This paper introduces Epistemics as the analysis of orientation structures, model validity, and revision under finite conditions. Epistemics is understood neither as metaphysics nor as normative theory, and it does not replace any existing discipline. Its object is to clarify the conditions under which finite cognitive systems stabilize experience, expectation, and action, form modelable orders, and guide, limit, or revise models. The point of departure is the structural finitude of cognition. Cognitive systems never have unlimited time, attention, processing capacity, or social and institutional resources. They must select, simplify, and form provisional orders. Not every such orientation structure is already a model; modelability arises only when an order becomes markable, available for renewed take-up, delimitable, testable, and correctable. A model, in this sense, is a condensed orientation structure whose use can be guided and whose validity can be determined. The central issue is not absolute truth, but the viable range of a structure or model under specific conditions. This validity is bound to domains: subjective orientation, intersubjective coordination, and functional-empirical robustness follow different logics of stability. Costs, friction, and revision form the central diagnostic concepts. Costs designate the effort required for stabilization, transfer, or revision; friction designates the epistemically readable non-fit of an activated expectation, take-up, or model structure under the conditions of its operation. Revision is the controlled processing of such states of strain without simply abandoning stabilization. Epistemics therefore understands itself as a revisable working canon for diagnosing epistemic malformations and enabling stable yet correctable orientation.
Stefan Rapp (Wed,) studied this question.