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

["Mervyn Hartwig" <mh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Dave,

I didn't read this very closely at first because I took exception to the 
implication that only Christians (here, you and George) would likely 
understand about "seeing through a glass darkly". On looking again, I see 
that it's making fundamentally similar points to Bwanika, and my response to 
Bwanika. I particularly like the bit about the automatic recognition of 
error being necessary for the appearance that there is no error, and I agree 
that much that passes for dialogue in academia is one-upmanship. But I'm not 
a correspondence theorist and I don't hope to find 'a point of view on 
reality which doesn't need or attract further criticism'. Even the religious 
point of view nowadays accepts the necessity and desirability of ongoing 
criticism, doesn't it?

Mervyn


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dave Taylor" <dave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "'Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List'" 
<critical-realism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, June 19, 2007 3:41 PM
Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Powers,processes, etc.


> Mervyn et al
>
> I've been refecting on the possible approach to truth via error, and what
> George says here about convergence (which I agree with) makes up my mind.
> The issue is not the possibility of error, though, it is the possibility 
> of
> RECOGNISING error, which is what is built into computers and one aspect of
> their programming.  In fact it is the possibility of AUTOMATICALLY
> recognising error, which is needed to become aware that there appears to 
> be
> NO error and that (maybe) one has found the truth.  IMO it is not about 
> true
> CORRESPONDENCE between an object and its representation, it is about true
> COHERENCE between the parts of an object not yet "seen" clearly enough to
> represent accurately, and in the case of actual vision, recognised by less
> than optimal sharpness of focus. George at least will understand what I 
> mean
> when I refer to "seeing through a glass darkly".
>
> Is "creative dialogue", then, what it appears to be in competitive
> academedia: distinguishing and justifying one's own position by 
> criticising
> the alleged failings of "rival" views? (I have in mind not just Hume's
> fortune-seeking but logical positivist G E Moore's savage criticism of J S
> Mill).  Or is it criticising our own as well as everybody else's views, 
> not
> for the sake of it but in the hope of finding and (by creative - elegant 
> and
> well as accurate - use of language) socially converging on, a point of 
> view
> of reality which doesn't need or attract further criticism: that we can 
> get
> on and use for the purpose for which it was intended?
>
> Dave
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Mervyn
> Hartwig
> Sent: 19 June 2007 13:19
> To: Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List
> Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Powers,processes, etc.
>
> Hi George
>
> First, my name isn't Merv.
>
> Second, I'm not counter-critiquing creative dialogue. On the contrary. I'm
> simply saying that it's going on, and let's hear no more of the libel that
> CR eschews it.
>
> Third, how can there be creative dialogue if there's convergence?
>
> Mervyn
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <gdemetrion@xxxxxxx>
> To: "Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List"
> <critical-realism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Tuesday, June 19, 2007 12:22 PM
> Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Powers,processes, etc.
>
>
>> "But in terms of the horizon of RTS, since one of the things that we are
>> doing is attending to that, the main thing to note is just how wildly
>> different even an only vaguely theorized notion of a causal mechanism (or
>> "powerful particular," from Harre and Madden) is from the ontology 
>> assumed
>> by Hume, and the account of "laws" and "explanation" to which the Humean
>> ontology gives rise.  Think Hempel."
>>
>> Ruth,
>>
>> Thanks for the insight and resources on scientific essentialism, the 
>> later
>> term in particular which has gotten bad press in postmodern circles. 
>> Both
>> Popper and Dewey, too, critique essentialism even as both move well 
>> beyond
>> Hume as well as positivism.  Dewey speaks a lot about potentiality which
>> perhaps is not too different from the notion of generative mechanisms
>> which may or may not be realized in any given context.  In that he is
>> moving toward ontology even as he tends to focus on the immanence of the
>> potentially transcendent which becomes "created" out of what happens; 
>> what
>> causal mechanisms are operationalized in any given context.
>>
>> Thus related to Merv's counter-critique of calls for more creative
>> dialogue among various schools of philosophy, the critical issue in my
>> view is greater convergence among closely related schools of thought;
>> hence, the need for convergence (and not just an emphasis on 
>> distinctions)
>> between critical pragmatism, critical realism, and critical rationalism
>> particularly in their common postpositivist mediating outlook in which
>> truth as a "regulative ideal" grounds all of their epistemologies. It is
>> this, I believe, which distinguishes their common outlook from both
>> positivism and postmodernism--a mediating postpositvism.  My objective
>> here is less to critique critical realism in that for the most part
>> critical pragmatism and critical rationalism have not engaged each other
>> to any significant way even as there has been some good discussion 
>> between
>> early pragmatism and the American critical realism of the early 20th
>> century reviewed from the bias of pragmatism in David Hildebrand's (2003)
>> Beyond Realism and Anti-Realism. A related text edited by John Shook
>> (2003) one of the foremost pragmatic philosophers of the contempoary era
>> Pragmatic Naturalism & Realism is highly sophisticated in the range of
>> philosophical discourse it incorporates.  There is some brief reference 
>> to
>> Bhaskar in one of the essays, but nowhere in this highly important text 
>> is
>> critical realism as a school of philosophical thought engaged in the
>> effort to explore the relationship between naturalism and realism.
>>
>> So the shoe that fits applies to many feet.  The issue is not to point
>> figures as this problem is grounded in the history of the development of
>> the academic disciplines where specialization, in itself a highly
>> desirable trait
>>
>> Thus when I think of Bhaskar's claim that critical realism is the most
>> adequate philosophy has taken on aura of mystification of its own which 
>> in
>> many significant ways has the pragmatic effect of short-circuiting the
>> search for truth at a high level of interdisciplinary discourse,
>> particularly among related schools of thought where a critical search for
>> convergences has a great deal to offer, including that of putting
>> differences into more balanced perspective
>>
>> George Demetrion
>> _______________________________________________
>> Critical-Realism mailing list
>> Critical-Realism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Critical-Realism mailing list
> Critical-Realism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Critical-Realism mailing list
> Critical-Realism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism 


_______________________________________________
Critical-Realism mailing list
Critical-Realism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism