From: "Marshall Feldman" <marsh-AT-uri.edu>
Subject: RE: BHA: Emergence
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 10:53:05 -0500


A few comments on Mervyn's latest posting:

>
> Hi Tobin, Ruth, Viren, all
>
> >Just to butt in briefly: I think what Ruth is saying -- and
> certainly what I
> >would say -- is that ideas qua ideas are all at the *same* ontological
> >level.  However, they may refer to (real or hypothetical) entities at
> >different ontological levels.
>
> Ruth may well be saying this, but if so I disagree. All societies are at
> the same ontological level in that they belong to the kind, 'society';
> but that doesn't preclude emergent levels and evolution within that
> kind. All life-forms are of the same broad kind, but there are emergent
> life-forms within that kind...

I think this mixes apples with oranges, or rather synchronic with
diachronic. Dogs may evolve from wolves, but they don't necessarily react
back on wolves to affect wolf behavior or evolution. This is entirely
different than the kind of emergence represented by water -- oxygen +
hydrogen or society -- individuals.

Ideas may evolve out of other ideas or presuppose them, but this kind of
diachronic emergence is qualitatively different from the synchronic
emergence of something like water.

>
> >I don't think one can use explanatory power
> >as a mark of ontological difference among ideas, because the explanations
> >concern referents.
>
> But you hold that ideas are not *the same* kind of thing as their
> referents; further, as Ruth said, belief systems (can) presuppose other
> belief systems.


I'm not sure I get the point of this. Can you elaborate on how difference in
kind between ideas/referents or the presupposing of prior belief systems
pertains to the issue of using explanatory power to determine ontological
differences?

To me it seems the very nature of "explanatory power" puts ideas in a
separate category from most (other) ontological things. While along with H.
Marcuse, I do not want to abolish ideas from being part of the world, I
nonetheless think they are a special category and we need to be very careful
when we refer to their ontological status.

>
> >> Of course if evolution is a mere social construction then of course
> >> anything goes but thankfully science is not a social construction!
> >
> >Sigh.  I suppose we'll never get past this.  The objects of
> science may not
> >be social constructions, but *knowledge* of those objects *must*
> be a social
> >product.  To fail to distinguish between knowledge and the object of
> >knowledge is the epistemic fallacy.
>
> Now you've made me sigh. Marko *means* by social construction the view
> that everything is within the paradigm, when the paradigm changes the
> world changes. There is nothing outside the text. Science discovers no
> truths of the world as it is independently of our theories. - CR is not
> social constructionist in this sense, so why not agree to that extent?
> Knowledge is not *just* a social product, because it is constrained by
> the way the world is independently of our knowledge of it. We couldn't
> navigate our way successfully around the world if this were not the
> case, nor communicate transculturally.

Yeah, but I don't think anyone on this list buys into this kind of
irrealism. It's a straw man. Personally, I don't think RB goes far enough.
The epistemic fallacy simply establishes the relative autonomy of ideas
while saving reality. Ian Hacking and Andrew Sayer emphasize practice and
scientific interventions in the world as presupposing reality outside
thought. Even Quine's rabbit is still SOMETHING even though our language
might describe it in different or contradictory ways.

Gotta run to class.

	Marsh Feldman
	URI



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