[lbo-talk] Neo-Lamarckianism???? Come on!

[Miles Jackson]

Carrol Cox wrote:
> One can _never_ KNOW the correctness of one's construal of a text at all
> complex; the hope here is not certainty but reduce disagreement to two
> or three clusters of only mildly disagreement. No one will _ever_ know
> for sure just how to construe all the levels of irony  in Swift's "An
> Argument against the Abolishing of Christianity." No one will ever know
> just when Pope began the composition of Essay on Criticism and just when
> he completed the draft which was printed. There is no way of knowing
> with any certainty whether or not Pope approved of certain changes
> Warburton (or perhaps Pope) made in the 1751 edition of his works.
>
>   
In nonscientific fields, knowledge is not the correct reading of the 
text; it is the understanding of the various interpretations/narratives 
themselves.  For instance, we can "know" about the free will/determinism 
debate in philosophy, Wittgenstein's critique of private language, St. 
Augustine's conception of God.  In these domains, knowledge is not the 
certainty of any one of these construals; it is the academic 
discussion--sometimes millenia old!--of which they are a part.

Miles