Date: Sun, 19 Jan 1997 23:34:49 -0500
From: porporad-AT-duvm.ocs.drexel.edu (Doug Porpora)
Subject: BHA: Types of determinism


Howard and Tobin,

        Thanks for your replies.  You both raise some intriguing questions
to which I will try to respond.

        First, Tobin:

>Doug, you seem to be interpreting "intelligible" as a synonym for "knowable."
>Is that correct?

        Yes, that does seem implied by what i said, but I don't know if I
really believe that.  I actually wondered about this myself after I wrote
it. You go on to say:

>To me, the claim that all causes are in principle
>intelligible is not equivalent to the claim that all causes are in principle
>knowable.  And yet, I have no difficulty imagining causes that are unknown
>and perhaps unknowable; but I don't grasp what it means to say that a cause
>may be *known* but impossible to (for us, for anyone) *understand*.  That
>would seem to me to devolve into a statement that we don't *really* know the
>cause, in which case the initial claim ("we know the cause of X") was, shall
>we say, premature.  Looking at it from the opposite perspective, if a cause
>is known, then it would have to be intelligible.  So someone needs to offer
>me a concrete example of a known but unintelligible cause.

        I agree with you up to a point.  For the reasons you cite, known
causes have to be a subset of intelligible causes.  If we truly know a
cause, then it must also be intelligible.

        However, one reason we might not be able to know a cause is because
it is unintelligible.  In that case, it would be impossible to offer you a
concrete example of a known but unintelligible cause.

        One question is whether all causes are in principle intelligible to
us. The affirmative is the thesis of intelligibility determinism -- at
least as I understand it.

        Now, Howard, you suggest that intelligibility determinism might
involve what you call "the anthropic fallacy," and ask, "What warrant do we
have to presume that the real cause of an event will always be intelligible
to us?"

        You go on to say,

> "This is the kind of move that leads the Kantian to assert, or Peter
>Winch for >the social sciences, that however it be with what really
>happens (we're >agnostic about that) what we are concerned with is what
>makes it make sense to >us.  Isn't that so?"

        I'm not sure that's true.  The Kantian and Winchian would be
correct if we never empirically verified the truth of our conjectured
causes.  We can conjecture a cause that is intelligible to us, but for us
to persuade ourselves that the conjectured cause actually is the cause, we
need empirical verification. The Winchian at least dismisses the
possibility of verification in any strong sense.  I guess this issue has
something to do with the epistemic fallacy.

        But, Howard, your prior question is, to me, more fundamental.  I
don't know what warrant we have to assume that all causes will be
intelligible to us. I guess I would say that (1) it is the principle
science must operate on for, otherwise, it might give up the search for the
cause of a phenomenon; and
(2) so far, the principle seems borne out.

        But I remain unsettled about the objections to the intelligibility
thesis you and Tobin raise.  For example, we construe the diverse effects
of light as a manifestation of light's simultaneous nature as both particle
and wave.  The particle/wave nature of light seems to be the cause of the
phenomena, but is that cause really intelligible?  If not, then what I said
above in response to you and Tobin is wrong, and I have just offered Tobin
a concrete example where the cause is known but unintelligible.  I'm not
sure, myself, what to say about this.

        Howard, re your further question about fn 13, all I can say is the
following:  If Bhaskar is referring to the INJS conception of causality,
then, while we _ordinarily_ single out one event as a cause and treat other
events just as conditions, that is actually misleading.  All the events
comprising the jointly sufficient set of events are constituent causes.

        I think your intersection example is a good one, but I don't think
you draw the relevant point from it.  You say:

>'Not seeing an object already in the intersection as you enter it' would
>be the >cause, I guess, in that sense, but in normal usage we would want
>to say what
>caused the not seeing.

        I would say in normal usage, the not seeing is the cause.  But
according to the INJS model, the cause is actually an entire set of events:
the speeding, the not seeing, the presence of other cars in the
intersection, the drivers of those cars not being able to get out of the
way, and so forth.

        In other words, the point is not the need to look for causes prior
to the not seeing but the need to realize that the not seeing is only one
necessary but insufficient "event" among an unnecessary set of jointly
sufficient causes of the accident.

        In that case, regularity determinists have a problem.  If the
regularity determinists want to find a regularity between not seeing and
accidents, they will have to assume all the other events in the jointly
sufficient set as generalizeably stable background, normally covered by a
"ceteris paribus" clause.  If the background is unstable, then the putative
regularity will hardly obtain with any necessity.  That is Bhaskar's point
about open and closed causal systems.

        I am grateful, Howard, for your explanation of "syncategorematic."
I had to laugh when I read your post because it never even occurred to me
that that word might be found in the dictionary.  I think now it does
explain what Bhaskar means as you suggest.

        All events are subject to multiple redescription.  An event will
fall under a law or theory only under some descriptions and not others.  As
is said in this regard, while causal contexts are "extensional," contexts
of causal explanation are "intensional" (with a deliberate s).  That holds
in general and not just for regularity determinists.

        About philosophy of history, the traditional argument has the
positivists arguing that historical narrative only describes without
explaining because narratives cite no laws.  Thus, according to positivists
(regularity determinists), historically detailed formulations are only
necessary because we are ignorant of the underlying causal laws that are
operative.

        I think it is one of the important virtues of critical realism that
it can finally deliver what is not just a reply to this positivist critique
of historical narrative but a reply that constitutes a knock-out punch.

doug

p.s. to Tobin:  got the paper, will read it, and get back to you.






doug porpora
dept of psych and sociology
drexel university
phila pa 19104
USA

porporad-AT-duvm.ocs.drexel.edu




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