Cognitive Disclosure and the Meaning of Truth

In this chapter, we will seek to demonstrate how this line of thinking remains capable of accounting for realistic intuitions. This would help us to avoid charges of performative self-contradiction by analysing a specific characteristic trait of cognitive phenomenality, which consists of its orientation on universal validity and its tendency to take contradictive evidence into account, which is something that is, as we will argue, untypical for our everyday understanding and for such practices as, for example, games, art and humour (Sect. 4.1). Furthermore, based on Heidegger’s analysis of the philosophical tradition and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave in particular, we will argue that cognitive understanding occurs in the context of our attempt to subordinate human understanding to an external criterion (Sect. 4.2). Then, we will also demonstrate how this subordination also goes hand in hand with a particular way of maximizing our ability-to-be (Sect. 4.3).