File spoon-archives/seminar-14.archive/marx-bhaskar_2001/seminar-14.0102, message 25


Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 09:02:30 -0500 (EST)
From: Ruth Groff <rgroff-AT-yorku.ca>
Subject: 2 small things


Hi all:

Viren, you quoted Bhaskar on Kant:

>Kant committed (the epistemic fallacy) in arguing that categories "allow
>only of empirical employment and have no meaning whatsoever when not
>applied to the objects of possible experience;  that is to the world of
>sense."

1. I don't remember exactly where this passage appears -- can you give me
the page #s? Thanks.  

The problem, though, with what RB is saying, it seems to me, is that it
assumes that what Kant means by "objects of possible experience" is the same
as what Bhaskar means by his, Bhaskar's, concept of the domain of "the
Empirical."  I don't think that this is right.  At a minimum, Kant is
talking about something much closer to what RB calls the Actual.  

And note that, with respect to the question of how far beyond the "world of
sense" reality extends, in RTS the empiricist ontology (if you'll pardon the
neologism) is expanded to include the operative but not necessarily
actualized mechanisms that constitute the domain of "the Real."  While it is
true that Bhaskar says that we should determine the existence objects by
asking whether or not they have any causal effects, rather than asking
whether or not we experience the object directly through our senses, I would
argue that in RTS "the Real" is still thought to be comprised of objects
that in principle we could experience.  The limits to experience are
presented as being primarily technological -- with lots of talk of real
mechanisms that used to be beyond our direct experience but now can be
experienced as a matter of course.  It's only in DPF that Bhaskar starts
saying that reality is more than everything that we could ever possibly
experience.  And even there it's more like "...possibly COGNIZE."  

Anyhow, I'll grant that Bhaskar's "reality" is bigger than Kant's, but
Kant's isn't quite as restricted as Bhaskar makes it out to be.  It's
certainly not as restricted as Hume's.

2. About "laws."  I think that it is important to keep in mind that it is
not laws that RB thinks exist out there on their own, but rather powerful
particulars.  Laws, strictly speaking, are conceptual artifacts.  Bhaskar's
point is that they REFER not to our subjective sensations but to the powers
of non-mental entities.  Bhaskar himself is not as exacting in his use of
language about this as he ought to be, in my view.

r.  

 

>
>This is an example of reducing the empirical realm to the real.  The
>problem of course is that the category of experience is vague.  Would
>Bhaskar say that we experience laws? Does the scientist experience a law
>when he is doing an experiment? If so then even the things that Bhaskar
>claims are real are objects of possible experience.  Of course, he argues
>that if they were true, then these categories would apply even in a world
>without sense.  But given that fallibility is inherent to the scientific
>project, would we even be confident in saying that a given law exists in a
>world without people.  I realize that statements about ontology (whether
>they exist) should not be reduced to statements about our knowing (whether
>we would be confident);  however, I think that the latter can severely
>undermine the relevance of the former.  
>
>
>Unrelated question.
>
>At the beginning of Bhaskars discussion of the epistemic fallacy, he
>writes of philosophy that 
>
>	its method is transcendental; its premise science; its conclusion
>the object of our present investigation.
>
>As I read this, I thought that this was a huge premise and that he risks
>being accused of smuggling the conclusion into his premise.  That is, one
>could argue that he begins with a contestable, realist interpretation of
>science, and not surprisingly, comes up with realist conclusions.  Of
>course, Bhaksar lays a foundation for his interpretation of science in his
>discussion of experimental activity, when he talks about creating events
>and inferring laws.  But I wonder whether we need to investigate this
>premise in more detail.
>
>
>Viren
>
>On Tue, 13 Feb 2001, Ruth Groff wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>> 
>> As is apparently my wont, I think that this epistemic fallacy thing is more
>> complicated than it seems.  Sorry for the long post to follow.  Skim it (or
>> skip it!) if you like.  
>> 
>> But here's the thing: Bhaskar goes at the concept of the epistemic fallacy
>> in a number of different ways.  And I don't think that they all have the
>> same meaning.
>> 
>> The first way that he presents the concept is that he gives us a definition:
>> the epistemic fallacy is when questions about being are transposed into
>> questions about our knowledge of being.  So, to give a crude and flawed
>> example, "Do dogs exist?" becomes "What is it possible to know of dogs'
>> existence?" or, as in Kant, "What are the necessary cognitive pre-conditions
>> of our having knowledge of dogs?"  [For the post-linguistic turn, po-mo type
>> examples that people have given in recent posts (e.g., "How are dogs
>> discursively constructed?") Bhaskar actually has a separate name: the
>> linguistic fallacy.]
>> 
>> In any case, in this first formulation the the mistake that has been alleged
>> to have been made is an EPISTEMOLOGICAL, or meta-theoretical one.  It's like
>> the person has made a methodological error, but at the level of meta-theory.
>> 
>> The second way that Bhaskar presents the concept of the epistemic fallacy is
>> via his discussion of the three "domains" of the stratified critical realist
>> ontology.  Here the epistemic fallacy is when the domain of the Real is
>> identified with the domain of the Empirical.  In this case, the problem is
>> not that the person (in this case an empiricist) has transposed a question
>> about what exists into a question about what &/or how we know things, but
>> rather that they have inadevertently lopped off most of reality by saying
>> that the only things that exist are either (a) the things that we perceive
>> through our senses or (b) our sensations themselves.  [Whether (a) or (b)
>> depends on what sort of general metaphysical implications the person wants
>> to draw from their empiricist theory of knowledge.]  So here, in this second
>> formulation, the mistake that has been made in an ontological one.  The
>> person has adopted a flawed, radically truncated ontology.
>> 
>> The third way that Bhaskar approaches the concept of the epistemic fallacy
>> is through the analysis of scientific laws.  Empiricists, Bhaskar says,
>> believe that natural scientific laws refer in the end to regularities in our
>> perceptual fields.  Properly conceived, however (according to Bhaskar),
>> scientific laws refer not to perceptual regularities but to properties of
>> independently existing, non-mental entities.  In this presentation, the
>> epistemic fallacy is when laws are mistakenly thought to refer to
>> "subjective" features of our experience rather than to "objective"
>> properties of entities.  Here we are back to it being a epistemological
>> error, or what I called above a problem at the level of meta-theory: the
>> person doesn't know what a certain kind of theoretical construct (viz., a
>> "law") is.
>> 
>> Finally, a fourth way that Bhaskar approaches the concept is through the
>> analysis of causality.  The epistemic fallacy here is when causality is
>> mistakenly believed to be either an expectation (of regularity), as in Hume,
>> or, as in Kant, an a priori category of reason itself.  Here the argument is
>> the same as that concerning laws, but the error is back to being an
>> ontological one:  the person has a flawed ontology because they don't
>> realize that causality is an objective feature of the world, operative in
>> virtue of the real powers of entities.       
>> 
>> The reason why I think that it is important to distinguish between each of
>> these different presentations is that a thinker such as Kant, for example,
>> who is the prime example of someone who commits version 1, doesn't commit
>> version 2 at all.  Meanwhile, at least in the form in which *do* see it in
>> Kant, version 1 is not at all the same sort of thing as the sort of
>> subjectivism that one might argue is the end-result of adherence to an
>> empiricist theory of knowledge.  Thus it is questionable whether empiricists
>> actually commit version #1.
>> 
>> In the end, I think that Bhaskar runs into trouble by trying to take on Hume
>> and Kant with the same concept.  Empiricism and transcendental idealism are
>> different enough from eachother that they require separate lines of
>> argument.  Personally, I tend to think of version 1 as "the epistemic
>> fallacy"; version 2 as "phenomenalism"; version 3 as either "positivism" or
>> "transcendental idealism," depending on who the target is; and version 4 as
>> either "That empiricists can't account for causality" or "transcendental
>> idealism," again depending on the target.  One could argue that version 1 is
>> just transcendental idealism too, but to me it's the formulation that's the
>> most compelling -- the one in which the introduction of a new term, a
>> fallacy with a proper name, seems the most appropriate.
>> 
>> So yes, I would say that the epistemic fallacy designates a purported error
>> in reasoning, in which an ontological question is transposed into an
>> epistemological question.
>> 
>> Ruth 
>> 
>>        
>> 
>> 
>> First of all, there's a real and I think unhelpful ambiguity at play
>> regarding what kind of a mistake the epistemic fallacy actually is.  Most of
>> the time, Bhaskar uses the term to designate a specifically ONTOLOGICAL
>> error: the epistemic fallacy refers to a flawed ontology, an ontology in
>> which the category of "that which exists" is taken to be exhausted by the
>> category of "that which is known."  In the empiricist case, "that which is
>> known" equals "that which is perceived through sensation"; in the radical,
>> or phenomenalist empiricist case, "that which is known"  equals "sensations
>> themselves."  In RTS, the focus is on empiricists of the purest,
>> phenomenalist variety.  Thus the reduction of reality to that which is known
>> is presented in RTS as a reduction of "the Real" to "the Empirical," where
>> the latter means "perceived by someone through their sense organs or through
>> a technological extension thereof."      
>> 
>>   
>> 
>> 
>> At 11:27 AM 2/11/01 -0700, you wrote:
>> >
>> >I fully agree with Greg's answer to the first question.
>> >The question was:
>> >
>> >>Bhaskar says that Humean empiricism commits the epistemic
>> >>fallacy: explain where it does this.
>> >
>> >Greg stresses that the error lies in the *implicit*
>> >ontology.
>> >
>> >Expicitly, overtly, Humeans think about it whether
>> >experience can be our only source of knowledge, or whether
>> >our knowledge of the world must also include an a priori or
>> >theoretical component.  But in all these deliberations they
>> >overlook that they let their conceptions pf what they
>> >consider to be "the world" be guided by sense-eperience.
>> >
>> >Let me say it again, elaborating a little: They ask: "Is my
>> >sense-experience of this chair here (and of other things and
>> >events which I can experience) sufficient to constitute my
>> >knowedge of this chair?"  They ask this not only about
>> >chairs but also about all the other objects of
>> >sense-experience, but they don't ask whether there are other
>> >things in this world, which are not the objects of
>> >sense-experience, worth knowing about too (for instance
>> >because without these things the scientific procedures which
>> >they are engaged in would not be possible).  I.e., they
>> >implicitly define that what is real by that what can be
>> >experienced, and this is where they commmit the epistemic
>> >fallacy.
>> >
>> >
>> >Here is a quote from RTS2, p. 41, just after the passage I
>> >sent to the list, where Bhaskar says this (I think):
>> >
>> >> But from Hume onwards the sole question in the philosophy
>> >> of science is whether our knowledge is exhausted by our
>> >> knowledge of such events and their conjunctions; it is
>> >> never questioned whether they in fact occur.  That is,
>> >> philosophy's concern is with whether our knowledge of the
>> >> world can be reduced to sense-experience as so conceived
>> >> or whether it must include an a priori or theoretical
>> >> component as well; not with whether experience can
>> >> adequately constitute the world.
>> >
>> >And here is a sentence of Greg's, with my additions in
>> >square brackets: is this how you meant it, Greg?
>> >
>> >> Since Hume sees knowledge as only [knowledge of] events of
>> >> sense-experience and scientific laws are induced from the
>> >> constant conjunction of these events, then there is no
>> >> reality beyond [these objects of] sense-experience.  This
>> >> is the epistemic fallacy because is reduces the idea of
>> >> what is real to what we can know about reality.
>> >
>> >
>> >I will stop here for now, because I don't want the emails to
>> >get too long.  More about the other questions later.  Others
>> >are invited to answer too, or to comment on these answers
>> >here (including my own).
>> >
>> >-Hans.
>> >
>> >
>> >     --- from list seminar-14-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
>> >
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>      --- from list seminar-14-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
>> 
>
>
>
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>



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