[Critical-Realism] RTS.ALT: Reading society?s Aristotelian apparati

[BD_wanika <bwanika@xxxxxxxxx>]

Functionalism and Instrumentalism - Talcott Parsons  

  Having failed to deter, raising causalities in an ever expanding industrial world sphere, functionalism respectable place in sociology and other social sciences fields faced its ultimate demise. Urban destitution and decay, violence, homelessness, among the elderly people dumped in backyard streets, industrial decline and raising poverty, raising level of unemployment, not to mention self-destructive behaviours, were all assumed to be redeemable through a functionalist single statement, functional instrumentalism. 
  In Talcott Parson's (the godfather) functionalism, the positivist school of sociologist thought and other social scientists, who neither fell into the psychosocial sociologist or the Structurist schools of thought, sought solace in what had been well elaborated on below. Functionalism.
     Functionalism derives its influence from nature?s instrumentality. That circulation of blood through the body can be equated to recycling a decaying society from dysfunctional one. That society exists only its subjective project render support to brute consumerism. What was actually behind functionalism was a soft-landing for an ailing system with its precarious, conspicuous consumption and generated chaos that accompanied it.
     The problem functionalists faced, exactly as with its equivalent, the Aristotelian physicalism, is that human beings, are always ?thinking beings? and are not mere things. 
     Sociology is very interesting when read carefully. Functionalist therefore, only led to a linear thought topology but which was always reaching its final destination.  It is in this respect, functionalism and instrumentalism became inseparable! I do understand the controversy  and  Marx's  total rejection of  God as a redeemer in humanities affairs. 
 
      Such that it was potato and computer chips as humanities ultimate end and final cause!
 
  Bwanika.  

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Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2007 05:13:45 -0700 (PDT)
From: Fred Zaman <agent.redstone@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: RTS.ALT: Reading society?s Aristotelian apparati


 
   
  Brian Dick (Wed Jun 13 13:38:51 MDT 2007) notes that Bhaskar 
  argues ?it is a condition of the possibility of experimental and 
  applied activity that the objects of scientific enquiry (causal 
  laws, generative mechanisms, structured things) not only exist 
  but act independently of that activity--transfactually, in open 
  and experimentally or otherwise closed systems alike.? The 
  transfactuality of such objects of science, argued by Bhaskar to 
  be required in order for the experimental and applied activities 
  of science to proceed, is supported by the Aristotelian causes 
  below; which here read through the lens of nature?s 
  instrumentality determine the ?social mechanics? of agents using 
  nature?s laws as the instruments of their agency, in both the 
  experimental and applied activities of science:
   
  1. material cause: the structural constraints imposed on agents, 
  as materially determined by the laws, principles, and rules of 
  physics, chemistry, biology, society, etc.
   
  2. efficient cause: the instrumentality of nature made possible 
  through the employment of nature?s laws, the employment of which 
  always involves complex amalgamations of such, as instruments of 
  control by agents in the accomplishment of their subjective 
  projects.
   
  3. formal cause: the agents employing nature?s laws as 
  instruments of control, which cause includes the guiding 
  theories, principles and assumptions that make the above material 
  and efficient causes comprehensible and further increase their 
  usability as instruments of control.
   
  4. final cause: the final cause of a thing is its purpose as 
  determined by an agent (the formal cause) in its instrumental 
  employment of nature?s laws, which necessarily involves complex 
  amalgamations of such,  to successfully conclude a subjective 
  project.
   
  These causes, taken together, form what conveniently can be 
  labeled the ?generative mechanisms? of Aristotelian apparati, the 
  ?mechanics? of which, in studies of the social character of 
  science called critical realism, pertains to scientific change 
  and development. The effects of nature?s laws here--as critical 
  realism generally understands--are tendential; because the 
  conjunction of events is determined not only by the laws 
  themselves, but also by just how the laws are employed, by agents 
  as instruments of control in the fulfillment of their subjective 
  projects. Aristotelian apparati thus conceived provide a 
  philosophical account of science as a social phenomenon. Such 
  apparati can serve as an underlaborer to assist scientists in 
  better understanding their subjective role in the conduct of 
  scientific research. The critical realism of Aristotelian 
  apparati also might serve as an occasional ?mid-wife? in birthing 
  a particular theory--?A Critical-Realist Theory of America? being 
  one of recent note on this list. The inadequacy of positivism as 
  a scientific philosophy is clearly highlighted as well.
   
  Now, how, in the terms of the agent-driven generative mechanisms 
  advanced above, does experimental science advance, whether in 
  physics, biology or the social sciences. One first makes 
  observations--of the past, present or both--of ?structures? 
  either seen or believed to exist in nature or society; one then, 
  as an independent agent, applies the laws or principles presently 
  understood or believed to apply to obtain some hoped-for 
  predetermined outcome; the explanation thereof is then modified 
  to take into account the discrepancies noted in what actually 
  occurred. The cycle is repeated again and again over long periods 
  of time, always employing nature?s laws--the employment of which 
  always involves complex amalgamations of such--as instruments of 
  control in whatever experiments are conducted. Aristotelian 
  apparati thus defined may seem at first to be ?too mechanical,? 
  but the mechanics thereof is always that of social relations.
   
  Giving one example in the realm of the social, social experiments 
  inspired by orthodox Marxism have failed; so that modifications 
  thereof are now in order, and have been for some time; which, in 
  a fundamentally new approach based on the instrumentality of 
  natural law operating at the highest possible level of 
  explanation, ?A Critical-Realist Theory of America? provides. 
  Might this achievement one day be hailed as a Copernican 
  revolution in social science? Which possibility suggests that the 
  social sciences today may effectively still be ?medieval? in 
  their world view, because they have yet to understand the scope 
  of natural law in the inner workings of society.
   
  fz

       
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