Definition of

knowing subject

Human being

A knowing subject carries out an act of knowledge through thought.

Subject is a term with several meanings. It may be the person who, in a certain context, is not named or identified. The subject is also a grammatical function and a philosophical category. Knower , for its part, is an adjective that applies to someone who knows or who is in a position to know.

The being that develops an act of knowledge through thought is called a knowing subject . It is a notion that is used in the field of philosophy and is related to the concept of reality .

The knowing subject and reality

Many philosophers have reflected on the level of knowledge that human beings have or can achieve. As a knowing being, there are those who maintain that man does not have access to the ultimate truth or reality, but rather knows certain phenomena that arise from it. In this sense, knowledge is taken as knowledge that is extracted from reality, with the subject located outside of it.

Other philosophical positions, however, believe that the knowing subject constructs his reality from the act of knowledge. In this case, the being generates itself and the world.

Beyond the accepted theory, it can be indicated that the knowing subject maintains permanent interactions with reality with the objective of producing certain knowledge that allows him to achieve adaptation to the environment . People have a psychic apparatus made up of different cognitive systems.

As the human being is a knowing subject, the thoughts he produces allow him to guide his actions and, in this way, act freely .

Reflection

When thinking, the knowing subject can act freely.

The view of different thinkers

Specifically, based on everything stated above, we must present some of the most important theories or ideas that have emerged in this regard from recognized figures over the centuries regarding the subject of knowledge. Thus, among the most significant we would highlight the following:

-One of the pillars of the history of philosophy is the Greek Plato 's myth of the cave. In it, two fundamental things were established: that reality is found in what he called the World of Ideas and that human beings can only access to know what the shadows of that aforementioned reality are.

-The Prussian philosopher who is a key figure of the so-called Enlightenment is Immanuel Kant who also theorized about it. Specifically, he stated that the knowing subject is only capable of knowing the phenomenon of the ultimate truth and not the truth itself.

-The German professor and philosopher Ernst von Glaserfeld , a key figure of the so-called constructivism, was one of the personalities who, at all times, advocated determining that the subject was in charge of carrying out the generation of his own reality.

-Of course, we should not ignore the existence of Jean Piaget 's theory in this regard either. Specifically, this came to determine that the knowing subject is one who is in constant interaction with reality, which he tries to know with a clear purpose: to maintain a balance in the exchanges that take place and ensure the adaptations that are necessary.