The Process of Knowing

Description of the Knowing-process

Knowledge is the inner grasp and possession of reality. Reality means not only individual things or classes of things, actual or possible. It also means the relations of these things as identical or different, like or unlike, connected or unconnected, essential or circumstantial, substantial or accidental. Reality (from the Latin res, “thing”) means anything that can be grasped by senses or intellect. It means anything sensible, anything thinkable, anything imaginable. Such reality or entity is the object of knowledge in the widest sense of the term. To keep the term object of knowledge in this broad meaning would be to make our present investigation unwieldy in handling and vague in result. We, therefore, limit the sense of the term and make it more specific. We shall here consider such knowledge as has for its object the actually existing bodily things in the world around us.

Knowledge, we repeat, is the subject’s inner grasp and possession of reality, of an object. It is the representation, the re-presentation, the re-presence of the object within the subject’s knowing grasp.

Hence the object has a twofold existence: its own proper and natural existence among things, and its existence in the subject as a thing known. Obviously, these two modes of existence—or, more precisely, these two phases, of the one existing thing—are not identical. The existence of the object among things in the world around us, without reference to the subject and his knowledge, is the natural, proper, real existence of the subject. The existence of the object as a thing known—its existence in the knowledge of the subject—is the knowledge-existence or cognitional existence of the object. Between these two phases of existence there is the same difference as between “being” and, “being known.” ^In knowing a thing, the subject actually possesses the thing, he has it, it is in him. Granted that the man whom I see walking down the street is really in the street and not in my eye, he is none the less in my knowledge. What I see is the man, not a picture of the man; what I know, by the knowing-power called vision, is the actual, real, objective man, even though I come to that knowledge by means of a complex process, which includes the forming of an image on the retina of my eye. Thus, although we have said that knowledge is a “representation” of reality, we must clearly understand that the representation is not a picture; it is a “re-presence” of the object within/ the subject. In other words, knowledge is not a set of photographic views which reflect reality into the subject in a kind of picture-existence. Knowledge is the grasp of reality itself, notwithstanding the fact that image and representation must play a part in the formation of knowledge, or rather in the effecting of knowledge within the subject. For the image that is impressed upon the sense-organ (to keep our assigned limits and deal with the world of things bodily, things sensible) is not the thing that is sensed; the object which impresses the image on the senseorgan is sensed by means of the image, yet the image plays no consciously recognized part in the knowingact. It is not the image that is known; it is the object which impresses the image, the object itself, that is known. To use a somewhat awkward and inadequate illustration: One may learn what a person looks like by studying his photograph. One knows that the photograph is an image; it is recognized as such.

The photograph is not the person which it pictures.

It serves as a medium, and is consciously recognized as a medium, which enables one to know the appearance of the person represented. Now if, instead of studying his photograph, I study the reflection of a man’s face in a mirror, the situation is somewhat different. Here I am not normally aware of the reflection as an image at all; it is an image, of course, but what I notice (by and through the image) is the person himself. Although I see the image, I do not advert to it as a consciously recognized medium whereby I learn what the man looks like. What I look at (by and through the mirrored image) is the man himself. Of course, this illustration is meant to offer the merest suggestion of the difference between a mere material representation or picture and the “re-presence” of the object of knowledge within the subject. The illustration is far from accurate, but it is hoped that it will be suggestive, that it will give a direction to the student’s thinking and help him in the grasp of what follows.

Let us institute a comparison between a camera and the knowing-power called vision or sense of sight. Suppose I hold a camera in my hands and prepare to make a snapshot of a graceful tree. As I press the spring of the camera, I look up and see the tree. At precisely the same instant, the image of the tree is impressed upon the camera-film and upon the retina of my eye, and I see the tree. The tree is where it is among bodily things, solidly rooted in the ground, unaffected by the fact that I am making a picture of it or looking at it. The image of the tree is impressed upon the film and upon the retina of my eye. Inasmuch as the impression is, in both cases, the effect of a photochemical process, the film-image and the retinal image are alike. But here the resemblance ends. When, by the action of light upon the chemical coating of the film, the image is impressed, KNOWLEDGE IN GENERAL the photographic process is completed. When, by a like action, the retinal image is effected, the act of seeing is not completed, but is ready to take place.

The retinal image considered photochemically (that is, as effected by light and the chemical activity of the eye) is like the film-image. But the retinal image considered physically (that is, as a completed thing, as an image that is there) is not like the film-image.

The retinal image, considered physically, is impressed upon a living organ, not upon a lifeless film; it is received into the organ, it is intra-organic, and becomes the immediate object of the knowing-power which operates by that organ; it is the immediate object of vision. We see here that there is a twofold object of vision (as there is of every external sense).

The one is the extra-organic object, the visible thing as it exists in nature. The other is the intra-organic object, and this is the retinal image, physically (not photochemically) considered. It is the intra-organic object which is perceived immeditaely, that is to say, without any medium whatever intervening between the seeing-power (the faculty of sight’) and this object. By the instrumentality of the intra-organic object, vision apprehends the extra-organic object.

The knowledge of the intra-organic object is immediate; that of the extra-organic object is mediate.

But notice carefully that the medium (that is, the intra-organic object) by which the outer object is known, is not recognized as such. The subject has no awareness of it as a medium. Hence its mediation is entirely objective. By one and the same act vision grasps its immediate object (intra-organic) and its mediate object (extra-organic). We do not form representations of things by vision as we make snapshots, and then contemplate the pictures; this is not the knowing-process. We lay hold of things objective (extra-organic) by the instrumentality (the objective mediation) df the intra-organic object. We lay hold of things, not of images. Of course, each sensation does not bring us complete and perfect knowledge of the extra-organic object as it is in itself, absolutely considered. Each sensation gives us knowledge of the extra-organic object as it is presented intraorganically—imperfectly presented, indeed, but capable of being perfected by repeated experience of the same sense under varied conditions and by the “check up” afforded by the findings of the other senses. Thus our knowledge of the world about us is rendered perfect by what is called “mediate experience.” Let us illustrate the knowing-process in a rather different way, borrowing now from Dom Gredt’s excellent manual, De Cognitione Sensuum Externorum. I look at a seal or signet, noticing the design curved upon it. I impress the signet upon soft wax.

In each case the configuration or design of the signet is impressed—upon the wax and upon vision.

Notice now how different the two impressions are.

The impression of the signet upon wax results in a new thing, which is neither simple wax nor simple signet, but a third thing, viz., figured-wax. The wax is now shaped to the design graven upon the signet; the wax holds the design as its own, as a M^-design.

The wax-design is like the signet-design, but it really is not the signet-design, for it is a design in wax.

In a word, the design of the signet is now compounded or “compositely joined” with the wax.

Now let us consider the impression of the signet made upon vision. Here there is no new thing, no third thing, as the result of the impression.

Vision receives the impression of the signet (by and through the retinal image, physically considered) but is not “shaped” to it, as wax is shaped in the material or bodily impression of signet on wax.

Hence there is no “figured vision,” no composite joining of signet and vision. Vision receives an impression which is not merely like the signet-design; it is the signet-design; vision sees the signet as the signet. Vision sees the signet objectively and leaves the signet in its “objective otherness” as it knows it, cognizes it, receives it into itself as a thing known, a thing seen. Now, in the impression of one bodily thing upon another (such as the impression of signet on wax) there is always a resultant third thing or tertium quid (as is figured-wax in the impression of signet on wax). This composite joining of bodily things in the production of a tertium quid is due to the limitations of things material; it is due to their “materiality,” their bodiliness. But cognition and knowledge are not marked and restricted by the limitations of bodies, for these things are not bodily.

Even though the external senses operate through or by means of outer bodily parts or organs; even though the impression of the object on the organ is a physical impression, there is nevertheless no bodiliness in the knowing-act itself nor in the resulting knowledge. The object impressed upon the organ and existing in the organ as the intra-organic object of cognition, is physical; cognition and knowledge are psychical. The intra-organic object is the means or instrument of external sense-cognition, but this object is not cognition itself, nor is it knowledge.

Cognition and knowledge, therefore, are not bodily, they are not material, and hence they are not marked by the limitations of bodily things. They are free from the limitations of “materiality.” To put the matter positively, cognition and knowledge are marked by “immateriality.” The penalty, so to speak, of materiality, is the production of a tertium quid (like figured-wax in our example) when things material meet in mutual impression. Cognition, however, not being material, is not liable to this penalty. In the knowing-process, the impression of object upon subject results in no composite joining, in no resultant tertium quid. Here we have not composite joining, but objective knowKNOWLEDGE IN GENERAL ing. All this suggests the meaning of the ancient saying of philosophers, “Immateriality is the root of cognition and of knowledge.” Since “immateriality” means freedom from limitations imposed upon bodily things by their material character, and since the same immateriality renders its possessor capable of receiving impressions without composite joining and by objective grasp, it follows that “immateriality is the root of cognition and of knowledge.”

The Principle of Cognition

Knowledge involves subject, object, and cognition. The object must be impressed upon the subject so as to induce the reaction called cognition. Now, it is asked, how is the object impressed upon the subject? The answer is that the subject is equipped with certain powers or capacities for taking cognizance of the objects that, under proper conditions, fall within their range; the subject has powers or capacities of receiving impressions from suitable objects.

These powers or capacities for cognition are called faculties, or, more precisely, cognitive faculties, or knowing-faculties. A cognitive faculty is defined as “the proximate and immediate principle of cognition.” This definition calls for some explanation. —**A principle is that from which anything proceeds.

It may be a mere starting-point or beginning, as dawn is the “principle” of day. It may be an origin, source, or cause, as the mountain spring is the “principle” of the river; as the ocean is the “principle” of the inlet ; as the right convictions of an upright man are the “principles” of his noble conduct; as creation is the “principle” of the creature; as the sun or a torch is the “principle” of illumination. Knowledge is the subject’s grasp, by cognition, of the object impressed upon faculty or faculties. Hence, subject, object, and cognition are principles of knowledge, for knowledge requires them all, it “proceeds from” them all. But the point of the present inquiry is not the principle of knowledge, but the principle of cognition or of the knowing-act. And, in special, we seek to know the proximate and immediate principle of cognition^ For a principle is either proximate and immediate, or remote and mediate. Usually we refer to these distinctions as simply proximate and remote. A proximate principle is the immediate source of the proceeding ; no medium intervenes between the influence of the proximate principle and that which proceeds from it. A remote principle lies farther back, and its influence on the proceeding is exercised through the mediation of the proximate principle. The boy throws the ball; so do the boy’s arm and hand: the boy is the remote principle of the effect (the throwing, the thrown ball), and his arm and*hand are the proximate principle.

Now, in cognition, there are three things that must be considered when the present question is raised, viz., What is the proximate principle of cognition?

These things are: (a) the subject itself taken in its entirety; (b) the subject’s nature; (c) the cognitive powers (that is, faculties) of the subject’s nature. These are all principles of cognition, for cognition proceeds from all. But which of the three is the proximate principle of cognition? (a) The subject itself is a knowing-subject. It knows. It cognizes. Cognition proceeds from it.

Therefore, it is a true principle of cognition. Thus one says rightly, “John sees”; “The man understands.” But John would be John if he were blind; the man would be the man if he were an imbecile and could not understand. Hence the cognition of seeing does not proceed immediately from John as John, nor does the cognition of understanding proceed immediately from the man as man. The subject, then, while a true principle of recognition, is not the immediate and proximate principle. (b) The subject’s nature is what enables the subject to know. It is, therefore, a true principle of cognition; cognition proceeds from it. Thus one says rightly, “It is natural for John to see”; “It is the nature of the man to understand.” But human nature would be present in John and in the man even if John were blind, and the man an imbecile. Human nature would lack certain operative powers that it ought to have, and would be so far imperfect. But imperfect human nature is still human nature. Therefore, the cognitions of seeing and understanding do not proceed immediately and proximately from human nature as such, since it can be “such” without these functions. It follows that the nature of the subject is not the proximate principle of cognition. (c) The cognitive powers of the subject’s nature constitute a true principle of cognition. Cognition proceeds from these powers. More: these powers would not be what they are if they could not cognize. Cognition proceeds from them as such. Hence these powers (called faculties) constitute the immediate and proximate principle of cognition. To speak distributives, the faculties are the proximate principles of cognition. The subject itself, and its nature, are remote principles of cognition; only the faculties of the subject’s nature are the proximate principles of cognition.

A cognitive faculty is a power and capacity for cognition. It is an operative power, for cognition is an operation. It is not an active power in the sense that it produces or makes its object; it does not make its object, but receives it. Hence it is a passive power.

But it is not passive with the dead passivity of marble under the shaping action of chisel and mallet. It is passive, but operative. In other words, while it is not active in the sense just indicated, it is certainly re-active. It is the power of reacting to suitable impressions received from objects, and of cognizing, of knowing these objects.

• There are as many kinds of cognitive faculties 3i as there are orders of cognition. In man, therefore, we distinguish sense-faculties and the intellectual faculty or mind. And there are as many sensefaculties as there are different senses. In man there are five external senses and four internal senses; each of these is a cognitive faculty or knowingfaculty, We shall study all these faculties in some detail in subsequent articles.

Summary Of The Article

In this article we have studied the knowingprocess. We have seen that knowledge results in the subject by the latter’s grasp of the object. Knowledge is the re-presence of the object in the subject, in a manner suited to the subject’s nature. We have indicated the knowing act (as exemplified in the operation of the external senses) as the grasp of the object in a truly objective manner. We have learned the meaning of intra-organic object and extra-organic object. We have noted that the intra-organic object is the immediate object of the knowledge of the external senses, and that the extra-organic object is the mediate object. We have stressed the fact that the intra-organic object, while a medium, is not recognized as a medium, but is the instrument by which the extra-organic object itself is known directly.

Since the individual cognition of the individual sense presents the external reality only under the aspect of the object proper to that sense, this reality is known only imperfectly in the cognition; repeated cognitions and the cognitions of several senses with reference to the same reality furnish the necessary check-up and experience (which we call “mediate experience”) for the perfect knowledge of the reality itself as it exists in the world about us. We have learned the meaning of the dictum, “Immateriality is the root of cognition and of knowledge.” We have discussed the principle of cognition, defining principle, remote and proximate, and have found that the immediate and proximate principle of any cognition is a cognitive faculty.