File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_2000/bhaskar.0003, message 61


From: "Colin Wight" <Colin.Wight-AT-aber.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: BHA: Re: More on TD/ID
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2000 17:02:08 -0000


Hi Ruth,

your clarification does the job. Intransitive objects we agree, may not yet
be objects of study, but, and contra transcendent realism there is no reason
to argue that they can never become objects of study. We agree I think; I
hope, I think, I hope, I think...

>
> I don't understand this as a response.  I've never said anything about a
> need for nice, neatly packed answers.

Ok, maybe my flippancy is getting in the way. I will take a studiously
serious line from now on ;-). But really, my reply was aimed at what I
perceived to be a longing (what Steve Fuller described to me as theological
wish-fulfilment) for some means to put our descriptions of the world to the
test against the world independent of our descriptions; some criteria by
which we could test our accounts of the world independent of those accounts.
There have been many such attempts to provide such criteria and they have
all failed. RB, and others, show why. If you don't buy the arguments, fine,
but can you show why some criteria might apply. I don't actually think you
do want a foundationalist epistemology, so we probably agree on this also.


>
> What I've said is that if one espouses a philosophy that one claims is:
> [a] DIFFERENT IN KIND from the view that there is a real world out there,
> but that we can't get to it -- that instead we can only ever get
> to it under
> some description of it (e.g., Putnam's "internal realism")

>From which I take it that Putnam's acceptance of a world out there is
redundant; similar to Rorty's in fact and many of the postmoderns.

and [b] more
> persuasive than the alternative (e.g., said "internal realism"), then one
> has to be able to make a convincing case for both claims.

Which claims? That there is a world, or that we can get to it, or both? I'm
not sure what the point here is Ruth. Let's go through the moves.

Internal Realism: Really an empty form of realism. The real is posited, but
does no work. It is there, but we can't get to it. So, what is it we do get
to? Our descriptions, I take it. A host of questions. Is it being suggested
that our descriptions form/shape the materiality of the non-gettable real.
No, can't be, cos that would be getting to it? Is it being suggested that
our descriptions actually materialise their objects into being? perhaps? Is
this plausible? Perhaps, but is it a form of realism?

Bhaskar's Realism: (please feel free to indicate the points of disagreement)
There is a real world. We can only know through our descriptions of it. But,
big but, we come to know it through our descriptions of it, not that we
can't know it because of our descriptions of it. As Tobin has pointed out in
reply to Andrew (and I suggested in my earlier distinction between everyday
knowledge claims and the philosophers in the car), just because we can't
have absolute certainty does not mean that we know nothing. Our descriptions
are not the real of the world we study, they are the descriptions of the
real, hence can always potentially, at least, be wrong about the object of
which they are descriptions. However, the real (intransitive), we can infer,
plays some role in structuring our descriptions; we can't just describe it
anyway we want, although the possibilities for description are vast.
Nonetheless, some descriptions just do come up against the hard edge of what
Santyana calls the "shock". So we are in contact with the real world and it
puts limits on our descriptions. How do we know which of our descriptions
have more accurately captured something of the world. The ways are many and
various (i.e. we should not attempt to proscribe in advance of some
specification of the object some epistemological position).

> >RBs answer to this question is fallibilistic; live with your
> >doubt.
>
> I don't know quite what this means.

It means, you can/must be prepared to doubt any and every knowledge claim,
and that this is a existential condition of being a being that can only know
this world fallibly.

As I understand it, fallibilism is a
> stance that RB adopts in relation to knowledge-claims, specifically those
> produced in the practice of science.  (He might also be a fallibilist in
> relation to other kinds of claims, e.g., moral judgements; I
> haven't paid as
> much attention to his comments on/in moral philosophy.)  Thus, from the
> perspective of transcendental realism, the practice of science must not to
> be understood to yield accounts of the world that will be taken to be true
> in perpetuity.

Exactly, so don't try and banish the doubt by fussing at the criteria of the
judgement form, because there isn't one but many, and which one will work in
which situation depends upon the situation (I'm not suggesting btw that you
are in search of the only and only tool in the toolbox).


>
> I'm not sure which question you mean here.  But if you mean the question
> about the concept of justification, yes.

Yes, but I took you to be saying, and this is where Andy came in, that this
was "the" question for a transcendental realism such as RB's. It's one
question, but I actually don't think it is that interesting when raised in
an ontological vacuum. The question of how we come to check the validity of
our knowledge is related to what it is we want (or have) knowledge of.
Knowledge claims rarely become a problem except in relation to a competing
knowledge claims and then we can find means of comparing one with the other,
because if they are competing knowledge claims there will be some
ontological overlap. If there isn't some ontological overlap how can we say
they compete? This process isn't easy and the outcome is not guaranteed, but
it can only be effected in practice, not legitimated in advance by a set of
a priori procedures that we must follow.

  I mean, all of us do, as a matter of course,
> make all sorts of choices between competing theories all day long.  And
> scientists, certainly, social AND natural, make those choices a bit more
> self-consciously.  So it's not QUITE like debating about angels
> and pin-size
> to think about the rational basis for such judgements. ESPECIALLY, I might
> add, if you are committed to a strong fallibilism about knowledge but are
> also opposed to relativism.

I never suggested it was, the point is that the claims can only be tested
when they are made, not by some procedures we devise in advance. Of course,
we make knowledge claims all the time, and as researchers and scientists we
should be held to account for our claims. But, and this is the big but, we
can't absolve ourselves of this responsibility to justify our claims by
appeal to the fact that we followed the criteria. And moreover, our
justifications will be varied (i.e. at times we will appeal to empirical
criteria, at others to rational ones, at others to pragmatic ones etc....)
The assessment of knowledge claims can't be made in the absence of such
knowledge claims, as the search for criteria independent of such knowledge
claims seems to suggest. I can't tell you (and I don't think anyone else
can) how to compare knowledge claims in advance of knowledge claims, but I
can tell you that the claim that the Holocaust did not happen is wrong and I
can tell you why I think it is wrong; more than this I have an ethical duty
to justify my knowledge claims. Will this procedure in relation to every
case. No.

Hope this helps clarify. We probably don't even disagree that much.

Cheers,






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