File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_2000/bhaskar.0007, message 76


From: "Erik Weissengruber" <epweissengruber-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: BHA: RE: RE: Re: Theology and critical realist praxis
Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2000 19:55:17 EDT


Has anyone looked at their Subject Line lately?!?!

Everyone keeps re-printing "theology and critical realist praxis," when they 
are no longer discussing that topic.

So to bring it all back home ...

1) IF one accepts the notion of "NON-EMPIRICAL Evidence" as pertinent to 
Critical Realism, does one then admit Theology and Mystical Experience as 
components of Critical Realism.

-- I myself suspect that one could come up with a number of definitions of 
non-empirical evidence that would be acceptable within CR, or conventional 
materialism, which would exclude any conceivable type of theology or 
mysticism.

2) If we are parsimonious about what counts as evidence, could we then limit 
acceptable evidence to those pieces of evidence that can be empirically 
verified?  Would such a limit necessarilly eliminate the possibility of 
theology?  Some theologians, believers, and mystics would then offer a 
number of pieces of "empirical" evidence for their beliefs.

  -- Most miracles, supernatural interventions, divine messages, intimations 
of immortality couldn't stand up to even the most basic standards of 
empirical verification.  But the sheer multitude of claims to be 
investigated would be overwhelming.

NOTE to HANS.

I am intrigued as to the nature of "NON-Empirical evidence."
I remember your discussion of the epistemological shortfalls of 
econometrics.
You claimed in this discussion that, despite the superfluity of empirical 
measurments that have been made, econometrics is in no way a truly 
"scientific" discipline.
Would your DISCUSSION function as "non-empirical" evidence in a later 
discussion of this issue (I used it as evidence to back up my position in a 
recent argument)

NOTE to TOBIN
I read your article in JDTC, and loved it.
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