ABSTRACT
THERE is no field of epistemological inquiry which stands in greater need of careful exploration and clarification of issues than the cognition of other selves and their contents. The slighting of this field of inquiry until quite recently is due to the former excessive preoccupation of epistemologists with perceptual and scientific knowledge. Even the terminology of this division of epistemology is cumbersome and inexact. There is no simple expression similar to perception, memory, or introspection to designate the apprehension of the processes and states of mind of subjects other than those of the cognizing subject. In the absence of any recognized technical expression, epistemologists employ such cumbersome expressions as "knowledge of other minds", "intersubjective intercourse", and "contact between minds". Intersubjective knowledge is an accurate, though somewhat ponderous, general designation for this type of cognition. The nouns telegnosis, telepathy, telesthesis, and their corresponding adjectives are useful except for their obscurantist associations; they suggest some sort of occult, extra-sensory transference of thoughts, emotions, and feelings from one mind to the other, instead of the normal sense-mediated communication between minds.
