Re: BHA: Mainstream Philosophy of Science

[Ruth Groff <rgroff@xxxxxxxx>]

Hi Marsh,

Longer response later, but for now: boy can I ever relate!  [Have you not noticed my repeated posts on this issue?]

And it's not just in philosophy of science either; it's in metaphysics, philosophy of language and history of philosophy too.  For what it's worth, I think that the explanation is that Bhaskar, like Harre and Madden and now Ellis and a few others, in propounding a non-Humean, non-Kantian account of causality, was writing very much against the mainstream.  To make a dent when you are doing that, you have to be unbelievably persistent -- and you have to take it as an explicit goal, I think.  You have to publish where those people publish, engage closely with what they say and do it over and over and over and over and over ... you get the point.  Charles Taylor is a good model for that kind of dogged persistence I think.  I get the sense that Ellis has been up to it on a smaller scale in Australia.  The other approach, of course, and a perfectly respectable one it seems to me, is to more or less dismiss the people who you think are spouting nonsense, and not waste time that could be better spent on other things trying to make in-roads.  It seems to me that that's been Bhaskar's approach.  So I think that mainstream philosophers don't know about Bhaskar because he hasn't undertaken to force himself upon the discipline.  [Though I should tell you that my friend who is a serious historian and philosopher of science guy tells me that his impression is that people *do* know about Bhaskar, but are put off by his writing style.  I don't see why that should be a problem with RTS, personally, but that's what he tells me.]

Anyway I'd love to talk about this more.  What are you planning to say at this conference?

Warmly,
Ruth




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