COGNITION IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SYMBOLS: A PHILOSOPHICAL EXAMINATION

Abstract

The question of knowledge is not about whether we can know at all as it is about the source of our knowledge, for “nobody doubts that we know. But how do we know? This is where disagreements come in”.1 Although this may not go down well with the skeptics, yet one basic thing is that even the one who doubts is at least aware that he exists; for he has to exist in order to doubt. The knowledge of his own existence is enough to counter his skepticism. However, this does not entirely rule out the fact that we can doubt certain aspects of human knowledge, though man can achieve certain knowledge. Even at this, the task of philosophers through the eras has been more of determining how we know what we know. History of inquiry shows that scholars are divided into opposing camps in this regard; rationalists, empiricists and others, insisting that certain knowledge can only be grasped through the reason and senses respectively. More pressing issues that philosophy raises are what inform the object of our knowledge or consciousness. How do our senses or how does the mind generate what we know? In what form is our knowledge generated? How do we communicate what we claim to know? And even understand what we express? It is fact that man is a being in language, yet prior to language formation man had always interacted with one another in some pattern or form. That is, “way before communication as we know it was conceptualized and contextualized, man has always communicated with symbols. This means that from time immemorial, symbols have played communicative and interactive role to man in general….”2 Consequently, whether knowledge is gathered through the senses or reason alone, this can only be possible when there are symbols. The object of man's consciousness is symbolic and through this he conceptualizes and contextualizes his world. Symbols are forms of cognition as without this man cannot properly communicate his consciousness or experience. Knowledge can only be transmitted through, in and with symbols.