knoWing unKnoWing Hames L. Christian EPISTEMIC LONELINESS I At about this point, a feeling of loneliness may begin to overtake usan epistemic loneliness. "For the egocentric predicament is really an epistcmolog ical cond ition: isolation within a world of our own making. We live in a shell, so to speak a private, personal shell inside which takes place an immense variety of experiences, all ours. And when we try to break out of our shells to make contact with the world and other creatures, we only rediscover the depth of our predicament We live in an epistemological shell with no doors. None may enter and none may share 2 Since certain aspects of our epistemological cond ition appear to be inescapable we must learn to live with them (1) The fallacy ofobjectfication is an everpresent danger Our experic ing system conspires to make us think that a variety of private experiences are in some way real that they are events occurring in the real world of objects/events. (The tragic consequences of this fallacy will be felt especially when we try to untangle our value--experiences. (2)Accordingly we have all lived(unwittingly) in a state of confusion regarding the location of the occurrence of events. Our subjective and objective worlds are interwoven: events we thought to be private may turn out to be objective while many supposedly objective events often prove to be experiences only ()We are restless with our evolutionary limitation and deceptions. While we can be grateful that sensory and information processing systems have rendered our physical environment meaningful, we have reached a point in our quest for reality when we want to go beyond our limitations and to know what the world is really like. We want to make whatever corrections are necessary in our universe and its principles of operation 3 From this vantage point, the central problem if Western epistemology may be more intellig ible. if we know only our experiences, how can we be sure that we know anything about the real world? More precisely, if objective physical phenomena are all converted before we can experience them into different kinds of energy, how can we know anything about the original phenomena? Can we even know what those phenomena are? If we experience only the subjective side of our interface with reality, can we ever now anything about the objective side of that interface-boundary? It will be helpful at this point to take time for historical sidetrip. Almost four centuries of epistemological analysis haw engaged some of the greatest minds the West has produced. Without felling any obligation to believe all they say, lets listen to three philosophers, brieflyKNOWING & UNKNOWING Hames L. Christian EPISTEMIC LONELINESS I At about this point, a feeling of loneliness may begin to overtake us__ an "epistemic loneliness." For the egocentric predicament is really an epistcmologica1 condition: isolation within a world of our own making. We live in a shell, so to speak, a private, personal shell inside which takes place an immense variety of experiences, all ours. And when we try to break out of our shells to make contact with the world and other creatures, we only rediscover the depth of our predicament. We 1ive in an epistemological shel1 with no doors. None may enter and none may share. 2 Since certain aspects of our epistemological condition appear to be inescapable, we must learn to live with them. (1 ) The fallacy of objectfication is an everpresent danger. Our expericing system conspires to make us think that a variety of private experiences are in some way real, that they are events occurring in the real world of objects/events. (The tragic consequences of this fallacy will be felt especially when we try to untangle our value--experiences.) (2) Accordingly we have all lived (unwittingly) in a state of confusion regarding the location of the occurrence of events. Our subjective and objective worlds are interwoven: events we thought to be private may turn out to be objective, while many supposedly objective events often prove to be experiences only. (3)We are restless with our evolutionary limitation and deceptions. While we can be grateful that sensory and information _processing systems have rendered our physical environment meaningful, we have reached a point in our quest for reality when we want to go beyond our limitations and to know what the world is really like .We want to make whatever corrections are necessary in our universe and its principles of operation. 3 From this vantage point, the central problem if Western epistemology may be more intelligible. if we know only our experiences, how can we be sure that we know anything about the real world? More precisely, if objective physical phenomena are all converted before we can experience them into different kinds of energy, how can we know anything about the original phenomena? Can we even know what those phenomena are? If we experience only the subjective side of our interface with reality, can we ever know anything about the objective side of that interface--boundary? It will be helpful at this point to take time for historical sidetrip. Almost four centuries of epistemological analysis haw engaged some of the greatest minds the West has produced. Without felling any obligation to believe all they say, let’s listen to three philosophers, briefly.