File spoon-archives/seminar-14.archive/marx-bhaskar_2001/seminar-14.0102, message 1


Date: Thu, 1 Feb 2001 12:01:06 -0700 (MST)
From: Hans Ehrbar <ehrbar-AT-econ.utah.edu>
Subject: How to Go On



Yesterday I sent you several citations from RTS which assert
that Critical Realist philosophical ontology is not just an
a priori unproven assumption but has the following basis: it
is the only interpretation which is able to explain the
practice of modern natural sciences, especially experimental
sciences.

What are the precise arguments by which this assertion is
proved?  It is not easy to isolate such arguments.
Throughout RTS, Bhaskar gives an interpretation of the
scientific process which depends on this ontology.  For
instance, in the next reading I am going to send you in my
next email, Bhaskar says that a criterion for the truth of a
scientific theory is not only whether it can explain the
given facts, but also whether the mechanisms which it
postulates are real.  And whenever such mechanisms are
found, the next step in the development of science is to
look at those mechanisms themselves.

For instance, atoms and their valencies explain chemistry;
then quantum mechanics explains the orbits of electrons
around the atomic nuclei which bind atoms together into
molecules, i.e., explain the valencies of the atoms; nuclear
physics explains the composition of nuclei, etc.  The
subject matter of each subsequent science are the mechanism
which give the explanation of the earlier science.  This
sequence of scientific discovery can be understood if one
has a depth-realist view, according to which the generative
mechanisms are themselves part of reality which can be
investigated in their own right.  But this sequential
process of discovery cannot be explained with flat
empiricism which reduces the world to that part of it which
humans can experience.  Many other arguments in RTS are of a
similar nature: they explain the practice of modern science,
but they make only sense if one has a depth-realist
ontology, and therefore they are an indirect corroboration
of this ontology.

I want to also finally answer Ruth's argument whether RB
means "perceived event" when he speaks of "constant
conjunction of events".  This argument is convincing to me.
The events in the phrase "constant conjunction of events"
belong to the empirical sphere, they are events which are
accessible to humans sense-experience.  This is what
empiricism considers the only legitimate basis of science.
But I don't think that Bhaskar defines the *actual* as
perceivable events only.  The actual is anything that
happens.  The empirical is a historically increasing subset
of the actual, since as time goes by humans invent more and
better instruments which give them access to more and more
events.  Does this make sense to you, Ruth?


After sending you the reading I just announced, which is
again quite short, I would like to have some discussion
about the connection between this part of Bhaskar's argument
and Marxism.

BTW, the text of RTS, from the discussion on the Bhaskar list
in 1996, is on the web under

http://www.raggedclaws.com/criticalrealism/archive/rts/index.html

It is not as nice as the text I am using now, because the
text is interrupted by page breaks and footnotes.  In the
present version, all the footnotes are moved to the end of
each installment.  I sent Wallace Polsom, the maintainer of
raggedclaws, the complete and cleaned-up version of the
text, as I am using it now.  I assume he is going to put it
up instead eventually.

-Hans.


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