File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_2003/bhaskar.0307, message 63


From: "Brad Rose" <Bradrose1-AT-comcast.net>
Subject: BHA: Are Incorrect Ideas, "real"?
Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 16:56:19 -0400


This is a multi-part message in MIME format.


Dear List Members,

I am wrestling with something (I'm not sure it's even crudely thought out yet) about which I'm sure list members' thoughts and comments would be of immense help. My thinking is, admittedly, a bit muddled.

If I recall correctly, Bhaskar argues that ideas (and thereby words or "discourse") are causally efficacious. Ideas (as expressed in spoken words, texts, etc.) can make things happen in the world. When we speak, we often do so, in order to achieve instrumental changes in the immediate or not-so-immediate environment---to make things happen. Ideas and discourse, therefore, have powers to transform given states of existence: "Please pass the butter" or "Uncle Sam wants you (to join the army)".

My question is about the "reality" of the mistaken (i.e., "incorrect," or perhaps "unscientific") idea, and more broadly, about "false consciousness", the latter which I assume to include incorrect ideas about what is real. Clearly, the inaccurate, the mistaken, the patently false, all have tremendous powers/capacities to make things happen in the world. Think here of tales of Weapons of Mass Destruction, or the power of racist ideas to mobilize violent actions against racial minorities. (The inaccurate, the mistaken, and the patently false all have powers to prevent things from happening, too.) The "false" or "incorrect" idea is potentially very powerful-- mobilizing racist actions, and compelling us "to be all we can be" by joining the US army. 

- In critical realism, are untrue or false ideas, "real"? ( I assume, 'Yes')

- Is a "false" claim (or in its stronger incarnation, a LIE) real, but also incorrect (both wrong and unscientific)? ( I assume, 'Yes')

- Are both truth and lies, real? ( I assume, 'Yes')

- Am I confusing or conflating the "unreal" with the incorrect/the false? ( I fear, "Yes"!)

I guess my questions hover about the issues of truth and falsity.  I am aware that Bhaskar specifies four kinds of truth (see the summary in >From Science to Emancipation  p29-30)

My overarching goal is to better understand the notion of false consciousness and how CR deals with this notion. (Is false conscsiousenss a mistaken consciousness of the real or an accurate consciousness of a somehow alientated and therefore dostorted reality?)  My understanding of Marx, is that false consciousness (expressed in ideology) reflects a contradictory and distorted, but nonetheless "real," reality--a reality that is out there, at least under capitalism.  Ideology conceals and therefore leads to the REproduction of the contradictions inherent in this historical reality. For Marx the resolution or transformation of historical reality is a precondition for the accurate perception of the real.

In advance, thanks for your thoughts.

Brad

Brad Rose, Ph.D.
Wellesley, MA 02482
bradrose1-AT-comcast.net


HTML VERSION:

Dear List Members,

I am wrestling with something (I'm not sure it's even crudely thought out yet) about which I'm sure list members’ thoughts and comments would be of immense help. My thinking is, admittedly, a bit muddled.

If I recall correctly, Bhaskar argues that ideas (and thereby words or "discourse") are causally efficacious. Ideas (as expressed in spoken words, texts, etc.) can make things happen in the world. When we speak, we often do so, in order to achieve instrumental changes in the immediate or not-so-immediate environment---to make things happen. Ideas and discourse, therefore, have powers to transform given states of existence: "Please pass the butter" or "Uncle Sam wants you (to join the army)".

My question is about the "reality" of the mistaken (i.e., "incorrect," or perhaps "unscientific") idea, and more broadly, about "false consciousness", the latter which I assume to include incorrect ideas about what is real. Clearly, the inaccurate, the mistaken, the patently false, all have tremendous powers/capacities to make things happen in the world. Think here of tales of Weapons of Mass Destruction, or the power of racist ideas to mobilize violent actions against racial minorities. (The inaccurate, the mistaken, and the patently false all have powers to prevent things from happening, too.) The "false" or "incorrect" idea is potentially very powerful-- mobilizing racist actions, and compelling us "to be all we can be" by joining the US army.

- In critical realism, are untrue or false ideas, "real"? ( I assume, 'Yes')

- Is a "false" claim (or in its stronger incarnation, a LIE) real, but also incorrect (both wrong and unscientific)? ( I assume, 'Yes')

- Are both truth and lies, real? ( I assume, 'Yes')

- Am I confusing or conflating the "unreal" with the incorrect/the false? ( I fear, "Yes"!)

I guess my questions hover about the issues of truth and falsity.  I am aware that Bhaskar specifies four kinds of truth (see the summary in From Science to Emancipation  p29-30)

My overarching goal is to better understand the notion of false consciousness and how CR deals with this notion. (Is false conscsiousenss a mistaken consciousness of the real or an accurate consciousness of a somehow alientated and therefore dostorted reality?)  My understanding of Marx, is that false consciousness (expressed in ideology) reflects a contradictory and distorted, but nonetheless "real," reality--a reality that is out there, at least under capitalism.  Ideology conceals and therefore leads to the REproduction of the contradictions inherent in this historical reality. For Marx the resolution or transformation of historical reality is a precondition for the accurate perception of the real.

In advance, thanks for your thoughts.

Brad

Brad Rose, Ph.D.
Wellesley, MA 02482
bradrose1-AT-comcast.net
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