Date: Fri, 13 Dec 1996 10:20:47 -0800 (PST) From: LH Engelskirchen <lhengels-AT-igc.apc.org> Subject: BHA: RTS ch2s1: actualism and closure I hope you are all glad to see all of us safely returned from the vortex of the world's pluralities. I sympathize a thousand percent with Hans' frustrations. It was very refreshing on Saturday to hear presentations from members of the list that were grounded, solid and provocative. We made a good start. For me the reading over the last five months has made a tremendous difference in my understanding of Bhaskar. I remember Tim saying shortly after I joined the list that he was was glad to find the list because he was beginning to think that he was the only person reading this stuff. But for our Saturday sessions, you could have gotten that idea at the RM conference also. So I'm very anxious to keep the steady progress of our reading going. That's really the most valuable aspect of what we do -- the gathering like a reading group for a progress through the text. Paraphrasing a bit a comment Ruth made in one of our sessions, this stuff is wack, so it's fun to read it with company. With that in mind, I thought I'd begin with Chapter two, which, as far as I can tell no one has picked up on yet. (Hans E: would it make sense to rerun the opening of chapter 2 for a fresh start in case others have lost the original post of it?) RTS: CHAPTER TWO. ACTUALISM AND THE CONCEPT OF CLOSURE. The actual is a domain; actualism sees the real as being exhausted by the domain of the actual. What RB shows is that closure is intrinsic to actualism. Analytic to it? INTRODUCTION: ON THE ACTUALITY OF THE CAUSAL CONNECTION. Three things are possible: i. causal connection is actual; ii. critique: causal connection is not actual; iii. critique: causal connection is actual, but it is not limited to the actual. QUOTE (i): "We have no knowledge of anything but phaenomena." It is a basic proposition of critical realism that we can have knowledge of things and structures we cannot observe. Electrons are not observable. Are they then just an image we fashion of how the world works which we use to order our understanding of phenomena but about which we are unable to make existence claims? Book browsing during the RM trip I came across Wittgenstein's assertion from the Tractus: The world is all that is the case (approximately that). I don't know how Wittgenstein means it. What I know is that a critical realist cannot read a like assertion positivistically. All that is the case, for RB, would include absence. What I became impressed by in working up materials for my presentation was the degree to which we are surrounded by positivist readings of this and that, Marx especially. As an example from my own discipline, the will theory of law. Marx called legal relations, relations of will, but this has been read with positivist lens instrumentally. So it is not only the critique of positivism which is important, but the critique of positivism's residue in the reading of any text. We have no knowledge of anything but phenomena also presupposes the Cartesian problematic: what makes it possible for me to be certain of what I know (not, given that the activity of experiment exists, what must the world be like for this to be possible). => "These relations are constant; that is, always in the same circumstance." Marx has a wonderful little statement in the Critique of Gotha which has been a lodestone of mine: to be an individual thing is to be unlike any other thing. The implication of this is that there is never the same circumstance and, in consequence, the world is open. But what is also clear from Mill's statement is that the very idea of constant conjunctions depends on closure. Closure is built in. Without closure relations are not constant. The meaning of the one is built into the other. This means that positivism depends on closure. This means if closure is not the case, then positivism may be an interesting intellectual enterprise (microeconomics anyone?), but it cannot be science about the world. QUOTES (ii) and (iii): the D-N method. explanandum: statements describing the event to be explained. explanans: statements explaining, accounting for the event to be explained. Deductive-nomological means two things: (1) deduction, as in an ordinary syllogism, (2) nomological, as in nomos or law, ie a law statement. Thus the explanans must be a law of nature from which the explanandum can be derived, and must be testable. Then the explanandum is a deductive consequence of it, viz: All copper conducts electricity. This wire is made of copper. Therefore, this wire conducts electricity. The law of nature expressed by the explanans is a constant conjunction of events of the type expressed by Mill, so D-N explanation presupposes closure. QUOTES (iv) and (v). "the acid test of theory is its predictive power." (I take it (iv) is just another form of statement of this.) One of the great achievements of critical realism is to break the link positivism establishes between explanation and prediction. RTS 64: "This theory [the Humean theory of law, ie constant conjunctions of events] has often been criticized on the grounds that a constant conjunction of events cannot be sufficient for a law. But most of its critics have been content to allow that it is at least necessary." The neo-Kantian critique of so to speak raw empiricism (recall the three stage model of the scientific method from the first chapter of RTS), is that theory is necessary to make sense of experience. So establishing a constant conjunction is not sufficient. The critique of closure allows Bhaskar to show it is not necessary either. RTS 65: "for to the extent that the antecedents of law-like statements are instantiated in open systems, he must sacrifice either the universal character or the empirical status of laws." Since to be individual is to be unlike any other thing and circumstances are never the same, the empirical connection of events is always unique. The universal character of empirical laws must be given up. Either we say the connection isn't universal (no law) or we say the law isn't empirical. Positivism can't have it both ways. But if we say the universe is open and that causal tendencies may operate but in a particular conjuncture be overridden or only co-contribute, then we may say the law is universal and also may be empirically confirmed. QUESTION: "A sequence of events can only function as a criterion for a law if the latter is ontologically irreducible to the former." Why? IMPORTANT FOR THE STUDY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE: One of the things many of us are faced with in the application of critical realism is extending the ontological distinction between structures and events to the distinction between social structures and events. I had to cross that bridge in the analysis I presented at RM. There is a statement at RTS 66 that is provocative on this score and I'm not sure I understand it: "Thus there is no necessity that we should exist. But, given that we do, if our social life is to be possible we must ascribe causal responsibility in open systems." ? Given social life, what must the world be like for it to be possible? There must be causal responsibility in open systems. ? Because we produce sequences of events? Who can pick up the thread on the rest of the segment? Howard Howard Engelskirchen Western State University College of Law 1111 North State College Blvd Fullerton, CA 92631 (714) 738-1000 x2505 lhengels-AT-igc.apc.org --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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