Date: Tue, 05 Aug 1997 07:22:51 -0400
To: bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
Subject: Re: BHA: Non-experimental science (was "What must the ...")


At 09:46 PM 8/4/97, Louis wrote:
>Marshll,
>
>You quote me
>
>>>of which science offers (allegedly) a better explanation.  Such a theory is
>>>labeled ideological only if acceptance has demonstrable causes unrelated to
>>>its truth.
>
>and ask:
>
>>Do you mean there are causes that produce the theory or that the theory
>>causes something else?
>
>I am talking about causes of theories, but the question makes sense to me
>only if you omit the last four words from the quote, namely "unrelated to
>its truth."

Well, atomic theory might "cause" construction of atom bombs iff the theory
is true.

>
>>Either way, it's hard to think of any theory whose own production does not
>>have causes and that itself does not have an impact on the world.  The
>>theory in _Capital_ is a good example.  Does this make it ideological?
>
>No, a theory having a cause does not make it ideological, not did I say so.
>Your subsequent statment that "the possibility of causes underlying the
>production and acceptance of scientific explanations necessarily temper any
>claims about science's rationality" leads me to think that you yourself are
>claiming that a theory's having a cause makes it ideological.  Be that as it
>may, I was not speaking of causes of theories generally, rather about causes
>unrelated to the truth of the theories.

Well, I think _Capital_ had causes independent of its truth.  For me,
ideology has to do with the nature of the reasoning rather than its causes.
 A wierd virus might cause me to think a certain way about economics, but
my economic theory will still stand or fall on its own merits.

My comment about causes of theories tempering their rationality simply
implies that no account of the production or acceptance of science can
treat it as strictly a rational activity.

>
>One thing I have in mind is the causal theory of knowledge, which states
>that in order to have knowledge, as opposed to a true belief, my belief must
>have been caused by that part of the world my belief is about (so knowledge
>is not true belief, nor even justified true belief).

If NSF funding plus advances in electronics let you use an electron
microscope to study the wierd virus I mentioned before, would your
subsequent beliefs about the virus be knowledge?  If instead, you had other
beliefs because you used computer simulation rather than the microscope,
would both sets of beliefs be knowledge?


>  I see the same kind of
>thing at work with theories: a theory should  be labeled ideological if its
>production in no way was caused by the way the world is.

It's hard to imagine a theory that IN NO WAY is caused by the world as it
is.  I see several problems here.  First, how could we know if the thing
under study "causes" the theory without having some theory about the thing
to begin with.  In other words, isn't this circular in some sense.  Second,
a theory might, in some way, be "caused" by the thing it understands and
yet have other causes as well.  Your original formulation called the latter
ideology too.  Third, many theories we might call ideology are in fact
caused by the thing they are about.  Marx's account of value is a good
example of a theory that explains how certain things, i.e., commodities,
cause the ideology of commodity fetishism, value, etc.  Similarly, one
might argue that religion is an ideology caused by humanity's place in the
world, but religion is about humanity's place in the world.  In short, I
don't see how to apply your criteria to most examples of ideology.

>I have trouble with the rest of what you raise, because it seems to me that
>it is concerned with the limits inherent in the process of rationality.  We
>should not be surprised that our ideas have causes, nor that it may be
>difficult to produce rational justifications for (or refutations against)
>them that rise above those limitations.  Nevertheless, that is just what
>occurs and is what RB's notion of ideology critique attempts to capture.
>That is sort of what I was aiming at in speaking of causes of a theory
>unrelated to its truth in opposition to causes generally of a theory.

Well, I'd probably say a theory's truth or ideological status does not
depend on its causes.  I can imagine a true or non-ideological theory being
caused by things unrelated to its truth, just as I can imagine a false or
ideological one being caused by things related to its truth.

BTW.  What do you mean by related, and how do you know if something is
related without making reference to the theory?  Since you want to know
about relatedness to judge the theory's status, it seems you must know
about relatedness independent of the theory.  But by your account, this
would render your account of relatedness to be ideological itself since
your theory of relatedness is now independent of the thing it relatedness
is about.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------
Marshall Feldman, Associate Professor		                marsh-AT-uriacc.uri.edu
Graduate Curriculum in Community Planning and Area Development	401/874-5953
The University of Rhode Island					401/874-5511 (FAX)
94 West Alumni Avenue, Suite 1; Kingston, RI 02881-0806


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