[Young Master Smeet]

In some of the debates around ideology, a lot of time is spent on the phrase 'social being determines social consciousness' if 'determines' is taken as meaning causes, we have a problem, since that would suggest that social being will always produce consciousness and there is no way out of the consciousness of the reproduction of everyday life.  One move is to say 'determines' means sets limits, as in determining a boundary.  In this way social beiong just sets limits (which can be tested) and ideas can change and varyy with greater ease.It becomes valuable, therefore, to also say that reality edtermines science, i.e. that reality sets limits on the truth claims that can be made about it.  We cannot claim that the Moon is made of Cadbury's Whispers.  No amount of distortion can change that.  Seen in that way, a science that corresponds with reality is possible, and a non-ideolofgical science is possible.  This non-ideological science may well be historical, since the truth claims it makes are determined by its social being, but in the sense of limits, not causes.

[Young Master Smeet]

I think this topic is slightly too important to let go, and get distracted with personalities.Marx' dialogue with Bakunin is highly relevent to thius topic.  Indeed, Bakunin takes a science skeptic view:https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/1873/statism-anarchy.htm

Bakunin wrote:

We must respect the scientists for their merits and achievements, but in order to prevent them from corrupting their own high moral and intellectual standards, they should be granted no special privileges and no rights other than those possessed by everyone – for example, the liberty to express their convictions, thought, and knowledge. Neither they nor any other special group should be given power over others. He who is given power will inevitably become an oppressor and exploiter of society.But we are told: “Science will not always he the patrimony of a few. There will come a time when it will be accessible to all.” Such a time is still far away and there will be many social upheavals before this dream will come true, and even then, who would want to put his fate in the hands of the priests of science?It seems to us that anyone who thinks that after a social revolution everybody will be equally educated is very much mistaken. Science, then as now, will remain one of the many specialized fields, though it will cease to be accessible only to a very few of the privileged class. With the elimination of class distinctions, education will be within the reach of all those who will have the ability and the desire to pursue it, but not to the detriment of manual labor, which will be compulsory for all.

Indeed, Bakunin was right that scientists should not be given special privileges, however, his rejection of the democratic method, which Marx also opposed, is his weak point (along with a his kind of romantic anti-science that rejects sociology on principle).Obviously, if we are to run society on rational lines, we need the best6 evidence we can get, and we would need a free and independent field of enquiry, else we'd be like foolish bosses who surround themselves with yesfolks.

[Young Master Smeet]

Well, it seems to be Marx' theory

Quote:

they no longer need to seek science in their minds; they have only to take note of what is happening before their eyes and to become its mouthpiece.

So Lbird doesn't agree with Marx, neither.  I also have to wonder when "our" became a singular pronoun.In any event, the above extracts tell us a couple of interesting things.  that Marx' socialism was not some sort of scientism (of which he has been sometimes accused) nor technocratic, but that "scientific" was merely a designator to oppose Utopian socialists, and also that Marx did not consider that any sort of superior elite would run society on everyone's behalf.  Also, this relates to how democratic Marx' vision of revolution was, again, he puts the class, active for itself at the centre stage.That is the "social movement made by the people itself;" which does indeed include scientific workers of all stripes.  The call is to be conscious of both what this movement does, and what it can achieve.  But, note, Marx' call to "limit" that consciousness to that active role.

[Young Master Smeet]

I thought we were discussing what Marx said: we know reality because it's before our eyes and we act upon/within it and change it (and in so doing are changed ourselves).

[Young Master Smeet]

Quote:

they no longer need to seek science in their minds; they have only to take note of what is happening before their eyes and to become its mouthpiece.

that's pretty unequivocal, wouldn't you say?Hang on a sec.  You're a communist?  When did that happen?  I'm shocked.  Shocked and surprised.  I never knew.

[Young Master Smeet]

I suspect your interpollations are slightly redundant, "historical movement" can be understood to include "class struggle", I'd have thought.  It seems to me to be a call for the Socialists, "the theoreticians of the proletarian class" to align itself with the realiy of the class struggle, instead of aligning with abstract utopian models of how a society could work, and instead seek to understand "they have only to take note of what is happening before their eyes and to become its mouthpiece."  The "Doctrinaire science" Marx is addressing is the utopian science of the working class, not the bourgeoisie.  Teh reality of class struggle imposes itself above and beyond theory.That's how I'd read the section.  Science has to follow reality.

[Young Master Smeet]

Charlie's argument with Bakunin is one of my favourite docs.  here it is again:https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1874/04/bakunin-notes.htm

Quote:

Bakunin wrote:

'scientific socialism'…

Charlie wrote:

…was only used in opposition to utopian socialism, which wants to attach the people to new delusions, instead of limiting its science to the knowledge of the social movement made by the people itself; see my text against Proudhon.

Bakunin wrote:

…which is unceasingly found in the works and speeches of the Lasalleans and Marxists, itself indicates that the so-called people's state will be nothing else than the very despotic guidance of the mass of the people by a new and numerically very small aristocracy of the genuine or supposedly educated. The people are not scientific, which means that they will be entirely freed from the cares of government, they will be entirely shut up in the stable of the governed. A fine liberation! The Marxists sense this (!) contradiction and, knowing that the government of the educated (quelle reverie) will be the most oppressive, most detestable, most despised in the world, a real dictatorship despite all democratic forms, console themselves with the thought that this dictatorship will only be transitional and short.

Charlie wrote:

Non, mon cher! — That the class rule of the workers over the strata of the old world whom they have been fighting can only exist as long as the economic basis of class existence is not destroyed.

And herewith Chucks section from his blast against proudhon:

Quote:

Just as the economists are the scientific representatives of the bourgeois class, so the Socialists and Communists are the theoreticians of the proletarian class. So long as the proletariat is not yet sufficiently developed to constitute itself as a class, and consequently so long as the struggle itself of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie has not yet assumed a political character, and the productive forces are not yet sufficiently developed in the bosom of the bourgeoisie itself to enable us to catch a glimpse of the material conditions necessary for the emancipation of the proletariat and for the formation of a new society, these theoreticians are merely utopians who, to meet the wants of the oppressed classes, improvise systems and go in search of a regenerating science. But in the measure that history moves forward, and with it the struggle of the proletariat assumes clearer outlines, they no longer need to seek science in their minds; they have only to take note of what is happening before their eyes and to become its mouthpiece. So long as they look for science and merely make systems, so long as they are at the beginning of the struggle, they see in poverty nothing but poverty, without seeing in it the revolutionary, subversive side, which will overthrow the old society. From this moment, science, which is a product of the historical movement, has associated itself consciously with it, has ceased to be doctrinaire and has become revolutionary.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/poverty-philosophy/ch02.htmIn some ways, quite relevent to this discussion. 

[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).

[Young Master Smeet]

I think I'd prefer to say that politics is about who gets to make decisions, not about the decisions that are made.  Electing a committee for a cake sale is apolitical, even if there is a hot dispute about whetehr to hodl the cake sale in a garden or in a hall (Aside: an example I use on the stump if the letters page of the Camden New Journal, where the debate raged ovr the siting of the 263, IIRC, bus stop in Hampstead.  Now, obviously, that's an area where people have the time, education, confidence and willingness to really through themselves into a debate like that.  It was viscious.  That's what I want socialism to be like, and endless debate about small things).

Quote:

bakunin wrote:

Will the entire proletariat perhaps stand at the head of the government?

Marx wrote:

In a trade union, for example, does the whole union form its executive committee? Will all division of labour in the factory, and the various functions that correspond to this, cease? And in Bakunin's constitution, will all 'from bottom to top' be 'at the top'? Then there will certainly be no one 'at the bottom'. Will all members of the commune simultaneously manage the interests of its territory? Then there will be no distinction between commune and territory.

Bakunin wrote:

The Germans number around forty million. Will for example all forty million be member of the government?

Marx wrote:

Certainly! Since the whole thing begins with the self-government of the commune.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1874/04/bakunin-notes.htm(Also:

Quote:

Election is a political form present in the smallest Russian commune and artel. The character of the election does not depend on this name, but on the economic foundation, the economic situation of the voters, and as soon as the functions have ceased to be political ones, there exists 1) no government function, 2) the distribution of the general functions has become a business matter, that gives no one domination, 3) election has nothing of its present political character.

)Charlie is particularly clear in this document, and it illustrates socialism/anarchism nicely.

[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.

[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.

[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).

[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.

[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.

[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.

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