Problems of Epistemology

The Problem of Essence or the Relationship Between Knowledge and Reality

Knowledge of the External World

The external world presents itself to our perception as a realm of moving bodies. These bodies, as a result of the epistemological reflection from which we began, are phenomena—subjective constructs composed of elements of sensation and representation. Everything we can say about a particular object, whether it is sweet, white, heavy, extended, impenetrable, soluble in water, or decomposable into certain chemical elements, ultimately reduces to the qualities of sensation and the contents of perception. Physical objects are constant subjects of sensation (sensibilia), and their essence lies in the various aspects of their sensibility. To put it in the words of J.S. Mill: bodies are constant possibilities of sensation. When I say, "this physical object exists," it translates to a present assertion: I am convinced that certain perceptions are possible in a specific relation. For instance, when I say, "there lies a piece of paper," it signifies that I receive this visual perception and presume that if I perform certain movements, I will have certain tactile sensations. Upon leaving the room, I might assert: "there is a sheet of paper on the table," which again means that I am confident that if I or someone else enters the room, they will see and feel this and that. If I did not believe this, I would not have made that statement; if I entered and did not find it, I would say: "the paper has disappeared"; and if I did not believe it was still possible to receive those perceptions elsewhere, I would say: "the paper no longer exists, at least not in its former state"; and if I did not believe it was possible to perceive its remnants in any form—be it ash or refuse—I would declare: "it has altogether ceased to be real." Thus, there remains a relation to perception: when speaking of the reality of physical objects, we imply the possibility of perception.

Yet, the common understanding might assert that the paper remains, even if I have ceased to perceive it; the elements of which it is composed would still exist, even if life on Earth has long since ceased, just as they existed before life and sensation arose. Indeed, the meaning of the expression "real" here relies solely on the notion that if there were any sentient and representational being present, it could receive certain perceptions—seeing the Earth as a fiery liquid mass, for instance, along with the carbon that has eventually transformed into this paper. However, it is impossible to escape this relation defined by a particular consciousness; it can be disregarded as a common and universal assumption in any specific instance, but it cannot be wholly eliminated. To ascribe existence and definitions to a physical object always means to position it as a collection of potential perceptions for possible consciousness; without perception and consciousness, there is no body. Thus, bodies possess only relative, not absolute existence; or, as Kant expresses it, bodies are phenomena for "consciousness in general."

Does this relative existence, this existence for consciousness, correspond to absolute existence, existence in itself? Do the phenomena we call bodies serve as indications of the actual, possessing being independent of any relation to my consciousness?

All people are convinced of this. Each individual believes that the world is more than a phantasmagoria within their consciousness, that the tangible physical world points to a certain "thing-in-itself" that manifests within it. What is this "thing-in-itself"? Kant states: we do not know and cannot know it; this is the necessary "side" of consciousness, the transcendental. Is the matter indeed so hopeless? I do not think so. I believe, along with Schopenhauer and any idealist philosophy, that we can assert some knowledge of what exists as the thing-in-itself; at least concerning living beings, everyone believes they know what they are in themselves. They present themselves to us as bodies with unique structures and diverse external and internal phenomena of movement; even the most insightful physiological investigation will not reveal anything else. Nonetheless, everyone believes that there exists something further—this inner life that can be compared to that which one experiences within oneself.

What is the foundation of this assumption? Evidently, Schopenhauer is correct in grounding it in the fact that we are presented to ourselves in a dual manner. I know myself directly as a wanting, feeling, sensing, and representing being. On the other hand, I am given to myself as a physical entity; I perceive my body and conceive it as a physical object among others. Thus, a correct correspondence emerges between the phenomena of inner life and those of physical life; feelings are accompanied by changes in circulation and bodily position, desires and inclinations are accompanied by movements in the system of organs, either in parts or as a whole; impacts on the body manifest in internal phenomena, in feelings or sensations. Therefore, my physical life serves as a mirror for my spiritual life; the physical system of organs is the outward expression accessible to perception of will and its system of inclinations; the body is the appearance or phenomenon of the soul.

I, presented to myself in this dual manner, become the key to interpreting the external world. Schopenhauer recalls the bilingual inscription in the Rosetta Stone, which first made it possible to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs. Just as the presence of the same content in known and unknown scripts led to the interpretation of unfamiliar signs, so too does the simultaneous presence of the external and internal aspects of reality in individual lives become the key to interpreting the external aspect in general; we learn to understand physical forms and phenomena as symbols of internal phenomena. In relation to people, we achieve remarkable accuracy in interpretation; every movement, every gesture, every twitch of facial muscles becomes a comprehensible symbol of an internal phenomenon for us; when speaking, we often forget that we are dealing with symbols; we assume that we hear or read the very thoughts themselves; only through reflection do we realize that all that reaches us from the outside is merely the vibrations of air produced by the body through a special mechanism; similarly, everything we find in a book consists exclusively of small strokes of ink on white paper. There are no thoughts lying between the pages of a book, just as they are not conveyed to our ears through the air; thoughts are produced by the reader or listener through the interpretation of these symbols, which in themselves have no relation to thought. If thoughts were contained in a book in a ready form, such that they could simply be extracted, there would be no need for the art of interpretation, and there would be no differences of opinion regarding the content.

How far does this interpretation now extend? One cannot establish any firm boundary; in general, it can be said that the accessibility of the corporeal world to interpretation diminishes as the resemblance between corporeal phenomena and the phenomena of my corporeal life diminishes. The greater this resemblance, the closer the interactions, the more certain the interpretation. We best understand our immediate environment; with decreasing fidelity, we comprehend our tribal and national companions. Members of a foreign nation pose significant challenges for interpretation, especially in the realm of the more subtle, more spiritual developments of the inner world: only through the arduous process of learning a language do we master the system of crucial symbols of thought, and even then, in most cases, this mastery is more or less imperfect; for the more nuanced shades of the world of ideas and feelings, the art of interpretation is inadequate; only one who has long lived among a foreign people, merging with them and becoming as if a member of their community, achieves the fine understanding we possess regarding the inner world of our own people. Moreover, even within a nation, social divisions impose more or less sharp boundaries on understanding. Understanding is even less perfect between different races and cultural circles; here it begins to be limited to the more coarse traits of the life of ideas and feelings. If we descend to the animal world, the very language that constitutes the most refined system of symbols, which objectifies the representations of inner life, is altogether absent; thus, we can only form very vague ideas about this aspect of animal inner life. The side of will remains more agreeable to us; homogenous systems of organs and their arrangement are interpreted as a homogeneity of impulses and emotional excitements. As the homogeneity of the system of organs diminishes, so too does this form of understanding; in the lower animal world, analogies suffice only to grasp the most rudimentary features of inner life. For the plant world, the capacity for understanding drops even lower, and for the inorganic realm, the last glimmer of understanding vanishes: here the corporeal world entirely ceases to be accessible for our deciphering of symbols. Yet what indeed still exists in this realm as an inner side is suggested by metaphysical consideration, as we have seen, which noted the constant connection of inorganic being with the organic, as well as epistemological reflections. To say that inorganic bodies are merely bodies is to claim that they possess only relative existence and are not anything in themselves. Whoever does not wish to assert this must concede that the elements of inorganic matter are also symbols of some "self-in-itself," the definition of which we can only seek in the direction indicated by the development of this "self-in-itself" in the animal world.

Thus, the conclusion of this reasoning would be as follows: I know the actual, as it is in itself, insofar as I am it myself, or as it is precisely that, or akin to what I am, namely, spirit. This truth echoes what Greek philosophy has long asserted: like is known only by like.

It is remarkable, in this regard, to observe the unique relationship between external or phenomenal knowledge and the understanding of phenomena based on interpretation. This can be expressed in the following paradox: the more we comprehend (begreifen) things, the less we truly grasp (verstehen) them, and vice versa. We best understand phenomena in the organic world; here we can encompass them in such rigorous logical (expressed in concepts) formulas that they become amenable to computation. Life processes, however, present a far greater resistance to logical mathematical formulation and computation; biology works exclusively with empirical laws, which have thus far proven impossible to reduce entirely to the last elementary laws of nature. The least accessible to computation is the human being; hence, actions are still regarded as generally free from regularity or as actions of a so-called free will, foreign to regularity, which altogether denies their comprehensibility and expressibility in concepts. The situation is entirely reversed with regard to understanding: only human life can be fully understood; in history, we achieve maximum understanding; it diminishes in zoology and botany and utterly fades in physics and astronomy, where mathematical understanding is most perfect. To encapsulate all this, we might say figuratively: the world is inscribed in a highly rich symbolism of a secret script. Each symbol, each more or less autonomous corporeal system, signifies the thought of God, a concrete idea that is a moment of one great all-encompassing idea of reality. From these meaningful signs, the human spirit can decipher with some certainty only a few—namely, those symbols of human spiritual life that constitute its immediate living environment. Others reveal some resemblance to the latter: these are the types of organic life on earth; however, the deciphering here is already quite imperfect, as one must remember the instincts of animals. Finally, we are surrounded by an innumerable mass of signs, the existence of which we may notice, but whose meaning eludes any attempt at deciphering: this comprises the realm of physical, chemical, and astronomical facts.

I will now briefly touch upon the question: how does the belief in the existence of reality, independent of my representation, arise? Directly, I am presented only with the phenomena of my consciousness; how does it happen that I transcend them to a transcendent reality and regard both myself and my consciousness with its contents as dependent members of this existing world?

This belief, in its general possibility, rests, of course, on those inner experiences that I undergo as a desiring being. Noticing my inner aspirations and their tendencies, I simultaneously perceive the constraining oppositions. The representations of expectation, in which I anticipate the future, are deceived by actual perception; the flow of representations is pushed aside from its spontaneous direction; intentions encounter obstacles; movements fail to reach their target. Such inner experiences are certainly the first condition for constructing reality according to the scheme of "I" and "not I." Where they would be entirely absent, this opposition would not arise at all. A being that merely represents, whose representations are devoid of emotional coloring, or a being whose will is fulfilled absolutely, to whom every desired content of representation is immediately given as perceived reality, such a being would never have produced the representation of objective reality beyond its world of representations; it would represent its representations and think its thoughts in the same manner a mathematician thinks his formulas and figures.

The further development of this opposition of "I" and "not I" in the contemplation of reality could thus have as its foundation mainly the following points:

1. The differentiation of one's own body from other bodies. The own body, initially given through sensory perception, like other bodies, necessarily acquires an exclusive position, firstly because its movements and interactions with other bodies relate to the excitations of will and feelings in a more immediate manner than the movements and touches of other bodies; secondly, because the perception of its parts and movements forms a constant, uniform backdrop for the perception of all others.
2. The differentiation of possible perceptions from actual ones. This is a distinction that everyone learns to make. I see some object, then close my eyes and no longer see it; yet I am convinced that at any moment I can see it again; experience continually confirms this belief. I leave my house, the place of my residence, and see thousands of unfamiliar things; at the same time, I am convinced that everything at home is still in its old place, that is, that at any time, having made such a change of place, I could see all those familiar things again. And when I return home, everything turns out just so. The same applies to the external world: it stands here, always ready to be reproduced again in perception. Thus, I construct a world of possible perceptions, and actual perceptions form an infinitely small selection from the possible. These possible perceptions constitute precisely what is commonly referred to as objective reality; actual perceptions are constructed as the impacts of this objective world on the consciousness of the subject.

The preponderance acquired in this way by the world of possible perceptions over that of actual perceptions can then be explained, along with D. S. Mill, in approximately the following manner. Possible perceptions, or—using the language of Kantian theory of knowledge—phenomena, in contrast to sensations, are constant and independent of volition. Actual perceptions, however, are in constant flux; the content of consciousness changes from moment to moment, and this change depends on my will; every turn of the eye produces a different content. In contrast, possible perceptions, tangible objects (sensibilia), or phenomena are constant and independent of volition; while I can cause actual perceptions to vanish at any time, possible perceptions remain generally constant; I can divert my gaze from the moon in the sky at any moment, but I cannot eliminate the possibility of seeing it there in the same way. This is connected with the fact that possible perceptions and their connections are common to various subjects, while actual ones are not; as well as that the occurrence of possible perceptions is accessible to calculation, whereas that of actual ones is not. When the moon becomes visible, that is, rises, this can be calculated; however, it is impossible to calculate when any particular individual will actually see it. Hence, every science investigates only possible perceptions or phenomena and their connections, but not the accidental connections of actual perceptions in individual consciousness: the laws of nature are formulas representing the constant relationships of phenomena, as opposed to the associations of representations in subjective consciousness.

Thus arises the conception of the objective world. For consciousness, this psychological mediation remains entirely foreign; the corporeal world stands before it as an absolutely existent reality. Only epistemological reflection leads to the understanding that the necessary point of relation for this objective world is what Kant refers to as "consciousness in general," a constructive subject endowed with synthetic functions, and that behind phenomena there must be presumed an existence in itself, of which the phenomenon is a symbol. What this existence might be has already been suggested above: only one internal life, existing for itself, fulfills the condition of absolute being.