“We do not counter [a] theory with another theory, but with experience.” — William Large, Heidegger’s Being and Time, p.30 (University of Indiana Press, 2008).

But, on what basis do we assert that a (particular) experience is evidence for or against a (particular) theory? By means of another theory? Or another experience? Either way, we have an infinite regress. Bare assertion is out of favor (except in theology; see Karl Barth, Gesammelte Schriften), but it seems the only way to break out of this conundrum.

Large continues, interestingly: “Yet here we encounter another problem, possibly the most difficult of all. How can we account for or describe this experience when the only language in which we can talk about the world is categorical? If we are going to capture the existential as existential, then we cannot use the propositional language of predicates, attributes, concepts, and categories. But it is precisely this language which we take to be the only true one.”

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