Re: [Critical-Realism] Side note on clear writing and Bourdieu

["Mervyn Hartwig" <mh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Tobin

>I did NOT agree that "de-ont" has a double meaning of absence and
constraint

This is not what  I claimed at all, so misconstrual is by no means all on my
part.

I thought very carefully about that entry, so naturally if you're going to
describe its interpretation as "fanciful" I will have a thing or two to say.
I admit to being wrong about one thing - how much fallibilism do you want?
Your own opener on this topic was: "You obviously don't know the meaning of
deontology". Charming.

I know you've got the huff, but others might be interested to know that I
don't agree with your implication that putting a hyphen in "deont" somehow
disconnects it from its Greek root. Now that does seem fanciful. 

You don't find the correspondences interesting. That's fine. I do. It could
even be the case that a fundamental connection between bind/constraint and
lack/need is implicit in human praxis as such, so not just as it were made
in Bhaskar's head in the concept of absence.

Mervyn 



-----Original Message-----
From: critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Tobin
Nellhaus
Sent: 06 December 2007 00:27
To: Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List
Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Side note on clear writing and Bourdieu

> Seems to me you're splitting hairs, since you admit that there's a
> correspondence between the double meaning Bhaskar gives 'de-ont' (absence
> as
> bind or constraint on the one hand and as lack or need on the other) and
> the
> meanings of the old Greek root.

Oh for pete's sake, Mervyn.  Stop forcing words into others' mouths.  I did
NOT agree that "de-ont" has a double meaning of absence and constraint.  I
object to this conflationary notion completely.  The double meaning you
hinged your argument on was originally supposed to belong to "deon," and I
showed that you were producing a forced interpretion of the Greek in order 
to support your fanciful analysis.  Now you pretend "de-ont" has the same 
double meaning!  "De-onts" are absences of *all* sorts.  Some act as 
constraints, most don't; some constraints have to do with ethics, but most 
don't.

I had drafted a much more detailed reply to your post, but I decided it's a
waste of my time.  Mervyn, clearly you place more value on *being* right
than on *finding out* what's right.  There's no persuading you of anything,
because you believe that you are unerringly right all along -- unless
Bhaskar tells you otherwise, and even then, you continue to imagine you've
penetrated some great secret.  (Shades of the discussion about intellectual
capital that began this thread!)  To support your presumption, you
*persistently* misconstrue what I and others write, either to knock over a
straw man, or to claim victory.  But CR requires fallibilism.  So I'm not
going to continue this "discussion," because it isn't one.

T.

---
Tobin Nellhaus
nellhaus@xxxxxxxx
"Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce



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