Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 12:37:08 -0700 (PDT) From: LH Engelskirchen <lhengels-AT-igc.apc.org> To: bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu Subject: BHA: rts2(5) Section 5 of Chapter 2 is called "Autonomy and Reduction." I understand this to be a counterposition. Because there is autonomy there is not reduction. Also, the concept of human freedom is introduced, and so in that sense the pulse of freedom, as in dialectic, begins here. As I understand it, the concept of autonomy has a specific meaning on which the concept of freedom rests and that these are situated within an essentialist tradition. Here is what I understand: 1. Autonomy. "Now any refutation of regularity determinism as an ontological thesis must depend upon establishing the autonomy of things, in the sense of the impossibility of carrying out the reductions implicit in the vital conditions B1 and C1 of Table 2.1 on page 76"(108). Table 2.1 specifies the conditions for closure. These are isolation of the system (A1), atomicity of the individuals which make up the system (B1), and additivity as the principle of organization of the system (C1). The quoted sentence means that the autonomy of things is opposed to their atomicity. (Additivity means that the parts cannot be changed by being aggregated into a whole). 2. Agents. "Agents are particulars which are the centres of powers. . . . By an agent I mean simply anything which is capable of bringing about a change in something (including itself) (109). I understand from this that an agent's autonomy refers to the agent as a center of causal power. 3. Essentialism. Here I need to bring forward some language from section 3 at p. 88. I'll quote the whole paragraph: "The ascription of powers [to things] differs from the simple ascription of complexity to things in that it presupposes a non- conventional distinction between those properties of the thing which are essential to it and those which are not. The essence of hydrogen is its electronic structure because it is by reference to it that its powers of chemical reaction are explained; the essence of money is its function as a medium of exchange because it is by reference to this that e.g. the demand for it is explained. Not all properties of a thing are equally important because it is by reference to some but not others that its causal powers are explained. In general it is these that constitute its identity and allow us to talk of the same thing persisting through change." Those properties of a thing which account for its causal powers are essential to it and constitute its essence or essential structure. What are the properties essential to a human agent? 4. Freedom and self-determination. "The question 'how is constraint without determination possible?' is equivalent to the question how 'can a thing, event or process be controlled by several different kinds of principle at once"(111). Thus human freedom is situated within the framework of "multiple control" (109), and, in particular, always occurs within the parameters of the social forms presupposed by action (e.g. cricket, language using 110). But, I infer, within the situation of multiple control the human agent is an autonmous thing, a center of causal power, and as such free. That is, we are free insofar as we are autonomous centers of causal power. Moreover, "complex objects are real because they are causal agents capable of acting back on the materials out of which they are formed," and "the forms of determination need not fall under the classical paradigm this in turn situates the possibility of various kinds of self-determination" (114). In other words as autonomous things our internal structure is complex. Recall from section 3, p 85 "the structure of a field or the organization of an environment may be the cause of what happens within it." Our internal structure is complex and causal in this way, hence the possibility of self-determination. That is, because we have the causal power to change ourselves, we are self-determined. As autonomous centers of causal power we are free and self-determined. 5. The essential properites of the human agent. The paragraphs at 117 are very important. From these I take two things: (1) "For all action depends upon our capacity to bring about changes in our physical environment. Hence we must belong to the same system of objects (nature) on which we act." (2) "But we not only act on it, in the sense of bringing about changes that would not otherwise have occurred; we act on it purposefully and intentionally, i.e. *so* as to bringing about these changes (as the results and consequences of our actions) and knowing that we are acting in that way. In other words, (1) we exercise causal powers in nature (2) intentionally, ie our reasons are causes. Thus, "for science to be possible men must be free in the specific sense of being able to act according to a plan e.g. in the experimental testing of scientific hypothesis." So scientific experiment is the thing that clinches the metaphysical refutation of the ontological claims of regularity determinism. Unless humans were free, self-determined and autonomous agents in this sense, science would not be possible. If they are free, self-determined and autonomous in this sense regularity determinism, and its assumptions about matter (passive, inert, including us) and action (the impact of corpuscles) are false. But science is possible. On the other hand, the significance of science in this instance is only as a clear example, isn't it? All action, not just scientific experiment, is characterized by the ability to identify causes in open systems and to act according to a plan. * * * * * * I missed a lot of the debates over the last couple of weeks, but I did want to pick up the reference Gary made in his post of May 8 to Bhaskar's "flirtation with market socialism." I've been troubled with this also insofar as it reflects moorings that are not materialist and which would therefore lead to Michael's conclusion that Bhaskar is "largely utopian in the good sense of the term" and of "negligible utility," and not "a guide to understanding real historical processes." I don't read Bhaskar in this way. I find most of the marxist tradition burdened by positivist readings of marx and this has had profound consequences for revolutionary practice. Doing the philosophical work to make a realist reading of Marx possible seems to me an enormous contribution. Doing the philosophical work to make possible human sciences rooted in a realist historical materialism seems to me essential to the struggle for socialist transformation. But this is compromised if the work is idealist, and that, for me, is why the flirtation is serious. I view these things more or less as a whole. Anyone can make an error, but you want to know whether if you pull at a thread, the whole cloth unravels. It seems to me that Marx pretty clearly leads to the conclusion that "from each, to each" is inconsistent with the perpetuation of the kind of social structures which give rise to the market. That is, to get there you have to get beyond what Charles Bettelheim long ago referred to as the "double separation": the separation of direct producers from the means of production and the separation of the processes of production themselves. Market socialism is an essential transitional form, but in the last analysis it rests upon the separation of the processes of production and is inconsistent with the flourishing of each as a condition of the flourishing of all and the flourishing of all as a condition of the flourishing of each. Flourishing can be idealist in the manner of the ideals of the great bourgeois revolutions if it is not grounded in the struggle for common control of freely associated workers over social means of production. Howard Howard Engelskirchen Western State University "What is there just now you lack" Hakuin --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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