is often talk about scepticism. Quickly noticing that HPL frequently invoke this term about himself and his position, it would be easy to believe him such a scepticist. That would be a mistake, though. According to the traditional, academic usage of the term he is not - or rather, if he is, he is at most a so-called 'local scepticist.' Joshi correctly asserts that when HPL refers to himself and the thinkers whom he liked to envision agreed with him as scepticists, the term is "evidently being used in reference to scepticism regarding religion." (Ibid., p. 5.) In other words: not in regard to knowledge and how we acquire knowledge. 'Local scepticism' is a kind of scepticism which only encompasses some, particular areas; these local areas are then claimed not to be objectively true - in casu religion is the local area HPL is sceptical about.

As a rule, most people are local scepticists regarding something - the question then becomes a matter of how widely spread this scepticism is. For instance, some (like HPL) are sceptics about religion but not i.e. science, sceptics about economics, atoms, or whichever field you can think of, yet still say that there are (often a lot of) other areas that have a firm foundation in 'reality,' that is: something you are not sceptic about. Despite their scepticism in some areas, they hold that there are still things we can have positive knowledge about.

On the other end of the scale you find the 'global scepticism.' This is scepticism doubting you can have any (true, solid) knowledge at all. Probably the most famous line of argumentation here is the one originating from the French philospher and mathematician, René Descartes (1596-1650). Granting that in dreams we can be fooled to believe in things which we otherwise believe to be false, he takes this a step further by wondering how we can know (for certain) that in the waking life we are not fooled by a very sadistic demon - a demon who takes particular pleasure in deceiving us to believe the things we normally believe to be true in the world. This is his so-called "demon hypothesis." Stripped down - and removing the picturial 'demon,' which might cause a reader or two to believe this to be a kind of religious argument - the point is: how we can really know that any knowledge we believe to have about the world is true? The answer from the global scepticist is: we can't. (This theme is impressively exploited in the successful The Matrix movies; the first one in particular.)

There is no doubt that HPL was familiar with this philosophical notion of scepticism. At times he also places at least some importance on epistemology in regard to human affairs and faculties. Joshi hints at this, when he remarks that HPL far from hated knowledge, as some commentators have believed, but quite contrarily, loved knowledge - "else, we wonder, why did he so arduously pursue it throughout his life?" (Primal Sources, p. 68.) And let's not forget HPL's philosophical tenet, "What is anything?" - If that is not, at heart, an epistemic pursue, I don't know what is.

If we take a look at what HPL says in a letter to Maurice W. Moe on this (May 15, 1918), something important is revealed, I think. Here he states that it is a basic human impulse to want to know: "I refer to that simplest yet most exalted attribute of our species - the acute, persistent, unquenchable craving TO KNOW." (SL1, p. 61.) He then goes on to relate to Moe in vivid images a dream he had recently, and then says that, "If there be not some virtue in plain TRUTH; then our fair dreams, delusions, and follies, are as much to be steemed as our sober waking hours." He continues, "If TRUTH amounts to nothing, then we must regard the phantasma of our slumbers just as seriously as the events of our daily lives." (Ibid., p. 62.) His point ends up being that, no matter how vivid the dream:

"I recognise a distinction between dream life and real life, between appearences and actualities, I confess to an over-powering desire to know whether I am asleep or awake - whether the environment and laws which affect me are external and permanent, or the transitory products of my own brain." (Ibid., p. 63. My italics.)

This is the very same thing Descartes was going for. With "truth" HPL refers to the 'reality' of the external world - as it is regardless of us; the world as it is, whether we experience it or not. In philosophical debates such a stance is called 'realism'; a realism that is closely connected to his insistence on the "is-or-isn't-ness" view we will look at in a moment. The way to reach this 'reality,' the external world, is through naturalism. Although the basic crawings for distinctioning between reality and non-reality is obviously the same, the way HPL and Descartes try to reach it of course differs widely. Descartes is what in academic circles is termed a 'rationalist,' whereas HPL is, essentially, an 'empiricist.'

Returning to the talk about scepticism, we notice that HPL is not satisfied with results steeming from the philosophical scepticism; especially not the global version. As a stout realist and naturalist he cannot be.

It comes as no surprise that knowledge and the striving for knowledge of the external world is a complex affair. So it is in philosophy in general, and so it is for HPL. In both cases, a good place to start is the scientific outlook. It is well proven that HPL was a die-hard believer in the sciences of his day - incidentally sharing many ideas with the so-called 'logic positivism' movement that came only a few years after his death. This gives us a good starting point to look at what foundation upon which HPL built his thoughts on the matter: empiricism. Albeit certainly not a naïve empiricist, at heart he was indisputably an empiricist. Writing to Frank Belknap Long about the process of acquiring knowledge per se, he exclaims (Feb. 27, 1931):

"I want the straight dope on the clear-cut is-or-isn't proposition as far as it can be pushed, & a weeding out of all silly, unmotivated, & gratitious guesswork & liefaking in the unknown gulph beyond the present radius of the is-or-isn't searchlight." (SL3, p. 299.)

This has one thinking of prominent logical positivists such as Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970), who would speak analogous, if far more elaborately and detailed than HPL ever managed, thoughts against the 'metaphysism' that was believed to be the bane and true science and knowledge of the world. (I touch this somewhat more in my essay published in LS 45.) A line of thought and reasoning which can be traced back to August Comte (1798-1857). HPL's point is that at the outset we as cognitive beings acquire whatever knowledge comes our way through our senses. As Setiya says, HPL "was showing that knowledge was governed ultimately by the limits of human sense-perception," (LS 25, p. 22) or in the words of Mariconda: "Man has sensory limitations inherent in his physiology and psychology; and he is able, Lovecraft thought, to perceive reality only dimly through the veil of these limitations." (A Century Less a Dream, p. 137.) This is not to be misunderstood: as is evident in both letters and stories such as 1920's "From Beyond," HPL had no qualms accepting that more than the five human senses exist; in theory, he was obviously willing to accept, there may very well be some not existing on this earth at all. His only reservation seems to be that so far we have no knowledge of such senses, cf. the current limitation of the "is-or-isn't searchlight." In other words, he is willing enough to accept further elaboration concerning the matter of other senses - which, of course, is lucky for him; since, for instance, we now know that bats use another kind of sense than we do; as do a wide range of other animals. Of course, even granting this, HPL's point remains unaltered and unaffected: even future (or only very different) knowledge acquisition is bound to be, in a broadened understanding of the stance, within some sort of empiricism. (As will be evidence a little further down in this text, this is where the reference to probability is of utmost importance.)

To understand HPL even better, it is informative to pay attention to something else which he mentions in aforementioned letter to Long: the notions of 'cognition' and "the abstract process of cognition-crawing" (ibid., p. 302); these terms help us understand where he is coming from. "Of our genuine basic emotions, curiosity is the strongest," he says, "That's simple, empirical nature." (Ibid., p. 301. Make note, too, of the reference to empirical facts as the final say on the matter, cf. what I said earlier. One can also speculate if not HPL found that this curiosity is as basic to human nature as fear - cf. his famous opening line to Supernatural Horror in Literature: "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." [p. 82] Thus, by the way, creating a most interesting mix of epistemology and existentialism, which I will elaborate on elsewhere on this website.) To our present purpose, it is the connexion with the 'is-or-isn't searchlight' which is important. Quite poignantly, HPL now defines the two terms 'cognition' and 'cognition-craving': "[Let's] adopt my suggestion of calling [the] abstract basic knowledge cognition, & the elemental instinct which motivates me, cognition-craving." (SL 3, p. 301.) From the evidence of the senses we gain whatever knowledge we posses of the world and its constituent; the 'truth' of these empirical facts we reach by use of our intellect's faculties - the so-called "abstract basic knowledge" that he calls 'cognition.' Here we see that HPL is not the kind of empiricist referred to as a 'sensualist,' there is also an element of rationalist in him; cognition is not reached by naked empirical processes. Of course, the cognition-craving all comes back to HPL's famous "What is anything?" - which he evidently envisages must be a fundamental, defining trait of all humans, cf. also his siding of curiosity alongside fear.

Taking a closer look at how HPL defends what is essentially an appeal to inductive reasoning, we see the emergence of the notion 'probability.' Inductive reasoning is to infer from particular to universal; the most famous example of this kind of reasoning is the sentence: "x swans have been watched; those x swans were all white; hence, all swans are white." Such reasoning is of course flawed. The problem, which has faced all empiricists since especially the Scotish philosopher David Hume (1711-76), is that the truth of such propositions dissappear the second just one swan of a different color is being observed (as it indeed did, when it was discovered that black swans existed elsewhere on the planet). In such cases it is all too evident that what was up till that point believed to be true in fact never was true. Philosophically this is most unsatisfying, and results in various kinds of relativity that many philosophers (and most people in general, it must be added) refuse to accept. So something else is needed. To avoid this problem, then, one can try to insert the idea of probability to save the day; this is what HPL does.

HPL in fact refers to knowledge as being approximated. The knowledge we believe to have at some given moment in time and space - infered from whatever empirical, 'hard evidence' before us - we conclude that we know something to be the case, that is, to be true. However, since our knowledge and the very process of knowing in various ways are limited, he conceeds that we may be mistaken. It is possible that in the future new evidence will surface, forcing us to restructure our knowledge on the matter at hand - e.g. when a black swan is observed, we must then reshape our belief about swans to encompass black swans as well.

When disussing with Richard F. Searight the possibility of a "central consciousness or purpose" in the universe (that is, God), HPL lists a long list of what he believes to be damaging empirical evidence against such an existence, but also admits that (Nov. 14, 1934):

"it would of course be departing from formal logic to speak of any such thing as technical proof, one way or the other. [...] All we can speak of are certain probabilities, as judged from the small fraction of the cosmos which we do know." (Letters to Richard F. Searight, p. 34.)

HPL uses this kind of reasoning in talk about teleology and religion; however, since he also uses it as a foundation whenever he talks of acquiring knowledge, I find it reasonable to conclude that it is an epistemic point as well. The point being, of course, that even though we do acquire knowledge through aforementioned inductive reasoning, we must also be aware that - given our limited sense apparata and the 'is-or-isn't searchlight' - whatever knowledge we think we have may very well prove one day to be false; no matter how hard the evidence here and now.

It's rather impressive to read HPL saying such things when talking about the existence of God. This I find quite open-minded from a man who was a die-hard materialist and atheist.

He also has a clear picture on how we as cognitive beings reach the conclusion that we know, on the basis of probability. The starting point for all human beings is that they have no knowledge of the world whatsoever - "the black gulph of the infinite is before me," (SL 3, p. 300) as he poetically puts it. We then begin receiving information, data, about the world from different sides:

"Sober men like Deocritus & Aristotle & Epicurus & Lucretius & Hipparchus & Eratosthenes & Copernicus & Kepler & Newton & Einstein & Haeckel & Huxley & Quatrefages & Tyler & Freud & Watson & Keith &c. tell me things about it in such a way that their essential statements fit together in a mutually supporting way & make certain new facts consistently & repeatedly clear to my registrering aparatus [...]" (Loc. cit.)

(Of course, the point is not that we should simply sit and listen to these men, and others like them, but that by means, reasoning, observation etc. just as clear and keen as those used by such scientists and philosophers we reach fair conclusions about the world in which we live.)

From this and other writings of HPL, it is clear that intersubjective verification is an integrated part of his empirical stance. That's a typical scientist position, to this day (subject to the inductive trap, by the way). Presumably HPL adhers to it because such a method can, in however limited a way, minimize the subject's own (possible) internal faults in registering external data, ideally eliminating one source of uncertainty to some agree. Even so, he then goes on to say, it is always possible - even if perhaps only in theory - that anything we believe to be true is wrong, given some possible unknown but crucial information which we have no knowledge of for the time being. (Loc. cit.; see also the letter to Searight.) Why? Well, because of aforementioned limitations of our senses and the 'is-or-isn't searchlight.'

From this it should also be fairly evident that, everything else notwithstanding, HPL believes that the world is fixed and absolute; it is merely us human beings who can't fathom and grasp the world; neither are we ever really guaranteed that whatever knowledge we have is true. He does not ever say that we cannot have knowledge of the world, but only, more modestly, that we must be open for the possibility that even knowledge we believe to be firmly true today may tomorrow turn out to be in need of modification - even rejection.

Regarding scepticism, I think it is fair to conclude that, on the one hand, HPL was somewhat sceptic about absolute knowledge of the world, due to the fact that we as cognitive beings are simply too limited; on the other, he seems to be a strong believer in how we acquire knowledge. So here he doesn't appear to be a sceptic. Also, when one hears his talk of what is most plausible and possible, as well as the reference to clear-cut 'is or isn't propositions,' it strongly suggests that what is generally accepted as 'hard, empirical evidence' he isn't sceptic about, cf. the outlined reasoning following quite positivistic ideas. And there is no doubt that for HPL the knowledge gained through the "right" means is justifiably characterized as knowledge - as opposed to the so-called knowledge gained through e.g. religion; so he remains a local scepticist. When acquiring knowledge through the chanals he mentions, he doesn't doubt that we will gain true knowledge. However, he conceeds that that knowledge is (possibly, in theory) fragmented; there is always "something more" - something beyond the radius of the 'is-or-isn't searchlight.' So he is a local scepticist, and isn't blind for the possible fallability even in the knowledge we have good reasons to believe we have. Which is more than can be said for many a professional philosopher in the same tradition.

None of this shows us that HPL was a sophisticated or original thinker when it comes to epistemology. In fact, he is all too open for criticism most of the way; too much is left unsaid as well as taken for granted for it to be philosophically more than minor trivia. That, however, was never my intention in the first place; that's not what is interesting in this context. What I hope to have shown is that - despite all the problems that definitely occur - he did have a fairly internally consistent theory of knowledge & how we acquire it (more impressive since it is a layman's own piecing-together); and it is a field of Lovecraft's thoughts that is worth further studies.

Without a doubt, a more intimate connexion between the epistemic cognition and HPL's much more original and profound theory on aesthetics is one of the subjects that will prove to be enlightening and very rewarding. Joshi and others have shown the way; and hopefully others will continue the work, illuminating even more details of the grand puzzle.

ABBREVIATIONS:

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Harksen, Henrik. "Metaphysics in "The Music of Erich Zann"." Lovecraft Studies 45. West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press. 2005.

Joshi, S. T. H. P. Lovecraft: The Decline of the West. Gillette, NJ: Wildside Press. 1990.
- : " "Reality" and Knowledge." Primal Sources: Essays on H. P. Lovecraft. New York, NY: Hippocampus Press. 2003.

Lovecraft, H. P. The Dunwich Horror and Others. Sauk City, Wisconsin: Arkham House. 1984.
- : Selected Letters, Vol. 1 & 3. Derleth & Wandrei (eds.) Sauk City, Wisconsin: Arkham House. 1965 & 1971.
- : Supernatural Horror in Literature. Joshi (ed.). Collected Essays, Vol. 2. New York, NY: Hippocampus Press. 2004.

Mariconda, Steven J. "H. P. Lovecraft: Art, Artifact, and Reality." Connors, Scott (ed.). A Century Less a Dream: Selected Criticism on H. P. Lovecraft. Holikong, Pensylvania: Wildside Press. 2002.

Setiya, K. & Joshi, S. T.: "Lovecraft on Human Knowledge: An Exchange." Lovecraft Studies 24. West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press. 1991.