But suppose that the realist accepts the traditionary psychology
according to which every event in the way of a perception is also a
case of knowing something. Is the way out now so simple? In the case
of the doubled fingers or the seen light, the thing known in
perception contrasts with the physical source and cause of the
knowledge. There _is_ a numerical duplicity. Moreover the thing known
by perception is by this hypothesis in relation to a knower, while the
physical cause is not. Is not the most plausible account of the
difference between the physical cause of the perceptive knowledge and
what the latter presents precisely this latter difference--namely,
presentation to a knower? If perception is a case of knowing, it must
be a case of knowing the star; but since the "real" star is not known
in the perception, the knowledge relation must somehow have changed
the "object" into a "content." Thus when the realist conceives the
perceptual occurrence as an intrinsic case of knowledge or of
presentation to a mind or knower, he lets the nose of the idealist
camel into the tent. He has then no great cause for surprise when the
camel comes in--and devours the tent.
Perhaps it will seem as if in this last paragraph I had gone back on
what I said earlier regarding the physical explanation of the
difference between the visible light and the astronomical star. On
the contrary, my point is that this explanation, though wholly
adequate as long as we conceive the perception to be itself simply a
natural event, is not at all available when we conceive it to be an
attempt at knowing its cause. In the former case, we are dealing with
a relation between natural events. In the latter case, we are dealing
with the difference between an object as a cause of knowledge and an
object as known, and hence in relation to mind. By the "method of
difference" the sole explanation of the difference between the two
objects is then the absence or presence of relation to a knower.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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