Relational Epistemologies: 1 The Representational Fallacy: Why ‘Knowledge as Mirror’ Always Misleads

We are taught from our earliest days that knowledge is a mirror: that the mind, the text, the experiment — each reflects reality faithfully. Look long enough, and the world’s essence will appear, unclothed, waiting to be captured.

This is false. It is a seductive, centuries-old fallacy — one that has shaped philosophy, science, and culture alike. The mirror does not exist. There is no world “out there” waiting to be represented. There are only relational potentials, and the cuts we enact into them.

The representational fallacy is easy to spot if we shift perspective:

1. Knowledge is not passive: The act of knowing changes the known. Observation, measurement, and even contemplation do not stand outside the world; they participate in its unfolding.

2. Mirrors are flat: Representation assumes a one-to-one mapping — a static equivalence between model and reality. Reality, in contrast, is dynamic, multi-dimensional, and relational. Mirrors, by definition, cannot capture relational depth.

3. Universality is illusory: What counts as “truth” depends on the alignments, potentials, and constraints of a particular collective. Knowledge is local, perspectival, and enacted — not universal in the mirror sense.

The implications are profound. Every epistemic habit predicated on representation — from classical science to cognitive models to political “fact-checking” — carries a hidden assumption: that the world is independent of our engagement with it. This assumption is seductive because it promises certainty, objectivity, and control. But in doing so, it blinds us to the relational fabric of knowing itself.

To escape this fallacy, we must shift from the metaphor of reflection to the metaphor of cutting: knowledge as a perspectival incision into potential. Each act of knowing does not capture reality; it generates it, aligns it, and shapes it. Knowledge is not a static copy; it is a relational act, a co-individuation of observer and world.

Once we see this, we can begin to dismantle the habits of representation that dominate centuries of epistemic practice. We can stop treating truth as a commodity waiting to be collected and start treating knowing as a dynamic, interactive, relational process.

In short: mirrors deceive. Knowledge is not a mirror. It is a chisel.