File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_2003/bhaskar.0311, message 70


Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 12:31:59 +0000
From: Mervyn Hartwig <mh-AT-jaspere.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: BHA: Re: body-cosmic and body-actual


Hi Jamie

>My concern is that most of the argument is conducte din an abstract fashion
>that fails to substantiate itself

I think this is getting to be a pretty boring refrain in CR (it's a 
putdown of meta-theory, which leads us back to what started this 
thread...). What would 'substantiating itself' look like for you? Do you 
say of an abstract mathematical theory that it fails to substantiate 
itself? Or that there's a problem about it's being abstract? Of course 
CR philosophy needs to go hand in hand with empirically oriented work, 
and that needs to be linked with emancipatory movements, but that is 
precisely what DCR both calls for and seeks to promote and is promoting. 
What's the problem?

>you'll note that there are a number
>of analytical ambiguities in the problem as CR poses it.

I haven't found what you've had to say about these alleged ambiguities 
very clear, also I've sought to provide some answers, so perhaps they 
can't be taken as read. Perhaps part of the problem is that you're 
applying the logic of stasis to dialectical arguments about process. 
(Phil's point about truth as concrete, relating to the whole. Whatever 
happened to the concrete universal as distinct from the abstract one?)

>A CR that cannot address context dilemmas and doesnot connect to real social
>conditions is not concernd with the real world

Which CR is that?!? Does the meta-theory informing quantum physics 
connect with the real world?

Mervyn





jamie morgan <jamie-AT-morganj58.fsnet.co.uk> writes
>Hi Phil, there is nothing Rortian in asking what do critical realists mean
>by 'a condition of' nor is there anything Rortian in suggesting that
>decisions are part of ethics - the question really should be reversed - what
>is it about the human that generates Andrew's comitment to the good of being
>and how does this good of being become ethical conduct in real situations in
>real societies - this is a realist concern not a postmodern supericiality.
>My concern is that most of the argument is conducte din an abstract fashion
>that fails to substantiate itself - if you refer back tot he points I put
>forward in response to Mervyn's question you'll note that there are a number
>of analytical ambiguities in the problem as CR poses it.
>A CR that cannot address context dilemmas and doesnot connect to real social
>conditions is not concernd with the real world as anything other than a
>possibility that cannot be argued from tarnscendence with quite the level of
>authoirity as a real;ist arguyment for other aspects of reality. I wouldn't
>suggest that AC or RB are not cocnerned 'about' the real world but your
>brief dichtomisation of the issues would tend to makre it seem so.
> I fail to see how universal and objective matter in motion sheds any light
>on the problem of ethics. Please expand.
>
>Jamie
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Phil Walden" <phil-AT-pwalden.fsnet.co.uk>
>To: <bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
>Sent: Monday, November 10, 2003 3:41 PM
>Subject: BHA: body-cosmic and body-actual
>
>
>> Hi Jamie, Hi Ruth,
>>
>>
>>
>> Then where do you both stand on Andrew Collier's distinction between the
>> body-cosmic and the body-actual?  (First chapter of his IN DEFENCE OF
>> OBJECTIVITY, Routledge, 2003).  It would appear that your positions
>> entail the view that only the body-actual exists and that the
>> body-cosmic is a redundant piece of metaphysics.  For if the ethics of
>> freedom is to be about actual context dilemmas and only about that, then
>> you seem to be somewhere around the position of Richard Rorty
>> (PHILOSOPHY AND THE MIRROR OF NATURE) in which he argues that ethics is
>> just about decision-procedures.  This is the hegemonic pragmatist
>> conception of ethics.  The view that the body-actual is sufficient to
>> uphold realism is a version of what Roy Bhaskar has called the
>> anthropomorphic fallacy, in that human social activity is defined by a
>> human-centredness that denies a meaningful objective relation to the
>> wider independent reality of nature and the universe.  (DPF 394 passim).
>> In the book to celebrate Andrew's life that is shortly to appear I have
>> a chapter in which I reinterpret the body-cosmic/body-actual distinction
>> in a dialectical materialist way.  Materialism creates a more credible
>> conception of the body-cosmic and body-actual relation because it has an
>> ontological starting point in the universality and objectivity of matter
>> in motion.  On this objective basis, it is possible to establish the
>> interconnections between the primacy of a non-human body-cosmic and its
>> relation to the specificity and dynamism of the body-actual of human
>> society.  (Engels, ANTI-DUHRING, Moscow, 1954, section entitled:
>> "Natural Philosophy: Cosmogony, Physics, Chemistry).
>>
>>
>>
>> Phil
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
>
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