The Baha'i Studies Listserv I'm unfamiliar with Bhaskar, but quite familiar with Whitehead. How would you say Bhaskar differs from Whitehead and why do you prefer his descriptions of reality over Whitehead's?
-----Original Message----- From: Mark A. Foster <ow...@markfoster.net> To: Baha'i Studies <bahai-st@list.jccc.edu> Sent: Fri, Nov 25, 2011 8:54 pm Subject: Critical Realism The Baha'i Studies Listserv I touched on Critical Realism in the last posting. However, I don't know if the subject interests anyone but me. :) In any event, I was a critical realist (Roy Bhaskar's general approach) until about 8 years ago. I returned to Critical Realism almost 3 months ago. According to Bhaskar, there are three basic levels: 1. The Real (unobservable, underlying structures) 2. The Actual (the events or phenomena produced by the Real) 3. The Empirical (observations of the Actual) I took Bhaskar's model and reformulated it: 1. unknowable unifying essences, including the Unity of God, the unity of religions, and the unity of humanity 2. attributes of essences, such as the individualized divine Attributes (Prophets) of the Unity of God, the virtues of unity of religions, and the rational faculty of the unity of humanity 3. names of anyone or anything, such as Muhammad, Lebanon, and stamp collecting In other words, unifying essences are unknowable. Our knowledge of them is indirect - by their attributes. Once we name, or identify, a set of attributes, we can relate to it and even combine those attributes into different forms. --- Regards, Mark A. Foster, Ph.D. 29 domains: http://markfoster.net Two books: http://bahaifaith.info Clinical: http://fosterservices.com __________________________________________________ You are subscribed to Baha'i Studies as: mailto:arch...@mail-archive.com Unsubscribe: send a blank email to mailto:leave-621661-27401.54f46e81b66496c9909bcdc2f7987...@list.jccc.edu Subscribe: send subscribe bahai-st in the message body to ly...@list.jccc.edu Or subscribe: http://list.jccc.edu:8080/read/all_forums/subscribe?name=bahai-st Baha'i Studies is available through the following: Mail - mailto:bahai-st@list.jccc.edu Web - http://list.jccc.edu:8080/read/?forum=bahai-st News (on-campus only) - news://list.jccc.edu/bahai-st Old Public - http://www.mail-archive.com/bahai-st@list.jccc.net New Public - http://www.mail-archive.com/bahai-st@list.jccc.edu
