File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_2002/bhaskar.0201, message 93


From: Wendy Olsen <w.k.olsen-AT-Bradford.ac.uk>
Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2002 22:26:06 +0000
Subject: Re: BHA: More on Collier's work & a question


Dear listers,
I liked hearing Phil steam up about two authors having an 
ontology he disagrees with; at least we can have a debate 
about that here, whereas I just filled in some forms for a UK 
government grant and the government officers still think all the 
methodological debates are about epistemology. They are trying 
to get more well-trained empirical social scientists by 
spending 4 million pounds on methodology research over 4 years.

Having got into ontology myself, I am finally reading Andrew 
Collier's _Being and Worth_. Now this is an interesting book. 
I'm sure, Phil, you must have read it before making your 
comment throwing up your hands in despair.  But I suspect that 
Collier himself has changed his views over time.  (He says he 
has, and I also sense it when comparing this book with his 1994
review of Bhaskar.) How about defusing the debate over God a 
little by making our definition of _that_ word more permeable 
than the way it is usually taken.  In other words if using the 
god-word tends to suggest you are touching on things that have 
infinite potential linkages, and perhaps the word 'spirit' 
might be better here, then it's hard to see how it can be split
from the efforts of humans to understand it.  COllier is very 
explicit, and I find it helpful that he is, about what it means
to 'understand', to 'know', and to 'believe' something.
If you apply that to knowing about God, defined as something 
having permeable edges, then you start thinking that the 
phenomenological aspect (the DOING, the process) is a major 
part of what it might mean to "understand" god.  Success in 
doing so, or completion of understanding, must be a minor part;
Collier says one doesn't just _achieve_ knowledge but rather 
move toward that aim, continually.

I haven't read the _marxism and christianity_ book; how does it
differ/ I hope to read it.  
Thanks
Wendy

-------------------
Wendy Olsen
w.k.olsen-AT-bradford.ac.uk



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