Date: Fri, 16 Aug 1996 10:18:05 -0500 From: derekh-AT-yorku.ca (Derek Hrynyshyn) Subject: Is it just me or is Bhaskar wrong? Thus in a world without men the causal laws that science has now as a matter of fact discovered would continue to prevail, ... (p. 34) Is it just me or do other people balk at these kind of statements? I know I have said this before, and I think the solution to the problematic formulation of this idea is not difficult. Distinguishing the laws that we use to explain the world from the real mechanisms that the laws represent seems to me to be absolutely necessary. But in statements like this: The intelligibility of experimental activity presupposes then the intransitive and structured character of the objects of scientific knowledge, at least in so far as these are causal laws. (p. 35) Bhaskar seems to say that the laws are the object of scientific knowledge, and not the real mechanisms. Does anyone else wonder about this? I am suspicious that perhaps this confusion may conceal other deeper (ie non-semantic) problems that may crop up later on. Or maybe it's just a problem of wording. derek. Derek Hrynyshyn, Graduate Program Phone: 650-2276 in Political Science, derekh-AT-yorku.ca York University Ross S609 Communications Officer, CUPE local 3903 cupe3903-AT-yorku.ca * Fax: 736-5480 * Office: 736 - 5154 http://www.yorku.ca/org/cupe/cupe3903.htm
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