I want to explore the relationship between the knowledge and acknowledgment. Is knowledge or acknowledgement prior to the other; or depend on, based on the other; what is the epistemological or ethical status of the concept; the function of it in ordinary language; and so on.
That we say we know so-and-so or such-and-such is important is clear enough from everyday life. But how important is acknowledging so-and-so or such-and-such? Why is it important? How prevalent, deep, does acknowledgment run in our forms of life? Do we acknowledge each other; acknowledge ourselves, my self; don’t we acknowledge our government, a political party, a religious persuasion, communities, movements, trends, etc. Or, we withhold that acceptance or admission (confession).
It is the concern of my thinking not just that knowledge is the acquisition of facts or information X, and that acknowledging is our acceptance of the truth or existence of someone or something.
To be sure, there are different sorts of knowledge, uses of utterances like “I know…” or “She knew…”. There are different uses of acknowledging someone or thing?
Further, how do we know or acknowledge it, is the question of the criteria for saying or doing it (There is a criterion; there is no criterion, is worth asking to).
In recounting ordinary language, what we say when, do we know our criteria of knowing it, must we, do I? Are the criteria of what we say something we must acknowledge? Is that directly or indirectly? Is knowing, acknowledging, the basis of what we say, implicit, or must we make it explicit?
The late Wittgenstein remarked, “Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement” (OC:§378).
But what sort of knowledge is based on acknowledgement? What is the concept(s) at play here?
If I say, “I believe that the end of knowledge is acknowledgment”, what is meant by end? Is the end the grounds of knowledge as such? The buck-stops somewhere. I could say, that the basis of knowing anything—someone or something or nothing—is acknowledgment or avoidance of it.
The concept of avoidance is the the other side of acknowledgement.
He says, “Acknowledgement is the basis of knowledge.” That might mean that we accept or agree in the criteria or grounds of knowing that P. Or, “knowing something or someone depends on acknowledgment” amounts to whether we recognize a person or thing or place (or misrecognize it).
As an initial line of argument we might consider that the basis of what we say when is what we say we say… call it, the everyday criteria of ordinary language. So that we agree in definitions and judgments, that is, in forms of life… And further, is that mutual acknowledgment?
Because whether we accept the language we speak in, share it, a fact (being-in-the-world), consent (or dissent) to our government, inherit an ethnic-cultural background, a religious persuasion, or confession, participate in a community, protest, am an individual or independent person, share that belief, conviction or opinion or taste (prefer espresso), have a value (a social construction), or I am in pain, or another is suffering, do this-or-that, or not; all of these involve, our acknowledgment–our response to (as responsibility), or we withhold it.
fragments of philosophy 