what I have been putting in various forms and arguments is the view that our reality is a reflected reality
that our knowledge so called is reflection
what we know is reflection
in one form or another not hard to grasp
empiricists held it as a tenet that the world reflects on consciousness
rationalists that the world outside mind is only known given the mind's reflections on it
I go with a third view a sceptical view
that we do not know
and that our reflections - are in fact reflections on and of the unknown
so what of that beyond reflection?
I say it is the object of knowledge - which I define as the unknown - and I say our
reflections - in so far as we hold them to be knowledge - are all open to question
still they are reflections
the mind reflects
and if we understand that there is no bed rock to reflection
nothing can be the touch stone to truth
nevertheless we still have the fact of reflection
we still have reflection as the epistemological reality of conscious - self-conscious
beings
reflection is an act of knowledge - in the sense that no one reflects from nothing
we are given in whatever form as epistemological entities something to work with
and we always have something to work with -
this data - epistemological data - becomes the object of reflection
it is what we reflect upon
what I argue is that it takes some thought to see that there is nothing that can be
known beyond this facade of reflection
the world beyond this is what cannot be known
Descartes thought that a good start in this business was himself
and who could argue with the common sense wisdom of this
he came quickly to see that what he could not question was that he thinks
the point being - yes he did know something - and it was at the very least about
himself
Descartes of course had not abandoned his pursuit of knowledge - it was a life raft
and he clung to it
really though - all he had actually managed to identify was that he reflects
now to say what this is - is of course to reflect upon it
it is to perform an epistemological operation
and its status - epistemological - ontological - is a matter of reflection
so here I am suggesting that the knower so called is reflection bound
logically speaking Descartes was no further down the road of his inquires at the end as he was at the beginning
and what of Descartes himself - or for that matter you or I
if you take reflection out of the picture?
what do we know of ourselves?
what can we know?
I say we must regard ourselves as unknowns
