Understanding “Practical Knowledge”

In contrast to the standpoint of the agent, O’Shaughnessy describes the role of the observer as one of “attendant questioner,” or one who regards the object of her perception as something “that is going its own way, that is taking its own course, and that may or may not shed a certain requisite item for which we are busy scrounging, viz., facts of a particular kind” (ibid., 330). In Aquinas’ terminology, this “scrounging” is a form of speculative intellectual activity; the knowledge it produces will be a knowledge of things that one does not regard as the intended products of one’s agential powers. Unlike the practical cognition of the agent, this sort of receptive attitude is aimed simply at securing a knowledgeable representation of its objects, and plays no direct role in determining what they are. But the essential point to see is that more is required to make one an “observer” of an event in this sense than simply the fact that one perceives that it is taking place: just as having non-perceptual knowledge that one is doing something does not suffice for knowing it in a practical way, so O’Shaughnessy’s suggestion seems to be that there is a sense in which being a perceiver of something does not always make one an observer of it, either.