Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2002 03:24:40 +0100
From: Jan Straathof <janstr-AT-chan.nl>
Subject: Re: BHA: On Reclaiming Reality


on Thu, 24 Oct 2002 <dbwanika-AT-uganda.co.ug> wrote:

>I've been reading through Reclaiming Reality - A critical Introduction
>to Contempory Philosophy 1989 - but I felt wanting in grasping the flux
>of thoughts on (pg. 104 -  114.) starting with Level IV : Explanatory
>critical Rationality and beyond
>
>I will be so grateful for any conclusive explanation from anyone to
>grasp the text.

Bwanika,

I promised to have a look at the pages, but, as things go, i've
reread the whole chapter. With much delight i must say, not the
least because, in taking a closer look, one surprisingly recognizes
the germs of themes that have developed in the later and current
thinking of Bhaskar. Indeed, this chapter presents a moment in
the grand flux that has occupied Bhaskar thought from PON via
SRHE to RR and onwards to his recently published: "From
Science to Emancipation: Alienation and Enlightenment" [2002].

Bhaskar's overall plea in this chapter is to make the case for the
transcendental necessity of the emancipatoric role of the (social)
sciences. Paraphrasing Marx, that the project of social scientists
is not (neutral)observation and interpretion of society, but, by
acknowledging its transcendent necessity,  development of
emancipatoric theories and practices that change society.

To make his case Bhaskar basically agrues the following:
(i) facts are values and values are facts, there are no "brute data"
and neither "brute beliefs", and thus knowlegde (science) is
necessay non-neutral and value-impregnated;  (ii) rationality,
although ever incomplete and unfinished, is inherently progressive
and empowering;  (iii) society is an emergent and unfolding open
structure (cf. TMSA).

It's against this background that Bhaskar proposes some tools and
guidelines for the human sciencist, the so-called Inference Schemes
(I.S.), elaborated in the pages you mentioned.

The simple but important double message of these I.S. lies in (a)
the statement that the critical rational drives of/in knowledge (facts,
science) transcendentally imply the a priority of freedom (value,
emancipation); and (b) the caveat not to focus and fight the (super-
ficial) symptoms, but to investigate and remove the (underlying)
real causes and sources.

I guess it's here, where the content of the I.S. is molded in a (quasi-)
mathematical formalism, that one might lose grip of what Bhaskar is
trying to argue. I tend to conceive the I.S. as sort of a problem solving
cyclus or progressive learning strategy. But at first sight it seems
difficult to read and interprete the mathematical layout of the schemes.
To my understanding the calculus of the I.S. consists of the following
symbols:

     T       = a theory, or set of theories
     P       = a belief, or set of beliefs
     >P     = a false belief (false consciousness)
     exp    = can explain (has explanation for)
     -->     = leads to (necessarily implies)
     S       = a source, structure, system of social relations (of ills etc.)
     I(P)   = a illusory, ideological belief (communicative ills)
     C(P)  = a contradictory belief (cognitive ills)
     (I-H) = a state of ill-health (practical ills)
     -V     = a negative value judgement of
     ø       = positive action for
     -s       = removal of sources of ills, oppression etc.

OK, Now let's take a look at the first scheme (page 105):

I.S.1  (i) T > P. (ii) T exp I(P)  --> (iii) -V(S --> I(P)) --> (iv) Vø-s

and try to rephrase the four steps (phases) into a concrete example,
e.g. let's suppose that:

(o) a farmer beliefs that a disease (or low yield) of his crops is
      caused by the will of god:

(i) a scientist can show that the farmers belief is false, because the
     crop disease is really caused by water polution (which is caused
     by an upstream factory, etc. etc.);

(ii) the scientist can further show that the farmers (false) belief is
     grounded upon the ideology of a given state religion, interlinked
     and controled by a capitalist powerstructure;

(iii) here the scientist is commited to double the negative evaluation
     of the farmer's belief with, a negative evaluation of the existant
     religious ideology and capitalist powerstructure;

(iv) and thus the emancipatoric solution the CR scientist has to offer
     here will consist in actions not only to remedy the crop disease
     (e.g. supply of clean water), but also to remove religious illusions
     (e.g. via education) and to counterattack capitalist oppression (e.g.
     via political movements).

I guess we all can think up alot of other examples illustrating I.S.1.:
e.g. a citizen beliefs that the best solution for street violence is more
police and more jails (leaving unquestioned the real underlying socio-
economical sources of street violence, i.e. school drop-out, unemploy-
ment, drugs, broken families, media violence, etc.); or e.g. an economist
who beliefs that materialism is necessary for growth, because the lack
of materialism implies a static economy with more poverty and less
well-being (casting aside findings from recent social studies which show
that materialists are significantly less happy than non-materialists and
that materialism is negatively evaluated to satisfaction of almost all
aspects of sociental and family life [cf. Richins & Dawson-1992]).

The rest of the I.S.'s are further generalizations, derivations and
extensionsof the basic I.S.1, whereby I.S.2 is designed to expose the
deep stuctures ofcognitive ills (e.g. stress/depression + Prozac = mental
health ??), and I.S.3 is about the ecological, practical, non-cognitive
conditions of ill-health (e.g. think about the worldwide impact of
malaria or AID's).

At the end of the chapter Bhaskar's nicely collects his own "belief-system",
viz. that: (i) reason must be causes, (ii) values must be immanent,
(iii) critique must be internal to its objects and (iv) knowable emergent
laws must be operate.

That's enough for now,

yours,
Jan


---------
below some quotes for the devotees:

"On the view advocated here, knowledge, though necessary, is
insufficient, for freedom. For to be free is (i) to know, (ii) to possess
the opportunity and (iii) to be disposed to act in (or towards) one's real
interests." [RR:89]

"It is the argument of this chapter that the special qualitative kind of
becoming free, or liberation, which is *emancipation*, and which
consists in the *transformation*, in 'self-emancipation' by the agent
or agents concerned, *form and unwanted to a wanted source of
determination*, is both *causally presaged* and *logically entailed*
by explanatory theory, but that it can only be effected in *practice*."
[RR:90]

"My core argument is relatively simple. It turns on the condition that
the subject matter of the human sciences includes both social objects
(including beliefs) and beliefs about those objects. Philosophers have
characteristically overlooked, or concealed, the internal relations
connecting these aspects: empiricists by objectivizing beliefs, idealists
by bracketing away objects. Now these relations, which may or may
not be intra-discursive (depending upon whether the first-order object
is itself a belief), are *both* causal and cognitive - in the ontological or
intransitive dimension we are concerned with relations of *generation*;
in the epistemological or transitive dimension of *critique*. But it is
the causal relation of generation that grounds the epistemological
programme of critique." [RR:101]

"To recapitulate the central argument, then, if we have a consistent
set of theories T which (i) shows some belief P to be false, and (ii)
explains why that, or perhaps some such false (illusory, inadequate,
misleading) belief is believed; then the inference to (iii) a negative
evaluation of the object S (for example, a system of social relations)
accounting for the falsity of the belief (amounting to a mismatch in
reality between the belief P and what it is about O) and (iv) a positive
evaluation of action rationally directed at removing (disconnecting or
transforming) that object, or the source of false consciousness, appear
mandatory CP. This could be represented, schematically, in the
inference scheme below as:

I.S.1.   (i) T > P. (ii) T exp I(P)  --> (iii) -V(S --> I(P)) --> (iv) Vø-s

and we certainly seem to have derived value conclusions (CP) from
purely factual premisses." [RR:103]

"In fact *dissonance*, not liberation, may be the immediate result
of enlightenment." [RR:112]

"The object of depth-investigation is *emancipation*. Emancipation
may be conceived either as the process of the changing of one mode
of determination D1 into another D2, or as the act of switching from
D1 to D2, both D1 and D2 perduring but D1 in an inactivated
condition. Now if the emancipation is to be *of* the human species,
then the powers of the emancipated human being and community
must already exist (although perhaps only as powers to acquire or
develop powers) in an unactualized state. The key questions for
substansive theory then become: what are the conditions for the
actualization of the powers ?; are they stimulating (cf. the socialist
tradition) and/or releasing (cf. the anarchic/liberal traditions) ?;
do they lie in social organisation and/or individual initiatives etc. ?"
[RR:113]




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