Knowledge in General

Abstract

Having spoken about all the operations of the mind in general it seems to me that, in order to provide a more detailed explanation, we should first say what knowledge is because that is the basis and foundation of all other thoughts of the mind. Those who have read attentively the treatise by Mr Chanet on the operations of the mind can see what a variety of views there have been about the nature of knowledge.⁵³ Some believed that it consists in the union of the object with the faculty, others that it is the reception of a species, and others again that it consists in perception. Chanet himself hardly knows what to say about it and turns in every direction without knowing what view to endorse. He does not accept the view of those who locate the nature of knowledge in perception because, he says, he does not know what this term means. He would have been better off therefore not speaking about it at all than blaming what he does not understand. Nor does he accept the view of those who think that knowledge is the reception of a species or its union with the cognitive faculty (which, according to him, is not distinct from the organ of knowledge), because he believed there was no place in the brain where it could not be received and thus united with the cognitive faculty without being known. He seems to say initially that knowledge consists in attention but he immediately rejects that when he recognizes that, however he explains this attention, it is not present in all our knowledge, especially if one agrees with him that attention is only the contraction of the brain’s ventricles — which is improbable, unless one suggests that only animals have know-ledge. He concludes at the end of the chapter that our knowledge is nothing other than discriminations.⁵⁴