A Functionalist Approach to the Distinction between Appearance and Reality Part One: Strategy Introduction 1. I began my previous chapter by formulating a central criterion of adequacy for theories of conceptual content that Hegel sees as put in place by the crucial role they play in theories of knowledge. He opens his to the by insisting that our Introduction Phenomenology semantic theory must not already doom us to skepticism. Our understanding of discursive epistemological contentfulness must at least leave open the possibility that by undertaking conceptually contentful commitments we can (in some cases, when all goes well) come to know how things really are. He then argues that that condition cannot be met by any account that opens up a gulf of intelligibility separating how things subjectively appear to us (how they are “for from how they objectively are consciousness”) (“in themselves”). Modern epistemological theories since have understood knowledge as the product of Descartes’s two factors: the grasp of subjective thoughts, and those representational knower’s thoughts’ relations to objective things. cognitive relations to those represented things are Knowers’ accordingly mediated by representings of them. On pain of an infinite regress, the relations between the knowers and their representings cannot then in general be understood as themselves mediated and representational. At least some of the representings must be grasped immediately, in the sense of nonrepresentationally.
A Functionalist Approach to the Distinction between Appearance and Reality Part One: Strategy Introduction 1. I began my previous chapter by formulating a central criterion of adequacy for theories of conceptual content that Hegel sees as put in place by the crucial role they play in theories of knowledge. He opens his Introduction to the Phenomenology by insisting that our semantic theory must not already doom us to epistemological skepticism. Our understanding of discursive contentfulness must at least leave open the possibility that by undertaking conceptually contentful commitments we can (in some cases, when all goes well) come to know how things really are. He then argues that that condition cannot be met by any account that opens up a gulf of intelligibility separating how things subjectively appear to us (how they are “for consciousness”) from how they objectively are (“in themselves”). Modern epistemological theories since Descartes’s have understood knowledge as the product of two factors: the knower’s grasp of subjective thoughts, and those thoughts’ representational relations to objective things. Knowers’ cognitive relations to those represented things are accordingly mediated by representings of them. On pain of an infinite regress, the relations between the knowers and their representings cannot then in general be understood as themselves mediated and representational. At least some of the representings must be grasped immediately, in the sense of nonrepresentationally.
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