[Critical-Realism] [Critical Realism] The Enlightenment: The philosophical dark side of modern science

[Fred Zaman <agent.redstone@xxxxxxxxx>]

  Louis,
   
  Critical realism is being developed as an ontological diving 
  apparatus that enables science to explore the deep waters of 
  reality in the search for a truer understanding of phenomena 
  observed at the surface. This is my objective as well. 
  ?Bhaskarian aleatory materialism? explains, at a deeper level 
  than currently found in the mechanistic theories of physics and 
  biology, the deeper reality concerning the chance and contingency 
  observed in surface phenomena. Nothing could be more ?Bhaskarian? 
  in character than this. Such explanations are the very essence of 
  critical realist philosophy, so maybe you should be the one to 
  become a ?lurker? on this list.
   
  The stridency with you are attacking a true Bhaskarian theory 
  suggests that you, perhaps more than anyone else on this list 
  because of your background in physics and biology, are this 
  list?s closet ?Sokalist.? If that is not true, I suggest you 
  ponder what Caroline Gijselinckx in ?Socialization in multi-
  ethnic schools: Toward a critical realist explanation of the 
  elaboration of socio-ethnic inequalities? (Paper presented at the 
  6th Conference of the ESA ?Ageing Societies, New Sociologies?, 
  Murcia, September 2003) has to say about the essence of critical 
  realism:
   
  Paraphrasing her truly excellent summary: CR is the search for 
  deep explanations of empirical events and phenomena. The vision 
  of CR is grounded on causality to be discovered through a 
  philosophical inquiry into a reality that is logically prior to 
  the development of social ontology and methodology. Causal 
  necessity in critical realism is understood not as logical 
  necessity, but rather as natural necessity. The world in CR is 
  not just the world we can observe, the world we can think of, or 
  the world we can talk about, It is a world ?out there,? existing 
  prior to our scientific observation, thinking, and talking.
   
  Quoting Caroline further: ?Critical realism argues that the 
  causes of the empirically observable effects lie behind the 
  empirical and effects come about because of the operation of a 
  complex network of underlying causes that can only be actualized 
  by virtue of the nature of social reality. The actual thus refers 
  to what actually happens (actuality) and the real (sometimes 
  called the transfactual) refers to the nature of reality, by 
  virtue of which things can happen (possibility). To discover and 
  conceptualize causes, means to dig into the nature of reality and 
  to discover and conceptualize possible tendencies and their 
  actualizations, not to deduce causal relations between empirical 
  events?Regularity, however, is not a necessary nor sufficient 
  criterion for causality. It can perfectly be so that an event 
  happens only ones [once]. Even a single event is ?caused.??The 
  world consists of more than the actual course of events and 
  experiences and/or discourses about them. It is composed of 
  complex objects that, by virtue of their structure, possess 
  certain powers, potentials, and capacities to act in certain 
  ways, even if those capacities are not always realized. It is the 
  continuing emergent result of the complex interplay of the 
  actualized powers, potentialities, and capacities to act in 
  certain ways existing by virtue of the nature of the objects the 
  social world is composed of. To know these powers, 
  potentialities, and capacities, we have to know the 
  nature/structure of the objects of which they are a property.?
   
  ?Bhaskarian aleatory materialism,? the theoretical foundation for 
  the deeper explanation of social structures, powers, potentials, 
  and capabilities brought to light in ?The Bhaskarian Dialectic of 
  Freedom in America? (previously ?A Critical-Realist Theory of 
  America?), applied to American economic, political, and social 
  historiography circa 1650 to the present and beyond, is a 
  comprehensive approach to developing the ?deep explanation? of 
  social ontology and methodology sought by critical realism. 
  Mechanistic theories, because of their a priori commitment to 
  surface causality, will in principle never be able to explain the 
  deeper reality brought to light in ?The Bhaskarian Dialectic of 
  Freedom in America.?
   
  Louis, I suggest you try reading my essay with a mind more open 
  to the deeper truths sought by critical realism than you have 
  demonstrated thus far. If you don?t already have a copy, you can 
  get one from your fellow travelers on this list (Dave Taylor et 
  al). Whether or not mechanists are trembling is irrelevant, 
  because they themselves are rapidly becoming the same?the fact of 
  which indeed may be the reason for your stridency here. Lighten 
  up. Be more open minded about things that, because of your prior 
  indoctrination in the mechanistic worldview, you presently have 
  no understanding. If you can do this, you might be able to make a 
  truly significant contribution to the advancement of science in 
  the 21st century. Embrace the light of critical realism, turn from 
  the philosophical dark side of modern science called The 
  Enlightenment.
   
  Fred


Louis Irwin <louisirwin9@xxxxxxx> wrote:  Fred,

You seem to be just expounding the original conception that I criticized in
my post. If you are going to present ideas you need to be able to defend
them and to engage with others - it's not enough to give us more of the
same. Nothing you say in your last message addresses why you think I am
wrong about your lack of a genuine emergence concept and why that lack does
not make you a determinist in the way I suggested. If you are not prepared
to do that, then perhaps you should be a "lurker" on the list. But I will
make two quick comments.

First, you wrote that "[what the first person pronoun "I" entails]
represents a phenomenon of nature that not only is subject to the laws of
nature, but also employs these laws as instruments of personal, first-person
control of the material world." You write as if no one ever noticed before
that not only are we subject to laws of nature, but we use them to control
things in the material world. Hello! - ever hear of Marx, toasters, nuclear
weapons, engineering, etc.? Then you proceed to say that that elementary
observation "clearly...does flat contradict the mechanistic point of view
that has dominated the natural sciences, particularly including the physical
and biological sciences with which you are most familiar." In other words,
the fact that thinking agents use technology as means of controlling things
is supposed to be a "clear" and "flat" contradiction of the mechanistic
point of view. Fred, it flies in the face of the facts to think that those
who have held mechanistic points of view have never been able to come up
with a mechanistic theory of mind that accommodates your refuting
observation, at least prima facie. Hello! - ever hear of mind/brain
identity theories, artificial intelligence based on computer
representations, etc.? I'm not saying those theories are satisfactory, but
their unsatisfactory nature can't be overcome simply by pointing out that we
are thinking agents who use laws of nature to make things happen. 

Second, your bringing in the notion of chance and indeterminacy does little
to refute a mechanistic point of view, which already has subsisted with the
indeterminacy of quantum mechanics very nicely for close to a century.
Mechanists are not trembling at your comments. The addition of
indeterminacy to a mechanistic world just means being buffeted by
indeterminate events, in contrast to events that were mechanistically
predetermined, does not show how it is that we are active and rational
agents and how our agency fits into society.


Louis Irwin

-----Original Message-----
From: critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Fred
Zaman
Sent: Friday, June 29, 2007 12:06 PM
To: Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List
Subject: [Critical-Realism] Bhaskarian "aleatory materialism"


Louis, The question seems off-kilter because it has been 
deliberately constructed within a conceptual framework that is 
alien to the natural sciences. Viewed within this framework, your 
very life and everything that you do is accomplished by virtue of 
your instrumental employment of nature's laws. When you move your 
body or any part thereof, you are employing the laws of nature 
thus, as they have been instantiated within your body 
physiologically. All your perceptions, thoughts, feelings, etc, 
everything conventionally known as the subjective, similarly are 
manifestations of your employment of nature's laws as they have 
been instantiated within your body physiologically. The material 
world that you control thus includes the physical body in which 
your "subjective self" is co-located. You must, in order to truly 
understand the substance of my postings and the essay on which 
they have been based, recognize the fundamentally different 
position taken on what the first person pronoun "I" entails. It 
represents a phenomenon of nature that not only is subject to the 
laws of nature, but also employs these laws as instruments of 
personal, first-person control of the material world. Does any of 
this contradict the empirically validated knowledge we possess in 
science? Not at all. But clearly it does flat contradict the 
mechanistic point of view that has dominated the natural 
sciences, particularly including the physical and biological 
sciences with which you are most familiar.

With regard to the subject of emergence, in a more theoretical 
vein, what I view emergence to entail, is based on the following 
definition of "aleatory materialism," a concept first developed 
by Louis Althusser:

Here defined, "aleatory materialism" is one in which chance, 
meaning a random variation not explained by laws that otherwise 
are deterministic, itself functions--in nature, the individual, 
and society--as an active agent that in essence employs nature's 
laws as its instruments of control. The contingencies of which, 
from the first-person perspective, collectively constitute the 
subjective, personal being--earlier personalized in social 
settings as Nostromo--that is the primal source of the Bhaskarian 
dialectic and pulse of freedom: in nature, the individual, and 
society.

Under this definition, it is further hypothesized that "second-
order" aleatory systems are determined by a high-level, holistic 
mechanics that can be empirically demonstrated to be grounded in 
evolved homologues of the laws governing lower-level, first-order 
systems. The variation due to chance, whether in nature, the 
individual, or society, thus in essence is the creative agent 
responsible for the emergence of diverse phenomena that at the 
highest levels of development include the Bhaskarian "pulse of 
freedom;" where this "agent's" instruments of creation and 
control are then nature's laws. The "Bhaskarian aleatory 
materialism" thus defined has been the implicit foundation of the 
essay "A Critical-Realist Theory of America," now changed to "The 
Bhaskarian Dialectic of Freedom in America." This essay organizes 
and explains the issues CR is concerned about within an American 
context; and furthermore makes predictions regarding the 
dialectical "pulse of freedom" in America that current events 
indicate are truly coming to pass. This approach, I believe, will 
provide a more systemic, less philosophical foundation for 
Bhaskar's "Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom," as this has been 
expressed in the American quest for freedom that has emerged over 
the past 400 years and dominated US geo-political history.

CR presently seems to be more concerned with developing the 
"philosophy of science," but this can change. Grounded in the 
above "aleatory" materialism, CR is transformed into an 
alternative "philosophy for science" in which subjective agency 
becomes central. A Bhaskarian-inspired aleatory materialism 
brings to front and center the role actively played by chance in 
the emergence of organizational and functional complexity-in 
nature, individual development, and societal evolution. It 
thereby becomes a proscription for the doing of science in the 
future that causally links society to the natural world. Aleatory 
materialism is the materialism of open systems that, instead of 
evolving downward into thermodynamic heat death, spontaneously 
evolves upward toward ever greater complexity of organization and 
functionality under the agency of chance. Aleatory materialism, 
understood within a Bhaskarian framework, becomes the causal 
foundation of emergence in nature, the individual, and society.

Fred


 
---------------------------------
It's here! Your new message!
Get new email alerts with the free Yahoo! Toolbar.
_______________________________________________
Critical-Realism mailing list
Critical-Realism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism