From: "Colin Wight" <Colin.Wight-AT-aber.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: BHA: Explanatory Power
Date: Mon, 3 Jul 2000 11:23:46 +0100


Well Tobin you are certainly very tetchy.

Let me just put back you all of the excerpts you took from me and go through
them for you answering your question and illuminating your creative leaps.

Your question is:

 do you hold
> that *all* scientific knowledge claims require empirical evidence, or only
> that *most* of them do?

So, I say:

22 Jun:
>                For myself I
> probably think that all knowledge claims normally involve an empirical
> element.

You don't understand this? You want me to more "probably all" to a dogmatic
"all". "Probably all" is not clear enough for you? From this I would
probably infer "probably all". Seems clear to me and involves no
equivocation. I don't know whether they "all" involve in advance because
this is simply too dogmatic for me; you live with it.

But how you get from "probably all" to...

>But I don't think a realist approach to theory
>choice can ever completely dispense with empirical evidence.

So, how do you derive a "completely dispense", with all honesty Tobin, from
a "probably all".

Then:


> Yes, but only in the concrete and not the abstract and the order we
> prioritise them in will be object dependent. It may be in some instances
> that we start with the empirical but put aesthetics prior to rational
> justification.

So, the issue of the order of epistemological criteria, no denial at all of
the importance of the empirical and moreover, a position you endorse...

TOBIN: Certainly, there are
many cases where (at least for some period, and possibly forever) the
empirical evidence is *not* sufficient.  At that point other criteria have
to enter the discussion.

Then:

26 Jun:
> One more thing, whatever your account may be Jonathan, I am sure that CR,
> and RB in particular, does not accord primacy to the empirical; and I
also said that in most cases knowledge claims will have an empirical
referent.

No primacy according to the empirical means "complexly dispense with"? In
"most cases knowledge claims will have an empirical referent" means complete
dispense with? Again, you are obviously unhappy with this and want to impose
the dogmatic statement they you "know" that "all" knowledge claims will have
empirical referents. Well good for you, one wonder how you know this of
course. Speaking for myself, I like to a little more circumspect with my
claims.

Then:

28 Jun:
> 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.

Well we have been through this one, but again, form my claim that  "in most
cases all knowledge claims will have an empirical referents" you derive
"completely dispense with"?


"Normally."  "In general."  "In most cases."  It is wholly reasonable to
infer from these statements that you allow exceptions in which empirical
evidence may be secondary or may even be absent from knowledge claims: that
is exactly what you say.  So if you're going to yell at me for saying that.

Yes Tobin I am going to yell at you, but not in the schoolboy insult fashion
which you have sunk to. To allow the possibility of something does not mean
"dispensing with completely". You are perfectly at liberty to take my claims
that "in general", "almost always"...etc as "completely dispensing with" and
I can't stop you, but if you want to find out who is hiding behind a pomo
veneer of meaning indeterminacy look no closer than home.

I'm flabbergasted actually! I am glad that you have a cast iron certainty
that all knowledge claims will have empirical elements. But I'm happy to
stay with my qualified position. Because quite simply, I don't know whether
they do; I think that they probably always do. But then again I could be
wrong. I wonder about you?

I have read my own words I saw what I had wrote, probably, mostly, in
general...not "completely dispense with".

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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