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Jacqueline Conway's avatar

This was fascinating to read! I know that you’re writing from an American context, and while a lot of what you say has echoes in countries like Britain, would you know of similar references that are applicable to the British context? One of the major factors here is the nasty undercurrent of racism that flows in this country - that’s what delivered the Brexit vote, for example. I don’t know enough about America to know how large a factor it is for you, but I suspect that it’s considerable. - Therefore, it’s possible that many of the social factors relevant in the analyses you mention might also be partially relevant here. Anyway, I look forward to reading more from you!

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Graham Vincent's avatar

Thank you. It's a lot, and I need to come back and read it again but wanted to respond to your opening, because it's a thing that I've recently written about myself and I'm not sure if I'm right.

Here's my own essay: https://endlesschain.substack.com/p/old-schoolmasters-old-truths. Its precept is "Everyone knows everything" because our own knowledge when contrasted with the knowledge of others is at best a clash of opinion. Definitive knowledge is - I want to contend - very rare.

What you say about gravity is predicated on the theory of gravity being right. In that sense, I don't know if it's right or not. I assume it's right because people who I respect - scientists and encyclopaedias and schoolteachers - tell me that's the way it is. But I only know the theory of gravity because OTHER PEOPLE know the theory of gravity. That puts an interesting slant on pretty much everything I know: I know it because someone else knows it. That means most of my knowledge is in fact based on hearsay, and hearsay is one source of evidence that is treated with scant respect by courts of law, and I find that interesting. We demand that courts base their judgment on primary evidence, and we ourselves base the vast majority of our judgments on secondary evidence - hearsay.

What you say about feelings is also interesting. When I feel in love, or afraid, it is my body that tells me those emotions, but my body does not put those labels on them. By contrast, an actor in drama class will be told by his teacher to act "afraid" or "in love" and he must then reproduce the feeling and outward appearance of those sentiments, but he can only do that if he knows the visceral reaction that his body has to such stimuli and also that "in love" and "afraid" are the correct words to apply to those reactions. So, the actor must know how the emotion feels and what words are used to describe it before he can start to display it to his audience. But I don't need to know any of that to be in love or to feel afraid, do I?

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