Chapter 6 Chapter 5 Cognitive knowledge and descriptive knowledge

In the previous chapter we have seen that there are two kinds of knowledge: namely, knowledge of things and knowledge of truth.In this chapter, we will fully study the knowledge about things.We must also distinguish it into two categories.It would be rash to suppose that man, while knowing things, can in fact never know certain truths about them; As such, it is inherently simpler than any knowledge of truth and logically irrelevant to any knowledge of truth.The knowledge about things obtained by description is just the opposite. We will find from the description in this chapter that it will never be able to avoid some knowledge of truth as its source and basis.But what is meant by "personal knowledge" and what is meant by "description" is something we must first figure out.

We say that we are acquainted with everything that we directly perceive, without the intermediary of any process of inference or any knowledge of truth.Standing before the table, therefore, I am aware of the sense-data which constitute the phenomenon of the table—colour, shape, hardness, smoothness, etc.; these are things of which I am immediately aware when I see and touch the table. .There may be much to say about the particular shades of color I see now—I can say it's brown, or it's very dark, and so on.But statements like these, though they may enable me to know truths about colors, do not enable me to know any more about colors themselves than I did before: knowledge of colors themselves as opposed to knowledge of truths about colors Theoretically, when I see a color, I know it so completely that it is no longer even theoretically possible to have any knowledge of the color itself.The sense-data which constitute the phenomenon of the table are therefore things known to me, and these things are immediately known to me as they are.

But with regard to the table as an object, the knowledge I have is just the opposite, it is not direct knowledge.As far as it is concerned, it follows from the knowledge of those sense-data which constitute the phenomenon of the table.We have seen that it is possible and unambiguous to doubt the existence of the table, but it is impossible to doubt the existence of sense-data.The knowledge I have of the table is of the kind we shall call "descriptive knowledge."The table is "the object that makes such and such a sense-data".This is describing the table in terms of sense data.In order to know anything about the table, we must know the truths that relate the table to what we already know: we must know that "such and such sense-data are made of a body."We do not have a state of mind in which we are directly aware of the table; all our knowledge of the table is really knowledge of truth, and the exact thing that is the table is strictly speaking unknown to us.We know that there is a description, and we know that this description can only be applied to an object, although the object itself is not directly cognizable to us.In this case we say that our knowledge of the object is descriptive knowledge.

All our knowledge, whether knowledge of things or knowledge of truth, has as its basis knowledge.Therefore, it is very important to consider what things we already know. We have seen that sense-data are among the things we know; in fact, sense-data furnish the most striking and striking examples of knowledge of knowing.But if they were the only examples, our knowledge would be much more limited than it really is.We would then know only what is presently presented to our senses: we who were past would know nothing,--would not even know that there was such a thing as the past--nor could we have any truth about sense-data, because All knowledge of truth (as we shall show hereafter) requires the knowledge of those things which are of a fundamentally different nature from sense-data, which are sometimes called "abstract ideas," but which we shall call "universals."In order, therefore, for our knowledge to obtain any reasonably proper analysis, we must consider knowing other things besides sense-data.

The first thing to be considered beyond the sphere of sense-data is knowledge through memory.It is evident that we often remember everything that we have seen or heard or otherwise reached our senses, and in this case we are still directly aware of what we remember, although it Show up as the past rather than the present.This immediate knowledge from memory is the source of all our knowledge of the past.Without it, inferential knowledge of the past would be impossible, since we would never know that anything in the past could be inferred. What needs to be studied beyond the sphere of sense-data is introspective cognition.Not only are we aware of certain things, but we are always aware that we are aware of them.When I see the sun, I am always aware that I see the sun.Thus "I see the sun" is an object I know.When I want to eat, I can perceive my desire to eat; thus "I want to eat" is an object I know.Likewise, we can also be aware of the joy or pain we feel, and what is happening in our psyche in general.This kind of knowledge may be called self-consciousness, and it is the source of all our knowledge of inner things.It is evident that only events that take place in our own minds can be so directly known to us.What happens in other minds is known to us only through our perception of their bodies, that is, only through our own sense-data connected with their bodies.We would not be able to imagine the minds of others if we had not known the contents of our own minds; and therefore we would never arrive at the knowledge that they have minds.It seems quite natural to suppose that self-consciousness is one of the ends which distinguishes man from brutes; we may suppose that animals, though they know sense-data, are never aware of this knowledge, and therefore never know of their own existence. .I don't mean that they doubt their own existence, but that they have never realized that they have feelings and feelings, so they are not aware that the subjects of these feelings and feelings exist.

We have said that knowing our psychic contents is self-consciousness; but this is of course not awareness of our ego, but awareness of particular thoughts and feelings.Whether we can also know our naked self as opposed to specific thoughts and feelings is a difficult question, and it would be rash to talk positively.When we try to reflect on ourselves, it seems that we always encounter some special thoughts or feelings, but we cannot meet the "I" with these thoughts or feelings.Even so, we have reason to think that we all know this "I", although this knowledge is difficult to separate from other things.To see why, let us consider for a moment what our knowledge of particular thoughts actually involves.

When I realized "I see the sun," it was clear that I recognized two related but very different things.On the one hand the sense-data which represents the sun to me, and on the other hand that which sees this sense-data.All cognition, such as my cognition of the sense-data representing the sun, obviously seems to be a relation between the knowing person and the object known by this person.When an act of knowing is itself a thing I can know (such as my knowing of the sense-data which represents the sun), it is evident that the person I know is myself.Thus, when I realize that I see the sun, the whole fact I know is "self-knowledge of sense-data."

Furthermore, we also know the truth "I recognize this sense-data".But how we can know this truth, or how we can understand its meaning, is difficult to know, unless we have some knowledge of this thing we call "I."It does not seem necessary to suppose that we know a nearly unchanged being, who is the same today as yesterday, but must know something, whatever its nature, of that which sees the sun and has knowledge of sense-data.In a sense, therefore, it seems that we must know the "self" as opposed to our particular experience.But the question is difficult, and each side can invoke complex arguments.It would therefore be unwise to know that we can possibly do it, but to affirm that it can be done without a doubt.

We may, therefore, summarize what has been said about the knowledge of things that exist as follows.In sensation we know the material given by the external senses, in introspection we know the material given by the so-called inner senses—thoughts, feelings, desires, etc.; s material.It is also possible, though not certain, that we also know the "self" that perceives things or desires them. Besides our acquaintance with particular beings, we also have acquaintance with what we shall call universals, i.e. general ideas, such as whiteness, multiplicity, brotherhood, and so on.Every complete sentence must contain at least one word representing a universal, since every verb has a universal meaning.As to the question of universals, we shall return to it in Chapter IX; for the present, we need only avoid assuming that whatever we can know is necessarily something particular and existing.Awareness of universals may be called forming concepts.The universals we perceive are called concepts.

It can be seen that the objects we know do not include physical objects as opposed to sense-data, nor do they include other people's minds.These things are known to us by what I have called "knowledge of description," and it is this knowledge which we must now consider. By a "description" I mean a phrase of the form "a so-and-so" or "this a so-and-so". Phrases of the form "a so-and-so" I shall call "indeterminate" descriptions; phrases of the form "this such-and-so" (singular) I shall call "definite" descriptions.Therefore, "a person" is an indeterminate description, and "the man in the iron mask" is a definite description.There are various problems associated with indeterminate descriptions, but I leave them aside for now, since none of them are directly relevant to the problem we are discussing.Our problem is what is the nature of our knowledge of an object that we know fits a definite description (though we do not know any such object).This is a question only concerned with definite descriptions.Henceforth, whenever I mean "definite description," I shall simply say "description."Thus, a description refers to any phrase of the form "this so-and-so".

We say that an object is "known by description" when we know that it is "the so-and-so," that is, when we know that an object (such and such) has a certain property.And this generally implies that we have no acquainted knowledge of this object.We know that the man in the iron mask existed, and we know many propositions about him; but we don't know who he is.We know that the candidate who receives the majority of votes will be elected, and in this case we are also likely to know the candidate who will in fact receive the majority (only in the sense that one can know others); But we don't know which of the candidates he is, that is, we don't know any proposition of the form "A is the candidate who will get the majority of votes", where A is one of the candidates name.Although we know that this so-and-so exists, and although we may know objects that are in fact this so-and-so, we do not know of any proposition "A is this so-and-so" (A here is our know something); in this case we say that we have "mere descriptive knowledge" of this so-and-so. When we say "this so-and-so exists", we mean that there is precisely one object which is this so-and-so. The proposition "A is this so-and-so" means that A has such-and-such properties while others do not. "Mr. A is a trade union candidate in this constituency" means "Mr. A is a union candidate in this constituency and no one else is". "There is this trade union candidate in this constituency" means "someone is a union candidate for this constituency and someone else is not." Thus, when we know an object and it is this so-and-so, we know that there is such-and-so; but we can know when we do not know any object which we know to be such-and-so, and even when we know nothing of any object which is in fact such-and-so. There is such a so-and-so. Ordinary words, even proper nouns, are usually descriptions.That is to say, the thoughts of people who use proper nouns correctly can generally be expressed correctly only when we replace proper nouns with descriptions.Moreover, the descriptions needed to represent ideas vary from person to person, and from time to time for the same person.The only constant (as long as the name is used correctly) is the object to which the name applies.But so long as this remains the same, it generally makes no difference whether the particular description here is truth or falsity for those propositions which appear by this name. Let's take a few examples.Suppose there is something to be said about Bismarck here, assuming there is such a thing as direct acquaintance with oneself, Bismarck himself can directly refer to this particular person whom he knew by his name.In this case, if he makes a judgment about himself, he himself is an integral part of that judgment.Here, the proper noun has the direct use it has always wanted to have, that is, it only represents a certain object, and does not represent a description of this object.But if a person who knew Bismarck made a judgment about him, the situation is different.What the man knows are certain sense-data which are associated (correctly, we may assume) with Bismarck's body.His body as a body is, of course, known only as a body in relation to these sense-data; and still more so is his mind, which is known only as a mind in relation to these sense-data.That is to say, they are known by virtue of description.Of course, it is entirely accidental that a person's physical features will appear in a friend's mind when he misses him; therefore, the description that actually appears in a friend's mind is also accidental.The main point is that he knows that the various descriptions can all apply to the same entity in spite of his ignorance of the entity in question. Those of us who do not know Bismarck probably have in mind no more than a great deal of vague historical knowledge in our judgments about Bismarck—much, in most cases, far more What Smarck needed was much more.But, for the sake of illustration, let us assume that we imagine him to be the "First Chancellor of the German Reich".Here, except for the word "Germany", everything is abstract.And the word "Germany" means different things to different people.It reminds some of a trip in Germany, others of Germany on a map, and so on.But if we want to obtain a description which we know to be applicable, we cannot help citing to some extent some particular which we know.Such references either implicate any reference to the past, present, and future (as opposed to exact dates), or here and there, or what others say about us.It would seem, then, that if our knowledge of the thing being described is not merely logically deduced from the description, then a description which is known to apply to a particular particular must necessarily behave in a different way. It involves the particularity that we know. For example, "the longest-lived person" is a description involving only universals, which must apply to a person, but we cannot make a judgment about this person, because the knowledge involved in judging him is beyond the scope of this description up.Yet if we say, "The first Chancellor of the German Reich was a cunning diplomat," we can only rely on what we know—usually hearing or reading evidence—to warrant our judgment. of authenticity.Leaving aside what we have conveyed to others, and apart from the facts about the actual Bismarck, which are important for our judgment, the thinking we have consists only of one or more relevant particulars, and in addition It's all about concepts. The names of spaces—London, England, Europe, Earth, the solar system—are likewise used to refer to some description starting from a particular or particulars known to us.Considered metaphysically, I suspect that even "the universe" involves such a connection to particulars.Logic is just the opposite; in logic we study not only that which does exist, but anything that could, or might exist, or would exist, but does not deal with actual particulars. It seems that when we make an assertion about something known only by description, we often purposely make our assertion not take the form of referring to the description, but only about the actual thing described; that is, when we say In anything about Bismarck, we are always ready, if we can, to make the kind of judgments that only Bismarck himself is capable of, that is to say, of which he himself is an integral part. Come.But on this point we are bound to fail, because Bismarck was not as we know him.Nevertheless, we know that there is an object B called Bismarck, and that B is a cunning diplomat.In this way we can describe the proposition we wish to affirm: "B is a cunning diplomat"; here, B is the object called Bismarck.If we now describe Bismarck as "the first chancellor of the German Empire," then the proposition we wish to affirm may be described as: "Concerning the actual object, the first chancellor of Germany, this proposition asserts that: He was a cunning diplomat."Although we use different descriptions, what makes our thoughts communicate with each other is that we all know that there is a true statement about the actual Bismarck, and that no matter how we change this description (so long as the description is correct), The proposition described remains the same.It is the proposition that is described and known to be true that interests us.We know it to be true, but we do not know the proposition itself and know nothing about it. It can be seen that there can be various levels of cognition that is free from particular phenomena.For example: Bismarck to the man who knew Bismarck, Bismarck to the man who knew Bismarck only through historical knowledge, the man in the iron mask, the longest-lived man, etc.These are getting farther and farther away and gradually detached from the understanding of particularities.The first is the closest knowledge to cognition as far as it is to another; in the second we can still say that we know "who was Bismarck"; Who is the man in the iron mask, though we can know many propositions about him that are not logically inferred from the fact that he wears the iron mask; Other than that, we know nothing.There is a similar hierarchy in the realm of universals.Many universals, like many particulars, can only be known to us by description.But here, as in the case of particulars, knowledge by description can at last be transformed into knowledge by cognition. The basic principle of analyzing propositions that include descriptions is: every proposition we can understand must be completely composed of components we know. At this stage, we do not wish to respond to the various objections that may be raised against this basic principle.For now, we merely point out that there will always be some way of refuting these objections.For it cannot be conceived that we make a judgment or a conjecture without knowing what we judge or conjecture?If we are to speak meaningfully and not nonsense, we must ascribe some meaning to the words we use; and the meaning we ascribe to the words we use must be something of which we are acquainted.So, for example, when we judge Julius Caesar, it is obvious that Caesar himself is not before our minds, because we do not know him.But there are some descriptions of Caesar in our minds: "the man who was assassinated on March 15th", "the founder of the Roman Empire", or just "a man named Julius Caesar" That's all. (In this last description, Julius Caesar is a voice or shape we recognize.) Our assertion therefore does not mean exactly what it seems to mean, but something These related descriptions are not related to Caesar himself, but some kind of description about Caesar composed entirely of particulars and universals we know. The fundamental importance of descriptive knowledge is that it enables us to transcend the limitations of our personal experience.We know only truths which are composed entirely of words which we experience in cognition, notwithstanding the fact that we can have knowledge by description of things which we have never experienced.This result is very important in view of the extremely narrow range of our immediate experience; unless it is understood, much of our knowledge is mysterious and even dubious.