Date: Fri, 01 Aug 1997 06:04:26 -0400
To: bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
Subject: Re: BHA: Non-experimental science (was "What must the ...")


At 08:32 PM 7/30/97, Lewis wrote:

[snip]
>of which science offers (allegedly) a better explanation.  Such a theory is
>labeled ideological only if acceptance has demonstrable causes unrelated to
>its truth.

Do you mean there are causes that produce the theory or that the theory
causes something else?

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?

>  Quite conceivably witchcraft in some specific society is not at
>all ideological, it may simply be they have no better theory and, if
>presented with appropriate information, would readily drop witchcraft as an
>explanation.

Re. my earlier remark.  I worry about the implicit rationalism here.  If
theories and their acceptance have causes, then it may be that people would
not adopt a theory even if it could be demonstrated to be superior.
Indeed, going back to _Capital_, all of us engage in the ideology of value
when we buy bread even though we may know better.  Some kinds of ideology
are PRACTICES rather than purely abstract thoughts.  We can critique such
practices with other thoughts (produced through scientific practice --
i.e., Althusser's theoretical practice?), but we can transform the
ideological practice only with something more than science (e.g., revolution).

The whole notion of ideas having causes is perhaps the most thorny issue in
the structure-agency debates and in any theory of science.  We may be able
to justify an account of science, but the possibility of causes underlying
the production and acceptance of scientific explanations necessarily temper
any claims about science's rationality.  A scientific theory can only be
rational within the range that its causes allow. When comparing two
theories, adoption of one over the other may simply reflect its underlying
causes rather than its relative truth.  Indeed, Marx's whole analysis of
ideology rooted in material practice would be unintelligible if this were
not so: e.g., people accept religion because of their material conditions
of life rather than because of its intrinsic theoretical superiority.

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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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