[lbo-talk] Bruno Latour on post-post-modernism

Charles Brown cbrown at michiganlegal.org
Thu Apr 29 10:45:15 PDT 2004


From: snitilicious


>CB: Sure. With practice (not just "experience", empiricism) as the test of
>theory, with a practical-critical epistemology.

this is precisely what some pomos say (Sandra Harding, Steve Seidman, Richard Harvey Brown) though I think they'd suggest that it wasn't a process that would ever end.

^^^^

CB: An old version of it never ending is termed the dialectic of absolute and relative truth. Absolute truth is infinite and unobtainable by us as finite beings. However, there is progress in our knowledge. The metaphor to math used is that we (humanity) approach absolute truth like an asymptotic curve approaches an asymptotic line, getting closer ever, but never reaching it. Note that there is a recognition of "relative truth" in this idea.

^^^^^^^

I also think that, Marx was much more certain that there was a reality out beneath the veil of ideology. I don't think that's the approach PM/PS takes. I wrote this, elsewhere:

-clip-



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