RE: BHA: path dependence, critical realism and marxism

["Marshall Feldman" <marsh@xxxxxxx>]

Hi Dick,

I really don't have much to say about your latest post, but I'll chirp in
with a few things just to clear things up.
>
> >While some of the logic here can be thought out without a
> research program,
> >it seems to me that CR recommends that we deal with this as a causal
> >mechanism and subject it to research.
>
> This is important.  I do not see CR as being completed by being written
> down, now matter how brilliantly, in a series of books and articles.  In
> trying (1) to communicate the principles of CR and (2) to use the
> principles of CR in solving practical problems, we encounter difficulties
> and anomalies which should result in modifications of the principles
> themselves, or in the way they are expressed.  Thus, the spread of CR
> through wider communication and use is, or should be, an
> intrinsic part of
> the research program, an essential part of its validation.   I
> believe that
> this can contribute to emancipation by being part of an educational and
> political process.

Good point. Agreed.

>
> >What, for instance, are the
> >contingencies that enhance or impede the spread of ideas? You say they
> >spread via "agency"? Can we be more specific?
>
> Yes.  I understand part of the meaning "agency" as being the capacity for
> understanding, which is required to put one's ideas into words and/or
> actions to the meanings of the words and actions of another.  A semiotic
> theory of communication describes both the senders and receivers of a
> messages as intelligent agents.  Words and other symbols do not
> mean things
> in and of themselves.   Speakers, writers, hearers, and readers
> mean things
> by the words and symbols.   This capacity to express and grasp meaning is
> only part of what I understand to be signified by "agency."  Other
> important components are the capacity to make choices and to exert some
> degree of control.

Yeah, but I sense the issue is wider than this. Compare, for instance, the
spread of witch-burning in late medieval Europe with the Enlightenment. Both
were accompanied by ideas, yet they were transmitted very differently. I
also don't think we can understand them strictly in semiotic terms.

>
> >  In the particular case of religion, I believe the historical record
> > shows that "agency" most often has
> >taken the form of fire and sword.
>
> The historical record is biased.  More people have acquired their
> religion
> in the peaceful practices of being raised in religious families,
> being told
> the stories and participating in the rituals.

You're right, but I had in mind the spread of particular religious doctrines
(to populations that formerly ascribed to different doctrines) rather than
their intergenerational reproduction.

>
> >  What is the role of history in all this? (BTW, this, I think,
> is a great
> > weakness
> >in CR. Logically, CR allows for an understanding of the intransitive
> >dimension as historical, including concepts and ideas. However,
> much of the
> >language of CR -- with its justified naturalism -- alludes to the natural
> >sciences where history is less important. We pay lots of attention to the
> >double hermeneutic in social science, but much less attention to the
> >historical nature of things social, the TMSA not withstanding.)
>
> There are different meanings of "history" -- all past events, the
> record of
> past events contained in documents and artifacts, the disciplines
> practiced
> by those who call themselves "historians," the stories of the
> past by which
> members of a collectivity defined themselves, etc.  I believe that all
> serious scholars, scientists, and intellectuals must make some use of the
> disciplines practiced by historians.   Is this what you mean by "the role
> of history"?

In addition to an epistemic understanding of "history," I also had in mind
an ontological understanding. By "history" I not only mean all past events,
but also all past structures and their causal powers and mechanisms. This is
why I said CR often does not do justice to history. I strongly recommend
Bertell Ollman's book, _Alienation_ on this. I think Chapter 1 is called
"With Words that Appear Like Bats" and directly addresses the historical
nature of social things in the intransitive dimension and therefore the
structured but varied meaning of words in the transitive dimension.




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