Morally Neutral Knowledge (was: Fra yn âs âCopenhagenâ

[jbor]

owen wrote:

> perhaps a more accurate formulation would be: the "knower", the subject,
> transforms the world or transforms knowledge.  we can theoretically posit
> some objective world out there, but the issue i think you are getting at is
> that we can never experience that objective world as anything other than
> *my* world.  as soon as i experience this theoretical objective world i
> interpret it - i can have no uninterpreted understanding of the
> world.  heidegger calls this the hermeneutical loop.

This realisation - that "the world" is always (re?)constituted by human
agents as an idiosyncratic text - is incredibly important to postmodernism,
and to Pynchon's fiction in particular.

> i always already have
> some type of fore-knowledge of the world and interpret accordingly.  so i
> think we find that the problem is not whether there is objectivity, but
> whether it is possible for a human being to have any morally-neutral or
> objective knowledge is, i find, highly doubtful.

I'd agree. But I'd add that that hypothetical "objective" world, which we
can't ever know objectively, is (hypothetically, at least) morally-neutral.

      By the time the sun was going down they'd nearly finished the case
    between them. Profane was balefully drunk. He got out of the car,
    wandered off behind a tree and pointed west, with some intention of
    pissing on the sun to put it out for good and all, this being somehow
    important for him. (Inanimate things could do what they wanted. Not what
    they wanted because things do not want; only. But things do what they
    do, and this is why Profane was pissing at the sun.)

      ... DIEWELTISTALLESWASDERFALLIST."
      "The world is all that the case is," Mondaugen said. ...
                                                    [_V._ 26, 278]

snip

> 
> true, this may be the intention of science - a progressive and open system
> which invites constant revision, etc. - but there have been many
> philosophers who have challenged this, most notably thomas kuhn in _The
> Structure of Scientific Revolutions_.  what he asserts (and exquisitely so)
> is that science is by no means any objective pursuit, that is intrinsically
> subjective, and the claim for the amorality of the scientific method is
> nothing but a harmful myth.

There have always been differing philosophical and ethical preconceptions
informing "Western Science" and the sciences as well, something which
Pynchon's portrayals and cameos play around with (eg. Pavlov, Pointsman,
Kékule etc in _GR_; Emerson, Mason, Maskelyne etc in _M&D_). The empirical
claim to objectivity (itself something of a stereotype in many cases) has
been open to challenge in the mainstream arena of the discipline since
Heisenberg at least.

best