Hell if I know, but they are surely topics for a philosopher’s philosopher and have been making a bit of a round in a corner of the bloggiverse I occasionally hang out it. Start with Larval Subjects recent series of posts and take it from there.
Something about all of it reminded me of this quote from the first page of Horwitz’s Transformation of American Law, 1870-1960: “In social thought, belief in the explanatory possibility of very general “covering laws” capable of making “if-then” predictive statements has plummeted (except as economics deploys ever more elaborate tautologies to conceal this fact). The result has been a dramatic turn toward highly specific “thick description” in which narratives and stories purport to substitute for traditional general theories. Today there are scholars in all fields of social thought who view orthodox claims to objectivity as contests over the appropriate generality of discourse.” Horwitz admits to great value in all of this and in the resulting complexifying, but asks, I think with a lamenting tone, “But how does one explain anything objectively in a world of complex multiple causation?”, adding a few lines later that “There remains the serious question of whether the new cult of complexity does not simply avoid through fiat the admirable generalizing and simplifying goals of nineteenth century modes of explanation.” (vii-viii.)
Part of what I like in the quote is that it raise the question for me of appropriate analytical modes, which for academics ties in to the strengths and weaknesses of different academic disciplines and subfields.
“But how does one explain anything objectively in a world of complex multiple causation?”
What annoys me in the developing blog discussion you cite is that what Horwitz identifies, in the question above, as if in objection and criticism, is precisely the question and problem originally animating the underlying philosophical work–it’s the motivation of this work.
It is a joke to see it shunted aside and then re-raised as if the work which ignores it deserves to be called work. Mixing and matching philosophical schools and technical terms is a folly of the overeducated.
Horwitz is, in my opinion, correct to notice that the problem and question of the objective in a world of complex multiple causality is important, it didn’t go away, and needs to be addressed (and can be.)
How the problem got covered over in jargon-laden self-important mishmash to the point where it seems almost irrelevant, is a marvel but I am not going to worry much about it.
Comment by Yusef — January 24, 2009 @ 2:49 pm
Our language is simply not suited for to accommodate every complexity in the flux of a causally described reality. What sets science apart from all other theory-based disciplines is its ability to isolate variables and test single-handed causal predictions. Ironically, this is also its problem. This may reflect the turn to the thick descriptions of narratives and stories as we would rather take the full analysis of the subject than the skewed analysis of the object. Neither shall triumph over the other as the subject and object will eventually merge once we let go of cause as the only binding truth-apt modality. Speculative realism is a primitive, albeit historically significant, attempt. Meillassoux is a modern philosophical equivalent of Fourier.
Comment by James — April 27, 2009 @ 1:38 pm