grounding

Chapter 18 of Nicholas Rescher's 'Epistemology: An Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge' focuses on cognitive realism and the nature of knowledge, particularly propositional knowledge. It emphasizes the importance of understanding knowledge as a condition rather than an activity, highlights the centrality of questions in epistemology, and outlines the key features of knowledge including truth commitment, grounding, and reflexivity. The chapter also distinguishes between different types of knowledge and stresses the pragmatic and conceptual foundations of realism in knowledge discourse.

This chapter explores the alienation and mental disorientation caused by living in artificial, human-made environments disconnected from natural reality, using examples from LSD experiences, psychiatric theory, and science fiction. It discusses how this disconnection leads to a crisis of reality perception, where all information becomes arbitrary and indistinguishable from illusion, as illustrated by the film Solaris and Orwell's 1984. The chapter argues that this loss of grounding fosters mental illness, political manipulation, and the rise of new religious-philosophical movements exploiting the confusion.