kenaz

Hi, I don't want to sound overly repetitive, so here's an excerpt of what I had explained of it in an earlier post on this thread:

Truths of the past can be known through insurrection of subjugated knowledges, as Foucault’s analysis of various historical narratives has shown. To elaborate, subjugated knowledges are historical contents that have been buried or masked in functional coherences or formal systemizations. They are knowledges that have been disqualified as nonconceptual knowledges, as insufficiently elaborated knowledges, hierarchically inferior knowledges, knowledges that are below the required level of erudition or scientificity.

For further elaboration, you can refer to my reply to CJD coming up next

kenaz

They are that, but more, because while they can be the reappearance of singular, local/regional knowledges, the noncommonsensical knowledges that people have, and which have been kept in the margins, left to lie fallow so to speak, subjugated knowledges are also historical, meticulous, precise, technical expertise. These two types of knowledges are called “subjugated” because they are knowledges that are differential, incapable of unanimity, and which derives power solely from the fact that they are different from all the knowledges in their surroundings. It is the coupling of buried scholarly knowledge and local knowledges that have been disqualified by the hierarchy of erudition and sciences that gave discursive historical critique its essential strength in the past decade. What was at stake in these two forms knowledge is a historical knowledge of struggles.
Subjugated knowledges and dominant historical discourses can empirically verifiable from a realist or antirealist standpoint, but a realist view will privilege the very empirical verifiability of his/her findings to construct a critique while an antirealist will focus on the processes that brought about the construction of the dominant discourse and the subjugation of knowledges.

I am suggesting that singular method- archaeology can be used in two different analysis, two different forms of historical critique- realist and antirealist. If any method/discourse is self-reflexive enough, it will, at one point or other, be a subject of its own criticism- and all the better off it will be.

Tyler Durden

This link is a decisive refutation of your (Vorko's) imitation of Starboy, or the position Starboy espoused in his heartstaggering ignorance.

May i ask whether you think the sec web should demolish the philosophy forum simply on your say-so?

Celsus

Hi all,

Ok, sorry that I haven't had the time to respond for a while to this thread over the weekend. To get back on track, firstly, great posts by CJD, kenaz and godfry n. glad (and I'll have to leave the exchange between CJD and kenaz due to time constraints). Oh, kenaz is, incidentally, my extremely beautiful and much-smarter-than-me partner, and I don't think I should get into an argument with her here because she always wins. Moving swiftly on... ...to Vork and Hugo's posts: I think you're both raising valid issues--and Hugo isn't taking his preferred position in the thread (and neither am I, for that matter), so it's useful to read the posts in that light. More later...

One bit of kenaz's post though, deserves greater scrutiny first:
What I see from this is that the realist will be deconstructing a text in order to try to find the underlying truth, whereas the antirealist believes that this is a futile exercise, and is quite content to leave the deconstruction as the end result. As godfry's post points out quite rightly:
Similarly, Robert Price quotes Schweitzer (I think? This is a vague recollection) to the effect that the HJ-seekers' work is akin to a patient going to several plastic surgeons and each time emerging in the image of the surgeon. The Jesus of Crossan thus differs from the Jesus of Vermes in the same manner in which Crossan differs from Vermes.

Now the question (or point) I was hinting at, and that I've discusssed with kenaz off-line is that my (actual) position is that of a realist cloaked in deconstructionist terms (Vork also alludes somewhat to this in describing us as innately teleological realists). I would disagree: The realist has to make rather large presuppositions about the reliability of texts, and by questioning it and leaving the answer open, it is an antirealist position. If, on the other hand, I insist on time (and other circumstances) being a factor that cloaks the historical verifiability of ancient events and processes, then I am indeed taking a realist position, and using a realist formulation of the destruction of evidence and sources (or redaction and altering), but still presupposing that barring time and other extraneous factors, the evidence could be reliable.

A simple counter, as Vork has raised is the issue of whether some soldiers died in Iraq: Here we have a recent event, in which obviously the details are mystified by the American propaganda machine, but the deaths themselves are unquestionable. So the realist position saves itself by setting the standards of verifiability very low. However, with the bar set so low, the work of history cannot be carried out--sure Alexander the Great existed, but every other detail is cloaked in historians' narratives.

So we move to archaeology, which in its modern form must surely qualify as a science (though it cannot be said for biblical archaeology, until it strengthens its methodological bases and doesn't appeal to historical narratives). The work of archaeology can never prove or disprove an event, it can only establish whether it is plausible. The efforts by Albright, Alt, Kenyon and older generations of archaeologists, while considerable, were constantly setting themselves up in the light of the Biblical record. All were realists in that they expected to make direct comparisons between an ever-so-slightly deconstructed historical narrative and archaeological finds.

As we now know, this approach is mistaken. Archaeology itself starts from classifications (therefore part of the scientific enterprise), but most things beyond that become part of narratives, in comparison with historical narratives. In that sense,the scientific aspect of archaeology cannot do the work of saving the realist approach to history, since by nature it is limited to establishing plausible reconstructions but nothing more (if it is to remain rigorous as a discipline). So much for archaeology.

So that leaves the historical narrative and the narratives constructed by historians. Both are obviously politically/theologically motivated, but this inference of motivation as Fuller and Vork agree on, must stem from a historical realism. Or does it? Look again at the genetic fallacy: Does the history of the idea influence our ability to judge the resulting conclusions? Since Fuller himself points out this mistake while critiquing Feyerabend, what can we say about the realism used to bring about antirealist conclusions? Is something wrong with the genetic fallacy then? Either Feyerabend and Fuller can both be right (if the genetic fallacy is thrown out), or Feyerabend and Fuller are both wrong--and then we end up with a paradox. Just as Newton's alchemical speculations and theological musings never detracted from his Laws of Motion and gravity, so we extract an ahistorical critique to history, but one that is necessarily weak: Too strong a critique will have to rely on realism, to weak is useless as a method. As Clutch writes:
If you want to question historical narratives, you can compare them to the methods and realm of science (science deals with laws (or to put it more accurately, habits ) of nature, which differs from history as described in the quote above). Science requires prediction, accuracy, unification, independent testability, etc., almost all of which history will never match up to. Where these fall short (or are unverifiable) of scientific benchmarks, they are discarded. Thus one is both a scientific realist and historical antirealist.

Does this at all make sense?

Joel

Ted Hoffman

Ahem!

Celsus

Care to elaborate?

Edit: Would you like me to split the thread?

Celsus

Tyler, the tone of your post was childish and unnecessary considering that Vorkosigan has retracted his statement and apologised.

Joel
BC&H Moderator

godfry n. glad

Hmmm... Thanks for the restatement... I think.

I must admit, it's not particularly clear to me. I'd be tempted to consider all knowledges to be "subjugated" given your definition of "historical contents that have been buried or masked in functional coherences or formal systemizations."

However, I fear my understanding has been "subjugated", if not "executed".

How about some nice examples?

godfry

Ted Hoffman

No I don't. But suffice it to say that I do not find that statement up there to be accurate.
I don't want to digress. But I doubt that you want to press the point either.

I think you are making the error of trying to sneak in science in a field as inexact as history. I do not find Scientific realism to fit in when talking about HJ for example.

History for example is not verifiable in the empirical sense (through testable and falsifiable methods) since the arrow of time moves forward always. And there are so many variables: politics, society, theology, cultural influences, historical issues etc.

Scientific realism, with whatever it claims, has a basis for making those claims. And I do not think religious history is one of them.

The questions you seek to address, I believe, are historical and or archaeological. To try to bootstrap your area of inquiry with ideas of scientific realism would be misleading. You have social/historical questions - NOT scientific questions. You need to perform historical research/social research - not scientific research (in its strictest sense) to answer your questions.

You need to deal with historians/theologists/sociologists when examining this issue, not scientists.

I hold that scientific realism is the view that science provides us with objective truth about reality (and not history).

I think you should be talking about logical positivism and not scientific realism. LP has been influential in the philosophy of science and logic and I think you should be talking about LP because of the statements you made in your OP:
It is implausible precisely because of the field of study: history-religion-society etc

I say LP because some of the tenets of LP include:source
Vork, with his mental masturbation quip, was speaking as a true logical positivist.

From the above, its very clear from the get go that existence of a HJ is not verifiable.

About the realist and antirealist positions, I do not think they add anything meaningful to whatever discussions you are holding. Because of the misleading connotations they have.

"Historical agnosticism", IMHO, does not qualify as anti-realist.

That is a misuse of terms and has the potential of misleading one into thinking you are actually handling a scientific subject. In any case, as has been noted by some, there are only certain things whose factuality that cannot be verified beyond reasonable doubt. If I reject cold fusion on the grounds that there is no evidence, yet some scientists state its possible, do I become anti realist?

I am not sure about how far you can thow "scientific realism" into the strange land of history. I think its incongruous. That means I agree with your assertion that realist notions of history are implausible but I think its a wrong question because:

1. Its not history per se or history in general but just a certain historical question.
2. Scientific realism in historical studies is incongruous.

A few suggestions:

What exactly will your debate with Hugo Holbling be about?
You need to clearly define realism, science, scientific realism and history.

That should indicate we are holding the wrong end of the stick. Scientific realism or any kind of misnomer doesn't need to be dragged into NT studies. One needs read the history, place it in the right context and use logic to extract what one can.

Deconstructionism, I believe was a counter-"movement" to certain "schools" of [metaphysical] philosophy. Including Freuds psychoanalysis, Husserls phenomenology and Saussure's structuralism.
To sneak it into NT studies in the name of pomo, is "politicizing" the issue IMHO.

In this day and age, its my opinion that it has outlived its usefulness since the scientific enterprise has come to take its rightful place in the society.
Pseudo-science and mysticism, if still existing, are at the fringes.
Deconstructionism, I think, is too loaded a term to use in referring to honest inquiry about biblical history. And its misleading anyway.

Literary deconstructionism, in J. Derridas post-structuralist project was aimed at taking apart the "enlightenement" project - the works of Freud and Edmund Husserl.

But its relevant tenets:
This should tell you plenty about describing this matter as deconstructionism.

IOW, I think you should throw out the heavy garb of scientific realism, postmodernism (deconstructionism) and other loaded terminology and expose the simple issue you are discussing.

My 2$

Celsus

Thanks for the response Jacob.

Before I make a proper reply, can I ask you if you are aware of any living logical positivist philosophers of science? As far as I'm aware, it has been discarded in philosophy. Realism/Antirealism seems to me the major ongoing debate (or at least Realism/Instrumentalism).

As for Hugo's and my debate, other circumstances may stall it (on my side, I'm personally very busy at the moment, and Hugo has other complications to deal with, not least of which is a long holiday across the globe). You may check this thread for further details. I haven't yet settled on my antirealist stance for the purpose of the debate (note that I am probably a historical realist as Vork and kenaz have alluded to in this thread, but I've been trying to see whether my position is actually sound and actually antirealist after all).

Joel