If responsibility arises within actualisation rather than beneath it, then knowledge cannot stand outside the cuts that make it possible. The fantasy of a view from nowhere—the idea that knowledge could be secured independently of perspective, position, or commitment—collapses once construal is taken seriously.
This post develops an epistemology adequate to relational ontology: knowledge without nowhere.
The Failure of the View from Nowhere
Classical epistemology sought certainty by abstraction. The knower was to be detached, purified of perspective, and positioned outside the world they described. From this imagined nowhere, knowledge would be objective, neutral, and universal.
But this posture depends on a contradiction: it requires a perspective that denies being a perspective.
Quantum mechanics exposed this contradiction experimentally. Social theory exposed it politically. Linguistics exposed it semiotically. In each case, the same lesson emerged: there is no knowing without positioning.
Construal as Epistemic Condition
Relational ontology reframes knowing as a mode of construal. To know is not to mirror reality, but to enact a cut that renders some aspects of structured potential intelligible.
This does not weaken knowledge. It specifies its conditions.
Every act of knowing involves:
A field of possible distinctions
Constraints that make distinctions coherent
A perspectival position from which distinctions are drawn
Knowledge is therefore not correspondence with an independent reality, but successful articulation within a constrained system.
Objectivity Revisited
Objectivity survives this shift, but in a transformed sense. It no longer means detachment from perspective, but robustness across perspectives.
A claim is objective when:
It remains stable under variation of viewpoint
Its constraints can be articulated and scrutinised
Its cuts can be reproduced or challenged by others
Objectivity becomes a property of practices, not of propositions floating free of their conditions.
Knowledge as Situated Commitment
To know something is to commit oneself to a particular construal of possibility. This commitment is not optional; it is constitutive.
There is no epistemic innocence.
To measure is to commit to an apparatus.
To classify is to commit to distinctions.
To theorise is to commit to a space of intelligibility.
What changes after construal is not that knowledge becomes arbitrary, but that its commitments become visible.
Against Relativism
The abandonment of foundations is often mistaken for relativism. Relational ontology avoids this by refusing both absolutes and indifference.
Not all construals are equal.
They can be:
More or less coherent with their constraints
More or less productive of intelligibility
More or less responsible in what they exclude
Evaluation shifts from truth-as-correspondence to adequacy, coherence, and generativity within structured potential.
Learning to Know Otherwise
An epistemology after construal is not merely a theory; it is a discipline. It requires learning to:
Articulate one’s standpoint without apology
Expose the constraints that make one’s knowledge possible
Remain open to alternative cuts without pretending neutrality
This is not scepticism. It is epistemic maturity.
From Knowing to Participating
Once the view from nowhere is relinquished, knowing reveals itself as a mode of participation in the world’s becoming. Knowledge is no longer something we have about reality, but something we do with it.
The final post in this series will draw these threads together, showing how relational ontology offers not a new metaphysical picture of the world, but a new stance toward participation, responsibility, and possibility itself.
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