File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_1997/97-01-11.090, message 68


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
 



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