Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2003 10:02:35 -0400
From: Tom Medvetz <tmm-AT-socrates.berkeley.edu>
Subject: Re: [BOU:] Where's the agency in agent?




>Not only is he not able to reflect from the outside on himself but 
>also he isn't able to see the world objectively but only 
>subjectively 'through' his habitus. (This is the point of course 
>where perspectivism and realism collide.)
>
>We still agree?

Perhaps the disagreement lies at least partly in the use of the term 
'objective.'  We can distinguish at least three meanings of the term:

1. 'popular' -- neutral or impartial; i.e., not given to favor one 
side over the other, as in a contest or dispute (e.g., "The refs in 
the hockey game were totally objective.")

2. 'philosophical' -- existing independent of human minds; (e.g., 
"John Searle says it's objectively true that there is snow on top of 
Mt. Everest.")

3. 'sociological' -- existing or having a reality independent of a 
particular agent or group of agents; i.e., something an agent 
confronts as an object (e.g., "A field is a space of objective 
forces.")

Bourdieu uses the term in the third sense.  From the 'embodied 
realist' position I laid out earlier, objective knowledge (in the #2 
sense) is not possible -- not because there is no world out there 
(there is), but because the form of human reason itself is structured 
by the form of the human sensory motor apparatus.  Therefore, the 
truth-status of any knowledge claim cannot properly be called 
'independent of human minds' (and bodies).

Bourdieu's theory is carefully designed to avoid sliding back into 
subjectivism (i.e., relativism), so he preserves a very strong 
'realist' commitment to objectivism  in the sense of #2.  But because 
he spends half his time arguing against subjectivism, and half 
arguing against objectivism proper ("twisting the stick in the other 
direction," in his phrase) -- in other words, because this antinomy 
is built into the very structure of philosophical discourse -- it may 
appear sometimes that he is guilty of one error or the other.  But 
you have to look at the theory in its entirety rather than focus too 
closely this or that particular passage.

tmm




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