How do we know - the HOW

 HOW DO WE KNOW? – the HOW

Fig. 1 Peek-a-boo is a prime example of an object permanence test (Wikipedia, image by Cynthia-Griggs)

A friend asked me about my LTW project, what is it about?

I answered - like in the LTW onepager - that this project is about the question “how do we know?” … and I was surprised to notice that this question seemed unclear to her.

But in fact, it is not surprising at all. It is easy to think, for example, that knowledge comes from learning, from perception, etc.; then the answer to “how do we know?” would be “by learning”, “by perceiving”, etc. and this would seem so clear, that many people, like my friend, would not see why we need a project for answering that question.

As a consequence, the LTW project needs to start by explaining its leading question “How do we know?”

In this question the [How] is not about procedures (perceiving, learning, etc.) but about the mechanisms (functions, operations) of knowing which enable such procedures.

So the question is not “[By which procedures] do we know?” but “[By which mechanisms (functions, operations)] do we know?"

An example can be taken from Jean Piaget: object permanence. The child develops the ability to understand (to know), that when an object is covered by a blanked, it has not finished to exist. The object still exists, there, under the blanket.

Step by step this develops into the “understanding that objects exist and events occur in the world independently of one's own actions” (1).

This ability is a mechanism of knowing that the child acquires and it answers the question “How do we know?” in relation to the specific case of objects that suddenly disappear from our sight.

Notes:

(1) McLeod 2021, Object Permanence, https://www.simplypsychology.org/Object-Permanence.html