THE CONCEPT OF KNOWLEDGE BOSTON STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

Editor

ROBERTS. COHEN, Boston University

Editorial Advisory Board

THOMAS F. GLICK, Boston University ADOLF GRUNBAUM, University of Pittsburgh SAHOTRA SARKAR, McGill University SYLVAN S. SCHWEBER, Brandeis University JOHN J. STACHEL, Boston University MARX W. W ARTOFSKY, Baruch College of the City University of New York

VOLUME 170 THE CONCEPT OF KNOWLEDGE The Ankara Seminar

Edited by

IOANNA KUCURADI Hacettepe University, Ankara

and

ROBERT S. COHEN Boston University

SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

The concept of knowledge : the Ankara seminar I edited by toanna Ku9uradi and Robert S. Cohen. p. em. --

ISBN 978-90-481-4495-2

Printed on acid-free paper

All Rights Reserved © 1995 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1995 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner. PREFACE

A sense of place and time, of the historically specific, cannot be total• ly transcended in philosophical work, although a philosophical desire for the universal seems always at hand too. All the more do these sensibilities motivate our human species when comparative encoun• ters occur, across cultural, generational, ethnic, religious, gender, tribal, class boundaries. Can we talk across borders, are the borders permeable with respect to sharing experiences and reports of experiences? Can we, in Ioanna Kuc;uradi's words, engage in philosophical reflection on global problems? Indeed can we reason together, about agreements or differences or about problems and opportunities, but in any case can we understand how others from another place think? To the puzzles of self-criticism concerning our own doubts, unclarities, confusions about what is really known, about where do we begin, and what must we assume, we confront others who seem to begin otherwise, accept other arguments, trust other evidence. Are there different understandings of what it is to know, and if this is so, how may we communicate? The Ankara seminar on the concept of knowledge was held August 28-29, 1989, at the Hacettepe University, with the friendly sponsorship of the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Philosophical Society of Turkey, and the International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP), and with the humane and rigorous scholarly leadership of Pro• fessor Kuc;uradi. The seventeen speakers were themselves reaching out, communicating to each other across boundaries within a core of Euro• pean philosophical commonalities but explicitly addressing a number of non-European challenges and even alternatives. The admirable Pro• logue sets before the reader the issues confronted by each contributor and also integrates the seminar as a whole. Will there be other FISP seminars, seeking mutual understanding, dealing with meta-philosophy, identifying species-wide abilities and disabilities, hopefully coming to identify what it is to know, what it is that may be known? So many historical and cultural alternative civilizations were not at Ankara but this was a vigorous and stimulating seminar for those who were there to speak. The contributions in this book deserve reflection from those who were not there, too. R.S. Cohen

v TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE I ROBERT S. COHEN v

INTRODUCTION TO THE SEMINAR I IOANNA Kuc;URADI ix

PROLOGUE I IOANNA Kuc;URADI xvii

PROBLEMSOFKNO~NG

1. GUIDO KUNG I 1\vo Concepts of Knowing 3 2. L. JONATHAN COHEN I Belief, Acceptance and Knowledge 11 3. ERNEST SOSA I Back to Basics 21 4. ARDA DENKEL I Experience, Order and Cause 31 5. VENANT CAUCHY I Some Thoughts on the Nature of Koow~ ~ 6. J. DAVID G. EVANS I Meno's Puzzle 67

KINDS AND CRITERIA OF KNOWLEDGE 7. GDROL IRziK I Popper's Epistemology and World Three 83 8. IOANNA Kuc;URADI I Knowledge and Its Object 97 9. EVANDRO AGAZZI I Are there Different Kinds of Knowledge? 103 10. RICHARDT. DE GEORGE I Ethical Knowledge and Social Facts 119 11. KWASI WIREDU I Knowledge, Truth and Fallibility 127 12. TEO GRUNBERG I Long Run Consistency of Beliefs as Criterion of Empirical Know ledge 149

APPROACHES TO KNOWLEGE 13. H. ODERA ORUKA I Cultural Fundamentals in Philosophy. Obstacles in Philosophical Dialogues 167 14. JINDRICH ZELENY I Analytical and/or Dialectical Thinking 183

vii viii TABLE OF CONTENTS

15. VLADISLAV A. LEKTORSKY I Knowledge and Cultural Objects 191 16. ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA I Knowledge and Cognition in the Self-Individualizing Progress of Life 197 17. FRANCISCO MIRO QUESADA I Knowledge and Destiny 219

NOTES ON THE AUTHORS 231

NAMEINDEX 239 IOANNA KU~URADI

INTRODUCTION TO THE SEMINAR

A few years ago, in this same hall, a small group of philosophers from different parts of the world, met with one part of their Turkish col• leagues, in the Seminar on Philosophy Facing World Problems1 which the Philosophical Society of Turkey had organized with the aim to open a discussion, from a philosophical view-point, of global problems, selected by the participants themselves, and thus to give an example of "incorporating the dimension of philosophical reflection in an appraisal of world problems"- a need expressed 'officially' in Unesco's Medium• Term Plan for the years 1984-1989, though felt for a long time by those who are well aware of the vocation of philosophy. The tendency to promote philosophical reflection on global problems and to involve philosophy in the endeavour to look for sound and humane solutions to these problems, at a global level, has gained ground also in the International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP) during the past few years. The question we have to face now is "how could philosophical reflec• tion be incorporated in dealing with such problems?", in other words "how could philosophy contribute her part to the treatment of such prob• lems?''. This 'how' still does not seem to be clear enough in the minds of most of the philosophers who really possess the will to make such a contribution. The epistemological 'theories' prevailing in our days, prove inappropriate in the approach to many of such problems. An attempt to answer the question concerning this 'how', presupposes - among others- being well aware of the theoretical difficulties, which the world community comes across in the endeavour to tackle these problems. Among such theoretical difficulties we see the difficulties concerning the right diagnosis and explanation of such problems, e.g. the naming or labelling of a social or political fact, let alone the difficulties of its 'objective evaluation'. Different practical or theoretical starting points• different assumptions or approaches- lead, naturally, to different diag• noses and explanations, still of the same - objectively same - situation or fact. The world community is now sufficiently aware of this impasse.

I. Ku(:uradi arui R. S. Cohen (eds.), The Concept of Knowledge, ix-xv. © 1995 Kluwer Academic Publishers. X IOANNA KU<;URADI

Still, I am afraid, we are not sufficiently aware of the epistemological problems behind this impasse. Another theoretical difficulty the world community comes across, arises in connection with the selection of practical principles. The variety of the principles proposed for a same case, leaves at a loss those who care for an ethical approach to individual cases. The moral theories prevailing in our days, are far from being helpful in the selection of such principles. Also the adoption of pluralism does not help much in action when one has to decide, in a given situation, what it is right to do. Still, the question of the justification of norms - of their 'scientific justification' -, is a question that has kept the philosophical community busy as a permanent item of its agenda for at least the past twenty years. Nevertheless, due attention is not paid to the epistemological problems underlying the question of the justification of principles, probably because such problems lie outside the scope of the prevailing epistemological theories. These are some of the considerations, which have led us to diagnose also the need to dwell on epistemological questions underlying the difficulties which the world community comes across in the endeavour to tackle world problems. Among these epistemological questions, perhaps the most fundamental one is the question of 'what is knowledge?'. Prevailing epistemological theories paid, up to now, too little attention to the diversity of epistemological questions arising in different areas of human activity, besides the sciences- and even besides the natural sciences. Thus, either they assume a too broad conception of knowledge, understanding by 'knowledge' all kinds of products of the human mind, as for example in the case of pragmatism, whose conception of truth keeps constituting, though unnoticed, a main approach to knowledge; or, as in the case oflogical empiricism, for example, they take as model what they call 'scientific knowledge', i.e. this time a too narrow conception of knowledge, and keep out of their scope all assertions that do not stand well with the criterion of meaningfulness they have formulated. Thus, strangely enough, though perhaps the philosophical discipline most cultivated in our century appears to be epistemology in a sense- or more precisely Philosophy of Science and Logic -, the epistemological tools it secures help us too little in facing the difficulties we come across with respect to world problems. Ramifications of this epistemology go on increasing, but few philosophers think of questioning its very framework, its main assumptions, and among them its conception of knowledge. INTRODUCTION xi

This is an epistemological framework in which - so far I can see - knowledge has lost its object. * In our century, pragmatism and logical empiricism with its various ramifications, seem to have played crucial yet different roles in this loss of the object of knowledge. It is noteworthy that both these 'schools' of philosophy have devel• oped their respective touchstones for knowledge from their world-views, which they proposed in order to answer pressing psychological needs of their age. It is also noteworthy that both of them call themselves 'method' in the sense of 'approach', or 'world-view', and when they speak, they both look at the spectator - and not at the producer - of knowledge. In the face of the turmoil created at the end of the 19th century by the development of sciences and by their 'truths', which were in disagree• ment with those of religion, pragmatism, by cutting the Gordian knot, was believed to have opened a way out for those who were at a loss: "The pragmatic method is primarily a method of settling metaphysical disputes that otherwise might be interminable"2 says James. "Whenever a dispute is serious, we ought to be able to show some practical differ• ences that must follow from one side or the other being right"2• As we see here, this is the attitude of the spectator of discrepant statements on the same topic. To enable the spectator to show these practical differ• ences, pragmatism formulates its criterion: "True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify ... Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events3• If the consequences we have in mind follow, that means that "our ideas agree with reality". Here we also observe that 'idea' is meant to be any product of the human mind. The main concern of logical empiricism is also to find a way to become sure of avoiding error - something which, of course, it never achieves, since it has to consider all propositions as 'hypotheses', in the end. It develops its criterion of knowledge - verifiability, and later falsifiability - from its world-view, as we find it expressed in the mani• festo (as I call it) of the Vienna Circle, i.e. in the text presented in 1929 to Moritz Schlick4• There we read: "The scientific world-conception is characterized not so much by theses of its own, but rather by its xii IOANNA KUc;URADI basic attitude, its points of view and direction of research. The goal ahead is unified science, ... a total system of concepts". The scientif• ic world-conception is characterized "essentially by two features. First it is empiricist and positivist. there is knowledge only from experi- ence, which rests on what is immediately given ... Second, the scientific world-conception is marked by application of ... logical analysis ... If such an analysis were carried through for all concepts, they would thus be ordered into a reductive system, ... the 'constitutive theory' within [the framework of] which logical analysis [would be] applied by the scientific world-conception". This is what logical empiricism planned to achieve. Still in the sciences, both in natural and the so-called social sciences, not one but many frameworks, many 'models' were developed. Right now to construct 'models' constitutes the main preoccupation in the sciences; and the term 'model' -concerning which a great confusion still prevails - appears to be one - if not the most - fashionable term in the Philosophy of Science. Yet, the following fact, which Hannah Arendt, in the sixties, pointed to, still escapes attention: The trouble is that almost every axiom seems to lend itself to consistent deductions and this to such an extent that it is as though men were in a position to prove almost any hypothesis they might choose to adopt, not only in the field of purely mental constructions like the over-all interpretations of history which are all equally supported by facts, but in the natural sciences as well ... The totalitarian systems tend to demonstrate that action can be based on any hypothesis and that in the course of consistently guided action, the particular hypothesis will become true, will become actual, factual reality ... In other words, the axiom from which the deduction is started ... does not have to tally at all with the facts as given in the objective world at the moment the action starts; the process of action, if it is consistent, will proceed to create a world in which the assumption becomes axiomatic and self-evident ... Within the natural sciences things are not essentially different, but they appear more convincing because they are so far removed from the competence of the layman and his healthy, stubborn common sense, which refuses to see what it cannot understand ... In both instances the perplexity is that the particular incident, the observable fact or single occurrence in nature, or the reported deed or event in history, have ceased to make sense without a universal process in which they are supposedly embedded; yet the moment man approaches this process ... in order to find meaning - order and necessity - his effort is rebutted by the answer from all sides: Any order, any necessity, any meaning you wish to impose will do ... This twofold loss of the world - the loss of nature and the loss of human artifice in the widest sense, which would include all history - has left behind it a society of men who, without a common world which would at once relate and separate them, either live in desperate lonely separation or are pressed together into a mass. For a mass-society is nothing more than that kind of organized living which automatically establishes itself INTRODUCTION Xlll among human beings who are still related to one another but have lost the world once common to all of them. 5

Hannah Arendt's observations concerning 'contemporary science' seem to the point. The hallmark of this science appears to be what I call 'the loss of the object' we observe prevailing in most of the sciences. 'Science' is considered - by the prevailing Philosophy of Science - to be a system of hypotheses or theories - these two terms being used as synonyms. For example, according to Popper, science is "a system of hypotheses, a system of unjustifiable anticipations: i.e. a system of anticipations by which we operate so long as they are corroborated, and which we may call neither 'true' nor merely 'more or less sure' or 'probable' "6 said Popper in the thirties. Thus "the activity of the scientific researcher consists of establishing propositions or systems of propositions, and of testing them systematically; what is established and tested in experience by observation and experiments are hypotheses, systems oftheories"7. 'Theory' is the net we throw in order to capture the 'world' - in order to rationalize, explain and master it''8• 'To capture the world' means in Popperian terminology 'to make empirically testable prognoses'. Is this conception of science, as worded by Popper, not in full agree• ment with Hannah Arendt's observations- still, critical observations• concerning 'contemporary sciences'? Thus, 'objectivity', being once the ideal of the sciences, has given room to 'intersubjective validity', which now constitutes the ideal in 'science'. Application of the assumed intersubjectively valid hypotheses or theories - or models, or approaches - to individual cases, which in tum 'proves' or 'corroborates' their validity, has become 'the method of science'. This latter observation applies not only to logical empiricism but to the dialectical approach as well. Nevertheless, 'theories' or models on the same issue, go on increasing in number, and all of them seem justifiable at first glance. Still this form of much praised pluralism leaves people at a loss, and makes the spectators of knowledge look like novices in philosophy. I think we are still not sufficiently aware of the consequences created by the loss of the object of knowledge in various areas of human activity; and as a remote consequence, I would mention - well aware, of course, that I may shock many among you here - the fashionable demand to respect all cultures equally. xiv IOANNA KUc;URADI * Thus at the end of our century, we find ourselves in a situation parallel to that of the beginning of the century: we have many 'truths' - but this time 'secular truths'- on the same topics: we have different models for the diagnosis, explanation, evaluation etc. of the same things. To come to grips with this situation-instead of questioning prevailing epistemology- we made pluralism a motto of our time, considering it to be a remedy against dogmatism, still without inquiring where pluralism is epistemologically possible. An epistemology in which knowledge has lost its object even in the natural sciences, does not seem appropriate to secure the tools to help breaking through the theoretical impasse in which world community finds itself in facing world problems. This is, to my mind, an impasse in the creation of which this very epistemology has played a great part. Thus it seems opportune to ask once again this most fundamental question of epistemology, i.e. to ask 'what is knowledge?' in relation to the problems we have to face today. But before trying to answer it, we have probably to ask: to answer this question, what shall we look at? * Such considerations, dear colleagues and guests, made us choose this time as general theme of our Seminar, a tough philosophical question. We thank all our colleagues who have kindly accepted to participate in it. I also wish to extend the cordial thanks of the Philosophical Society of Turkey to all our guests who by their presence have honoured this inaugural session. And I wish to express our gratitude, to all those who, by their support, made it possible for us to meet here: the Ministry of State, the Department of Culture of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Mayor of Ankara, the T.C. Ziraat Bankasi, the Soyut Company, the Meteksan Company, and all the students and friends of philosophy who have helped us in the organization. Let me close by wishing that the work to be done in this Seminar constitutes a noteworthy step towards the aim of its organization. INTRODUCTION XV

NOTES

1 Published in 1988 by the Philosophical Society of Thrkey, Ankara. 2 William James, 'What Pragmatism Means', The Moral Philosophy ofWilliam James (New York, 1969), p. 276. 3 William James, 'Pragmatism's Conception of Truth', op. cit., p. 295. 4 The Scientific Conception ofthe World: The Vienna Circle [Wissenschaftliche Weltauf fassung: Der Wiener Kreis], in Otto Neurath, Empiricism and Sociology, ch. 9, pp. 305-307 (Vienna Circle Collection, vol. 1 (D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, 1973). 5 Hannah Arendt, 'The Concept of History: Ancient and Modern', in Between Past and Future (Penguin Books, 1978), p. 87-88. 6 Karl R. Popper, Logik der Forschung, (J.C.B. Mohr- Paul Siebeck- TUbingen, 1971), p. 258. 7 Ibid., p. 3. 8 Ibid., p. 31. PROLOGUE*

The aim of organizing this meeting in Ankara of a few outstanding philosophers from all over the world, was an attempt to bring to the fore a question: 'what is knowledge?'. This appeared to us to be a 'need', because one of the main reasons why philosophy at present fails to contribute its part in tackling 'global problems' seems to be an 'internal' problem of philosophy: the prevailing views in epistemology and mainly the ambiguity in the conception of knowledge underlying those views. This ambiguity concerning what knowledge is, is also reflected in the denomination of the relevant philosophical discipline in our century: in Anglo-American circles it is usually called 'epistemology', while in German circles 'Gnoseologie', i.e. the same discipline is named after two different terms related to the concept of knowledge in general, or by terms denoting in Greek, two different kinds of knowledge**. As for the French-speaking circles, they use both terms, 'gnoseologie' in order to denote the philosophical discipline constituted of problems of knowl• edge, while by 'epistemologie' they mean the 'theory' or 'philosophy of science(s)'. *** There are many tough questions in the philosophy of knowledge, but one of the tougher ones is that of determining, in an epistemically justifiable way, the content of a concept, and another being the concep• tualization of an idea, as I call it. These are knowing activities quite different from those carried out for the 'definition' of a term. Yet to determine the content of a concept - and in our case the concept of knowledge-, or to conceptualize an idea, where shall we look? What has this Seminar on 'The Concept of Knowledge' contribut• ed, directly or indirectly, to the answering of this latter question, and consequently of the question of what knowledge is? To my mind, a main characteristic of a fruitful meeting of philoso• phers, scientists etc., as well as of a successful course of philosophy, lies in the impetus it gives to its participants after it ends. Yet this is some• thing that only each participant, if interested, can become conscious of.

I. Ku~uradi arui R. S. Cohen ( eds.), The Concept of Knowledge, xvii-lviii. © 1995 Kluwer Academic Publishers. xviii PROLOGUE Now that the papers of this Seminar will be submitted to the consid• eration of the world philosophical community, I shall attempt here, by setting forth some observations I have made, to connect certain points in these papers with the main theme of this Seminar, and then to raise some further questions. * One first point observed is that most of the papers either explicitly 'accept' -to use L.J. Cohen's term- or assume dichotomies existing in the Anglo-American epistemology, even when they criticize relevant views - dichotomies such as that of the is-ought propositions or those of the "knowledge of things by acquaintance and by description" and "knowledge of truths". Let us first refresh our memory concerning the latter Russellian dichotomies in connection with our issue: "There are two sorts of knowl• edge: knowledge of things and knowledge of truths"1• This is a division made in accordance with 'the known', but still only according to what one gets knowledge of. Following this sentence we read:

We shall be concerned exclusively with knowledge of things, of which in tum we shall have to distinguish two kinds. Knowledge of things, when it is of the kind we call knowledge by acquaintance, is essentially simpler than any knowledge of truths, and logically independent of knowledge of truths .... Knowledge of things by description, on the contrary, always involves ... some knowledge of truths as its source and ground. 1 In this latter distinction of "two kinds of knowledge of things" we observe a total shift of attention to the knowing individual subject, i.e. this dichotomy concerns two different ways of getting knowledge even of the same real, individual 'thing'. This is a dichotomy made by looking at the individual knower, in connection with whom the attempt is made to answer the question 'how does one get know ledge of things?', whatever the known real thing might be. What Russell looks at, when he is making this dichotomy, is the individual who gets knowledge of 'things', and also of 'truths', not the producer of knowledge. Put very simply, according to this view, one 'gets' knowledge of a thing either by direct contact with it or by learning something about it, i.e. by getting information about something, through description that somebody else made- by being, or not, in direct contact with that thing -; or even by learning 'a truth', which somebody else put forward. Here we see that knowledge, i.e. information, received by description PROLOGUE xix or knowledge of 'truths' amounts, in the best of cases, only to second• hand knowledge. This is a much simpler view concerning the origin of knowledge in individuals than it appears at first glance. These Russellian dichotomies stand, up to a point, only if considered to be an answer to the question "how does a given individual know what he 'knows'?" or a similar question. On the contrary they fall if they are assumed to be distinctions between kinds of knowledge - 'knowledge' understood here either as a human activity or as the outcome of this activity. They fall, because they neither appear to be an attempt to distinguish among different expressions of this activity, which is much more complex than Russellian dichotomies assume, nor to be a distinction among kinds of pieces- or propositions- of knowledge, which have to do with 'objects' which are not only ontically independent of the knowing individual but also show differences of ontological specificity. What is the difference between the questions "how does an individual know?" and "how does the human activity of knowing occur?"? And what are the implications of not distinguishing them in contemporary epistemology? These are questions worthwhile to dwell upon. I shall not do it here. I shall confine myself in this respect only to the attempt (a) to put a finger on a few 'problems' mentioned and issues dealt with in the following papers. But these arise, so far as I can see, only if one looks exclusively at the individual knowing subject, though the question treated has also to do with the known-object, i.e. when one neglects the object or only takes it for granted without looking at its ontological specificity; they further presuppose a confusion of the 'roles' (of the objects, as well as the activities) of the epistemologist and the 'spectator' of a piece of knowledge, or even, of a proposition in general. Then I shall try (b) to show, wherever I shall be able to do it, what the authors of these papers look at when they deal with their respective epistemological issues. Such observations can perhaps lead to a concept of knowledge which can be more suitable to deal also with global problems. * Guido KUng in his paper 'Two Concepts of Knowing', calls our atten• tion to 'a change' in epistemology in our century, a change in the episte• mological attitude of the knowing individual toward knowing: toward XX PROLOGUE the possibility of an individual's knowing certain things in the 'external world' and toward the meaning of 'knowing'; i.e. not to a change in the philosophical consideration of the human activity of knowing. In other words: he calls our attention to the different conclusions that Carte• sians and common sense epistemologists reach concerning 'knowing'. His initial example 'Eyiiboglu Hotel exists' (p) is a statement affirming existence, i.e. a kind of statement which has to be treated on its own account, and not independently of a given context. But as the content of this example plays no special role in the elaboration of his point, i.e. it is considered as any p, this specificity of the statement has no implication whatever. This change in epistemology he mentions, concerns the attitude toward the claim 'I know that p', not the claim 'I believe that p', since the latter "even if p should turn out to be false, the proposition "I believe that p" can still be true"2 for both the Cartesian and common sense approaches, observes Guido Kling, and this is very much to the point, indeed. When somebody says 'I believe thatp', unless he lies, this proposition is necessarily true, as is also true what Kling says concern• ing the Cartesian and common sense attitudes toward this proposition. It is true, because it is "about a now occurring act of belief' in Kling's words. Just here a distinction has to be made between the Cartesian episte• mological 'attitude' and the epistemological problem faced at this point: According to Kling "the Cartesians accept that the truth of [the proposi• tion 'I believe that p'] is given to each one of us in direct introspective intuition and thus is not doubtful at all"2• What Kling says about the Cartesian epistemological attitude is true, but epistemologically this is not the reason why the proposition 'I believe that p' is true. This latter proposition is true, because the object of this proposition or of this piece of knowledge here, is "a now occurring act of believing that p", not an act of affirming the truth of p; i.e. the object of this proposition is the connection between a feeling (or whatever you would like to call it) of the individual who states it as a whole and p, whatever the content- and consequently the truth value - of that p might be. In other words: what he who says 'I believe that p' looks at when stating it, is the connection between a feeling of his and p, i.e. the object of his belief, which here is p; and this same relation is also what Kung looks at, when he affirms that even if the proposition 'Eyiiboglu Hotel exists' should turn out to PROLOGUE xxi be false, the proposition 'I believe that Eyuboglu Hotel exists' can still be true. 'I believe thatp' is a statement of fact for him who states it, while for the 'spectator' of this proposition, be he a layman or an epistemologist, it is a necessarily true proposition. Kung's 'Cartesian', who states this proposition, has no doubt (that he believes that p ), because he has direct knowledge- "by acquaintance" or "introspective intuition"- of a "now occurring act", i.e. the object of his knowledge is an act of his, which does not transcend his consciousness; while for the epistemologist the proposition 'I believe that p' is true, because it expresses a now occurring act of believing, i.e. because its object is such an act. Still having or not having a doubt, in the case under consideration, has nothing to do with the truth or falsity of a proposition p. As a conse• quence, the problems faced, to Guido Kung's mind, in connection with the proposition 'I know that p'- here 'knowing' understood as 'having no (reasonable) doubt' - do not seem to be problems of epistemology, but problems of personal disposition, which it would be more appro• priate not to be allowed to interfere in epistemological inquiry. Let me give the reasons for this claim of mine with an anecdote: A young man who had undergone psychiatric treatment because he believed that he was a grain of barley and used to run away as soon as he saw a hen, on leaving the clinic saw a hen in the garden, and ran away as he used to do earlier. When the psychiatrist asked him why he was running away since he well knew that he was not a grain of barley, the young man is said to have answered as follows: "Yes, I know that I am not a grain of barley, but does the hen also know it?" Guido Kung's explanation of the truth of propositions of the type 'I believe that p' appears to be an important contribution to the aim of the Seminar. Still 'I know that p' will always be true as well, if 'I know' is assumed to mean 'I have no (reasonable) doubt' that p. L. Jonathan Cohen, with a view to" ... clarify the nature of scientific knowledge"3, calls our attention to the "difference between belief and acceptance", which "has been largely ignored in recent philosophy" and attempts to show it. In his paper 'Belief, Acceptance and Knowledge', he uses the term 'know ledge' very rarely, almost only in connection with science, in contexts like 'scientific knowledge', 'knowledge of physical laws', etc. Here I shall deal separately with the way how - or with the question of what he is looking at when - he differentiates between 'belief' and 'acceptance', and with the distinction itself. xxii PROLOGUE

What does L. Jonathan Cohen look at, when he distinguishes between 'acceptance' and 'belief'? I dare say that he looks at the conditions under which he and a given scientific community accept a proposition as 'knowledge'. According to this community, (scientific) knowledge and/ or (scientific) theories are propositions, or systems of propositions, which can be verified-corroborated or falsified indirectly, i.e. when used as premises for the deduction of propositions which can be directly verified-falsified by sensory experience. According to Cohen "to accept that p is to take it as given that p"4, i.e. to go "along with a proposition in one's own mind ... as a premiss or inference-licence ... for one's own and others' deductions ... whether or not one feels it to be true that p"4: "acceptance concerns ... what you premise to be true". 4 Thus, if we con- sider "the knowledge of physical laws that well-regarded professional scientists like Einstein claim explicitly to have ... having the knowledge that p, where the proposition that p states a physical law, requires the scientist to accept the p, in the light of evidence that p"5. Here it is possible to see clearly where Cohen is looking: he looks at someone who accepts (the truth of) a proposition which was already put forward, and which was tested according to a given criterion. If one does not premise a proposition, i.e. he does not accept it but only feels it to be true, what he feels is a belief. Here we also see under which conditions, according to Cohen, a proposition, and even one and the same proposition, is an object of belief and may be the object of acceptance. Still here both belief and acceptance concern the attitude- two different attitudes- of the knowing individual subject towards a given proposition (p ). Thus the difference between belief and acceptance appears to be a difference between two relationships of the knowing individual subject to a given proposition• and not to the object of the proposition p -, the former denoting a feeling "when attending to items raised, or referred to, by the proposition that p"6, the latter a decision about a proposition p after it is treated in a special manner, for theoretical use. "What is undeniable about an ascription of knowledge that p" says Cohen "is that by uttering it the utterer also implicitly declares his own knowing-relationship to the proposition that p"7. This is a very important distinction, provided that we move within the framework of a given epistemological approach, whose most basic term is 'belief'. Seen from the outside of this framework, 'belief' and 'acceptance', as defined by Cohen, appear to be connected with either the PROLOGUE xxiii relationship of the knowing individual subject, or his attitude towards a proposition p. These are two different relationships to 'the truth' of a given proposition - relationships established without any reference to the epistemic specificity of the proposition itself. What Cohen attempts to put forth is the difference between someone 's believing that p and someone's accepting that p, yet believing or accepting the truth of the givenp. At just this point, we are faced with a problem which is worthwhile to dwell upon: the object of (theoretical) acceptance is, in fact, always a proposition already put forth, any kind of proposition in the role of a premise for deduction, inference, inquiry, deliberation, etc., while this does not appear to be always the case with the objects of believing. The object of one's believing need not always to be the truth of "an item already referred to": when someone claims that he, or somebody else, is a grain of barley, i.e. he says 'I am (he is) a grain of barley', he believes that he is so. In other words: a belief may concern what is the case (or even what one has to do, etc.), as well as the truth of a proposition p, i.e. we may distinguish between 'propositions of belief' in which the object of believing is the truth of a proposition p, and 'propositions of belief' which create their object through quite different mental activities. Thus by 'belief' we may understand the 'act of believing' as well as the propositions which are the outcome of such acts, and among the latter we may distinguish between propositions expressing what someone - a given individual - feels, thinks, assumes, etc. is the case, as well as propositions affirming one's own believing in the truth of a given proposition p, i.e. propositions stating 'I believe that p'. The former, as well as the clause 'that p' of the latter, may be true-false, beyond truth and falsity, absurd, etc.; while the latter as a whole, unless the individual who states it lies, are always true, as Guido Kung has also pointed out. Now if, for theoretical purposes, we make this distinction between the two uses of 'belief', i.e. between the act, or 'feeling', or 'disposition', of believing and its object-the content itself, believed to be so and so, and the proposition believed to be true -, things seem to be more complex than they appear at first glance: A belief, i.e. what someone believes, is shaped by himself on the ground of premises of quite varying epistemic specificity, which means that an act of believing creates its object, and consequently that a belief is bound to him who shapes it, i.e. it is his xxiv PROLOGUE belief and it is effective so long as he has it. This is the reason why a belief expressed in the form of a proposition 'I believe that p', i.e. expressed by him who has shaped or 'has' it, is always true. A bit of knowledge, on the other hand, or a proposition of knowledge, is put forth in relation to something that is, and is so and so, independently of the individual who puts forth the relevant proposition. This is the object of knowledge- what is to be known in a given case- or what the knowing individual wishes to know for a given purpose or reason, i.e. always within a given context. Still, (someone's) beliefs as well as the products of the complex activ• ity of knowing (something), if worded, appear, both of them, as propo• sitions. Thus both propositions of belief and propositions of knowledge, considered by somebody else than those who put them forth - by a spectator, but not the epistemologist - may become for him an object of belief (in their truth), as well as an object of knowledge. The distinc• tion, which Cohen tries to make, is the difference of a proposition p as an object of belief and as an object of knowledge, still only from the viewpoint of someone's relationships to a proposition p. Still, what he looks at, when he tries "to clarify the nature of scientific knowledge"• and consequently to distinguish what he calls 'acceptance' from belief -is nevertheless the 'acceptance' of a given scientific community con• cerning what knowledge is. To make a proposition or bit of knowledge an object of knowledge, would be to evaluate it from different viewpoints, the first step being the attempt to verify it, i.e. to test on one's own account the connection of this proposition or claim with what it is about; while to make a proposition of knowledge object of one's own belief-as in the proposition 'I believe that p'- would be to take it for granted or to accept its truth and use it without any attempt to test it. On the other hand, to tum a proposition expressing someone's belief (which created its object) into an object of knowledge, would be to evaluate it from different viewpoints, and, first of all to look for its 'ground' and evaluate it epistemically, i.e. to look for the premises wherefrom it was shaped or deduced, and to look at their epistemic specificity; while its becoming an object of belief, would be that someone takes it for granted or accepts it as true, i.e. it would mean that it has become valid or determining for the individual who accepts it as 'true'. Thus it appears that both a proposition of knowledge and a proposi• tion expressing someone's belief concerning a given issue, may become PROLOGUE XXV objects of others' believing as well as of others' acceptance, indepen• dently of their epistemic specificities. When someone states 'I know that p', "he implicitly declares his own [intended] knowing relationship to the proposition that p", still not necessarily a factual knowing rela• tionship with the object of the proposition p, necessary for testing and affirming the truth of that given p. From the above considerations it follows that it is not possible to differentiate between 'belief' and 'acceptance', in the way that Cohen does, unless we accept one given criterion ofknowledge which equates 'knowledge' with 'truth', understood as the consensual acceptance of a scientific community, i.e. as propositions or systems of propositions empirically verified or corroborated, for which there is no 'reasonable' reason to doubt their truth. Thus rather than his distinction between 'belief' and 'acceptance'. Cohen's differentiation between believing the truth of a proposition and accepting its truth, understood as a differentiation between making any given proposition an object of belief and an object of knowledge, appears to be an important contribution to the concerns of the Seminar. Ernest Sosa's paper 'Back to Basics' may be considered as an imme• diate expression of the aim of the Seminar, if his call, or the issue to which epistemologists are invited 'to go back', is the question "how are basic propositions (the p's themselves) put forth?", and not only "how does an individual-subject get direct, foundational knowledge?". His criticism of the three approaches to the question of 'founda• tional knowledge' allows such an understanding. Yet his "alternative approach", that "one has direct foundational knowledge when one is right not just by accident but by means of a non-inferential faculty which enables one to form beliefs on the matter in question with a high success ratio"8 makes me have some reservations concerning the pos• sibility of understanding his 'call' in the former way. This is the reason why I shall confine myself only to a few provisional observations. Sosa calls our attention to the 'non-inferentiality' of the human activ• ity, which puts forth 'foundational knowledge', and this is one main contribution to the question of the Seminar. Still, if we take into account what, according to Sosa, the 'non-inferential faculty' enables the know• ing individual to do which is "to form beliefs", we can see that Sosa on the one hand does not restrict 'belief' only to 'believing' the truth of a 'proposition', but that on the other hand he equates 'belief' with xxvi PROLOGUE

'knowledge': to him "to know is to believe through a [non-inferential] faculty or intellectual virtue"8• But can one determine how 'high' is 'the ratio of success' of a belief he has formed, without accepting a certain criterion for 'testing' it? And what could 'success' mean in this context, besides the conformity of 'beliefs' to this given criterion? These are, to my mind, among others, questions, which need further scrutiny, if his 'call' is expected to be fruitful. What Arda Denkel in his paper 'Experience, Order and Cause' attempts to do, is to defend against skeptics and 'epistemists', the pos• sibility of knowing the 'external reality', i.e. against those who have logical doubts about it. He tries to persuade them in this respect, by calling their attention to an 'inconsistency' or 'incoherence' of 'mini• mal realism', i.e. of the acceptance that there is 'out there' (out of the mind) a world or reality, which 'causes' our perceptions, but of which we can never be sure that it corresponds to them, in the following way: If we accept that "(A] the content of experience is made of a rich manifold of elements related mutually in a highly orderly way", i.e. if we accept it as true; and if we accept that "[B] the cause of experience (percep• tion) is an external reality" (which is an answer to the question 'why we perceive?', not to the question 'how we perceive?', i.e. an explanation of experience), it follows that we have also to accept that "[C] the order, variety and coherence of the content of experience (perception) reflects the order, variety and coherence of the external reality, which is said to cause it"9 • But if one does not accept any of the premises? This is not Denkel 's problem, since he deals here with 'minimal realism'. If this reasoning is accepted, then "it cannot be the case that the external reality causing our perceptions is unknowable, since accord• ingly experience reflects just that world" 10• This external world exists as the object of perception, and independently of consciousness and is the cause of experience. Thus, if we accept that 'external reality' is the 'cause' of perception, human knowledge (logically) must represent it. But "what about objects of knowledge, which do not belong to the external world?" a skeptic could ask further. I am not a skeptic, nor a skepticist. This is the reason why I shall con• fine myself only to point to Denkel's main contribution to the issue of the Seminar: this is his calling our attention to perception as the most basic act of the complex activity of knowing - perhaps not only for knowing the 'external reality', but also all kinds of objects of knowledge, since PROLOGUE XXVll perception makes possible any objectification whatever and constitutes the precondition of all other acts, which, in different complexes, appear to constitute knowing as a human activity. For epistemology, perception is the act that makes us aware of the relationality of knowing. This relationality of knowing constitutes the focus of Venant Cauchy's paper bearing the title 'Some Thoughts on the Nature of Knowing': knowing is "a relational act, if it is anything at all. In other words for there to be 'knowing', there must be something that knows, a knower or subject of knowing and a known or object"11 • These are the conditions of knowing, or, this is the 'nature' of knowing as a complex human activity. Error and illusion, which underlie skeptical and some other episte• mological attitudes, have to do with given 'acts of knowing' of given individuals in given conditions, not with knowing as a human activity in general; and are also among the special issues of the epistemological inquiry connected with the activity of knowing. Thus we see that the question underlying Cauchy's considerations is "what is knowing?", not "whether knowing ... is possible" or "what can we know without doubting its truth?" or similar questions, which we find at the origin of some widespread theories. "The view prevalent in modem approaches to knowledge according to which entities other than the knowing subject cannot be the immediate objects of knowledge appears preposterous in the strict epistemological sense of that word" 12: this is what Cauchy tries to show in his paper. The extreme position of this prevalent view is the epistemological attitude to which Guido Kling has called our attention, that the only thing of which one may not doubt the truth, is that one 'believes that p'. What we observe in such approaches is a confusion of the know• er in general with the epistemologist, a confusion which is probably inevitable unless the object of knowing and its specificity is not kept as a dark point while looking at the human activity of knowing, i.e. its 'relational acts'. Thus an inquiry into and analysis of the complex human activity of knowing appears to be a prerequisite for framing a concept of knowledge more suitable to base ourselves on in dealing with problems in other disciplines, as well as with global and other practical problems. This relationality of knowing, and the connection of knowledge as the product of this relation established by the knower with an independent, objectified issue, i.e. the connection of a piece of knowledge to its object, xxviii PROLOGUE has to be distinguished from what K.R. Popper calls the 'objectivity of knowledge' or 'objective knowledge' in order to distinguish it from 'subjective knowledge', i.e. knowing. The genitive in the expression 'objectivity of knowledge', taken inde• pendently of a given context, can be understood as a genetivus subjec• tivus and as a genetivus objectivus as well, i.e. it is possible to understand it as 'knowledge of(related to) an object' and also as 'knowledge' itself as a kind of object, the latter meaning that knowledge has an existence independent of those who put it forth. Popper understands this term in the latter sense. Pieces of such objective knowledge constitute what Popper, "for want of a better name"13 calls 'third world' and later 'world 3', whose 'objectivity' or 'autonomy' constitutes the issue of Giirol Irzik 's paper. This 'third world' is "the world of objective contents ofthought, espe• cially of scientific and poetic thoughts and of works of art". "Among the inmates of [his] 'third world' are, more especially, theoretical sys• tems; but inmates just as important are problems and problem situations. And ... the most important inmates of this world are critical arguments, and what may be called ... the state of a discussion or the state of a critical argument; and, of course, the contents of journals, books, and libraries " 14' all products of the human mind, put forth at a given time in one way or another, which consequently can be objectified, i.e. become objects of others' knowledge, as is everything in world 1, while, accord• ing to Popper, this cannot happen with world 2. This is Popper's attempt to show the ontic independence, or, in his own words, the 'ontological status', of 'a kind' of human product and the autonomy of the area it constitutes - the autonomy of world 3. Its 'inmates' are autonomous, like the 'inmates' of world 1. Still the inmates of world 3 exist independently of given individuals, but not independently of the human species, as the inmates of world 1 do. Thus, though Popper's view of world 3 and its distinction from world 1, appears to be quite problematic from the ontological viewpoint, when considered only epistemologically, i.e. in its distinction from world 2, it appears to be one important way of calling our attention not only to the independence of knowledge from its producer, which is never• theless a specificity shared by all kinds of human products, but also to the independence of the object of knowledge from the knowing sub• ject, an independence which distinguishes the activity of knowing, as a relational activity, from other activities of the human mind. PROLOGUE xxix Still, if I am not mistaken, though Popper considers various onto logi• cally different products of the human mind as 'inmates' of world 3 (e.g. theories and the works of art), he frames a concept of knowledge - of objective knowledge- equated with only 'scientific' knowledge, i.e. he shares the framework or concept of knowledge of logical empiricism. Thus while 'objectivity', when qualifying knowledge, means for Pop• per, 'independence of the knowing subject', when it qualifies 'science' - in 'scientific objectivity' - it means 'intersubjective validity': "sci• entific objectivity" he says "can be described as the intersubjectivity of scientific method"15 and "ironically enough, objectivity is closely bound up with the social aspect of scientific method, with the fact that science and scientific objectivity ... result from the cooperation of many scientists. Scientific ob;ectivity can be described as the intersubjectivity of scientific method"1 • The 'objectivity' of scientific knowledge con• sists in its independence from those who produce it, consequently in the possibility of becoming itself the object of others' knowledge. Is this not also a specificity of all kinds of propositions, be they products of the relational knowing activity or other activities of the human mind and even of other human mental capacities? In Popper's epistemology we see in its limits an epistemology which has not settled accounts with ontological questions and assumes only one kind of being. Giirol Irzik "believe[s] that if ontological autonomy [in Popper] is replaced by what [Irzik] call[s] logical autonomy, we get a more coherent picture which puts the emfhasis where it belongs - on the objectivity of scientific knowledge"1 • In saying this, Irzik seems to look at 'a place' different from that which Popper looks at when he speaks of the autonomy of world 3 and the objectivity of knowledge. What Popper looks at is (a) the epistemological difference between what he calls objective knowledge and subjective knowledge, the latter being bound to the knowing subject and (b) the similarity of the former knowledge with the 'inmates' of world 1. The autonomy of world 3 consists in its independence from the knowing subject, not from what he calls world 1. Popper's world 3 is not 'somewhere there', 'outside' .or independent of world 1. The 'inmates' of world 3 - all products of the human mind, scientific knowledge included-are independent only of those who have put them forth. Irzik, on the other hand, when he says that the autonomy of world 3 is not an 'ontological' but a 'logical' autonomy, appears to look at the ontological difference of the 'inmates' of the first and third XXX PROLOGUE worlds, still without presupposing, as also Popper does, such a differ• ence. * The epistemological questions in the Meno, treated in a totally unso• phisticated language, on which, J. David G. Evans focuses in his paper on 'Meno's Puzzle', seem to be - at least to Evans' and my own mind, though for different reasons - much more relevant to issues dis• cussed in present-day epistemology such as 'foundational knowledge', belief, acceptance, explanation, justification etc., than they appear at first glance. 'Meno's puzzle' is in fact no 'puzzle' for Socrates, who never loses sight of his object and tries to remind those with whom he is in dialogue, that they should not miss their objects: 1rov a7ro(3>.i1rct~, he often asks them. _ The clai~ that "ovK apa E(J'TW (TJT€tV avBpwm.~ OVT€ 0 oi&v, ovrc o 1-L~ oi&v"11 , i.e. the claim of the impossibility of starting inquiry, is puzzling, only so long as he who deals with it as a complex dialectical problem, in the Aristotelian sense, keeps himself within the limits drawn for him by its justification, i.e. so long as he accepts the 'truth' of its premises, but is not inclined to accept the logical conclusion which follows. What Meno expects Socrates to do is to refute the impossibility of starting inquiry, and consequently of knowing the VOTJTci, which are a specific kind of objects of knowledge, i.e. of knowing what virtue, shape, justice, analogy etc. are. Still Socrates takes over the onus probandi of his acceptance of the possibility of starting inquiry and shows, by an experiment, the origin of this acceptance, or the ground of the knowledge of this possibility; but before he does that, i.e. before his attempt to show how one may become able to start inquiring into the VOTJTci and know them, quite unexpectedly he narrates a myth he "aKryKo[c~ rCxP avfJpwv T€ Kat rvvatKwv (J'o¢wv 7rcp£ ra Bc'ia 7rP_cirw~.ra" 1 , from some priests and prie_stesses "o(J'at~ J.LcJ.LiATJK€ 7rcp£ wv J.Lcraxnpi( ovrat >.61ov otot~ r'dvat &86vat"18 • This is the myth of the immortality of the soul, by which these priests justify their claim that "&'iv ... w~ O(J'tWTaTa 8w{3twvat rov (3iov". 19 This myth constitutes one of the premises on PROLOGUE xxxi which Socrates bases his own myth - what in the relevant literature is called 'Plato's theory of recollection', a naming that always makes me wonder whether Plato's ~pecialists have read the following sentence in the Phaedo: "ro J.,tEV ovv rou:xvra fnu~xvpi(aaBw, ovrw<; ii'xcw, w<; f:1w 8tc>..iJ>..vBa, ov 1rpbrct vovv ii'xovn av8pi"20. By this myth Socrates wishes to persuade Meno to go on trying to find what virtue is. To do this he attempts first to persuade him of the possibility of knowing the voryrci:, not of the possibility of starting inquiry- in a way very 'familiar' to him (~an~ avviJBcwv), as he had already done in connection with the question "what is colour?", when he answered the question "in the way that Gorgias does"21 • Socrates tries to persuade Meno that knowing the voryrci: is possible, by giving an 'expla• nation' why individuals possess this possibility, i.e. by 'explaining' the cause of a possibility: of something which, according to its ontological specificity, cannot be an object of explanation. Thus Socrates by this myth, which 'explains' the origin of the possibility of the individuals to know the voryrci:, secures for Meno- i.e. for somebody who accepts its truth - a premise from which it can be concluded that knowing the voryrci: is not impossible. The reasoning is the following: Given that "h 1/JVX~ a()ci:vaTO<; otaa ~at 7rOAACx~t<; "'(C''(OVVia ~at f:wpa~vi:a ~at TCt f:v()O:bE ~at TOV ,, Atbov 7rCxVTa XPiJJ.-taTa, ov~ E:anv 0 T/, OV J.,tcf.,tCx()rJ~cV" and given that "rryc; cpVOcW<; OV"'f"'(cVOV<; OVOrJ<;, ... ovbev ~w>..vct f:'v f.iOVOV avaf.iVrJa()ivra, o8~ ~-tci:Bryatv ~a>..ovaw crvBpw7rot, T~>..>..a 7rCxVTa aVTOV CxVcVpciV, f:O:v TL<;av8pcio<; h~a/, It~ a7ro~ci:J.,tV[J (ryrwv"22 • This possibility exists, because we already possess the knowledge of the voryrci:. In this attempt to 'explain' why knowing the voryrci: is possible we observe a confusion of an ontic possibility with a logical one, as well as of the ways of putting forth claims about these two kinds of the possible: the implication of the theoretical conclusion that individuals have the possibility to know (that they can know) the voryrci: is that one should not follow the eristic claim that starting inquiry is impossible, in other words that one has to accept that starting inquiry is possible. If someone, like Meno, wishes to have an explanation where there is no room for explanation (why individuals can know the voryrci:), i.e. if he asks for reasons in order to believe that individuals possess such a possibility, a myth will do. If he believes this, he can also conclude and believe that starting inquiry is not impossible, i.e. that inquiry into the xxxii PROLOGUE voryra can be carried out. Ergo: If inquiry into the voryra is possible, one must inquire into them. What Socrates does just at this point, is to compare two beliefs con• cerning the possibility of starting inquiring into the vo?Jra, and by narrating that myth he tries to secure for Meno another belief, from which he can deduce that 'must'. As for him: as an epistemologist he knows that knowing the voryra is possible and how this is possible, and as an educator he knows how people can become able to know them. The place wherefrom he himself deduces that 'must' is this knowledge of his. What he believes is not these possibilities, but that inquiry could make people better. For him it is sufficient that people start inquir• ing, no matter whether they believe or know these possibilities: "K-O:t ra J.dV aAAo: oVK, av ?ravv V7r€p rov_ AO/OV OttUXVPU70:fJ.L?JV' OTt 8' oioJ.LcVOt Oc'iv (,'I)Tc'iV a J.LTJ Tt<; oiOc, {JcAriov<; av clJ.LcV K-O:L avOptK-WTcpot K-~L ~TTOV aPfOL ry ci oioiJ.Lc8o: a J.LTJ k1rtUTaJ.Lc8o: J.LTJO€ 8vvo:rov ci..vo:t c~pc'iv J.LTJO€ 8c'iv (?Jrc'iv, 7rcp'l rovrov 1ravv av OtO:J.LO:XOiJ.LTJV' ci.. oio<; Tc c't?]V' K,O:t AO,'i) K,Q:t 'i P!vl'23 • For this he does in fact everything, he even invents a myth, the myth of recol• lection, in order to persuade Meno- a myth which caused a 'classical' misunderstanding of Plato's epistemology. One starts inquiry not when faced with a puzzle but with a problem - an a1ropio: in Greek -, i.e. when one becomes, or is made, aware that one does not know something, which one either believes, or is sure etc. that one knows, or something that one has never reflected on. Puzzles lead to skepticism and inertia while a1ropio:t lead to inquiry and may lead to knowledge: Evans' main contribution to the Seminar appears to be his calling our attention to the way that Plato treats the puzzle, and consequently to the epistemological difference between a puzzle and a problem - a very important difference for understanding Plato's epistemology. This is an epistemology in which, probably for the first time, we see an attempt to differentiate among kinds of knowledge according to the specificity of the known. In the Meno, Plato for the first time gives examples of the distinction among these kinds, which he will elaborate mainly in the IIoAtrcio:24: (a) his distinction between two kinds of voryra and the ways to know them: to know what shape is, a way which appears to be what later Husser! will call 'phenomenological reduction', and to know how one can get the double of a quadrangle, and (b) the distinction between true belief or opinion and science. These are PROLOGUE xxxiii among the epistemological preconditions of the possibility of knowing the V07JTa. For the moment, in the Meno, he can only say that these are different: b6~ O:i, even aA7]0E: ~<; b6~ O:i and E7r UJT~ JL7] are different. What is the difference? For the moment Socrates can express only an ciKo:(]"£0:. But "on bE E(]"Tt TE: aAAO~OV opOiJ b6~o: KO:t E1fi(]"T~JL7], ov 7ravv JLOi boKW TOVTO ci,Ka(EiV, ~)..)..' c'(7rE:p Tl QAAO

Thus while the first - i.e. the ontic specificity of different objects of intention- appears to be a promising way to differentiate between kinds of knowledge, the second and consequently the third, appear to need further scrutiny: People wish or intend to know "how things are", "what [other] things mean" and "how things ought to be": Here to 'wish to know' could mean 'to wish to find out' or 'to wish to learn' from others, whatever the intended kind of object might be. Let us confine ourselves here to the case of the 'ought to be': Here what people could wish to know might be- or the 'what' here might mean- (a) what one should do in general, (b) what one should do in a given case and also (c) whether a proposi• tion expressing an 'ought to be' connected either with (a) or (b), is, to use Agazzi's expression, what really 'ought to be'. The first concerns the question of deduction of norms, the second concerns the question of one's finding out what is appropriate (from different viewpoints) to do in a given real case, while the third concerns the question of eval• uating general norms (ought propositions). To answer these questions presupposes, in fact, quite different knowing 'procedures'. Here, again I shall confine myself to saying a few words concerning only the case of evaluation of norms30, since the substantial contribution of Agazzi 's paper to the aim of the Seminar appears to be his calling our attention to the difference between norms and knowledge about norms (or between what he calls 'normative' and 'deontic truth'), in connection with which he says that the problem "envisaged ... is not that of correctly understanding a norm, but of saying whether what the norm prescribes is "good" or "bad" (or something similar), i.e. whether it [the norm] is how it "ought to be'"31 • Still, to do this depends also on not losing sight of the fact that the evaluation of a norm necessarily presupposes one's "correctly understanding" or knowing what the prescribed is or means. The first concerns the prescribed content of the concept, the second the ethical specificity of the prescribed content. This is the problem of evaluation of a norm - not of its deduction and/or justification-, i.e. the objectification of an already existing norm, and consequently it is closely related to problems faced in the case of different norms on the same issue, contradicting each other. The question of evaluation of given norms is a crucial question and directly connected with the aim of the Seminar; still it is an issue not sufficiently dealt with in philosophy. To make such an evaluation presupposes first to try to inquire into and answer at least the questions XXXVlll PROLOGUE of what a norm is32, what kinds of norms exist, as well as presupposing philosophical knowledge concerning what evaluating a norm is. In other words it presupposes a distinction between norms of evaluation (i.e. between general 'value judgements') and practical rules, principles etc. and their kinds, in spite of the fact that they can be easily translated into each other; it also presupposes inquiry into, differentiation among, and analysis of, the ways or modes of evaluation - i.e. differentiation among what I call value ascription, value imputation and right-wrong evaluation, the latter not to be done without keeping in mind the ontic and/or epistemic specificity of the object of evaluation33 • All these are different objects of philosophical inquiry, a consider• able part of which constitutes issues of Ethics as a cognitive philo• sophical discipline, where knowledge put forth is related to a special kind of objects, and consequently it can be verified or falsified; while norms themselves, though declarative-meaningful propositions, have no 'object', but are deduced from premises of different epistemic speci• fities, and by different kinds of reasoning. Thus, though norms - the so-called 'ethical propositions' -do not express 'feelings' as logical empiricism claims, they are, in fact, neither true nor false, but are only epistemically justifiable, or not justifiable, in ways differing according to their epistemic specificities. Propositions expressing a norm - of behaviour or action, but not of evaluation -, though they are not verifiable or falsifiable, can become objects of knowledge- objects of right evaluation-, and become so with respect to different theoretical and practical 'interests'; also the knowledge put forth in connection with such a norm may be true or false. Still norms may also become - as any proposition may become - objects of belief and acceptance of individuals, in theory and in life. Philosophical knowledge of norms, provided that we understand from it a cognitive evaluation of existing or proposed norms, appears to be an important part of the philosophical knowledge we need for decision and action in private and public life, and which we greatly need in a 'democratic society'. * Also the focus of Richard T. De George's paper is 'ethical knowl• edge': whether there can be such a 'knowledge', since there are claims concerning its impossibility, and if there can be, what this knowledge PROLOGUE xxxix is. The dispute concerning the possibility of such a knowledge "does depend importantly on what one considers ethics and morality, and on what one considers knowledge, to be".34 This is a sentence which states the heart of the matter, and one of the observations that made us organize this Seminar. He discusses three centers of debate - the realist-antirealist debate, the foundationalist-anti-foundationalist debate and the relativist-anti• relativist debate -, on the basis of which, i.e. on the assumption that this knowledge has to do with the question of right and wrong, or the question "how should one act?", he tries to find out where he can look in order to answer the question what 'ethical knowledge' is. There is something, says De George, that people call morality. This 'morality' or 'ethics', whatever it be, is something which is not inde• pendent of the human species, consequently its knowledge cannot be know ledge of something existing independently of human beings- like physical objects exist. Morality is a human or social fact, about which, at least, we know "what actions people take to be right or wrong, moral and immoral; they consider to be virtuous or vicious"35 . This is a fact which includes "prescriptions as well as descriptions" and which "ethi• cal theorists" attempt to understand and explain. Most moral philosophers are interested in the meaning of morality "which they find people generally holding, which involves a claim to universality. An action [in a given situation] is ri~ht for me only if it would be right for anyone else similarly placed'' 6. Here we see that 'universality' -understood as universalizability in the Kantian sense• constitutes a characteristic of single given actions of individuals, which they perform in a unique situation, i.e. not the characteristic of given norms or principles which are found in every society. Still De George assumes universality to be the specificity of norms "that go to make up what can be called ethical knowledge as such, that demand recognition no matter what theo~ one holds or what one believes the relation of ought and is to be"3 . These are (a) "certain norms or rules that are found in every society because they are necessary for the existence of any society as a society"36 and (b) "moral imper• atives" to act in a certain way ... embedded in certain moral practices (such as promises), which involve moral obligations37• They constitute "moral knowledge" and are different from (c) the norms of "conven• tional morality", with which "moral knowledge" could not be equated, xl PROLOGUE because, among others, "an important aspect of moral knowledge is knowledge of the role of moral reasoning in moral practice"38• Here we see that, according to De George, 'ethical knowledge'- the area of 'ethical knowledge'- consists of norms found in every society, no matter wherefrom they are deduced, and of imperatives embedded in practices involving moral obligations. This is how De George frames the concept of 'ethical know ledge'. Thus 'ethical knowledge', from an 'objective' viewpoint, would consist of a group of principles, rules and imperatives selected by ethical theo• rists among other non-universal ones, and from a subjective viewpoint would mean someone's 'knowing' these principles and imperatives. Then the question remains: Can such a selection avoid the criticism of the relativistic approaches, as De George thinks? And a more impor• tant question: if 'ethical knowledge' is made to denote such a body of principles, what, in fact, does 'knowledge' mean in this context? The main contribution of De George's paper to the aim of the Seminar appears to be his calling our attention to morality as a fact of the human ethical world, i.e. of the world of human relations and actions, which is nevertheless much broader and much more complex than the "rules and practices that govern and facilitate and make possible certain kinds of human interaction called society"39; or it is a human phenomenon constituting only a part of the issues which Ethics, as a philosophical (cognitive) discipline- and not as a body of principles, rules etc.- deals with and puts forth (verifiable-falsifiable) knowledge. * Kwasi Wiredu, in his paper on 'Knowledge, Truth and Fallibility', attempts to show the "inconsistency of relativism" and the difference between 'certainty' of knowledge and 'necessary truths'- a very impor• tant distinction, indeed. According to the relativist's position, as expressed by Meiland, says Wiredu, "judgments, knowledge, even truth, are relative to conceptual and evaluative frameworks; and ... there is no way of stepping outside every framework to make a non-framework-dependent evaluation"40 • Still, Wiredu observes, and in a very accurate way, indeed, the relativist by this very claim of his "has already accomplished the feat of 'stepping outside' all conceptual and evaluative framework" 41 , but he has not stayed there: he generalized and came to the conclusion that "there is PROLOGUE xli no way of stepping outside every framework to make a non-framework• dependent evaluation"41 • Put in other words: what Meiland 's relativist does is to look at or objectify only what people do when they explain, interpret or evaluate something by applying an acceptance or a belief of theirs, i.e. when they "impute value" to something, which is only one mode of evaluation. Still losing sight or ignoring the other modes of evaluation does not prevent the relativist from generalizing it about "judgments, knowledge and truth" in general and concluding that it is impossible "to step out" of given frameworks. This is also the reason why such a relativistic claim concerning knowledge, is not only inconsistent- since he who makes it "has already stepped out" of given frameworks, as Wiredu says, because he intends to state a fact -, but it is also false as a generalization, since this claim, if considered to express the specificity only of one mode of evaluation is true, but false if considered to express a specificity of all modes of evaluation. This is a generalization, due to a series of confusions of the knowing and evaluative activities that people carry out in life with those of the epistemologist or philosopher, and consequently it loses sight of their respective different objectifications. This is also the case with the evaluation of given conceptual frame• works themselves and not only with the evaluation of other objects through such frameworks. "It should be noted" adds Wiredu "that in order to evaluate a given conceptual framework or deliverance there• from, we do not ... need to step outside our own framework; what we do is to step inside the framework in question"41 , to understand it ("to learn its language") and compare it with our own, in which case we may "find good reasons to step out of it ... ". What Wrredu describes here, is a vague or incomplete expression of the cognitive evaluation of something, or of the activity of 'right evaluation' as I call it42• The acute criticism, which the epistemologist Wiredu exercises upon relativism is based, I dare say, on his looking simultaneously (a) at what the epistemological relativist looks at when he claims that "knowledge, judgment, even truth" is relative to a conceptual and evaluative frame• work, which is what people do when they "impute value" to something; and (b) at what people do when they evaluate something- e.g. a concep• tual framework - somehow as in the above mentioned way. As a result of this he refutes the claim of the impossibility of a non-framework• dependent evaluation. xlii PROLOGUE The way Wiredu refutes epistemological relativism makes us aware, among others, of the epistemological difference between contradictory 'conclusions' connected with human activities of knowing: a theoretical conclusion about the impossibility of carrying out a knowing activity, reached from premises obtained by observations of many singular facts; and a conclusion about the possibility of carrying it out, reached on the ground of knowledge obtained by looking at how this activity is carried out in its single cases, i.e. through the philosophical knowledge of that activity as a human activity43 • Thus Wiredu 's criticism of epistemological relativism constitutes itself an example of a 'non-framework-dependent' epistemological crit• icism, which is nevertheless dependent upon the objects of the relevant epistemological knowledge. These objects are certain activities, though undifferentiated activities, of knowing. Teo Grunberg's paper on 'Long Run Consistency of Beliefs as Cri• terion of Empirical Know ledge', on the other hand, constitutes a typical example of a logical treatment of an epistemological question, that of the criterion (of truth) of 'empirical know ledge'. What the epistemologist Teo Grunberg wishes to do, is to justify logically- to demonstrate the validity of-a' criterion', which he accepts to be the criterion also of 'empirical knowledge' and thus to provide an epistemic criterion, which anyone could use or apply in order to decide whether he or she may accept, or justify, that the 'beliefs' which constitute his or her 'system of beliefs' are 'true'. Where is Grunberg looking when he formulates this 'criterion' as "long run ostensible consistency of the system of beliefs of a rational cognitive agent"44, and considers it to be "the ultimate truth conductive standard of (epistemic) justification, as well as the criterion of empirical knowledge"? And on which ground does he justify this 'criterion'? Grunberg looks at what he calls "the behaviour of a rational cognitive agent", which agent he describes as an "agent whose objective is to maximize truths and minimize errors in his system of beliefs"44• This is an agent whose "rationality ... is reflected only in the way he changes his system of beliefs"45 , by the principles of "expansion and contraction"• a system which includes also metabeliefs. In other words, he looks at the 'behaviour' of somebody who modifies -or as an "ideal rational cognitive agent" has to modify -"his system of beliefs" in the sense that he changes his beliefs as individual components of this system, but probably he does not look at the beliefs constituting PROLOGUE xliii the backbone of the system as a whole. Still he looks at these changes on the ground of his acceptance concerning one's "being rational" in this respect: it is rational to change a belief, if that belief is proved to be an error, ergo: "a rational cognitive agent is an idealized cognitive agent whose behaviour is designed to attain the objective ... [of] maximiz[ing] truths and minimiz[ing] errors in his system of beliefs, as quickly as possible and with least efforts"46 . Such a cognitive agent has to test his beliefs, i.e. to use a criterion, which will make it possible for him to accept a belief of his as true, or, if it does not conform to this criterion, to reject it. This criterion is, according to Grunberg, "the long run ostensible consistency" of a belief within a system of beliefs, i.e. when a belief remains stable or does not change, without hindering the acceptance of other beliefs from exogenous sources or of beliefs which are inferred from some of the agent's present beliefs. Thus, Grunberg concludes: "If a is a rational cognitive agent, then the [long run approximate] LOA -consistency of Sa at time t probabilis• tically implies the approximate truthfulness of Sa at time t"47 • Thus he puts forth his criterion of truth; and this is "a (meta)belief express• ing a methodological rule of acceptance [for] the correctness (i.e. the reliability or truth conductiveness) of the rule"47 • This implies, according to Grunberg, that "a rational cognitive agent a is (objectively) justified in believing at time t that p if (i) pis local?' justified at t with respect to Sa and (ii) Sa has LOA-consistency at t"4 • Then 'to know that p' would mean that "a rational cognitive agent a globally knows that his system of (empirical) beliefs Sa is approximately truthful at t in case (i) Sa is globally ~ustified at t2, (ii) Sa has at t SL• consistency, and (iii) Sa is truthful" . This is how Grunberg defines knowledge. A 'cognitive agent', provided that he is rational, may use this 'criterion' in order to be sure of and accept the truth of his beliefs, or in order to justify his beliefs: since to know is to have "justified true belief[ s] with undefeated justification" 49• This is also a criterion that all theories of justification (foundation• alist and coherentist theories) can accept, since this is, he thinks, what "rational cognitive agents" have to do in order to accept the truth of their beliefs, or, those who do this are rational cognitive agents. 'Con• sistency' of a belief within the system of beliefs ofsomeone, under these conditions, can be considered as the proof of its truth. This was what Grunberg wished to demonstrate: i.e., the 'truth' of a metabelief of his, since this is the way that rational cognitive agents ideally behave, or xliv PROLOGUE the way that they have to behave. This is a metabelief of his, which he accepts, after he has 'justified' it logically. Put forth in an unsophisticated language, what GrUnberg says can be worded as follows: if new experience does not cause a change in someone's (in your) system of beliefs for a long time, provided that he is (you are) a rational cognitive agent, he (you) may accept that his (your) belief- what he or you believe to be true (that p) - is true: "Long run ostensible consistency of beliefs is the criterion of empirical know ledge". Thus what GrUnberg does, is to define the terms of this acceptance of his and to reason in order to justify his acceptance - i.e. in order to demonstrate the truth or validity of his acceptance that "a cognitive agent ... whose behaviour is designed to ... to maximize truths and min• imize errors in his system of beliefs, as quickly as possible and with least efforts"50 changes (i.e. must change) his beliefs if new experience or "testimony of others, especially of experts" makes it necessary and accepts (i.e. must accept) "beliefs which are inferred ... on the evidence of some of [his] present beliefs"51 . By doing this, GrUnberg gives us a typical example of an epistemology without "object of knowledge". * The starting point of H. Odera Oruka's paper on 'Cultural Funda• mentals. Obstacles in Philosophical Dialogue', as also its title betrays, is mainly an ethical-practical one. Anthropological-practical concerns will be the mark also of the other papers to be discussed in the following pages. 'Systems of beliefs' or systems of' cultural fundamentals', if accepted as 'true', constitute a big obstacle in 'dialogue' and also in philosophical dialogue. This is an observation of Odera Oruka's, who understands by 'cultural fundamentals' "a concept, a style of language, a method of work or a psychological expectation that helps to mark one culture from another"52 In spite of these obstacles, dialogue and philosophical dialogue are possible. "In philosophy, different perspectives can have dialogue only if each of the promoters of one perspective appreciates and respects the seriousness of the perspective of a different person or group"53 • This is a widespread acceptance. "But then we shall need to have a referee PROLOGUE xlv to conduct and judge the dialogue"54 he adds immediately, and thus somehow leads this acceptance into an impasse. Still a "claim if true, is true not just in [a given] culture, but for all cultures"54 he says, which epistemologically amounts to saying that the truth of a claim does not depend upon perspectives or upon a given method or approach. What Odera Oruka looks at when he puts forth this negative statement, seems to be on the one hand given "methods in Western philosophy" - probably "the scientific conception of the world" - and the claims about "life-affairs" put forth "intuitively", by his Sages, claims which may be true or false. They are put forth by intuition, which is "a form of mental skill which helps the mind to extrapolate from experience and come to establish extra-statistical inductive truths or it enables the mind to make a correct/plausible logical inference without any established or known rules of procedure"55 . These 'inductive' claims- or 'truths' as he calls them- remind us of Plato's opOat 86~aL, which play a role not inferior to the role of E7rWr7JJ.LTJ in "life affairs", as Socrates says in the Meno56 • Odera Oruka's 'description' of how such claims concerning life• affairs are put forth, appears to be an attempt to point at the way how and wherefrom a kind of opinions or norms- whose most typical examples are proverbs- are deduced 57. This, together with his calling our attention to the fact that the 'truth' of a claim does not depend on who has put it forth or how it was put forth, may be considered a noteworthy contribution to the aim of the Seminar. That different 'philosophical fundamentals' on the same issue con• stitute an obstacle in philosophical dialogue is also Zindfich Zeleny's observation, who in his programmatic paper 'Analytical and/or Dialec• tical Thinking' wishes to eliminate such an obstacle, by attempting to show "how analytical and dialectical thinking are related within the framework of the dialectico-materialist type of modem rationality"58 . Zeleny does not juxtapose 'dialectical thinking', i.e. the dialectical approach to reality, with 'metaphysical thinking', as is usually done by classical dialectical materialism, but with 'analytical thinking', which, according to its definition in Zeleny's paper, is "based on abstract iden• tity" and reminds us of Hegel's 'abstract thinking'. To him, both these 'thinkings' find their proper place in different areas of human endeavour: e.g. 'analytical thinking' in issues connected with artificial intelligence, 'dialectical thinking' in issues "in the field of logico-ontological, onto• praxeological foundations of modem rationality"58 . xlvi PROLOGUE

How does Zeleny attempt to connect these two 'thinkings' which are, to his mind, both necessary for a>..rJBc:vc:tv? And first: where is he looking? He looks at the ontic specificity of what he calls "ahistorical and historical structures", which he nevertheless differentiates "from the dialectico-materialist point of view": "ahistorical structures" are, if we look at his examples, different kinds of systems "which exhibit both stability and variability"- "a variability within the framework of onto• logical priority of stable states" and which "lack irreversible processes engendering qualitative novelties"59; while "historical structures" are all kinds of irreversible Entwicklungsprozess, which occur "dialectical• ly", and consequently cannot be understood unless we approach them through "dialectical thinking", that is unless we "consider our world as it is, i.e. as self-sustaining, self-sufficient process (Selbstbewegung), in the development of which new qualities emerge that have not exist• ed before "60• In this differentiation between two 'kinds' of 'structures' assumed to 'exist' in one and the same modality ofbeing, i.e. in reality, in other words in this differentiation between existence as a process and existence as wholes of logical relations, made within the limits that the dialectical materialist approach permits, we discern an attempt to differentiate 'structures' according to their ontic specificity, an attempt which meets with, at least, two 'obstacles': the assumption of only one mode of being and consequently the acceptance of the principles of contradiction and identity as principles both of being and thinking. Thus in this differentiation between 'structures', as made by Zeleny, we see again in its limits another attempt to elaborate a 'theory' in which "objective truth is accessible to human thinking" - a 'theory' which senses an ontological difference between 'structures', but differ• entiates between 'modes of thinking'. * The role of knowledge 'in life' constitutes the main concern of Lek• torsky's, as well as Tymieniecka's and Mir6 Quesada's papers. The focus of Vladislav Lektorsky's inquiry in his paper 'Knowledge and Cultural Objects', in which the term 'cultural' is probably under• stood as the relative term of 'natural', is the question of the 'develop• ment' of 'knowledge'. To explain this 'development' he looks at the role that man-made (material) things play in this 'development', and PROLOGUE xlvii he calls this attempt of his "a new paradigm in the investigation of knowledge"61 • In Lektorsky's anthropological approach to the 'development' of 'knowledge', it is possible to distinguish two pairs of questions which he attempts to treat: (a) how knowledge is produced by individuals and by collectivities, which are two different, though interrelated, questions concerning the 'genesis' of knowledge (here understood as genetivus objectivus); and (b) how 'knowledge' develops in individuals and in history, which are two totally different questions - one concerning the 'development' of the knowing capacity of individuals, the other con• cerning the growth of knowledge (in the latter context as genetivus subjectivus). These questions, concerning in fact quite different "pro• cesses of the development of knowledge", are treated within the focus of 'cultural objects'. "The development of knowledge" he says, and I would add in history, "is closely connected with the production and the use of a special kind of things that the human being creates and interposes between himself and nature. These things can exist and function only within the sphere of intersubject relations"61 . Thus "it seems to be more productive to start analysing the problem of knowledge not by studying relations between an individual subject62 and the external world, but with the investi• gation of relations between intersubjective connections and nature"63 • These man-made things "embody" knowledge and "peculiar modes of communication". They "exist not in the consciousness of individuals but somewhere between them, in the field of their real interactions"63 • By means of these things, "human activity in all its different forms is fulfilled"63 • "Patterns of human activity emerge not as patterns of activity with objects of nature as such, but, above all, as patterns of activi~ with man-made objects carrying some social and historical meaning" 4• Still individuals or collectivities "discern" in these things "only such features as these objects reveal [to them] in [their] activity"65 . In other words: individuals discern, or know, what they objectify in, or in connection with, these things, in view of a given purpose, or in connection with a given interest of theirs. "At the outset of the formation of knowledge we find three types of activity blended together, ... : practical activity, cognition and communication"66 • Set forth in connection with the issue of our Seminar, Lektorsky calls our attention to the intentionality and contextuality of knowing, xlviii PROLOGUE i.e. to knowing as an objectification made by the 'knower'- whether an individual or a collectivity - in connection with a special given interest they take in something ontically independent from them. This point appears to be Lektorsky's main contribution to the aim of the Seminar. Still what interests him is the development of knowledge in history. For this reason he proposes that "if we attempt to analyse the patterns and norms according to which cognition is implemented, and the canons of knowledge and how they correspond to reality, the subject matter for this investigation should be sought in "the process of historically developing collective knowing activity, rather than in individual consciousness and knowledge"66• This collective knowing activity is also the place where, according to Lektorsky, one has to look in dealing with problems of knowledge. Now, how can we objectify "the historically developing collective knowing activity" in order "to analyse the patterns and norms" that Lektorsky mentions? Or: what does Lektorsky mean, by 'collective knowing activity'? He has to answer these and other such questions. In contrast to Lektorsky, who makes the knowledge of 'nature' some• how dependent upon the knowledge embodied in man-made things, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka speaks of "knowledge deposited" in "the world of life". This is a knowledge which is not dependent upon human beings and which she distinguishes from 'cognitive knowledge', in order to study the function of knowledge "within the unfolding of life't67 in general and in human life, as well as their relations. From this concep• tion of knowledge she reaches a practical conclusion concerning the human being. What she understands "to be 'knowledge' is deposited and stored in readiness for virtual activation, should an appropriate situation occur within the life-process, by already accomplished life-functions"68 , since "life is characterized by ... developmental continuity, which projects itself through discrete steps of a process, each of them accomplishing a fragment of the entire constructive project and each depositing an item of information to be used at the next stage - all of which is initiated by a germinal informative complex surging from 'pre-life' level"69 . This is the role of "knowledge within the unfolding of life", by which "self-individualization of life" occurs. Compared with this 'knowledge', cognition appears "in its essential nature as life's specifically human vehicle". It has its source "in human singular experience". PROLOGUE xlix

Thus "the role of knowledge deposited by the life system [is] to launch and maintain the course of life on preestablished tracks, and while the projection of new steps in that system still follows initial guidelines, the role and function of the cognitive knowledge is to transform the life-system"70• Cognitive knowledge is creative. The product of cognition is "knowledge in a strict sense", "precisely an objectified statement about a state of affairs that is posited through cognition; that is, in principle, 'knowledge' denotes the result of the specifically human capacity to perform a set of psychic operations, those of focusing attention on, observing, sensing, surveing, and syn• thesizing and objectivizing what happens around and within us, and thus extrapolating that into the intelligible form of a meaningful statement"10. Thus put, knowledge appears to be the product of given "specifically human capacities", or, of the complex human activity of knowing. Here Tymieniecka calls our special attention to the complexity of the activity of knowing, whose constituents can be isolated only artificially - an activity which constitutes one main complex object of epistemological knowledge. "Relying exclusively upon meaningful data", thinking, as the "cre• ative/inventive power" of the human mind, she adds, "develops new skills which expand the specifically human universe of life: calculating, computing, re-organizing, forecasting, planning etc. 71 Thus man's "life• script is not a mere 'decoding' of the laws of nature"; he changes his life-world according to his own judgment and tendencies and thus he "has his hands on the steering wheel": "the human being has the future of humanity in his own hands"72• Knowledge and thinking give man's 'destiny' into his own hands. Also, according to Francisco Miro Quesada "knowledge is the only tool that human beings dispose of to forge their own destiny"73 • In his paper 'Knowledge and Destiny' he tries to show that "the only justifi• cation" of issues in life-affairs "that resist rational criticism" - power for example- is consensus, which "is a non-arbitrary attitude and non• arbitrariness is a constitutive trait of reason"74• From this acceptance of his he concludes that "the only way to organize society in a rational way is democracy"74• 'Theories' do not resist 'rational criticism'. If we take a look at the 'theories' in the history of philosophy and the history of different sci• ences, says Mir6 Quesada, who appears to accept Popper's criterion of falsifiability, we can see that only the criticism of theories is 'definitive'. 1 PROLOGUE

He tries to show and explain this: "A philosophical system can be crit• icised from a purely logical point of view and from an epistemological perspective ... If a philosophical system resists the purely logical criti• cism then, to show its invalidity, there must be some reasoning founded on factual knowledge that shows that the system, or some parts of it, are false"75 • One of the most important ways to do this is "the critique through counterexamples"75 • This criticism can be, and is, in fact, exercised upon theories of power. Still when "the justification of ~ower is not theoretical but is based on historical or religious tradition" 6, "rational criticism" does not work, i.e. the latter justifications - being non-rational - "resist rational criticism". Thus "the only way to justify power by means of reason is b.f consensus "77• "Democracy is a consequence of the rational ideal life "7 • Would Mir6 Quesada allow me to give a counterexample? I assume that he would. So I would like to remind him of the 'democratic' elec• tions in Algeria a few years ago. * Let us now put together the conceptions of knowing and of knowledge, those explicitly stated in the papers of the Seminar, to see what we can 'get' from them in order to answer the questions 'what is knowing?' and 'what is knowledge?' Putting them together we can see that in some papers the attempt is made to objectify knowing, as a human activity and its products, while in some other papers different conceptions concerning 'knowing' and 'knowledge' are put forward, which are generalizations of given claims. These claims themselves have, in fact, an object, but an object different from the object that these generalizations are supposed to refer to, i.e. these generalizations either miss this object, or they have no object. In other words: those who put forth these claims look at something, which they objectify according to their own similar or different concerns, but the conclusions they reach are not, though supposed to be, about knowing as a complex human activity, whoever carries it out, and they are not about knowledge, whoever puts it forth. In putting these papers together two preliminary distinctions - among others possible - might make us see things more clearly: the distinction between 'knowing' and 'knowing that p' or 'knowing the truth of a p', and the distinction between 'knowing the truth of a p', still understood PROLOGUE li as denoting the epistemological activities of testing a proposition and saying "I know that p". When a Cartesian (layman) says "I know that p", he means that he has no doubt that p, while somebody else (who adopts the common sense attitude), means that he has no reasonable doubt that p. Both of them look at a feeling of theirs. What concerns both of them is overcoming doubt: with this concern, as epistemologists, they look this time at the conditions which make them feel no doubt or no reasonable doubt that p. And these conditions are different. Thus two different temperamental attitudes become two different acceptances or two different answers to the same question: "what are the conditions of one's not doubting that he is in error that p?" This is probably the reason why Guido Kling finds both of them unsatisfactory: because they don't "explain the miracle of our capacity of knowing", or: because they don't explicate this human activity. Also for Jonathan Cohen '"to know that p' means 'to accept a propo• sition (p) as "true", 'in the light of evidence that p' " and to use it "as premise or inference-licence for ... deductions". A proposition thus treated becomes an acceptance. (Scientific) knowledge consists of such acceptances. Cohen's concern is "to prise apart" belief and acceptance and "disentangle them from the various confusions in which they have become embedded". With this concern he looks at his own, or at one special, relationship to given propositions, i.e. he looks at the conditions under which he and a given scientific community accept a proposition as 'true': as worthwhile to be used as a premise. These conditions, which are not explicitly stated, but only mentioned as "having evidence that p" - an evidence which leaves no room for "reasonable" doubt that p - constitute the criterion of the truth of a proposition, or of its being knowledge, in fact of its becoming, i.e. being accepted as, knowledge. The epistemological specificity of p seems, at least in this paper, to play no explicit role in accepting the truth of a p, which may be also the object of somebody else's belief. The criterion of accepting a proposition as true, is, according to Teo Grunberg, "long run ostensible consistency of the system of beliefs of a rational agent". Such a consistency "constitutes the ultimate truth con• ductive standard of (epistemic) justification, as well as the criterion of empirical knowledge". Also Grunberg's concern is to secure for him• self, and for others, a touchstone by means of which one can test his 'empirical' beliefs and then not doubt. With this concern he looks at the Iii PROLOGUE behaviour of those who, he assumes, are "rational" agents - 'rational' qualifying here an agent whose behavior is designed to maximize truths and minimize errors in his system of beliefs, and who consequently changes his beliefs if proved to be inconsistent with his new beliefs -; in other words he defines 'being rational' (in this respect) in this way, in order to use this definition later as a premise for the deduction of his epistemological criterion (of truthfulness). If the new beliefs of such an agent do not create an inconsistency in his system of existing beliefs, i.e. if one's previous beliefs still stand, one may, or is entitled to, con• clude that his or her beliefs are 'truthful'. From this the epistemologist Grunberg concludes: long run ostensible consistency of beliefs is also the criterion of empirical knowledge. This is how GrUnberg deduces his pragmatic criterion, which he attempts to justify logically. This is a 'criterion' which protects those who accept it, not from error, or holding cognitively unjustifiable beliefs, but from doubt. For Sosa 'to know' does not mean 'to know the truth of a proposition p', but "is to believe through a faculty of intellectual virtue"; it is "to form beliefs" by means of such a faculty "on a matter in question with a high success ratio". His concern is to call attention to something neglected in present-day epistemology, how the 'basics' or the p's themselves are put forth, and develop an epistemological approach which has overcome the problems which rationalist and empiricist approaches face in this respect, and some of which he puts a finger on. His 'alternative approach' seems to intend to concentrate on human faculties which secure 'beliefs' or knowledge. The specificity of the objects of knowledge, or of the referents of the 'matter in question', seems to play no role here as well; these objects or referents are taken only for granted. What V. Cauchy looks at in his attempt to answer the question 'what is knowing?', is 'acts of knowing' performed by a knower in relation to a known-object. These are the conditions ofknowing as a human activity, whoever carries it out and in connection with whatever. In opposition to the psychological-logical approaches to the question of knowing, which look only at individual-knowers, we see here the start of objectifying the human phenomenon or activity of knowing. This is an approach which calls our attention to knowing as a relation established by one (anyone) with something (anything)- but one however who intends to know something-, and which leads, as Agazzi points out, to "an account of 'how things are' and not of an isolated feature of something or even PROLOGUE liii an individual simply perceived as such", or, as Tymieniecka says, to "an objectified statement about a state of affairs", i.e. it produces knowledge. For Agazzi, 'knowledge' juxtaposed to 'cognition' "must be express• ible in judgments (or in declarative propositions)", which are true, i.e. obtain "a certain relation between a proposition and the state of its intended referents". Only true declarative propositions may be qualified as knowledge. Consequently, the so-called criteria of truth are not given or established touchstones, but "procedures by means of which we must be able to identify the referents of a proposition, as well as to identify the attributes of these referents (i.e. properties or relations which apply to them), so that we can know the actual state of affairs and compare it with the state of affairs expressed by the proposition". What Agazzi looks at when he says this, are the different 'procedures' by which propositions (still, I would add, not all kinds of propositions) are tested. This is the formal expression of any act of testing: what in fact one formally does when one tests a proposition (of knowledge) by different 'procedures'. Still, "this fact invites us" to question Agazzi's equation of knowledge with 'truth', since on the one hand it implies that a proposition may be qualified as knowledge only after being tested and proved to obtain, i.e. for a proposition to be knowledge is made dependent on its being true: but on the other hand, 'truth' and 'falsity' cease to denote "properties" of propositions and any verified proposition itself becomes a truth. The fact that there are no given "criteria of truth" but judging- "'pivcw• whether a proposition (of knowledge) is true or false, is a result of having different kinds of know ledge, i.e. propositions possessing onto logically "different kinds of referents", but not different "kinds of truth". And all these propositions may be true or false. His equation of knowledge with truth nevertheless makes it possible for Agazzi to speak not only of kinds of knowledge but also of 'kinds of truth', on which he bases his statements related to his main concern in this paper. This main concern of his is "the enlargement of the domain of truth and knowledge", so as to include also 'value judgements' and 'ethical knowledge', i.e. the enlargement of what logical empiricism accepts as knowledge. This concern makes him "adopt the strategy" of looking this time at the intentions of people, at the different 'things' they intend -or wish- 'to know', among which is also "to know how things ought to be". Now, to intend to know- to find out or to learn- what "ought to be" in general, concerns the question of the deduction of principles, rules liv PROLOGUE and other such norms, while one's intention to know - to find out - what he or she ought to do in a given, unique situation can be fulfilled by his knowing of different 'things' and putting in connection different kinds of knowledge: e.g. by connecting his purpose with the existing conditions etc. 78 On the other hand, deducing a norm and evaluating an already existing one also presupposes quite different knowing (and other) activities. These problems once inquired into, we can see that ought-should propositions cannot be verified or falsified, because they have no object independent of themselves, i.e. not because they express feelings or do not pass to the relevant criterion of logical empiricism. Still, this is not the case with 'ethical knowledge', if by 'ethical knowledge' we do not understand humanity's or an individual's 'having knowledge of norms', but philosophical knowledge of the ethical human phenomenon, i.e. the outcome of making this human phenomenon an object of inquiry, which amounts to objectifying action in different kinds of human rela• tions. Other objectifications are of course, theoretically, not excluded. However, lack of epistemological differentiation between propositions - and here I mean lack of a differentiation which is made not by using the 'criterion' of logical empiricism, but by looking at whether they are or are not the outcome of an objectification, and consequently at their having or not having objects - could probably lead only to understand• ing by 'ethical knowledge' what De George assumes it to be: from an 'objective' viewpoint, a set of 'universal' principles and imperatives, and from the 'subjective viewpoint', having knowledge of these princi• ples and imperatives. * To sum up: As can be seen by reading the papers of this Seminar, know• ing appears to be a contextual-intentional human activity: the activity of objectifying, in view of a given purpose or interest, anything - in each case independent of the act(s) that objectify it-, and finding out, establishing connections, or putting anything into connection, from the viewpoint of the given interest or concern. The 'procedures' of objec• tifying vary according to the ontological specificity of the objectified 'thing', which is nevertheless something that is, and is what it is, inde• pendently of those who objectify it. PROLOGUE lv

Different objectifications made in connection with one and the same real-individual 'thing' are the reason why there are and can be many 'true' propositions about the same real-individual 'thing', but not more than one true proposition, if any, on the object of a given proposition. Still not all propositions put forth by individuals are the outcome of knowing, i.e. not all of them are products of someone's objectify• ing something independent from himself - whatever the ontological specificity of that something might be. Many propositions are put forth through the intermingling of knowing with other mental capacities. It is by no means easy, even sometimes impossible, to distinguish them in given individual cases. Propositions can, however, be distinguished in this respect. And only propositions possessing an object are verifiable-falsifiable, nevertheless by differing epistemological 'procedures' according to the ontological specificity of the objects or 'referents' of the propositions. What am I looking at when I say all that I have said in this 'Prologue'? I leave to others the explicit answer to this question. This 'Prologue' is by no means exhaustive- neither in picking up in the papers everything connected with the aim and the main question of the Seminar, nor in comparing everything put forth in the papers with their object. It is conceived only as a further step toward the aim of organizing this Seminar. A critical scrutiny of this 'Prologue' would be a further step toward the same aim.

Ioanna Kufuradi

NOTES

• This 'Prologue' was written in January 1993, as a 1r6.pc p-yov during my stay in Mainz (Germany), with the purpose of a different research - a stay made possible by a Sonderforderung of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung, which as well as my collague Prof. Richard Wisser (Mainz), I wish to thank here, for giving me the very rare opportunity to devote all my time to writing. •• This seems to be also the reason why 'knowledge' in Anglo-American epistemology is considered by many as per definitionem 'true'. • • • To avoid naming this discipline from the view-point of a given approach, we can perhaps name it as 'philosophy of knowledge', which is a 'neutral' term. The Problems of Philosophy (London: Oxford University Press, New York: Henry Holt and Co. Inc., 1912), in The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell, ed. bt Robert E. Egner and Lester E. Denonn (London, George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1962 ), p. 217. I vi PROLOGUE

2 'Two concepts of Knowing', p. 4. 3 'Belief, Acceptance and Knowledge', p. 15. 4 Ibid., p. 11, emphasis added. 5 Ibid., p. 15, emphasis added. 6 Ibid., p. 11. 7 Ibid., p. 17, emphasis added. 8 'Back to Bascis', p. 28, emphasis added. 9 'Experience, Order and Cause', pp. 36-37 and 39. 10 Ibid., p. 39. 11 'Some Thoughts on the Nature of Knowing', p. 49, emphasis added. 12 Ibid., p. 50. 13 Karl R. Popper, 'Epistomology Without a Knowing Subject', in Objective Knowledge (Oxford, 1972), p. 106. 14 Ibid., p. 107. 15 Open Society and its Enemies II (London, 19573), p. 217. 16 'Popper's Epistemology and World Three', p. 84. 17 "It is for man impossible to look for either what he knows or what he does not know", Meno, 80e. 18 "He has heard from wise men and women concerning divine things", "who care to ¥.ive the reason of what they use", ibid., 81a, emphasis added. 9 "One must live his life in the most pious way", ibid., 81 b, emphasis added. 20 "To claim that these issues are as I just narrated, does not suit a reasonable man", Phaedo, ll4d, emphasis added. 21 Meno, 76c, when he said that "colour is emanation of shapes, symmetrical to, and f:erceivable by, sight". 2 "The sould being immortal and born many times and having seen everything here and in Hades, there is nothing that it has not learned", "nature being homogeneous, ... there is no obstacle to the individual's finding for himself everything else, once he has remembered one thing - what people call learning -, if he is courageous and does not ~ive up", ibid., 8lc, emphasis added. 3 "And about everything else I would not be willing to claim for the sake of the discussion [of the argument, of justification], but that by believing that we must inquire into what we don't know, we could become better and braver and less idle than by believing that it is impossible to find what we don't know and that we must not inquire; for this I would fight as much as I can, both in word and deed", ibid., 86b-c, emphasis added. 24 Mainly in 509c-5lle. 25 But "that true belief-opinion and science are different, I don't think I conjecture; but if I would say that I know something, I would mention very few things, and among the things that I know one would be this one", ibid., 98b. 26 'Are there Kinds of Know ledge?', p. 105. 27 Ibid., p. 106, emphasis added. 28 Ibid., p. 107, emphasis added. 29 Ibid., p. 108. 3°For further details, see, please, my 'Normlarin Bilimsel Temellendirilebilirligi' ('The Scientific Justification of Norms'), in <;ag~n Olaylan Arasinda, (Ankara, 1980). 31 'Are there Kinds of Knowledge?', p. 112. PROLOGUE I vii

32 For this see, please, my 'Ahlak: ve Kavramlari' (Morals, Morality and Ethics'), in Uludag Konusmalan (Uludag Papers), (Ankara, 1988), pp. 20-36. 33 In connection with the different modes of evaluation see, please, my 'From Revolt to Philosophy', in Philosophers on Their Own Work (Bern, 1984, pp. 109-112), which is a summary, in English, of relevant points elaborated in my /nsan ve Degerleri (Man and his Values), (Istanbul, 1971) and Etik (Ethics), (Ankara 1982). 34 'Ethical Knowledge and Social Facts', p. 119. 35 Ibid., p. 121. 36 Ibid., p. 122, emphasis added. 37 Ibid., p. 123. 38 Ibid., p. 124. 39 Ibid., p. 122. 40 'Knowledge, Truth and Fallibility', p. 130, emphasis added. 41 Ibid., p. 132. 42 For the specificity of this mode of evaluation, see op. cit. in 33. 43 This is also the difference between a puzzle and a problem, I mention in pp. xxix-xxx and p. xxxii. 44 'Long Run Consistency of Beliefs as Criterion of Empirical Knowledge', p. 149, emphasis added. 45 Ibid., p. 151. 46 Ibid., p. 149, emphasis added. 47 Ibid., p. 153, emphasis added. 48 Ibid., p. 159. 49 Ibid., p. 160. 50 Ibid., p. 149. 51 Ibid., p. 152. 52 'Cultural Fundamentals. Obstacles in Philosphical Dialogue', p. 173. 53 Ibid., pp. 176-177. 54 Ibid., p. 177. 55 Ibid., p. 171. 56 97b. 57 See my 'Normlarin Bilimsel Temellendirilebilirligi' (The Scientific Justification of Norms), in op. cit. in 30, pp. 184-187. 58 'Analytical and/or Dialectical Thinking', p. 183. 59 Ibid., p. 184. 60 Ibid., p. 185. 61 'Knowledge and Cultural Objects', p. 191. 62 Which has to be distinguished from the knower. 63 Ibid., p. 191. 64 Ibid., p. 192. 65 Ibid., p. 193, emphasis added. 66 Ibid., p. 194. 67 'Knowledge and Cognition in the Self-Individualizing Progress of Life', p. 197. 68 Ibid., p. 202. 69 Ibid., p. 205. 70 Ibid., p. 208. 71 Ibid., p. 209. lviii PROLOGUE

72 Ibid., p. 217. 73 'Knowledge and Destiny', p. 228. 74 Ibid., p. 227. 75 Ibid., p. 225. 76 Ibid., p. 226. 77 Ibid., p. 227. 78 For this point see, please, my Ethics, pp. 55-77, 106-123, and 135-143.