To understand things from the outside world and inner feelings, a person has to rely on his own culture and experience. In this situation, the human mind becomes the main tool that helps people to determine reality and perceive some knowledge. People infer the truth about some causally connected but logically independent state of affairs. We read the relevant instrument itself in our knowledge of the existence and nature of our perceptual experiences, and reason from thereby an elaborate and highly dubious inference–to the existence and nature of the material world around us. The thesis is impossible to have objective knowledge because people rely on their own experiences and feelings which differ from the perceptions and experiences of others.
It is impossible to have objective knowledge because a person does not have a standard of feelings and experiences that can be comparable with the feelings of others. Although the classification is in many ways problematic, Following Wilson the relevant features of experiences are their vivacity, their passivity and lack of voluntary control on the human part, the irresistibility of the beliefs to which they give rise, and their peculiarly direct connection with pleasure, pain, and immediate action: precisely those features which distinguish such experiences from those involved in imagination, memory and thought (54).
Thus, it is possible to say that perception is a source of knowledge about the existence and nature of the material world around us. Perception is simply an autonomous mode of acquisition for knowledge of particular matters of fact, in virtue of its de facto status as a special kind of reliable source of true beliefs about such things. In this respect, it is quite on a par with reason, and in no need of any justificatory support from it. All people belong to different cultures and ethnic groups, so their feelings and experiences are influenced by diverse cultural norms and traditions. People have different perceptions of the same subject and they cannot confirm or reject the truth.
It is impossible to have objective knowledge because the truths that perception generates are less certain than those delivered by intuition or demonstration, although our use of these is of course fallible; but this fact is of little epistemological significance. Perception is an independent route to knowledge of particular matters of fact, whose epistemological standing consists in its being the special kind of cognitive faculty which it is for informing us about the way things are around us, and how we are thereby right about them, rather than in the availability of any endorsement of its deliverances by rational argument. Perception may suffice knowledgeably to rule out the possibility of an error (Wilson 92). AoK of the universe, and the world around detailed and extensive, on the other hand, cannot provide objective knowledge.
Indeed, it may be objected that in so far as a person ever knows that his beliefs succeed in referring to particular mind-independent things, this knowledge is necessarily derived from his prior and independent knowledge that the appropriate possibilities of massive reduplication are not actualized. The thought behind this objection is that referring to something is insufficient on its own, either for knowledge that any description which may be involved is not multiply satisfied throughout the whole universe, or for knowledge that one succeeds in referring to the thing in question; whereas with independent knowledge of the former, and a little reflection about the descriptive nature of the belief in question, one might infer the latter, that one is indeed successful in one’s purported reference.
Furthermore, the objector continues, this is the only way of acquiring such knowledge of successful reference to mind-independent things. Thus, there are no cases in which the two conditions required by my argument are both met. A way with self-knowledge becomes an obstacle to the knowledge of the world. For instance, different people have different perceptions of colors so it is impossible to say that this knowledge is objective.
The account of content-determination ensures that beliefs about the world are normally true (Wilson 55). There is the unacceptable consequence that a person has no real understanding of how he thereby believes the world to be. Any person who has a perceptually based belief about a particular thing in the mind-independent world around her is thereby in a position to know that she is indeed referring to that spatial particular.
in sum, knowledge cannot be objective because people belong to different cultures and diverse backgrounds, they have different experiences and perceptions. People sometimes know that they are referring to spatial particulars other than by inference from their reflective knowledge of the descriptive nature of the Idea involved along with some independent knowledge that the relevant description is uniquely satisfied, it follows that the two conditions and frequently are, jointly met.
Successful perceptual reference is sufficient for knowledge, thus this knowledge is not objective. Every person has a unique understanding of reality and unique perceptions which cannot be confirmed or rejected by other people, so it is impossible to have objective knowledge because people are guided by different emotions, reasons, and language
Works Cited
Wilson, E. O. Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. : Vintage, 1999.