Sensory Empiricist Epistemology - A Moral Risk

This has probably been remarked on by others, at least indirectly, but it's worth spelling out:

At the heart of the 'internal / external', 'subjective / objective', 'senses / science' conundrum lurks an issue of good faith. When we cannot understand what someone (A) is saying - when what they are saying does not 'make sense' to us - we might represent this to another person (B) as a hypothesis about A's competence or honesty as a language user.

Within the empiricist tradition, there are many statements (e.g. first-person observation statements) where this failure, or this dishonesty, must translate into a specific issue with A's sensory apparatus: either it isn't working properly (they don't see what's there) or they are lying (they see, but pretend not to). We know (externally, demonstrably) that the linguistic interaction is going wrong, and we claim (problematically, unresolvably) that this results from a lack of facility or from moral failure.

This easy projection of the external communication breakdown onto the internal space of a potential interlocutor has some ugly consequences. Among mental health practitioners, there is considerable disagreement about whether certain conditions can be treated as personal deficiencies or whether they can only be understood contextually - whether, for example, the family, the society, or the therapist/client relationship need to be considered along with the capacities of the patient or client. Traditionally, people have been diagnosed as mad on the grounds of their social interactions, but treated as though the incomprehensible aspects of these are the product of personal perceptual and moral defects.

If we look for epistemological fundamentals in the possibility of a shared language, we are forced to shift the focus from the individual to the interaction - from personal 'failure' to relationships. From this perspective, we are also forced to recognise that diagnosing someone as having an 'individual defect' must always be provisional and can never have a 'moral' dimension. Once we have put someone outside the class of interlocutors (or potential interlocutors?) our judgments about their intentional states cannot be tested against their participation in the conversation. We cannot know their reasons, and so cannot judge them.

This doesn't mean that we cannot protect ourselves from their actions, of course. It does mean that we cannot pretend that we can know that this is 'for their own good'.

We also cannot legitimately invite them to consult their own internal condition to explain our behaviour towards them; to consult their empirical equipment or their conscience to find the roots of their 'madness'.

Not only do we have no shared language with which to do this, but we have no legitimating empiricist mythology with which to comfort ourselves.