THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE OTHER

The knowledge of the other is the foundation of philosophy of culture.

1. A philosophical treatment of culture and history requires the study of human living
considered as a complex whole: its being and becoming.
- this implies that individuals and human events are not simply juxtaposed with each other.
- There is a reciprocal relationship between human beings in the context of the human
environment.
- The transcending cognitive activity (intellective-volitive) of the human being is inserted
deeply into the context of the biological and psychological, experiential activity.
- Thus, establishing a creative relationship between each other and the natural
environment.
- This reciprocal relation renders the possibility of a philosophy of culture.

2. Knowledge of the other is the basis of philosophy of culture:

- It is impossible to speak of culture and history without this relation of knowledge of the
other
- The cultural and the historical conceptualization emerge from this foundational alliance
of one and the other in the context of their environment.
- Knowing oneself coexistent with others in a particular environment opens the horizon in
which culture and history constitutes themselves.
- It is in this context that questions are raised and answers formulated.
- Therefore, philosophical reflections on the diversity of cultures and history begins from
the knowledge of the other
- It presupposes the critique of the value of human knowledge (epistemology) and the
philosophy of the human being, the former presenting the fundamental structure of the
dynamic structure of human cognitive activity, and the later presenting the structure of
being human.
3. Human knowledge is understood here in the full sense, which is completed in
judgment.
- Human knowledge is not attainable by purely experiential and sensitive knowledge.
• Although, these are indispensable for the accomplishment of the human
cognitive activity.
- Knowing the other cannot also be studied independently from the experiential.
• This is dealt with in philosophy of the human being.
• How do we judge the other as endowed with psychical acts based on
experience.
- The question of how we know the other not only as subject but as a human subject.
- This leads us to the problematic of Culture and History.
Knowledge of the Other as Subject.

1) Knowledge of the other as subject becomes a philosophical problem at the moment he

believes to know the other.
- the other not only as endowed with sensible qualities,
- but an individual like himself: knowing, intending, etc.
2) There are many ways in confronting this problem of the other:
- the other-mind problem: developed in western philosophy.
- the relationships of the experiential level of our psychical life with the bio-chemical
activity and finally the structure of our human knowledge.
• The relation at the experiential level grounded on the biological activity;
there is already an 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,
 concepts gathers or unites the evidences
 finally a judgment.

3) How do I know the other as other?

- This is the basic question. If I have both public and interior life, how do I know the other
as equally with an interior psyche and internal contents as myself?
- 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 “mental sign” 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 position (realist) was thrown away by nominalism.
 The Nominalist claims that the meaning of words is all that counts.
 This is also a problematic position considering the fact of the
diversity of cultures and languages.
 This could lead us to relativism.
• Descartes held fast to the idea that all human beings thought in identical
manner.

4) Emergence of the problem of knowledge of other as subject:

- The problem arose with rationalism since the whole philosophical reflection turns to the
subject, i.e. to the interior of consciousness.
• The search has shifted towards 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 by 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.

5) What was the Cartesian solution to the problem of knowledge of other as subject?
- 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.
- Analogical argument is not sufficient to explain the knowledge of the other because a
deductive argument toward the internal of the other demands the presupposition of a
link between two interiors.
• Indeed, the unbridgeability of Cartesian res cogitans and res extensa cannot
be easily resolved.

1. What are some criticisms to the analogical argument?

- Radical criticism to analogical argument: Logical positivists = A.J. Ayer, Wittgenstein I,

and P.F. Strawson have analized, discussed, and criticised this argument.
- Our experience and our language are in correspondence. This means that
the structure of our language is the structure of our experience.
- Such position is also inadequate, because the logical positivists also failed
to specifically consider the nature of perception and the dynamic structure of
human knowledge as a whole.

2. What is the alternative approach or solution to the problem?

- The alternative approach is based on phenomenology and existentialism since they

describe perception properly.
• They see an opening to the ultimate foundation of the world, but we consider
them with reservation because of our understanding of the structure of
knowledge.
• This approach shows 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 makes my organism with its corporal scheme of movement and active
me as the center.
- This implies that 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.
- Whatever I perceive is always a totality of innumerable profiles, present
though not sensibly given.
- Among the objects given 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.

3. Why the difficulty in admitting that this is what we perceive?

- The difficulty is due to the fact that in the level of intellectual knowing we have already
clearly distinguished between things, animals and humans.
- Jean Piaget in “La Representation du Monde chez L’Enfant”, has shown
that for the child all objects are intended and only little by little, from 6 to 12
years of age, 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.
- 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.
4. What is the distinction between my body and the rest of the perceived world.

- The distinction between my body and the rest of the perceived world is fluid.
- It is constructed little by little through the sensory-motor activity and is
fixed only in the stage of understanding and conceptualization.
- The data of lived consciousness are continuos with the data of the whole
experience.
- This same idea we find variably expressed in Scheler, 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 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.
5. Where do we find an explanation of the experience of the other?
- 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 Man, 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.
6. How does knowledge proper (i.e. the judicial affirmation) of the other as subject
emerge?
- 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.
• It understands, conceptualizes and evaluates the evidence of what is
already the object of experience.
• We have seen how the total experience gives myself and the other as
both subjects equally tending towards the environment.
• Both are psychic beings in a situation, in a common world.
- Knowledge deals itself therefore of knowing that which is experienced.
• 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.
- A very same psychological subject experiencing myself in lived awareness, I
become object of my understanding in the data of this consciousness.
• Objects – including me the subject – are not known as being except in
judgment.
• They are distinguished one from the other as self-standing beings only
through a series of judgments.
 - Knowledge of the other starts from the analysis of perception.
• On the one hand there is uncertainty of every perception
• On the other hand it demands an absolute certainty on the existence of
the other which is given in perception.
- Every knowledge starts from experience, even that of our own selves. And
this cognitive activity is completed in judgment.
- Lived awareness gives me directly the subject in its psychic activity, while
perception gives me other subjects through the profiles, configuration and
behaviour of the other.
• 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.
• 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.

- Based on the above explanation, we have shown- 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.
• This means that man is not only endowed with psychical life, but a
psychical life in which the intellective-volitive activity, properly
characteristic of the human being, finds its place.