[Critical-Realism] related schools of thought

[<gdemetrion@xxxxxxx>]

George

I couldn't agree more with your post. Especially regarding the tendency to  
become hermetically sealed. I think you are more versed that I in some of  
the alternative schools that you mention, but I've often myself felt that  
critical realists are sometimes too attached to Bhaskar, and a degree of  
critical distance would perhaps allow a better appreciation of  
commonalities and divergences with other schools. I think people like  
Dewey, Putnam, Popper or McDowell could all be very usefully contrasted  
with critical realism. I also think the lack of engagement with these more  
"orthodox" thinkers shows in the lack of seriousness, sadly, and  
justifiably or not, with which people take CR. Personally I hope that  
changes, because I think there are unique things that CR offers. I thought  
Ruth's book Critical Realism, (Post-Positivism and the Possibility of  
Knowledge) was a step in the right direction by comparing with Putnam; but  
a lot more needs to be done IMO.


Thanks for that comment Phil,

For those who may have an interest I provide a link to my online essay, "Postpositivist Scientific Philosophy:  Mediating Convergences. While I draw on the subtopic of adult literacy education, the area of my vocational profession, the essay more broadly speaking focuses on scientific philosophy in the postpositivist vein where I look at some critical convergences between Dewey, Popper, and the contemporary pragmatist philosopher Nicholas Rescher. The essay can be accessed here  http://www.the-rathouse.com/Postpositivism.htm. It is not that Dewy, Popper, and Rescher are saying the same thing in different words, but in some different and related ways are getting at what Phil discusses below on the relationship between intransitive and transitive dimensions of scientific discourse. The hexagon that I envision writing in another life would add Pierce and Bhaskar in a much extended elaboration on the already too long essay as currently written.

George Demetrion




John, on the point I made about relatively intransitive, I just meant that  
Bhaskar's "intransitive" dimension might not, or ought not to be understood  
in absolute terms, but only as something *relatively* enduring against the  
more transitory, and that the relatively fixed element need not be  
mind-independent.  
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