From: "Howard Engelskirchen" <howarde-AT-twcny.rr.com>
Subject: BHA: criteria for ascription of reality
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2004 03:10:12 -0400


I've been reading Bhaskar's the Possibility of Naturalism and hesitated over
this:

"it is important to note that science employs two criteria for the
ascription of reality to a posited object:  a perceptual criterion and a
causal one."

Now I understand the emphasis on ascribing reality to things on causal
criteria, but I wonder if the formulation is quite right, and I wonder if a
too easy appropriation of it hasn't caused some confusion.  I think it has
for me.

What I mean is that actually neither perceptive or causal criteria provide
in and of themselves grounds for ascribing reality to anything -- if
perceptive criteria alone are the test this dissolves into phenomenology and
then solipsism.  If causal criteria are the test for imputing mechanisms,
then why not witches spells (Peter Halfpenny in entry on causality in the
Blackwell Dictionary of Social Thought).

In other words, neither is in itself adequate without a methodology that
situates itself in a context of science, that connects with other background
theories in order to best explain the mechanisms of science and does so in
an ongoing process of theory evaluation, projection, confirmation and
revision.

I also hesitated over the idea that philosophy studied what could be known a
priori and wondered whether there was any such knowledge at all (and whether
the notion of apriori knowledge had something to do with stopping a bit
short on the criteria for ascribing reality).

Incidentally, one of the best and most sustained discussions on the list was
a systematic reading of the Realist Theory of Science years ago.  We started
Dialectic a bit later but never got very far with it.  I would be very
interested in reading the Possiblity of Naturalism.  The book is over a
quarter century old and I wonder what its status is today.  I still consider
it a leading book of social theory and if there are others that have
supplanted it I'd like to know why.

If a handful of others were interested, we could begin a list reading of it.
With RTS we actually had the text posted and I don't know if that is
possible, but that probably does not matter.  People unable to come up with
a copy can comment on the issues engaged in posts anyway and people who post
can make generous use of quotation.

Howard



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