From: "Ronald M. Carrier" <rcarrier-AT-suba.com>
Subject: Re: Ideology:  or, the "real" problem here...
Date: Thu, 23 May 1996 12:40:44 -0500 (CDT)


Good morning.

Paul Bains wrote:

> Ronald Carrier writes:
>
> >And this has happened already: advocates of creationism appeal to 
> >anti-realist accounts of scientific practice in order to bolster their 
> >claim that evolutionary biology is "just a theory" that ought not to 
> >be given preference over the first two chapters of _Genesis_.
> 
> evolutionary biology is a 'story' and creationists have every right to
> criticise it. And so should we.  

I suppose that, from some point of view or other, evolutionary biology is 
a 'story' (why the quotation marks?).  So what?  What is this claim 
supposed to show?

And I fail to see what the point of the "rights" rhetoric is, unless it 
is supposed to move the reader to take into account any comment that comes 
down the pipe.  But if you look at the creationist criticisms, you'll 
find that they're of very little worth.  Creationist arguments are 
arguments, not that this-or-that evolutionary theory is faulty 
(scientists do that as a matter of course, and lots of evolutionary 
theories have gone by the board), but that evolution didn't take place at 
all.  And the arguments that they give for this (much stronger) claim are 
uniformly bad.  To see why, I recommend the talk.origins FAQ archive at 
<http://rumba.ics.uci.edu:8080/> or <ftp://ics.uci.edu/pub/origins>.

> >Witness the drivel about quantum-mechanical "explanations" of psychic 
> >phenomena and the sheer incomprehension that manifests itself in the 
> >face of evolutionary biology. 
> 
> Witness the drivel written by physicists about the "measurement problem".

>From what I've read concerning the measurement problem, there's a lot 
there to be criticized, much of which has to do with the importation of 
unquestioned epistemological positions into physics.  The Copenhagen 
interpretation is positivist, and Bohr was up-front about that.  But then 
physics, or any other science, has no need for a grounding in epistemology.

The problem with psychic phenomena and QM is that there's precious little 
evidence that there are psychic phenomena to be explained.  The problem's 
not with QM as such.

> What counts as an 'explanation'. When does a 'description' count as an
> 'explanation'? When did 'cause' and 'effect' become operationally
> equivalent. Answer: with galileo's equivalence of description and reason.
> The galilean dynamic object.

Am I supposed to be worried by this?  I'd be more worried by the apparent 
claim being made here that there's some sort of unified phenomenon called 
"explanation."

> When was it 'proved' that the earth goes around the sun? Never, if it's a
> question of when sceptics "must" renounce their scepticism.
> Was there a 'Big Bang'? This remains a theoretical 'enigma'.

So far as I can tell, scientists are not particularly concerned with 
making skeptics renounce their skepticism.  But then skepticism is a 
philsophical disorder which has more to do with unquestioned theoretical 
commitments about the nature of knowledge than with actually coming to 
have knowledge about things.  And since the sciences have no need of a 
philosophical grounding, philosophical skepticism is not particularly 
threatening to them.

> My favorite text (this morning) is Henri Atlan, Enlightenment to
> Enlightenment, Intercrique of Science and Myth, SUNY,1993.
> 
> Jacob von Uexkull, who d/g like so much (the tick) dedicated his main 
> work "Theoretical Biology", to Kant, declaring that "All reality is 
> subjective appearance. This must constitute the great, fundamental 
> admission, even of biology" (preface). 

Well, if von Uexkull finds Kantian concepts useful for his own conceptual 
creation, I'm happy for him.  But at the same time, that doesn't mean 
that the sciences are necessarily committed to a Kantian ontology, von 
Uexkull notwithstanding.  So far as I can tell, the sciences have no 
ontological commitments other than the ones they make in the course of 
creating and evaluating scientific theories.  And it seems to me that one 
of those commitments is this: that theories made concerning Nature are 
not indifferent to Nature, but Nature is indifferent to the theories made 
about it.  Now, if you want to call that realism, I have no problem with 
that.  But it should be noted that (a) it is a realism that is local to 
the sciences, since it is not a commitment that extends itself beyond the 
sciences; and (b) it is a much weaker realism than those usually found in 
philosophy, so weak that adherents of the latter would probably not 
regard it as realism in the first place.  (For a good discussion of why 
the sciences do not need philosophical realism--or philosophical 
anti-realism, for that matter--see Arthur Fine, _The_Shaky_Game_, 
especially chapters 6-9.)

	<snip>

> D/g's claim that scientific propositions are referential or pointing to
> things with an existence independent of the proposition is quite open to
> debate. Humberto Maturana, Prof of Biology, Santiago, claims that 
> science as the domain of scientific statements doesn't reveal an indep. 
> objective reality, _and has no need of one_ and that as biological 
> systems its impossible to know an indep. world. (Reality: The Search 
> for a Compelling Argument. "Irish Journal of Psychology, 1988, 9, 
> 25-82. For the post kantian biologists (and Lacan) we 'explain' our 
> 'experience' not an indep world. We only know our interactions. This 
> doesn't mean we don't bump into 'things'. 

Again, I'm not quite sure what the point of all this is.  It seems to me 
that what you're pointing out is (a) the underdetermination of any theory 
by its data (which is hardly a new point) and (b) the ineliminable 
necessity for judgment calls in the selection of data and the formulation 
of theories (again, hardly new).  The sciences manifest these 
characteristics all the time (and so does philosophy, for that matter).  
But to conclude from these two points that it is somehow problematic to 
claim that the sciences generate knowledge about a Nature that is 
indifferent to the theories formulated about it is less the result of any 
real difficulties with which the sciences are confronted than the result 
of an unquestioned _philosophical_ thesis concerning the nature of 
knowledge.  That is to say, the conclusion is motivated less by any 
_scientific_ problem with which this-or-that scientist is faced than by 
an _epistemological_ (and thus _ontological_) commitment that is forced 
onto the sciences by philosophy and for which the sciences have no real 
need.

I said in an earlier missive that Deleuze's thinking is respectful of the 
sciences.  This is not only because he thinks that thinking takes place 
in the sciences as well as in the arts and in philosophy, but (I believe) 
because he thinks that the sciences have their own local ontologies which 
a properly philosophical thinking ought to take into account.  
Philosophical thinking ought not to impose its own preconceived ontology 
onto the sciences (which is not to say that philosophers can play no 
legitimate role in helping scientists formulate their local ontologies), 
but at the same time philosophical thinking should not take over the 
local ontologies of the sciences wholesale without rethinking the 
concepts to account for the change in environment.  I don't think that 
Deleuze has violated either of these constraints.  Would you mind giving 
some textual evidence (i.e. quotes from Deleuze) in which he manifests 
the philosophical realism (as opposed to his acceptance of the local 
"realism" of the sciences) that you attribute to him?

> As Massumi puts it 'saying that nature is discursively constructed is not
> necessarily the same as saying that nature is _in_ discourse". (The 
> Autonomy of Affect, Cultural Critique, 31, p.100).

Of course.  But why is this not simply because the Nature that is the 
object of scientific discourses always (at least potentially) exceeds 
what is said of it in the discourses?  There is no representational 
commitment to the principle of identity either on the side of the 
scientific discourse--for as a process of thinking it involves conceptual 
creativity as Deleuze understands it--or on the side of Nature--for 
Nature itself manifests a history in which new orders of beings emerge 
(unless you think there was never a time at which biological phenomena or 
social pheomena did not exist).  And none of this implies either that 
Nature is not indifferent to scientific theories in any strong sense or 
that the sciences do not produce knowledge, at least not without 
involving philosophical--more specifically, epistemological--claims that 
are, as you say, "quite open to debate."  Or do you not think so?

<snip>

Later...

--
                               Ronald M. Carrier
             rcarrier-AT-suba.com (or: rcarrier-AT-casbah.acns.nwu.edu)
                          Philosophy, Northwestern U.
                  "Philosophy--I'm only in it for the money."


     ------------------