www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall knower, knowing, known

OK, I was driving to the Post Office and the thought occured to me that our consciousness consists of knower, knowing, known. For example, I see the apple. Can anyone elucidate on this idea or suggest a resource that does? Many thanks.

-- John

John,

Are you asking about the nature of a person's being or about the nature of our way of speaking about or defining a thing? There are modern philosophers which may interest you such as Heidegger's "Being and Time". That work is what I first thought of when I read your question.

He is not easy to read and the English translations are, I have been told, substandard and do not capture the tone of his German.

Some of Plato deals with this, usually around the question of "what is knowledge" or "what is wisdom." St. Augustine speaks of a distinction between the author and reader in "On Christian Teaching" (the title varies in English, I don't remember the variants right now).

I can't elucidate on the idea in a short manner, I don't know if I could if I were to try and dialogue with the thoughts of philosophers.

Terry

JOHN:

I'm not a philosopher, but am wondering about the three from a theological point of view.

Is it not the case that we cannot be any of the three?

God is the "knower" because He "knows" us through and through. And he wants to give us a chance to "know" Him in the little way we can. We cannot "know" Him in the sense that He knows us because He can "know" us through and through and we cannot, being finite. If we could "know" God as He "knows" us, we would be God and He would not.

"Knowing" cn be multimple parts of speech, but it implies an ongoing, active situation. Something, it seems to me, like seeking Him while He can be found. We are in a "knowing" relationship as we get to ddepen our relationship--something He is constantly involved with us while we are in His grace life.

I guess "known" is in the same sense. He has "known" us from all eternity, even before He created the earth and the world. And if we persist in our clear focus on becoming His servants and purifying ourselves in this life, we can be sure that we were a pleasant thought then and now. On the other hand we cannot have known Him before He found the right time to come into our lives at our invitation.

2 copper coins for this afternoon. Not worth much.

BOB

There are a number of ways of elucidating this statement I see the apple. The two ways I am most familiar with are in terms of phenomenology and idealism. Both have this in common, that they begin with the fact that there are two poles of self consciousness and then there is the activity that unites the poles.

The knower, "I", is the subjective pole. The objective pole is "the apple." "see" is the activity that unites the two poles. A central question of modern philosophy, going back to Descartes yet also anticipated in medieval scholastic philosophy, is the question of the relationship between the poles. Is the object something that exists independently of the subject? How is it that the subject grasps the object? What is it that the subject is grasping when it "sees" the object?

Aquinas, following Aristotle, sees the intellect (of the subject of course) as abstracting the "intelligible species of the object," that is first given to it in the senses. The "intelligible species" of a thing is the form that makes a thing that which it is.

A typical idealist reply would be that this is speculative. Actually, phenomenologists might say the same thing. They would ask, "what is an 'intelligible species?'" What ontological status does it have? How does one know whether it is in the thing or in the mind or both? And what does mind contribute and how much does the object contribute to the intelligible species?

The "common sense" realist approach simply sees us as apprehending the object in itself exactly as it is. Aristotle and Aquinas' account is a little more nuanced, but essential they are on the same page with the common sense realist insofar as St. Thomas would say that it is the passive intellect that receives the content of the "intelligible species" that the active intellect abstracts from the object. Now according to St. Thomas, the active intellect merely abstracts that which is in the object. The active intellect doesn't contribute to the basic characteristics of the intelligible form. And I think that this is what most versions of realism hold, that the intellect corresponds to the object in such a way that it grasps immediate the content supplied by the object. However, this is a huge assumption and the insight supplied to us through modern philosophy is that it is unprovable and possibly even implausible.

It was Kant's contribution to spell out how it is that the mind actually shapes intellectual content. This is what Kant calls his "Copernican revolution" in philosophy. Certainly, it is true that things in the world supply content to consciousness. Yet, it is also true that things in the world can only appear to the mind in such a way that they conform to the fundamental laws (or structures of the mind). On Kant's model of consciousness, we receive data from things through our senses (what Kant calls sensible intuition), but the mind structures that data so that it conforms to basic laws of thinking, what Kant calls the "categories." Kant's philosophy is idealism because he holds that we only know that which can conform to the mind. We do not know what things are in themselves, but only in how they can be present in consciousness. This means that while we can specify specific laws of experience (and these laws are the governing principles of sciences), we cannot make any judgments about anything that lies beyond possible experience.

Fichte thought that Kant was correct in stating that it is the conscious subject that supplies the formal laws of conscious experience, but he argues that Kant's notion that we receive sense impressions from things "outside of us" as inconsistent with idealism and rather dogmatic. Fichte argues that it must be the subject that supplies the content as well as the form of experience. The "I" must posit the non-I over against itself (this is what the word "object" means in German, 'gegenstand'). An object is literally something that stands against consciousness. In positing the non-I, the "I" comes to know itself by self-reflexion (consciousness turning back on its own activities). Ultimately, the reason we share an intersubjective world and we agree on things conceptually is because there must really be only one "I" that is the Absolute. So, in our knowing it is God who is knowing himself through our consciousness (of course all of this is also a big leap and heretical too).

I have to run now, so I'll finish up with part 2 later.

Joe

"The 'intelligible species' of a thing is the form that makes a thing that which it is."

Would this be the quiddity?

Terry

Terry, yes, "quiddity" (or essence)is what St. Thomas is talking about.

I'm too tired right now folks, but when I can sit down and gather myself, I will complete what I started in my previous post.

Joe

WOW: much food for thought here. Thank you Terry, BOB (I always value your copper coins, sir) and of course, Joe.

Here is what I was thinking of.

What distinguishes human awareness from other living creatures? Other animals are aware; how is our awareness so different?

That, in turn, lead me to the question; What is awareness? Not a physiological description of its mechanics. But: what do we mean by the word "awareness" ?

I suggest that awareness means awareness of the world around us, awareness of ourselves, and awareness of how we relate to it all. And, by extension, human awareness is awareness taken to a greatly pronounced degree: a degree far greater (at least, that we can determine) than other living creatures on this earth.

Now, as I was ruminating on that over the last few days, something else came to mind. For lack of a better term, I think of it as the "trinity of consciousness." Namely, how do we know? Based on the above, the answer seems to be: in terms of the world around us, and of ourselves, and how we relate to it. But what does that mean?

And then it was that I stumbled into this idea that maybe we know in terms of knowing, knower and known. In other words, I suspect that:

-- We are aware of the world around us by the simple faculty of awareness (knowing);

-- and thereby, we are also aware of ourselves (knower);

-- and therefrom, we are aware of how we are aware (how we "relate" to the world and to ourselves).

For example, if I see the apple , then

see = knowing

I = knower

the apple = known.

I haven't read Kant, but I'm becoming interested in his ideas, Joe, because of what you have posted about him. I agree that hardware determines software. The body is the hardware; the mind is the software. And the hardware sets the parameters of the software that can run on that hardware. What is the difference between my little hand-held calculator and this computer? Hardware. So too, I suspect, is the difference between Man's mind and the awareness of the other living creatures.

(And, let us be honest: an underlying question is this: If I was half as highly intelligent as I like to think I am, why the heck have I done so many stupid things in my life? That is one of the reasons I like Orthodoxy and the whole Eastern Christian Tradition. It addresses the whole man, not just the brain nor just emotion nor just the body, but the whole man: to bring the medicine of salvation, the whole Christ. It is, in my opinion, a complete package for addressing the human condition.)

But here is the real kicker (and what Kant seemed to be getting to): How does the design of our brains not only limit the degree of our awareness, but how does it also shape the kind of awareness that we have?

A black and white TV (oh boy, does that date me) can only display black and white -- even if it is receiving images in color.

Likewise, what can our minds not process simply because we don't have the hardware for it?

And back to the question: if knowing, knower, known is how our brains are built to comprehend the cosmos -- what does that say about our comprehensions?

And now it's time for some decaf . . . lol.

Enjoy your Saturday.

-- John

This comes from memory, so excuse me if I am inaccurate.

Aristotle distinguished intelligence into various types. Animals have an intellect, and to some observers a flower that turns towards the sun during the day has some kind of mover, but it are humans alone which reason. What is reason? I cannot explain this fully and I don't claim to be a philosopher, but I have thought it to be the use of abstract thought to synthesize life into a narrative particular to oneself.

Animals have a memory, they can show signs of thought (sign language, or a dolphin looking in a mirror). This is irrefutable. Yet there is something that distinguishes their kind of thinking or responding to the natural world to how the human mind works and our inventiveness; especially our art.


"I haven't read Kant, but I'm becoming interested in his ideas, Joe, because of what you have posted about him."

I have read his Critique of Pure Reason, and in the class we were told how this work has influenced both analytical and Continental philosophy. The limits of pure knowledge, which he strictly defines, led to similar delimitations in our particular understanding of objects or ideas. It can lead to confusion and to absurdity if a person lacks certitude upon seeing a question like: how do we know that we know?

There is a question which seems to naturally follow. Is truth subjective upon our perceptions, or is it objective so that we must seek to have the eyes to see and the nose to smell it?