forum for week of 12 September

In reading Morton I do find that he brings forth plenty of his arguments as if he is an objective authority on what constitutes knowledge, ignorance, rational, justification and so forth. However, he makes sound arguments that contribute to a larger discussion and I see no reason that he should stop and first acknowledge the inherent subjectivity in his sociohistorical context when writing about epistemology.

The ideal of epistemology is to discover the nature and scope of knowledge, or equivalently: epistemology is the study of the nature and scope of knowledge. Now, even if we change the definition of epistemology, there is still 'something' that can reasonably be seen as the study of the nature and scope of knowledge. For example, say we completely lose the concept of infinite - gone from all science. There is still 'something' that can be seen as infinite. Infinite will still be 'infiite' - still hold all the properties we know as infinite - even if we decide to define something else as infinite. The first mentioned 'something,' assuming it will always be labeled epistemology, is not just an expression of values and biases then as that's simply not what it is.

Morton, however, does bring his own fallible value and biases to the ideal of epistemology (albeit, the degree of this, I find, is only because he is human). But this only means that his arguments, and to take it further, every epistomologist's arguments is a subjective expression to some degree or another. It does not mean that epistemology is merely an expression of values and biases. There's similarly something exhilarating and arbitrary about sport brought about from one's cultural heritage. This does not mean that sport is merely an escape from boredom defined by it's sociohistorical context.

So... yes, we're all fallible but we can all bring something of value to the powerful discourses and ideals that we aspire to appropriate one day. Morton adds to his ideal and we can extract what we can from his competent writing and translate it into our context and subjective limitations as we continue to pursue that ideal of epistemology.

CORNELIS DIRK HAUPT