From: Tobin Nellhaus <nellhaus-AT-biddeford.com>
Subject: RE: What do the things in the basement consist of?
Date: Wed, 28 Aug 1996 14:04:10 -0400


Hans E raises some interesting questions.  I think his two cases 
(exchange-value and psychic trauma) have differing structures, and I'm not 
sure I can tease out all of the issues/levels involved, but here are some 
thoughts.

To turn first to the issue of psychic trauma, I would (at first impulse, 
anyway) think that this is *not* an instance of the epistemic fallacy. 
 Memories and perceptions may not be material objects, but they are 
nevertheless real, that is, causally efficacious (at least to the degree 
that they provide reasons for actions, and I think in other respects); and 
as Bhaskar argues in PON and elsewhere, reasons are causes.  But this does 
not mean that it's of no importance whether a memory has/had a real 
referent, that is, whether something actually happened.  (Freud notoriously 
effaced the difference, claiming that his neurotic female patients merely 
imagined their sexual abuse.)  Even so, one's fantasies can be deeply 
disturbing even when known to be fantasies; as can fiction, etc.  So it's 
as fallacious to deny that imagined events have the potential for psychic 
importance as it is to assert that it's immaterial whether abuse really 
occurred.  In any event, the past may be "passe," but it too is real, 
because it is the material, social and cultural precondition for present 
activity.  So getting to the psychic truth would, one hopes, involve 
determining whether in each instance something did happen, was imagined, 
misinterpreted, or whatever.

As for the exchange value of a commodity, it is true that labor is 
"invested" in the commodity, making it of value *to the producer.*  The 
commodity is of course real, and so possesses various powers and 
susceptibilities; among them, the possibility of being exchanged on the 
market.  But then the question becomes *realizing* that capacity.  The 
consumer will presumably consider use value, but that's a complicated 
notion, one which invokes all sorts of social and cultural values 
(including, say, status, allure, fear, etc.).  So the mechanisms of 
producing values and those of exchanging them are different; the latter 
directly involve people's ideas and images, which of course the savvy 
producer will take into consideration when producing the commodity in the 
first place.  But: "involve" does not mean "reduce to."  *That* assertion 
*would* involve the epistemic fallacy.

Hope I've sold you on this analysis.  ; -)

---
Tobin Nellhaus
nellhaus-AT-biddeford.com
"Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce