The question of what ontologically exists is of upmost importance and fundamental in answering any question about what is to be epistemological known. The problem is its circularity, that we can only “guess” at what exists from what is known.
The nature of knowledge, then, must tell us something of the nature of what exists, that is, we can never “know” something else directly. If we were to know something else directly then we would be that thing. Then, we would not be something else. Things are necessarily separate and never known directly.
This also tells us about the nature of knowledge – that a medium is always necessary in order to have knowledge of it. This is true of both self-knowledge (or will) and other-knowledge (or representation) where they both are indirect. The internal (self) medium is no different to the external (other) medium. They only differentiations in degrees of knowledge and levels of activity or process.
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I follow Schopenhauer’s idea of “representation” but do not accept his “will”. I do not agree that we can fully know the self either.
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I come from the noumena/phenomena distinction here. We can *know of* an object but never *know* an object.Let me rephrase this.
physical objects are not knowable except for through the senses. The knowledge of the object from the senses is a representation of it and not the object itself. We can have knowledge of an object but not fully know the object.
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I will answer (or have answered) this question in a post scheduled for Monday. The summary of it is:
there is no ontology of epistemology outside of a certain being (that is, an existing sentience).
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I think there are some jumps you make. That I am not following. Like, you need to fill in the steps a little more.
Why would direct knowledge of a thing mean that we would have to be that thing? For example.
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… we can never know something else directly. Why not?
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Granted, this is a short proof. Nevertheless, I feel you make some jumps I don’t follow.
Ontology: being
Epistemology: How we know.
Knowledge
The ontology Of epistemology. The being of knowledge. It seems that we already know that: the being is of knowledge is an identity. I’m not sure there is anything between knowledge and it’s being. I think knowledge maybe is being…. let me look at your post again…
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