Why do we accept that the world is directly knowable? Because it is the natural thing to do. It is the default position that obviates all the deeper mysteries that Idealism brings in its train. Does the object that is not known blink out of existence, like the book in the cupboard, or the six penny bit dropped on the top of Mount Everest. That red barn, is it a facade or does it have depth?
Yes real enough for government work, in this case the navigator in the world. What about that fellow, this pilgrim, this apparently continuous entity that plots and plans, feels remorse and hunger, and doubt? On what do we base that sense of self-identity? Hume’s question was a good one - How does a series of conscious states become conscious of itself as a series? Is ‘it just does’ a good answer or can memory be applied as a binding, bundling force that integrates? Seems unsatisfactory to hold that memory can create its own subject.
What then are we left with - deeper mysteries, conundrums or the beginning of a necessary clearing of the ground? Shankaracarya thought so. He begins in his commentary on the Brahma Sutras with the aporia of perception. How does that out there come to be in some sense in here and at the same time we are certain that the ‘inner’ account is a true one within the technical boundaries of the capacity for error?
In the XVIII chapter of ‘Upadesa Sahasri’Sankara reviews the various theories of self-identity and agency. Who is conscious, what is conscious? Take the use of ‘I’ in sentences as a base line of reality. Avoid the fata morgana of the Buddhist scholiasts of the void, the Sunyavadins. Work with what you are given not as an apparently given. Move from sensation to reason and get to the bottom of things.
Theory has as its etymology ‘theoros’ Gk. spectator. Wittgenstein said if I remember correctly - ‘don’t think look and see’. Start there with the ground cleared of engaging mysteries.
