From: "Wendy Olsen" <wendy.olsen-AT-man.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: BHA: rejection of TMSA by Baert
Date: Wed, 9 Oct 2002 15:15:03 +0100


Dear Listers,
Thanks to Jamie for further discussing Bhaskar's notion of truth. DId you
see that P. Baert wrote an (attempted) rebuttal of Bhaskar's TMSA in the
Cambridge Journal of Economics, 1996?  Baert argues primarily that
1.  the TMSA is as deterministic as Gidden's structuration theory - here
Baert seems to deliberately ignore dialectics and to pretend that the
structures created by agency are the _same ones_ that generate agency, in a
circle, rather than allowing for the spiral upward/forward toward social
change.  I thought the spiral or dialectic was central to Bhaskar's own and
his main interpreters' writings, and I feel Baert has ignored Outhwaite's
hermeneutic interpretation (1987), Archer's dialectical interpretation (et
al. collection) eetc.
2.  the TMSA doesn't allow for hermeneutic depth.  Here Baert argues that
the differences of meaning of claims, for the speaker/norm/listener
respectively, and the contestation of meaning do not belong within TMSA.  In
my view again this shows a skimreading of Bhaskar's work.
However the fact that this appeared in CJE indicates that there are those
(reviewers/professors) who would be willing to allow such claims to go
through, without checking on what realists are actually publishing.

To me this implies that there is a need to publish re-statements of the
realist position on epistemology, including such points as Jamie has made
clearly about Truth versus Knowledge-claims, the latter having a less
absolute truth status than the former, in prominent places like good
international journals.

Otherwise realist positions on epistemology and on substance will continue
to be interpreted as essentialist or absolutist positions, from outsiders
unaware of the complexity of what is proposed as TMSA and/or DPF's DCR.

Yours
Wendy


Wendy Olsen
Lecturer in Socio-Economic Research
Cathie Marsh Centre for Census and Survey Research
University of Manchester
Manchester M13 9PL
UK
ph 0044-161-275-3043
email wendy.olsen-AT-man.ac.uk <mailto:wendy.olsen-AT-man.ac.uk>
website www.ccsr.ac.uk/staff/wkolsen <http://www.ccsr.ac.uk/staff/wkolsen>


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
[mailto:owner-bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu]On Behalf Of Jamie
Morgan
Sent: 26 September 2002 09:30
To: bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Subject: Re: BHA: de novo and ex nihilo


Hi Gunther, look forward to reading your work. Your point on Praxis and the
Baron is well taken (it reminds me of the Simon Bolivar quote - making
revolution is like ploughing the sea), I think a productive way to look at
it is that there is a zone of ambiguity rather than a simple line between
ontology and epistemology - Bhaskar captures this by the argument that all
ideas are real (in the minimal sense that they have been cognicised, in the
more permissive sense that they may be beliefs grounding action and in the
highly restricted sense that they may be (or become) true - depending
primarily on whether they deal with the social or non-social)) but not all
ideas are real in the same way. That they may be true remains aspirational,
a possibility, paradoxically adduced from the way we experience a reality
that escapes us, but even should they be true the knowledge itself remains
paradigmal and social, unable to assert its absolute truth. The only tools
we have for moving forward are knowing activities (praxis) including for
example dialogical critique and research, neither of which is a guarantee of
their own veracity or even necessarily the defintiive falsity of what is
critiqued (for if one can be wrong one can be spectacularly wrong in any way
including what one holds firmly not to be the case). THis is the complexity
we have to acknolwedge but cannot let overwhelm us. Epistemology feeds
reality but it is possible to analyse the ways in which it seems to do so to
provide a general architecture but it is never possible to overdetermine
reality from epistemology since this would collapse the
intransitive/transitive distinction entirely - and whilst it is difficult to
conceptualise the distinction clearly it is easy to refute the lack of any
distinction at all in terms of the consequences of irrealism.

Jamie

----- Original Message -----
From: "Gnter Minnerup" <g.minnerup-AT-unsw.edu.au>
To: <bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, September 25, 2002 11:34 PM
Subject: Re: BHA: de novo and ex nihilo


> On Wed, 25 Sep 2002 20:39:35 +0100, Mervyn Hartwig wrote:
>
> >Suggest you read DPF!
>
> Just started...
>
> G.
>
> Gnter Minnerup
> Visiting Fellow
> Centre for European Studies/School of History
> University of New South Wales
> Sydney NSW 2052
> Tel. (+61 2) 9385 1363 (work)
> Tel. (+61 2) 9398 3646 (home)
> Email g.minnerup-AT-unsw.edu.au
>
>
>
>
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>



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