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