Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 11:26:56 +1000
From: Brad Shipway <bshipway-AT-scu.edu.au>
Subject: RE: BHA: RE: adjudicating between knowledge claims


Hi Doug,
thankyou for your answer, I am finding this good stuff in terms of
clarifying my own understanding of CR, (both 'currents').

You wrote:
>I think the critical realist belief in a stratified world inclines us
>against the reduction of, say altruism, to inclusive fitness or whatever.
> All I
>can tell you is that I have never bought it.  

Personally, I am with you. One of the reasons I was asking was because I
was interested if others from other (ie. not biological) perspectives
'bought it'.

>Again, I
>can only say that personally I also could never see how it tells either for
>or against God that our capacity for metaphysics evolved and is rooted in
>the brain. Despite the arguments, I just don't find these factors
>epistemically relevant.
>
>On the theologians, Huyssteen sounds interesting.  

I agree again. And so, I think, would Huyssteen. He argues very similarly
what you have outlined here: that a defensible argument for the possession
of metaphysical beliefs is a totally different thing to proving that God
exists. By not 'epistemically relevant' do you mean that it doesn't matter
whether metaphysical beliefs evolved or not, the point is they exist, so
pragmatically it doesn't matter how they arrived?


>Barbour of course explicitly shares a critical realist perspective. I
>didn't know Polkinghorne addressed epistemology much, but I do think he
>presupposes a CR view.

Your opinion on Polkinghorne has confirmed what I have been wondering about
for a while.

>Oh boy. I'm not the most facile listmember on all these distinctions, but I
>would say the mechanisms of blind variations and selective retention appear
>in all three. We certainly can observe both in some cases.  So they are
>empirical.  If they are empirical, then they are also both actual and real.
>That's my best shot at the moment.
>

That shot seems to be making sense to me at this time,
Thanks,
Brad


Brad Shipway
Southern Cross University
Lismore, NSW 2480
Australia



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