(BELIEF AND KNOWLEDGE{1}[continued(5)])[5th April 1987]

[Redbook3:122-123][19870405:1057e](BELIEF AND KNOWLEDGE{1}[continued(5)])[5th April 1987]

19870405.1057

(Sunday)

[continued]

Direct Knowledge*, or Religious Knowledge (in this context), is particularly characteristic of the Inner Circle, although it can arise anywhere: indeed in one sense we are subject to it all the time but are conditioned immediately to translate it into the terms of Indirect Knowledge. Consider the following exchange:

(A) 'I've seen a Flying Saucer.' – Indirect Knowledge, based on I[ndirect] K[nowledge] of Flying Saucers.

(B) 'No, you haven't.' – Indirect Knowledge, based on I[ndirect] K[nowledge]/B{elief} below (D).

(C) 'I know what I saw.' – Still Indirect Knowledge, based on (A).

(D) 'There are no such things as Flying Saucers.' – Indirect Knowledge (sometimes verging on Belief!).

(E) 'I saw what I saw.' – Direct Knowledge. Taken literally (which is not quite how it would have been intended), this statement is unassailable. (The taking of evidence theoretically requires that the witness recall as closely as possible what he actually saw – Direct Knowledge – upon which the [evidence-]taker reconstructs, as Indirect Knowledge, what actually happened. In practice a level of Indirect Knowledge is assumed by both parties: the battle is to get it in the right place. But I digress.)

Problems arise with perception, and with memory. On both accounts, it is useful further to analyse Direct Knowledge into Outer and Inner (Direct) Knowledge. (All Indirect Knowledge is Outer in that it is based to some extent directly on information received from outside, i.e. via the external senses. Claims to supply Inner Indirect Knowledge – e.g. systems of information (such as the Circles, but) claiming absolute truth as inner revelation – should be regarded with great suspicion).

Direct Knowledge must be, in one way or another, true (Indirect Knowledge may, as we have seen, be true or untrue).

Outer Direct Knowledge is, at the moment of perception (we must always allow for defects in memory, so the contemporaneity of the record is important), subjectively true: 'I saw a blue flash in the Sky' is (if truthfully recounted) bound to be subjectively true, but objectively we do not know for certain whether there was a blue flash in the Sky or not.**

*[See last previous entry.]

**Without the statement: I see a blue flash in the Sky [sic]. That is what I think I see. But what am I really seeing? {Unknown.} And what is it? [sic] {Unknown.} <[87]0414> {See p.193} {cf. p.186} [=?]

[continues]

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