Re: [Critical-Realism] Powers,processes, etc.

["George demetrion" <gdemetrion@xxxxxxx>]

Third, how can there be creative dialogue if there's convergence


Mervyn,

Critical convergence doesn't presuppose unity though it does require an 
identification of commonalities, which does not deny differences but places 
them within the perspective of the context of the broader issue or problem 
under investigation.  It also doesn't deny the possibility of any given 
theory that might prove itself superio; simply that the grounds and the 
counterclaims need to be carefully addressed.

Briefly, to take the three related schools that I've laid out--critical 
pragmatism (Peirce & Dewey), critical rationalism (Popper), critical realism

Commonalities:

a)  Post Humean metaphyics
b)  Sustained critique of both positivism and postmodernism (Deweyan 
analysis is commonly drawn upon by contemporary pragmatists on this even as 
some pragmatists are working out of postmodern filters
c)  Truth as a regulative ideal
d)  very rigorous work in the area of scientific philosophy (eg. Dewey's 
Logic:  The Theory of Inquiry)

Differences

a)  Dewey focuses more on inquiry; Popper focuses more on the efficacy of 
the results of inquiry and works backwards (his World, One, Two & Three)
b)  Bhsakar focuses more on ontology (the validity of which neither Popper 
nor Dewey would deny) while still accepting the ineradicable gap between 
what we can know and what is actual.
c)  While that's a difference neither Dewey nor Popper deny what Bhaskar 
refers to as generative mechanisms and causal power (if I have the latter 
right) even as they (perhaps?) focus more on more immediate issues of 
effective problem solving as defined by the nature of the problem itself.

There's nothing mystical in how this may be done.  It requires (and I'm not 
presuming your opposed) to greater interrdisciplinary border crossing at a 
fairly in-depth level which speaks to fundamental issues of breadth and 
depth, shaped, perhaps, by the preoblem at hand.

I'd be really interested what the work in scientific essentialism may have 
to offer--intererested, but not at this time toi the extent of undertaking 
the hard work of gaining a substantial level of knowledge that would likely 
be needed to better appreciate how the depth and breadth of how a 
postpositivist theoretical and research design that accepts regulative truth 
as  an operative ideal might be further enhanced.

George Demetrion



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