Knowledge Without Observation, Identity and Falsifiability

Abstract

In Intention, GEM Anscombe suggests that there is a form of knowledge, given as “knowledge without observation”. This paper will aim to characterise this form of knowledge in terms of two necessary (but not sufficient) conditions – that the subject who knows and the object of knowledge are necessarily identical, and that the claim made as knowledge is falsifiable.

In the course of the paper, the necessary identity claim will lead to a substantial claim about the way knowledge is given in knowledge without observation. This substantial claim is that in knowledge without observation the sensations given to the subject in experience cannot be separated from the knowledge claimed by the subject. That is, in non-observational knowledge, the sensation given simply is the knowledge claim. This will be compared to observational knowledge, where I will aim to suggest that the sensations given in experience are separable from the knowledge claimed.

The claim of the falsifiability of knowledge claims will draw out Anscombe’s connection to the later Wittgenstein’s work in the Philosophical Investigations, and will in particular focus on the difference Wittgenstein draws between expressions of pain and knowledge claims regarding sensations. This condition will suggest that it is a necessary condition for any knowledge claim that it can be falsified by an outside observer.

I will draw on Anscombe’s corpus of work on sensation and intentional action to develop these conditions, and will aim to conclude that her later work on the use of the first person pronoun in The First Person is a continuation of the work she began on intentional action and bodily self-knowledge in Intention and On Sensations of Position.