I cannot here follow up further the difficult problem of
cognition[78]--save to add one or two supplementary remarks. First: it
is, I suppose, fairly obvious that any given field of cognitive
relatedness comprises _all_ that is then and there selectively cognized.
Just as, in the very extended sense of the word 'knowledge', the earth
knows, in gravitative fashion, the whole solar system, as does also any
one of the planets, so, in the restricted sense, is knowledge
co-extensive with all that is, selectively, in cognitive relationship
with the organism or that part of the organism which is the locus of
awareness. I speak here of the locus of awareness in just the same sense
as I might speak of the earth as a locus of gravitative knowledge of the
solar system. The locus of awareness is just a specialized portion of
the whole relational web. In other words, the relatedness is of the
part-whole kind, where whole means rest of the whole other than the
specific part. In any such integrated system the part implies the
whole--which, by the way, is quite a different matter from saying that
the part includes the whole, or, as I understand the words, is
equivalent to the whole. But, whereas gravitative knowledge is
reciprocal--the sun knowing the earth in the same fashion as the earth
knows the sun--cognitive knowledge is not reciprocal. My cognitive
awareness of a spinning-top does not imply that the spinning-top is in
like manner aware of me. The part knows the whole in a way that the
whole does not know the part. The relationship of the part to the rest
of the whole is not reciprocal or symmetrical. This we must just accept
as a given feature of cognitive relatedness.[79]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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