Complexity, Deconstruction and Relativism

Paul-Cilliers

Abstract

It is easily acknowledged that different intellectual traditions have different understandings of what the nature and status of meaningful knowledge is. This would not have been a problem if these discourses operated in isolation. However, different epistemological positions interact and compete with one another. This competition is necessary, of course, but it is rarely an amicable one, probably because our basic under- standing of the world, and of our role in it, is at stake. Thus there is no agreement even on the criteria for what would count as meaningful knowledge.

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