File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_1996/96-09-09.212, message 40


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
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