Modes of Sensory Knowing

January 28th, 2008 Fred McVittie Posted in Abstract, Embodiment, Knowledge, Metaphor, Perception, Sense, Space, thesis |

Knowledge (or knowing) is not a singular type of entity with clearly-defined parameters, rather the objects or entities of knowledge are conceptualised as existing along a continuum from ‘objective’ at one end to ’subjective’ at the other. This paper will propose that this distinction, and the continuum which it articulates, is derived from a single metaphorical schema through which the abstract notion of ‘knowing’ is grounded in the sensory experiences of the body.

The guiding metaphor for human knowing is derived from the experience of human sensing. The structure and details of our sensory embodiment provides the schema with which the abstractions of cognitive meaning-making is rendered comprehensible and conscious. The overall schema has particular entailments which carry over into our organisation of knowledge such that different types of knowing are associated with differences in the organisation of human sensory awareness. The visual sense has characteristics which distinguish it from the sense of touch, and both these sensory modes have differences from the sense of taste, and the differences in these characteristics provide a metaphorical template for differences in knowledge. Some of the differences in these modes, and which carry over into their metaphorical application to the structure of our concept of knowledge, include:

• Distance/Proximity - The different senses are able to operate at different distances from the body. (Allied to this is the feature of Salience, in which proximity to the body indicates increasing salience; it is a necessary feature of human cognition that objects or events which occur close to, or at the surface of the body should have a high level of relevance)..
• Intersubjectivity - Some sensory modes operate in shared public space (seeing being the paradigmatic public form), whilst others operate purely in relation to a single individual (as exemplified by taste).
• Substantiality - Some sensory modes provide information which appears clearly bounded (as with a visualised object) whilst that provided by other modes is blended, suffuse, or indistinct (sounds or smells for example).
• Vectoriality - The information provided by some sense seems to offer a direction from which it arises (or a vector for the intentionality which locates it) whereas that provided by other senses seems not to offer this extension.
• Spatial Orientation - Related to Vectoriality, some senses suggest a particular alignment or spatialisation in which some information is more available than others. This is particularly evident with vision which only operates in a forward direction. (The detailed particularities of visual awareness suggests a number of other particularities which we do not have space to discuss here).

These characteristics, which mark the differences between the different sensory modes, can be shown to map onto the metaphorical schema that we use to understand and structure our concept of ‘knowledge’.