Science for Communists?

[Young Master Smeet]

OK, so a Janet & John descxription of Criticial Realism can be found at:CRITICAL REALISM IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS RESEARCH.  MIS Quarterly. Sep2013, Vol. 37 Issue 3, p795-802. 8p.

Quote:

We can now describe the critical realist scientific methodology, what Bhaskar calls retroduction (this is essentially the same as “abduction,” as developed by C. S. Peirce (1931– 1958, ss. 5.145) in contrast to induction and deduction). We take some unexplained phenomenon that is of interest to us and propose hypothetical mechanisms that, if they existed,would generate or cause that which is to be explained. So, we move from experiences in the empirical domain to possible structures or mechanisms in the real domain. This is the essential methodological step in CR studies: to move from descriptions of empirical events or regularities to potential causal mechanisms, of a variety of kinds, some of which may be nonphysical and nonobservable, the interaction of which could potentially have generated the events. Such hypotheses do not, of course, prove that the mechanisms do in fact exist. And, we may have competing explanations proposed, so there is then a further stage within the methodology in which more research has to be carried out to try and eliminate some of the explanations and perhaps support others.

This strikes me as being different from what LBird has espoused, beginning with theory, and then delving in.  Here we start with observations and retroduce a workable model.  In rpactice, though, it doesn't, as I've noted before, seem to change anything about how science is performed, since it still requires data, experiement and evidence to reject variant explanations.Anyway, they also state:

Quote:

• CR defends a strongly realist ontology that there is an existing, causally efficacious, world independent of our knowledge. It defends this against both classical positivism that would reduce the world to that which can be empirically observed and measured, and the various forms of constructivism that would reduce the world to our human knowledge of it. Hence it is realist.• CR recognizes that our access to this world is in fact limited and always mediated by our perceptual and theoretical lenses. It accepts epistemic relativity (that knowledge is always local and historical), but not judgmental relativity (that all viewpoints must be equally valid).  Hence it is critical in a Kantian sense.• CR accepts the existence of different types of objects of knowledge—physical, social, and conceptual—which have different ontological and epistemological characteristics. They therefore require a range of different research methods and methodologies to access them. Since a particular object of research may well have different characteristics, it is likely that a mixed-method research strategy (i.e., a variety of methods in the same research study) will be necessary and CR supports this.

[LBird]

YMS wrote:

This strikes me as being different from what LBird has espoused…

What bit about 'engagement and discussion' do people on this site not understand?Anything (videos, links, summaries, extracts) but 'engagement and discussion' with me.

YMS wrote:

In rpactice, though, it doesn't, as I've noted before, seem to change anything about how science is performed, since it still requires data, experiement and evidence to reject variant explanations.

Again, what bit about 'theory and PRACTICE' don't you understand, YMS?Y'know, it's like talking to the bloody wall.No matter how many times I say 'theory and practice' upon 'an external reality', we keep getting a regression to materialist/positivist/physicalist 'Janet and John' childhood.LBird ignores 'practice'; LBird is an 'idealist'; LBird denies 'reality', LBird is a 'PostModernist', etc.YMS, will you ever read what I write? Will you and the others ever respond to what I say, rather than your own made-up fantasies?

[LBird]

Johannes Kepler, in Astronomia Nova, regarding Mars, wrote:

…the observation took the side of my preconceived ideas, as they often did before.

[my bold]Physics as 'theory and practice'.Kepler backs up Einstein's "it's the theory that determines what we observe".

[Young Master Smeet]

A bit more:

Quote:

Having established the intransitive objects of knowledge, we must recognize that the production of knowledge is very much the work of humans, and occurs in what we could call the transitive dimension (Bhaskar 1989, p. 18). Acknowledging the work of sociologists, the practice of science is a  social process drawing on existing theories, results, anomalies, and conjectures (the transitive objects of knowledge) to generate improved knowledge of science’s intransitive objects. This distinction allows us to admit the epistemic relativity of science, the fact that knowledge is always historically and socially located, without losing the ontological dimension.  We should also note that such epistemic relativity does not imply a corresponding judgmental relativity (i.e., that all views are equally valid and that there are no  rational grounds for choosing between them).

(Ibid., My bold) I think this is what set off alarm bells when Lbird began, but as we can see from the above, really, this isn't much different from what Asimov said about degrees of wrongness.  The sun didn't go round the Earth, it was just good science to say it did.  This was wrong, and has been disproved, and no good science can make it right again.

[LBird]

YMS wrote:

This was wrong, and has been disproved, and no good science can make it right again.

You still don't get it, do you, YMS?

[Young Master Smeet]

I'm not sure what to get, other than that four or five paragraphs in a journal article seemed to explain CR more clearly than you have over a couple of months.

[LBird]

YMS wrote:

The sun didn't go round the Earth, it was just good science to say it did. This was wrong, and has been disproved [presumably, by more ‘good science’], and no good science can make it right again.

[my bold and insert]Can’t you see the philosophical problems with this, YMS?Your ‘good science’ seems to say ‘yes, black’ then say ‘no, white’. Other examples could be found to display your ‘good science’ saying ‘yes, black’, ‘no,white’, ‘oh err… grey’, ‘oops, it’s brown’, ‘hang on a mo… this time it’s definitely blue’, ‘ahhh, it had us fooled a bit, then, it’s red! Deffo!’, ‘damn and blast , it was black all the time…’, ‘Fuckin’ hell, now that bastard Einstein says it’s a spectrum of colours!’.The fact that you use the term ‘good science’ suggests that you can identify ‘bad science’, too. But who are these scientists employing ‘bad science’? Or are scientists only ‘good’ when they use your particular version of ‘good’?Unless we accept the actual results of science, that tell us that ‘truth’ has a history, so that we can determine when something became ‘black’, ‘white’, ‘grey’, etc., and when it ceased being so, and realise that we can’t keep pretending that the results ‘now’ are the ‘really deffo, ‘truth’, no probs!’, then we’ll continue with this elitist charade that ‘scientists produce The Truth’, and will remain beholden to their authority.All you’re saying, YMS, is that the latest ‘truth’ is ‘Really True!’.It isn’t, ‘truth’ is socially produced, and while we’re not in control of everything produced by humans, we won’t have a Communist society.Perhaps, instead of putting ‘QED’ after scientific results, you’d prefer them to put ‘Honest, Guv!’. And you’d believe them…

[Young Master Smeet]

Well, a clear example of bad science would be throwing mice off a tower and reading their entrails to predict the weather (myomancy).  I think we can both agree that that is bad science now (although, I'd happily accept that taking a handful of mushrooms, staring at a river and deciding that river spirits moved it was once good science).  Then our capabilities changed, and previous accounts became unsupportable.  Since there is a real world out there that filters out inaccurate statements, what we have left is degrees of wrongness.  The latest "truth" is the best we can do (and we can make a value judgement between the quality of efforts to understand the world, according to CR).

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

I'm not sure what to get, other than that four or five paragraphs in a journal article seemed to explain CR more clearly than you have over a couple of months.

But it hasn't!The CR explanation you've found is bollocks! It doesn't agree with Marx, for example, and doesn't provide a basis for Communists to take science forward. That text is just good, old-fashioned, induction. It only 'seems to explain' because it fits with your own ideology of science (which you won't declare, so either you don't know you have one, or you're a bluffer).You really do believe anything academics write, don't you, YMS?What part of 'the world turned upside down' don't you understand about revolution?

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

Well, a clear example of bad science would be throwing mice off a tower and reading their entrails to predict the weather (myomancy).  I think we can both agree that that is bad science now (although, I'd happily accept that taking a handful of mushrooms, staring at a river and deciding that river spirits moved it was once good science).  Then our capabilities changed, and previous accounts became unsupportable.  Since there is a real world out there that filters out inaccurate statements, what we have left is degrees of wrongness.  The latest "truth" is the best we can do (and we can make a value judgement between the quality of efforts to understand the world, according to CR).

This is just contradictory drivel, and undermines most of the arguments you've been making about 'good science'.Who is 'we'?Who determines 'best'?Who determines 'value'?Who determines 'quality'?Either 'elite scientists' or 'humans'. Either by minority or by democracy.Which one best suits Communism?

[Young Master Smeet]

Hmmm.  The plot chickens.Retroduction:

Quote:

Retroduction is a method of conceptualising which requires the researcher to identify the circumstances without which something (the concept) cannot exist.

and

Quote:

Retroduction differs to deduction in that it is not 'logical'. In the analysis of research, retroductive inference will not move a researcher from a basic premise or hypothesis to a conclusion (Danermark et al. 1997). Moreover, unlike abductive inference, the researcher must bring assumptions to the research when employing retroductive inference. It is the a priori knowledge which allows the researcher to move beyond, and to begin to question and clarify the basic prerequisites or 'conditions' for a priori assumptions or theoretical frameworks.

http://www.socresonline.org.uk/18/1/12.htmlThis seems to accord with the previous quotation from the MIS paper.  So I suspect that that source was accurate and reliable, and my opinion remains the same.By we I mean Soylent Green.  Soylent Green determines what is best, what is value, what is quality.

[LBird]

YMS wrote:

This seems to accord with the previous quotation from the MIS paper. So I suspect that that source was accurate and reliable, and my opinion remains the same.

And nothing to do with the thread title 'Science for Communists?'.That's what I want to discuss, not your mistaken opinions about some mistaken academics' opinions about an incorrect variety of Critical Realism.When will critical discussion start on this thread?

[Young Master Smeet]

Well, you kept askign for us to discuss CR, I went out and did more reading than I feel it warrants in my life, and still you're not satisfied.  i suspect that unless all post to say "I agree wholeheartedly with LBird" you'll be disatisfied.  I've discussed Science and Socialism, and heard nothing back.  I discuss Critical Realism, and get nothingback.Maybe we should leave it to Soylent Green to decide.

[LBird]

YMS wrote:

Well, you kept askign for us to discuss CR, I went out and did more reading …

[my bold]Can't you tell the difference between 'discussion' and 'reading', YMS?One is social, interactive and critical, the other is individual, isolated and trusting – guess which one you chose, given your ideology?You have the chance to discuss with Communists, or passively accept what non-revolutionary academics tell you – guess which one you chose…

YMS wrote:

i suspect that unless all post to say "I agree wholeheartedly with LBird" you'll be disatisfied.

The words of someone both fearful of discussion and of being persuaded.Can't you stand up for your ideology, YMS? I can stand up for Communism.

YMS wrote:

I've discussed Science and Socialism, and heard nothing back. I discuss Critical Realism, and get nothingback.

You haven't discussed anything, YMS. You keep telling me what liberal and conservative academics say (and you uncritically accept their word), but not discussing what is your (or their) ideological position on science.

[Young Master Smeet]

I made two comments:1) That the methodological  aspects of CR don't sound too disimilar to existing science's rationale's and practices.2) Following from this, that CR doesn't cound like it matters much.Neither of which Lbird chose to rebut.Further, I pointed out that my reading suggested that while CR does propose that knowledge is historical, not all truth claims about the world can be treated as equally valid, and that it proposes that there is a real world which limits (to my mind Holmes' style) the statements we can validly make about the world.  This seems to me to be in contradiction to Lbird's apparent claims early that the Sun going round the earth was true until scientific ideology changed.  Whereas I'd suggest that it was a valid claim, until new facts and methodologies arrived, and now cannot be rendered true again (unless significant new facts emerge).On that latter point, I was flicking through Asmimov on science last night, and he posits that induction doesn't provide eternal truths.  Now, that struck me as interesting, because 'd have thought Asimov would represent the acme of the scientist ideolgy Lbiord purports to oppose, and yet here he was agreeing with central premise.Indeed,. a quick visit to the Wikipedia page on Inductive reasoning:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_reasoningShows how uncertainty is a central part of the description.  So Lbirds apprehension of scientists ex cathedra priestlike certainty seems misplaced, by several degrees.So, I came to discuss, based on a bit of reading, and Lbird chose not to discuss.Perhaps Lbird would like to clarify:1) Why retroduction should be chosen over induction.2) The extent to which they understands reality imposes limits on truth claims (and thence on ideology).

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