From: "Jamie Morgan" <jamie-AT-morganj58.fsnet.co.uk>
Subject: BHA: Materialism etc.
Date: Thu, 12 Sep 2002 11:13:42 +0100


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Phil, commensuration is a critical account of the possibility of mutual inteligibility of worldviews theories etc. entailed by the fact they are situated to a corrigible reality which makes a difference to what is true in its regard. Philosophically it emerged as a reply to conventionalist currents in modern social theory that had (against his own interpretation of his work) appropriated the notion of incomensurability from Kuhn i.e. Gestalt switches and fundamental incompatibility of assumptions. In pilosophy commesnurability is therefore a constittuive part of the very possibility of dialectial transcendence of competing knowledge forms. Habermas (and quoting Habermas is not an indication of love, Phil but it is a respect for the process of 'theory-mongering') is relevant int he sense that ideal speech makes no sense without the additional ontological warrant that there is a common world to agree upon in additiont o the Habermasd criterion that all participants are commited to rational conversation, possible xchange agreement etc. Wendy is of course right that how commensuration is achieved as something other than an acknowledgement of mutual inteligibility i.e. how it affects method is a difficult issue and one that entails problems of the relative pwoer structures of academia as well as the illiberating consequences of certain hegemonic forms of knowledge - how to engage with Empiricism (does one coopt its methods, is this a problem etc.). This also accords with your own concern with poltiical conditions of dialogue.

Regards, Jamie

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