Self-Validating Empirical Epistemology?

[The Grand Nudger]

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.

Taking me at my word is irrelevant, and you don;t know that I was telling you the truth in the first place.  Maybe I was fucking with you and didn;t have anything in my hand at all. -If only you had some sense data, eh?  The irrelevencies of your credibility have nothing to say regarding the issue we are discussing.

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..."?

Maybe you should make sure the hare is in the loop before you try to spring the trap?  I would prefer that you discuss knowledge, and empirical validation of empirical knowledge claims....the subject of our discussion. Provided, ofc, you are attem[pting to respond to my comments. You can talk about kittens if you like, obviously.

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 do not, you don;t even know if I was holding an object, as has been made painfully obvious.  You have knowledge of human beings and what they can hold.  Shall we run a similar experiment to determine the status of -that- knowledge, it's basis and validation within empiricism?

Ha! Couldn't resist.

LOL, hi-five!

...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:

I gave you none, you still don't even know whether I was holding an object in the first place.  

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?

I think it worked just fine.  If I provide you with sense data, by the way, then your knowledge will still be predicate upon sense data - and thus still empirical...and can then be used as yet another case example of empirical validition, of empirical knowledge claims relative to alternatives.  I won't.  

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

Perhaps your understanding of empiricism is unnecessarily narrow?

Would you have been, indeed.  If you could answer that question - then perhaps you'd have had some claim to knowledge, empirical or otherwise.  I gave you the wiki link..the time to disagree was then.  I asked you if it was the position of empiricism which you were looking to understand, rather than your impositions upon it, the time to disagree was then.  It was painfully easy to provide you with what you asked for - both in explanation and in elaboration. That empiricism was not what you thought it was, and you would now plead to have your impositions included, isn't any problem of mine.

@Chad....lol, you get enough arsenic down that hole, or do you think we might want to pour in a few more scoops just to make sure the water's properly lethal? Another observation, you're really bad at identifying positions that I hold, arent you? You seem to think that I'm a great many things...the last two examples of your guessing are pretty contradictory. I mean, I could only be one or the other - right...non-contradiction and all that?