Re: BHA: Mainstream Philosophy of Science

["Tobin Nellhaus" <nellhaus@xxxxxxx>]

A couple of other thoughts on the way CR and similar developments in
mainstream philosophy seem not to know much about each other.  I would
hazard a guess that Bhaskar has been mainly interested in addressing the
political left than mainstream philosophers.  (I don't know him
personally -- those of you who do may want to speak to that.)  To the extent
that he *does* engage contemporary philosophers, which isn't much in any
case, they're mostly people like Derrida who have been championed by
progressives.  Conversely, few mainstream philosophers are willing to have
much truck with leftists (or maybe I should say, few *male* philosophers;
anyway, a fair number of prominent female philosophers are somewhere on the
left).

But the problem occurs in other corners too.  For example, Lakoff &
Johnson's work comes awfully close to CR in many respects.  But not only are
they apparently unaware of CR, they also don't cite many of the mainstream
philosophers toiling in these fields.  And Johnson is himself a philosophy
prof!  Similarly, one might have expected the (left-leaning) contributors to
a recent collection on identity and realism to be acquainted with CR, but
with one partial exception, none of them are.  Etc.

Mostly, everyone seems to be in their own little cul-de-sac.  One might
describe this as specialization and an increasing division of intellectual
labor.  But whatever it is, clearly a lot of networking needs to be done.

---
Tobin Nellhaus
nellhaus@xxxxxxxx
"Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce




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