File spoon-archives/seminar-14.archive/marx-bhaskar_2001/seminar-14.0101, message 1


Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2001 11:57:25 -0700 (MST)
From: Hans Ehrbar <ehrbar-AT-econ.utah.edu>
Subject: First Assignment




Hello friends and colleagues.  Thank you for your interest
in the Marx-Bhaskar seminar.  Now it's finally beginning.

During this seminar I plan to go quickly through some key
passages in Bhaskar's RTS (*A Realist Theory of Science*)
and PON (*The Possibility of Naturalism*), and then cover
DPF (*Dialectic, the Pulse of Freedom*) more extensively.

I hope to be able to scan in the most inportant readings and
send them to you per email.  This is certainly true for RTS,
since for this I already have a scanned-in version from the
early days of the bhaskar list.

Therefore, in the next email I will send you the Preface of
RTS.  While reading it, please answer the following
question:

 In the Preface of *A Realist Theory of Science*, Roy
 Bhaskar claims that philosophy has not kept up with modern
 sciences.  Modern sciences are plagued by a number of
 ancient unresolved "pilosophical problems."  Philosophy has
 not been able to solve these problems because its framework
 is too limited.  RB proposes in his book to expand this
 framework and thus make philosophy again able to be a
 fruitful "underlaborer" and "midwife" of science.  But in
 the Preface RB is not terribly clear about it what the
 limitations and the needed expansion of the framework of
 philosophy consist in.  Can someone explain in one
 or two paragraphs what this great advance in philosophy will be
 which RB alludes to here?


This is the first assignment in this Seminar (there are two
assignments per week).  Therefore in the next three days,
please send me some proposed answers.  Afterwards I will
tell you how I would answer this question.  I am also open
to discussion about whether this is the right question to
ask, or what else the student should take away from a first
reading of this Preface.

Hans.


     --- from list seminar-14-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005