Free Will: In Search of a Foundation

By Steve Rensberry

   Why do humans do the things they do?
   On the surface it would seem an easy enough question to answer.
   "Because they choose to do it," people will say. "Because they see some benefit in it for themselves and make a conscious decision to act on it."
   But does this not beg the question? What exactly is it, in a causative sense, that drives the choices we make? Are the things we choose not framed by the circumstances that surround us, by our genetic and biological attributes? When we say that a person chooses one thing over another, what exactly--on a cognitive or causative level--is truly transpiring? 
   Whether we can see beyond the puzzle of our own existence even far enough to formulate a sufficient answer is a question that philosophers from Thales to Dewey have been trying to determine, and one that continues to cry out for clarity. Like many things, the presumed basis upon which this strange and paradoxical thing we call free will, or free choice, proves all the foggier the closer we look. Is it truly what drives our behavior, as a cause produces an effect, or is something deeper at work here?
   Plato presented us with his theory of forms, in effect elevating abstract ideas to a position of supremacy in the quest to define true reality consists of. German philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote widely of the noumenal realm vs the phenomenal realm, the former of which he considered to be the "real" world of reason and innate ideas compared to the subjectively-experienced phenomenal world. Empiricists such as Aristotle, Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and John Stuart Mill side with the view that sensory experience and physical evidence are fundamentally more trustworthy and real than the "tentative" world of abstract ideas. Naturalists, in embracing the world of natural causes, have stood in long opposition to theists and supernaturalists, who have welcomed the world of the immaterial and innate with arms extended.
   If only this persistent concept of free will--as a type of unaffected, infinitely untarnished and personal decision-making device--weren't so often used as a convenient battering ram, to place blame and to castigate. Do we seek to hold people responsible because they are responsible in an absolutist sort of way, because it reflects the type of human being they truly are, or because on some subconscious level we are driven to do so because it is quantitatively easier than acknowledging and dealing with the deep complexities of the human condition?
   Let me propose that the list of those factors in our lives which compel us to act and which demand either immediate or future resolution is far longer, far more influential, and holds a far greater share of responsibility for human action than does the list of those things which can rightfully be considered within the realm of free choice.
   Consider a fictional gentleman by the name of Mr. Jonathan Jones.
   Let us presume that Mr. Jones grew up in an average size town, that he was brought up a Protestant, and that he was well schooled to the point of obtaining a bachelor of science degree in business. He has a job, a wife, two small children, plenty of friends, and an adequate supply of cash thanks to a combined household income and some early savings. When he is not working, Mr. Jones likes to head for the hills to camp, hike, boat or simply to explore the countryside with his family or friends.
   But let us ask ourselves, is Mr. Jones free to choose whether to breathe or not?
   Is he free to choose whether to sleep, to eat or to hydrate himself?
   Can he choose to stop time in its tracks, or to reverse it?
   As he relaxes under a tree on one of his many favorite wilderness adventures, he imagines that he can fly above the mountain tops like a bird. Is this a choice that he is free to manifest without consequences?
   Can our friend choose to live under water, extend his life by 500 years, grow 10 feet tall or move objects with the power of his mind alone?
   He can decide to try, but to call such an exercise of the will a choice would seem rather meaningless.
   We can presuppose a dimension to the human intellect and conscious mind that rises well above the purely physical, a place that we may surely presume to be the seat of choice, but here again we come perilously close to pure conjecture.
   There is a sense in which the human will, as the locus of imagination and desire, is infinitely disconnected from external reality altogether in that it adheres neither to its limitations nor to the basic laws of cause and effect that govern it. Only within a very thin slice of what we can ultimately envision are the choices we make free to be manifest. French philosopher Rene Descartes makes little distinction between the concepts of will and choice, with choice thus perceived as being effectively unlimited in scope. More common, however, is the view that willings are substantively distinct from the idea of a truly free will, given the vast number of barriers to its full realization (Sanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).
   Authors Xingxu Wang and Guenther Ruhe, in a 1997 article published in the International Journal of Cognitive Informatics and Natural Intelligence, present a fundamental cognitive decision-making process which they describe as "a sequence of Cartesian-based selections," with real-world decisions seen as but "a repetitive application of the fundamental cognitive process."
   Wang and Ruhe cite a layered reference model of the brain (LRMB), which they say "has revealed that there are 37 interacting cognitive processes in the brain," part of which parallels the processes which the mind goes through in problem-solving. Other elements include a combination of processes involving such things as qualification, quantification, comprehension, representation, memorization and search.
   "Contrary to the traditional 'container' metaphor, the human memory mechanism can be described by a 'relational' metaphor, which perceives that memory and knowledge are represented by the connections between neurons in the brain, rather than the neurons themselves as information containers," Wang and Ruhe write.
   In respect to the dissection of free will, let me plead for clarity on a list of several other ontologically relevant concepts, such as intention, determination, belief, desire, wanting, wishing, longing, thought, and meaning itself. Is it a case of the mind owning such concepts or reflecting them? Do they exist apart from the human mind? The supernaturalist will, generally speaking, be inclined to say "yes." Not only are we fundamentally connected on some otherworldly, quantum-like level with at least one particular entity far more powerful than ourselves, the argument goes, but the communication is ongoing, hyper-intimate and in need of no other evidence to justify the reality of it than the mere testimony of those who believe it. Evidence, thus defined, does not come from the outside in but from the inside out -- and our free will is deemed to be truly free because we are, theoretically, connected to the very source of all knowledge itself. Intuitively and innately, writers such as C.S. Lewis have argued, we are made aware of what is moral and what is immoral, what is right and what is wrong, what is the creator's will and what is not the creator's will. By such logic were are thus made 100 percent responsible for 100 percent of the choices that we make, the circumstances that preceded or shaped such choices notwithstanding.
   It is quite understandable the comfort that comes from believing in some deeper reality, in the guiding hand of some transcendent being who is always there to give life order, purpose and meaning. But are we being intellectually honest with ourselves? Should not the evidence we choose as justification for such all-encompassing belief rest on more than subjective personal experiences or mere human testimony? Even more so when such testimony suggests that which contravenes all known laws of physics.
   Professor and author Douglas Hofstadter made the case, beginning with Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, for the role of analogy in the formation of human consciousness, and for the brain's use of self-referencing or feed-back loops in developing a sense of "I" and in the creation of meaning. In his book, I Am A Strange Loop, Hofstadter posits that this "I" which is created in effect can exist across multiple minds.
   "In the end, we self-perceiving, self-inventing, locked-in mirages are little miracles of self-reference," Hofstadter writes. (I Am A Strange Loop).
   Studies by Benjamin Libet in 2002 regarding decision making and brain activity revealed some interesting findings, among them evidence that appears to show that one's actions actually are sometimes set in motion even before the conscious mind wills it. Where does that leave free will?
   Consider once again our friend Jonathan Jones.
   When he gets up in the morning and decides to make a pot of coffee, what actually is it that causes the coffee to be made? We can say that Mr. Jones' decision, or freely chosen will, is responsible, but does it not take one thing coming into contact with another, or at minimum some kind of force acting upon another, for a cause to produce an effect? How is a motivation or something as abstract as a desire connected to something as material and physical as the human body?
   If Mr. Jones decides to do something dastardly, such that we feel compelled morally and ethically to hold him accountable, should we hold him 100 percent responsible or should we view his culpability as but pieces of some metaphysical pie, split among an unpredictable array of genetic, biological, educational, socioeconomic and psychological factors in his life? Surely, our friend has more control over some of these than others. And where does intent fall into the picture, if the consequences by change turn out to be different than expected? Imagine, for instance, that Mr. Jones witnesses what he thinks is an altercation on a neighboring street, decides to intervene, but when he steps between the two suspects one of them suddenly and unexpectedly steps backwards over a curb, then tragically dies after his head smashes against the pavement. The degree to which Mr. Jones is responsible would certainly seem to be less than 100 percent, but where do we draw the line?
   The concept of freedom would seem at best to be profoundly ambiguous, and nature of choice equally ripe with speculation, both requiring in effect that we take a conceptual leap from one unknown (the world of ideas) into another unknown (the world of physical cause and effect). No one fully understands what the nature, source and mechanisms are which form the fabric of human consciousness. Likewise, no one fully understands the mechanisms and forces that govern the physical world, whether we're talking about quantum physics or neurology. Yet somehow we feel confident in attaching a very individualistic form of responsibility to human actions -- as though the act of choosing were somehow akin to turning a light switch on or off and every decision came with a crystal clear set of consequences that always produced the same result.
   In the classic work, Tertium Organum, Russian philosopher P. D. Ouspensky writes about our experience of the world as a place existing in time and space and the near impossibly of conceiving of it in any other way, as unsatisfactory as that may be. Ouspensky writes:
   "In general, we say that the objective world consists of things and phenomena, i.e., things and changes in states of things. The PHENOMENA exist for us in time; the THINGS, in space . . . But such a division of the subjective and the objective world does not satisfy us. By means of reasoning we can establish the fact that in reality we know only our own sensations, perceptions and conceptions, and we cognize he objective world by projecting outside of ourselves the causes of our sensations, presuming them to contain these causes."
   The causes of our sensations have been one of the perennial philosophical questions since the "remotest antiquity," Ouspensky states.
   I would concur, but argue as well that we should include within that same conceptual framework the human faculties of motivation and will. Ouspensky implies as much himself in parsing the subjective (conceptual) world and the object-based world, or as he puts it, the world of "things."
   Ouspensky cites Kant in casting doubt even further, this time on the possibility of ever knowing exactly how the human mind is swayed by the outside world and declaring that the very concepts of space and time, apart from the human intellect, would not even exist. As stated by Ouspensky:
   "Kant established the fact that everything that is known through the senses is known in terms of time and space, and that out of time and space we cannot know anything by way of the senses; that time and space are necessary conditions of sensuous receptivity (i.e., receptivity by means of the five organs of sense). Moreover, what is most important, he established the fact that extension in space and existence in time are not properties appertaining to things, but just the properties of our sensuous receptivity; that in reality, apart from our sensuous knowledge of them, things exist independently of time and space; but we can never perceive them out of time and space, and perceiving things and phenomena thus sensuously, by virtue of it we impose upon them the conditions of time and space, as belonging to our form of perception."
Upon what foundation should we lay this ubiquitous concept of free will?
   Let me posit and answer that is both an appeal and a proposition.
   As I see it, human motivation and the human decision-making process in general would seem at best to be a complex, little-understood phenomenon that begs us to take into account the overall human condition before jumping to conclusions about the precise reason for any particular human behavior. Not only have we yet to find a definitive answer to the paradoxical relationship between mind and body, but a similar conundrum presents itself in dealing with the abstract vs the concrete, the emotional vs the empirical, the subjective vs the objective, the internal vs the external, the supernatural vs the natural, the absolute vs the relative, the teleological vs the accidental or nihilistic, the predestined vs the existential, and the intuitive vs the scientific.
   Holding people responsible for their actions is fine, I would say, if we understand that the term "responsible" is a relative one. How can we truly hold someone responsible for their actions when it is uncertain, in a metaphysical sense, exactly what this thing called free will really is, much less the precise mechanism by which non-spacial, abstract phenomenon cause motion within the human body? Yes, we can hold them responsible, but only as partially free agents in a grossly misunderstood, infinitely complex universe -- agents who often make choices for reasons that neither they nor we fully understand.

For further reading:

P.D. Ouspensky

Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophyentry on free will

The Cognitive Process of DecisionMaking

Critique of Pure Reason

Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid

Spinoza's Refutation of Teleology

 

Causality, Correlation and Common Sense

By Steve Rensberry

   How do we know what causes produce what effects? The question seems simple enough on the surface, but dig deeper and the issue becomes much more complex, unequivocally intertwined as it were with matters of definition, belief and time.
   Think for a minute whether a ball dropped from a person's hand falls--in an absolute and definitive sense--because, A) the person released his or her grip, or B) because gravity pulls the ball downward. If we answer "A," then it begs the question of what happens in a zero-gravity environment, where releasing one's grip on a ball would, in effect, do little to ensure that the ball falls to the ground. If we answer "B," then what need is there even to release one's grip? Gravity, in this case, may clearly be a factor, but it would take a major leap of blind faith to consider it to be the sole and absolute cause.
   Creating further difficulty is the rather dubious nature of things themselves, whether we're talking about physical objects and phenomenon, or about abstract constructs of the mind -- or perhaps some combination of the two. What, at their very deepest essence, is an atom, a molecule, or a chair? To a human, a chair is a place to sit. To a termite, it is food. Atoms and molecules, likewise, are often defined simply as the building blocks of the material world, but what is a "building block" other than some definition we choose to give something, relative to the way we perceive reality? Is it a block or the mere manifestation of something else? It depends how you look at it and what type of purpose we assign to it.
   Time adds another twist to the slippery concept of causation, with delayed effects and delayed influence often blurring the lines considerably. Scientists and health officials who studied the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, for instance, have predicted a 2 percent increase in the cancer rate for those exposed to some measure of contamination near the site -- but over a period of 70 years. Can we be absolutely sure the reactor's explosion is what causes a victim's cancer, if they do in fact fall ill? Establishing cause and effect with such delayed timing can be a guessing game at best.

   Author Ben Dupré writes about the cognitive tug-of-war going on between physicalists and dualists with respect to causation and the mind-body problem.
   "Physicalist's solutions to the mind-body problem brush aside many of the difficulties of dualism at one stroke. In particular, the mysteries of causation that torment dualists are dispelled by simply bringing consciousness within the scope of scientific explanation," Dupré states. "Predictably, critics of physicalism complain that its proponents have brushed aside too much; that its successes have been achieved at the heaviest cost -- of failing to capture the essence of conscious experience, its subjective nature." (50 philosophy ideas you really need to know, Quercus Publishing Plc, London, 2007, pg 31).
   What fascinates me greatly are the claims to certainty that so many people and groups adhere to in respect to causation, where circumstance itself is seen not so much as the product of some prior event or force, but as the consequence of some mysterious intent or force from another time and place altogether.
   Karma posits a world in which actions in this life cause effects in a future life. Indian philosophy, as represented by Satkaryavada, supposes that the effect is somehow bound up, or pre-existing, within the cause itself. Buddhist teaching, in particular the concept of Pratityasamutpada, considers an effect to have more than one cause. Then we have theistic and supernaturalist systems of belief, which arguably do away with cause and effect altogether by presupposing that all of reality--right down to the smallest element, mental construct and sociological circumstance--is but the manifestation of some higher being's will and eternal nature.
   Again, it begs the question. What exactly do we mean by the terms themselves? What is a "cause?" What is "an effect?" The indeterminacy introduced by quantum physics, and the concept of nonlocality, complicates the issue even further.
   Let me suggest that we may, just may, be looking for certainty of the kind that simply does not exist, with the only thing we can rightfully be expected to know with some limited degree of certainty being the proximate cause of relative effects. This may not satiate those who are prone to embrace as absolute truth the mere penumbra of a very wide spectrum of earthly phenomenon, but intellectual honesty beckons.
   No clearer divide can be seen on the subject of causality than between the goals and methodology of science--which establishes causative relationships primarily by way of carefully controlled testing and repeatability--and those beliefs which employ some element of magical thinking--and which establish causative relationships primarily through correlation. Do magical, superstitious and supernaturally-oriented systems of believe stand the test of common sense? Because A happens with B present, does that mean that A was caused by B? If it begins raining right after you walk into a building, does that mean that your entrance into the structure caused it to rain? If only there weren't so many people who actually believed that such correlation was sufficient, we wouldn't need to worry.

For further reading:

Causality

A Defense of Naturalism

Causation and Culpability

Causal Theories of Mental Content

David Hume

Wired Health Conference: Synthetic Biology

Epistemology and the Limitations of Knowledge

By Steve Rensberry  

Epistemology is an important branch of philosophy concerned with the parameters and limits of human knowledge, with beliefs that are justifiably true and based on that which is genuinely real. It is concerned with the capability of things in general to be known and understood in their deepest essence.
   Are abstract constructs real? What do we make of the thoughts, images and emotions experienced by a conscious human mind? Certainly they can be said to be subjectively meaningful to the person experiencing them, but are they grounded in some deeper type of reality, independent of the subject? Plato attempted to make this exact point in his Theory of Forms, Aristotle argued against it and many others throughout the ages have sought to add their own insight into the definition of what is real, what is imagined and how it is we can know the difference.
   This essay will consider the idea that this thing we call knowledge is fundamentally a linguistic tool, albeit one which presumably helps us to understand and control the world around us. Giving a name to phenomenon which we consider most certain also helps us to reduce the physiological stress that can arise from doubt. In similar fashion, the attempt to define reality itself will be considered as making, at best, a series of relative and subjective affirmations. What we say, what we believe, what we think, takes shape only after it is filtered through a maze of human cognitive processes, replete with all of its genetic predispositions, emotional baggage and life experiences.
   First, let me address the false dichotomy which is frequently drawn between those who are skeptical about the existence of absolutes on the one hand, and those who are skeptical about skepticism on the other. Typical is the following criticism of absolute skepticism, as stated in Questions That Matter by Ed. L. Miller (McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1984, pg. 191): "Actually, there have been relatively few absolute skeptics. It is not hard to see why. Critics of this position have been quick to charge that it is impractical and impossible. It is impractical because, from the purely practical standpoint of getting along in the world, no one in his or her right mind can actually live on such a premise. Our daily lives are pervaded by what we take to be (whether they actually are or not) assurances, certainties, and in a word, all kinds of knowledge."
   Likewise, Miller provides the traditional response to relativism by pointing to its supposedly self-contradictory and self-refuting nature. "For they maintain, with the greatest assurance, that we cannot maintain anything. Otherwise stated: If we cannot know anything, then how do we know that? Stated again: If absolute skepticism is true, then it must be false!"
   Such criticism, however, misrepresents the issue. When people hypothesize that absolutes do not exist, all they are saying is that the weight of evidence appears, from their limited perspective as finite human beings, against the existence of absolutes; in the same way, modern empiricists question that substantive knowledge can be derived from sources that are completely independent of the senses.
   Why must we assume anything to be infinitely true, to necessarily be absolute in nature in order to live our lives? Perhaps this is just one dimension of many. Perhaps what we see now is not the way things always have been, nor how they will be millions of years in the future. Why must we make a leap into absolutism to be sufficiently certain about the world around us. Is it not enough to interact with things as relative phenomenon that are simply true most of the time, that display a high degree of probability and consistency but that also carry with them the chance of floundering in the face of contrary evidence? To object to absolutism is not to make a metaphysical claim but merely to point to the illogic of the concept and to the dearth of empirical evidence available to substantiate it. As I have mentioned in previous posts, to claim that there are absolutes is implicitly claim that there is no place anywhere in the universe where absolutes do not exist.
   Obviously there are many things which present us with a high degree of certainty that we cannot readily see with the naked eye, things such as wind and gravity, but we can test them as to their veracity through empirical, scientific means that act as an extension of human sensory organs. There also are many presumed entities and abstract concepts which, while theorized as real, are little less than figments of the human imagination. Placing our complete trust and in that which we have no solid evidence for, that is presumed in fact to be outside of the realm of scientific analysis altogether, is the issue at stake.
   Since the dawn of recorded history, human beings have embraced a large number of false beliefs. For one list of such beliefs, see: List of Common Misconceptions.
   Though it doesn't take an illness to believe a falsehood, the false beliefs of those who suffer from schizophrenia and other forms of psychosis are well documented, as are the suspected physiological basis for them.
   One report discussed in Time Magazine in a story by journalist Maia Szalavitz links the phenomena of false belief to the presence or absence of a particular fold in the human brain, a fold that is missing in an estimated one-quarter of people and 44 percent of those with schizophrenia.
   Hanna Pickard with the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics and All Souls College at the University of Oxford has written an interesting piece entitled Schizophrenia and the Epistemology of Self-Knowledge, in which she discusses what is termed "alien thought," leading many people suffering from paranoid delusions and schizophrenia to mistakenly assign alien responsibility for their own thoughts.
   "There is evidence that both schizophrenic and paranoid patients show a generalized attributional reasoning bias towards assigning causal responsibility for events to others, rather than to assigning them to themselves," Pickard writes, citing two references. (Baker, C. A., and Morrison, A. P. 1998. Cognitive processes in auditory hallucinations, Psychological Medicine 28(5): 1199-208; Moritz, S., Woodward, T. S., Burlon, M., Braus, D. F. and Anderson, B. 2007. Attributional style in schizophrenia, Cognitive Therapy and Research 31(3): 371-83.)
   Pickard also notes the tendency for such subjects to jump to conclusions more so than normal subjects. (Garety and Hemsley, Delusions: Investigations into the psychology of delusional reasoning, Oxford University Press, 1994).
   "The proposal suggests that they are prone to alien thought because they may also show exaggerated irrationality in the capacity for conscious reflection to causally influence the maintenance and revision of beliefs and other mental states; that it is something which in principle is open to empirical testing. But importantly, as I have emphasized, it is an abnormality that places them along a continuum together with the rest of us. Indeed, it is natural to envisage a spectrum of related abnormalities, more or less pathological, moving from immoral or selfish or shameful thoughts, to addiction and akrasia, to obsessional thinking and disorders, through to prodromal alien thought and finally full-blown schizophrenia," Pickard states.
   If only it were possible to venture into the epistemological jungle without also addressing the multi-faceted issues of belief, truth and evidence (or justification), but it is mighty difficult. One way to depict the relationship is by use of a Euler diagram. The diagram places knowledge within a subset represented by two overlapping circles, one representing truth and one representing beliefs. Something can be true but not believed, and visa versa. True knowledge, categorically speaking, must be something that is both true and believed. This is not to deny instances where a person's belief just happens to be true by accident or by luck. (see: The Gettier problem). Whether such cases of "luck-based belief" are justified ultimately begs the question: how do we determine (know) what things are real and what things are not?
    The great divide in epistemological circles is, generally speaking, between empiricists such as Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas, John Locke and David Hume; and rationalists such as Plato, René Descartes, Gottfried Leibniz and Baruch Spinoza, with philosophers such as Immanuel Kant attempting to bridge the gap by arguing that both are necessary to some degree in acquiring knowledge -- with reason being necessary to help make sense of experience, yet impotent in regard to claims about things of which no human can possibly have any experience of.
   Either way, the idea of knowledge being acquired by some sort of intuitive sense of truth that we are all born with seems to me an idea which can only survive by assuming an immensely broad definition of what constitutes evidence. Analytical philosopher Alvin Plantinga's reformed epistemology posits the idea of a "properly basic belief," as reason enough for one's beliefs, needing neither inference from established truths nor empirical evidence of any kind. The proposition falters in essentially appealing to subjective experience and to an overly-broad definition of what constitutes sufficient evidence.
   Plantinga, as with fellow theist C.S. Lewis, makes the mistake of reaching for absolute certainty without warrant, and by taking aim at empirical, naturalistic approaches to knowledge by building up the traditional straw man in order to be able to knock it down, falsely claiming that they are self-defeating and incoherent.
  Let me invite your consideration of two views, one espoused by Hume in his work, the Treatise of Human Nature, and the other by G.W. Hegel in The Phenomenology of Spirit.
   Hume writes: "But setting aside some metaphysicians of this kind, I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement. Our eyes cannot turn in their sockets without varying our perceptions. Our thought is still more variable than our sight; and all our other senses and faculties contribute to this change; nor is there any single power of the soul, which remains unalterably the same, perhaps for one moment. The mind is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, re-pass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations." (ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge; Oxford University Press, London, 1888 pgs. 251-153). See: Of Personal Identity.
   Faced with perceptions of an "inconceivable rapidity," and in a state of "perpetual flux and movement," as Hume puts it, is it any wonder the human animal is so prone to tether itself to something that is of an eternally unchanging nature, permanent and lasting, yet without proper justification?
   Hegel, in the Phenomenology of Spirit (Mind), writes: "The goal to be reached is the mind’s insight into what knowing is. Impatience asks for the impossible, wants to reach the goal without the means of getting there. The length of the journey has to be borne with, for every moment is necessary; and again we must halt at every stage, for each is itself a complete individual form, and is fully and finally considered only so far as its determinate character is taken and dealt with as a rounded and concrete whole, or only so far as the whole is looked at in the light of the special and peculiar character which this determination gives it. Because the substance of individual mind, nay, more, because the universal mind at work in the world (Weltgeist), has had the patience to go through these forms in the long stretch of time’s extent, and to take upon itself the prodigious labour of the world’s history, where it bodied forth in each form the entire content of itself, as each is capable of presenting it; and because by nothing less could that all-pervading mind ever manage to become conscious of what itself is — for that reason, the individual mind, in the nature of the case, cannot expect by less toil to grasp what its own substance contains."
   Hegel's point: The imperfect human consciousness instinctively establishes its own criteria for knowledge, subsequently modifying its concept of reality (the object) to fit an imperfect knowledge, rather than adjusting its knowledge to conform to the object, a distinction which ultimately is immaterial. As noted in this Wikipedia entry on Hegel: "At the end of the process, when the object has been fully 'spiritualized' by successive cycles of consciousness' experience, consciousness will fully know the object and at the same time fully recognize that the object is none other than itself."
   A rather interesting phenomenon often takes place whenever a person who has made an intellectual and emotional commitment to transcendent truths runs out of logical defenses. "It doesn't really matter," they'll say. "I know what I believe is true because I have a personal relationship with (pick your transcendent entity). In other words, they "just know," as if by magic, as if by some invisible force and source of knowledge wholly beyond human comprehension. By any measure, it's a response that relies on such a broadly subjective criteria for knowledge as to be essentially no criteria at all.

For Further Reading
Epistemology
David Hume
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
The Phenomenology of Spirit
Plato and the Theory of Forms
Logical Positivism
Questions that Matter: An Invitation to Philosophy
The Ontology of Concepts: Abstract Objects or Mental Representations
Schizophrenia and the Epistemology of Self-Knowledge