Date: Fri, 20 Dec 1996 13:21:47 -0500 (EST) From: Howie Chodos <howie-AT-magi.com> Subject: Re: BHA: Transitive & intransitive I think Colin is largely right that what is ontological changes relative to the standpoint of the observer, but I think it's worth trying to push the argument a little further. I'm still not sure how all this relates to the criticism of postism from a CR perspective, but I can feel in my bones that there is a connection. The general point I take from Colin's argument is that *any* body of thought can constitute an intransitive object of scientific investigation for suitably positioned observers. In this context I would want to recall what Bhaskar calls the "ontological peculiarities" of social structures. He argues that we can study social structures scientifically, and in this sense they do not pose any epistemological difficulties that are qualitatively different from those associated with the natural sciences. But the objects of study of the social sciences are particular entities in that they exist only in and through the activity of living human beings. What this seems to me to imply is that, with regard to the study of science itself (as with the social sciences more generally), any theoretical intervention has the ability to alter the object of study itself. So while 'science' may be an intransitive object for the 'philosophy of science', it is not identical to the intransitive object 'tree' for the biological sciences. The very act of studying and debating the nature of science alters the object of study itself. In the natural sciences, of course, we acquire the ability to transform the objects of our study through the knowledge that we develop of them. But these are two separate moments, with different imperatives (analogous, perhaps, to the distinction between applied and basic research). In the social sciences the theorisation of the social is, ipso facto, an intervention in the social which transforms it as an oject for subsequent study. The world of ideas is thus never cut off from the material practices of social life. Ideas acquire materiality because they are constituted as part of social reality. It seems to me that it is in the understanding of this dynamic that there is overlap between CR and varieties of postism. CR, and in particular the TMSA, implies that what is socially real is, in part, a function of belief, understood in its broadest sense to encompass both true and false understandings. We do create our world. Not out of nothing, and not without constraint, but the idea that we necessarily reproduce or transform pre-existing social relations through our very participation in social life carries the connotation that we creatively alter social reality through our individual action. So where does the difference between CR and postism lie? Colin suggests in his reply to Tobin that we must defend "the idea of science itself (the search for context specific, explanatory knowledge)". I don't know that Jack Amariglio and his colleagues who argue for a Postmodern Marxism would necessarily object to this, as long as it was not taken to mean that there is a single version of science that instantiates "the idea of science itself". Sandra Harding certainly defends an idea of science and scientific objectivity. In other words, how does defending the idea of science itself stake out a distinctively CR position? Howie Chodos --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005