Subject: BHA: RE: murmurs, mutters and matters mystical
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 1999 11:22:41 -0400


Regarding Hans' comments about mystical matters: I think Bhaskar's
distinction between transient and intransient dimensions is a crucial
advance in understanding this. Unlike most other philosophers of science and
knowledge, RB says relatively little about epistemology and the transient
dimension. Human knowledge, even scientific knowledge, is inherently
fallible. Hence, no "scientific method" can guarantee reliable knowledge.

This move allows all sorts of mischief in human knowledge (politics, funding
agencies with agendas, gendered knowledge, etc.) while leaving the
intransient dimension intact. Unlike Wittgenstein and many other "language"
philosophers, the transient dimension does have some connection with the
intransient dimension (what we usually call "reality"). Presumably, the
latter impinges on the former so that not just anything can pass as
"knowledge." In other words, in a very loose sense human knowledge is
consistent with the reality outside knowledge that it seeks to know. It is
not so much a "mirror of nature" as a cognitive link with, or hook to,
nature. Moreover, insofar as humans study nature by intervening in it (re.
Ian Hacking), this link/hook is not *merely* cognitive. It is practical as
well.

Furthermore, Bhaskar develops his ontology by asking what the world must be
like for science to be possible. In other words, science is taken as the
starting point. We might ask, with no less legitimacy, what the world must
be like for (a specific?) mysticism to be possible. There is no a priori
reason why science must be better than mysticism, but if mysticism's world
is inconsistent with science's, then we have a problem accepting both.
Absent this contradiction, there's no reason why science and mysticism can't
be bedmates.

I don't know if this explicitly opens the door to mysticism per se. However,
it does seem to rescue science from radical (i.e., "anything goes")
relativism without relying on foundationalism (i.e., dogmatic first
principles).


	Marsh Feldman
	The University of Rhode Island



     --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---