Re: [Critical-Realism] Quick on Popper and falsification

[<gdemetrion@xxxxxxx>]

Dear Mervyn,

 I believe my discussion with Ruth is quite civil and the questions and responses both of us have raised are important ones.  You, of course, have the right to disagree, but I have to say that your uninviting intrusion would have the tendency of ruling out and discouraging all but the most initiating from participating in your narrow-minded range of what you define as acceptable discourse on this list.  Truly, I did not know you were the guardian of listserv orthodoxy here.


In all seriousness what I don't get is your defensiveness along with your assumptions about what my motivation may be with giving Fred the right to speak here without untoward ad hominem attack.  Perhaps they are the thoughts of a specialist who is so in love with his narrow understanding whose "rigor" becomes contemptuous of those who seek to have discourse with guild members and others and do not follow the prescribed way of entering in through the dogmatic doors of disciplinary orthodoxy as defined by the high priests.  Of course, I don't know since I don't really know you.  It's simply a conjecture based on the evidence at hand sifted through the various theories in use that influence the processing of the information I do have.   

In a message that I'm working on in response to Fred's analysis of religion perhaps the following at this point bears merit:

I can't say I am able to follow all of what you are saying here, though I do find it clearer and more accessible for the educated lay reader than some of the recent posts on holism, etc.  I'm sure they're very cogent, but my sense is that they are largely inaccessible to all but the extremely well informed.  There's nothing wrong with that level of discourse in itself, though some breaking it down for those of us with less than highly specialized knowledge would have, and still could make a nice contribution in expanding dialogue among the communities of learners here.  My couple of efforts to get some of the specialists to concretize their arguments to a response to my questions in terms of the significance of agency in concrete historical situations and on whether the issue in essence boils down to an interactive relationship between structure and agency, however variable in which structure is the more durable factor, which nonetheless requires appropriation and often results in re-appropriation which at least partially transcends any deterministic argument, has failed to have gotten a response.  My queries were focused on social science rather than natural scientific application of critical realism.

As you know, Mervyn, I'm still waiting for some cogent and to the point responses and I have not overly intruded in my process of seeking some on point responses to my on point query in terms of the relationship between structure and agency.

For the record, I have read the entire 83 page section of A Realist Theory of Science in the edited text by Archer et el, Critical Realism along with some other pieces of Part 1 on Transcendental Realism and Science and not without understanding, though, of course, Mervyn, I don't have anything resembling your vast knowledge on CR.  Therefore, you can always draw on your repository to point out areas where I or anyone else except the most schooled may be showing their vast ignorance, in need, therefore, of the schooling you are so gallantly willing to bestow on the less initiated.

By the way, I don't take this personally because in what I take (since I'm a fallibalist I qualify what I say) as the typology which perhaps shapes your professional identity there are tendencies and powers operating which influence your sense of agency, I would assume in conscious and unconscious ways.

To conclude this, what I believe is a necessary note, though not upon which I prefer to spend my time, but you do need a lecture here on fundamental civility--to conclude this, as a professional representative of critical realism, you are doing your profession no credit here.

On final point on substance on the following:

"You haven't even grasped from the recent discussion here that the distinction between epistemology and  
ontology is a distinction within ontology and not the 'gap' you say it is"

That may be your argument and it may be Bhaskar's as well.  Unless you or Bhaskar has stepped into the realm of known I can only conclude that a gap between the two certainty pertains notwithstanding Bhaskar's important contributions to the unending quest for human knowledge. Moreover, what you describe as my "your postpositivist convergence barrow" has very much to do with some of the most critical issues in the contemporary discussion of scientific philosophy, of which of course, I remain highly ignorant particularly when my knowledge is matched to that of the seasoned specialist.

I leave with a final theory; that what you wrote was simply a thought experiment to see whether or not I would take it seriously that since what you did write was so preposterous that he or no one else could possibly take it seriously.  I don't think that was your motivation, you got me there, but if so could you at least explain the joke?

George Demetrion

----- Original Message -----
From: Mervyn Hartwig
Sent: Friday, June 22, 2007 5:15 AM
To: Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List
Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Quick on Popper and falsification

Hi George

There you go -- get other people to put up the answers and then try and  
knock them down pushing your postpositivist convergence barrow. You admit  
that you don't know much about CR, and it shows (fallibilism e.g. is based  
on epistemic relativity, not what you say). How can you preach convergence  
when you have little idea what you want to converge? You're not showing much  
interest in getting into CR -- you're doing the classic academic quibbling  
(you said it) and equivocating and duplicitous thing, the consequence of  
which is the reduction of everything to a homogeneous mess and doing a good  
job of muddying the water for others. Exactly what Fred seems to want inter  
alia and perhaps the real basis of your support Fred?  If you've got a good  
theory, you don't ask, How can I merge it with others? You ask, How can I  
develop it and make it an even better one? This is how immanent critique  
proceeds. Mergers and acquisitions pertain to the domain of the stockmarket,  
not social theory.

Re duplicity: first we have "From the little I've read of TRS my sense is  
that his reach exceeds his grasp", but this later becomes: "I would suggest  
that to the extent that Bhaskar's reach exceeds his grasp in resolving the  
epistemology-ontology relationship...". You haven't even grasped from the  
recent discussion here that the distinction between epistemology and  
ontology is a distinction within ontology and not the 'gap' you say it is

Mervyn
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