File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_1997/bhaskar.9706, message 41


From: "Doctor Spurt" <SPURRETT-AT-mtb.und.ac.za>
To: bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
Date:          Fri, 13 Jun 1997 15:33:15 GMT +0200
Subject: BHA: Earth-quakes


Greetings,

DP:

> >There is another question bugging me. Millions in India (the country 
> >I come from) accept that earth-quakes occur because 'mother earth' 
> >rolls over in her sleep. To them, it is a perfectly good 
> >'explanation'. Are they 'wrong'? Guilty of 'false consciousness'?

COLIN:

> >  However, given the state of play of
> > geological research I would have to say that they are wrong.
> ... and ...
> > So all-in-all given that we have two theories for
> > earthquakes, I prefer the scientific explanation.
 
This is an important problem, and there are many relevantly 
similar examples of the same type. (Belief that illness is caused by 
angry spirits as opposed to an analysis in terms of metabolism and 
infection, say, or any of a number of cases where 'scientific' 
explanations compete with 'traditional', 'religious', 'magical' and 
other forms.)

Now all of these explanation-types, as far as I can tell, are realist 
(everyone is realist about _something_) and most of them realist in a 
sense similar to transcendental realism as a philosophical ontology, 
which is to say that they acknowledge a distinction between the flow of 
outcomes (whether observed or not) and layers of mechanisms which may 
be at work without being manifest. (Thus a malignant spirit may be said 
to be at work, but to be counteracted by some other action so that no 
undesired outcome follows...)

The question, then, is not "who is realist?" or even "who is not in the 
grip of the epistemic fallacy?" but rather "whose account of the 
mechanisms is preferable?"

I have been brought up in a scientised culture, and am myself a kind of 
philosopher and historian of science. I think that earthquakes are 
better explained by geology than by theology, but hasten to admit, as 
any transcendental realist must, that geological explanations are 
not complete. This means that they do not entail the falsity of any 
competing belief as long as it is suitably updated. (So Newton and 
Boyle did not think that the mechanical philosophy was an objection to 
Christian theism, they thought that it showed HOW GOD ACTED IN THE 
WORLD...) I would not be surprised to find that there were geologists 
in India whose scientific work took place alongside genuine acceptance 
of the view that gods caused earthquakes.

This does not close the debate though - there are mistakes of kinds 
other than entertaining a contradiction. The question is - what kind of 
mistake (if there is one) is being made here, and does it help being 
some kind of critical realist to either identify or avoid the mistake? 
(Does DCR entail atheism? Hmmm...)

Cheers,
David
Department of Philosophy,
University of Natal, Durban, 4041, South Africa.
Tel: +27(0)31 260 3248. Fax: +27 (0)31 260 3031.
----------------------------------------------------------
Which is wrong? The weather or our calendars?
- John Cage.


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