Transcendent Knowledging

This is partially prompted by the very engaging discussion about knowledge and substance initiated by professoranton, which for me has two points of entry, one to do with an understanding of 'knowledge' and another to do with 'substance' (which I'll try and get to on another video). For me at least, 'knowledge' as a term contains within itself the idea of a 'knower' (in the same way that 'dance' implies the existence of 'dancer'). To this extent, knowledge is a statement about the relationship between a subject (the person doing the knowing) and some entity that is the object of that knowing. It has an intentionality to it that calls us to say that we have knowledge 'about' some thing just as we might have beliefs about that thing or desire 'for' that thing.

This doesn't really address the question about whether these things, these objects of knowledge, have any kind of transcendent existence outside of these acts of knowing, it just shifts the focus from the knowing onto these metaphorical knowledge objects (which might pehaps be called 'data' or 'information' or 'facts' which are terms which, for me at least, carry less of the sense of being intimately related to a person doing the knowing). The question of whether facts, data, or information can have independent existence outside of or preceding human awareness feels different according to the type of fact. Some facts, like the axioms of mathematics or the various laws of physics feel permanent and independent of human awareness to me. However, other facts, particularly social facts, don't feel anything like as 'transcendent'. I can kind of imagine Newton's laws of motion floating around in empty space waiting for matter to form, for it to congeal into planets, and for humans to evolve and discover them, but the idea that social facts such as are found in psychology, sociology, political science etc also pre-existed us in this way seems absurd.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• knowledge
• transcendence
• transcendent
• Newton
• law
• axioms
• epistemology
• social
• facts
• substance
• mathematics
• psychology
• embodiment
• consciousness
• subjectivity
• objectivity

[alteringenting]

I agree

[andreoirasor]

do you have a blog?

[Professoranton]

This is excellent. At 5:20 it is interesting to note that fact comes from the Latin factum, meaning to make.