CHAPTER I
HUMAN KNOWLEDGE OF THE OTHER AS
SUBJECT
The knowledge of the other as subject becomes a philosophical problem at the moment that one wonders at the fact that s/he knows or, at least, s/he believes of knowing others. And further, that s/he knows the other not only as a corporeal being endowed with the sensible qualities, but more of an individual like himself: knowing, intending, a centre or nucleus of behavior. At first, it is not easy how such fact is possible considering that the same sensible qualities are common to things that do not present themselves as psychical subject.[1]
In this chapter, we will trace back the basis of knowledge of the other in the full sense of the expression to philosophy of human person. It is a fact that since time immemorial, we experience the full knowledge of the other. So what we will do here is only to explain the fundamental mode of our experience of the other and of our judgments of the existence on other subjects.
There have been various ways in confronting the problem of the other, i.e. the other minds problem. The treatment has developed itself in western philosophy from the German Idealism and following. Here, we are going determine the relationships of the experiential level of our psychical life with the bio-chemical activity and finally the structure of our human knowledge. In the experiential level, we think of the perception as it is presented by phenomenology, and by psychology derived from the theory of the form (Gestalt Theory), and also to the tendential acts dependent on perception. The relations at the experiential level are grounded on the biological activity; there is organization or systematization of series of organic events. Through the structure of the human knowledge we comprehend a determined collection of functions among experiential acts and intellective acts which are cognitive, and of concepts that gathers or unites the evidences and finally a judgment.
How do I know the other as other? This is the basic question. If I have both public and interior life, how can I pass to the other as equally with an interior psyche and internal contents? To answer such questions, we try to look into the basis of intersubjectivity, which renders possible all sorts of communication between persons.
The ancient and medieval periods did not see this as a problem. Not because of an unconscious ingenious attitude, but because the problem is linked with the conception of knowledge and metaphysics. Realist held the value of universal terms made possible through abstraction. Hence, the signum mentale is equal and valid for all human beings. Each man possesses or can possess the same universal terms, not through innate endowment but through the same capacity for sensation-perception-imagination-abstraction-intellection-affirmation. This is the system that vindicates the identity of both processes of intellection and its content.
The secure position of the Scholastics was thrown away by Nominalism. The Nominalist claims that the meaning of words is all that counts. The constitutive factor here is positive convention. This is not a problem, however, for as long as we presuppose one common language for the whole of humanity. But given the diversity of cultures and languages this becomes a real problem. It could lead us to relativism. In Descartes’ time the diversity of language was generally known, but he held fast to the idea that all human beings thought in identical manner.
The problem emerged with Rationalism since the whole philosophical reflection turns to the subject, i.e. to the interior of consciousness. The search has shifted to the singular subject’s consciousness. In antiquity the philosophical analysis of plurality was done through the distribution of universal to individual referents. Now the position of the "I" becomes a radical uniqueness because the "I" is not just an individual referent among many. The plurality here is no longer the problem of several individuals to be embraced in a universal term but a plurality of subjects each of which is an I, and together they form a community of 'I’s. Here, the Aristotelian and Thomistic terms do not apply any longer.
For the first time in the history of western philosophy, the knowledge of the other becomes a real problem. In the context of Cartesian dualistic philosophy (the mind-body duality), there was a need to prove the existence of other minds (thinking substance) connected with other bodies (extended substance). The attempt of connection gave birth to the so called analogical argument: I observe that the determined states of my mind correspond to the determined modifications of my body, and observing other bodies similar to mine which exhibit similar modifications indicate to me the existence of minds similar to mine. It is obvious that we make this sort of reasoning in our everyday practical life, in psychology and history. Such an argument cannot function to explain the knowledge of the other since such a deductive argument toward the internal of the other demands the presupposition of a link between two interiors. Indeed, the dichotomy of the Cartesian's res cogitans and res extensa cannot be easily resolved.
The analogical argument, therefore, as instrument to account our knowledge of the other, invites a radical criticism. Logical positivists, like Alfred Jules Ayer and the Wittgenstein I, and his commentators: Peter Frederick Strawson, John Wisdom, have analyzed, discussed, and criticized this argument. These authors tried to explicate - in divergent ways - that our experience and our language are in correspondence. This means that the structure of our language is the structure of our experience. But such conclusion is also inadequate, because they failed to specifically consider the nature of perception and the dynamic structure of human knowledge as a whole.
Therefore, as an alternative approach, we initially dialogue with phenomenology and existentialism, since they describe perception properly. They see an opening to the ultimate foundation of the world, but with reservation to all those differences that follow from the structure of knowledge admitted by us.
We intend to show the knowledge of the other as immediate and not through argument. Perception offers us an organization of sensible data with what we call implicit presence in a horizon that has my organism with its corporal scheme of movement and me, and action at the center. That is, the perceiving "I" is present to myself in the lived consciousness of the act of perception. The perceiving and the perceived are given to me never isolated from the past and future perception. For instance, the image of me approaching the building in a park with some persons looking at the window as I enter. Whatever I perceive is always a totality of innumerable profiles, present though not sensibly given. Among the objects given, what I perceive are animals and human beings, which occupy the point of view, which I could occupy myself, which move and act as I could virtually do from the point of view. They are objects perceived with a particularity, i.e., they play a role which are present to me as eventual to the same object or situation in which I find myself.
The difficulty in admitting that this is what we perceive is due to the fact that in the level of intellectual knowing we have already clearly distinguished between things, animals and humans. And we inquire how the intention (or the psychical part) could be added to the objects that are simply "things". Jean Piaget ( Swiss Psychologist) in "La Representation du Monde chez L’Enfant", has shown that for the child all objects are intentioned and only little by little, from 6 to 12 years on, he eliminates intention from the things that do not move and from those that do not move spontaneously. The other difficulty rests on the description that the "I" subject would be given in perception as object of perception of the other. And this difficulty derives from the dualistic mind-body conception. The fact is that the perceiving "I" is given to me as incarnate datum in the body, i.e., a consciousness obscures to itself. It is an "I" which occupies a point of view. And which is situated with a proper organism given in perception in the form of scheme of presence, position and possibility of action. It is an "I" which is accessible from the outside and object of intentions and actions of others not only in its proper organism but also in its proper intentions.
The distinction between my body and the rest of the perceived world is fluid, is constructed little by little through the sensory-motor activities and is fixed only in the stage of understanding and conceptualization. The data of lived consciousness are continuous with the data of the whole experience. This same idea we find variably expressed in Max Scheler, Edmund Husserl and the Existentialists. Scheler talks of knowing the others through a kind of intuitive sympathy that gathers their intention. However, he lacks a sufficient attention on perception and to the incarnate nature and he is not clear about our experiential psychological activities. Husserl, with his 5th Cartesian Meditations, is the origin of every description of the perception of other subjects. But he has overturned his problem of the idealistic constitution of the world and of the transcendental ego. Sartre insists on the dimension for the other (l’etre pour autrui) included in the psychic activity, but imposing on his phenomenology the rigid opposition between en soi and pour soi inherited from Descartes. The Heideggerian "mitsein" (with being) is situated in the level of intelligence inasmuch as it refers to being. The position of Merleau-Ponty is closed to his refusal of ontology.
The explanation of the experience of the other is to be found in the relationship between psychic and biological acts, between the experiential and biological levels of human activity. If, as we have seen in Philosophy of the Human Being, it is true that the psychic form and act organize a series of organic events, it becomes clear how perception finds and gathers as presence in the configuration of the perceived the intention, the psychic activity as inhabiting the other. It explains the continuity between the lived consciousness of my act of perception, imagination, anger and desire and the perception of gesture of the other from the very data that is organized in perception.
The knowledge proper (i.e. the judicial affirmation) of the other as subject or being endowed with psychical activity, emerges from the context of experience and understands, conceptualizes and evaluates the evidence of what is already the object of experience. We have seen how the total experience gives me and the other as equally subjects both tending toward the environment, psychic beings in a situation, in a common world. It deals itself therefore of knowing that which is experimented. It deals of distinguishing and connecting data, of expressing the fruit of knowing in concepts, of valuing them and verifying them. Then, it arrives little by little to the affirmation on that which really possesses the psychical aspect of reality.
Notwithstanding the difficulties which philosophical effort toward total coherence and self-justification implies, what is important to note is that the knowledge of the other as subject does not have a different starting point from every other kind of knowledge of another reality which comes under experience. And that this is immediate in the sense of judgment obtained not through an argument, which presupposes other judgments, but directly from understanding in experience and the verification in it.
To prevent any discomfort with seeing other subjects that become objects of my experience and of my knowledge, we have only to recall that the psychological subject is nothing but the being inasmuch as exercising psychic activities. And thus aware of lived consciousness, therefore, the psychic subject and activities are correspondingly ontological substantial being and accidental perfection. And that, finally, as the very same psychological subject experiencing himself in lived awareness, I become object of my understanding in the data of this consciousness, of my conceptualizing, verifying and affirming myself. Objects - including me as subject - are not known are being except in judgment and they are distinguished one from the other as self-standing beings only through a series of other judgments.
There is a doubt that in the presentation of the knowledge of the other, it starts from the analysis of perception, i.e., a doubt which directs itself on the one hand toward the uncertainty of every perception and demands, on the other hand, an absolute certainty on the existence of the other which is given in perception. We noted that every knowledge starts from experience, even that of our own selves and which is completed only in judgment. It is true that every single judicial knowledge is subject to error. Lived awareness gives me immediately the subject in its psychic activity, while perception gives me the other subjects through the profiles, configuration and behaviour of the other. And therefore here there is a certain privilege in knowing the existence of the "I-subject" over knowing the others as subject, because every single perception can be illusory. Nevertheless, the single perceptive act is not isolated; it gathers the past and tends toward the future, in the perceptive exploration that incorporates every new sensible data it eliminates the figure of the perceived as illusory or confirms by enriching it. What is worth considering here is that the existence of the other in the cogito is consist in the fact that even an illusory perception or an erroneous judgment can theoretically allow the glimpse of other subjects. The demand of an absolute certainty, as the starting point, sacrifices the dynamism of the human knowledge to just only one of its aspects, not taking adequate account of the fact that this knowledge in its entirety confirms and verifies itself by development, eliminating what may be illusory or erroneous in its anterior states, in the single perceptions, hypotheses or judgments. This is true for science, systematic philosophy as well as in practical life.
With this, the aim of the first chapter is attained. We have explained - presupposing the Philosophy of Man - our knowledge of the other as subject, as psychical being. We must see now our knowledge of the other as human subject, as not only endowed of any psychical life, but a psychical life in which I find the intellective-volitive activity, which is properly characteristic of the human being, in place.