From: Tobin Nellhaus <nellhaus-AT-biddeford.com>
Subject: RE: Request for conceptual clarifications
Date: Wed, 4 Sep 1996 18:21:11 -0400


Martha--

Don't worry, many of us aren't in philosophy (I'm in theater studies 
myself, and most of what I know about The Great Thinkers comes from "The 
Philosophers' Drinking Song" by Monty Python.  Well, not from school, 
anyway).  You're right, a lot terminology creeps up, and while I don't 
think I can adequately cover all of your questions, I'm willing to try a 
few, and maybe so will others.  Incidentally, several of Bhaskar's books 
have glossaries, but unfortunately, they're often as difficult to 
understand as everything else he's written.  Actually, I think Archer 
summarizes some of the concepts rather usefully, but she often does so "on 
the side," without directing a lot of attention.

Real powers: this concerns causal efficacy, the capacity (not always 
exercized) to produce changes in the world.  A red object has the real 
power of reflecting certain wavelengths of light while absorbing the rest; 
it retains this power even in the dark.  Capitalism has the real power of 
forcing me to try to sell my labor power, since I haven't managed to own 
any other means of production, and it retains that power even if I'm off 
the market for a bit.  This connects to the "causal criterion of 
existence": critical realism argues that if something has a causal effect, 
then it has a real existence, in contrast to positivism, which says that 
something exists only if it can be experienced by the senses in some way.

Emergent structures, properties, etc: yeah, Archer's quite emphatic about 
these.  Roughly, within a given level of the real world (for example, 
biology), certain forms can arise which have unique features or capacities 
that can't be explained simply by the features of the original level (human 
society emerged from us as biological organisms, but society is not a 
biological process: it has its own "emergent" properties).  Actually, 
Bhaskar suggests that there are two kinds of emergent structures: those 
that establish a new, "higher" level (as society is "above" biology), and 
those that arise *within* a level (rock music, fascism, e-mail are all 
developments within society).  In many cases, the emergent structure is 
able to act upon the lower level (I can affect biological processes to some 
extent, by eating differently, taking medications, altering DNA, etc).

Stratification of reality: Structure and agency are two important strata 
within society (along with culture), but there are many more, not only 
within society (e.g, psychology), but of course also outside.  In fact, 
science occasionally discovers "new" strata (such as the quarks which 
compose atomic particles).  There's no *known* limit to the number of 
strata, I don't think, though humans may be limited in what we can know. 
 (We can talk about the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, if 
anyone wants to.)

I'm sure some of these explanations are a bit off, maybe this will turn out 
to be a good occasion for use all to thrash out some of these important 
concepts.  And I hope someone else will take up the rest--especially 
"methodological epoche," which I also just barely grasp.

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