Marcia Cavell Responds

June 15, 2002. Arnold Goldberg seems to equate knowledge with certainty. (This equation is one of the things philosophers mean by “foundationalism.”) For a discussion and criticism of the idea I refer

Goldberg to my “Knowledge, Consensus, and Uncertainty” ( Int. J. Psycho-Anal.  80/6, 1999)↗. The arguments I present there, I should say, are by no means original with me, but are by now fairly standard among philosophers.

With some obvious annoyance, Goldberg says, “Cavell tells us that one may have.… knowledge that may be taken as true, but then this knowledge may turn out to be mistaken. We can assume, I would think, that these statements can be made of her own positive theses.” Certainly. I do not know why he thinks that either Lawrence Friedman or I are influenced by “a spectator view of the world,” and in any case would like to know what he means by this catchphrase. Of course we are always in the world. But does it follow that “one's relating to the world makes true what we attribute to the world”? Consider the following: “AIDS is caused by evil thoughts”; “Schizophrenia is a disease peculiar to white males”; “There are unicorns in the garden”; “Mary's wishes were responsible for the destruction of the World Trade Towers”; “On June 15, 2002, the World Trade Towers are the tallest buildings in New York.” Were I to make these statements, would my “relating to the world” make them true? Finally, it is always easy to equate the idea that we all believe our beliefs to be true with the different idea that everything each of us believes is true; that each of us deserves respect for our views with the different idea that all our views are equally well-founded, reality-oriented, etc. There are indeed only views from somewhere—many somewheres. But a view is a view precisely because it sees something that is not a view. For an eloquent explication of this idea I refer Goldberg to Truth and Method by the German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer. I do wish both philosophers and