On Sat, 30 Oct 1999 15:50:16 +0100 "Vikash Yadav" <vikash1 at ssc.upenn.edu>
writes:
>Dear Jim,
>A few quick points...
>Not just Foucault but virtually all pomos attempt to do away
>with the distinctions between ideology and truth, ideology
>and science.
Quite right, and Foucault was hardly the worst offender in this regard either.
>1. Why do you believe that ideology and truth are always mutually
>exclusive
>categories?
My position is that science is not ideology, since one of the defining characteristics of ideology is that it is unscientific. Science can, however, contain unscientific ideological elements but it is despite them that it is science. Science in class societies is suscptible to ideological distortions of various kinds (i.e. social Darwinism, "scientific" racism, sociological theories of "cultural deprivation" and the like) but from that fact it does not follow that science itself is inherently ideological.
> I don't think that 'virtually all' post-modernists deny
>the
>existence of scientific truth.
But they do in fact tend to treat science itself as just another ideology not inherently different from say theology or other nonscientific modes of discourse.
> From what I can tell post modernists
>see
>scientific technologies as real, social and narrative all at once (see
>for
>example, Law and Hassard, Actor Network Theory and After, 1999, p.
>22).
>That is why they cannot account for the efficacy
>of science in the prediction, control , and the understanding
>of natural phenomena.
>>2. I think you do a disservice to the scientific process to portray it
>>as so
>>efficient and rational. Science can only be considered rational and
>>efficient through a process of narrative re-construction.
Writers like Kuhn & Feyerabend in combatting what they saw as the inadequacies of the traditional positivist and empiricist accounts clearly IMO bent the stick too much in the other direction. Both of them underplayed the role of irrationality for the sake of making the otherwise valid point that not everything that occurs in science is reducible to some algorithm. The pomos if anything pushed the idea that science is not necessarily rational even further than Kuhn & Feyerabend were ever inclined.
> There seems
>>to be
>>a belief that through 'falsification' science achieves efficiency and
>>rationality.
Popper thought that falsifiability was a necessary property for a theory to be scientific. I would suggest that he was correct on that score even though I would insist that being falsifiable is not enough and my understanding of what it means to be falsifiable may be different from Popper's.
> However, it is neither wise nor logical for a scientist
>>to
>>discard a theory because of empirical falsification. There is always
>>the
>>possibility that the empirical evidence was incorrect or that the
>>technology
>>to measure an empirical phenomenon was not accurate enough to conform
>>to the
>>theory.
Even Popper accepted these qualifications of his doctrine that scientific theories must be falsifiable. Remember, that one of Popper's basic arguments for the falsifiability doctrine was that the traditional notion that the testing of scientific theories seeks to verify them involved in Popper's analysis the fallacy of affirming the consequent. The thesis that scientific tests are instead intended to try to falsify theories was in Popper's view the more logical position. However, it soon became clear that this position required qualification since we cannot assert that some observation or other piece of evidence definately refutes a hyothesis unless we are assuming that such observations or evidence are verifying a hypothesis that is contradictory to the one that is being falsified. It is evident that this too would involve the same fallacy of affirming the consequent.
> Progress in science does not occur through falsification, but
>>by
>>the development of progressive research programs that continue to ask
>>and
>>answer interesting questions.
I would agree that scientific progress does not depend solely on falsification but it is one necessary precondition for it to occur.
>> I do not want to belabor old debates in
>>the
>>philosophy of science, which have been dealt with elsewhere please see
>>Imre
>>Lakatos, Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge.
Lakatos as I recall was critical of many aspect's of Kuhn's work even though he agreed with him on the need for a historicized approach to the philosophy of science.
>This is also why a pomo Marxism
>is untenable (Doug take note).
>3. There have been very few radical, original, and influential
>Marxists
>thinkers since Marx and Engels. Only Georges Sorel comes to mind.
>Perhaps
>it is not such a bad idea if Marxists were a bit more eclectic?
It is not necessarily a bad idea but Marxists should be careful about who they choose to keep company with.
Jim Farmelant
>Vikash Yadav
>St. Antony's College, Oxford
>
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