Thanks for the reference

Awareness is not judgement. Being aware of both "this" and "horse" is not judging <this is a horse>, but we do so judge, because we confuse the joint awareness of the two different contents with that of a single object that is both this and a horse. For <this is a horse> means that the identical thing that evokes <this> is evoking <horse>. — Dfpolis

If we think we see a horse and not a dog, that is what we see. So while acts of perception do involve a general categorising conception and some particular sensory image, the two are normally experienced as a single act of interpretation. A point of view is what clicks into place.

So yes, we can dissociate the ideas from the impressions as a further effort of analysis. But the “immediacy of intelligibility” is a result of the perception being a fusion of the bottom-up sensory possibilities and the top-down conceptual constraints. Awareness is the emergent synthesis where the particular impression now stands as an acceptable instance of a general idea.

Psychology is about relational models. And that requires taking points of view. The sense of self is thus what emerges along with a sense of the world. The intelligibility being imposed on the world is the one that has “me” seeing “it” from some particular perspective.

This is easy to see with illusions like the Necker cube. The front can become the back, depending on “where” we are placing ourselves in our sense of visual space. Are we a bit above looking down, or a bit below looking up?

The stimulus remains exactly the same. But we can flip between two general conceptions as our intelligible interpretation of what it is in relation to where we are.

So knowledge - as some kind of direct experience of the available sense data - is always a mediated judgement. The self that is perceiving and taking some viewpoint is part of what is getting constructed, along with the world understood as a realm of intelligible objects.

Stepping back, saying "essence of truth is the truth of essence," seems rather monadistic. I mean that a great part of truth is not about the essence of any one thing, but more ecological -- about how things relate and interact -- and we can never discover that except by observing actual relations and interactions. — Dfpolis

This is just Heidegger's characterization. Ask what a mother is, and you get "female parent" - genus-species. Ask what is the essence of being a mother as a mother, and the answer should be different - the "as" structure. He argued that the "truth" of being a mother was the essence of being a mother as a mother, other definitions of truth being matters of form or criteria of some kind.

As to knowledge, it would seem the truth about it - the essence of knowledge - lies in what knowledge is as knowledge. I think your "actualization of a present intelligibility" works if you allow the addition of "for a present use"; "use" needing be no more than the bringing to consciousness of the knowledge itself.

I think your "actualization of a present intelligibility" works if you allow the addition of "for a present use"; "use" needing be no more than the bringing to consciousness of the knowledge itself. — tim wood

Sometimes we have no idea of a potential use. We just encounter being. We may take joy in it -- or we may not. I understand your extension of "use," but it seems perilous in an era of soundbites -- where "use" is liable to be separated from your extension.

Sometimes we have no idea of a potential use. We just encounter being. We may take joy in it -- or we may not. I understand your extension of "use," but it seems perilous in an era of soundbites -- where "use" is liable to be separated from your extension. — Dfpolis

The idea is Kantian. Stimulus, synthesis, and an act of judgment. Three ingredients (at least) to knowledge. The "this," the assembly of the "this" into a that, the act that brings that into awareness as a that, without which awareness the that is arguably nothing at all.

Stimulus, synthesis, and an act of judgment. — tim wood

I have not addressed it, but there are two kinds of knowledge we have been talking about. Aristotle's account of ideogenesis as the actualization of present intelligibility gives us knowledge as acquaintance: "Do you know the house on the corner?" "Yes, I do." In this case there is no judgement about the house. We are simply aware of its existence.

The second kind is what you are pointing out, judgement. In it we assert (or deny) some truth. "The house on the corner is painted blue." I discussed, in a backhanded way when we considered misjudging a "this" as a horse or dog, how judgement works when it works right. If the presentation that elicits <the house on the corner> is identically the presentation that elicits <painted blue>, then we are justified in thinking <the house on the corner is painted blue>. If the presentations are not identical, then we are not justified, for <the house> is elicited by one thing, and <painted blue> by something else.

This means that the copula "is" bespeaks identity -- not in the coupled concepts, but in the source object eliciting the concepts.

In light of this, I think we need to be careful in assenting to "synthesis" -- at least in the case I'm discussing. We're not bringing anything together that was not one before we abstracted distinct concepts out of it. All we're doing is acknowledging the unity that underpins the concepts we abstracted.

I have not addressed it, but there are two kinds of knowledge we have been talking about. — Dfpolis

I'm still finding it very unclear what it is that you think you are arguing. But maybe it is this. Maybe you are making the contrast between the roles played by coherence and correspondence in theories of truth.

So on the one hand, there is the certainty (and doubt) that results from some generalised state of coherent belief. We have a world view that seems to work in reliable fashion. We have a pragmatic set of interpretive habits that do a good enough job of understanding the world. This is what intelligibility feels like. The world is experienced as having a stable rational structure - where dogs are dogs, horses are horses, the house on the corner is still blue like the last time we saw it, and we aren't concerned about the possibility it may have been repainted or knocked down in the last few days.

Then there is the converse thing of the particular correspondence of a belief to a state of affairs. We are talking now about some individuated fact, which could thus be true or false as a particular thing. Our general knowledge of the world can't tell us that directly. From general knowledge, that giant dog could be a tiny horse. It is a possible fact consistent with a general view. So now we have to go a step further and establish that fact as being one way or the other as a matter of "immediate actual intelligibility".

So when talking about Descartes, he does seem to be claiming that every fact is merely a particular, and so suffers the challenge of correspondence. But he relies on an evil demon to pursue that line. And that increasingly becomes incoherent with that other aspect of our knowing - the one that relies on a generalised coherence.

It is not such a stretch to argue that our perceptions could be dreams or hallucinations. You don't even need an evil demon for that to be true (according to the allowable possibilities of generalise coherence) some of the time. But for an evil demon to be universally the case - to the degree it can intrude on our thoughts and make us miscount the number of sides to a square every time we seek to establish that fact as a matter of perceptual correspondence - is a real stretch. It conflicts rather too violently with the rationality we find in knowledge as generalised correspondence.

And in the end, an evil demon that could so completely deceive us on that level - in a totally generalised way - falls out of the picture. It becomes a difference that makes no difference. Life for us would remain the same despite it being "a grand illusion". The epistemology of generalised coherence would absorb Descartes's evil demon. As you say, Descartes is still left in his chamber, stuck in that reality. Doubt so complete leaves him back where he started.

But when it comes to the history of ideas, it remains important to see beyond the naive realism of the kind of "unity" of mind and world you appeared to be pushing.

Descartes and Kant stressed the problem of knowledge correspondence. In psychological terms, the mind only appears to represent the world. The world is merely an image. And that creates a troubling epistemic gap.

But then Peirce and Pragmatism stressed the generalised coherence of belief. So now we have a triadic or hierarchical epistemology with a long-run temporal structure. As I argued, globalised coherence creates a general certainty about what even counts as actually possible or actually likely. Perception begins with a state of reasonable expectation. And then correspondence fits in as the particular facts that might then come into question.

Is that house still blue? Well. let's go take another look. We would be surprised if it were not. Although it is quite possible it might have been repainted. Less likely we were simply mistaken in our memory.

Within a framework of generalised belief, we can then entertain a doubt about any particular fact. But the degree of that doubt is then always pragmatically constrained. We kind of know what needs better checking and what is unlikely to be wrong.

So knowledge of the world has this intelligible structure - generalised belief that occasions particularised doubting. A Bayesian brain, in other words.

I'm still finding it very unclear what it is that you think you are arguing — apokrisis

What I am arguing is that Descartes's doubts leave what he actually knows (that he is in his chamber) unaffected. What is being questioned is his belief about the deeper structure/nature of "being in his chamber" -- which is something he does not know, but believes he does. (He does not know if his experience of being in his room is due to continuous, extended "stuff" (res extensa), atomic interactions, or demonic activity.) We have known since Robert Grosseteste that the rational way to address his question is posit and test falsifiable hypotheses.

Maybe you are making the contrast between the roles played by coherence and correspondence in theories of truth. — apokrisis

No, I'm not discussing theories of truth. I'm pointing out that knowledge as awareness of present intelligibility is independent of whether we grant or withhold belief.

The coherence theory is too easy a target. Harry Potter's "world" is or easily could be, coherent.
Nor do I support "correspondence." There is no one-to-one correspondence between what we think and reality. Rather, what we think can be adequate or inadequate to reality. If it is adequate to reality. it is true.

there is the certainty (and doubt) that results from some generalised state of coherent belief. We have a world view that seems to work in reliable fashion. — apokrisis

Once you mention your worldview "working," you've started to test your beliefs against intransigent reality -- stepping beyond the bounds of strict coherence. You're asking "Is what I believe adequate to reality?"

We have a pragmatic set of interpretive habits that do a good enough job of understanding the world. This is what intelligibility feels like. — apokrisis

I agree, that our system of beliefs "works" in a general sort of way. Often, however, it does not work at all, because when we examine our detailed beliefs we find them inadequate to reality.

Intelligibility is characterized not by a "feel", but by power -- the power to inform -- to reduce what is logically possible to the actual given.

The world is experienced as having a stable rational structure - where dogs are dogs, horses are horses, the house on the corner is still blue like the last time we saw it, and we aren't concerned about the possibility it may have been repainted or knocked down in the last few days. — apokrisis

Sure. In living our daily lives we expect things to be more or less the same as they were when we last encountered them. (That's an adequate model.) Still, we aren't shocked when a store has closed or moved -- or the house on the corner has been repainted.

So when talking about Descartes, he does seem to be claiming that every fact is merely a particular, and so suffers the challenge of correspondence. — apokrisis

Yes, he could mean that, but, actually he doesn't. He tells us explicitly that he was in his chamber. So, there is no question of it having burned down or having been smashed by drunken rioters. It's still there. He sees it, and relies on it to shelter him.

It conflicts rather too violently with the rationality we find in knowledge as generalised correspondence. — apokrisis

Yes, that is why you need more than logical possibility to be rational. Chesterton makes the same point -- you don't need to bend the facts to be paranoid -- only your interpretation.

Life for us would remain the same despite it being "a grand illusion". — apokrisis

This is close to the point I am making. The "deep structure" of his chamber doesn't matter to the fact of "Descartes being in his chamber." We don't "know" (in the strictest sense) what the deep structure of the world is, but we do know we are in our room, and what we believe of the deep structure is adequate to our needs.

it remains important to see beyond the naive realism of the kind of "unity" of mind and world you appeared to be pushing. — apokrisis

I'm not a naive realist. That is one reason correspondence is a poor criterion for truth. There is no "red" in red apples. We experience red as the result of a complex interaction of objective and subjective factors -- not because the apple contains "redness." There is an objective reality, but it is far more complex than redness in apples. Still, complexity does not belie reality -- or the partial identity of subject and object by which we know it.

In psychological terms, the mind only appears to represent the world. The world is merely an image. And that creates a troubling epistemic gap. — apokrisis

This is precisely the error I am opposing. An apple acts on my senses. Its modification of my neural state is identically my sensory representation of the apple. There is no gap. There are only two names for, reflecting two ways of thinking about, the same reality -- a reality that belongs to both the sensed object and the sensing subject. Thus, we may say, there is an existential penetration of the object into the subject.

The other aspect of this identity was noted by Aristotle: the joint actualization of two potencies by a single act. Both the object's sensibility (its potential to be sensed) and the subjects capacity to sense are actualized are actualized in the single act of sensing. The object being sensed by the subject is identically the subject sensing the object.

So, there is no "gap" -- no separation of phenomenon and noumenon. In sensation the sensory representation is not dynamically isolated from the object -- it is the very mode of the object's presentation to the subject's awareness.

Saying, "The world is merely an image," reminds me of Locke's claim that we only know our ideas. Our ideas are not so much what we know as they are the means by which we know. It is only in retrospect, in reflecting on how we know, that we understand that the existence of ideas. In fact, ideas are not "things" at all. They are simply us thinking. The idea <apples> is just thinking of apples.

So, the world is not an image, the world dynamically projects into us as images, as phenomena.

globalised coherence creates a general certainty about what even counts as actually possible or actually likely. — apokrisis

I am happy to agree with this, but only as one projection of knowledge.

Perception begins with a state of reasonable expectation. — apokrisis

Sometimes it does. Other times it comes as a complete surprise.

Let us not get started on Bayesian probability.