That question is not, _save upon the assumption of the ubiquity of the
knowledge relation_, the absurd question of whether knowledge makes
any difference to things already known or to things _as_
knowledge-objects, _as_ facts or truths. Until the epistemological
realists have seriously considered the main propositions of the
pragmatic realists, viz., that knowing is something that happens to
things in the natural course of their career, not the sudden
introduction of a "unique" non-natural type of relation--that to a
mind or consciousness--they are hardly in a position to discuss the
second and derived pragmatic proposition that, in this natural
continuity, things in becoming known undergo a specific and detectable
qualitative change.
I had occasion earlier to remark that if one identifies "knowledge"
with situations involving the function of inference, the _problem_ of
knowledge means the art of guiding this function most effectively.
That statement holds when we take knowledge as a relation of the
things _in_ the knowledge situation. If we are once convinced of the
artificiality of the notion that the knowledge relation is ubiquitous,
there will be an existential problem as to the self and knowledge; but
it will be a radically different problem from that discussed in
epistemology. The relation of knowing to existence will be recognized
to form the subject-matter of no problem, because involving an
ungrounded and even absurd preconception. But the problem of the
relation of an existence in the way of knowing to other existences--or
events--with which it forms a continuous process will then be seen to
be a natural problem to be attacked by natural methods.