Knowing we're not dreaming

Esther Meek defines Knowing as "the responsible human struggle to rely on clues to focus on a coherent pattern and submit to its reality". We integrate subsidiary clues, but only as we focus on a pattern and not the clues. But how do we know that the pattern we focus on is actually real? Meek suggests that in all knowing two accompanying experiences make us feel that our focal pattern is a discovery and not an invention.

1. Growing out of our past - the profundity of the pattern. We "sense the richness, the profundity, of the pattern [that is] grander than the clues on which it relies." We find the pattern "more than makes sense of the clues [it] unites and transforms them into a fresh center, in light of which the clues gain profounder meaning. The pattern evokes uncanny harmonies and resonances between things that once appeared disparate. The gaps become meaningful hiddennesses."
2. Growing into our future - unspecifiable future prospects. "In the moment of a profound integration, we experience a sense of the future possibilities, prospects, horizons of the thing we have encountered. There are sides we cannot currently see, behaviors we suspect but could never predict, implications only some of which we can reason out, but which in their inompleteness may lead us to uncover new and transforming dimensions."

[Notes on Chapter 16 of Longing to Know: The philosophy of knowledge for ordinary people]