File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_1997/bhaskar.9710, message 66


Date: Sun, 12 Oct 1997 16:50:29 -0700 (PDT)
From: LH Engelskirchen <lhengels-AT-igc.apc.org>
To: bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
Subject: Re:  BHA: Re: theorya/theoryb


 
 
Tobin and Hans --
 
On judgmental rationalism forced upon us by the need to act there
is chapter and verse:  PON, p. 58 -- epistemic relativism "neither
entails nor . . . gives grounds for a belief in the doctrine of
judgmental relativism.  On the contrary, it is clear that if one is
to act at all there must be grounds for preferring one belief
(about some domain) to another . . . ."  The point is also
reflected in the chapter on Agency where at p 92 (2d ed) RB says
that unless a reason could function as a cause "there would be no
sense in a person evaluating (or appraising) different beliefs in
order to decide how to act." 
 
Appeal to our causal interaction with the world as the test of
truth is always called pragmatic and instrumentalist, but, as RB
says, there is a difference between "it is true because it works"
and "it works because it is true."
 
BTW my quote from PON on the relationship between society as a real
object and the objects of philosophic knowledge in the post on
math's residence address appears in RECLAIMING REALITY at 85-86.
 
 
Notice, that if you argue that a reason for preferring realist
explanations is "because its theories concern the causal powers amd
susceptibilities . . . " then you have got to be able to explain
natural necessity, the subject of RTS ch 3.  Notice also that this
is not the reason realist explanations traditionally have been
preferred.  Traditionally such explanations have been preferred on
empirical grounds.
 
In my experience it generally is reconceptualizations that drive
theory preference.  But I don't suggest this is for
reconceptualization's sake.  As Bhaskar said in his plenary,
inconsistencies function like a diagnostic key that tells you a
science is lacking something.  You go along and then you get stuck. 
There are absences.  An anomoly persists until it reaches a crisis
point.  At that point you move to a deeper and more inclusive
totality.  
 
That was the idea about reconceptualization.
 
But you don't have to reach the new foundation or level or more
inclusive totality all at once and comprehensively.  Your
breakthrough may be isolated and limited and still, because you
have broken through to a deeper layer of explanation, forcing a
reconceptualization, you are entitled to a confidence in your
explanation that makes it rational to prefer the new theory over
the old even if, for the time being, it explains less in actualist
terms.
 
I don't think I said anything about criteria, Hans, but if I were
to try fashioning some, I would certainly want to put a comparison
of the level of structure achieved at the top of the list.  
 
 
Howard
 
 
Howard Engelskirchen
Western State University
 
     "What is there just now you lack"  Hakuin
 



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