Date: Mon, 04 Aug 1997 22:00:28
To: bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
Subject: Re: BHA: Non-experimental science (was "What must the ...")


At 05:45 AM 8/1/97 -0400, Marshall wrote:

>At 07:06 PM 7/30/97, Lewis wrote:
>
>>Although Marshal, Doug and I are in agreement on CR not being a general, a
>>priori theory and requiring at least support in the various domains outside
>>natural science, as I said in a response to Doug's post I disagree with
>>his, and now Marshall's, way of putting it in terms of the meanings of
>>"science", "cause" and "explanation."  I don't think it is right to say
>>that the meanings of those terms are fixed by a CR analysis of natural
>>science, especially the last two.  On their understanding, having fixed
>>those meanings we go on to ask if social studies are capable of causal
>>explanation, and if they are, whether those explanations are scientific in
>>character.  I would prefer to say that first we establish what natural
>>science is in CR terms and then ask whether causal explanations in other
>>domains conform to the same kind of depth analysis.  If the answer were to
>>turn out negative in some domain, I don't know that we should declare that
>>there are no causal explanations in that domain simply because they do not
>>conform to the CR account gleaned from natural science.  I wonder how
>>others feel about this matter.
>
>Lewis,
>
>Here's what I think is at stake here.  On your account we might have to
>start with, say, Herb Blalock's empiricist account of causal explanation in
>social science (which is actually a version of Humean-J.S. Mill causal
>explanation) and ask if it conforms to the CR account of causal explanation
>in experimental science.  The answer would be "no."  Does this mean CR does
>not apply, or is Blalock full of -AT-$#^?
>

Marshall,

I don't know what Blalock's account is, but I do not see why we might have
to start with his account of the meaning of "causal explanation".  No gun
is at my head, and I assume you are able to expose the error of his
definition.  I am willing to concede that his fixed sense of that term is
evil while your and Doug's fixed meaning is good.  I just find the idea of
a fixed definition for such a term to be highly dubious.  And yes, my use
of "fixed definition" is meant to turn some of RB's later views against you
on this.  But I may be missing a finer point here.

Louis



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