What I will take away from this class is that my standpoint, in what I thought was opposition to "hard" science, has no more authority than the opposing epistemology I so readily criticized. Both sides, if you will, are guilty of abusing positions of authority, knowledge, and power in order to lay claim to the dominant ideologues of the world.
The stakes are large.
What I'll be taking with me is the same skepticism I had for science, except that I will be turning it inwards instead.
Clearly I can't click publish post until I address the conception of "reality". Given that it was the first question of the class review, I think that in these cases where we put into question what exactly it is that we consider reality to be, we are relying far too much on the presumed authority of "reality". Claims like "we have different realities because each of our world experiences is uniquely different" are almost true, except that it ignores the existence of a communal reality, a reality in which large structures such as a capitalist mode of production, can't escape our individualized, competing realities.
Given that, I believe in reality. I believe that something outside of our mental cognition exists, but that we can't and won't ever know its true essence.
Thanks for everything, Ben and Robin.
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I agree that it is good to always question authority. I think science thrives on the objection to the current view of things and searches to find a better fit in whatever way it can and to create more and more reliable models of reality. Skepticism is the basis for science, and the cool part is that anyone can do it given time and commitment. The trouble comes with the implementation of it and how best to distribute the fruits of science in a beneficial way to society, whether it's the knowledge itself or some technology. I think the humanities can help us to understand the effects that these fruits of science have on our cultures.
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