Date: Sun, 01 Aug 1999 20:52:04 +0100
Subject: Re: BHA: 2.6


Just two quick points re Ruth's excellent overview of this section.

Well three actually, or it might even be four????

First, wouldn't it have been better for this section to be an intro of kinds?

Second,

 Moreover, once we recognize that
>neither side permits either the concept of scientific theory or the concept
>of natural necessity, we can see that the oppositions between empiricism and
>idealism, the ontic and epistemic fallacies, and the positivistic and
>speculative illusions, respectively, are all flip sides of the same
>(irrealist) coin.

I actually think this is very powerful and it has been very useful to me in
my discipline
as a way of showing how the radical positivists and the radical postmoderns
share much in common. They both hate it.

Three:

>
>[This is a small point, but if ontological monovalence is *defined* as "a
>purely positive account of knowledge and being," it seems incorrect to speak
>of it "producing" this condition as an effect.

But it is surely the epistemic fallacy which produces this positive account
of being. Not ontological monovalence.

Four:

>So the unholy trinity sucks.  Even though it's not true, if you *believe* it
>to be true, you can't do science; and if you can't do science, there can be
>no significant change in consciousness or in underlying social relations.

Well  maybe not this. perhaps the point is more that if you adhere to the
unholy trinity there is no need to do science. But even those who do claim
to adhere to it do both do science and use the fruits of science, hence!!!!!!!


Five:

>action." [This is actually an odd formulation, when you think about it, as
>it makes it sound as though even intransitive objects are, a la Heidegger,
>only objects for us, ie., "of some transitive process ... or field of
>action."  I don't think Bhaskar believes this, as he is clear at other times
>in charging Heidegger with having committed the `anthropic fallacy'.  But
>still, it's a curious formulation.] 

Not really, it is on first reading but a closer reading gives weight to the
arguments of those who say we should take him at his (unedited) word and
try and see what he is trying to say. The key point in this sentence is the
distinction between "the domain of existentially intransitive objects" AND
" or ontics of some transitive of relational process of inquiry of field of
action." So the ontics might be objects for us, but the intransitive
objects may not. The intransitive objects are not reducible to the ontics
of particular scientific theories. Perfectly consistent CR.


Cheers,



============================================

Dr. Colin Wight
Department of International Politics
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Wales
SY23 3DA
Tel: (01970) 621769 


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