Date: Sat, 7 Sep 1996 02:13:23 -0700 (PDT)
From: LH Engelskirchen <lhengels-AT-igc.apc.org>
Subject: return


 
 
First things first.  
 
I talked to Steve Cullenberg who is the organizer for the RM
conference about time limits and he said that panel time limits are
set at one and one half hours with double sessions possible.  
 
Our primary problem at this point is getting attractive panel
slots.  While the cut off date is September 30, many papers and
panel proposals came in for the original August 15 deadline.  It is
in our interest to get our plans together as soon as possible, and
not just under the deadline.
 
A reading workshop of the sort I suggested earlier is possible.  On
one scenario we could have a panel of presentations on one day and
make available at that session a text from RTS.  Then at a later
session we could have a reading of RTS, doing what we do now.  Or
we could have a regular or double session with normal
presentations.
 
Bhaskar has not yet responded.  He was offered a very modest sum
for travel and expenses.  We are encouraged to contact him. 
Printing of a brouchure announcing the plenaries, etc., will go out
in about a week, so it would be wonderful if he were to commit to
the conference before then so that his appearance could be
announced in this material.  
 
Where do we stand on this?  How shall we proceed?
 
* * * 
 
The exchange over the weeks has been fascinating.  I won't try to
catch up all at once.  Instead, having got used to retroduction,
I'll move backwards from the present.
 
Ruth observes that false beliefs may be causally efficacious.  They
may be real reasons for action.  As I recall, the fact that they
can function in this way is significant in RB's argument that you
can derive an ought from an is.  Is anyone on top of this?  I will
check it in PON.
 
I thought Tobin's explanations for Martha were excellent and hope
we get more of this from him -- and from everyone. 
We all bemoan the absence of a philosopher to use for clarifying
technical and Great Thinker references.  Can't we go out and find
one to put on a retainer or something like that -- a philosopher in
residence.  We should all make an effort to nose around philosophy
departments to find someone.  Or maybe there is already someone
reading.  In the meantime we are challenged to read as carefully as
Tobin has.  
 
Anyway, both Tobin and Hans have now made reference to "categorical
errors" in their discussion.  I assume this is the same as a
category mistake.  I would welcome some elaboration of the concept. 
Hans could you do this, say, in regard to ideology?  
 
For Martha, I thought I could add some examples from our earlier
discussion of value.  As I understand the value relation it is a
compound of private autonomy and the social division of labor.  Now
if you dispose of people in society in this way -- they are
autonomous, their needs are general, but their capacities to
produce are specialized -- they are driven to resort to exchange. 
A "real power" of the value relation, then, would be that it has a
tendency to drive people to market.  They are autonomous, but not
self-sufficient.
 
Because they are autonomous, they are self-interested. 
Arrangements for exchange that take time reflect a coincidence of
self-interests.  But self-interests change and do not do so
synchronously.  I make an arrangement to sell grain, but it doesn't
rain and it is not in my capacity, or self-interest, at a later
point, to perform.  If the reproduction of the social relations
upon which exchange depends are not to break down, there needs to
be formally coercive, customary, or moral social arrangments to
hold the original deal together.  These are emergent dimensions of
social relations which generate according to their own imperatives
social institutions of courts, baliffs, priests, etc.  
 
As Tobin explained, causal criteria of existence depend not on what
can be shown to be the case by sense experience, but what can be
known to be the case because of the effect something has.  We are
persuaded of the reality of gravity because of what it does,
because of its effects.  We don't fell it; we feel its effects. 
The same is true of social relations and reasons and rules.  Real
rules are causally efficacious.  There really is a rule against
theft.  It is causally efficacious in influencing people's conduct. 
There aren't rules, officially coercive ones at least, enforced by
the fashion police.  These don't exist as legislated laws and
people don't bend their conduct in anticipation of judicial
enforcement.  
 
The best argument for structure and stratification is in the
reading from RTS that we've done on this list.  The most important
point, I think, is that the causal mechanisms which tend to
generate the flow and flux of events in the world, natural or
social, cannot be reduced to those events themselves.  Because we
must differentiate these two things, we must recognize that reality
is stratified.  Comparably we cannot reduce the social relations
which provoke the exercise of coercion to the social rules we call
law, nor those rules to any particular behaviors, nor to their
articulation as doctrine.  A judicial decision is an event
experienced differently by different observers.  But the social
mechanisms which tend to generate the decision are distinct from
it.  
 
I found Archer tough going at the end, though I think I finally
turned every page.  Also the further I went, the less sure I felt
of the foundation.  It might be worth figuring out a way to turn
some of our critical attention to her analysis.  I'd be interested
in what others thought.
 
Reaching back further in our exchange:  Ruth, in one of her first
posts, referred to the proper object-domain of science and
philosophy respectively.  I need to have these domains sorted out
for me in relation to a very specific problem:  both transcendental
argument (what philosophers do) and retroductive argument (what
scientists do) begin by asking "what must be the case for X to be
possible," or "what are the conditions of possibility of X," etc. 
What is a good way to explain the distinction between these two
different ways of proceeding?  If I were going to address the
question of e.g. "law" how would I know when to use one rather than
the other?
 
Finally, a question from the text:  at page 38, Bhaskar writes: 
"Thus the problem of induction is a consequence of the atomicity of
the events conjoined, which is a function of the necessity for an
epistemically certain base."  Lacking our philosopher in residence
on retainer, can somebody spell this connection out for me?
 
Howard Engelskirchen
Western State University College of Law
1111 N. State College Blvd
Fullerton, CA 92631
lhengels-AT-igc.apc.org