From: "Tobin Nellhaus" <nellhaus-AT-gwi.net>
To: <bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU>
Subject: BHA: Incommunicado
Date: Tue, 30 Sep 1997 09:31:36 +0300


Hi Wallace--

Your summary of the implications of conventionalism for communication
sounds pretty much on the beam to me.  The logic of that approach can
hardly resist dissolving into individualism and semiotic insularity, such
that (as I mentioned in a previous post) poststructuralists end up claiming
that communication is impossible unless people first share an entire
semiotic system--for the slightest difference is enough to constitute a
different "universe."  The question then is, how does the "superficial"
level come to exist and operate?  I suspect the answer is along the lines
of Bhaskar's "inexorability of realism" argument ....

However, I'm not certain the argument holds for the epistemic fallacy as
such.  Social constructivism or conventionalism involves the epistemic
fallacy, but so does positivism, and however atomistic positivism's
semiotics may be, I don't think it follows this particular route.

---
Tobin Nellhaus
nellhaus-AT-gwi.net *or* tobin.nellhaus-AT-helsinki.fi
"Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce



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