Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 11:36:19 -0400
From: "Charles Brown" <CharlesB-AT-CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us>
Subject: Re: BHA: epistemic fallacy.




>>> Colin Wight <Colin.Wight-AT-aber.ac.uk> 10/04/99 05:53PM >>>
I had promised to lurk, but when presented by such a challenge(?) as
Andrew's and Charles's one feels the inexplicable need to interject.

To Charles: Yes, I take it this RB's claim.


Charles: I had asked:

Did all previous discussants ( before Bhaskar)  of philosophy commit the epistemic fallacy ?

Charles, continuing: Not to be coy , but I can't understand how Engels's formulation of the fundamental question of philosophy ,( 1) idealism or materialism ; 2) Can we know reality ? ) commits the fallacy.  Seems the ontological question of first here and the epistemological question second.


>> Hans Ehrbar <ehrbar-AT-econ.utah.edu> 10/03/99 02:19AM >>>


Bhaskar's criticism of the epistemic fallacy predates
dialectical critical realism, therfore I will discuss it
first, without reference to his dialectics.  Bhaskar does
not ask, as Nicola wrote, "What must the world be like in
order that we know such and such about it?"  He asks: "What
must the world be like in order that such and such
activities, which we call science, allow us to learn about
it (as we know they do)?"  He does not look at the *results*
of science, but at the *procedure* how science is done.  It
is amazing how much can be said about the world by looking
at this procedure.

((((((((((((((

Charles: Does Bhaskar's answer to his question include "the world is an objective reality . " ? 



Bhaskar's transcendental question about ontology is the
first question that must be asked.  The epistemological
question: What do we have to do in order to gain knowledge
about the world?  can only be the second question.  If a
philosopher tries to ask this second question first, then he
relies on an implicit and unscrutinized ontology.  Bhaskar
put ontology back into philosophy.  The epistemic fallacy
tries to subordinate ontology to epistemology.


In his "dialectic, the pulse of freedom", Bhaskar extends
his general criticism of western philosophy: it not only
commits the error of the epistemic fallacy, but also the
errors of ontological monovalence and of the primal squeeze
(the "unholy trinity").

((((((((((((((

How is ontological monovalence different than Spinoza vs. Descartes ?


CB





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