Some would argue that awareness of things is knowledge that there are things. Plato, Russell, that I am familiar with. In juxtaposition to knowledge of things. — Mww

I would say that this probably runs afoul of the Myth of the Given. In order to know that there are things one must have grasped concepts such as "thing" and "existence" and made a judgment on the basis of those concepts. Wilfrid Sellars provides a pretty thorough critique of the notion of immediate knowledge.

Doesn’t Freud’s discovery of the unconscious (if indeed a discovery it was, as it had been anticipated previously) have some bearing on the question of self-knowledge? — Wayfarer

Yeah, I'd say so, but I personally don't think it undermines the possibility of self-knowledge. Unconscious mental processes are not present in experience the way empirical objects are, but their effects are. Thus, I'd say that they can be investigated, understood and known. What are your thoughts?

I am reluctant to directly compare this to Descartes as he published in such a constrained environment.

I am also reluctant to make my quoted passage a generality when I put it forward to show an example of his analysis and manner of discourse rather than put the passage on par with the problems he presented in his Metaphysics.

Experiencing, understanding and reasoning are acts of subjectivity. They are not something over and above the subject but constitutive of the subject itself. So when I engage in these activities I am intrinsically conscious of them as constitutive of me. Or so I would argue... — Esse Quam Videri

Kant made an effort to address this in the Paralogisms in the Critique of Pure Reason. Perhaps you could set your thesis against that since his view is sharply different from yours.

What are your thoughts? — Esse Quam Videri

What I have in mind is something that’s been central to my thinking for a long time. The mind-created world essay (this thread sprouted from that one) grew out of an earlier attempt to articulate how contemporary cognitive science has converged—somewhat unexpectedly—with a broadly Kantian insight.

The basic point is that the world as experienced is not a passive imprint of a mind-independent reality (per John Locke and empiricism more generally). Rather, the mind (or brain) actively synthesises disparate sensory inputs with organising structures—categories, forms, constraints—at a level largely below conscious awareness. This synthetic activity gives rise to what Kant called the subjective unity of perception: the coherent, stable world that shows up for us at all. It is not too far-fetched to compare the h.sapiens forebrain as a remarkably sophisticated VR generator.

There’s good empirical support for this. Neuropsychological disorders— like visual agnosia—show that when this integrative synthesis breaks down, the “world” fragments in very specific ways. This is not a matter of losing access to an external object so much as losing the capacity to bind features into a unified perceptual field (Oliver Sacks books had a lot to say on this.)

It's also the case that neuroscience still lacks a clear account of how this synthesis is implemented. The so-called neural binding problem highlights precisely this gap: there is no agreed-upon neural locus or mechanism that explains how distributed processes are unified into a single phenomenal scene. That absence matters philosophically, because it undercuts the assumption that perceptual unity is simply “read off” from the world (ref).

Andrew Brook argues that this places Kant as almost 'the godfather of cognitive science' because the core Kantian insight, not that the world is unreal, but that objectivity itself is constituted through cognitive synthesis, which has become influential through constructivism in many different disciplines.

That’s the sense in which I say the “mind-independent world,” as commonly understood today, is not a brute given (per the Myth of the Given) but a construct—one grounded in real experience, certainly, but mediated by cognitive conditions and cultural factors we usually overlook, because they've become second nature, and hence, in some basic sense, unconscious, or at least sub-conscious.

In order to know that there are things one must have grasped concepts such as "thing" and "existence" and made a judgment on the basis of those concepts. — Esse Quam Videri

In order to know what things are one must conceptually represent them to himself and judge accordingly. This is knowledge of.

One has no need of conceptual context for mere appearances to sensibility. One can have (the sensation of) a tickle on the back of his neck without the slightest clue as to its cause, antecedent experience not necessarily any help except to inform of what the cause is not, but not what it is.

To know that there is a thing, some as yet undetermined something, is merely the impossibility of its denial that isn’t self-contradictory. It is said to be given for the simple reason the perceiver, insofar as he is affected by it, cannot be its cause.

Sellars is correct as far as empirical knowledge mediated by discursive judgement is concerned, of course. Knowledge that there is a thing, is not that.

Kant made an effort to address this in the Paralogisms in the Critique of Pure Reason. Perhaps you could set your thesis against that since his view is sharply different from yours. — Paine

I don't think I can do this justice in a single post, so I am going to start with some general observations and we can dive deeper if needed.

At a high level, I would say that I don’t necessarily disagree with Kant’s critique of the paralogisms, but rather with the underlying epistemology that he uses to justify his critique. In my opinion, Kant basically reduces knowledge to something like “direct empirical access”. I think we can reasonably argue that, in doing this, Kant is running afoul of the Myth of the Given and concluding from it that genuine knowledge is impossible. The general shape of his reasoning goes something like this: “genuine knowledge is immediate; all human knowledge is mediated; therefore no human knowledge is genuine knowledge”. I would say that this is precisely why he is more-or-less forced to posit the noumena and the transcendental subject (among other things) as strictly unknowable. However, if we reject the claim that all genuine knowledge is immediate (and I would), then we don’t have to follow him down that path.

As for the paralogisms themselves, the common assumption undergirding all of them is that the soul can be known a priori. My general strategy for approaching Kant’s analysis of each paralogism would be to more-or-less accept that these a priori arguments fail while also rejecting the reasons Kant provides for why they fail, which are rooted in his errant epistemological commitments as detailed in the paragraph above. The upshot is that I can accept that the paralogisms are faulty without accepting Kant’s conclusion that genuine knowledge of the self is impossible.

Your points are well-articulated and the parallels you draw between modern cognitive science and Kant are certainly apt (as they were in your original essay). Of course, you could have probably guessed that I would resist taking on too strong a notion of "construction". In my opinion, there is a real difference between saying (1) that cognitive content is underdetermined by sensory input and structured by unconscious operations and (2) saying that the mind-independent world is itself a construct in its entirety.

To put a finer point on it, when you say things like "there's an unconscious synthesis occurring" and "there is no agreed neural mechanism" you are presumably making a claim about the way things really are - not just about the way that they appear to you - and that you've actually grasped and confirmed something true about how the mind actually works. Would you agree with this, or do you see things differently?

One has no need of conceptual context for mere appearances to sensibility. One can have (the sensation of) a tickle on the back of his neck without the slightest clue as to its cause, antecedent experience not necessarily any help except to inform of what the cause is not, but not what it is.To know that there is a thing, some as yet undetermined something, is merely the impossibility of its denial that isn’t self-contradictory. — Mww

Sure, you can have a tickle without knowing its cause, but having a tickle and knowing that you're having a tickle are two different things. The occurrence of the tickle requires no concepts. Your knowing that you're having a tickle does.

The fact that the claim "I'm having a tickle sensation" is, perhaps, impossible to deny does not imply that the claim is not conceptually mediated. The recognition that it can't be denied is itself a reasoned judgment, not an immediate content of sensory experience.

….having a tickle and knowing that you're having a tickle are two different things. — Esse Quam Videri

I don’t need to know there is a sensation beyond having one. The given sensation makes the knowing of it superfluous.

The recognition that it can't be denied is itself a reasoned judgment, not an immediate content of sensory experience. — Esse Quam Videri

Agreed, in principle, for sensation is not the immediate content of sensory experience, but merely the occasion for its possibility.

The proof sensation cannot be denied is determinable from the change in the condition of the affected subject from the time before to the time of each and every such occasion. This is an aesthetic judgement, from which the subject cognizes nothing at all, not a reasoned, re: discursive one, from which a possible cognition always follows.

To put a finer point on it, when you say things like "there's an unconscious synthesis occurring" and "there is no agreed neural mechanism" you are presumably making a claim about the way things really are - not just about the way that they appear to you - and that you've actually grasped and confirmed something true about how the mind actually works. Would you agree with this, or do you see things differently? — Esse Quam Videri

I agree, with an important qualification. I wouldn’t claim that I personally possess privileged insight into “the way things truly are.” But I do think that clarifying what can and cannot meaningfully be meant by that phrase is one of philosophy’s central tasks.

The distinction you draw between (1) cognitive content being underdetermined by sensory input and structured by unconscious operations, and (2) the claim that the mind-independent world is wholly constructed, is a real one—and I resist the latter if it is taken in a literalistic sense. Saying that cognition involves unconscious synthesis is not to say that the world is an arbitrary mental fabrication. But then, where is the line drawn between 'world as experienced' and 'world as it is?'

In that sense, I am making claims about how things really are—but not from some point beyond! That is also why I bring in cognitive science, which has, for fairly obvious reasons, devoted a great deal of effort to understanding how the brain synthesises and constructs our experience-of-the-world.

Here is where I’ve found the opening sentence of Schopenhauer's World as Will and Idea instructive:

§ 1. “The world is my idea:”—this is a truth which holds good for everything that lives and knows, though man alone can bring it into reflective and abstract consciousness. If he really does this, he has attained to philosophical wisdom.

I should also point to one of the footnotes in the Mind- Created World, which is central to the overall argument. It is a quote from one of the Pali Buddhist suttas, to wit:

By and large, Kaccayana, this world is supported by a polarity, that of existence and non-existence. But when one sees the origination of the world as it actually is with right discernment, “non-existence” with reference to the world does not occur to one. When one sees the cessation of the world as it actually is with right discernment, “existence” with reference to the world does not occur to one.’ — Kaccāyanagotta Sutta

Here, the Buddha warns against reifying either “existence” or “non-existence” as ultimate categories (eternalism and nihilism, respectively). To see the origination and cessation of the world “as it actually is” is precisely to see through that polarity. The “world” in Buddhism is therefore not a metaphysical totality but the experienced world, whose character is structured by conditioned origination and attachment.


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On that note, I’ll be signing out for Christmas. My dear other has made it clear that festive time is not ideally spent arguing with my invisible friends. All the best to everyone here for the festive season :party: :pray: :hearts:

I don’t need to know there is a sensation beyond having one. The given sensation makes the knowing of it superfluous. — Mww

This doesn't sound right to me. A sensation isn't a claim. It can't be true or false. It can't be a premise in an argument, or the result of an inference. A sensation just is.

Best of the season for you and the dear other.

Have a wonderful holiday!

A sensation just is. — Esse Quam Videri

Right, hence my meaning in saying to know of having it is superfluous. In response to your to have it and know you have it are two different things.

The point never was the sensation to begin with, but the thing I know that is necessarily its cause.

It’s so easy to get lost in the minutia.

Yes, perhaps I got lost somewhere along the way. I was originally responding to this:

Some would argue that awareness of things is knowledge that there are things. Plato, Russell, that I am familiar with. In juxtaposition to knowledge of things. — Mww

This seems to stating that awareness is knowledge. Depending on what "awareness" means here would, I think, determine whether the critique applies.

But I am happy to let it go. It sounds like we may be talking past one another.

Right, hence my meaning in saying to know of having it is superfluous. In response to your to have it and know you have it are two different things. — Mww

I can have an itch and scratch it without having being consciously aware of having done so. Or I can have an itch and consciously notice it, and then decide whether to scratch it or not.

Both of those experiences are possible without any self-reflective conceptualization such as "I have an itch".

This seems to stating that awareness is knowledge. Depending on what "awareness" means here would, I think, determine whether the critique applies. — Esse Quam Videri

Awareness can be counted as a kind of knowledge―knowledge by acquaintance or participation, but it is not, on it's own "knowledge that", or propositional knowledge.

Per the example of having an itch above―if I am not consciously aware of having an itch, yet I scratch it then it could be said that my body knew of the itch, even though my mind was not conscious of it.

If I am consciously aware of the itch, it would not seem that the conscious awareness must be of the self-reflective kind.

….without any self-reflective conceptualization such as "I have an itch". — Janus

Pretty much what I’m saying: there’s nothing cognizable in a sensation alone, so nothing to do with its cause or its resolution. Pure reflex of course being irrelevant.

I was agreeing with Sellars’ thesis that empirical knowledge of things is not possible from sensation alone, but still favoring the notion that knowledge THAT there is a thing, is a non-contradictory, hence completely rational idea.

Awareness can be counted as a kind of knowledge―knowledge by acquaintance or participation, but it is not, on it's own "knowledge that", or propositional knowledge. — Janus

You are right to distinguish between awareness and propositional knowledge, and you're right that conscious awareness need not rise to level of self-reflection; consciousness is intrinsically self-present.

That said, I personally would not regard the body's response to an itch as "knowing". If we simply feel the itch and scratch it without advertence, then we haven't really risen above the level of stimulus-response. Intelligently adaptive, sure, but not cognitively engaged.

If the itch becomes focal in the sense that we attend to it and understand it as this kind of sensation in this location, and if we implicitly affirm yes, I have an itch, then I'd be willing to say we've achieved knowledge.

That said, Sellars's critique of the Myth of Given is specifically directed toward those who would conflate sensation with propositional knowledge. Sellars might argue that knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by participation are merely latent or implicit forms of propositional knowledge that have simply not yet been made explicit by being appropriated into understanding and judgement. In that sense they would be more appropriately classified as a type of experience or presence that, while real and important, does not rise to the level of what would normally be admissible as knowledge in a philosophical context.

Personally, I would tend to agree with Sellars, while also acknowledging that the word "knowledge" is used in many ways in both colloquial and philosophical speech. What are your thoughts?