Empirical Knowledge and Objectivity

Abstract

There is, in the philosophical literature, a paradox which surrounds the discussion of the nature of physical reality and the possibility of our knowledge of it. Although there are many ways in which this paradox may be stated, in each case it is a result of an analysis of empirical knowledge into two components, such as, observation and theory, the given and the conceptual interpretation of the given, matter and form. In this thesis I show some of the reasons which have lent plausibility to those statements which make up the paradox, the impossibility of a satisfactory resolution of the paradox by the means of two proposed doctrines, and I suggest a possible solution of the paradox.