Self-Validating Empirical Epistemology?

[Ignorant]

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.

Ha! This isn't helping you. If you were indeed lying to me about holding an object, you have given me evidence that your word is not trust-worthy. You would simply be considered a poor instrument for data collection. Maybe you're lying about what you accept as true? Maybe you're not even an empiricist! Maybe you're not even a human being? Worse... maybe you're a TROLL!

But if you were indeed holding something, and you told me that you were holding something, you've given me sense information. It's not that difficult. I'm sorry it didn't fit your analogous experiment... lighten up a bit maybe? I'm not even trying to assert some other sort of knowledge (if I take you at your word, I still have to do that through my sense experience of you telling me stuff), I was just answering your question... apparently more accurately than you would have liked.

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. 

I am sorry, what trap? I am trying to discuss knowledge!

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?

Ya, ha! Now I am not so sure that you were holding an object, and I'm starting to wonder why I should trust any of the data you provide me with in the future (just like we do with poorly calibrated/malfunctioning instruments in the lab). You said you were holding an object, I took that as a trustworthy premise. You should have asked "Do you know what I am holding?", and I would have to simply say "no". We can start over there if you'd like. This is what bad epistemology leads to, people!

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

Well sure. I didn't have any reason to doubt it before. Now I have every reason to doubt it, along with any other information you provide me with.

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 would have been very willing to agree with this before had you not been so shrouded with the fact of your holding-an-object. Now, I don't trust any sense data you would provide me with, as it has previously been predicated upon lies.

If your point was that sense knowledge requires sense data (which isn't controversial or interesting), then I agree with it. Does sense knowledge require immediate and direct sense data? I hope not, or else I better hit the lab early in the morning!

If you could answer that question - then perhaps you'd have had some claim to knowledge, empirical or otherwise.

Right, that was the point of asking it. Had you told me the answer, I could have empirical knowledge of the object you were holding, without any direct empirical experience of it myself. I don't know why you wouldn't want to tell me, but, because I know human beings better every day, I also know that they do weird things like this!

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.

Then you misunderstood me. I was looking to understand how you understood empiricism. I consider myself an empiricist, but my epistemology isn't so narrow as to exclude additional human ways to knowledge. Remember, I'm OBTUSE not narrow!

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.

Of course not! But then again, I was never confused about empiricism. I was merely confused about individual empiricist's understanding of its empirical justification. Still waiting for a coherent account of that justification. The most coherent account has been Thumpalumpagus and Ben Davis (and probably others') assertion that it is axiomatic rather than an empirically demonstrated conclusion.