Divine Ineffability and Franciscan Knowledge

Philosophical Psychology

2022

When we experience the world -see, hear, feel, taste, or smell things -we gain all sorts of knowledge about the things around us. And this knowledge figures heavily in our reasoning about the world -about what to think and do in response to it. But what is the nature of this knowledge? On one commonly held view, all knowledge is constituted by beliefs in propositions. But in this paper I argue against this view. I argue that some knowledge is constituted, not by beliefs in propositions, but by awareness of properties and objects. To make my case, I focus on the role of visual perception in reasoning. I start by introducing a principle about the relationship between knowledge and reasoning, which says that to learn something new by reasoning, one must know the bases of one's reasoning. Then I argue that in some cases of genuine, knowledge-conferring reasoning, the bases of our reasoning are not propositions that we believe; rather, they're properties or objects that we see. Thus, I conclude that some such knowledge is non-propositional and is rather what some call "knowledge of things".

Section: Connectionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reasoning with knowledge of things

Philosophical Psychology

2022

“…For instance, some philosophers and theologians are concerned with a tension between the idea that God is transcendent – and thus beyond human conception and description – and the idea that God is knowable. Here's an argument that expresses this tension (adapted from Keller 2018): God is beyond human conception. Therefore, we have no conceptual knowledge of God. All propositional knowledge is conceptual. All knowledge is propositional. Therefore, we have no knowledge of God. …”

Section: Knowledge Of Things Beyond Epistemologymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…And it allows one to say the following: We know of God, but not that God is thus-and-so. So we have knowledge of God, but not the kind of conceptual knowledge of God that some contend is forever beyond us (cf., Keller 2018).…”

Section: Knowledge Of Things Beyond Epistemologymentioning

confidence: 99%

“… 2 Conee (1994), McGinn (2008), Tye (2009), Coleman (2020), Duncan (2020, 2021), Giustina and Kriegel (Forthcoming), and Pitt (Forthcoming) discuss (and endorse) knowledge of things (see Crane (2012) and Farkas (2019) for dissent). Stump (2010) and Keller (2018) talk about “Franciscan knowledge”, which is akin to knowledge of things. Fiocco (2017) defends a Brentano-inspired account of something like knowledge of things.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Suppose We Know Things

2021

Episteme

When contemporary philosophers discuss the nature of knowledge, or conduct debates that the nature of knowledge is relevant to, they typically treat all knowledge as propositional. However, recent introductory epistemology texts and encyclopedia entries often mention three kinds of knowledge: (i) propositional knowledge, (ii) abilities knowledge, and (iii) knowledge of things/by acquaintance. This incongruity is striking for a number of reasons, one of which is that what kinds of knowledge there are is relevant to various debates in philosophy. In this paper I focus on this point as it relates to the third kind of knowledge mentioned above – knowledge of things. I start by supposing that we have knowledge of things, and then I show how this supposition reshapes various debates in philosophy.

“…Some other philosophers defend something that is at least similar to the view that acquaintance is a kind of knowledge. For example, Eleanor Stump (2010) and Lorraine Keller (2018) talk about “Franciscan knowledge,” which is similar to knowledge by acquaintance. M. Oreste Fiocco (2017) defends a Brentano‐inspired account of something like knowledge by acquaintance.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Acquaintance

2021

Philosophy Compass

To be acquainted with something (in the philosophical sense of "acquainted" discussed here) is to be directly aware of it. The idea that we are acquainted with certain things we experience has been discussed throughout the history of Western Philosophy, but in the early 20th century it gained especially focused attention among analytic philosophers who drew their inspiration from Bertrand Russell's work on acquaintance. Since then, many philosophers-particularly those working on self-knowledge or perception-have used the notion of acquaintance to explain various facts about human experience and knowledge. In this paper, I offer an overview of this work, with particular focus on the resurgent literature on acquaintance in contemporary analytic philosophy. After more fully explaining what acquaintance is (or is supposed to be), I describe some reasons for thinking that we are indeed acquainted with certain things we experience, and then I survey some of the facts about experience and knowledge that acquaintance may help explain. 1 | INTRODUCTION This paper is about acquaintance-an especially direct mental relation that we (allegedly) bear to certain things we experience, such as colors, smells, tastes, pains, and itches. This philosophical notion has received renewed interest and use of late, but it has also invited misunderstanding and skepticism. My aim in this paper is to dispel some of that misunderstanding and, hopefully, some of the skepticism too. Most contemporary philosophers who appeal to acquaintance draw their inspiration from Bertrand Russell (1911, 1912), who characterizes acquaintance as direct awareness. This differs from the ordinary sense of "acquaintance," as in "Hector and Paula are acquaintances" (or related knowledge attributions, such as "Hector knows Paula"). For one may be acquainted with something in that sense without being directly aware of it.