critical-realism message, Re: BHA: Emergence

G'day,

Sigh. I suppose we'll never get past this. The objects of science may not
be social constructions, but *knowledge* of those objects *must* be a social
product. To fail to distinguish between knowledge and the object of
knowledge is the epistemic fallacy.

Imagine a caveman living all on his lonesome. Imagine he discovers fire, say as a result of a lightning strike. Imagine that he fiddles around with it, puts his hand in it and discovers that it is hot and can burn flesh. Furthermore as the lightning recedes and it starts to rain he discovers that water puts fire out. He now has "knowledge" about fire. According to Tobin "knowledge" "must" be a social construct but notice that the caveman is all on his lonesome, he lives in no society but alas he has "knowledge". Tobin's thesis is invalid. If by "social construct" we mean that science has journals, email communications and so on and members of this "society" discover knowledge of course this is true but completely trivial.

We have knowledge about ourselves, for instance we have some knowledge about the universal grammar underlying all natural languages. But notice that "we" are the objects of that knowledge. Here we see no distinction between knowledge and the object of knowledge. We have knowledge and we are the objects of that knowledge. So according to Tobin the cognitive revolution of the past 50 years is a fallacy. I'd like to see the evidence for this claim. So if "knowledge" of human nature is a social construction, and we are the objects of that knowledge, it follows that there is no such thing as human nature for human nature is a social construction. Thus Tobin, upon this logic, agrees that we are a blank slate an assumption shared with positivism. I submit then if one believes that human nature is a social construction then any attempt to construct a philosophical defence of emancipatory politics will collapse upon scrutiny. This is rather a pity. Our enemy is Capitalism (although Tobin is a Marxist I am an Anarchist but this matters not for Left Marxism and Anarchism share basically the same goals) and I don't want to give the ruling class and its lackey's any opening to attack the foundations of emancipatory philosophy. I think that the main assault on emancipatory philosophy comes from socio-biology or more correctly its use by ruling class ideologists. My goal is to attack these scum, that is the ruling classes lackey's, on their own turf. This is why I am attracted to Bhaskar's realist philosophy of science and his defence of emancipation. The ruling class would have us believe that the academic left are basically all a bunch of relativists of one form or another. Bhaskar shows otherwise.

As far as Mervyn's comments on this topic go, I agree with him and have said so, I thus have found little need to comment upon his "translation" for fear of repetition. As far as him being my "translator" is concerned this is of course absurd and the comments in regards to this one need not bother with.