90. “I know” has a primitive meaning
similar to and related to “I see” (“wissen”, “videre”). And “I knew he was in
the room, but he wasn’t in the room” is like “”I saw him in the room but he
wasn’t there.” “I know” is supposed to express a relation, not between me and
the sense of a proposition (like “I believe”) but between me and a fact. So
that the fact is taken into my consciousness. (Here is the reason why
one wants to say that nothing that goes on in the outer world is really known,
but only what happens in the domain of what are called sense-data.) This would
give us a picture of knowing as the perception of an outer event through visual
rays which project it as it is into the eye and the consciousness. Only then
the question at once arises whether one can be certain of this
projection. And this picture does indeed show how our imagination
presents knowledge, but not what lies at the bottom of this presentation.
what lies at the bottom of this imagination
–
and for that matter any imagination –
is the unknown
© greg t charlton. 2009.
