Blackwell Reference Online

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Epistemology the term, coined by the American philosopher R. B. Perry, refers to the situation according to which everyone's knowledge is limited by his or her own experience and cannot go beyond that experience. This situation has already been expressed in Berkeley's dictum “to be is to be perceived.” Because of this predicament, we cannot have empirical knowledge of other minds, for we cannot share their experience. We also cannot have empirical knowledge of the mind-independent external world, for any recognition of the world must be formed on the basis of one's experience. Idealism, although widely criticized in this regard, generally takes this predicament as a strong proof of its truth.“The fallacious argument from the egocentric predicament is to confuse the redundant statement that ‘everything which is known, is known’ with the statement that ‘everything which is, is known’; or to infer the second statement from the first.”Perry, Realms of Value ... log in or subscribe to read full text