If one violated the unspoken condition that one is playing standard chess. — Dfpolis

...in that case, the rule isn't wrong; rather the action goes against the rule.

When one breaks a rule, one either stops playing the game, or one has changed the rules of the game.

if we think a table is solid, and later find that it has an atomic substructure structure, we will conclude that our initial knowledge was as nothing in it corresponds to atoms. — Dfpolis

Perhaps it would be better to say that our new knowledge of subatomic structure supplements our knowledge of what it is to be solid; it does not supplant it. Hence,

Knowing that the table is also made mostly of space, and has a certain atomic structure, does not mean that we are wrong about the table's being solid. — Banno

So,

The lesson is we shouldn't extend the meaning of "solid" beyond its experiential basis. Saying it is solid is adequate to what we want to know, — Dfpolis

When we learn that the table has an atomic structure such that it is mostly space, we do not at the same time learn that the table is not solid. We are not wrong to say that the table is solid, and yet mostly consists of the space between particles.

And if you agree with that, we might be able to look at how the way we use words such as "solid" forms a foundation in language, and hence in science. While we might be wrong about this table's being solid, it's much harder to be wrong about what it is to be solid... to be wrong about how to use the word.

In sum, philosophy can only deal with human knowledge, because, however limited, it is the only knowledge we have. It begins by accepting experience, not as infallible, but as the only raw material that we have to reflect upon. — Dfpolis

This is right; and to it we might add that experience here is not just the experience of the individual, but the experience of those around her, such that they have a common language that includes terms such as "solid" and "red". In much the same way as we know that the Bishop moves diagonally, we know how to use these words correctly in our language community. It's not that this use is infallible, so much as that it forms a foundation against which we can develop descriptions, including scientific descriptions.

It's an interesting example, but do you want to wade into "true by convention" waters? — Srap Tasmaner

See above. Dropping back into philosophical language, I've argued for there being no private language, and hence that knowledge cannot be built on private experience, but instead on shared use; and that hence this shared use in foundational, if not quite infallible.

That's almost, but not quite, "true by convention".

I've argued for there being no private language, and hence that knowledge cannot be built on private experience — Banno

Knowledge can't be built only on private experience. But of course there is private experience and of course it is a key contributor to our knowing things.

You tell the students something; it leaves something out, therefore it is an abstraction, — Srap Tasmaner

I'm not too keen on the way "abstraction" is used here. It's not an uncommon use, but I think there may be some problems with it.

What is clear is that the description given to children is incomplete; but I'm not sure it is more abstract. Arguably, relativistic physics is more abstract than Newtonian physics, despite it being more complete.

Newtonian physics is not so much false, as appropriate to some conditions and not others.

"Abstraction leaves something out; Newtonian physics leaves something out; hence Newtonian physics is more abstract..." - Nuh.

Knowledge can't be built only on private experience. But of course there is private experience and of course it is a key contributor to our knowing things. — Srap Tasmaner

I'd ask you to reconsider both uses of "of course".

If your experience is private, can it be expressed? If it can be expressed, then perhaps it isn't so private. If it can't be expressed, can you properly be said to know it?

But hereby hangs years of philosophical discussion.

C'mon, you know I was baiting you.

Not that I don't believe what I said!

Still at work, but while you're waiting for me you could go ahead and explain why the PLA entails that there is no such thing as private experience.

...explain why the PLA entails that there is no such thing as private experience. — Srap Tasmaner

Oh, it doesn't. It just says that they are not something we should talk about.

It just says that they are not something we should talk about. — Banno

Except of course that we do. The question is what sort of hay philosophy can make of talk of our inner experiences.

So in §243 we find this:

But could we also imagine a language in which a person could write down or give vocal expression to his inner experiences -- his feelings, mood, and the rest -- for his private use? ---- Well, can't we do so in our ordinary language?

Does Wittgenstein turn out later to answer this "no" rather than the "yes" implied here? Been too long since I looked, but I can't think of a reason to say "no" myself. We have inner experiences and we talk about them in ordinary (i.e., public) language.

But then here is §246:

In what sense are my sensations private? --- Well, only I can know whether I am really in pain; another person can only surmise it. --- In one way this is false, and in another nonsense. If we are using the word “know” as it is normally used (and how else are we to use it?), then other people very often know if I’m in pain. --- Yes, but all the same, not with the certainty with which I know it myself! --- It can’t be said of me at all (except perhaps as a joke) that I know I’m in pain. What is it supposed to mean --- except perhaps that I am in pain?

Other people cannot be said to learn of my sensations only from my behaviour,--- for I cannot be said to learn of them. I have them.

The truth is: it makes sense to say about other people that they doubt whether I am in pain; but not to say it about myself.

I don't see any denial here that we have an inner experience of being in pain, or that this might be expressed by saying "I'm in pain". But he does want to deny that this is a cognitive experience, that that-I-am-in-pain is something I learn about myself, and something I could properly be said to know.

(I find the first part of the middle paragraph a bit of a head-scratcher: he is clearly not saying that others cannot be said to learn that I am in pain, know that I am in pain, doubt that I am in pain; they can, but I can't. I think you have to read the sentence backward: if we behave in a certain way to communicate to others what we know, and if me-being-in-pain is not something that I know, then my behavior cannot be how I communicate that I am in pain, and therefore you cannot learn that I know I'm in pain from my behavior. Still feels a little off.)

Okay, so for the topic of this thread: of course people have inner experiences we might properly describe as seeing the red triangular facing surface of an object; but it's not, or not normally, something they know, and certainly not something that by definition they infallibly know. The language of "sense impressions" or the like properly belongs to psychology, to a causal theory of our ability to use language, our acquisition of concepts, and so on. (Like the genetic learning algorithms you mentioned to me recently.) But there is another way to talk about what we know, and that's to do with reasons, justification, and the like; that's not a causal story.

The ambiguity of "because" and "why" make a mess of the distinction -- you could almost say foundationalism is exactly what you get if you systematically equivocate on the meanings of those words.

Abstraction from what? — Srap Tasmaner

Abstraction from the sensory representation, aka the phantasm.

If the datum is raw, unconceptualized, it's going to be useless for knowledge that's supposed to be inferred from it. If it is already conceptualized, then it's not independent. — Srap Tasmaner

Baloney!. I already explained that, by attending to various notes of intelligiblity, we actualize various concepts. What is intelligible is knowable, not known, and so neither conceptual nor propositional. Further, I explained in general how, in attending to our representation of Socrates, we can actualize not only a substantive notion, <S>, <Socrates> (tode ti = this something), but also a predicate concept, say <human>, and finally, that recognizing that both <Socrates> and <man> derive from the same representation justifies us in judging <Socrates is a man>.

You may object that we need several instances of humans to develop the concept <human>, but more experience is not inference. And, if we didn't recognize the humanity in each independently, we couldn't see that it's a common trait. Rather, more experience helps us clarify which notes of intelligibility are best included in the concept we choose to use. Perhaps we will learn that you don't need to be white to be human.

You really need to read De Anima iii, 7, and perhaps Henry Veatch, Intentional Logic or Jacques Maritain, Distinguish to Unite or the Degrees of Knowledge.

Remember above you did end up reaching for an infallible foundation after all — Srap Tasmaner

Not for truth. The infallibility of awareness is not propositional. It is judgements and propositions that are properly true or false.

Is this knowledge conceptualized? — Srap Tasmaner

No. It is awareness without abstraction. Abstracting, which forms concepts, leaves data behind and sets the stage for misplaced concreteness.

Is it "I'm experiencing that" or "I'm experiencing the red triangular facing surface of an object"? — Srap Tasmaner

Once we start applying prior concepts, we are making a judgement <This is an instance of that>, and so open ourselves to error, because there may be more to <that> than what we are experiencing. But, we don't need concepts enhanced from other experiences to judge this experience -- or even named concepts. All we need to do is abstract notes of intelligibility from the whole and then predicate it back to the same whole.

If one violated the unspoken condition that one is playing standard chess. — Dfpolis

...in that case, the rule isn't wrong; rather the action goes against the rule. — Banno

Then, the rule is incomplete, because it does not state its condition. Further, since it is conditional, it is not fundamental.

Perhaps it would be better to say that our new knowledge of subatomic structure supplements our knowledge of what it is to be solid; it does not supplant it. — Banno

The problem is that "solid" is equivocal, as it can be understood in two ways. First, pragmatically, as meaning that our tea service will not fall through it -- and this is justified by experience. Second, mathematically, as meaning that no magnification will ever reveal anything fundamentally different, which is not justified by experience. So, the error is extending our claims beyond their experiential basis -- and that happens quite often.

We are not wrong to say that the table is solid, and yet mostly consists of the space between particles. — Banno

That is not what "solid" usually means. When things have lots of empty space we say they are porous.

we might be able to look at how the way we use words such as "solid" forms a foundation in language, and hence in science. — Banno

Yes.

This is right; and to it we might add that experience here is not just the experience of the individual, but the experience of those around her... — Banno

I think we pretty much agree. Language is a primary instrument of our being social animals, and science is a social endeavor.

Rather than reply point-by-point -- it may surprise you, but I'm not certain we're as far apart as it might appear, plus I'm not wedded to my position, plus I'm very interested in an Aristotelian take on all this, so -- rather than reply point-by-point, I wonder if I could get your view on what seem to be somewhat distinct questions:

1. How does a fluent adult speaker of a natural language perceive things as categorized in the terms of her native language, or in terms of the conceptual apparatus common perhaps not just to speakers of her native language but to many other people, or even all people?
2. How does a pre-linguistic child learn how to do this?
3. How did mankind begin doing this?

We're accustomed to say that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" and thus in some ways expect the answers to (2) and (3) to be related, except we know there's an enormous difference, because children are trained to speak their native language by already competent adults. It is conceivable, therefore, that we could eventually come up with satisfying answers to (1) and (2) while (3) continues to elude us.

I'm not asking you to answer all three questions! But I am curious to know whether you think in terms at all like this, how you might see answers to these questions being related to each other, how you read Aristotle (and his interpreters -- thanks for the reading advice) as seeing the connections between these questions, or even whether the way we answer these questions has any bearing on this thread at all!

1. How does a fluent adult speaker of a natural language perceive things as categorized in the terms of her native language, or in terms of the conceptual apparatus common perhaps not just to speakers of her native language but to many other people, or even all people? — Srap Tasmaner

I hope I'm responding to the point you are interested in. We each have what I call a "conceptual space," a set of concepts that we know and use to understand experience. As an American trained in physics and read in Aristotle and Aquinas, I have a different set of concepts than someone raised in a Chinese or Indian cultural tradition. For example, I don't use a Chi concept, or have an adequate concept of nirvana. I lack many concepts current in analytic and in continental philosophy. Yesterday I added <Stove's Gem> to my conceptual space.

A two days ago, I sent in the final corrections on a paper defending the compatibility of evolution with classical theism. In it, I defended the legitimacy of alternate taxonomies, with alternate species definitions. Because reality is complex, and abstraction attends to some notes of intelligibility to the exclusion of others, we can form different species concepts (different universal ideas), given the same data. (At least 26 different definitions of "species" have been proposed in the biological literature.) This is not nominalism, because we're not assigning categories arbitrarily (without an adequate basis in reality). Rather, it is moderate realism, because we're using different features to form alternate classification schemes, so that each scheme's concepts have an adequate foundation in reality.

We tend to project our experiences onto our pre-existing conceptual space, seeing them in terms of familiar concepts. Sometimes we recognize that none of our concepts fits our experience, and so we form a new concept --articulated in a new word, or a new use of an old word. Thus, language grows.

We can learn other people's ways of conceptualizing the world. E.g., I learned physics, abstract mathematics, evolutionary biology, mysticism and a number of philosophical theories.

2. How does a pre-linguistic child learn how to do this? — Srap Tasmaner

I am not well-read in Piaget or more recent child psychology. My working theory is that children learn to associate sounds with experiences. I remember that one day my mother was talking to me in the dinning room, and it suddenly dawned on me that there was a "me" inside listening and that is what she meant by "you". I think I was 3 or 4.

3. How did mankind begin doing this? — Srap Tasmaner

I wasn't there. So, I would be giving pure speculation. I suspect gestures and shared goals played a large role.

I do think how children learn has a bearing, as children grow up to become us. Take counting and mathematical abstraction. After children count enough different kinds of things, they see that the relations of the numbers do not depend on what we count (abstraction) but on the act of counting alone. This is the basis for learning arithmetic.

But then here is §246:

In what sense are my sensations private? --- Well, only I can know whether I am really in pain; another person can only surmise it. --- In one way this is false, and in another nonsense. If we are using the word “know” as it is normally used (and how else are we to use it?), then other people very often know if I’m in pain. --- Yes, but all the same, not with the certainty with which I know it myself! --- It can’t be said of me at all (except perhaps as a joke) that I know I’m in pain. What is it supposed to mean --- except perhaps that I am in pain?

Other people cannot be said to learn of my sensations only from my behaviour,--- for I cannot be said to learn of them. I have them.

The truth is: it makes sense to say about other people that they doubt whether I am in pain; but not to say it about myself.

I don't see any denial here that we have an inner experience of being in pain, or that this might be expressed by saying "I'm in pain". But he does want to deny that this is a cognitive experience, that that-I-am-in-pain is something I learn about myself, and something I could properly be said to know. — Srap Tasmaner

Maybe an aside, but: that a person cannot be said to learn of their sensations in a way that is distinguished from simply having them is something that has troubled me. It reminds me of this exchange from the webcomic Erfworld:

"Have you ever had a ringing in your ears that you weren't aware of until it stopped?" asked the Foolmancer (Jack, an illusionist)
...
The warlord shook his head. "No," he said, almost apologetically, "At least, I don't believe so."

Jack smiled and nodded. "I thought you might say so. I, ah, took the liberty..."

He gestured subtly, and made the ringing noise in Ansom's (the warlord) head cease. He'd been building it up there ever since coming into the room. ...

The warlord cocked his head curiously, then nodded. "I see."

Personally, I've had knee pain for a long time and can usually tune it out. When it goes away, I learn that I was in pain then but adjusted in a manner where I didn't feel it. But at the time before it went away, I would not have believed I was in pain. Seems like the presence of sensations very much can be inferred, but perhaps only after a transition in their intensity.

Take counting and mathematical abstraction. After children count enough different kinds of things, they see that the relations of the numbers do not depend on what we count (abstraction) but on the act of counting alone. This is the basis for learning arithmetic. — Dfpolis

This is just the kind of thing I had in mind. Insofar as I have been pushing your position to look more like empiricism than you want, it's because I wonder how this works.

So if there are $n$ things on the table -- I can't even set up the question neutrally! -- we say there are $n$ things on the table, not $2^n$, because we don't count all the sets as things. This is the natural way to count, to us, but there is a view -- I'm going to call this Wittgenstein's view -- that all we can really say is "this is how we count" and there could be other ways. In particular, modern mathematics seems to require counting the sets as, well, "things", even while maintaining a distinction between element and subset. It might be tempting to say: by "how many things are on the table" we mean "how many elements does the set 'things on the table' have", but that's circular, and I don't see a simple way out.

Your adaequatio approach suggests that "how many things are on the table" means "how many of the sort of things we understand ourselves to be talking about are there on the table" and that feels right. But then we're back to this not being something a child could conceivably figure out through the exercise of natural reason but only in a context where the conceptual apparatus is already in place.

This is why your use of "awareness", glossed as "infallible knowledge by acquaintance", troubles me. I think some of this conceptual apparatus is just hardwired from birth and some of it we acquire not through the exercise of reason but through training by adults already conversant with a much more elaborate scheme than what they had at birth, and then some more we develop through the use of reason, and thus modify our own habits of conceptualization. However that side of the story works, a lot of the conceptualization of our experience is taking place below the level of awareness and thus without attention or reason. The way you distinguish knowledge from judgment suggests a similar hierarchy, it's just that "knowledge" in this case would map to psychological processes we are largely unaware of, and that sounds a little odd to my ear. Of course we have to call it something!

Not for truth. The infallibility of awareness is not propositional. It is judgements and propositions that are properly true or false. — Dfpolis

No. It is awareness without abstraction. Abstracting, which forms concepts, leaves data behind and sets the stage for misplaced concreteness. — Dfpolis

I was wondering if you might be willing to expound a bit more on these points?

Am I wrong in inferring that you are striving in the direction of properly basic belief?

Ha! I have a little tinnitus, which now that we're talking about it, I am experiencing again! (Tinnitus is famously mysterious this way.)

There's a point of Wittgenstein's that came up in the Moore's paradox thread that I found interesting: you can't take your own belief that p as evidence that p -- except when you can, but that requires moderately special circumstances. For instance, if you have, you know not how, picked the winner of every football game you've thought about for the last 11 years, you could take your, let's say, "intuition" that the Flamingos will defeat the Cormorants as evidence that they will. (Outlandish for clarity but ordinary might be informative.) But in normal circumstances, you don't, shouldn't, maybe can't treat your beliefs the way you treat things we do typically count as evidence. The way you can "read off" the state of the weather by stepping outside, you don't read off the state of the world from what you happen at the moment to think it is. Your beliefs are just your beliefs, and not evidentiary.

So I think this is the kind of thing LW is getting at, though it's perfectly obvious we can reflect on our inner state and say things like "I know what I'm looking at", "I know that I'm in pain", whatever, and in some conversational situations it's just the right thing to say. We say stuff. He just wants to block philosophers from thinking that the way we talk is a reliable guide to -- well, to any of the sorts of things philosophers like to talk about it. I'm putting that wrong, but I hate doing Wittgenstein exegesis.

Except of course that we do. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes; folk do lots of things that they probably shouldn't.

Wittgenstein’s friend has had surgery. Wittgenstein asks him how he feels. “Like a dog that’s been hit by a truck”, the friend wearily groans. Wittgenstein replies angrily: “How would you know what a dog feels after being hit by a truck?"

Wittgenstein’s rather unsympathetic response is exactly right, while entirely missing the point.

§243 asks the question answered over the next few sections. It's a notorious argument. Perhaps for our purposes it might be helpful to focus on what justification one might offer for "I am in pain", and how that might differ from "She is in pain". One does not infer that one is in pain - one simply is in pain.

(But see @fdrake's interesting example. He claims to infer, from "I am not in pain now", that "I was in pain previously". I'm not convince infer is quite right here.)

The discussion in PI slides into the sensation "S" at §258 and on to beetles in boxes. But it might be better to go backwards, right to the beginning. §1 shows what he is arguing against - that the meaning of a word is found by identifying that to which it refers. This view would hold that there is something the very same, that you and I might both refer to as, say, having a toothache. Wittgenstein is arguing against this view by asking how we can be sure that what I point to by "toothache" is the very same as what you point to...

...and the conclusion is that what "toothache" points to, if anything, is irrelevant to the way we use it. Even if one accepts the picture of meanings as what the word points to, and hence concludes that one cannot know that "toothache" for me points to the very same thing as "toothache" for you, one can go to the dentist and have one's teeth fixed.

Or, to switch examples, even if you and I don't mean the very same colour when we say "red" - if your red is my blue - we will both stop a the red light.

So, even if one continued to accept Augustin's theory of meaning, it is irrelevant. What counts is what we do - theories of meaning are better replaced by descriptions of use.

...since it is conditional, it is not fundamental. — Dfpolis

I'm nonplussed here. It's precisely because it is conditional that it is fundamental. If you would play chess, then this is how you must move the bishop. Doing otherwise is not playing chess.

Personally, I've had knee pain for a long time and can usually tune it out. When it goes away, I learn that I was in pain then but adjusted in a manner where I didn't feel it. But at the time before it went away, I would not have believed I was in pain. Seems like the presence of sensations very much can be inferred, but perhaps only after a transition in their intensity. — fdrake

Let me suggest that there is a difference between having a sensation, and being aware of it. We get uncomfortable sitting a certain way, and change our posture without a moment's thought. Some people can, as you suggest, tune pain out. Aristotle's point in De Anima iii, 7, is that sensory representations (nerve signals) are intelligible, but not actually known until we attend to them (in his language, actualized by the agent intellect -- which I identify with awareness). So, having a sensation does not automatically mean that we have a cognitive experience.

Yes; folk do lots of things that they probably shouldn't. — Banno

I'm sorry, are you saying there is something wrong with people giving vocal expression to their feelings, mood, and all the rest?

Wittgenstein’s rather unsympathetic response is exactly right, while entirely missing the point. — Banno

It's sociopathic.

(( I'm ignoring the rest of your post because I've actually read Wittgenstein. ))

(( I'm ignoring the rest of your post because I've actually read Wittgenstein. )) — Srap Tasmaner

But not Banno. Oh, well.

It's sociopathic.( I'm ignoring the rest of your post because I've actually read Wittgenstein. ) — Srap Tasmaner

I don't quite understand this? What exactly are you claiming is sociopathic?

Banno's point is quite accurate:

...even if you and I don't mean the very same color when we say "red" - if your red is my blue - we will both stop at the red light. — Banno

Further, "Wittgenstein replies angrily..." what in God's name? Although, no surprise that the abstraction of analytical philosophy would negate human compassion. The way I see it you are playing a game that allows you to move away from reality and thereby feel better about it. I do not consider this responsible philosophy.

So if there are n things on the table -- I can't even set up the question neutrally! -- we say there are n things on the table, not 2n, because we don't count all the sets as things. — Srap Tasmaner

It is because sets are not things, but mental constructs (ways of grouping elements in our minds). Primitive shepherds counted sheep by tying knots in a string. (Similarly, in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, the attack was synchronized by untying a knot each day.) Why count sheep and not relations or sets? Because shepherds are not generally interested in possible relations between sheep, but in the number of sheep they have.

I am suggesting that how we think about things is driven by our interests. Some are practical, but some are theoretical -- we just want to know.

But then we're back to this not being something a child could conceivably figure out through the exercise of natural reason but only in a context where the conceptual apparatus is already in place. — Srap Tasmaner

That is why we teach children mathematics, rather than letting them discover it from scratch. Children want to please us, so they do as we ask.

This is why your use of "awareness", glossed as "infallible knowledge by acquaintance", troubles me. — Srap Tasmaner

I would define awareness as the actualization of intelligibility. It is infallible because it is inseparable. Aristotle points out that before we know, there is an intelligible object (something which has the potential to be known) and a subject with the potential to be informed. One act, that of awareness (aka "the agent intellect"), simultaneously actualizes both potentials. There is no becoming known without a mind becoming informed -- and vice versa. Because only one act is involved, there is no possibility of an intervention preventing success. It is the union of object and subject in their joint actualization that is the basis of knowledge.

Judgement is quite different, for it invariably involves at least two acts: (1) the separation of certain notes of intelligibility from the whole (abstraction/concept formation) and (2) the recombination of at least two concepts. So, there is the possibility of an intervention preventing success.

However that side of the story works, a lot of the conceptualization of our experience is taking place below the level of awareness — Srap Tasmaner

I would deny the very possibility of concepts below the level of awareness. The concept <apple> is merely someone thinking of apples. It is not a thing, but an act. We can't think without being aware, because to think is to be aware of certain contents.

Of course, the mind is more than awareness. There is a lot of physical data processing going on, and most if it, we are unaware of. We form neural net connections underpinning Humean associations, but associations are not judgements. I may associate an orange moon with a citrus, but that does not cause me to think that the moon is a citrus.

So, I would say that a lot of association is taking place below the level of awareness.

The way you distinguish knowledge from judgment — Srap Tasmaner

I am not distinguishing knowledge from judgement. All knowledge is awareness of intelligibility. Some awareness is mere acquaintance ("I know the house on the corner"). Some knowledge is awareness of identities, i.e. judgements (we see that what evokes <Socrates> is identically what evokes <human>).

What is mental, but not knowledge, is concepts. To think <oranges> or <uincorns> is not to know anything, as no relation to an object is implied.

It is because sets are not things, but mental constructs — Dfpolis

What counts as a thing is a 'mental construct'... See PI §48.

One of the differences between PI and the Tractatus is the rejection of the notion of simples.

I said quite a bit about these topics in my immediately preceding comment.

The basic act of knowing is awareness of present intelligibility. Intelligibility is usually present via sensation, but in mystical experience it is present in our very act of existence.

It is usual to think of ourselves as separated from what we sense, and spatially, that is usually true. Dynamically, it is a gross error. We sense objects because they act on us, and we can detect and neurally encode those actions, forming neural representations (which the Scholastics called "sensible species"). From the object's perspective, our neural representations are its action on us, its modification of our neural state. So, our neural representations are identically the object's action on our neural system. So, dynamically, sensing subject and sensed object share the same being: its action on us is our representation of it. We might call this "existential penetration."

But, as I discussed earlier today, sensations are not thoughts. We may have, and respond to, sensations without a hint of awareness. It is only when we become aware of the neurally encoded content that it becomes knowledge. As long as it is only a neural state, it can be no more than knowable = potential knowledge. Nothing that is merely potential can operate, and so what is merely knowable cannot make itself known. To become actually known, the neurally encoded content needs to be acted upon, and it is our awareness (Aristotle's agent intellect), that does this. When we turn our attention, or awareness, to some content, to some present intelligibility, it becomes actually known.

Again, there is a dynamical identity: our being informed is identically the object informing us. "The object informing the subject" and "the subject being informed by the object" are just two ways of describing the identical event. So, we are not (dynamically) separate from our objects of knowledge, but partially identical to them. Our knowledge of the object is the object informing us.

Am I wrong in inferring that you are striving in the direction of properly basic belief? — JerseyFlight

Basic, yes. Belief, no. Beliefs are commitments to the truth of some judgement, and so acts of will. Knowledge is awareness of present intelligibility, and an act of intellect.

I'm nonplussed here. It's precisely because it is conditional that it is fundamental. If you would play chess, then this is how you must move the bishop. Doing otherwise is not playing chess — Banno

Fundamental means that we are at the absolute starting point. The consequences of chess rules can't be a starting point, because the rules themselves are more basic -- the starting point from which we derive the consequences.

So, our neural representations are identically the object's action on our neural system. — Dfpolis

This is pretty close to my own view, the difference is that I see it as a dialectical process of action, both subject and object. It's pretty hard to refute this action view, more and more evidence is being accumulated in its favor.

What counts as a thing, is an ostensible reality with intrinsic unity, i.e. an Aristotelian substance. The unity of an organism is not a mental construct. Each part of it serves the good of the whole independently of whether we think it does. A three-legged sheep is wolf bait.

It's pretty hard to refute this action view — JerseyFlight

It's been around since Aristotle.

The consequences of chess rules can't be a starting point, because the rules themselves are more basic -- the starting point from which we derive the consequences. — Dfpolis

But, but but... they are the starting point, from which we derive the consequence of Chess...

Philosophy moved on a bit after Aristotle. And after the Tractatus.

But that's not what you are after, so I'll leave you to it. Perhaps later...