File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_1997/bhaskar.9707, message 72


From: "Tobin Nellhaus" <nellhaus-AT-gwi.net>
To: <bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU>
Subject: Re: BHA: Non-experimental science (was "What must the ...")
Date: Sat, 26 Jul 1997 12:19:43 -0400


Hi Ruth--

You wrote:

>                   I mean, the 
> whole point of (what I have not yet been convinced not to call) the 
> argument  from experimentation is that `cause' is a relationship in the 
> instransitive, rather than transitive, realm - that is, that the 
> workings of generative mechanisms hold apart from even the *existence* 
> of human beings.  No?

Um, actually, no.  *Some* (indeed, many) generative mechanisms exist apart
from humans, but not all.  Social mechanisms certainly cannot exist without
people.  I don't think RB ever stipulated that generative mechanisms *as
such* must be human-independent, and doing so would obviate the argument
for naturalism.  Nor are social mechanisms unique in this respect: for
example, the social structures of ants or rhesus monkeys don't exist apart
from those species, and certain mechanisms governing the behavior of
subatomic particles depend on the existence of those particles.

>     And if so, then there is a problem in extending 
> this notion of causality, and thus of explanation, in a simple way to 
> the realm of the social.  RB says its not so bad, social mechanisms are 
> only `relatively' intransitive, etc.  Fine.  But I still dont see how to 
> get around the point that the model of explanation which follows from 
> the establishment of a purely intransitive realm is and can be only a 
> metaphor in the case of the social.  That's not to say that there aren't 
> good reasons to accept it, but that it is logically contingent.

If social structures are (or have) generative mechanisms, then there is no
metaphor.  Social structures are certainly different from physical ones,
but ontologically they still count as structures or generative mechanisms,
if they indeed have causal powers.  Also, if I remember right (my books are
in shipping), RB doesn't say social mechanisms are relatively
"intransitive," but rather, relatively enduring.  Not even all natural
mechanisms are permanent (e.g., a flower's scent, a star's thermonuclear
process).

I still don't see any basis for saying that RB's analysis "depends" on the
"necessity" of experiment.  That account seems tantamount to empiricism or
positivism, which insists that everything must be reducible to sense
experiences.  Experiment (or more generally, experience and observation) is
certainly important, but Bhaskar spends a fair amount of time in PON
arguing for the role of *Verstehen* in social analysis (as one strategy
among several), and elsewhere accepts the theory-ladenness of perception. 
Experiments are important but not to the exclusion of other methods.  In
physics, for example, experiment may reveal natural mechanisms, but they
may also *confirm* propositions developed *theoretically,* not
experimentally.  All sort of experiments have been conducted to *test*
Einstein's theories, which were developed in *thought.*  In sociology (and
perhaps in other fields, e.g. ecology?) experiments are quite limited or
even impossible, but there are compensatory possibilities--we can ask
people what they're up to, which has its limits of course but they aren't
as extreme as asking electrons what they're up to.  (Usually, anyway: in
the case of some people, they're about equally useless!)

Cheers, T.

---
Tobin Nellhaus
nellhaus-AT-gwi.net
"Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce


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