ARNOLD BRECHT'S POLITICAL THEORY REVISITED Political ...

ARNOLD BRECHT ' S POLITICAL THEORY REVISITED 181
inability of non-"science" to provide "intersubjective evidence of a
conclusive nature" (125) or "exact proof" (16) in its account of
things, would seem to imply the latter meaning. That appears also
to be the implication of his comparative observation that "[f]actual
research and strictly logical inferences offer possibilities of intersubjective
verification that are not available in the case of ultimate
value judgments" (298). Similarly his claim that "Scientific Method"
provides transmission of "knowledge qua knowledge" and not merely
"the assertion that I have such knowledge" (114), while
non-"science" is "limited to the personal report, or `protocol,' saying
that we believe we have knowledge on such and such a basis" (280).
But this impressive claim is not well supported by his more careful
formulations. What he tells us there is that "[w]hat is intersubjectively
transmissible qua knowledge is the evidence, not the conclusions
therefrom" (114). But what is "the evidence"? What are the
"facts" or the observations upon which they are based? He concedes
that the "acceptance" of "facts" as true and of observations as accurately
made and communicated entail the subjective judgments of
individual "scientists," as we have seen. In Brecht's account, the exact
form of the "scientific" observation report appears remarkably
similir to a "personal report, or `protocol'." 38 It is with these sources
of uncertainty in mind that he explains his avoidance of the term
"intersubjectively `verifiable' knowledge": "We actually do not
through Scientific Method `verify' the data and conclusions on
which our knowledge relies, at least not all of them, either to
ourselves or to others....) We can merely transmit them with the
evidence, leaving acceptance ultimately to the recipient " (116). But
the ambiguity remains as he goes on to claim that "the evidence is
sometimes so strong that acceptance is practically necessary and inescapable"
and in a later passage equates the "intersubjective proof'
of science with "immediate obviousness" (435). But what all readily
perceive goes without saying-i.e., it does not require
"transmission"; and this is surely not the self-chosen sphere of
"science. "
To transmit "our subjective knowledge to others qua knowledge,"
he explains, requires "a type of knowledge that can be transmitted
from any person who has such knowledge to any other person who
does not have it but who can grasp the meaning of the symbols
38. See p. 162