File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_1997/bhaskar.9705, message 1


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



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