How Does “Collaboration” Occur at All? Remarks on Epistemological Issues Related to Understanding / Working with the Other

Collaboration must be based on careful representation and communication of each stakeholder’s knowledge. Using a foundational logical and epistemological point of view, we explore how such representation and communication can be accomplished. We tenta-tively conclude, based on careful delineation of logical technicalities necessarily involved in such representation and communication, that currently a complete representation is not possible. This inference, if correct, is discouraging. However, we suggest two actions. First, we can strive to make stakeholders more aware of the incompleteness of knowledge representations. Second, moderating one’s certainty of “Truth” should increase each stakeholder’s humility, thereby promoting the efficacy of collaborations.