File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_2002/bhaskar.0203, message 104


Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2002 10:10:27 -0500
From: Ruth Groff <rgroff-AT-yorku.ca>
Subject: Re: BHA: Knowledge as a social product


Hi all,


Mervyn, you wrote:

' Scientific knowledge is socially produced knowledge *of* intransitively existing 
objects. Presumably that is far more acceptable to you, Marko, than just 
to say that it is a social production.


It may be more acceptable to say it this way, but there is still the matter of the actual content.  There are three different points being made (of course related).  One has to do with the ontological status of knowledge; one has to do with the ontological status of the things that scientists, let's say molecular chemists, produce knowledge of; one is the claim that knowledge is knowledge OF something.


My understanding of this debate with Marko is that we all agree that the properties of molecules are mind-independent.  Yes?  
We also all agree that knowledge is necessarily knowledge of something.     
The thing that there is actually disagreement about, it seems to me, is the ontological character of knowledge. 


Specifically, Marko contends that, as he put it, knowledge is not "produced."  Rather (as he puts it), it is discovered.  And often by single individuals -- who need not be thought of as being engaged in activity that is social.  


If we are to take him at his word that this is, indeed, his position, then Marko (along with many others in the world, it must be said) accords a very different ontological status to knowledge (of mind-independent objects) than do proponents of non-positivist accounts of knowledge, such as critical realism -- according to whom knowledge (including, e.g., "facts"), is taken to be a product of necessarily social human activity.  


[Critical realism, it is worth noting, differs from some other non-positivist accounts because in critical realism the view (a) that knowledge is a product is combined with the view (b) that certain features of the natural world are mind-independent, and the view (c) that competing knowledge-claims can be rationally assessed.  In contrast to critical realism, some non-positivist accounts of knowledge are coupled with ant-realism about the natural world and/or with relativism.]


Personally I have no problem with Marko adhering to a positivist theory of knowledge.  Really.  In my first or second post I pointed to some assumptions connected to his position that he might want to look at if he wanted to really understand the critical realist critique of it.  But that's about it.  I think it is useful for someone who is encountering any position for the first time to see how the new ideas might differ from the ones that they currently hold.  Maybe after some consideration they will adopt some of the new ideas; maybe instead they will only come to better understand why they hold the beliefs that they do hold.    


The only thing that is frustrating is what seems to me to be your effort, Mervyn, to render a positivist account of knowledge consistent with critical realism.  I'd rather say to Marko (Hi Marko) "Look, critical realism is a non-positivist theory of knowledge, combined with a realist ontology.  Go figure."  So consider it said.

Warmly,
Ruth


I have no problem with agreeig 



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