Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2002 01:15:22 +0100
From: Jan Straathof <janstr-AT-chan.nl>
Subject: Re: BHA: re: cr and social science


Hi Ruth,

sorry for this belated response, am drowning in work at the moment,
and the current list-traffic (hurray !!) takes its ways and disarrays my
attention to write a proper reply, so he're some loose and probably
self-contradicting rumblings ... ;-))

on reading the Bhaskar quotes you offered,

>"The chief epistemological limit on naturalism is not raised by the
>necessarily unperceivable character of the objects of social inquiry,
>but rather by the fact that they only ever manifest themselves in open
>systems; that is, in systems where invariant empirical regularities do
>not obtain.  For social systems are not spontaneously, and cannot be
>experimentally, closed."  [Pon:45]
>
>"...the human sciences must start their trek to scientificity without that
>priceless asset, available to the experimental sciences of nature, of
>sometimes being able to observe or detect in undisturbed fashion the
>operation of latent structures of the world ..." [PON:131]
>
>"... (any science that must study phenomena which only ever manifest
>themselves in open systems)."  [PON:132]

i must confess that i've misread Bhaskar here, esp. in his emphasis
on the necessity of closure in true experimental settings.

My, probably Popperian/Kuhnian biased, textbook understanding
was that the crux of experiments is /testing theories/*. To do so you
need: (a) theories, which can generate hypotheses; (b) to select a
sample; (c) control of the relevant variables; (d) releasement of
treatments and (e) to do repetitive measurements. And thus if these
conditions were supplied - i was thaught - then you are doing
experimental science, whether in the social or the natural milieu.
       Anyway the basic philosophical argument was that every
experimenation (whether in the lab or in the field) is as theory-
laden as any other form of scientific inquiry.

This brings me to the question of "closure". What is closure in
science ? What do we mean when we say we are studying a
phenomenon in a (artifically and temporally) closed environment ?
In fact, i think, we have two problems here, viz. one about
(i) epistemic closure and an other about (ii) ontic closure.

- the first question invokes the notion of closure as a theoretical
  construct: e.g. the reasons a physist assumes that the cyclotron
  is a perfectly closed system, is grounded primarily in the actual
  quantum theory that she adhers to; which -in fact- i would picture
  more as a form of mathematical closure than of quantum closure.
  So, imo, in the praxis of experimenation it is the (mathematical)
  theory which decides what and when (sufficient and logically
  relevant) closure is obtained.
  [and btw. would you agree with me here that Bhaskar's strict
  definition of experimenation makes him vulnerable to the
  charge that he -himself- is committing an epistemic fallacy ?]

- but do closed systems really, ontically, exist ? Are all the entities,
  tendensies and mechanisms, that comprise Bhaskar's ID, totalized
  in one (or more) closed system(s)? Is our universe closed ? Is our
  consciousness closed ? The ontological possibilities imo seem at
  least fivefold:

     1. only closed systems exist.
     2. closed systems do not exist, only open systems exist.
     3. both closed and open systems exist or co-exist.
     4. there exist closed systems, which contain inherent absences/voids.
     5. there exist open systems, containing ultimately fixed points/zones.

  I don't know where i should place Bhaskar here, but would he disagree
  that only in four of these five positions (2 to 5) the significance of
  experimenation is ontologicaly tenable, and not in position 1, because
  really closed systems -per their absence of external relations- cannot
  be empirically (experimentally) detected or accessed, and are therefor
  only transcendentally known/assumed by us ?

All in all, for me, experimentation in the field of the social sciences
is possible and useful, and maybe even necessary; but imho it ought
to be guided (limited) by at least the following consideration:

   "And the desire to end one's own suffering (alienation and state of
   desiring) - in self-realisation - itself entails, through the inexorable
   logic of dialectical universability (as manifest in the dialectic desire
   for freedom), commitment to end the suffering of all dialectically
   similar beings, i.e. to the project of universal human self-realisation,
   and thence to end the suffering of all beings as such, in virtue of their
   dialectical unity as beings, i.e. to truly universal eudaimonia."[EW:149]


yours,
Jan

* "53. There is no problem about the empirical testing of theories of
phenomena which are internally related (although there is a problem,
which can only be resolved intra-theoretically, about the appropriate
specification or individuation of the different aspects or parts). For
the locus of the empirical is the observable, and discrete observable
items can alway be described in ways which are logically independent
of one another. Hence even if social scientific theories can only be
compared and tested /en bloc/, they can still be tested empirically.
Thus because, say, 'capital' cannot be emiprically identified and
even if, as argued by Ollnam (op.cit.), 'capital' cannot be univocally
theoretically defined (or even conceptually stabilized), it does not
follow that /theories/ of capital cannot be empirically evaluated.
The problem of the best individuation may then be resolved by
considering which individuation is implied by (or necessary for)
that theory wich has the best causal grip on reality." [PON3:75]







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