Self-Validating Empirical Epistemology?

[Ignorant]

I didn't ask you about your beliefs.  I asked about your knowledge.  You have no knowledge of the object I was holding, regardless.  

I know, I was careful about my language. I described knowledge in relation to belief with conditional statements (starting with "if"). If you were telling the truth about holding some object, and I took you at your word, I would have knowledge of the fact that you are holding something. I'd be careful about attacking that idea, since about 99% of what the average person knows (maybe you're a scientist and that percentage is lower) about scientific phenomena is taken on the authority of the scientists actually collecting and analyzing the data. That is not a bad thing, and it is not some attempt to sneak "faith" into the discussion. I was answering your question in the most detailed way I could. Would you prefer something like "If I trust you..."?

But I do have some knowledge about the object you were holding, as long as you keep asserting that you were holding it. Until you tell me you weren't actually holding it... I know that you could hold it, and that you did hold it. In other words... I know that it is a thing that can be held.

You have knowledge of object you were holding.

Sure

Don't be obtuse.  

Ha! Couldn't resist.

Predictably, in our empirical experiment..you had no knowledge of the object for which you did not possess sense data.  

...except for all of the sense data that you gave me... like its weight not exceeding your ability to lift... that it is sensible to human beings, etc. Sure, I don't know what it is, its color, its shape, its smell, etc., but that doesn't mean I know nothing. Let's see where you take this:

You had knowledge of the object for which you did.  Care to run that experiment a few dozen times, a few thousand, a few million? This is precisely the sort of validation described in the first response to your question..where we consider empirical and non-empirical case claims against reality. It is breath-takingly simple to do so, and similarly easy to understand.

I think you need to refine your experiment (I get what you're trying to do, but you ironically demonstrated the opposite), and narrow it down to an aspect which actually requires my physical and personal sense observation (like color). By the way, what color was the thing you held up?

In the case above, had you layed claim to any knowledge of the object I was holding (rather than, say,.,knowledge of human beings - which I'm willing to bet you might have seen once or twice in your life, btw) you'd have quickly been shown to be bullshitting us..or, perhaps, the luckiest guesser in the history of guessing.

Well, would I have been correct that it was an object you can hold?

Perhaps your understanding of empiricism is unnecessarily narrow?