Dear Marion,

There's no alternative but to plead guilty to a charge of
exhibitionism when I compare my epistemology to a condition
of mild enebriation, a state of altered consciousness,
which in this instance is not the effect of drugs or alcohol,
but the consequence of premeditated intellectual discipline,
inculcated by methodical life-long practice, and demonstrated
by the ability to negotiate certain high-wires of thought
which are inherently inaccessible to others. In other words,
you have a trapeze artist, an acrobat for a cousin,
who is under the curse of needing to communicate, i.e.
to display his extravagant and therefore unholy enterprise.

There is a literary precedent:

Wie Till Eulenspiegel vom Magdeburger Rathaus flog

In Magdeburg war Eulenspiegel bald beliebt bei jung und alt.
Er verstand sich naemlich auf allerhand Kunststuecke,
wie man sie jetzt im Zirkus sieht.
Damit vertrieb er Kindern und Erwachsenen oft die Zeit.
Aber schon damals gab es Leute,
die jeden Tag etwas Neues sehen mussten.
Die setzten ihm taeglich zu,
er solle doch einmal etwas noch nie Dagewesenes zeigen.
Till weigerte sich und sagte, das koenne er nicht.
Endlich musste er nachgeben, und er beschloss,
ihnen eine Lehre zu erteilen.
"Schoen", sagte er, "dann will ich etwas tun,
was noch kein Mensch gemacht hat."
Voll Neugier draengte sich alles um ihn:
"Was denn? Sag's doch schnell"
"Ich will vor euren Augen ..
"Schnell nur, schnell, was willst du denn vor unseren Augen?"
"Vom Rathaus fliegen." "Vom Rathaus fliegen7"
Entsetzt starrten ihn alle an.
Dann liefen sie auseinander und erzaehlten ueberall:
"Wisst ihr's schon? Wisst ihr's schon von Eulenspiegel?"
Bald sprach die ganze Stadt von nichts anderem,
als dass Till Eulenspiegel vom Rathaus fliegen werde.
So kam es, dass die Neugierigen sich vor dem Rathaus draengten.
Wer nicht krank war oder blind,
war herbeigekommen.
Stundenlang warteten sie und schlugen sich beinahe um die besten Plaetze.
Endlich nahte Eulenspiegel.
Mit feierlichem Schritt ging er ins Rathaus.
Jetzt! Jetzt erschien er auf einer der hohen Lauben,
die dem Rathaus vorgebaut sind.
Ein lautes "Ah" ging durch die Menge.
"Er will es also wirklich wagen!"
Alles war voll Spannung und riss die Augen,
ja sogar den Mund und beide Nasenloecher auf.
Till hob sich ein paarmal auf den Zehen und bewegte die Arme,
wie es die Voegel tun, ehe sie sich in die Luft erheben.
Die Neugierigen unten renkten sich beinahe den Hals aus.
"Jetzt, jetzt fliegt er wirklich los."
Da trat Eulenspiegel dicht an den Rand der Laube,
lachte schallend auf und rief hinunter:
"Ich, habe geglaubt,
es gaebe in der ganzen Welt keinen groesseren Narren als mich.
Nun sehe ich, daß hier die Stadt voll noch weit groesserer Narren ist.
Wenn einer von euch mir gesagt haette, er werde fliegen,
wahrhaftig, ich haette es ihm nicht geglaubt.
Ihr aber glaubt es mir, dem Narren!
Bin ich denn eine Gans oder sonst ein Vogel?
Habe ich denn Federn und Fittiche?
Ohne Federn und Fittiche aber kann kein Wesen fliegen.
Wusstet ihr denn das noch nicht?"
Damit verschwand er von der Laube und eilte durch die Hintertuer davon.
Unten aber sahen die Neugierigen sich an
und machten kein sonderlich schlaues Gesicht dazu.
Dann begannen einige zu schimpfen.
"An der Nase hat er uns herumgefuehrt, der Landstreicher!"
Das waren die Dummen. Die Klugen aber sagten:
"Er ist nur ein Narr, aber die Wahrheit hat er uns gesagt.
Sind wir nicht selbst die Narren, dass wir glaubten,
er koenne wirklich fliegen,
und dass wir deshalb hierher gelaufen sind?"

So much for epistemology.

Back in the hospital now. Margrit has been moved into a
much more spacious private room. She seems to be much better.
Has been taking fluids by mouth. The nasogastric tube and the
urinary catheter have been removed. She wants badly to escape
from the hospital. I consider it a healthy sign.
 
Events move quickly. A few minutes after I wrote the preceding
sentences, Margrit started to have diarrhea, and more diarrhea.
A diagnosis of Clostridium difficile enteritis was made. This,
as you may or may not know is a nosocomial disease associated
with broad spectrum antibiotic therapy, which may lead to
pseudo-membranous colitis with a mortality rate of 25% for
patients of Margrit's age and debility. I spent last evening
scouring the Internet for "facts" about the disease, and prepared
to go to the hospital this morning to tell them exactly how I
thought it should be managed. However, as I was waiting at
the corner of Orchard Street and Concord Avenue for the 12:55 bus,
I received a cell phone call from Klemens telling me that Margrit's
antibiotics had been stopped, that she was being given metranidazole
capsules, that he diarrhea seemed to be improving, and that she
wanted to come home. After talking with Margrit at the hospital,
I arranged for her discharge at 10 a.m. tomorrow, Sunday morning,
when a new chapter in our saga will begin.

=======================

Thank you very much for your thoughtful letter. I repeat that
I believe ourselves to be in substantial agreement with regard
to the experience of knowing; the difference being only a matter
of emphasis.

Implicit in the arguments I have made is an unconditional distinction
between knowledge as experience and knowledge as "facts". This
oversimplification needs to be corrected: the statements that I
hear, the sentences that I read, treatises of various kinds, textbooks,
are replete with "facts" and these "facts" are themselves also subjects
of experience.  Indeed, the experience of facts is what reading is all
about. It is not the experienced fact that perplexes me, but the presumed
existence of facts independent of the mind that experiences and interprets
them. If I were not so ignorant of Jewish liturgy, I might cite an example
from Jewish services. In the churches, it is the recitation of the creeds,
Nicene and Apostolic, that provokes my distrust: the public compulsion
to a ritualistic recital of "facts" in which one purports to "believe."

Forma Recepta Ecclesiae Occidentalis - 2 February 1546
From the Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent
(Form accepted by the Roman Catholic Church)

Credo in unum Deum Patrem omnipotentem;
factorum coeli et terrae, visibilium omnium et invisibilium. 

Et in unum Dominum Jesum Christum, Filium Dei unigenitum,
et ex Patre natum ante omnia saecula [Deum de Deo],
Lumen de Lumine, Deum verum de Deo vero,
genitum, non factum, consubstantialem Patri;
per quem omnia facta sunt;
qui propter nos homines et propter nostram salutem descendit de coelis,
et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria virgine,
et homo factus est;
crucifixus etiam pro nobis sub Pontio Pilato,
passus et sepultus est;
et resurrexit tertia die, seundum Scripturus;
et ascendit in coelum, sedet ad dexteram Patris;
et iterum venturus est, cum gloria, judicare vivos et mortuos;
cujus regni non erit finis. 

Et in Spiritum Sanctum, Dominum et vivificantem,
qui ex Patre [Filioque] procedit;
qui cum Patre et Filio simul adoratur et conglorificatur;
qui locutus est per Prophetas.
Et unam, sanctam, catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam.
Confiteor unum baptisma in remissionem peccatorum;
et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum, et vitam venturi seculi. Amen.

A recitation of "facts" which have dominated Western thought
for most of the past two thousand years.  Clearly a ritualistic
worship of "facts" is not the monopoly of modern science.

The human mind, - and I suppose it's true of all animals, -
is shaped by the stimuli to which it is subjected, by the
experiences that constitute its existence. It is an elementary
observation that the eye which is masked, does not develop vision.
(amblyopia ex anopsia) In the absence of hearing, one does not
learn to speak. Indeed the language that one speaks is determined
by the environment in which one grows up. The entire spectrum of
mental activity is a reflection, albeit modified, of the
stimuli to which the mind is exposed. It seems to be quite 
reasonable to postulate that "learning"  anything and everything
has if not an anatomic, then a biophysical or biochemical
correlate, even if such biophysical or biochemical correlates
elude our attempts to identify them. "Facts" expressed in 
spoken or written language have an indispensable role in shaping
the mind.

And yet I would argue, that notwithstanding their pervasive effect
on what we think and who we are, "facts" have no reality independent
of the communal mind that discovers, invents, perpetuates and
disseminates them. The only reality of facts derives from their
function in the spiritual metabolism of which they are integral 
elements.

======================
You write:
 
>  'Facts are theory-laden' is a fundamental truth,
>  essential to evaluating assertions including those
>  that occur in the sciences. 
>  Yet I think you are applying this concept
>  in such an extreme manner
>  as to hamper us in using our brains
>  to improve and enrich our lives.

On the contrary, I would argue that accepted uncritically,
untempered by doubt, "facts" become manacles that impair
the free exercise of thought and intuition (Anschauung).
As a good example of the paralytic effect of facts,
conside The Nicene Creed quoted above.
 
You write further:

>  You want to confine the concept "facts"
>  to sensory impressions,
>  and give only those total credence. 
>  Yet sensory impressions alone,
>  without what you would consider
>  theoretical interpretation,
>  are of very restricted usefulness. 

No, I consider "facts" to be the instruments of thought
by which we orient ourselves in the world. I argue that
independent of such orientation, facts have no meaning.

You write further:

> You may find this odd,
> but I sometimes hear faint sounds
> that I initially interpretr
> as coming from outside my open window,
> or from another room
> where perhaps a message is being left
> on my telephone answering machine. 
> After a short time, and more sounds,
> I discover that the sounds
> are really emanating from my grumbling stomach.
> Now you would say that the fact
> is no more than the sound itself,
> that only this can be given full credence,
> that the source of the sound is theory,
> and less reliable.  I agree;
> yet the sounds, by themselves, are practically useless. 
> Uncovering the origin of the sounds
> allows them to fit into a useful cognitive process....
> I should pick up the phone message,
> or else drink some water.
  
What you describe is very familiar to me:
Our mental processes are never instantaneous.
We are usually oblivious of the interval between the stimulus
and its valid interpretation. An unexpected loud noise
causes, in my nervous system at least, a motor reflex that
makes me to "jump", followed only after a discernable
interval by the auditory perception of sound.
When driving, particulalrly under conditions of limited 
visibility, I frequently discern in the distance an object
which I identify, for example as a house or a bridge, before
shortly thereafter recognizing it as a large truck.  This
epiphany occurs in the absence of approximation, so that
image magnification cannot be a factor. I am frequently
aware that after hearing an inchoate spoken sound, my brain
requires an interval of time until it succeeds in decoding
the sound's modulation as a word or a sentence.  

You write:

>  We need to be aware, as best we can, how "theory", language,
>  acculturation, education profoundly influence our perceptions. 
>  Yet to make our way in the world, to enjoy a full life,
>  which includes an intellectual life and social relationships,
>  understanding of others, we must interpret, remember, compare,
>  integrate what we perceive around us. 

No disagreement.

You write:
 
>  Admittedly, there are many sources of possible deception
>  as we interpret our impressions. 
>  So it's important that we be able to distinguish
>  the more reliable interpretations from the less likely. 
>  This is the part of cognition I find most essential. 
>  Without interpretation there is little worth knowing. 
>  The view across your lawn in Konnaock
>  derives its meaning and beauty
>  largely from your interpretation
>  of what the different shapes and colors represent:
>  shrubs, trees, vines, flowers, birds, deer. 
>  You group them into categories of beings,
>  you've learned the characteristics
>  they share with their fellow species-members. 
>  You remember how these beings behaved in the past,
>  interacted with you and your family members,
>  how they have changed with the seasons.

Again, there is no disgreement.
 
You write further:

> To live life in a cogent manner,
> I am anxious to distinguish what's true from what's not. 
> Of course this is laughable, impossible in an absolute sense. 
> Yet propositions vary in their level of consistency,
> corroboration, reliability (having been tested). 
> Essential to developing a foundation of knowledge and understanding,
> is having ways of sorting assertions
> into the more or less likely to be true (accurate).
> I give my qualified credence
> (qualified because of the impact of theory)
> to the assertions supported by empirical evidence,
> while trying to remain ever conscious of the limitations
> of the evidence (including Goethe's dictum). 
>  
> So most important for me is which propositions
> to consider relatively true,
> even though there is no such thing as a culture-free,
> theory-free proposition.

With respect to the preceeding, I'd like to take a rain
check for my comments, except to note that I may need more
specifics in order to write anything meaningful. But to the
extent that I have time, I'll try to address, at a later date,
the very general issues that you have phrased.

You write further about global warming:
 
>  Take the assertion that human activity
>  is accelarating global warming
>  to the detriment of future life on earth.
>  Admittedly the global temperature records
>  show variablity from location to location. 
>  There are inaccuracies. 
>  Many factors besides human activity contribute
>  to changeing earth temperatures
>  (e.g. sun cycle, volcanic eruptions
>  sending material into the stratosphere). 
>  Rising temperatures influence so many interacting factors
>  (rainfall patterns, ice melts, ocean currents, wind patterns, etc.)
>  that it is difficult to predict accurately
>  what the effects on different countries will be.
>  And political and economic factors influence the interpreters. 
>  Despite all these complexities
>  and sources of distortion and prejudice,
>  I think we should try and figure out what's happening,
>  and how to mitigate the effects if necessary. 
>  Despite the overwhelming presence of theory
>  in our perceptions of these matters,
>  I think we can sort through the evidence
>  and apply it to distinguish
>  the likely-to-be-true from the less likely. 

The issue of global warming seems to me to be of great
practical and theoretical interest and importance.
The winter's snows certainly are not so deep as they
were in my college days. If the weather bureau tells me
that average or median temperatures are rising, I'll
believe them. The barrier islands, including Nantucket
are being eaten away by storm tides. Such erosion 
has been going on on both sides of the Atlantic for
centuries, whether more rapidly than heretofore, I
don't know. I remember some decades ago, the use and
sale of freon as a refrigerant was outlawed, because
it was thought to cause global warming; now it's thought
to be also carbon dioxide. My expert in this matter,
a long time patient who is Professor of Meterology at
MIT, after telling for years that his colleagues weren't
sure, now tells me they think it's for real. I understand
how the output of mathematical modeling will be affected
by even a small change in a critical parameter. I don't
know the extent or the cause of global warming. I don't
need to know, since what I can do about it personally
is so miniscule as to be meaningless.

Politics strikes me as so wildly irrational, that I can't
imagine that the concerted international action required
to slow the rate of global warming, not even to mention
the action required to stop or reverse global warming
is politically feasible. Aside from possible national
policies with which I would comply like everyone else,
I don't know what personal sacrifices it would be reasonable
for me to make as a symbolic statement, as ritual. I'm
open to suggestions and instructions.
 
You write:

>  Nothing would mock the victims of the Holocaust
>  more than to say "It's history.  It's past. 
>  We, the living, are not in a position to determine what happened,
>  if anything, who was responsible.  What's past is past. 
>  It's theory.  It's useless trying to apply evidence
>  to understand what happened."  There is evidence. 
>  Lots of it.  We can study it, sort it, appraise it,
>  even though there are inaccuracies, contradictions,
>  missing data, and self-interested interpreters. 

To study (the evidence) of the Holocaust, to sort it, to appraise it,
to determine what happened and who is responsible, is the most eloquent,
the most conclusive statement that the Holocaust _is_ history.
The analysis of evidence is what history is all about.
Someone for whom the Holocaust is real, someone for whom
the Holocaust is integral to his existence,
doesn't need to sort the evidence,
doesn't need to appraise it, 
doesn't need to determine what happened.

Let me tell you a story: When I was an intern at the Pennsylvania
Hospital, I remember, on rounds one morning, aghast, when the attending
physician who happened to be the hospital's chief cardiologist,
Joseph P. Vander Veer, M.D., F.A.C.P. opined that a certain
young childless black woman with a heart murmur but no clinical
heart disease should be surgically sterilized because negroes 
were unduly prolific and there were too many of them already.
Hysterically or otherwise, I thought that was concentration camp
logic and I vowed to myself that I would try to stop that kind of
abuse as soon as I had attained a professional position from which
I was able to do so. Years later, during my ophthalmology residency
at the Harvard affiliated Mass. Eye and Ear Infirmary, I observed
the residents performing experiments on "service patients" who
were socially too disadvantaged to have a private physician. There
was much experimentation going on, most of it inconsequential, some
however with devastating consequences. One patient whom I remember
vividly was a Chinese man with narrow angles, who was at risk for
developing acute angle closure if his pupils were pharmacologically
dilated.  There was no medical indication for mydriasis.
One of the residents had read somewhere that if one moistened a
strip of filter paper with the mydriatic agent and applied it to
only one sector of the corneal limbus, mydriasis could be achieved
without precipitating angle closure. It was a nonsensical approach
which was not in use at the Infirmary, but the resident was bright,
innovative and curious, and of course the patient, a Chinaman.
His pupil was dilated, the angle closed, the resident was rewarded
for is imaginative approach with a chance to get additional surgical
experience, the operation failed, the eye became blind.

At the time, Henry Allen, who had been my ophthalmology instructor
in Medical School, was Chief of Ophthalmology at the Infirmary.
He was obviously the finest that Harvard could produce. The
university recorded his prominence as follows:

HENRY FREEMAN ALLEN, Henry Willard Williams Clinical Professor of
Ophthalmology, Emeritus, died on December 23, 1993, at the age of 77.
Born in Boston, he graduated from Harvard College in 1939 and from
Harvard Medical School in 1943. A sixth-generation surgeon,
he was a descendant of the Warren family, whose members helped
found the Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital.
His great-grandmother was author Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Following service in World War II as a captain in the Army
Medical Corps in Germany, Dr. Allen did his residency in ophthalmology
at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary. He was chief of
ophthalmology there from 1968 to 1973. President of the Channing
Home from 1956 to 1962, Dr. Allen helped to establish the Channing
Laboratory, the William Ellery Channing Professorship, and the
Harriet Ryan Albee Professorship at the Medical School.
He volunteered his surgical services at the Binder-Schweitzer Hospital
in Pucalpa, Peru, as well as in Haiti, Saudi Arabia,
and the Sioux Indian Nation in South Dakota.
He was a trustee of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge,
the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown,
and the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary.

I was upset and I went to Dr. Allen's office to protest the story
of the hapless Chinese cook. Dr. Allen thought it was funny:
"A Chinese Cook or a Chinese Crook?" he joked, as he brushed me off.
As a staff member of the Infirmary I was expected to assume nominal
responsibility for such patients, and to pretend, in Dr. Allen's
words, "that everything was being done in the best interests
of the patient." Dr Allen told me that if I didn't, I would be
dismissed from the staff.

I admit that it was somewhat hysterical of me to confuse Harvard
Medical School's Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary with a Nazi
concentration camp; but the Holocaust is unavoidably the cause
of a certain amount of hysteria, and for the patient who is blinded,
the difference decreases.  My colleagues thought I was a traitor.
One of my most congenial colleagues, a very literate and urbane
Jewish ophthalmologist, whose name will probably come back to me
as soon as I've mailed letter, tried to reassure me that although
what was going on might seem deplorable, it was justified for being
done "in a good cause." He didn't convince me, and I sued in Federal
court, Meyer v. Mass. Eye and Ear Infirmary, 330 F.Supp. 1328,
for protection against being dismissed for refusing to collaborate.
Once I had filed the suit, the Infirmary was afraid to throw me off
the staff, I was relieved of the objectionable involvement, but
I was ostracized. The case dragged on for ten years. It
was finally dismissed as a result of a forged, back-dated
entry in the docket sheet. At the hearing, Judge W. Arthur
Garrity, a Kennedy appointee, recited the praises of his
Clerk as a person of consummate integrity. It was not until
years later that I understood what happened. I told the story to
a lawyer who explained it all. Clerks, he said, follow the
instructions of the Court. So much for one echo of the Holocaust
in my own life. I hope you agree that I'm not a Holocaust denier.
For the existential meaning of history, you should take a look at
Kierkegaard's Philosophical Fragments. It's a very small
book with which you will never be finished.

Jochen