From: "Colin Wight" <Colin.Wight-AT-aber.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: BHA: Explanatory Power
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2000 17:49:10 +0100


Hi Mervyn,

I'm not sure how people are misconstruing my position so horribly. So let's
try and set the matter straight. Folks are obviously free to carry on
misconstruing and ignoring important qualifiers. More to the point, and
leaving aside whether my position is misconstrued or not, no one has, in my
humble opinion, come close to showing, not only what something like a
criteria for theory choice might be like, but how one might be possible.



1. 	I have insisted that in most cases all knowledge claims will have an
empirical 	referents: I have tried to steer clear of putting this in terms
of transitive and 	intransitive objects for obvious reasons.

2.	RB (certainly pre-FEW) does see the empirical as only a very partial part
of reality, hence purely empirical criteria can not apply and need not be
privileged. Some science, still deserving of the name science, have very
limited access to empirical data. (see 4 for further clarification)

3.	The argument from ontology to epistemology is perfectly in accord with
CR. The appropriate epistemological criteria cannot be determined in advance
of ontological considerations of the object domain. CR rests or falls on
this. RB reverses the western dogma of prioritising epistemological matter
over ontological ones.

4.	Your claim:" Roy does seem to be stipulating at least one general a
priori rule: choose 	the explanatorily most adequate theory i.e. the one
which goes beyond its rivals in terms 	of the phenomena it can explain
(empirical control!) including hopefully the rivals
 	themselves." simply begs the question since the phenomena (the empirical
control) are 	not in themselves the explanation, but are what requires
explanation; an explanation 	which may well, and probably will, incorporate
much more than empirical elements; i.e. retroduction and retroduction etc...


>
> I think your position also begs the question of how, if not ultimately
> empirically in some sense, the nature of the object *can* determine the
> relevant epistemological considerations.

It's not a matter of determining Mervyn in the sense of the ontic fallacy,
but it is a matter of arriving at epistemological criteria which are
appropriate to the object domain.

A
> Roy has always insisted that the results of the transcendental arguments
> establishing a philosophical ontology for science must ultimately stand
> the test of a posterior science.

Exactly, but the philosophical ontology RB develops implies no commitment to
a restrictive epistemology, or the privileging of some criteria over others;
it requires the test of an a posterior science and one that can't be
delimited in advance, precisely because of the nature of the philosophical
ontology he has developed; stratified, differentiated and relational. Such
an ontology will require many modes of access.

There is nothing wrong with this as such from my (agnostic)
> point of view - in fact, I welcome the notion of a theological strand
> within CR, but I think we do need means of distinguishing theology from
> science, and empirical control is one of them. When you say things
> intended to belittle the role of the empirical like

Well since I haven't abandoned empirical data, this misses the point. More
important, if you rely only on empirical data then you leave a whole raft of
other epistemological objections to religion which can support your
empirical claims. Moreover, RB's God differs substantially from the
traditional notion of a Christian God, and its refutation (if desired) may
well take a form different from claims re Christ etc. Empirical data are
never brute explanation in and of themselves. But you know this. However, I
sense in many posts on this issue still that same sense of longing that the
empiricism sought to fill. Just because RB has gone off the deep end so to
speak, does not mean that we need negate the gains of CR and regress to a
naive, or sophisticated, form of empiricism. We don't know what
epistemological arguments we can muster against any ontological claim until
we have some idea of the content of the claim.


> it seems to me you are indeed on the edge of the slippery slope, Colin
> (the last place you want to be in respect of theology, you could forgive
> me for inferring). It is *only* via the positive (empirically detectable
> effects) that we can come to know causal mechanisms as real, satisfying
> both a causal and a perceptual criterion for ascribing reality.

Exactly, so what in my position negates this. However, if you are according
primacy to the empirical what philosophical warrant to do have for the
allusion to causal mechanism which can only be inferred from empirical data.
To give primacy to the empirical in advance is to slip into empiricism,
whatever the claims to the contrary.

Cheers,

=================================Dr. Colin Wight
Department of International Politics
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Tel: 01970 621769
http://www.aber.ac.uk/~cow
==================================


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