File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_2003/bhaskar.0306, message 43


From: "Jamie Morgan" <jamie-AT-morganj58.fsnet.co.uk>
Subject: Re: BHA: Re: Positivism, Realism, Materialism
Date: Sun, 8 Jun 2003 17:38:34 +0100


Hi Mervyn I don't see anything problematic in the idea that 'material
objects have an intelligible inner structure' on one level but there are a
number of issues to consider aboutknowledge and the material:

1. At a broad level of generality about knowledge - intelligible does not in
itself indicate the possibility of identity merely meaningful identifiying
as an ongoing engagement with ding an sich, Kant may be wrong to
differentiate knowing and knowledge of a real object world in the way he
does but a CR concept of the  process of investigation (whose ontological
innovation reduces to we do not see the world how it is but how we are yet
how we are is part of how the world is), if it is to retain fallibilism and
the notion that knowledge is work from antecedents, cannot make identity
claims without also providing a stronger correspondence theory of truth. To
my knowledge noone has yet provided a defensible one - Searle and Alvin
Goldman both argue for a weak correspondence - an 'aboutness' of truth that
acknowledges a world amenable to description and potential if limited
descriptive success. Here judgemental rationality offers the prospect that
knowledge of something other than itself may not be infallible but a best we
have may be a long term 'paradigm' precisely because it is such a good
account of X. This of course necessarily implies an alethic reality, which
is Bhaskar's later interest. What I'd like to see from Bhaskar is a
sustained move from the abstract possibility inherent in
categorial/ontological and alethic realism to accounts of X that are
persuausively deployed as judgementally rational, this would provide a
better bridging theorisation of precisely what Bhaskar takes from 'identity'
thinking (at leastin thise sense) as he reads it from Hegel et al. and would
also provide a bridge between a philosophy of ontology and a philosophy of
truth (as well as ethics) since any operational exploration of the former
implies the exploration or deployment of criteria of the latter and this is
one of the things that seems to need developing in later CR. MR may perhaps
be Bhaskar's preferred route for doing this. Has he intimated that to you? I
better add that alethic truth in Bhaskar's work is not something I would
read as an epistemology - it is not an exploration of what is knowledge in
terms of operational criteria of justification, it seems intended as an
adjunct to ontology in terms of 'how the world must be' arguments. In the
terms I'm thinkig about it is more part of aphilosophy of ontology than a
philosophy of truth. It is the presupposed.

2. Clearly there are different kinds of material objects and therefore
different kinds of intelligibility. The double hermeneutic or Mannheim's
sociology of knowledge or Marx on ideology all entail this for material
social objects. Social relations, for example,  are material relations, they
are inscribed on material bodies, that engage in material transactions and
employ material effects in terms of events and in terms of the totality to
which those relations are bound. Social relations are material, sicne they
are simultaneously conceptual, their intelligibility is part of their
constittution. This is not a revelation in CR as you know but precisely part
of its appeal through the agent structure dilemma in PN. Clearly knowledge
here is radically different in relation than it is in regard of material
objects like galaxies. The idea of implicate order tends to bridge the two
however since it seems to suggest that consciousness is the possibility
residing in prior forms of entities (ametrial objects?). The knowing
subvject and their knowledge is implicate in the structure of the universe.
I'm not sure what to make of this, it canbe taken as trivially true in the
sense that we exist and we know and therefore it is true that knowing
entities evolved. But if we consider what we might make of this concept in
terms of the present i.e. the pursuit of intelligibility as part of the
dialectic of social change where the conceptual-physical of material social
objects is developed through knowledge, the idea of an implicate order of
consciouenss with Hegelian overtones becomes more difficult to conceive,
though I doubt this is an insurmountable problem. Does it provide a broad
telos? It certainly doesn't imply the necessity of any given change -
neither DCR or TDCR  or MR make that claim as far as I recall. Does it
provide a roadmap to preferred change? If so 2 problems occur that need
addressing - 1) this implies contingency which is stilll compatible with
possibility but broadens any notion of the implicate to literally any
possoble outcome i.e. an intelligible range of change following different
patterns of inteligibilities. This raises the question what was the relation
between prior and post? and reduces, in all aspects of a concept of the
implicate, the notion that 'something emerged because it 'must'. Implicate
becomes semantically tautologous and operationally weak since any outcome is
literally to order. On one level this produces problems for a critically
self-reflexive appraisal of a philosophy of imlicate consciousness (it
cannot step outside itself to appraise itself since it is a self-defining
conceptual scheme whose very structure allows only one answer to the
question i.e. itself). On another level, this of course raises the
interesting question of a guiding role for knowledge in choosing a right
path between alternative inteligibilities - dancing between all aspects of
what is has and could be - this I guess is what an ontology of ethics
situated to praxis strives for - in a certain sense the need for such an
ethics and its pursuit by Bhaskar is implicate in the problematic that seems
to emerge from his own philosophy of ontology. 2) This raises the further
interesting question of intelligibility - the disjuncture or rupture opoints
in the pursuit of varieties of explanations, including successive
retriductions to deeper structures etc. - posed by emergence itself. If
emergence entails that X is supervenes on Y but cannot be reduced to Y then
X has properties that are qualitatively new, this raises the difficulty of
identifying Y once one moves past certain simple cases like
mind-consciousness since the superveneing of Y on X becoems more ambiguous
or difficult to identify, at which point the problem reverses i.e. the
existience of X is parially accounted for by the positing of Y where Y may
itself noty  be a genuinely exitsent or causally related entity - putmore
simply one raises the problem of the positing of ever deeper structures of
reality to accout for aspects of known reality whose actual aexplanation may
simply be aspects of known reality. In a way this is looking at the Hegelian
implicate order and identity consciousness problem from the opposite end. It
doesn't deny them, it rasies philosophical questions about them and the
intelligibility of the idea in the material. This is a challenge for MR that
hopefully is addressed in Bhaskar's forthcoming works.



----- Original Message -----
From: "Mervyn Hartwig" <mh-AT-jaspere.demon.co.uk>
To: <bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Sent: Saturday, June 07, 2003 6:30 PM
Subject: Re: BHA: Re: Positivism, Realism, Materialism


> Hi Jamie,
>
> I agree re knowledge, and epistemology.
>
> >The key
> >distinction I would retain in CR is that knowledge is 'real' in a quite
> >different way than its physical/material object in the (I know clumsy)
> >non-social/presocial etc world.
>
> Could you unpack this a bit in relation to the later Bhaskar? I read him
> to be now agreeing with Hegel et al that material objects have an
> intelligible inner structure which we can come to know, thereby grasping
> the 'thing in itself' and in fact achieving identity with it (i.e. the
> inner structure *is* implicit thought or consciousness). We can see in
> retrospect I think that this is at the heart of the theory of alethic or
> ontological truth, so it's the middle Bhaskar too really. If you accept
> this kind of view, then you would need to qualify your 'quite different'
> and speak rather of distinctions within a unity, but presumably you
> don't...
>
> Awaiting enlightenment!
>
> Mervyn
>
> Jamie Morgan <jamie-AT-morganj58.fsnet.co.uk> writes
> >Hi Phil is it a rejection of materialism to chart some interesting lines
of
> >philosophical development?
> >
> >Early realism including CR in philosophy of science was developed as
> >immanent critique of the epistemic fallacy - particularly since LP had by
> >then begun to mutate into conventionalism through some rather poor
readings
> >of Kuhn. Nothing in CR disputes that former scientific endeavour is
partof
> >the real since it constitutes knowledge claims that are reasons for
acting
> >and are themselves the basis of manipulations that are part of social
> >relations situated in modes of production - clearly they are causal. The
key
> >distinction I would retain in CR is that knowledge is 'real' in a quite
> >different way than its physical/material object in the (I know clumsy)
> >non-social/presocial etc world. In any case it is a philosophical
confusion
> >to term the problem one of epistemology. Epsitemology is the
philosophical
> >study of what is knowledge (the classical greek definition from Thaetetus
of
> >True Justified Beleif) not the knowledge itself (Socrates specifically
> >rejects this definition) - knowledge may be real in some way but you need
to
> >distinguish the study of knowledge (epistemology) and the study of the
real
> >(metaphysics and/or ontology) even though knolwedge may be part of social
> >reality. Failing to do so causes a confusion of meaning realms which
makes
> >retaining important analytical distinctions difficult.
> >
> >Jamie
>
>
>
>      --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
>




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