More on Elsa Lanchester

["Barry Buitekant" <Barry.Buitekant@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>> James Farmelant <farmelantj@xxxxxxxx> 10/22/99 11:11AM >>>

On Fri, 22 Oct 1999 09:51:20 -0400 "Charles Brown"
<CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
>Yes , Bhaskar has been associated with developing a position called
>Critical Realism. I just noticed that one of the positions Lenin
>polemicized against in _Materialism and Empirio-criticism_ was called
>"critical realism". Someone named Yushkevich wrote _ Materialism and
>Critical Realism_.

There was in American and British philosophy a school of critical
realists which included such figures as R.W. Sellars, George
Santayana, Dawes Hicks amongst others.  Like other realists
they insisted on the reality of an external world which exists
regardless of whether anybody perceives it or not. Unlike
other realists they contended that we ever directly perceive
objects in the external world but only their appearances
or sense-data from which we infer their existence.

((((((((((((((

Charles: This part sounds similar to the Machism Lenin discusses.( I think you 
mean
"never" not "ever" ?). Although, Mach seems to reduce to a Kantian position that
things-in-themselves exist but we cannot know them.

((((((((


  In this
regard their view was not unlike that of the idealists who
had dominated anglophone philosophy up to them but
they held that there were actual objects behind the
appearances.  Critical realism thus represented an
attempted at synthesizing the insights of naive realism
with idealism.  This was probably the school that Lenin
had in mind.

Bhaskar's critical realism is like this earlier school in that
he insists that our perceptions of the world are never
direct but are always mediated.  Whereas for the earlier
critical realists this mediation was via sense-data or the
like for Bhaskar this mediation is always a social process.

((((((((((

Charles: Up to this point, it sounds like Marxism, which holds that the 
mediation is
through social practice or labor and , importantly, the division of labor 
between
predominantly mental laborers and predominantly physical labors, and exploiting 
and
exploited classes.


(((((((((((



Our perceptions of the world are for Bhaskar always
mediated through the ideas which we acquire from the
societies in which we live.  This thesis is closely linked
to Bhaskar's thesis that reality stratified, that is the
real world consists of different layers or strata which
we can penetrate as our scientific understanding of it
becomes more and more comprehensive.

(((((((((((

Charles: This sounds like levels of organization or levels of emergence. Soviet
philosopher Alexander Spirkin discusses this in _Dialectical Materialism_ in his
chapter "Systems of Categories of Philosophical Thought" under the heading " the
impossibility of reducing one structural level of matter to another" . He says 
" What
distinguishes the dialectical conception of matter is its denial of the 
possibility of
reducing matter to one or a few simple forms, as mechanistic materialism does.  
I'm
not sure , but this may the barrier to unified field theory that Einstein 
couldn't
develop.

(((((((((((




This implies
that there necessarily exists a distinction between
essence and appearance.  The job of science is to
penetrate appearances to reach the underlying
essences which may in themselves not be accessible
to empirical observation.

((((((((

Charles: Spirkin has a section on "Essence and Phenomenon"

((((((((((((

These theses ground Bhaskar's notion of critique.
The correct understanding of reality requires that
we become critical of currently existing social reality
because the epistemologies, philosophical theses
etc. that mediate our perception of reality are generated
are reflections of the society in which they are generated
and sustained but which may very well be confused
and misleading.  Therefore, a critique of these misleading
or distorted ideas must lead us into a critique of the
society which fosters these ideas as a necessary part
of its functioning.

Therefore, while the older school of critical realism sought
to resolve the contradictions between traditional or naive
realism and idealism, Bhaskar's critical realism seeks
to synthesize the insights of realism and of an epistemological
relativism which portrays scientific knowlege as a cultural
product.  This latter view has been widely promulgated by
the pomos.  Bhaskar agrees with them but he also insists
that science does give us knowledge about objectively
given real worlds as well.

((((((((((((

Charles: It really is interesting how this still seems to revolve around the 
same
issues that Lenin got into in *MEC*. The pomos seem like neo-Kantians. Not only 
was
there a "critical realist"  but French symbolists, like Levi-Straussian 
structuralism
underpins much pomo today. I think we are in philosophical cycles.

A key is : Is Bhaskar's " epistemological relativism based on cultural 
difference "  a
"cultural difference" of a class society in which the antagonism between 
predominantly
physical and predominantly mental laborers is reflected in this distortion of
epistemology ?

As Christopher Caudwell says in the Introduction to _Illusion and Reality_:

"For once it had become plain that the errors of philosophy were due to its
abstractions of subject from object, it also became clear that the active
subject-object relation was nothing but man (sic) living in nature. Not an 
abstract
man in abstract nature, but men as they really live and behave, who must live
concretely before they come to speculate abstractly, and whose abstract 
speculations
therefore will bear the marks of their concrete living. Marx saw that the 
separation
of subject in enjoyment and object in contemplation which had occurred in 
philosophy
was the abstract reflection of a similar cleavage in concrete living between the
conscious existence of the philosophizing class and the unconscious actions of 
the
remainder of society. Theory and practice were sundered in consciousness 
because they
were divided in social reality. "

^^^^^^^^^^^^^

So far, what I have learned of Bhaskar seems that he has rediscovered Marxism. 
But
afterall, Marx would have no ownership of ideas, intellectual property, and the 
name
"Marxism" is so stigmatized that Bhaskar may help with an end run around 
redbaiting.



CB

*************


Concerning Bhaskar's writings, I find most of his books to
be impenetrable but *The Dictionary of Marxist Thought*
ed. by Tom Bottomore et al. has a number of articles by
Bhaskar on philosophical topics relating to Marxism which
are quite lucid.  The Autumn issue of The Philosophers'
Magazine has an interview with Bhaskar as part of a symposium
on contemporary realism. (Also see their web site at:
http://www.philosophers.co.uk ).

Jim Farmelant

>
>CB
>
>>>> Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan@xxxxxxxxxx> 10/22/99 12:35AM >>>
>Roy Bhaskar has a lot to say that is relevant here, especially in
>_Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom_ and _Plato Etc_. He also has a very
>good
>essay on Marxist Philosophy - in a book the name of which escapes me
>at
>present. It would certainly be wroth a discussion corner on this list.
>Bhaskar is currently  I believe working on a fuller treatment of Marx
>and
>Hegel.
>
>
>

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