Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2002 09:40:26 +0000
To: Steve Lehar
From: Anthony Freeman
Subject: Re: fyi

Dear Steve,

Thank you for alerting me to your note about JCS on your website. May I point out one error? You write:

"In fact the real reason why this paper was not really reviewed at all was because the editor and the reviewers are all naive realists, and they feel threatened by this challenge to their cherished beliefs."

I know that one of the referees is a realist (though I think of the "critical" rather than "naive" variety), but in my own case the charge of naive realism is misplaced. The reason I now have to earn my living editing JCS is that I was dismissed from the Church of England after more than 20 years service when I published a *non-realist* account of Christianity ("God In Us: A Case for Christian Humanism", SCM Press, 1993; 2nd edition Imprint Academic, 2001). Since then I have written a number of reviews and articles pointing out the problems caused by the current fashion for "critical realism" both in theology and science.

Yours sincerely,

Anthony.

From: "Steve Lehar"
To: "Anthony Freeman"
Cc: "Steve Lehar"
Subject: Re: fyi
Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2002 08:53:14 -0500

Dear Anthony,

Thank you for your reply, and thank you also for pointing out my error, I will be sure to make a note of it on my web site. Of course from my Indirect Realist perspective, there is little real difference between naive realism and critical realism, both which are, in my view, a rationalization to avoid facing the real truth of representationalism, as is abundantly clear in my review of the history of the epistemological debate in...

http://cns-alumni.bu.edu/~slehar/webstuff/consc1/consc1a.html#hist

In any case I think it is a shame that the academic establishment is so averse to a free and open discussion of these paradigmatic hypotheses, and that unconventional or non-standard explanations are most often rejected out of hand rather rather than opened up for public debate. No wonder the standard fare in the academic journals is so dry and monotonously conventional.

I thank you also for taking my "mad ravings" in good humor, as they were intended.

Sincerely,

Steve Lehar