Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Gaining Insight Into
The relation 'gaining Insight into' seems paradoxical because 'S possessing O' seems to imply that that O is in S, while 'S . . . into O' seems to place S in O. But the apparent incoherence is not peculiar to Insight, e. g. one may both possess a house and live inside it. More fundamentally, one may be said to 'have' a body, as well as to 'inhabit' it, which Merleau-Ponty introduces in attempt to avoid the dualistic connotations of the former. But, despite his efforts, he only perpetuates the Cartesianism, primarily because 'inhabiting' is a product of the same abstraction that generates 'having'. As has been previously discussed, 'I can' is derived from 'I have possess a habit'. But, in turn, 'I possess the habit of X', is only a generalization of 'I have done X'. Hence, 'having a body' and 'inhabiting a body' are, alike, representations of one's actions. Furthermore, since 'I do X' entails self-externalization, the representation of it locates the 'I' within the performing subject. So, more generally, the taking possession of O, by S, via Insight, is constituted by an imaginative ingression of S into the activation of O. In other words, that the locution 'gaining Insight into' only reflects a standard analysis of the relation.
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Plato, "Theaetetus"
ReplyDeleteSOCRATES: I should distinguish 'having' from 'possessing': for example, a man may buy and keep under his control a garment which he does not wear; and then we should say, not that he has, but that he possesses the garment.
THEAETETUS: It would be the correct expression.
SOCRATES: Well, may not a man 'possess' and yet not 'have' knowledge in the sense of which I am speaking? As you may suppose a man to have caught wild birds—doves or any other birds—and to be keeping them in an aviary which he has constructed at home; we might say of him in one sense, that he always has them because he possesses them, might we not?
THEAETETUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And yet, in another sense, he has none of them; but they are in his power, and he has got them under his hand in an enclosure of his own, and can take and have them whenever he likes;—he can catch any which he likes, and let the bird go again, and he may do so as often as he pleases.
THEAETETUS: True.
SOCRATES: Once more, then, as in what preceded we made a sort of waxen figment in the mind, so let us now suppose that in the mind of each man there is an aviary of all sorts of birds—some flocking together apart from the rest, others in small groups, others solitary, flying anywhere and everywhere.
THEAETETUS: Let us imagine such an aviary—and what is to follow?
SOCRATES: We may suppose that the birds are kinds of knowledge, and that when we were children, this receptacle was empty; whenever a man has gotten and detained in the enclosure a kind of knowledge, he may be said to have learned or discovered the thing which is the subject of the knowledge: and this is to know.
THEAETETUS: Granted.
SOCRATES: And further, when any one wishes to catch any of these knowledges or sciences, and having taken, to hold it, and again to let them go, how will he express himself?—will he describe the 'catching' of them and the original 'possession' in the same words? I will make my meaning clearer by an example:—You admit that there is an art of arithmetic?
THEAETETUS: To be sure.
SOCRATES: Conceive this under the form of a hunt after the science of odd and even in general.
THEAETETUS: I follow.
SOCRATES: Having the use of the art, the arithmetician, if I am not mistaken, has the conceptions of number under his hand, and can transmit them to another.
THEAETETUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And when transmitting them he may be said to teach them, and when receiving to learn them, and when receiving to learn them, and when having them in possession in the aforesaid aviary he may be said to know them.
THEAETETUS: Exactly.
SOCRATES: Attend to what follows: must not the perfect arithmetician know all numbers, for he has the science of all numbers in his mind?
THEAETETUS: True.
(CONT)
ReplyDeleteSOCRATES: And he can reckon abstract numbers in his head, or things about him which are numerable?
THEAETETUS: Of course he can.
SOCRATES: And to reckon is simply to consider how much such and such a number amounts to?
THEAETETUS: Very true.
SOCRATES: And so he appears to be searching into something which he knows, as if he did not know it, for we have already admitted that he knows all numbers;—you have heard these perplexing questions raised?
THEAETETUS: I have.
SOCRATES: May we not pursue the image of the doves, and say that the chase after knowledge is of two kinds? one kind is prior to possession and for the sake of possession, and the other for the sake of taking and holding in the hands that which is possessed already. And thus, when a man has learned and known something long ago, he may resume and get hold of the knowledge which he has long possessed, but has not at hand in his mind.
THEAETETUS: True.
SOCRATES: That was my reason for asking how we ought to speak when an arithmetician sets about numbering, or a grammarian about reading? Shall we say, that although he knows, he comes back to himself to learn what he already knows?
THEAETETUS: It would be too absurd, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Shall we say then that he is going to read or number what he does not know, although we have admitted that he knows all letters and all numbers?
THEAETETUS: That, again, would be an absurdity.
SOCRATES: Then shall we say that about names we care nothing?—any one may twist and turn the words 'knowing' and 'learning' in any way which he likes, but since we have determined that the possession of knowledge is not the having or using it, we do assert that a man cannot not possess that which he possesses; and, therefore, in no case can a man not know that which he knows, but he may get a false opinion about it; for he may have the knowledge, not of this particular thing, but of some other;—when the various numbers and forms of knowledge are flying about in the aviary, and wishing to capture a certain sort of knowledge out of the general store, he takes the wrong one by mistake, that is to say, when he thought eleven to be twelve, he got hold of the ring-dove which he had in his mind, when he wanted the pigeon.
THEAETETUS: A very rational explanation.
SOCRATES: But when he catches the one which he wants, then he is not deceived, and has an opinion of what is, and thus false and true opinion may exist, and the difficulties which were previously raised disappear. I dare say that you agree with me, do you not?
THEAETETUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And so we are rid of the difficulty of a man's not knowing what he knows, for we are not driven to the inference that he does not possess what he possesses, whether he be or be not deceived. And yet I fear that a greater difficulty is looking in at the window.
For further reference regarding the relation between Insight and Knowing-How--Spinoza's definition of 'circle' in Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect. Then apply to the Meno, to previous comments here regarding "internalization", and to 'Gettier counter-examples'.
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