File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_1997/97-01-11.090, message 66


Date: Tue, 7 Jan 1997 20:33:40 -0500 (EST)
From: Ruth Groff <rgroff-AT-yorku.ca>
Subject: BHA: the possibility of naturalism


Hi all,

I think that this discussion has raised several important points.  First, as
Colin notes, there is the matter of the relationship between transitive and
intransitive objects, on the one hand, and ontology and epistemology on the
other.  This is related to the issue, at the heart of the exchange between
Michael and Colin it seems to me, of whether we define the term intransitive
object to mean "whatever a given observer x undertakes to investigate" or
whether, as Michael suggests, an `object' must have certain specifiable
properties - viz., those of being a real, generative mechanism, or
`structure', as Bhaskar sometimes refers to generative mechanisms - in order
to be an intransitive object.  Now, in the social sciences (or what Bhaskar
refers to as `social science' and distinguishes from both psychology and
social psychology) I think Bhaskar is clear that the *proper* object domain,
in any case, is that of structures (or, to put it in Howie's terms, class
rather than class actors).  This no doubt only adds to the complication.  I
think also that there is a way in which Bhaskar's insistence that
*causality* is not to be found at the level of manifest events has slipped
into our discussion as well.  (For if it is the task of science to determine
causality, ...etc.) 

But the question at hand is what is it to say that something is an
intransitive object?   And, specifically, why the conditioning
"intransitive", if by intransitive all we mean to say is "an object for us"?  

With respect to the natural sciences, Bhaskar's whole point, it seems to me,
is to give the `intransitive object' exactly the ontological spin to which
Colin objects.  At the level of causality, that is, that which is studied by
natural scientists exists quite apart from the contingent fact of the
conscious activity of human beings.  Or, to put it differently, the
intransitive object of the natural sciences is not "concept-dependent", as
is, according to Bhaskar, the proper intransitive object of social science.  

But what *about* in the social sciences?  Just what is involved in being a
realist with respect to the social sciences?  Here the distinction between
the intransitive object and the transitive object cannot be that the former
is necessarily concept-independent, while the latter is not.  

I've registered my reservations about Bhaskar's naturalism before, but this
discussion only raises them again.  And I guess this is really my point.
Sorry for the circuitous route.

Howie, I don't understand Bhaskar's epistemological relativism as stemming
>from a Kantian recognition that we cannot know the (social) world in itself,
as you seem to suggest.  Epistemological relativism, as I understand it,
refers only to the fact that knowledge is socially produced and changes
across time and place. Indeed, it is because Bhaskar believes that we *can*
have (fallibalistic) knowledge of the world, that he adopts a position of
rationality at the level of judgement.  No?  


Warmly,
Ruth   




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