File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_2004/bhaskar.0404, message 14


Subject: BHA: Short - re: Jamie
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2004 14:48:54 -0500
From: "Groff, Ruth" <ruth.groff-AT-marquette.edu>


Howard cited RB in PON:

"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."

Jamie asked:
is this intended in PN to be a description of how science percieves what it does? in which case it wouldn't be an endorsement of  adequacy but a precursor of the critique of its adequacy entailing some form of depth realism.


Yes and no.  Yes in that the suggestion is that practising scientists do, indeed, employ the latter criterion; no in that the latter criterion is also endorsed.  

The argument is directed against the idea that it is only those things which can be perceived directly that may be said to exist.  The proposed alternative is that the existence of unobservables may be inferred.  

In PON the function of the argument is to provide epistemic grounds for asserting the reality of society, which RB wants to say IN PRINCIPLE cannot be established on preceptual grounds (as opposed to things about which this is only contingently so, e.g., electrons prior to the invention of adequate microscopes).  

Something about the causal criterion seems right.  At the same time it of course issues in all sorts of follow-up philosophical issues.  

Still haven't had time to read Howard's post carefully.

r.


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