Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 11:34:47 -0400 (EDT) From: Ruth Groff <rgroff-AT-yorku.ca> Subject: Re: BHA: Critical Realism and Marx's Theory of Value Hi all, Unfortunately I have to go prepare to teach and can't read the last few posts as closely as I should just now, but I wanted to say that I thought that Nicky's (yes?) initial comment about the transcendental deduction from experimentation poses a serious and interesting challenge to those of us who want to "get around Kant," as my advisor puts it. I'm not convinced that the problem is solved via Han's corrections (and my memory is that in relation to *social* science Bhaskar does pose the question in just the way Nicky says: "What must the world be like in order for it to be a possible object of knowledge for us?"). I thought that Nicky's formulation of the issue was interesting. The way that I've always thought about it is that even the RTS version is based on an assumption, rather than an argument, that scientific knowledge is indeed knowledge. (That it *is* knowledge is not an unarguable claim, but strictly speaking the presention in RTS is a dogmatic one.) So you get "Given that we do have knowledge (or, more precisely, "Given that we believe that we must engage in experimentation in order to produce what we take to be knowledge...), what must the world be like?" It is indeed a transcendental deduction from practice, but it is one that presupposes a particular understanding *of* the practice - viz., that it does indeed yield something that we want to call knowledge. I think RB's argument works fine within a philosophy of science. Whether it works as metaphysics, though, is not so obvious. Still struggling with Kant, Ruth --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005