The nature of perspective, epistemology, and why we might not know everything.

Originally appeared on Medium

If you are in a room with 100 people, what’s something you know more about than at least 80 of them?

This question is a simple way to get someone to consider what they are good at or, more specifically, above-average at. Often someone will express, usually with reluctance, a particular hobby or category of existence which they feel quite confident about.

But that’s a fair question because that question compares your knowledge to others. An unfair question would be:

“What’s something you know everything about?”

Knowledge, it seems, is a tricky thing. Nicholas Cusa is famous for remarking:

“Observable reality is full of contradictions that show how little we humans know. The more you learn, the more you see how ignorant we are.”

Knowledge appears to be incredibly limited.

Welcome to the fascinating subject of epistemology, where we question how people know things. It also ponders whether people are able to know anything at all, and how we come to know things.

What does it mean for knowledge to be known by a person?

Your conglomerated knowledge becomes what we call a perspective, it is your point of view based on what you have seen, experienced, and know.

But how is this perspective formed and how ought our perspectives work?

Problems arise when it comes to humans and our perspectives. Knowing stuff appears to be quite complicated and certainty, so it seems, remains elusive.

So, what ought we do?

If we can understand the nature of our perspectives, such epistemological awareness might allow us to navigate the world with a bit less derelict obtusity.

Knowledge: Finite & Limited

Can you know everything about something? If not, what is causing that incompleteness?

Within the conversation on epistemology, how we know things, what knowledge is, and what knowledge is capable of — there are two general propositions on how knowledge is obtained:

With our minds (rationalism).
With our senses and experience (empiricism).

But both of these forms of ‘knowing’ have inadequacies that lead to the acknowledgment that human knowledge is always incomplete.

Please note, the following dissection has been debated since written history — taking on full-scale mobilization during the Enlightenment with the Rationalists versus the Empiricists.

The Problem of Reason — Our Minds Are Finite

Rationalism — knowing via the mind as opposed to physical experience — is incomplete because it is finite.

As our minds are not infinite, we can’t know everything.

The debate is enormous and covers everything from perspectives on human nature to articulations of consciousness with some even claiming that human consciousness is infinite in scope. Whether or not it is infinite in scale (achieving transcendent means or able to know as if one is another conscious being) remains undetermined.

Concerning incomplete knowledge, the basic premise is that there are things the human mind is incapable of knowing because we are contingent beings.

Essentially, our minds and perspectives are finite because we are finite.

Now, whether science can overcome that finitude or whether certain technologies will, one day, make it possible to know everything is a debate that I don’t wish to incite (at, least, not here).

The problem is the apparent reality that there are things our minds are incapable of knowing, conceiving, and comprehending and we don’t, therefore, know everything.

Arguments can continue as to where exactly that finitude occurs, however, our perspectives are finite — because our mind and mental capacities are finite.

The Problem of Experience — Our Perspectives Are Limited

As stated, the debate between rationalism and empiricism is heavy, but an interesting issue is that even empiricists tend to agree that knowledge based on sensory observation is limited.

Empiricists are just adamant that sensory observation is still better than rationalism. However, even if experience (sensory observation; empiricism) is the best method for knowing reality, it still isn’t capable of knowing everything.

The problem with experience is that it is contained to the human person and, therefore, abides by the same constraints of the human person.

You only can know what you experience within the confines of the time you have and the places you are.

Your perspective, therefore, is limited.

A Further Problem — Reason & Experience are Interdependent

As the Rationalists and the Empiricists railed against one another, they both criticized that the method the other group was using to arrive at conclusions was fallible.

However, as philosophical history continued, you begin seeing folks recognize that, actually, both processes have problems. They recognized something else, as well:

Reason and experience depend on one another.

If you are doing scientific research, you have to rely on mental faculties. Further, if you are rationally considering logical truths, you have to do so within the confines of your direct experience.

Neither reason nor experience exists in a vacuum. This means the problems of one infects the problem of the other.

Any time you are considering some form of knowledge, your finite mind, and your limited experience both indict your outcome.

Can We Know Anything?

As more and more people considered this problem of epistemology, more and more folks concluded that certainty, unfortunately, is elusive. Because, if:

Mental cognition is finite;
Sensory observation is limited;
And both of those forms of knowing are dependent on one another;

Then not only is your knowledge plagued with constraints, but your knowledge is also even further contained to one, single, sentient, mortal being: You.

Because all ‘knowing’ must be manifested through the human person, you will only ever know anything through the lens of your mind and experience. Even if you share the same experience with someone else, how you know that experience will still be unique to you. You can read all the books or watch all the videos you want, but you can’t inhabit someone else’s being.

Phenomenological Egocentrism

There is, then, a phenomenological issue that makes all knowledge egocentric in nature and, therefore, impossible to fully capture with any sense of full certainty.

Phenomenology argues that how you experience the world is not the same thing as the objective nature of the world because we can’t see everything and we impart our own values and meaning to anything we experience.

If you were to look at your house, you can’t possibly see the whole house at one time because you can only see the house through your eyes. You also can’t see the house over the duration of time within a single moment nor the process that has changed the house from moment to moment — including seeing the totality of materials, ideas, and experiences that created the house as you see it any single moment. Yes, you could use photographic technology, but many a philosopher have argued this doesn’t capture conscious awareness.

So, you don’t see everything. Yet, you also don’t just see a box of wood and metal.

You see memories and ideas and values and emotions and concerns when you realize that you might need to replace your roof, but also that the house seems to have a purpose for your identity or family or community.

What phenomenology does to the conversation on perspective and epistemology is it forces us to recognize that our perspectives are constantly under the constraints of our eyes and under the distinction of what we bring to the knowledge, itself.

We are myopic, by nature.

Which means the nature of our perspective is egocentric.

Immanuel Kant phrased it that we only ever see what we see; which is limited; which means we can’t see everything. Our perception can never be reality. There are elements of life and the world that you can’t harness because your specific, egocentric consciousness is in your way.

What Do We Do?

First, wrestle with your subjectivity.

None of this is meant to imply that objective truth is non-existent, just very inaccessible to the finite, limited consciousness of human beings. In fact, Immanuel Kant was quite concerned about this very issue and worked incredibly hard to come up with a priori solutions to the epistemological confusion so that finite, limited humans could still interact with objective reality.

We need to be honest that we ain’t working with all the information.

And the information we are working with is quite unique to us.

If there is an objective truth, it will not be contained within the singularity of your existence. We don’t know everything because we can’t know everything.

That impossibility requires us to be honest about the subjective nature of our perspective.

Second, recognize the same is true of others.

When anyone, including yourself, claims to just be reporting the facts, please acknowledge that this isn’t such a simple task. Look no further than this essay, plagued with my own sentient interpretations and confuscated claims abhorrently opaque to a multiplicity of information, factors, and perspectives that I either blatantly missed or left out for the sake of brevity.

The beautiful thing is that our finite, limited perspectives don’t have to be a problem if we are honest about their shortcomings and are wise in how we use them.

But that begins with us. And, unfortunately, includes how we interact with others working with the same constraints.

Because none of us are working with all the information.