Re: Larry Hoover is bipolar disordered
Larry Hoover
"LostBoyinNC" <DeepS...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1104946118.3...@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
> Larry also has a prior bipolar dx
I do not care about what you think of me, but I do care whether you lie about me. I
have never had a bipolar diagnosis. You have. Now fuck off.
Larry Hoover
> people DO NOT become irritable or more irritable from SSRIs.
> Irritability is a common symptom of major depression and SSRIs actually
> RELIEVE irritability in a unipolar major depressed person. They tend to
> worsen irritability or cause irritability that didnt exist before in
> bipolar disordered individuals. That is just the facts, ma'am. Sorry if
> you dont like to hear the hard, cold facts about SSRIs and
> irritability.
>
> Eric
My concerns were quite explicit, Eric. Don't lie about me. You go ahead and lie
about having ECT and whatever else you want. Keep me out of it.
CajunCutie
given antidepressants, the latest bein Lexapro and I'm always
irritable......i filed for disability and the state of course sent me to
their shrink who was the first person to tell me that he thought i had
bipolar and that Lithium would probably help me out....the local clinic
can't see me til the end of the month so i still take the Lexapro, but it's
not helping.
"LostBoyinNC" <DeepS...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1104974194....@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
Lucida
this is true.......i've always been diagnosed with major depression and
been
given antidepressants, the latest bein Lexapro and I'm always
irritable......i filed for disability and the state of course sent me
to
their shrink who was the first person to tell me that he thought i had
bipolar and that Lithium would probably help me out....the local clinic
can't see me til the end of the month so i still take the Lexapro, but
it's
not helping.
Lucida's reply:
Irritability can be the symptom of many things, up to and including
bipolar disorder. However, the problem here that you are likely not
aware of is that Eric is continually calling Larry bipolar, as he
thinks it is an insult. Eric is the one who is pretty much irritable
about everything. He also tends to believe that whatever he experiences
on a med is generalizable to everyone.
Eric has severe problems with his cognition, and has been diagnosed as
having dementia. Therefore, he posts a lot of stuff which may or may
not seem to make sense. However, he also has posted that he wants to
chase psychiatrists with a rake and he thinks that depression should be
treated by NASA scientists, so you have to keep it all in perspective.
He thinks he is an expert, the poor thing, because he has been sick for
so long and has ried many medications- none of which worked for him,
obviously. Even posts a rather amusing FAQ that he thinks is
"official." He keeps lists, too, as he seems to think that he is in
charge here, and tries to chase out anyone who contradicts him by
claiming that they are bipolar and therefore do not have the right to
post here. Maybe it would be easier to just humor his delusions, but I
keep hoping that he may finally get therapy which could help him better
manage his illness. It is obvious that medication alone is certainly
not helping him, and he will be the first to tell you how very, very
sick he is. (if you have any doubts, just google a bit...)
Here is hoping that you get in to the local clinic soon, and that you
get what you need to help you with your problems. Keep calling to see
if they have any cancellations. If they do, you may get in sooner. The
first time you call, be very nice to whomever answers and explain that
you are hoping to be seen sooner if there is a cancellation. Leave your
number to call, and ask him/her what the best time to call and check
would be. This way, they are more willing to help you out, and know
that you are reasonable to deal with. It certainly can't hurt, and if
you are bipolar (which you may or may not be- remember that this is
just one guy's opinion. You will need a better exam and usually some
testing to be sure) the sooner you get good treatment, the better.
Good luck!
Lucida
Lucida
Youre moving higher and higher on the anti-psychiatry poster list.
Pretty soon I will have to create "anti-psychiatry certified" status on
here. Im sure you will be APCertified on the NG pretty soon.
Lucida replies:
And to think that I won't even have to take a class or pay to be
tested. Eric, it is an honor to be "anti-psychiatry" by your warped
definition of the word. I am thinking that I might add this to my
resume. ;-P
(pokes Larry) Nyanyanyanyanya! I'm APC Certified, and you're not!
You have made my evening, Eric. I thank you!
Lucida
Lucida
> You will find out what I am going to do jobwise eventually. I will
> someday be in the news someday, raking havoc with psychiatry (not
> physical havoc) and straightening it out once and for all. I am going
> to turn that profession upside down and when Im done, they are going
to
> wish theyd never heard of me.
"Raking" havoc.... Where ya gonna get it? Ace Hardware or TRUValue? I
can just picture you, Eric, frothing at the mouth, chasing them with a
rake, yelling 'My Uncle is a SCIENTIST, you DUMBASSES! Now get the
NASA guys to treat me, STAT!" I do agree that that should get you in
the news, alright. A few other places, too.
By the gods, you have been entertaining of late. You really ought to
consider comedy as a career. I have to say that tonight, you have
improved my mood more than meds OR therapy. Bravo!!!!
Lucida
Lucida
> You will find out what I am going to do jobwise eventually. I will
> someday be in the news someday, raking havoc with psychiatry (not
> physical havoc) and straightening it out once and for all. I am going
> to turn that profession upside down and when Im done, they are going
to
> wish theyd never heard of me.
"Raking" havoc.... Where ya gonna get it? Ace Hardware or TRUValue? I
can just picture you, Eric, frothing at the mouth, chasing them with a
rake, yelling 'My Uncle is a SCIENTIST, you DUMBASSES! Now get the
NASA guys to treat me, STAT! Now splice my genes, or I swear... Don't
make me use this licorice!" I do agree that that should get you in the
news, alright. A few other places, too.
By the gods, you have been entertaining of late. You really ought to
consider comedy as a career. I have to say that tonight, you have
improved my mood more than meds OR therapy. Bravo!!!!
Lucida
Bitch Ho Dumbass, APCertified*
(eat *that* Larry Hoover!)
*pending
Steve n Holly
"Lucida" <spamb...@webtv.net> wrote in message
news:1105050621.8...@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
> Oh yeah, I almost forgot:
>
> > You will find out what I am going to do jobwise eventually. I will
> > someday be in the news someday, raking havoc with psychiatry (not
> > physical havoc) and straightening it out once and for all. I am going
> > to turn that profession upside down and when Im done, they are going
> to
> > wish theyd never heard of me.
>
> "Raking" havoc.... Where ya gonna get it? Ace Hardware or TRUValue?
No no Lowes is a southern chain--a true son of the south would shop there!
I
> can just picture you, Eric, frothing at the mouth, chasing them with a
> rake, yelling 'My Uncle is a SCIENTIST, you DUMBASSES! Now get the
> NASA guys to treat me, STAT!" I do agree that that should get you in
> the news, alright. A few other places, too.
With Eric mission control would simply report 'all systems nominal'
>
> By the gods, you have been entertaining of late. You really ought to
> consider comedy as a career.
I told him that years ago--he called me...we you can imagine!
I have to say that tonight, you have
> improved my mood more than meds OR therapy. Bravo!!!!
Perhaps thats how he will rake up Psychiatric practice--Eric will go from
mental ward to mental ward telling everyone they are bi-polar?
Larry Hoover
>
> Listen up bitch...ho...dumbass...whatever. I do not use bipolar as an
> insult.
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Larry Hoover
> Lucida replies:
> And to think that I won't even have to take a class or pay to be
> tested. Eric, it is an honor to be "anti-psychiatry" by your warped
> definition of the word. I am thinking that I might add this to my
> resume. ;-P
>
> (pokes Larry) Nyanyanyanyanya! I'm APC Certified, and you're not!
> You have made my evening, Eric. I thank you!
>
> Lucida
It's OK, I can be a gentleman about this honour. You've earned it!
Lar
Larry Hoover
>
> Youre going to qualify for anti-psychiatry certification status soon
> too, asshole. Its going to be called "AP-Certified."
>
> Eric
Associate Professor, Certified. Sounds cool.
Steve n Holly
> too, asshole. Its going to be called "AP-Certified."
>
> Eric
>
Sir:
I should like to enquire as to the exact qualifications that the committee
requires in order to qualify for the "AP-Certified" designation.
Sincerely yours et al
Steve
Steve n Holly
>
> Eric
>
I hereby, under the powers I herewith unilaterally claim, appoint Master
Lawrence Hoover Associate Professor with full Certification in advanced
Minionry at Sycophant State.
As it is said so it shall be written. That is all.
Lucida
I should like to enquire as to the exact qualifications that the
committee
requires in order to qualify for the "AP-Certified" designation.
Sincerely yours et al
Steve
Lucida replies:
It appears to be at the sole discretion of King Eric. He has promised
me that I will be the first, and that the list was created especially
for me. You and Larry can join, but I MUST be the first. King Eric
promised!
Lucida
Bitch Ho Dumbass, APCertified*
*pending
Larry Hoover
"Steve n Holly" <steve...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:1NKdnTenIbg...@comcast.com...
>
> I hereby, under the powers I herewith unilaterally claim, appoint Master
> Lawrence Hoover Associate Professor with full Certification in advanced
> Minionry at Sycophant State.
>
> As it is said so it shall be written. That is all.
Sorry to burst the bubble, dude, but y'all just appointed someone else. It says
Larry on the birth certificate. Ain't no Lawrences here.
Lar
Linda
love to have that *pending* thing go away.
Linda
"Steve n Holly" <steve...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:1NKdnTenIbg...@comcast.com...
>
Steve n Holly
"Larry Hoover" <larry...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:BqwDd.64270$P%3.21...@news20.bellglobal.com...
I further decree, under the powers claimed above that the original decree be
modified by striking any mention of Lawrence and substituting Larry therein.
Steve n Holly
"Linda" <lbri...@google.com> wrote in message
news:0PyDd.11805$iu5....@fe2.columbus.rr.com...
> Hey... can you do that for the rest of the minions? I know Lucida would
> love to have that *pending* thing go away.
>
> Linda
Only 562 has the power to denote Anti Psychiatry certification :(
Pablo
Why are the rules different for me?
Pablo
jake
> You arent anti-psychiatry dude.
http://www.uea.ac.uk/~wp276/define.htm
WHAT WAS ANTI-PSYCHIATRY?
The anti-psychiatry movement has already been consigned to the history of
psychiatry (Tantum 1991) despite the relatively recent first use of the term
in the literature (Cooper 1967). A key understanding of "anti-psychiatry" is
that mental illness is a myth (Szasz 1972). The argument is that illness is
a physical concept and therefore cannot be applied to psychological disorder
without any physical pathology. As soon as it is accepted that mental
illness can refer to psychological abnormality then the "anti-psychiatry"
argument fails (Farrell 1979).
However, "anti-psychiatry" includes critics with differing views and the
essence of its argument has not always been clear (Gijswijt-Hofstra & Porter
1998). Anti-psychiatry has perhaps been defined more by psychiatry itself
than by its adherents. R D Laing (1986) never called himself an
anti-psychiatrist and distanced himself from David Cooper, as Laing did not
regard himself as ideologically Marxist as Cooper. Thomas Szasz attacked
Laing for his lack of rigour (Mullan 1995) and although Laing agreed that
the term mental illness is a metaphor, he argued that it mapped onto
reality. Nonetheless, "anti-psychiatry" has had an anti-authoritarian
popular, even romantic, appeal as an attack on psychiatrists' use of
psychiatric diagnosis, drug and ECT treatment and involuntary
hospitalisation.
Over recent years psychiatry has become more biological in its approach,
partly as a reaction to the perceived threats to its foundation from
antipsychiatry. Doctors tend to view the mentally ill as blameless victims
of brain disease and a structural and physiological basis for mental illness
is assumed to have been demonstrated (Double 1992a). Nonetheless the human
and inanimate realms are distinct and there are consequences of treating
people as though they are objects or things (Johnstone 2000).
Psychiatric legitimacy was embarrassed by Rosenhan (1973) who claimed
professionals were unable to distinguish the sane from the insane because of
his demonstration that normal people could gain admission to hospital and
acquire a diagnosis of schizophrenia by merely feigning a mundane, simple
hallucination. Rosenhan suggested that psychiatric diagnosis is subjective
in the minds of the observers and does not reflect inherent patient
characteristics. Operationalisation of psychiatric criteria as in DSM-III
and DSM-IV (American Psychiatric Association 1994) arose as a response to
the perceived dire need for objectification in diagnosis. The modern
explicit and intentional concern with psychiatric diagnosis contrasts with
earlier views de-emphasising diagnosis in favour of understanding the life
story of the individual patient. The Meyerian psychobiological model has
been devalued and reframed into a neo-Kraepelinian consensus (Double 1990).
In this context renewed criticism of modern psychiatry is needed and it may
be important to resurrect "anti-psychiatry" ideas (Double 1992b, 1998).
"Anti-psychiatry" in this sense is merely what psychiatry should be if it
truly understood the facts of the case (Critical Psychiatry Network
website). Anti-psychiatry is part of psychiatry but recognises that
objectification of the mentally ill makes psychiatry part of the problem
rather than the solution of mental illness (Jones 1997).
>
> Eric
>
Tinkerbell
Peter Bentall writes a great article on propositioning "happiness" as a
psychiatric disorder using the same yark sticks we use for schizophrenia.
This is all within the construct of the social constuction of reality.
Kenneth Gergen presents a couple of good arguments for Social
Constructionism.
I am sure his highness is too busy lynching the AP mob to be interested in
such intellectual pursuits
" jake" <inv...@invalid.com> wrote in message
news:crpg0o$ov1$0...@pita.alt.net...
Pablo
> You arent anti-psychiatry dude.
While I am critical of aspects of the profession of psychiatry, I am not
anti-psychiatry. If anything, I'm more anti-anti-psychiatry, not that I
think psychiatry is the be-all and end-all. I also think ECT needs to
remain as a treatment option.
There seem to be two concepts merging/colliding on this group. The first
concept is this one of "minions," which was Linda's invention. The
Anti-Psychiatry certification issue is a separate issue/process.
My quoted comments above were with regard to the minion question. They are
setting up all sorts of "minion status" rules, but the way it's always been,
anyone who agrees with me or disagrees with Linda seems to automatically
become one of my minions, according to Linda Gore. I just know she is not
going to honor the contemplated minion prodecure. (Don't agree with
me...it'll make you one of my minions.)
Pablo
jake
"Tinkerbell" <tinke...@icon.co.za> wrote in message
news:crpm77$mq2$1...@ctb-nnrp2.saix.net...
> Thomas Szas is great
>
> Peter Bentall writes a great article on propositioning "happiness" as a
> psychiatric disorder using the same yark sticks we use for schizophrenia.
:>)
I must make a point of trying to find and read it..
nosology is fraught with ambiguity..
diagnostic criteria are supposed to change with new facts and information..
what is deemed bipolar disorder yesterday can be post traumatic stress
today..
IMO the fascist ideology that mental distress is simply the symptoms
of a diseased brain in an inferior mutant.. is as obscene as it is
fallacious..
>
> This is all within the construct of the social constuction of reality.
> Kenneth Gergen presents a couple of good arguments for Social
> Constructionism.
there are good arguments .. the most extreme post-modernists.. in practice
walk out the door ..
not through the wall
:>))
my own view is perhaps closer to that of Roy Bhaskar with his
transformational model..
and critical realism
http://www.raggedclaws.com/criticalrealism/archive/rbhaskar_rbi.html
Roy Bhaskar Interviewed
Questions by CHRISTOPHER NORRIS
Q. You have been thinking and writing about issues in the philosophy of
science for around twenty five years. Can you tell us what originally took
you into this area and why it has remained such a central preoccupation?
A. I got a scholarship to Oxford to study PPE and I was equally interested
in all three subjects, but it seemed to me in the mid to late sixties that
clearly the most important problem facing mankind was that of world poverty.
It also seemed to me that economic theory had very little of relevance to
say about this, so I started writing a PhD thesis on the relevance of
economic theory for under-developed countries, the answer to which, if it
had been written, would probably have been very little, probably nil. But in
order to elaborate this intuition it was necessary for me to go back to
issues in the philosophy of social science and further back into the
philosophy of science. I found the philosophy of social science to be
dominated by a very unrewarding dispute between positivism and hermeneutics,
and they all seemed to be dominated by an empiricist philosophy of science.
About this time, there was a very vigorous theoretical debate generated by
Kuhn, Feyerabend, Lakatos and so on. I found this extremely stimulating.
These theorists called into question standard empiricist orthodoxies in what
I call the transitive or epistemological dimension of science. They had
virtually nothing to say, except by implication, about ontology, that is,
the theory of being. They basically left the empiricist ontology intact, so
they could not sustain their rational intuitions or insights. I found some
clues about a possible alternative ontology from the works of people like
Rom Harré, who were moving in a realist direction. Now they didn't have very
much to say about the transitive dimension as such, but they were very
critical about the deductive, nomological model of explanation. Implicitly
they called into question the sufficiency of the Humean, Hempelian,
Popperian orthodoxy. What I was doing in A Realist Theory of Science and
related works was to call into question the necessity of these theories
which dominated empiricism and anti-empiricism. In particular, I did this by
re-thematising ontology and giving it a certain new content or shape. Really
the whole of my work has stemmed from this essay into ontology. I should
just say that within a year or so I was teaching economics, but I had
changed my research topic to philosophy. After two years, I switched to
become a full-time philosopher, which I realised was the true love of my
life.
Q. Can you tell us what is distinctive about critical realism as compared
with other realist epistemologies and philosophies of science?
A. The answer to this question would take an interview in its own right! But
very briefly, it used a transcendental method of argument, which most
philosophies of science didn't use, and then the transcendental argument
became a dialectical one in which the force was immanent critique. Secondly,
it had the various propositions about ontology, about the necessity of
ontology, about the particular place or shape of ontology - that the nature
of the world is presupposed by science - which it explicitly thematised, and
it was shown that rival philosophies of science tacitly secreted or
implicitly presupposed some distinctive, normally Humean, ontology that was
quite inadequate to the real nature of being and the true character of
science. The sort of ontology I was arguing for was the kind of ontology in
which the world was seen as structured, differentiated and changing. And
science was seen as a process in motion attempting to capture ever deeper
and more basic strata of a reality at any moment of time unknown to us and
perhaps not even empirically manifest.
So this created a radically new world view and this world view was taken
into the philosophy of social science, into ethics, into politics to a small
extent, into other branches of philosophy, into the history of philosophy,
and above all into the area of dialectic.
Now there is a third thing besides the content of the particular thesis at
issue at any particular stage in the development of critical realism.
Through and through critical realism has been critical of what we can call
the nature of reality itself. Not the nature of absolute reality, or the
absolute structure of being - to be critical of that is to put oneself into
the position of God or the creator of the universe - but rather it is to be
critical of the nature of actual, currently existing, social reality, or of
our understandings of social and natural reality. It has always taken
epistemologies, philosophical thesis, etc., as reflections of the society in
which they are generated and sustained. And as far as these theses are
misleading, they point to deep categorial confusions and errors inherent in
the very structure of social reality itself. So it was natural to find an
identification between people who were influenced by critical realism and
left-wing socialist, Marxist and other critical currents of thought in the
1970s and through on into the 1990s.
And so I would say that the three major distinctive things about critical
realism are: its transcendental and dialectical character; the content of
its particular theses; and the fact that it is critical of the nature of
reality itself, in the first instance social reality, including the impact
of human beings upon the natural world in which they are embedded and in
which they are at present creating so much havoc.
Q. How do you see your work as having changed and developed in the period
since your first book, A Realist Theory of Science, appeared in 1975.
A. I think looking at it over the last 25 years or so, there have been four
major benchmarks and I'm now working on initiating a fifth. These can be
associated with particular books: 'transcendental realism' with A Realist
Theory of Science; 'critical naturalism', first promulgated in The
Possibility of Naturalism; Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation, which
forefronted the notion of 'explanatory critiques' and the refutation of
'Hume's Law'; and the 'dialectical turn', initiated in Dialectic: the pulse
of freedom and recapitulated in Plato etc. Just to summarise briefly what I
take to be the salient features of this development.
A Realist Theory of Science re-thematised ontology, argued for its necessity
and irreducibility in any account of science, and gave it a radically
different shape or context. In particular, it argued against the epistemic
fallacy, that is the idea that one can reduce or analyse knowledge in terms
of being. It was argued that being was an absolutely irreducible and
necessary category.
The Possibility of Naturalism argued against the dualisms and splits that
dominated the then contemporary human sciences - and which to a large
extent, despite critical realism and related currents of thought, continue
to do so now. What were these dualisms? They were dualisms between
positivism and hermeneutics; between collectivism and individualism;
structure and agency; reason and cause; mind and body; fact and value. In
each case, critical naturalism argued for a third sublating position which
could reconcile these stark polarities and oppositions, and which could
situate the two extremes as special cases of the more general sublating
position. Thus, against positivism and hermeneutics, it argued for a
critical naturalism based on a realist philosophy of science. Against
collectivism and individualism alike, it argued for relationism - that is,
the conception of society as essentially relational in character, as not
consisting either of collectivities of individuals or individuals, but as
concerned with the relations between individuals. Then in opposition to the
dichotomy of structure and agency, it argued for what I called the
transformational model of social activity, which is not to identify
structure or agency, but to trace their distinctive features and mutual
interdependency, in a way that Margaret Archer and others have shown is
distinct from, although related to, that position that Giddens has put
forward under the theory of structuration. Basically, structure always tends
to collapse into agency on his model, whereas on my model the agents
themselves have natural and other perhaps transcendental components that
can't be reduced to social structures. The fourth dichotomy argued against
was the stark contrast between reason and causes, where I argued that
reasons were in fact causally explicable and causally efficacious in my
conception of intentional causality. Against a crude materialism and
idealism, which would dislocate embodied human beings from the material
world, I argued for what I characterised as a synchronic, emergent powers
materialism, in which mind is seen as an emergent power of matter. And
finally, I argued against the stark polarity and contrast between facts and
values. There is a dialectical interrelation between facts and values, in
which we are never situated in a value free context. Values always
impregnate and imbue our social praxis and our factual discourse, but at the
same time, facts themselves do generate evaluative conclusions. This paved
the way for the refutation of Hume's law. Truth and factuality are
themselves norms, but that is a presupposition of all factual discourse, and
on the basis of that value we can generate other evaluative conclusions.
The fourth major development is I think the most radical and exciting, after
the first - and this is the dialectical turn, taken in Dialectic: the pulse
of freedom. And this put to the fore two notions which I think are
absolutely crucial. The notion of absence and dialectic was defined
recursively, in terms of absenting constraints on absenting ills, and if
constraints and ills alike are understood in terms of absence, as absenting
absence on absenting absence. The notion of absence I regard as
ontologically, logically and epistemologically prior to that notion of
presence. Positive being could not exist without negative being. And the
full implications traced through of this dialecticalisation of ontology are
very radical indeed, and presuppose a vision of the good society viewed as
implicit in every human action or remark. The second major innovation in
this book was the notion of truth as being ontological as well as absolute;
that is, an expressive, ontic dualism, as well as epistemological, as well
as being social.
The firth turn I'm working on now is the sense in which the highest order
categorial structure of any domain of reality or being as such can have
implications for our daily praxis.
Q. Your work has always had a strong ethical and political content,
especially in a book like Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation. Could
you explain in this connection just why you think it is so important to
defend a realist conception of science against a marked anti-realist
tendency that has typified so many recent movements of thought.
I think there are three main reasons for this. First of all, there is the
argument that one can derive facts from values. This allows the possibility
of ethics and politics becoming, in principle, decidable disciplines.
Following on from this, I argue that morality and moral sciences, including
politics, have an intransitive dimension, that is, I say that they have real
objects, which it is the job of these moral scientists to investigate. This
allows the possibility of a rational critique of what I call actual existing
moralities. Thirdly, I think it is important because I believe that truth is
the highest truth, and that very radical implications can be derived from
this idea.
Q. Critical realism is now quite a large scale and interdisciplinary
movement of thought, with representatives in various branches of the
physical, social and human sciences. Could you tell us something about the
history of the movement, and why it has been able to bring them together
despite the increasing specialisation of much academic life.
A. When I started out people who had been influenced by my work found
themselves frequently marginalised in academic life. They had extreme
difficulty in getting critical realist papers published, and I found myself
acting as a sort of one person support mechanism for people influenced by my
work. It was helped a little by the publication of books by Ted Benton,
Russell Keat and John Urry, and others - and it began to develop an academic
reputation. Nevertheless, there was still a feeling of isolation and
fragmentation. Then four of us got together - myself, Ted Benton, Andrew
Collier and William Outhwaite - in the early 1980s, and we would begin by
discussing important theses in philosophy and end up by discussing what was
wrong with the state of politics or whatever. Out of that was born the
Realism and Human Sciences conferences movement. From 1983, we had annual
conferences, characterised by friendliness and intellectual stimulation,
solidarity and great enjoyment. Not really marked by careerism, position
taking, fractious argument, but a real sense of comradeship and an idea of
the exploration of truth.
These conferences gradually grew bigger and bigger, and critical realism
began to take off in the different disciplines - in sociology, economics,
biology, even in physics - it took off in the States, in European countries
and all over the world. There were journals, like Radical Philosophy, which
were sympathetic to critical realism - that published articles more easily
by critical realists. And then around 1995, we decided to begin to formulate
a centre for critical realism which was instituted as a registered charity
in 1997-98. We have our own website and about 30000 people have subscribed
to the Bhaskar list on the internet.
I think critical realists are understanding the importance of networking and
mutual solidarity. It is still a very radical and somewhat fragmented
movement. And I would argue that there are profound reasons for this,
because the nature of any society dominated by instrumental reason - by
reification, by alienation, by master-slave relations - the categorial
structure of such a society will be irrealist in character. Irrealism, of
one sort another, will always have the backing, as it were, of the
superficial currency of social reality. So critical realists will always be
at odds with what appears to be the case in society. So we are marginalised
now, by the nature of social reality itself, but despite that we are forming
a resistance movement to that categorial structure, in tune and in keeping
with deeper categorial structures, which irrealist categorial structures
mask, obscure and occlude.
Q. The concept of stratification is extremely important in your own thinking
and much of the work produced by your colleagues in the CR movement. It has
to do with the need for complex, differentiated grasp of the various strata
or levels of reality, some of them exerting their causal powers wholly
independent of human intervention, while others are affected by the kinds of
observation we make or the sorts of experiment we carry out. Could you say a
bit more about this aspect of your thinking and how it links up with ethical
issues -for example, the scope for responsible choice in matters of applied
scientific research?
A. I think Marx somewhere observed that the whole of science would be
pointless unless there was a possibility of a distinction between essence
and appearance - unless there was the possibility that what we thought about
natural reality or any other form of reality was wrong.
Therefore, this notion of stratification is already necessary to sustain the
idea of critique. The critique of some kinds of understanding or
reflection - or the nature of a level of reality, including social reality -
in terms of its misdescription of a more basic, deeper or autonomous level
of reality. That is essential for the notion of critique or argumentation
generally.
Additionally, the development of science has revealed a process of a
continual stratification of knowledge, as we attempt to capture ever deeper
or wider strata of reality. This is an evident fact about the nature of
scientific process, only sustainable by a critical realist ontology in which
the world itself is seen as stratified.
Putting these two points together, the critical impulse in science is one of
demystification and the central norm with which I have been concerned
recently is that of human freedom. Human freedom depends upon understanding
the truth about reality and acting towards it, so it is essential that
science and philosophy should be concerned with human liberation. This takes
us into the realm of ethical issues in scientific research. Because we are
very far from perfect or free, by which I mean we are far from the full
realisation of our potentials, and because we're dominated by a capitalist
society in which reification, alienation, dualism, illusion, categorial
error are dominant and manifesting themselves in modalities of instrumental
reason and a whole complex of master/slave relationships, there must be
necessary constraints on generating anything that goes by the empirical name
of science. So people have recently, quite rightly, become worried about the
abuses of science involved in genetic engineering research. We have very
good reason to believe that many increases in scientific understanding will
actually be abhorrent.
This raises the important question that we cannot prosecute science in an
intellectual or moral vacuum. It may be necessary for morality to correct
bad science, but it corrects it in the name of a higher norm, true freedom.
And that is guided by a highest norm of all - fundamental truth.
Q. Some present day cultural theorists - e.g. Lyotard - would say that we
have moved into an era where the very idea of scientific knowledge has
undergone a kind of dramatic mutation, a large scale Khunian paradigm shift.
Thus Lyotard argues that post-modern science is no longer concerned with
such old fashioned values as truth, accuracy, theoretical rigour, causal
explanatory power, etc. Rather, it is concerned with undecidability,
uncertainty, the limits of precise measurement, and a range of other
currently fashionable themes, often drawn from the field of quantum
mechanics and field theory. What is wrong with this, from your point of
view?
A. I think the familiar point that it is inherently auto-destructive is
basically correct. For what are this strand of post-modernist thinkers doing
but making certain truth claims about uncertainty? They seem to be very
certain about the truth of their claims. Therefore, in no way does their
discourse presuppose that truth ceases to be a fundamental and overriding
value.
Now what I think they in fact do is to subjectivise the true impact of
contemporary physics. This indeed has fundamental implications for our
understanding of notions of events, of things, etc. For example, we must
differentiate the classical notion of a mass event, by which it is meant a
mass or collectivity of events, from the quantum mechanical notion of an
event as a mass or collectivity, as a distribution or spread in space, or a
succession or flow in time. This is much more in keeping with our ordinary
commonsensical notion of an event, than it is with the classical Newtonian
mechanical conception of an event as punctual, atomistic and so on.
And again we need to rethink our notion of a thing. Why do we model it on a
billiard ball or a solid compact material object. In fact, no such things
exist, we know that billiard balls are full of empty space and couldn't
sustain themselves unless they were.
Moving into the realm of biology, biologists are moving away from the notion
of an organism being an individual, a big billiard ball, if you like, and
are beginning to understand the notion of an organism being an individual in
its ecological niche.
Basically, what's wrong with this line of reasoning is that it subjectivises
the true impact of contemporary scientific thinking.
Q. Do you see quantum theory as posing any special problems for a critical
realist approach to the philosophy of science.
A. As I think I've already indicated, only critical realism can begin to
situate - by thematising notions of absence, etc., and breaking from
atomistic notions of being - the true impact of quantum mechanics. One is
only worried about it, if one is wedded to certain normally implicit,
atomistic presuppositions of empiricist ontology.
Q. I'd like to hear your views about the strong programme in the sociology
of knowledge, since it comes into conflict with critical realism on a number
of crucial issues.
A. What critical realism does is that it allows us to sustain and to argue
the mutual implication of ontological realism in the intransitive dimension,
epistemological relativism in the transitive or social dimension of science
and judgmental rationalism in the intrinsic aspect of science. This means
that there is no conflict between seeing our scientific views as being about
objectively given real worlds, and understanding our beliefs about them as
subject to all kinds of historical and other determinations. At the same
time, there will a be a right or wrong of the matter in any one discursive
domain, which defines the possibility of judgmental rationalism in the
normative aspect of science.
I think many of the objections in the strong programme of the sociology of
knowledge confuse judgmentalism and realism. Realism is not judgmentalist,
and realism is in fact a condition for the possibility of the strong
programme in the philosophy of science. The strong programme wants to argue
that all beliefs are causally generated. I have no problem with this, but
the thing is that some beliefs are causally generated by the truth of the
matter, other beliefs are generated by illusion, prejudice, superstition,
which veil deeper structures from the protagonists supporting them. And
hence there can't be a normative parity between true and false beliefs. I
think articulating the distinction between ontological realism,
epistemological relativism, and judgmental rationalism, and understanding
the difference between ontological and epistemological realism, which is
silly, ontological and epistemological relativism being at best an assertion
of the historicity of the world, and between judgmental rationalism and
judgmentalism, allows a certain rapprochement between the best sociologists
of knowledge and realism.
Q. You have often acknowledged Rom Harré's strong, even formative influence
on your thought. Just recently the two of you have engaged into some
vigorous public debate, suggesting that you are now not so much in accord
with respect to issues in the philosophy of science?
A. I think there was always a slight difference between Harré and myself, in
that Harré sat halfway between transcendental idealism and transcendental
realism. He talked in works like Principles of Scientific Thinking about the
crucial role played by models. Models gave not only a heuristic role to
imagination in science, but in some sense reflected a deeper level of
reality unknown to science. But because he questioned only the sufficiency,
not the necessity, of Humean and Hempelian ontology, and because he did not
explicitly thematise ontology in the way that transcendental realism did
(the radical thrust of the argument in Realist Theory of Science against the
epistemic fallacy, in favour of ontology - a radically different kind of
ontology), his work was always subject to certain tension.
In so far as he did not come out for transcendental realism, as distinct
from transcendental idealism, it was natural to find that when he started to
write on issues in the philosophy of social science, he was to replicate
certain Kantian dualisms. So we have a dualism now in his philosophy between
two kinds of entities, material objects or molecules, as he sometimes puts
it, and people and their discourses. I think this dualism basically goes
back to a failure to sustain transcendental realism as distinct from
idealism. I should say that Rom Harré and myself are very good friends - and
we have been engaged in polemics without any real offence to that friendship
for about 30 years now. We both enjoy a good argument.
Q. It often strikes me that some of the central debates in the philosophy of
science could be brought down to earth if they took more account of the
developments in the history and philosophy of technology. Do you see
critical realism as moving in that direction?
A. The initial arguments for and about ontology were sustained by the notion
of immanent critique. So I drew attention to those human activities that had
most prestige in the cognitive discourse of philosophy. And these were most
typically what was called experience and experimental activity. But equally,
I could have taken ordinary practical activities such as fixing a bike as
sustaining this transcendental realist, critical realist and dialectical
realist ontology.
How can we make sense of making a cup of coffee with sugar, except by the
notion that the sugar has an independent intransitive existence with respect
to our acts of finding it? How can I make sense of my discourse with you,
unless I assume that what you say has a sense and intelligibility
independent of my understanding of it? So I'm very sympathetic to this whole
turn. I think the more deeply we go into all the forms of human experience,
the more our ontology and our understanding of human beings in the world in
which they live will be deepened and broadened.
Q. Could you name the three or four books that have most influenced your
philosophy at some stage?
A. I'm afraid that my answer will probably be a little bit hackneyed. I
would say Kant's Critique of Pure Reason; Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind; the
early, middle and some late writings of Marx. I have already mentioned the
importance of the work of writers like Lakatos, Kuhn, Feyerabend. I would
say that the philosophers that I have admired most are Plato, Aristotle,
Kant and Hegel. These are also the writers I have polemicised with. So my
polemics are often an indirect form of flattery.
Q. Would you want to name any one thinker who in your view has exerted a
harmful influence on the way that philosophy gets done nowadays? If our
roles were reversed and you were asking me the question, I would nominate
Wittgenstein and go on at great length about the kinds of cosily
Wittgensteinian doctrine that have a regular mind-numbing effect whenever
one comes across them.
A. Well, I think I'll talk about Wittgenstein! He is one of the most
important philosophers of the 20th century, but I do think he has had a
baneful influence. As is well known, he moved through two phases - the first
was a very vigorous and beautiful form of practical reason, the second was a
form of transcendental idealism. I think the most baneful influence of
Wittgenstein was to linguistify that important criterion of philosophy I
refer to as reflexivity. This was important in so far as it made
philosophers aware of language as perhaps the indispensable vehicle of our
expression and understandings of the world - and to situate language as a
topic of investigation.
But now the linguistic fallacy has almost become the orthodoxy. The
linguistic fallacy is the idea that one can analyse or define being in terms
of our language about being. Language can only be understood in terms of the
co-ordinates of a matrix where human nature is defined in terms of the
stratification of the personality, transactions between human agents, social
structure and our material transactions with nature. Language is really only
a fitting paradigm for our transactions with nature. It is not a good
paradigm for the social structure. And even our interactions with each other
have many dimensions which are non-linguistic. I think that only by
situating language within the context of a human and social totality, which
encompasses the natural world and dimensions of existence of which we are
perhaps only partially or dimly aware, can we do justice to it. To do
justice to language, one has to break from the linguistic fallacy. And
therefore, perhaps in order to understand the true greatness of
Wittgenstein, one has to be non-Wittgensteinian.
Q. Some philosophers argue that the realist versus anti-realist debate is
one that will never be settled or achieve any genuine progress, since it is
one that involves two utterly different world views and maybe two quite
different sorts of ingrained philosophical temperament, so that the parties
will always be talking at cross purposes and failing to see how the other
could possibly want to maintain such an extravagant position. Then there is
the case of someone like Hilary Putnam, who seems to have flipped right
across from the one to the other camp, and recently half-way back again, and
produced all manner of supporting arguments on both sides of the issue. So
it's easy for a sceptic like Richard Rorty to treat this as evidence that
the whole issue is a non-starter like most of the classical philosophical
debates, and therefore that we should stop discussing it and find something
better to occupy our minds. Your own book on Rorty gives plenty of clues as
to what you might say in response to his diagnosis. Still I would like to
hear your reaction in this currently widespread post-philosophical line of
thought.
A. One of the things that I have tried to show is that arguments against
ontology, in fact presuppose ontology. You can see this in the case of an
anti-ontologist like Habermas, who in his generation of the knowledge
constitutive interest in prediction and control, definitely presupposes a
Humean theory of causality as constant conjunction or empirical regularity,
and the Hempelian, Popperian idea of explanation as deductive, nomological.
You can't get away without ontology. It's not a question of being a realist,
or not a realist. It is a question of what kind of realist you are going to
be - explicit or tacit. Insofar as you are not a realist, you secrete an
ontology and a realism....You can't get far in the world unless you are
implicitly realist in practice. And I would say that the whole categorial
structure of transcendental, dialectical critical reason could be teased out
of any remark or action in the world of any significance. This is a very
strong claim to make: I would argue that critical realism, in its
transcendental, dialectical forms, is the only form of philosophy which can
do justice to the categorial structure of the world and so to the
axiological necessity of the particular positions, arguments, actions and
responses that we make in our ordinary life. From this standpoint, the
development of philosophy can be seen as a progression in
self-consciousness, in an understanding of what we're doing, when we're
doing things about which we are normally unconscious.
Q. What are your thoughts about new Labour and prospects of any kind of
genuine socialist renewal? How should critical realism be viewed in relation
to such broader political and socio-cultural developments?
A. I think this has to be understood in the context in which capitalism has
basically won the struggle against actually existing socialism as it was
called, and 1989 was indeed a crucial year, in that it marked the decisive
victory against Soviet style socialism. New Labour is just part of the
universal accommodation to this fact. Capitalism itself is wrecking havoc on
our environment, and quite frankly, unless capitalism is overturned, by a
revolution, which will be at once much more peaceful and deeper than the one
that overthrew socialism, that will draw on resources and aspects of our
being that are at once spiritual and cultural, and set in the context of a
programme of feasible transition, and done in a non-violent way - unless
capitalism is overturned in this way, I can see very little prospect of
humanity surviving much into the 21st century on this planet.
I think we need to consider what is wrong with the superficial categorial
structures of the societies in which capitalism, socialism, contemporary new
Labour, all equally cohabit. What is required is a revolutionary
transformation far more profound that perhaps any of us imagine.
Q. One current version of anti-realism is the denial that we can ever have
reason or adequate grounds for asserting the existence of objective
transcendental truths. To the realist, about mathematics, for example, this
would seem clearly wrong since truth in such matters, has nothing to do with
the current, or indeed the ultimate scope of human knowledge. I wonder where
you stand on this issue - and whether critical realism has anything to say
about the more technical anti-realist stances.
A. I argue that truth has four aspects. First, fiduciary this is, if you
like, the intrinsic aspect of science or knowledge - and to say that
something is true is to say 'trust me, act on it'. It is quite obvious that
we have to have a workable notion of truth to enable us to get around in a
world we have only a limited grasp of. This is a pragmatic necessity. The
more strongly this aspect can be backed by other aspects, the stronger it
is.
The second aspect of truth is truth as warrantedly assertable. This is truth
as epistemological. There is no way of getting around the notion of best
possible grounds for acting one way rather than another, in a world in which
we must act one way rather than another.
Moving now to the notion that lies behind the first two notions, the idea of
truth as absolute. To say something is true is to say this is the way
reality is. This is absolutely indispensable for any notion of intentional
action and hence for any notion we as human beings can have. For
intentionality presupposes two things, firstly a belief, and secondly, an
orientation to act on the belief in some manner. Without beliefs human
beings just aren't humans. So commitment to beliefs as expressive of
reality, are transcendental features of any form of social life.
Now, what lies behind the truth of a well attested scientific or moral
proposition - e.g., the fact that emeralds reflect light of a certain
wavelength - is a higher order proposition, the truth of that truth - the
reality that generates it, that is, the atomic structure of the crystal, the
nature of the wavelength of light that is reflected in a certain way. What
makes it true, for example, to say that if Socrates is a Man he must die is
that it is the nature of human beings to be mortal. It is a proposition at a
higher level, and it is this higher level truth that grounds the truth of
the universal generalisation, the proposition which is expressed in the
absolute conception of truth.
So truth at this higher level just is reality, and it is the reality that
grounds or accounts for the mundane realities that we invoke in the absolute
conception of truth, and it is that absolute conception of truth that backs
our epistemological or social conception of truth. There is no getting away
from ontology. And the only solution to all the forms of scepticism that the
whole tradition of empiricist epistemology has generated, which encompasses
the anti-realism to which you refer, is to see that what we're trying to do
in science or morality or any other form of life, is to make fallible claims
about the world, claims which if they are true are true in virtue of the
real nature of beings, entities, things, the real nature of the universe
quite independently of our claims. And it is the real nature of being that
grounds well attested, universal empirical generalisations or other
propositionalised claims of reality, without which no science, no discourse,
no action, or no intentionality is possible. There is no escape from truth.
Q. Just to finish can you tell us what you are thinking about now and what
is to be the topic of your next book?
A. I'm currently working on an exploration of the way in which we can draw
on the resources of traditions and worldviews other than those of the west.
On a book called East and West, which has a theoretical component and a
component which is more popular in form - which actually takes the form of a
novel. This is very connected to an earlier answer I gave, for if we are to
have the cultural and spiritual resources that we need to generate a true
alternative to and a true sublation of the tradition that has given us
capitalism, etc., we must draw on the traditions of the East as well as
those of the West. Greek and traditional Christian resources are our
contemporary academic philosophical tradition, but looking at ancient Hindu
philosophy, at Buddhism, at Confucianism, at Islam - going back to explore
the origins and roots of Christianity, all this might give us the resources
to fulfil the true potential of human beings and save our planet.
This is linked up to my other feeling that not only has Western philosophy
drawn on far too restricted traditions, but it has also couched itself in a
pretty inaccessible mode. I'm aware of the paradox that I have talked about
human emancipation but in a relatively inaccessible form! So I'm writing a
story, which I hope will be universally accessible, this will be backed up
by theoretical works.
>
> I am sure his highness is too busy lynching the AP mob to be interested in
> such intellectual pursuits
lets hope thats all King Eric... AKA the Real Third Reich...AKA Imperial
Wizard
is lynching
bluemoon
Is it really necessary to post the entire article when you've posted the
fucking link?
jake
"bluemoon" <blue...@milkyway.net> wrote in message
news:NqaEd.226678$6w6.1...@tornado.tampabay.rr.com...
yes..
Tinkerbell
" jake" said
> IMO the fascist ideology that mental distress is simply the symptoms
> of a diseased brain in an inferior mutant.. is as obscene as it is
> fallacious..
I agree, the example of our King behaving like a complete toss-pot which
seems to result in all sorts of feedback is an example of this.
He is defintely maintaining his ol' depression very well by not getting any
support
>> This is all within the construct of the social constuction of reality.
>> Kenneth Gergen presents a couple of good arguments for Social
>> Constructionism.
>
> there are good arguments .. the most extreme post-modernists.. in practice
> walk out the door ..
> not through the wall
>
> :>))
Yeah - I def walk throught the door in practice
but I take the time to reflect on how I walked through the door, whether I
bumped it, how did I feel while walking through the door and has the way I
walked through the door affected anyone else
hmmm
t
Tinkerbell
Bluemoon wrote:
>> Is it really necessary to post the entire article when you've posted the
>> fucking link?
Jake and tinkerbell wrote: yes..
And I appreciated it 'cos I read it.
Intersting article. I come from an ecosystemic perspective having journeyed
through general systems theory and cybernetics.
A whole approach would not allow for dualities but recognise the dialectical
nature in there theories
Kuhn Structure of the Scientific Revolution allowed for paradigm shift that
has opened up a world of posibilities for us
At the moment I am focussing on intergrating first-and second order
cyberntics which is the way I think it should be done
Its an ethical way of doing things and practicing which gets away form the
critisims of both
I'll look into reading more of Roy Bhaskar
t