ABSTRACT
Nevertheless, the maker’s knowledge of an artefact is an appropriate analogy for our intellectual knowledge of particular things. Aristotle’s error, like that of idealist accounts of cognition, is to recognize too late, if indeed he does so at all, that the analogy is metaphorical. (This error comes out in his theory of the active intellect.) The analogy is appropriate because our inner knowledge of our actions -the knowledge that comes from so-called kinaesthetic sensations -does not exist alongside sensory knowledge but blends with it as inner and outer knowledge of the same thing. When Merleau-Ponty speaks of us as ‘inhabiting’ things we perceive, or Lipps of us as ‘permeating them with our activity, they make the point that this feature of knowledge of our actions is metaphorically present in perception. The problem is to reach an understanding of perception that can explain why such metaphors are appropriate. This will give the understanding of it we need for aesthetics.
