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“Let us, thusly, embrace the assumption that to each advocate of a respective paradigm within his respective bubble, the phenomenological gaps between himself and those in neighboring bubbles are insurmountable. The resident of a given bubble has become so inured to the echoes of his own ‘truthâ€� as to abandon all terms of commonality with the ‘truthsâ€� of others outside his bubble. The internal terms, concepts, definitions and assumptions underlying each paradigm are different and incommensurate with those of their external counterparts. And so, to debate them would be tantamount to speaking through one another without much mutual understanding. In their communities, they speak different words, abide by different sets of logic, axioms and propositions from those of other communities; they, thusly, do not understand the terminology upholding other paradigms beside their own, and many attempts at translation have become lost in circular discourse for there exists no equivalency of terms. Thus, any gaps between bubbles of paradigm are beyond traversal; all arguments between them remain perplexing and irreconcilable. There, then, evolves, among them, a strong tendency to seek out information that only serves to confirm their own biases, and, in the process, to otherize any alien paradigms as hotbeds of disinformation.”
― Ashim Shanker

“It must be *possible* for the *I think* to accompany all my representations: for otherwise something would be represented within me that could not be thought at all, in other words, the representation would either be impossible, or at least would be nothing to me. That representation which can be given prior to all thought is called *intuition*, and all the manifold of intuition has, therefore, a necessary relation to the *I think* in the same subject in which this manifold of intuition is found. This representation (the *I think*), however, is an act of *spontaneity*, that is, it cannot be considered as belonging to sensibility. I call it *pure apperception*, in order to distinguish it from empirical apperception, as also from original apperception, because it is that self-consciousness which, by producing the representations, *I think* (which must be capable of accompanying all other representations, and which is one and the same in all consciousness), cannot itself be accompanied by any further representations. I also call the unity of apperception the *transcendental* unity of self-consciousness, in order to indicate that *a priori* knowledge can be obtained from it. For the manifold representations given in an intuition would not one and all be *my* representations, if they did not all belong to one self-consciousness. What I mean is that, as my representations (even though I am not conscious of them as that), they must conform to the condition under which alone they *can* stand together in one universal self-consciousness, because otherwise they would not one and all belong to me. From this original combination much can be inferred.

The thoroughgoing identity of the apperception of a manifold that is given in intuition contains a synthesis of representations, and is possible only through the consciousness of this synthesis. For the empirical consciousness which accompanies different representations is itself dispersed and without reference to the identity of the subject. Such a reference comes about, not simply through my accompanying every representation with consciousness, but through my *adding* one representation to another and being conscious of the synthesis of them. Only because I am able to combine a manifold of given representations *in one consciousness* is it possible for me to represent to myself the *identity of the consciousness in these representations*, that is, only under the presupposition of some *synthetic* unity of apperception is the *analytic* unity of apperception possible. The thought that the representations given in intuition belong one and all *to me*, is therefore the same as the thought that I unite them in one self-consciousness, or can at least do so; and although that thought itself is not yet the consciousness of the synthesis of representations, it nevertheless presupposes the possibility of this synthesis. In other words, it is only because I am able to comprehend the manifold of representations in one consciousness that I call them one and all *my* representations. For otherwise I should have as many-coloured and varied a self as I have representations of which I am conscious. Synthetic unity of the manifold of intuitions, as given *a priori*, is thus the ground of the identity of apperception itself, which precedes *a priori* all *my* determinate thought. Combination, however, does not lie in the objects, and cannot be borrowed from them by perception and thus first be taken into the understanding. It is, rather, solely an act of the understanding, which itself is nothing but the faculty of combining *a priori* and of bringing the manifold of given representations under the unity of apperception; and the principle of this unity is, in fact, the supreme principle of all human knowledge."

—from_Critique of Pure Reason_. Translated, edited, and with an Introduction by Marcus Weigelt, based on the translation by Max Müller, pp. 124-128”
― Immanuel Kant

“It has always been asked in the spirit of: ‘What are the best sources of our knowledge â€� the most reliable ones, those which will not lead us into error, and those to which we can and must turn, in case of doubt, as the last court of appeal?â€� I propose to assume, instead, that no such ideal sources exist â€� no more than ideal rulers â€� and that all ‘sourcesâ€� are liable to lead us into errors at times. And I propose to replace, therefore, the question of the sources of our knowledge by the entirely different question: ‘How can we hope to detect and eliminate error?â€� The question of the sources of our knowledge, like so many authoritarian questions, is a genetic one. It asks for the origin of our knowledge, in the belief that knowledge may legitimize itself by its pedigree. The nobility of the racially pure knowledge, the untainted knowledge, the knowledge which derives from the highest authority, if possible from God: these are the (often unconscious) metaphysical ideas behind the question. My modified question, ‘How can we hope to detect error?â€� may be said to derive from the view that such pure, untainted and certain sources do not exist, and that questions of origin or of purity should not be confounded with questions of validity, or of truth. â€�. The proper answer to my question ‘How can we hope to detect and eliminate error?â€� is I believe, ‘By criticizing the theories or guesses of others and â€� if we can train ourselves to do so â€� by criticizing our own theories or guesses.â€� â€�. So my answer to the questions ‘How do you know? What is the source or the basis of your assertion? What observations have led you to it?â€� would be: ‘I do not know: my assertion was merely a guess. Never mind the source, or the sources, from which it may spring â€� there are many possible sources, and I may not be aware of half of them; and origins or pedigrees have in any case little bearing upon truth. But if you are interested in the problem which I tried to solve by my tentative assertion, you may help me by criticizing it as severely as you can; and if you can design some experimental test which you think might refute my assertion, I shall gladly, and to the best of my powers, help you to refute it.”
― Karl Popper

“No other thinker was so well prepared to give new impetus to the philosophical questions of the younger generation. Though many of his students and successors have attained a higher degree of exactitude and adequacy in their logical analyses of problems in the theory of knowledge, [Moritz] Schlick had an unsurpassed sense for what is essential in philosophical issues.”
― Albert Blumberg

“It is true, no doubt, that this principle of the necessary unity of apperception is itself an identical and therefore an analytic proposition; but it shows, nevertheless, the necessity of a synthesis of the manifold given in an intuition, a synthesis without which it would be impossible to think the thoroughgoing identity of self-consciousness. For through the *I*, as a simple representation, nothing manifold is given; only in intuition, which is distinct from this representation, can a manifold be given, and then, through *combination*, be thought in one consciousness. An understanding in which through self-consciousness all the manifold would be given at the same time would be one that *intuits*; our understanding can do nothing but *think*, and must seek intuition in the senses. I am conscious, therefore, of the identical self with respect to the manifold of the representations that are given to me in an intuition, because I call them one and all *my* representations, as constituting *one* intuition. This means that I am conscious *a priori* of a necessary synthesis of them, which is called the original synthetic unity of apperception, and under which all representations given to me must stand, but under which they must also be brought by means of a synthesis.â€�

—from_Critique of Pure Reason_. Translated, edited, and with an Introduction by Marcus Weigelt, based on the translation by Max Müller, pp. 128-129”
― Immanuel Kant

“Some animals can see only in black and white, so everything is a shade of grey, others can see in various colors. If you cease to look at something and it continues to exist, what color does it have? The color one species sees it in, or the color another species sees it in? Clearly it can't be grey and have another color at the same time. The same applies to other sense perceptions, a vibration in the air sounds different to different species, the same odour can smell different to different species. Remove the observer, what sound or smell continues to exist. The way one observer hears the sound or the way the other observer hears it? Does an odour continue to exist the way one observer smells it or the way another smells it? Something cannot be of different colors, smells or sounds at the same time. Clearly the sense perceptions a particular observer has disappear when the observer ceases to be making an observation.”
― Rochelle Forrester, Sense Perception and Reality: A Theory of Perceptual Relativity, Quantum Mechanics and the Observer Dependent Universe

“Bergson shows firstly that any theory of knowledge that wishes to be consequent will have to start out by destroying the type of superstition that leads us to imagine that there could be no order at all.”
― Gilles Châtelet, To Live and Think Like Pigs: The Incitement of Envy and Boredom in Market Democracies

“To unchange the understandable theory of a busy street a road must walk a distance for the rims to move a feet”
― Manny Godson

“To unchanged the theory of a busy street a road must walk a distance for the rims to move a feet”
― Ben Jr Grey

“A person’s theory of knowledge (epistemology) is but part (or an aspect) of a whole network of presuppositions that he maintains, which includes beliefs about the nature of reality (metaphysics) and his norms for living (ethics). Consider someone’s commitment to a certain method of knowing (learning, reasoning, proving, etc.). That method will not be set forth by its advocate simply in a descriptive fashion, as though we were just observing what happens when people come to know things. Rather, the method will be treated as normativeâ€� as the proper and obligatory way in which to gain or justify knowledge. It carries prescriptive force, then, and becomes a standard for evaluating or judging claims to knowledge. The choice of such an epistemological norm and the choice to conform in particular cases to it are part of a person’s broader lifestyle, reflecting his ultimate authority for conduct and attitudes (ethics). [...] If one is attempting to be philosophically reasonable (rather than arbitrary), one’s method of knowing has presumably been chosen, from among conflicting methods, because it “worksâ€� well in identifying the beliefs that reflect reality (the way things are) and separating out the beliefs that fail to do so. In that case, then, our choice of an epistemological method is adjusted to what we take as paradigm instances of beliefs reflecting the actual metaphysical state of affairs. [...] It will not be possible, then, to resolve disputes of a basic epistemological character between individuals without engaging in argumentation at the level of presupposed worldviews as a whole.”
― Greg L. Bahnsen