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 --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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