From: "Colin Wight" <Colin.Wight-AT-aber.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: BHA: Re: More on TD/ID
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2000 14:32:55 -0000


Hi Andrew,

Careful reading would reveal that I said "RB says no general, philosophical,
or
transhistorical answer will be forthcoming". Still, you want to impute this
to me. Fine, in relations to epistemology, I will happily agree with it.

But to claim this is not to claim the invalidity of ALL Transhistorical
statements, but only the invalidity of the search for transhistorical
epistemological criteria, through which some universal grounding, and means
of judging how our concepts map onto the world. The claim in effect, is a
specific rejection of a specific transhistorical claim, not a rejection of
transhistorical claims. If you disagree with this specific claim, it is open
for you to show why and how. I can show why I agree with RB, but since
people can find it much more clearly articulated in RB himself, I think time
would be better spent. However, I fully agree with you that. hence you claim
that "We are all in the game of putting forward such positions;
there's nothing we can do about it." is correct. But so what in relation to
the specific claim re epistemological criteria?


On Hume, so much the worse, a paradigmatic case of theory-practice
inconsistency!

On doubt, no, not only this, but of "not doubt" as well; that is, how much
do we know.
On your analysis of RB I agree, but doubt is not in itself the problem. The
problem resides in the attempt to banish the doubt by transhistorical
epistemological procedures or metaphysical systems that attempt to deny the
non-identity between thought and its objects. Which is why I say live with
the doubt. Learn to live with our fallibilism. We would all like to find
that magic key that allows us to compare our conceptualisation with the
objects independent of our conceptualisations, but as it stands it seems we
can't. Learning to live with this reality of the situation we find ourselves
in is a political act, the denial of which has led to all sorts of horrors,
both philosophical and political. Remember CR is committed to
epistemological relativism (understood in a very particular way).

I argue at length in a forthcoming paper that a position such as Colin's
> (and RB's) collapses to not merely *doubt* but to utter scepticism of
> a Humean type. The argument is simple. If there are real objects
> about which we know nothing,

You disagree that there might be real objects of which we know nothing?
Really, so we know everything?

then how do we know they are not
> about to change all the 'known' 'laws', mechansims etc. of the universe
> (this goes back to the 'buzzing blooming confusion' discussion on this
> list some months ago)?

We don't, and you are claiming you do? Really? On which side is the
fallibilism and dogmatism now? Look, I'm not one that is normally
predisposed to appeal to Kuhn, but surely some humility in our current state
of knowledge re the laws of nature is possible (and desirable) without
saying we know nothing. I don't agree with much the postmoderns say, but I
do agree that the people who say they know with certainty, are potentially
dangerous.

The point is that this is not merely *doubt*. It
> is, instead, a complete lack of knowledge of the nature of the world
> (its laws, structures, mechanisms) in the immediate future.

Wrong! This can only be the case if you are working with a very foundational
(and dare I say binary) concept of what it means to know. And I think again
(as I have pointed out previously) you are close to confusing explantion (or
knowledge) of the present or past with prediction.
>

=================================Dr. Colin Wight
Department of International Politics
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Tel: 01970 621769
http://www.aber.ac.uk/~cow
==================================
>
>
>
> Andy
>
>
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