Subject: Re: The premises extracted
Date: Mon, 05 Feb 2001 18:55:15 -0700



Ruth,

I'd like to take a guess why you consider the facts about
the world which Bhaskar infers by transcendental or
second-order arguments from experimental activity etc. as
"ways of thinking about things":  because they cannot
directly be confirmed or disconfirmed by empirical evidence.
Any sequence of events which we experience in our world
could also be experienced in a properly programmed
hyper-deterministic world, or in a society in which
methodological individualism is the right approach, or in a
flat empirical world in which God causes all events to
happen, etc.  These second-order arguments are a different
approach to knowledge: it is a knowledge which is impossible
to obtain by passive observation of the world.  It is a kind
of knowledge which allows us to get a perspective on the
empirical facts, and therefore you like to view it as a "way
of thinking about things."

Am I guessing right?


This irreducibility of philosophical ontology to the
substantive sciences has very important implications for
ideology, which I am trying to heed in my undergraduate
classes about Marx's Capital:  if people are not told by
someone that methodological individualism is wrong or even
that there are alternatives to it, chances are slim that
they will discover this by themselves.  This is why so many
people who are very knowledgeable about the facts still
cannot see capitalism.  I think Critical Realism should
be taught in High Schools.


Shall we go in in the readings?  If we do, this does not
preclude you from sending something to the list which ties
into some of the unfinished business which we still have,
and it might give is new material for answering those
questions.


Hans.


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