On 11/1/05, Brown, Darin <Darin.Brown(a)enmu.edu> wrote:
Of course, I'm sure other subjects are not so
simple, either...imagine
chemistry, archaeology, law, e.g.! If I asked for a reference for something
in law, I wouldn't be surprised to hear, "Here's a law textbook...go home,
read pages 200-400 until you understand them, and then see that the statutes
on page 385-395 apply." Even in areas like history or lit crit, the same
could apply (ever try to verify that Derrida or Habermas made a certain
claim on page 352 of such-and-such?) My point is that "verification" always
requires some amount of prior intangible expertise, and not all references
to the literature will be "checkable" by everyone.
True, but philosophy is a good case in point. I've gotten in
discussions on the talk page of philosophers before (i.e. [[Thomas
Kuhn]]) where one user seems to have read a completely different text
than I did and come to completely different conclusions about it. How
to resolve this? Do I reason through Kuhn's argument and come up with
my own interpretation? Do I try and create a synthetic argument
buffetted by quotations? It's a legitimately difficult thing to do, as
anyone who has read some philosophy and discussed it with others would
know, especially with a character like Kuhn whose interpretations vary
and historically varied quite widely with one another (some saw him as
an unabashed relativist, others saw him as a form of Cold War
reaffirmation of science, some saw him as painfully unoriginal, etc.).
In the end, you hope for a very conservative, "just the facts, ma'am"
reading of the text itself, with perhaps a section featuring various
prominent interpretations properly attributed to their best-known
articulations.
Will there always be involved an element of subjective, individual
authority? Of course. But in such instances one can only try one's
best. But shifting the burden to other, attributed opinions is one way
to stay in the clear on it. But such an attempt is hard work, hence
the Kuhn article isn't really in an "ideal" state of the sort I
described.
Of course, in
general. But when there are real disputes, where the
answer is not self-evident to most editors (such as the use of "there"
vs. "their"),
That's not self-evident?! What are they teaching in schools today? :-)
Ah, I think I was not clear: that was my example of when something
*was* self-evident. What I meant by "such as" was "unlike"; not quite
the same thing, I must admit!
FF