Re: BHA: Knowledge as a social product

[Mervyn Hartwig <mh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Ruth, Marko, Tobin,

>I take it that the "but" above could just as easily have been an "and."

Not really. I'm saying that to say that scientific knowledge is (just) a
social production is to ignore its intransitive dimension (all right, we
know that you don't, but that at any rate is the way it must seem to
someone coming from where Marko is). As we know, science has *both* a
transitive *and* an intransitive dimension. When Bhaskar says in the
passage Tobin cited that 'science as a process is always intrinsic to
"thought"', he is speaking of the TD only ('*as a process*'). He
immediately goes on to say, as Tobin noted, 'However, by perception and
experiment access to objects ... existing independently of thought may
be obtained. And of such objects knowledge may be achieved.' Scientific
knowledge is socially produced knowledge *of* intransitively existing
objects. Presumably that is far more acceptable to you, Marko, than just
to say that it is a social production.

Similarly with your original point, Marko, that human nature is not a
social construction, which you now raise again. I agree with you that
human nature qua species being - our core universal nature, the psycho-
organic capacities and needs we are all born with - is not a social
production in the requisite sense. It has been significantly influenced
socially in the course of the evolution of homo sapiens, but it has not
been produced by *this* society except infinitesimally (NB, I'm not
talking about social being or four-planar human nature, whereby our
potentialities are actualised). *Knowledge* of it is however socially
produced in the above sense. I think your basic instinct that Bhaskar is
on the side of science (genuine knowledge is possible) rather than of
postmodern relativism is correct, but his position is considerably more
complex than you perhaps have yet appreciated.

Mervyn


Ruth Groff <rgroff@xxxxxxxx> writes
>Hi Marko,
>
>You said that you agree with Mervyn (and with the rest of us, along with the
>early Bhaskar, at least) on the key point of the discussion.
>
>As Mervyn put it:
>
>1. "Certainly, knowledge is a social product, achieved via the transformation
>in
>the TD of existing knowledge (which itself is in the ID in relation to such
>practice)"
>
>2. "but how this is done, in science, is constrained and shaped also by the way
>the world is quite independently of our knowledge."
>
>I take it that the "but" above could just as easily have been an "and."
>
>I want to make sure that you do agree with Mervyn here.  If you do, then we can
>call it a day and move on ... if you don't, then perhaps we can enlist Mervyn's
>considerable powers of persuasion [ :-)] to help convince you!
>
>For better or for worse, the idea that knowledge is something that is socially
>produced (and also that it doesn't really make sense to talk about isolated
>cavemen as a way of thinking about practices like knowledge production) *is* a
>basic element of the critical realist alternative to positivism. If you are
>trying to decide what you like or don't like about critical realism, it would
>be
>important both to understand the critical realist position a bit better than it
>seems that you do, and to decide for sure your own position on the point
>(though
>I would agree with Tobin that you seem, at least, to have been pretty
>consistent
>in your opposition to the position that Mervyn sets out).
>
>Warmly,
>Ruth
>
>
>
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--
Mervyn Hartwig
Editor, Journal of Critical Realism (incorporating 'Alethia')
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