Beyond Locality: On Metaphysics & Local Epistemology
It seems to beg the question to verify knowledge. The authority that certifies knowledge always has an invested interest in what exactly the knowledge is. The tensions are relieved in certain circumstances.
For example, in science, hypotheses and theories are depersonalized/objectified so as to free/liberate them from bias. In office settings, subordinates answer to a professional pecking order so as to maintain a stable leadership. Office gossip can run contrary to the official company version of the story, but office gossip at worse can become open secrets that are still trivial to the leadership.
Hypotheses, theories and office gossip are consequences of what it means to exist as a human. An example the exemplifies their relevance to the human condition is Kant’s means to an end. Our actions can only be made sense of if we predict they will be of a certain consequence. The consequence is based on a seeming single chemical reaction that started with the Big Bang. We can all tether our own physical conditions to the physical world. But our mental conditions are tethered to personal experience that are relevant in personal understanding. This personal experience create one locality of knowledge that is ourselves. This locality can come in contact with office politics or scientific endeavors and the locality of personal experience can simultaneous keep being its own local epistemology while also becoming a part of the larger group’s epistemology.
For example, a frog is sitting on a pond and senses a small black ball go by. Instinctively, the frog’s local epistemology goes into motion and acts. The frog slings its tongue at the object and makes contact. Unexpectedly, the black ball keeps going and escapes the frog’s slimy grip. A person watching this saw it all. In the person’s local epistemology, a young kid had shot a BB gun. One of the pellets flew by the frog. The frog thought it was a fly and lunged at it.
The person watching the frog applies it to their own local epistemology. The black ball is BB gun pellet. The frog is an amphibian that evolved to react to small flying objects. The person then makes the local conclusion, “this frog was mistaken.”
When we read this story, we may be tempted to say that the person’s local conclusion is actually a universal conclusion. Any intelligent being observing the incident would think, “that frog was mistaken because it thought the pellet was a fly.”
This is where we hit a wall. We all perceive are own knowledge as universal but it’s never universal. It’s always local. Beyond office gossip or scientific theories, there is always unintelligible phenomenological potential. To believe anything or treat anything as knowledge is a radical assault on the chemical reaction we call the Big Bang’s bang.
