In a message dated 1/31/01 6:46:27 PM Eastern Standard Time,
kirk728@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
> 2. My main idea is that I cannot gain fact emprically. We do not know
> whether our senses render us an acurate picture of corpereal reality.
> There is no way I have seen to disprove the Idealist picture of the
> world (only insofar as the basic idea that thoughts alone could exist).
> All corporeal fact is also based on inductive reasoning which renders a
> usually erring categorization of reality. These categories (such as
> power, discourse, etc.) are not a fact but can be a very useful way to
> interpret and utilize when forced to act in such an otherwise
> unintelegible reality.
Apparently, you are divided between two understandings of reality: either
thought is primary and sense or fact secondary, or sensory data is primary
and our thought about it secondary. In either case, you could follow each
claim to its logical conclusion. I am sure that you can understand that this
is merely an academic exercise, at some point both perspectives meld into
each other when a decisive action must be made, even on a micro-behavioral
level. I would agree that power and discourse are not necessarily factual,
but are evaluations that are arrived at from several facts or patterns of
facts in juxtaposition. That facts are perceptions that depend upon
positions of self-interest, periods of social-historical development, or
emotional dispositions that may also be unconscious, are some of the possible
understandings that we can take up from a theoretical perspective.
When Foucault reports that during specific historical periods certain social
practices were evident, a verification could be made by researching any
documentation from that period. Why wouldn't inductive proof be considered
viable verifying evidence? Especially when deductive arguments or even
nomothetic arguments are guilty of generalizing from one culture or episodic
period to all others as if that perspective is omniscient! I find Foucault's
Method convincing and real because he does not suppose a progressive
mechanism nor a causality but instead looks at and reports on actual changes
the mechanisms for each being distinct.
When you say that you cannot gain fact empirically, you are committing a
contradiction. Fact is empirical, by definition, unless you are using a
definition that I have not heard of! The problem with empiricism is that it
is driven by a hidden ideology.
Vunch
kirk728@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
> 2. My main idea is that I cannot gain fact emprically. We do not know
> whether our senses render us an acurate picture of corpereal reality.
> There is no way I have seen to disprove the Idealist picture of the
> world (only insofar as the basic idea that thoughts alone could exist).
> All corporeal fact is also based on inductive reasoning which renders a
> usually erring categorization of reality. These categories (such as
> power, discourse, etc.) are not a fact but can be a very useful way to
> interpret and utilize when forced to act in such an otherwise
> unintelegible reality.
Apparently, you are divided between two understandings of reality: either
thought is primary and sense or fact secondary, or sensory data is primary
and our thought about it secondary. In either case, you could follow each
claim to its logical conclusion. I am sure that you can understand that this
is merely an academic exercise, at some point both perspectives meld into
each other when a decisive action must be made, even on a micro-behavioral
level. I would agree that power and discourse are not necessarily factual,
but are evaluations that are arrived at from several facts or patterns of
facts in juxtaposition. That facts are perceptions that depend upon
positions of self-interest, periods of social-historical development, or
emotional dispositions that may also be unconscious, are some of the possible
understandings that we can take up from a theoretical perspective.
When Foucault reports that during specific historical periods certain social
practices were evident, a verification could be made by researching any
documentation from that period. Why wouldn't inductive proof be considered
viable verifying evidence? Especially when deductive arguments or even
nomothetic arguments are guilty of generalizing from one culture or episodic
period to all others as if that perspective is omniscient! I find Foucault's
Method convincing and real because he does not suppose a progressive
mechanism nor a causality but instead looks at and reports on actual changes
the mechanisms for each being distinct.
When you say that you cannot gain fact empirically, you are committing a
contradiction. Fact is empirical, by definition, unless you are using a
definition that I have not heard of! The problem with empiricism is that it
is driven by a hidden ideology.
Vunch