ABSTRACT
Within the large family of belief, judgement, acceptance, conviction, taking for granted, being under the impression that, certainty, acquaintance, apprehension (‘Erkennen’), knowledge, one possibly fundamental category is that of primitive certainty. Ortega y Gasset says:
I did not ‘notice’ the seat or arm-chair I am sitting on . . . In some way I was counting on (‘contar con’) the seat . . . When we go down the stairs we are not properly speaking aware of every step, but we count on all of them; and in general we are not aware of most of the things which exist for us but we count on them.
