File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_1997/97-01-11.090, message 2


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


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