Date: Tue, 7 Jan 1997 21:53:30 -0800 (PST) From: LH Engelskirchen <lhengels-AT-igc.apc.org> Subject: BHA: its not true we kant know! Howie -- The realisation that we Kant ever know the world I think isnt the grounds for realism's commitment to epistemological relativism. Critical realism holds that our knowledge is socially and historically contingent. This does ground epistemological relativism and should ground epistemological humility. Necessarily our knowledge reflects such limits. But realism does not conclude that we can't know the world. To the contrary. As I understand it, it distinguishes itself from all forms of Kantianism by the proposition that we can. True enough, it concludes that our knowledges are fallible (epistemological humility) and we can't give a Cartesian warrant of certainty. But the problem of certainty is positivism's problem. That's a different issue. I can't give you assurances of certitude, and much of what I know I could know better or may be in error, but I think I have all kinds of reliable knowledge about how the world works. I think I mentioned once Paula Poundstone's reminder about the orange thing in your electric oven, the one that brightens when you turn the oven on -- don't touch that she says. That's knowledge about the world. The special significance of generative mechanisms, as distinct from events, is that they possess powers and liabilities which are tendentially efficacious. They do things; they make the world other than it would have been had they not operated in the way they did. For this reason, as I understand it, Bhaskar insists that they, not events, are the objects of science. I agree that any phenomena caused by any generative social structure is always also and necessarily a product of those psychological and other specifically individual mechanisms accounting for the behavior of persons. Social structures are always only co-producers. Anyone recommend a particular vodka? Howard --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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