🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <2dlr5k$lkl@charm.magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu> rjackson@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Randy W Jackson) writes:
>Of course, and I doubt that you would find anyone who would vehemently defend
>the concept of absolute objectivity.  In no way, however, does this fact render
>empirical research a fantasy.

Right, but the problem with empiricism isn't really its objectivist tendencies
(although that's generally what you'll hear about it from someone still 
thinking in terms of subject/object).  Empiricist approaches partake in a
false consciousness of the analytic that excludes any examination of the
social conditions in which knowledge is produced.  By "social conditions," 
I'm talking about a whole lot of things besides just personal bias or the
limits of perspective.  Frex, I'm talking about the thoroughly historicizable
assumption that data exist apart from the theory that explains them and that
the analyst can take some position outside of or blind to the work she or
he undertakes (obviously, the analyst can set the experiment up such that
she or he won't be able to influence the outcome, but in the process of
setting up the experiment, the kind of outcomes that will be possible are
necessarily "controlled").  I'm also talking about the empiricist's amnesia
with regard to his or her socialization as an analyst and with regard to
the metaphoricity on which her or his explanations of the results of the
experiment will necessarily hinge.  And, also, about the blind acceptance of
traditional categories like "theory/practice," "fact/fiction," 
"subject/object," "order/chaos," "knowing/being," "identity/difference,"
"apparent/real," "revealed/hidden," "said/seen," "self/other," and so many
other problematic oppositions that constitute our intellectual heritage.
So you see, it's not a matter of personal bias, but of the unreflexivity
with respect to power (authority, social status, etc.), representation
(truth, metaphor, simulation, etc.) and the intersections between the two. 
That's what's really troublesome about empiricism.

-- 
Christopher Pound	+	"Homer deserves to be thrown out of the
Anthro Grad Student	+	 contests and flogged." 
pound@rice.edu		+	 	                  -- Heraclitus