Re: Hard Science

----- Original Message -----
From: "Andrew Wayne Austin" <aaustin@utkux.utcc.utk.edu>
To: "Carl H.A. Dassbach" <dassbach@mtu.edu>
Cc: "WSN" <wsn@csf.colorado.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2000 10:58 AM
Subject: Re: Hard Science


> All this is important caution. We cannot think past the mind. At the same
> time, we commit an error if we reduce the world to the mind. The external
> world, including the social one, makes knowledge possible; it has an
> objective basis. Interpretations are not necessarily ideological. It
> depends on the character of the interpetations.
>

I agree with what you say but disagree with what I believe are its
implications because you appear to suggest that some "interpretations" are
"better" than others.  But by what criteria?  I know the Marxist criteria of
praxis  but, as I tried to point out, I'm no longer sure that is a valid
criteria because outcomes are themselves subject to interpretation.  On the
other hand, prediction which seems to demonstrate the veracity of our
knowledge of the objective social world is impossible except in the most
rudimentary social situations.

Carl Dassbach