Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 11:45:59 +0200
Subject: Re: BHA: Response to CCR Conference



Hi Mervyn and all,

I attended for the first time this kind of conference.  But how to 
comprehend myself of what kind it really was. In any case during 
the conference time and being in =D6rebro  I got many interesting 
thoughts in my mind - I believe many conference topics, and 
expecially some discussions around those topics had some impact 
on me in getting forward with those ideas. 

It seemed to me, many presentations were too epistemologically 
loaded, which is quite understandable  when thinking persons 
in the conference; many of them were some kind of academicians, 
who tried to organize their personal thoughts before all. 
Not paying much attention in their presentations in their own 
empirical social contexts and ethical problems, as if there would 
be a general scientific world in the critical realist sense 
without dialectics. 

My pondering mainly was focussed on the problem how in the 
conference of critical realism it would be possible to go on with 
those discussions and argumentations from the two first levels of 
dialectics also towards the two other level of dialectis, that is the 
dialectics of (the) open totality and the transformative agency. 

In some presentations there was latently much of that kind of 
dialectics, but those introducers somehow left that contextual 
ethical level behind. I was pondering why. Maybe 
presentators thought of going on with their academic 
career, somehow idealizing or mystifying their social world and 
their personal problems, etc.. But in any case there was little 
discussions and ideas of various dialectical relations. How to 
take seriously some epistemological logicitization in that 
case?

First of all I got some ideas about psychological topics, because 
the other very important social science: sociology was represented 
quite rigidly in the conference. In the sociological sense I thought 
there is more need to evaluate and elaborate what kind of 
'middle range' theories there would be of use in some social 
contexts. One general context would be organizational world 
and that would also help to get hold on the Bhaskarian kind of 
totality and transformative agency, too. 

When thinking dialectics in psychological sense the conference got 
me nothing very important (the conference did not lessened 'my 
dialectics' in that sense either, I think, but what is the situation 
when thinking all those persons who attended the conference?).   
At least the conference got me to ponder why the problem of 
concrete singularity is so difficult for the introducers to confront 
more strightly in certain conference reports when the conference 
topic was implications for practice. When constructing  
my personal reflections within me, in my motivations there was a huge 
increase to go on forward in my personal professional life of 
teaching new constructive psychology, with more flexible standpoint 
theories, with more interactive, with processual ways of 
strenghtening student's personal problem solving abilities, with 
more concicous skills of evaluating personal epistemologies on human 
action. It seems to me that critical realism as a philosophy of 
science, how firm general basis it maybe is after all, can help so 
little in constructing those innovative learning practices with my 
students.

Martti Puttonen, Psychologist, Senior Lecturer, Finland


Merwyn Hartwig:

Hi all,
> 
> Hows about (as is almost traditional now!) people who attended the
> Conference offering their thoughts on it for the benefit of those who
> didn't? Warning: anything you say might be taken down and published in
> *Alethia*....
> -- 
> Mervyn Hartwig
> Editor, 'Alethia'
> Newsletter of the International Association for Critical Realism
> 13 Spenser Road
> Herne Hill
> London SE24 ONS
> United Kingdom
> Tel: 44 (0)171 737 2892
> Email: mh-AT-jaspere.demon.co.uk
> 
> 
> 
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> 
> 


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