THE PHILOSOPHY OF KNOWLEDGE

( For the Students Use Only )

I

THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE.

1.

The Question of Knowledge.

The spontaneous daily experiences say that the subject knows reality, for man makes affirmation
and conducts himself according to some convictions, which he holds to be true. But does our
knowledge of reality correspond to that reality? Is our knowledge rather a mere Image that we
create of reality? And if this image were not to correspond to reality, would it not be a kind of
reality in itself? How to rationally explain the movement which permits the human spirit to unite
itself to the real, the human to take possession of the subject? Or how can we know?
The critical problem of knowledge, then, is that of justifying the truth-value of our knowing,
i.e. showing that our knowing can really know what it claims to know.
The critical problem of knowing can be dealt with negatively and positively. Negatively, by
showing that the problem itself is fictitious or false. If the problem is false, it is non-existent and
in this sense incapable of a solution. It is like hitting a fly when there is no fly. As Blondel justly
remarks: There are no problems more insoluble than those that do not exist. (LAction [1893],
premiere partie, ch. 1).[1] The problem is fictitious because the condition of possibility of raising
the problem is its solution. To doubt our knowing, presupposes that we can know our knowing as
it is knowing. Therefore the problem is already solved.
1. The Solutions from a Historical Perspective:
In general, the resolution of the Gnoseological problem can be classified into two categories:
Objective realism and Immanentistic Idealism. The objective realism would be the realistic
solution: To know is to reflect. The immanentistic idealism is the idealist solution: To know is
to create.
The different answers given to the adequation between the mental image (under the form of
concept, intuition, judgment, law) and reality stand for different theories of knowledge.
a.

Ancient Philosophers:

The epistemological understanding of the Ancient philosophers may be clearly understood of we

consider the context on which they build their own philosophical thoughts. In the case of
epistemology, while it is only the 6th cent. B.C. that a heard evidence of general thinking on the
nature and limits of human knowledge, but the context on which the 6 th cent. B.C. philosophers
Xenophanes and Heraclitus were philosophizing goes back to the time of Homer and Hesiod.
Xenophanes and Heraclitus epistemological reflections were simply a re-action against the view
of the world provided by Homer and Hesiod.[2]

Homers understanding of knowledge is normally conceived as acquired by direct perception. In

other words, there is a close connection between knowledge and sense-perception. Thus, to know
means knowing by personal sense-experience. In ordinary mortals, such experience comes by
ordinary sense-perception, while to seers and to gods it may also be conveyed in supernatural
kinds of direct perception.[3]
The epistemological question, the possibility of acquiring knowledge, already existed long
before the Ancient Greek Philosophers. However, this epistemogical question and its treatment
reached the peak of its concern during the Modern Period. Epistemology then was considered the
First Philosophy.
The Ancient Greek philosophers were already engaged in the problem. As Xenophanes and
Heraclitus were reacting against the Homeric and Hesiodic poems, the Sophists were already
challenging the truth-claims of reality by Plato and his disciples.
a.1.

Plato:

In Platos dialogue of Meno, Meno recounts an argument to the effect that knowledge can never
be acquired because we either already know or do not know that which we seek to know. If we
know already, then we cannot acquire knowledge, since, as a purely logical-conceptual thesis, we
cannot acquire what we already have. If on the other hand we do not already know, then we
cannot acquire knowledge because we do not know what to look for, nor would we recognize it
if we happened to stumble upon it (Meno 80d-e [Stephanus]).[4]
Socrates, seems to accept the conclusion, holding that knowledge as distinct from merely
correct opinion is recollection of the eternal Forms, known by direct acquaintance prior to the
immortal souls embodiment in a particular human body(Meno 81a-e). In the Republic
(621c),Plato indicates that the soul drinks from Lethe, the river of forgetfulness in ancient Greek
Mythology, before entering the body of birth, and thus causes its perfect knowledge to be
obscured. Knowledge is not acquired, but it does not really need to be, since it is a permanent
possession of the soul, brought to memory by the probing questions of an enlightened teacher. [5]
For Plato, then, to know is to remember.
a.2.

Aristotle:

In Aristotles Metaphysica, he opens the work with the statement: All men desire by nature to
know (980a1). In fact, he argues further in his ethical philosophy that the highest pleasure is the
contemplation of known truths. Knowledge is not only made an object of desire, but at the same
time the motivation to act and a source of satisfaction.
But, if Plato is right that knowledge is not acquired but is a permanent possession of the soul,
then Aristotle cannot be correct to hold that knowledge is desired or the object of desire. Just as
we cannot acquire what we already have, so we cannot desire what we already have.[6]
Nevertheless, the epistemological position of Aristotle is unmistakenly true. A deeper analysis of
Platos claim would only render inconsistency. Because if we already possess knowledge

obscured only by a bad memory, then from an epistemological point of view we are just like the
gods, who are fully in the possession of knowledge of eternal truths. Philosophy is the love or
desire for knowledge. This desire is directed necessarily to something not already possessed.
b.

Before Descartes:

Before Descartes, philosophical reflection on how can one be certain of the correspondence
between what exists in the idea and what exists in reality had given two types of answers:
b.1.

With respect to the nature of knowledge, two positions:

b.1.1. Empiricism:
It is the external things which progressively give form to the human spirit by means of sensation.
Sensation is the conscious impression which accompanies the excitation of a sensible organ. The
dictum There is nothing in the spirit which has not previously been in the senses can be
applied to this meaning.
b.1.2. Intellectualism:
It is the spirit which organizes the diversity of sensible experience projecting the ideas to it. Ideas
will have to be, then, innate, previous to the data obtained in sensations.
b.2.

With respect to the value of knowledge, two positions:

b.2.1. Dogmatism:
The intellectual representation conforms to the object and the spirit thus attains truth and affirms
it.
b.2.2. Skepticism:
The adequation of image to reality is impossible and the spirit cannot, thus, attain truth.
c.

Descartes.

Descartes moved the problematic from the relation of the spirit and the real into an internal
relation within the spirit itself: knowledge becomes now the relation of the spirit and its proper
ideas, ideas that it bears in itself and from which he discovers some order.
What guarantees, then, the correspondence between the order of ideas and the structure of the
real? This guarantee is given to us by the discovery of the existence of God, the idea of which is
immanent in the cogito. The veracity of God, i.e. that He cannot be deceived, implies the truth
of the Ideas which He has deposited in our understanding (or rather which God keeps
continuously in the spirit, because God creates continuously both the world and man). From

here, the mathematical order of ideas coincides with the physical structure of nature. The
foundation, then, of Cartesian knowledge/science is ontology.
d.

From Hume to Kant.

The thesis which postulates metaphysically the harmony between the spirit and reality had been
contested by the English empiricists of the 18th century, particularly by Hume. Radical
empiricism tends toward skepticism: there is no way to prove that the qualities we attribute to
objects really belong to them. What we affirmed is the perceived regularity among the
phenomena, and we fall prey to its determinism because we are accustomed to see them
happening in the same way. Logically there is no necessary impeding reason for things to occur
in any another way.
Descartes had, like Plato, made truth a reflection of being. Hume converted being into a human
creation. Kant now shows that it is a human creation without thereby, however, losing its
certainty. Kant effected a Copernican Revolution in the theory of knowledge. While before
him the theories of knowledge centered on the object, with Kant the subject becomes the center
of knowledge. It is the subject which intellectually constitutes object.
The Kantian Theory implies a double rupture:
*
between the object that is constructed intellectually and the reality that is unknowable
being in itself.
*
between the regulative structure of understanding and sensibility, this last being at the
same time the matter and obstacle of knowing.
e.

After Kant.

The difficulties left by Kant in the double rupture had to be confronted by those who came after
him.
1.
Hegel made of each step of knowledge a moment of the vital process which lead to the
identification of reality and knowledge.
2.

Husserl denied the distinction between reality and appearance.

1. Heidegger affirms the identity between truth and the self-manifestation [7] of Being,
rejecting thereby the reduction of being to knowledge. The reality of being surpasses
knowing. Knowledge is not a reflection, faithful or otherwise, of an already given reality
equipped with a stable and permanent nature; it is rather a form of approximating itself to
reality and whose value depends not so much on the hypothetical value of the object one
tries to reach but on the perfection of the steps of this approximation to reality.

f.

In Contemporary Philosophy.

Intuition has become a fundamental method of knowing. Its diverse modalities may be grouped
under representative authors:
f.1.
Bergson: opposed intellectual knowledge to intuition. Intellectual knowledge takes
things as static, composed of elements that can be de-composed and re-composed. This aspect of
reality grasped by the intellect is superficial and false. Authentic reality, one that is fluid,
without distinctions and separations cannot be decomposed into interchangeable elements. The
intellect, thus, solidifies a dynamic reality, transforming the flowing into a rest, and thus
decomposes the movement into an infinite series of immobile points.
The mission of intuition is to oppose the work of the intellect, the thought, to pass through the
solidification to the flowing reality of life. Truth cannot be reached through intellectual
definitions because these refer to the static, immobile. To know the truth, the subject has to
immerse himself in the flowing and dynamic reality, experience it and later give witness to it
by means of metaphors and suggestions of literary and artistic character.
f.2.
Dilthey: Reality, the existence of things, cannot be demonstrated by reason, cannot be
discovered by understanding. It has to be intuited with an intuition of volitional character. This
consists in perceiving the subject himself as agent, as being who, before coming to think, have
desires and do will. The willing and appetizing encounters difficulties; these difficulties are
converted by the subject into things. The difficulties give us an immediate and intuitive news of
things, and once our will encounters these resistances, it converts them into existences. The
existence of things is given to us in the volitional intuition as the resistance of things.
f.3.
Husserl:
Intuition is the act which consists in living the presence of the object. We
grasp reality from the singular representations which singular represent the object. With a
phenomenological intuition of the essence, we focus on a representation of the object,
disregarding its singularity, its particular psychological character, and placing in parenthesis the
singular existence of thing, looking in this representation for nothing else but what it has of
essential, of universal.
Once we have the intuitive grasp of what the particular representation have of the general, then
we have in this representation, though it be particular, realized the general essence, the idea of
the object. Essence, thus for Husserl, is not a universal concept deduced from sensible intuitions
but an ideal unity of meaning.
f4. Nietzsche: Knowledge becomes a matter of expressing what is new and surprising in the
language of the Old and fmiliar. The essential feature of knowledge is fitting new material into
old schema,.making what is new.
f5. Emmanuel Levinas: Knowledge is always an adequation between thought and what it
thinks. Knowledge has been an equation of the thought to reality. To know the truth is to have
invented a coherent system of representations that allegedly corresponds to things. Therefore, it
is coherence disguised as correspondence. For him, knowledge has always been interpreted as
assimilation. Even the most surprising discoveries, and by being absorbed, comprehended.(EI

60). To comprehend is to embrace, to swallow, possess, make what was other a part of the self.
So, knowing is a reduction of the foreign to the familiar, of what is other to the self.
Levinas made a critique to this understanding of knowledge. Based on his understanding of the
Face of the other as irreducible, the face of the other resists my power to assimilate the other
into knowledge. The alterity of the other is infinite and inexhaustible. Our knowledge of the
other cannot therefore be absolutized and be fixed.
3

Theories of Knowledge:

a) The Linguistic View of Knowledge: (Contextualist)

Theories of knowledge are now focused on finding the way language shapes our thoughts.
Because of this, the analysis of languages has become indispensable. On of such study is the
comparison between the English and the Hopi language, an Uto-Aztecan language, by Benjamin
Whorf. In his work, Whorf tries to explain the differences between English and Hopi. He points
out that the grammar of the language a people uses molds their thoughts according to the
structure of the language. In the case of English, the language demands that there is a dualism;
There must be a subject and a something is said about the subject in the predicate. There must be
an agent and its action. American Indian languages such as Hopi do not demand such a
dichotomy. Consider how we refer to the conditions during night, its dark. What is dark? The
sky? No, everything is dark. But does there have to be a thing which is dark? No, darkness can
be the condition when there are no objects about. The Hopi would not say, its dark, but
something like dark, which is a sentence or complete idea without having some actor doing
something. The Hopi view of time is fundamentally different from our; They do not count units
of time, like we count days or minutes, because such units are merely a spatial metaphor. We
do not experience days, but rather we experience a latering. The Hopi refer to the passing of
time as just that; they do not numerate time. They have a part of speech (which has no English
parallel, but is something like an adverb or prepositional phrase), which modifies their story,
which relates the relative times of two events. Translating between Hopi and English would be
difficult, but it is a great irony that the Hopi way of talking about time and space is very much
like the way modern physics treats ideas such as fields, and the space-time continuum.
Whorf alludes to the fact that there are categories, or ways of putting together experience, just as
Kant said- but Whorf notes that those categories are far from fixed; Different sets of categories
can be completely incompatible, but each set will still be complete and equally functional and
correct. Note also that Whorf does not say that just any random structure of language will be
workable or functional; He says categories of the mind are relative to the language of the
individual or culture in which those categories are unconsciously applied to organize
experiences.
b) The Foundationalist View of Knowledge:
The Foundationalist view of thought conflicts greatly with the linguistic view. Considering the
phenomenon of diverse languages, the linguistic view relativise our knowledge of reality.
Foundationalist upholds the unchanging character of knowledge. Immanuel Kants idea of the

categories of mind were such that they were fixed, unchanging, and most importantly, universal
between all thinking humans.
The Foundationalist view holds that the categories of mind are fixed with respect to humans, to
the view that the categories of mind are relative to the language used, is another epistemological
turn, from the study of knowing to the study of knowing as related to language.
The distinction between this two poles in epistemology will be discussed later in our course.
4

The Concept of Knowledge.

a.

As an Activity of the Subject.

Knowledge is a real property of the human subject. Knowledge is something that is real; with it
something changes in me and determines me. What I know is not a being of reason, something
that I have thought of, but a real being, my thought. This reality does not exist independently by
itself but always as a property of the knowing subject: what is known is known by somebody.
Knowledge is a property of the whole man. It is not only my senses, nor my intellect which
know. What I see, hear, think, judge determines me and makes me different from the rest,
influences my relations with the world and with others.
Knowledge is the realization of the knowing subject. As the subject knows some changes occur
in him/her, because knowledge perfects him/her. Knowledge helps him/her to mature, to have
new abilities, new dimensions and new possibilities of action. The progress in knowledge is a
perfection of human being as human being, a development of his/her person.
b.

As a Conscious Relational Structure.

By knowing, I become conscious of something. If I were not conscious of something I would not
know it. What I now is mine but it is not a physical possession. [8] when I know a person, he is not
physically present in my head. We are treating here of intentional union: what I know is mine
only and precisely because it is known by me, I refer to it and make of it an object, it remaining
different from me.
In the intentional union one does not absorb the other; one affirms the other in its otherness, as
something different from the one who knows: it is mine inasmuch as it is in itself not mine but
the object of my cognitive activity.
In knowing I am not only conscious of something other than me which is the object of my
knowing but that I am conscious of myself as knowing it. Taking consciousness of the object I
take consciousness of myself as the subject of knowing, although this cannot be said in the
strictest sense of the word because there is an irreversible relation from subject to object, such
that there is no possibility for the object to be converted into subject and the subject into object in
the same act of knowing. The act of knowing is ordained to what is known, to the object and it is

of the object that i am conscious; the cognitive act is not which is known but that through which
the subject knows and is conscious.
II

THE VALIDITY OF KNOWLEDGE.

1.

The Refutation of Skepticism.

a.

What is Skepticism?

As a general definition, skepticism is a disbelief in the possibility of certain knowledge about

anything. This has a long history from the time of the early Greeks (Pyrrhonism) onwards. [9] This
skeptical arguments are usually refuted by pointing out that they themselves are claiming to
know something namely, that nothing can be known. However, if the skeptical claim is merely
nothing is infallibly known, it cannot be so refuted, since it does not claim infallibility. Most
philosophers would now agree with it in that form.[10]
b.

Varieties of Scepticism.[11]

b.1.

Direct Scepticism:

It claims that no person, S, can know that p, where p stands for any proposition ordinarily
believed to be knowable. I say can because their claim, as mentioned above, is not that S does
not know that p (although that follows from their claim), but rather that some necessary
condition of knowledge cannot be fulfilled. Thus, for example, their claim would be that even if
S were to acquire more evidence for p, S would still not know that p because S can never acquire
knowledge that p.
b.2.

Iterative Scepticism:

The Iterative Sceptic is not quite so ambitious. The claim here is that it is not the case that S can
know that S knows tha p. some may believe that Iterative Scepticism is a form of scepticism with
a rather short history beginning with the development of contemporary forms of epistemic logic.
On the contrary, although sceptical literature may not always have distinguished Iterative from
Direct Scepticsim, I believe it will become apparent that often those arguments which were
designed to support Direct Scepticsim, if sound, would support only Iterative Scepticism. In fact,
it is the conflation of those two forms of scepticism which provides a basis for some of the initial
plausibility of the sceptical arguments.
b.3.

Pyrrhonian Direct Scepticism:

This is skeptical view which refuses to commit itself with regard to the epistemic status of any
preposition, including the proposition that S cannot know tha p. Pyrrhonian Direct Scepticism
asserts that there is no better reason for believing that S can know that p than there is for
believing that it is not the case that S can know that p.
As Summary:

To summarize the three forms of scepticism as categorize by Peter Klein:

Direct Scepticism
Iterative Scepticism

It is not the case that S can know that p.

It is not the case that S can know that S knows that p.

Pyrrhonian Direct Scep.

There are no better reasons for believing that S can know
that p than there are for believing that it is not the case that S can know that p.
2.

What Do We Know of the Outside World?

a.

Subjective Idealism.[12]

The subjective idealists hold that the qualities of the world which we perceived through our
senses are dependent on our mind. Thus, all that we know are simply our mental states which the
subjective idealist calls ideas. The roundness of the ball, the red color of the car, etc. all these
qualities are ideas in our minds.
Now, if this conclusion or position is true, even our bodies and sense organs our knowledge of
them will also be our ideas in our minds.
Some Mainline Subjective Idealists:
a.1.

Lockes Theory of Perception:

This theory is sometimes known as Representationalism. It asserts that we do not know

external things, but the representations, or copies, of external things in our own minds. Locke
calls these representations as simple ideas. The external world consists of things which possess
only primary qualities such as size, motion, number and extension, that is, occupancy of space.
These things impinge upon our sense organs and cause representations or images of themselves
to appear in consciousness. It is these representations or images, and not the external objects that
produce them that the mind knows. But the representations, unlike the objects, are enriched by
the mind with secondary qualities such as temperature and color. The mind then proceeds to
project the secondary qualities with which it has enriched the representations into the external
world, supposing the objects to possess those characteristics which it has itself engendered. The
mind is thus conceived after the model of a dark cabinet containing a brightly-lit screen which is
illuminated by the light of consciousness. Upon the screen our senses throw the images, or
representations, of external things, and it is these that the mind knows, at the same time investing
them with secondary qualities. The following quotation, a celebrated passage from Professor
Whiteheads Science and the Modern World, admirably sums up Lockes view: Thus the bodies
are perceived as with qualities which in reality do not belong to them, qualities which in fact are
purely the offspring of the mind. Thus nature gets credit which should in truth be reserved for
ourselves: the rose for its scent: the nightingale for his song: and the sun for his radiance. The
poets are entirely mistaken. They should address their lyrics to themselves, and should turn them
into odes of self-congratulation on the excellence of the human mind. Nature is a dull affair,
soundless, scentless, colorless; merely the hurrying of material, endlessly, meaninglessly. Thus
what, according to Locke, is really out there in the world is a kind of featureless stuff called

substance which, though it is without qualities, serves as a substratum, or foundation, for the
primary qualities which inhere in it.
a.2.

Berkeleys Theory:

Berkeley departs from Lockes in two particular points: 1) he abolishes the distinction between
primary and secondary qualities; 2) he eliminates substance. Why? First the distinction between
the primary and secondary qualities are clearly arbitrary. Any arguments which show that a
secondary quality, heat for example, is an idea in the mind of the perceiver, apply also to size, or
solidity, or motion. Second the abolition of substance belong to the discussion of the abstract
ideas and substance in relation to qualities. Berkelys critique focuses on Lockes theory of
representationalism. How do we know that the idea represents the thing of the external world if
we do not already know that very thing. In other words, representation of it presupposes the
knowledge of the former (external object). For Berkeley, this theory is untenable.
Berkeley agrees with Lockes position, in so far as it asserts that what we know are our ideas and
that these ideas of simple qualities, for example, of roughness, and sweetness, squareness, and
whiteness.
Berkeleys philosophy, therefore, issues in two main positions: 1) since all qualities which we
perceive in things are dependent on our minds, and since the brute, featureless substance
conceived by Locke as a support for the qualities, is a myth, therefore things can only exist in so
far as they are known or perceived by minds. To exist is to be an idea in some mind. Esse, est
percipi. 2) that the ideas in our minds into which our knowledge of the external world resolves
itself are ideas of simple qualities. Our so called sensory knowledge is always of our own ideas,
and these ideas are ideas of qualities and not of things.
Berkeley has shown that to exist is to be an idea of mind. However, the mind in question need
not necessarily be mine; it may be Gods. Therefore, the ideas we do know exist as ideas in the
mind of God. It is on these lines that he seeks to distinguish between perception and imagination.
The things I perceive come into my mind whether I want them or not; the things I imagine can be
summoned and dismissed at will. The existence of these ideas in Gods mine also gives
assurance of the existence of things even if we do not perceive them.
a.3.

Humes Position:

With Locke and Berkeley, Hume also takes the position that what we perceive are our mental
states and not things as they are. However, he divides these into two classes: 1) impressions,
which are what we usually call sense experience (passions and emotions are also called
impressions), and ideas. In his Treatise of Human Nature:
All the perceptions of the human mind resolve themselves into two distinct kinds, which I shall
call impressions and ideas. The difference between these consists in the degrees of force and
liveliness, with which they strike upon the mind, and make their way into our thought or
consciousness. Those perceptions which enter with most force and violence, we may name
impressions; and, under this name I comprehend all our sensations, passions, and emotions, as

they make their first appearance in the soul. By ideas, I mean the faint images of these in
thinking and reasoning; such as, for instance, are all the perceptions excited by the present
discourse, excepting only those which arise from the sight and touch, and excepting the
immediate pleasure or uneasiness if may occasion. I believe it will not be very necessary to
employ many words in explaining this distinction. Every one of himself will readily perceive the
difference between feeling and thinking. The common degrees of these are easily distinguished;
though it is not impossible but, in particular instances, they may very nearly approach to each
other. Thus in sleep, in a fever, in madness, or in any very violent emotions of soul, our ideas
may approach to our impressions are so faint and low, that we cannot distinguish them from our
ideas. But, notwithstanding this near resemblance in a few instances they are in general so very
different, that no one can make a scruple to rank them under distinct heads, and assign to each a
peculiar name to mark the difference.
b.

Realism.

Opposed to the theory of Subjective Idealism is Realism. It holds that there exist, in their own
right, extra-mental objects which constitute a real, external, material universe; the nature of
which we can know; at least to some extent.[13]
Realism, however, is commonly used in two ways in philosophy: Conceptual Realism and
Perceptual Realism. Conceptual Realism is the view that concepts exist independently, and are
apprehended by the human intellect. Perceptual realism, sometimes called naive realism, is the
view that in perception one is directly aware of physical objects, which exist independently our
perception of them, with all the properties that we perceive them to have.[14] Conceptual realism,
used in medieval discussions, refers to the knowledge of universals, which have a reality beyond
all their individual exemplars. In other words, the universals do have at least some kind of
existence independent of the mind that perceives them. [15] In recent philosophy, realism means
that the objects of knowledge exist independently of our awareness of them. Such objects may
be: a thing (e.g. computer) or a thought (e.g. image of a sunset in my mind.[16]
b.1.

Illationism:[17]

Illationism takes the position that though our immediate knowledge is only a subjective objects,
yet we can conclude by means of inference from there that rans-subjective ones also exist. The
argument on the veracity of God as incapable of deceiving us, give us an invincible belief in the
existence of the external world. This was the line taken by DEscartes who remained a realist
despite his cogito. Other Illationists, from Louvain School, argue that the subjective world,
which is immediately apprehended, requires the trans-subjective as its cause. Since an effect
must be proportionate to its cause, we can know at least something of the nature of that transsubjective world which causes our subjective impressions.
b.2.

Perceptionism:

This theory is popularized by the Scholastics. Here, the trans-subjective is perceived but through
a medium by means of which it is perceived. however, unlike Lockes representationalism, the

medium is not a representation or a picture of the external object. The medium leads us to the
knowledge of the external world as such.
b.3.

Phenomenological Realism:[18]

Phenomenologys idea of intentionality excludes idealism. The subject-as-cogito is, as

intentionality, orientation to that which is not the subject himself. By a reflective return to
knowledge as it really occurs, the philosopher always comes face to face with the invincible
facticity of the bodily given. The density of this de facto givenness can never be overcome, for
the subject-as-cogito himself is a way of being-in-the-world. Thus the subject-as-cogito is never
pure activity but always also sensitivity to a reality which is not the subject himself. Knowing
man is merely the shepherd of reality.
Realism also, as it was traditionally conceived, is rendered impossible by the idea of
intentionality. The world, as conceived by phenomenology, is the real world. The correlate of the
existent subject-as-cogito is that which shows itself, which discloses itself, the disclosed, the
unconcealed. the phenomenon, in brief, appearing being itself. Phenomenology calls
appearing being meaning. Meaning speaks to the subject-as-cogito because meaning is
unconcealedness. But meaning is unconcealed because the subject is not pure passivity: the
subject is, despite his passivity, also activity because he is the letting be of meaning. Meaning
is the unconcealed which imposes itself on the subject in knowledge: it is the real. But the fact
that the real imposes itself does not give anyone the right to conceive the real as an in itself, for
the in itself is something which in principle and definitively is concealed, i.e., which does
not speak to the subject. The real as it is conceived by traditional realism is not
phenomenon, but one could say that it has been phenomenon and was realized. This
expression means that the in itself of traditional realism is, in spite of everything, first the
result of the subjects letting be and fused with it; but then this result is divorced from this
letting be and deposited outside existence as an absolutely original reality. Meaning is
inseparably connected with the saying of is which the existent subject-as-cogito himself is; but
traditional realism removes this saying of is and thinks that, in spite of this removal, it can call
being being.
The traditional dilemma, then, of either realism or idealism is not a genuine dilemma. For this
reason one need not object to calling phenomenology a realistic philosophy, because the term
realistic cannot be understood here in the objectivistic sense in which it was taken by
traditional, representational realism. To distinguish the term reality, however, as it is
understood by phenomenology, from the brute reality of representational realism, the terms in
itself for us and being for us are used rather widely: they express the autonomy of being
proper to worldly meaning in reference to the subject.
III

THE VALIDITY OF KNOWLEDGE THROUGH THE

REALITY.

Here, the Mind once more turns itself to investigate both the origin and the validity of knowledge
it has gained. However, it can not be aware that it knows, until first of all, it knows something.[19]
a.

Consciousness:

The word has been much mis-used. For instance, in modern philosophy, consciousness has
extended its meaning to cover anything which is in anyway present to the mind. Take for
example the statement: I am deeply conscious of the critical state of affairs in China. Here, to
say that a thing is within my consciousness is equivalent to saying that it is present in my mind.
In other words, the data of consciousness embrace all the objects of knowledge, so what cannot
be in my mind, like the external reality, is not only unknown but unknowable. This is a mis-use
of the term, for unless China is in my mind, I cannot be properly speaking conscious of the
state of affairs there.
Consciousness, then, refers to the capacity of perceiving our own internal operations and
dispositions all those things that are present in us. Here, we have to make a distinction between
concomitant consciousness and reflex consciousness. Concomitant consciousness accompanies
every act of the cognitive faculties and knowledge is impossible without it. Reflex consciousness
does not accompany every cognitive act, and is not necessary for cognition. Strictly speaking,
consciousness signifies reflex consciousness, for consciousness means the return of the faculty
on its own and on itself, which return is reflection.
Today, from the evolutionary perspective, especially in the works of Thomas Berry The
Universe Story, consciousness takes a larger meaning. The power of consciousness is extended as
the power of consciousness whereby Earth and the Universe as a whole, turned back and
reflected on itself.[20]
b.

Intentionality:

b.1.

Notion of Intentionality and Its Forms.

Intentionality, coming from Latin in-tendere is the property of anything which tends towards
something other than itself; hence, applied to the realtion that there is between the subject that
tends toward the object, to the consciousness that the subject has of the object. As a dynamic
concept it is opposed to being-staying in itself.
We can see its various uses in the history of philosophy:
b.1.1. In Scholasticism:
Intentionality was used mainly in three cases:
*

In reference to the act of knowing, distinguished as:

intentio prima: when the act of knowing is direct and refers to concepts that are directly
representative of a reality.
intentio seconda: whan the act of knowing is reflex and refers to abstract concepts, the logical
entities.

*
In reference to the form of the act of knowledge, form of the representative nature whose
realization is the concept. Thomas calls it intentio intellecta.
*
In reference to the will, it means the act by which the will tends toward the object it
wishes to possess.
b.1.2. In Brentano:
Brentano conceived of intentionality as a character not of the act as such but of what he calls the
psychic phenomenon, i.e., the representative phenomenon which contains in itself a relation to
a content, a directionality toward an object that may be real or not, but which is not merely a
represented thing, but the thing itself.
Brentano characterizes the psychic pehnomenon with what the Scholastics call the intentional
presence and refers to it as a relation to a content; every psychic phenomenon has something of
the character of the object: in the representation is something which is represented, in the
judgement is something which is affirmed or denied, in love something which is loved, etc
b.1.3. Husserl:
Intentionality signifies the particularity that consciousness has of being conscious of something,
i.e. of having in its quality of cogito its cogitatum.[21]
The foregoing philosophy, intellectual or empiricist, idealist or realist, supposed an original
separation between the subject and the world, between consciousness which perceives and the
object perceived. The world was conceived as representation, as a mixture of my
representations, of my thoughts about the world (idealism), or through a slow discursive process,
one proved that there existed a real world exterior to my representations (Descartes).
For Husserl the first evidence is the link which unites my consciousness to the world, or rather
that my consciousness is this primordial relation without which it would not exist. Every
consciousness is essentially intentional, i.e., it is not a certain interior state closed to itself but a
movement of directing oneself to an object. To perceive does not consist in receiving in itself, as
in psychic receptacle or container, some hypothetical content called sensations. To imagine does
not consist in producing in consciousness some miniature reproductions of the object. To hear
a sound is always accompanied with the implicit consciousness of hearing. One has the
consciousness of the act of hearing and the consciousness of the object heard.
Again, consciousness is always and nothing but intentional, because it directs itself to the object
or because it reflects upon its act.
b.2.

Intentionality in Knowledge.

The relation of the knowing subject to the object is called its intentionality and it is its essential
characteristic since intentionality makes knowledge what is is and distinguishes it from every

other thing, operation or relation. Without the conscious intentional relation of the subject to the
object, there is simply no knowledge.
In the act of knowing the subject is conscious of the act by which it knows the object and thus
consciousness and intentionality are two aspects of the same thing: as conscious, nowledge is
theact of the subject, as intentional it is the activity which tends toward the object.
The notion of intentionality of knowledge in phenomenology is very close to signification=
meaning. If consciousness is the relation to the object, it exists only in relation to the object; the
objects have no meaning, except in the interior of the project which consciousness has of them.
Thus this notion closes off the ancient dispute of subject-object of realism and idealsim in
philosophy.
b.3.

Intentionality in the Will.

Intentionality is also a fundamental character of the will, since the act of willing is the tending of
the subject toward the possessof the object considered as good. In the will, the subject tends not
to the intentional possession of the object, affirming it as distinct from itself, but to the
possession of the object itself in its concrete reality, and this object itself becomes its end.
Gilson:
The will puts in motion all its faculties toward the end and it is to this end which belong in the
first place this act of tending toward which is called intention. The means are willed because
of the end. The proper object of intention is the end, willed in and for itself.[22]
b.4.

Intentionality in the Senses:

Intentionality makes of each sense to tend toward the proper corresponding object, which is the
proper sensible, which can be perceived by each. In virtue of this, one hears music, sees color,
feels roughness, etc.
b.5.

Intentionality of the Intellect:

In the intellect, the relation between the subject and object is different according to the point of
view that the intellect takes its object. It can consider the object and tend toward it as a work of
art, or as scientific object, religious, etc..
b.6.

Intentionality in Concept and Judgement:

In the concept, the subject tends toward its object in order to grasp its essence, that what the
object is, while in the judgment, it tends towards the object in order to grasp the existence, or its
identity or non-identity with another term, i.e., whether it exists, or whether it exists according to
the term it is related to.
c.

Human Knowledge as Intentionality.[23]

Phenomenology calls the subject-as-cogito, or human knowledge, intentionality. When Husserl

used this term for the first time, he explicitly referred to Franz Brentano. It is certain, however,
that Husserl merely took over the term itself from Brentano, for he gave it a meaning which is
radically different from that attributed to it by Brentano. Scholasticism also used the same term
to refer to the impressed species, the substitute forms for brute reality. Scholastic
philosophy presented reality as divorced from the subject-as-cogito, and assigned to the
substitute cognitive images the role of building a bridge between the subject and reality.
Scholasticism answers the question concerning the mode of being proper to those images by
saying that they do not have any entitative being but only intentional being. In other words, their
whole being consists in their referring to reality. The subject-as-cogito, then, is first separate
from reality and then enters into contact with reality by means of those impressed images.
When Husserl, however, uses the term intentionality, he does not refer to a subject isolated
from the world and encapsulated, but he describes the subject-as-cogito knowledge itself as
orientation-to and openness-to-the-world. Knowledge is not a matter of storing cognitive
images in the subjects interiority, but the immediate presence of the subject as a kind of light
to a present reality. As a mode of being-man, human knowledge is a mode of being-existent, a
mode of being-involved-in-the-world, and this being-involved is the subject himself. The subject,
then, is not first and in himself a kind of psychical thing which subsequently, by means of
cognitive images, enters into relationship with physical things. Knowledge is not something in
between two things in themselves not a relationship between two different realities but is the
subject himself involved in the world.
Closely considered, the theory of substitute images also is forced to presuppose that which it
does not wish to admit. The theory refuses to admit that the subject-as-cogito is immediate
presence to a present reality; nevertheless, it calls the cognitive images images of reality. But
how is this possible if the subject is not immediately present to reality? If we assume that there
really are images of reality in the subject, there must be a reason to assume that those images are
really images, forms representing reality. But this affirmation can only be made when the
subject is immediately present to reality and, on the basis of this presence, recognizes that the
images are really images. One who again conceives this ever presupposed presence to reality as
the storing of images in the subject, postpones to infinity the possibility of recognizing these
images as images. Images can only be called images on the basis of the subjects immediate
presence to a present reality. But once this immediate presence is admitted, those images are no
longer necessary.
d.

Objectivity of Knowledge:[24]

Before, we have shown that knowledge is endowed with an intentional character: that is to say, it
is oriented to objects rather than towards impressions or states of mind. Therefore, by affirming
intentionality, we have also affirmed the objectivity of knowledge. Still it is necessary to observe
that objectivity only emerges implicitly in intentionality: it is thematized but it is only lived. In
order that objectivity may become explicit it takes an act which divides the object form the
subject, and makes the object effectively an ob-jectum, something placed before the subject.
Only intelligible knowledge performs this detachment and becomes cognizant of the distinction
between the subject and the object. Only man has the power of objectivity. Animals do not have

this. Just as they do not possess reflexive knowledge that is, self-consciousness so animals
lack the power to put distance between themselves and the objects they perceive, the power to
place the objects before them as objects and to study them as objects. << The animal has no
object. It lives, as it were, ecstatically immersed in its environment which carries it along as a
snail carries its shell. It cannot trans forms an environment into the world or into a symbol of
the World. It cannot perform the act by which man transforms the centres of resistance
determined by drives and affects into objects I might say the animal is involved too deeply in
the actualities of life which correspond to its organic needs ever to experience and grasp them as
objects >>.
The lack of objectivity does not allow animals to reach truth; whereas to be cognizant of
objectivity is the first step that puts man on the way to truth. Only when objectivity cuts the
umbilical cord that keeps the mind narrowly bound to the object and puts them one in front of the
other, begins for the mind the labor of controlling its own ability of truly representing the object.
The Scientificity.
A

Science and Common Sense.

Long before the beginnings of modern civilization, men acquired vast funds of information about
their environment. They learned to recognize substances, which nourished their bodies. They
discovered the uses of fire and developed skills for transforming raw materials into shelters,
clothing, and utensils. They invented arts of tilling the soil, communicating, and governing
themselves. Some of them discovered that objects are moved more easily when placed on carts
with wheels, that the sizes of fields are more reliably compared when standard schemes of
measurement are employed, and that the seasons of the year as well as many phenomena of the
heavens succeed each other with a certain regularity. John Lockes quip at Aristotle that God
was not so sparing to men as to make them merely two-legged creatures, leaving it to Aristotle to
make them rational- seems obviously applicable to modern science. The acquisition of reliable
knowledge concerning many aspects of the world certainly did not wait upon the advent of
modern science and the self-generation repeat in their own lives the history of the race: they
manage to secure for themselves skills and competent information, without benefit of training in
the sciences and without the calculated adoption of scientific modes of procedure.
If so much in the way of knowledge can be achieved by the strewed exercise of native gifts and
common sense methods, what special excellence do the sciences possess, and what do their
elaborate intellectual and physical tools contribute to the acquisition of knowledge? The question
requires a careful answer if a definite meaning is to associated with the word science.
The word and its linguistic variants are certainly not always employed with discrimination and
they are frequently used merely to confer and honorific distinction on something or other. Many
men take pride in being scientific in their beliefs and in living in an age of science. However,
quite often the sole discoverable ground for their pride is a conviction that, unlike their ancestors
or their neighbors, they are in possession of some alleged final truth. It is in this spirit that
currently accepted theories in physics or biology are sometimes described as scientific, while all
previously held but no longer accredited theories in those domains are firmly refused that label.

Similarly, types of practice that are highly successful under prevailing physical and social
conditions, such as certain techniques of farming or industry, are occasionally contrasted with the
allegedly unscientific practices of other times and places. Perhaps an extreme form of the
tendency to rob the term scientific of all definite content is illustrated by the earnest use that
advertisers sometimes make of such phrases as scientific haircutting, scientific rug cleaning,
and even scientific astrology. It will be clear however, that in none of the above examples is
readily identifiable and differentiating characteristic of beliefs or practices associated with the
word. It would certainly be ill-advised to adopt the suggestion, implicit in the first example, to
limit the application of the adjective scientific to beliefs that are indefeasibly true if only
because infallible guarantees of truth are lacking in most if not all areas of inquiry, so that the
adoption of such suggestion would in effect deprive the adjective of any proper use.
The words science and scientific are nevertheless not quite so empty of a determinate content
as their frequently debased uses might indicate. For in fact the words are labels either for a n
identifiable, continuing enterprise of inquiry or for its intellectual products, and they are often
employed to signify traits that distinguish those products from other things. In the present
chapter we shall therefore survey briefly some of the ways in which prescientific or commonsense knowledge differs from the intellectual products of modern science. To be sure, no sharp
line separates beliefs generally subsumed under the familiar but vague rubric of common-sense
from those cognitive claims recognized as scientific. Nevertheless, as in the case of firm meaning
for each of these words. In their more sober uses, at any rate, these words do in fact connote
important and recognizable differences. It is these differences that we must attempt to identify,
even if we are compelled to sharpen some of them for the sake of expository and clarity.
1.
In any case, commentators on the nature of science who have been impressed by the
historical continuity of common-sense convictions and scientific conclusions have sometimes
proposed to differentiate between them by the formula that the sciences are simply organized
or classified common sense.
It is clear that the proposed formula does not adequately express the characteristic differences
between science and common-sense. A librarians card catalogue represents an invaluable
classification of books, but no one with a sense for the historical association of the world would
say that the catalogue is a science. The obvious difficulty is that the proposed formula does not
specify what kind of organization or classification is characteristic of the sciences.
It is the desire for explanations which are at once systematic and controllable by factual evidence
that generates science; and its the organization and classification of knowledge on the basis of
explanatory principles that is the distinctive goal of the sciences. More, specifically, the sciences
seek to discover and to formulate in general terms the conditions under which events of various
sorts occur, the statements of such determining conditions being the explanations of the
corresponding happenings. This goal can be achieved only by distinguishing or isolating certain
properties in the subject matter studied and by ascertaining the repeatable patterns of dependence
in which these properties stand to one another. In consequence, when the inquiry is successful,
propositions that hitherto appeared to be quite unrelated are exhibited as linked to each other in
determinate ways by virtue of their place in as system of explanations.

2.
A number of further differences between common sense and scientific knowledge are
almost direct consequences of the systematic character of the latter. A well-recognized feature of
common sense is that, though the knowledge it claims may be accurate, it seldom is aware of the
limits within which its beliefs are valid or its practices successful.
The sciences thus introduce refinements into ordinary conceptions by the very process of
exhibiting the systematic connections of propositions about matters of common knowledge. Not
only are familiar practices thereby shown to be explicable in terms of principles also provide
clues for altering and correcting habitual modes of behavior, so as to make them ore effective in
familiar contexts and more adaptable to novel ones. this is not to say, however, that common
beliefs are necessarily mistaken, or even that they are inherently more subject to change under
the pressure of experience than are the propositions of science.
3.
It must certainly be admitted that scientific statements make use of highly abstract
concepts, whose pertinence to the familiar qualities which things manifests in their customary
settings is by no means obvious. nevertheless, the relevance of such statements to matters
encountered in the ordinary business of life is also indisputable. It is well to bear in mind that the
unusually abstract character of scientific notions, as well as their alleged remoteness from the
traits of things found in customary experience, are inevitable concomitants of the quest for
systematic and comprehensive explanations. Such explanations can be constructed only if the
familiar qualities and relations of things, in terms of which individual objects and events are
usually identified and differentiated, can be shown to depend for their occurrence on the presence
of certain other pervasive relational or structural properties that characterize in various ways an
extensive class of objects and processes.
B

The Field of Science

1.

The formal aspect of science.

What we call science today appeared at first within the general human knowledge in an
embryonic form. Scientia (episteme) covered mathematics, philosophy, and theology. Science
and the sciences distinguished themselves from philosophy of nature toward the end of the
middle ages during the nominalist critique. It arose insisting on its autonomy against the
unifying philosophical system. In its modern meaning, science originated with the adoption with
the adoption of the scientific method of observation and experimentation. As such, it is a
manifestation of the creativity of the human spirit, preparing the hypotheses which readies one to
observe definite realms of reality and their processes, which are brought into systematic unity
with the interpretation and explanation of the fruits of experiments.
Galileo and Descartes asserted the mathematical character of scientific knowledge. Nature is
written in mathematical language, yet it is still man whoc creates mathematical terms. The law
of gravity, for instance, as such is not found in nature; the facts in nature are put together and
explained by this law. The formulation of the law implies the power of abstraction, discerning
relevant aspects among the varied facts of nature, while leaving the others out, thereby providing
a margin of variability that comes into play without affecting the fundamental intent of the law.

The laws of nature formulated by science in this sense cannot predict each concrete occurrence
of movements that they cover. Such determination in casual terms is done by philosophy of
nature, not by science. Kant is right in pointing out that this sort of speculation belongs to
philosophy, not to science. Science makes abstractions but not ultimate concrete determinations.
The direct object of science is not something that is concretely real, but what is abstracted (the
form) of the concretely real the intelligible in sensible. It is abstractive in as much as it concerns
itself not with facts themselves but with the laws that govern the conduct, the repetibility of the
facts. The elaboration of hypothesis (law) is done according to certain definite method, and
together with the results of experimentation, exhibit logical coherency that allows for
systematization. The systematization is often expressed in mathematical terms.
2.

The material of science.

Here we deal with the distinction between fact, datum and historical reality. Historically, facts
and scientific data were distinguished from other facts and data (common-sense, philosophical,
theological) with the development of scientific experiment. Philosophically, not all fact are
scientific, they are only those which in their regularity, uniformity and repetibility and
predictability can be expressed at least in many sciences, in mathematical terms. Given a
detailed description they can be controlled by others following definite methods and employing
generally accepted technical instruments. Here, what is of importance is that the description be
controllable, taking into account the accepted cognitive achievements of the particular science
and the adequacy of technical instruments. Their existence, therefore, is not physical but logical,
and thus is not independent from the scientific subject.
The ensemble of rules in their varying degree of universalization and technical rigor characterize
determinate branches of science. Facts and laws within a particular branch are coherent one with
the other. The horizon of this coherence has to be strectched to its limits before leaping beyond it
can be legitimized. This, for instance, is what happened with Euclidean geometry and the
problem of parabolic movement, Newtonian physics and quantum mechanics and the theory of
relativity. The demand of internal coherence serves the systematization of knowledge. Such
systematization is important not only for pedagogical reasons ( i.e. for transmission of
knowledge) but to ascertain the order existing in nature.
The actual state of scientific research and knowledge determine the science of each epoch as well
as the consciousness of the scientific subject. Yet the scientific knowledge (methods,
terminology, laws, discoveries).