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-621656-27401.54f46e81b66496c9909bcdc2f7987...@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
