Autor: Flanagan, Josef

Buch: Quest for Self-Knowledge

Titel: Quest for Self-Knowledge

Stichwort: Notion des Seins (notion of being): das Objekt des Fragens und Intendierens; Beispiel: Realität eines Baumes

Kurzinhalt: It is important now to shift attention to the object, content, or term of the questioning ... eing, therefore, is intrinsic to every individual being, but at the same time, it transcends ...

Textausschnitt: 5b All-Pervasive Notion of Being

67/5 My emphasis in explaining the notion of being thus far has been on the questioning or intending, not on the object questioned and intended. It is important now to shift attention to the object, content, or term of the questioning and to appropriate the way the notion of being underlies, penetrates, and transcends every object questioned or intended. Questions move on three distinct, yet relatable levels, which means that the contents known on these different levels needs to be specified. The question. What is a tree?, transforms the sensibly experienced and named tree into a potentially intelligible experience, which permits us to wonder about its 'what.' Medieval Scholastics named this the 'quiddity' of the tree. The tree as sensed is sensibly known; the quiddity or 'whatness' is unknown, but desired to be known. (139; Fs)

68/5 When the child learns the name of the thing, he or she has a nominal understanding of this sensible experience. Such nominal understanding focuses and illuminates this thing, and also makes it possible for knowers to analogize to other things having somewhat similar and somewhat different shapes, sizes, colors, textures, odors, etc. When a knower moves from a common-sense context of knowing the reality of trees and begins to wonder in a scientific context, the knower desires to know the reality of trees not only descriptively, but in abstraction from its descriptive characteristics; he or she begins to apprehend and judge it in its relations to other organic beings. Thus, the contemporary biologist knows that trees are biochemical and biophysical operators, and that trees are continuously integrating themselves in their environment through a flexible set of recurrent schemes, including such metabolic activities as meiosis and photosynthesis. Scientists tacitly know that, by forming such complex theories, they gradually come to know what trees really are and how they differ and relate to one another. (139; Fs)

69/5 At the heart of such theoretical, cognitional processes is the guiding notion of being that moves scientists to wonder, not only inquisitively, but also critically. They challenge and cross-examine their own thinking because implicitly they know that thinking is not knowing, that thinking is transformed into knowing through judging or verifying. More importantly, they realize that any present verified theory is only a limited explanation of the actual reality of trees. The full and final reality is what biologists know they do not know but want to know, and so their desire to know keeps leading them on to fresh inquiries that repeatedly transcend their present, provisionally verified theories. (139f; Fs)

70/5 Trees are assumed to be fully intelligible realities, and biologists intend to know what those full and final intelligibilities actually are. However, while biologists are aware that they do not know the final reality of trees, they do know something about trees, and what they do know, insofar as it is correctly verified knowing, is what in fact trees actually are. In other words, correct, explanatory knowing of things is not extrinsic to the supposedly inner reality of things; rather, it is through correct knowing that the intrinsic reality of the trees is gradually being disclosed. Correct biological knowing reveals the intrinsic reality of biological things. (140; Fs)

71/5 There is not some further profound, inner reality within trees that philosophers or metaphysicians come to know. Biologists as biologists do not seek to know everything, but they do seek to know what the actual reality or being of trees is, and they are well on their way toward that specialized goal. Being is what all knowers desire to know, and it is what they know in some limited way whenever they know correctly. Being, therefore, is intrinsic to every individual being, but at the same time, it transcends and grounds all that there is to be known. With this notion of being in hand, we are now in a position to raise the epistemological question, namely, the question about the objectivity of our knowing. (140; Fs)