From Ernst Werklempter’s first book - “I Think I Think, But I Know I Know”.
[i]How can we know if we can know? For, if we cannot know, we cannott know that we cannot know.
So we could just stop talking about it.
But if we can know, we might know if we can know or we might not know if we can know. Because we might know but not know what we can know and what we cannot know.
What if we knew but didn’t know that we knew? Would we still know?
Know what I mean?
If you do, then you know, and you know that you know.
If you don’t, then you don’t know, which you at least now know.[/i]
Two thousand years of epistemology in a few sentences.
That would lead to an infinite progress of wishes. Which would, eventually, looking back, lead to an infinite regress. You can’t have one without the other. Infinity is infinity, after all.
Unless there was a First Wisher. Which Werklempter rejects.
I’ve not read any Werklempter, actually . . . but the quoted passage is just a fun sort of play on words - i suppose i won’t venture to make any final judgements about whether it’s actually epistemology in a proper sense or not, but i think it works best (and probably ONLY) as a sort of tounge in cheek commentary on the absurdity that necessarily arises when we try to treat things like knowledge, objectivity, and certainty as all or nothing propositions . . .
He says you can know something, right?
And then he says that you can know that you know something.
Am I supposed to be impressed by the assertion that one can’t do both at once? How can you do do?
There also is mention of instinctual or subconscious knowledge (not knowing that you know) and limits to what you can know (I don’t think there is a limit to knowledge of “facts”) which is just stating the obvious.
