[Critical-Realism] RTS Summary of Chapter 1.1

["Brian Dick" <briandick51@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

To minimize the number of e-mails sent out, I'm going to bring up a number
of issues in this one.  First of all, notes on Section 1 of Chapter 1 have
been posted to the CR wiki site and reprinted below.

Mervyn, Could you send out the text of Chapter 1?  We can take things slower
(I know I'm going pretty fast here), but it would be good for everyone who
doesn't have a hard copy of the book to have a copy of the text we will soon
be discussing.

Ruth, I think that you made a good point in regard to the complexity of the
introduction (again, thanks for sending out the philosophical background
needed to understand what Bhaskar is doing here).  That's why I think we
should move quickly from the introduction (which we could spend weeks
discussing because we haven't gotten to the point in the later text where we
could understand the summary Bhaskar gives in the intro) on to the main
text, i.e., section 1 of chapter 1.  I think that moving on to these issues
will help clear up ones that arose in our reading of the introduction.

Finally, Mervyn, thank you for helping distinguish between the 'normic' and
the 'nomic'.  I have seen Bhaskar use these terms quite a bit, but never
clearly understood their distinction.  However, could you elaborate a bit on
this distinction--I still don't have a copy of the dictionary (is it now
available for purchase?).

All the best,
Brian




1.1 TWO SIDES OF 'KNOWLEDGE' (21)



The central paradox of science:

   - 1.) "men in their social activity produce knowledge which is a
   social product much like any other…"
   - 2.) "knowledge is '*of'* things which are not produced by men at
   all…"



Resolution of paradox: distinguish between:

   - *Transitive* objects of knowledge:
      - Aristotelian material causes.
      - The raw materials of science.
      - "the artificial objects fashioned into items of knowledge by
      the science of the day."
      - "They include the antecedently established facts and theories,
      paradigms and models, methods and techniques of inquiry available to a
      particular scientific school or worker."
      - We cannot imagine a science without transitive objects
      (although we can imagine a world of intransitive objects without
science).
      - "Knowledge depends upon knowledge-like antecedents" (22).
      - "we cannot imagine the production of knowledge save from, and
      by means of, knowledge-like materials."
      - Examples: pp. 22-3.
      - "social products, antecedently established knowledges capable
      of functioning as the transitive objects of new knowledges, are used to
      explore the unknown (but knowable) intransitive structure of the world.
      Knowledge of B is produced by means of knowledge of A, but both items of
      knowledge exist only in thought" (23).
   - *Intransitive* objects of knowledge:
      - What knowledge is *of* (21)*.*
      - Exist independently of human activity.
      - We can easily imagine a world (it has occurred and may occur
      again) without science, but the intransitive objects of knowledge would
      continue to exist (22).
      - Are generally invariant to our knowledge of them.
      - "they are the real things and structures, mechanisms and
      processes, events and possibilities of the world…"
      - "for the most part they are quite independent of us."
      - They are not unknowable (we no quite a bit about them).
      - "They are the intransitive, science-independent, objects of
      scientific discovery and investigation."



Ontology: the "answer to the transcendental question 'what must the world be
like for science to be possible?'…"

   - Bhaskar intends to provide a new philosophy of science with an
   ontology.
   - Science cannot exist without intransitive objects (but not
   vice-versa).



Developing an adequate philosophy of science:

   - 'what must science be like to give us knowledge of intransitive
   objects (of this kind)?'
   - Bhaskar's position depends upon "the intelligibility of certain
   universally recognized, if inadequately analysed, scientific activities"
   (24).
      - Following Kant: "the function of philosophy [is] to analyse
      concepts which are 'already given' but 'as confused'."



Any adequate philosophy of science must sustain and reconcile both:

   - 1.) Transitive Dimension: the social character of science.
      - The (non-spontaneous) "production of knowledge from and by
      means of knowledge" (in the TD).
   - 2.) Intransitive Dimension: the independence from science of the
   objects of scientific thought.
      - Structural and essential realism: the "independent existence
      and activity of causal structures and things (in the ID).


Science "is a social activity whose aim is the production of knowledge of
the kinds and ways of acting of independently existing and active things."
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