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From: carnes@gargoyle.UChicago.EDU (Richard Carnes)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Interpretive social science
Message-ID: <679@gargoyle.UChicago.EDU>
Date: Wed, 17-Jun-87 15:20:51 EDT
Article-I.D.: gargoyle.679
Posted: Wed Jun 17 15:20:51 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 21-Jun-87 11:44:24 EDT
References: <3568624e.44e6@apollo.uucp> <678@gargoyle.UChicago.EDU> <125@snark.UUCP>
Reply-To: carnes@gargoyle.uchicago.edu.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Organization: U. of Chicago, Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 29

eric@snark.UUCP:
>> To put forward an approach to the human sciences as a paradigm
>> candidate requires that one accept the analogy to natural science
>> according to which human actions can be fixed in their meaning by
>> being subsumed under the law like operations of the epistemic
>> subject.  
>
>I'm not sure that last sentence even makes sense.

It makes more sense if you read "law-like" for "law like".

At the moment I haven't time to respond to the various insights and
profundities in Eric Raymond's article.  I was puzzled at first,
until I recollected that he describes himself as a libertarian.  Ah,
now we're getting somewhere.

In the meantime I would like to draw Mr. Raymond's attention to the
*Philosophical Papers* (Cambridge U. Press, 2 vols.) of Charles
Taylor, an advocate of the hermeneutic approach in the human sciences
(this may be summarized very roughly as the claim that it is futile
to search for ``natural laws'' governing the human world as
distinguished from the natural world, and the proper approach is the
interpretation and explication of meanings).  A similar critique from
Mr. Raymond of one of Taylor's papers, say ``Interpretation and the
Sciences of Man'' or ``Atomism'', would be interesting and
enlightening.

Richard Carnes
The highest to which man may aspire is wonder. --Goethe