Abstract
Are we in any doubt as to whether there is such a thing as knowing, or for that matter, sense consciousness, seeing, hearing, touching and so on? I know that there are people in front of me, and each one of you knows, without a doubt, that I am here, looking at you and speaking. I and you know this and many other things besides. If we did not, it would make no sense for me to be speaking here. It goes without saying that you are there, I know it, and you are capable of attending to what I am trying to say, and I know that too.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Sense and Sensibilia, by J.L. Austin, reconstructed from the manuscript notes by G.L. Wamock. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964).
Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians I, 357–8. Transi. by H.G. Bury. Loeb Classical Library Edition, Vol. II, 189 (London: William Heinemann Ltd and Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1935).
John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, in The English Philosophers from Bacon to Mill, edited by Edwin A. Burtt (New York: The Modem Library, 1939), pp. 241–2.
Leibniz, Nouveaux essais sur l’entendement humain (Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1966), p. 91.
John Locke, op. cit., Bk. IV, c. IV, entitled ‘Of the Reality of Human Knowledge’.
Octave Hamelin, Essai sur les éléments principaux de la représentation (2e éd., Paris: Alcan, 1925), p. 274: “(…) les métaphysiques rudimentaires qui se tiennent tout ?rès du sens commun et qui sont réalistes de la manière la plus épaisse.”
H. Habberley Price, Perception (London: Methuen, 2nd ed. rev. 1950, rep. 1973).
Not only is Descartes’ logic defective, but it would preclude any advances in the solution of philosophical and scientific problems as they arise. If one were only to draw from the illusory convergence of parallels at a distance, or from the inability of the colourblind to distinguish various colours, the possibility that all propositions are doubtful or that no colour perception is reliable, no real progress could be achieved in finding solutions to our problems. If there is a difficulty involved in the apparent convergence of parallels at a distance, a correct procedure consists in inquiring why this is so and perhaps discovering the pertinent laws of optics and perspective, not in extending one’s doubt to all propositions (surmising in effect that I may always be in error if I am sometimes in error). If colour blindness presents a problem, we should ask why this is so and perhaps, again, discover physiological facts, i.e. how the absence of some pigments on the retina prevents the perception of colour differences. We would be precluded from doing this if we merely supposed with Descartes that there may not be differences in colour since in some cases such differences are not perceived.
The expression ‘Copernican Revolution’ hardly applies to the change which modern thought and Kant in particular have brought about in the area of philosophy. In the history of science, more particularly in cosmology and astronomy, the expression refers literally to a radical development from an earth and man-centered conception of the universe, to one in which man and the earth are but one element of the cosmos, certainly not its center. Philosophical change on the other hand proceeds in a markedly opposite direction. Man, aside from Socrates’s ethics-centered approach, is not central, nor even primary either in ancient or in mediæval thought. Modern philosophy, beginning with Montaigne and Descartes, is characterized by increasingly man-centered views, to the point of sheer solipsistic impotence in some forms of contemporary thinking. It would seem then that if one should wish to use the word ‘revolution’ to depict the philosophical novelty introduced at the beginning of modern times, one ought rather to speak of a Ptolemaic Revolution, rather than a Copernican one…
This does not in the least involve a Newtonian conception of Space and Time. For Kant’s subjectivistic approach, see Critique of Pure Reason, transi. by J.M.D. Meiklejohn, (New York: The Colonial Press, 1899). Introduction to the 2nd edition, 1: “(…) though all our knowledge begins with experience, it by no means follows that all arises out of experience. For, on the contrary, it is quite possible that our empirical knowledge is a compound of that which we receive through impressions, and that which the faculty of cognition supplies from itself (sensuous impressions giving merely the occasion) (…) Knowledge of this kind is called a priori, in contradistinction to empirical knowledge (…),” p. 3: “Necessity and strict universality, therefore are infallible tests for distinguishing pure from empirical knowledge (…)”.
The Atomists of ancient Greece, Galileo, Descartes and many modern thinkers believed that the so-called sensory qualities were purely subjective. Locke held for example that colour was in the eye, and not in the thing; the thing, he thought, possessed a power to produce colour in the eye, but colour as such was the subjective effect of such a power. Mediwval thinkers distinguished between ‘proper sensibles’ such as colour, sound, resistance, heat, savours and odours which were perceived first, and ‘common sensibles’, such as form, size, unity, plurality, motion and rest, which were perceived secondarily, i.e. through the ‘proper sensibles’. Modern philosophers use the expressions ‘secondary qualities’ for ‘proper sensibles’ and ‘primary qualities’ for ‘common sensibles’. They tend, if they shy away from skepticism or subjectivism, to consider primary qualities to be objective and secondary qualities to be subjective. The problem here is that primary qualities are perceived through the secondary qualities and, as skeptics have contended, if the latter are purely subjective, the former must also be so. Conversely if primary qualities are objective, secondary qualities must also be objective, that is, qualities of material things. To deny objective reality to secondary qualities results from a basic misunderstanding. The coloured thing as seen has no existence as such outside of the cognitive relation of being seen; but that is nothing more than a tautology, and it can be said of any reality as entering in the cognitive relation, i.e. as being known. Thus colour as seen is not such independently of an act of seeing being exercised by a seeing subject. The question rather is whether there is a quality of the surface arrangement of the elements of a material thing which is such as to reflect light shining upon it from various angles and which can legitimately be termed ‘colour’, not whether colour as seen, i.e. that quality as known exists independently of a subject actively seeing; or for that matter, whether there is a quality, in a resistant body which upon impact with another body or as a result of internal stress emits in the surrounding medium waves of a certain length, by virtue of which the body can be said to sound objectively. The colour of the earth seen from space only in the last few decades was there to be seen, was it not, from the beginning of time. Do not the bells chime in the absence of anyone within hearing distance?
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1995 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Cauchy, V. (1995). Some Thoughts on the Nature of Knowing. In: Kuçuradi, I., Cohen, R.S. (eds) The Concept of Knowledge. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 170. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3263-5_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3263-5_5
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-4495-2
Online ISBN: 978-94-017-3263-5
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive