Re: [Critical-Realism] Creative Dialogue

["Dave Taylor" <dave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Mervyn

Please excuse me joining in, but this has gotten to be as big an issue for
me as it seems to be for George.  Your first comment helps me understand
where you are coming from:-  

>what you [George] call 'critical convergence' I'd call 'creative dialogue'.

As I see it, if dialogue is "creative" then it MAY be leading to
convergence.  It may however lead to incomprehending but respectful
tolerance, generate antagonism, or even lead to decisive rejection,
depending on what it is "creating".  In other words, dialogue is not
necessarily dialectic.  It is not necessarily the case that all parties have
part of the truth and together create the "synthesis".  What is supposed to
happen when what some parties may eventually recognise as the synthesis is
what other parties have been arguing, in language developed within their own
"specialism", all along?  

>I agree with Ruth re (a) - there's not much commonality here.

Having looked back at what Ruth was arguing at (a), I agree there is not
much commonality in the SOLUTIONS offered, but I don't see that means
George's exemplars were not AIMING for the same reality as RB: at least
originally, though like the great Chomsky mimicking pre-quantum chemists in
that piece Tim presented to us, they may have written off the possibility of
what they were personally not yet in a position to imagine.  Peirce and
Dewey were different types of pragmatist and a long time ago; a lot has
happened in the field of logic since then.  Even Popper was formed before
Shannon and Algol68.  

Ruth's "parsing" of RB and "losing" of these worthies was fascinating and
worth a debate in itself. What I am getting at here comes out in her final
comment, though. 

>I agree with you though [George] that it is interesting to all the time be
comparing and contrasting thinkers; it helps in trying to figure them out I
think.

Yes, but not only to figure out what they ACTUALLY said; at a deeper level
one may be reading between the lines, figuring out what they were TRYING to
say, and learning about both that and one's own deficiencies by viewing the
problem they were addressing in light of comparison of what was understood
by different schools then with fruitful insights [c.f. Lakatos] others have
had since.  That of course may come more easily for intuitive thinkers than
it does for sensory thinkers, whose strengths lie in dealing with the
actual.

Best

Dave


-----Original Message-----
From: critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Mervyn
Hartwig
Sent: 19 June 2007 19:45
To: Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List
Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Powers,processes, etc.

Hi George

That's fine, but what you call 'critical convergence' I'd call 'creative
dialogue'.

I agree with Ruth re (a) - there's not much commonality here.

Mervyn

----- Original Message -----
From: "George demetrion" <gdemetrion@xxxxxxx>
To: <critical-realism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, June 19, 2007 2:34 PM
Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Powers,processes, etc.


>
> 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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