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From: bhw@aifh.ed.ac.uk (Barbara H. Webb (Phd 89))
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Direct awareness (was Re: UNIFIED MODEL FOR KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION? (IMPOSSIBLE
Message-ID: <1991Jun17.144356.21450@aifh.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 17 Jun 91 14:43:56 GMT
References: <25348@samsung.samsung.com> <8455@awdprime.UUCP> <1991Jun16.083632.1383@tygra.Michigan.COM>
Reply-To: bhw@aifh.ed.ac.uk (Barbara H. Webb (Phd 89))
Organization: Dept AI, Edinburgh University, Scotland
Lines: 47

In article <1991Jun16.083632.1383@tygra.Michigan.COM> dave@tygra.Michigan.COM (David Conrad) writes:

>Bertrand Russell has a fascinating discussion of all this in his book
>_The_Problems_of_Philosophy_.  He concludes that we cannot know anything
>about objects in the world directly, but only indirectly.  The only things
>we can have direct knowledge of are our sensations.   Our knowledge of
>objects must always be indirect.  Actually, in addition to our perceptions
>we are also directly aware of abstract concepts, which Russell terms
>'Universals'.  E.g. I am aware of my sensation of seeing this keyboard
>in front of me, and touching it, and hearing the keys click, but I cannot
>be *aware* of the existance of the keyboard; I can only infer its existance.

What is 'knowing' or 'being aware of' if it is not the process of
sensing or percieving something? If you _have_ the sensation of seeing
your keyboard, then you are aware of your keyboard (directly) rather
than aware of your sensation. What you describe solves the problem of 
_how_ awareness occurs, not by finding the processes underlying it, but by
moving the entire problem back one step - the senses project the outside
world onto a video screen inside our heads and the little man inside our
head 'knows directly' what he sees there, and infers that it reflects
some real scene going on outside the head. This is not much help to a
science of cognition, because we don't how the little man manages his
'direct awareness' any more than we knew how we were aware of the world in
the first place.

>Additionally, we are aware of universals, such as '1+1=2'.  There is no
>greater knowledge of it attainable than that which the mind apprehends
>immediately.  To use an example which was brought up before, we may doubt
>that Bogota is actually the capital of Columbia, or that there is even a
>city named Bogota, and we might seek to go to Columbia to see the city for
>ourselves.  (We would still have no direct knowledge of Bogota, but our own
>sensory perceptions are presumably more trustworthy than our perceptions of
>the writing which is supposed to record the sensory observations of persons
>not personally known to us.)  But what on earth could it mean to "go and
>see the *real* '1+1=2'"?

Easy. It means picking up one apple and then picking up another apple
and then counting how many apples you have and finding you have two of
them. Numbers exist in reality, so we can 'go and see' them (and hence, 
as above, know them) without their having the special status of
being abstract concepts that the little man inside 'knows directly'.

>David R. Conrad
>dave@michigan.com

Barbara Webb
bhw@aifh.ed.edu.uk