Brian Noble wrote:
>
> In science studies, this "great debate" has for many now been put to rest.
> For a very specific discussion of this, please see Bruno Latour's most
> recent book "Pandora's Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies",
> especially his opening chapter, where Latour recounts his exchange with an
> animal ethologist who asked Latour whether he "believed in reality".
[snip]
I find Latour kind of "thin", compared with Husserl and those who
have seriously elaborated his work. Ditto, people like Richard
Rorty. But certainly these persons' relatively "lightweight"
positions are less worse than either the Derridadaists et al. on the
one hand, and the scientistic "realists" on the other hand.
> Perhaps, it would be better to have a discussion focussed on a question lik=
> e
>
> "How should be reconfigure our practices for better and more effective
> outcomes that move beyond the endless polemics of the unreconcilable
> dichotomy posed by the great debate?"
[snip]
I would urge (putting on my Gadamer / Habermas hat, now), that
the first and always most important thing we should pursue
is to reflectively examine this discussion we are in [whatever
discussion each of us finds themself in in each here-and-now], for,
when all is said and done, "the conversation we are"
is far more robustly real and knowable than any of the
objects of discourse which we may bring into it. And,
even beyond epistemological questions, "the conversation we
are" is a universal court of judgment upon the world, i.e.,
it is the locus of "the good which is beyond being".
Mankind is not the master of all the things that are,
But Everyman (woman, child) is a judge of the world.
"Reality", whatever it may consist of, is ultimately
the raw material for our creative construction of what
not merely "is", but is *good*: All that which merely is
is a semiotic smorgasbord for creative
re-model-ing by those who participate in the conversation
(contrast with those anthropoid animals which are called
"persons" but, because they are *objects* of conversation
and not full participants in it, are only equivocally human:
students, employees, etc).
I propose that an ultimate ontological distinction is
between "talking about" (CxOs, e.g.) and being *talked about*
(employees, e.g.).
+\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [log in to unmask]
914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua NY 10514-3403 USA
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