These Maxims And The Art Of Interpreting

We Know More Than We Can Tell.

The Amount Of Knowledge Which We Can Justify From Evidence Directly Available To Us Can Never Be Large. The Overwhelming Proportion Of Our Factual Beliefs Continue Therefore To Be Held At Second Hand Through Trusting Others, And In The Great Majority Of Cases Our Trust Is Placed In The Authority Of Comparatively Few People Of Widely Acknowledged Standing.

I Shall Suggest, On The Contrary, That All Communication Relies, To A Noticeable Extent On Evoking Knowledge That We Cannot Tell, And That All Our Knowledge Of Mental Processes, Like Feelings Or Conscious Intellectual Activities, Is Based On A Knowledge Which We Cannot Tell.

Admittedly, Scientific Authority Is Not Distributed Evenly Throughout The Body Of Scientists; Some Distinguished Members Of The Profession Predominate Over Others Of A More Junior Standing.

We Cannot Ultimately Specify The Grounds (either Metaphysical Or Logical Or Empirical) Upon Which We Hold That Our Knowledge Is True. Being Committed To Such Grounds, Dwelling In Them, We Are Projecting Ourselves To What We Believe To Be True From Or Through These Grounds. We Cannot Therefore See What They Are. We Cannot Look At Them Because We Are Looking With Them.