File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_1997/bhaskar.9707, message 77


Date: Sun, 27 Jul 1997 09:45:38 +0200 (MET DST)
To: bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
From: Bwanika <h961138-AT-stud.hoe.se>
Subject: Re: BHA: Non-experimental science (was "What must the ...")


At 19:03 26/07/97 -0400, you wrote:

>
>Same difference, in this context.  Either social structures are/involve
>real generative mechanisms, in which case there's no metaphor, analogy,
>similitude, etc; or they don't, but are/involve something *like* generative
>mechanisms, in which case analogy (or whatever) does apply.  You seem to be
>saying that, because social structures differ from natural ones, they
>aren't properly called generative mechanisms; I'm saying they *are*
>generative mechanisms, albeit of a different sort.  At the very least, you
>appear to be taking natural mechanisms as paradigmatic, and I don't think
>that's necessary or helpful.  That much is clear from the following:
>
>> Then we get to social structures.  And we want to say that there are 
>> generative mechanisms here, too.  Now the term does not carry with it 
>> the same, or perhaps the full, sense that it had in the "original" (in 
>> the sense of the logic of the early arguments for critical naturalism, 
>> moving *from* RTS to PON) context.  
>
>I really don't see why the sense is different.  All that is needed for
>something to be a generative mechanism is for it to possess causal powers
>and susceptibilities.  Social mechanisms have these in abundance.  It seems
>to me that you think there are additional criteria, and that these somehow
>disqualify social mechanisms from being generative mechanisms in the full
>sense.  The leading contender appears to be in the following:
>
>> Thus the contrast: in the social realm, unlike in the natural realm, 
>> generative mechanisms are quite clearly *not* ontologically independent
of the intentions of human beings.
>

Tobin,

Let us assume we are at a train station at rush hours.  We don't know
anything about the word, * inertia *. We are made to stand in line, to get
on the train but since it is rushing hours, everyone is trying to get on the
train as first as possible. Then, it so happens that individuals standing
behind  you, start falling down as you rush to get on the train. What
happens in this case, is the fact that your action triggers other
individuals actions. Besides, those who fall down have no intention of
falling down and you had not intention of seeing them fall down, for you
only wanted to get on the train as first you could.

In another instance, if one is standing on a cliff, occasionally, locks
without any explanation can start rolling/ falling down the cliff. In
physics, we can attribute that act, to given forces acting on the these
locks, assuming the causal  reasons for these stones to fall down were not *
intention *.
Now, from another point of view , we can attribute the lock's * acts *
(behavoiur) , let us say,  to different types of  forces (?) (mechanisms ,
i.e., weathering (chemical ), mechanical (abbrasion) etc.,
Now, going back to the above analogy, were we have people in queue falling
down, on the other hand,  some people are actually not falling down despite
the fact that others do fall !
In this regard , the cuasal / generative mechanisms acting on other
individuals,  as the case is, with some locks fallig over a cliff, seems not
to affect other locks, unless certain criteria are met.
For instance , we can explain, so and so did not fall down while standing in
a queue since:  S/he  was not too tired that day or because, s/ he was
standing in a strategic position that when others fell s/he remained in
balance, or simply because s/he's * used * to the experience of getting on
trains at rush hours. ( used = experimentation or sense perception )

If we leave chemistry, biology  and physics alone, and move on to social
action or behaviour . In industrial countries people have a tendency, to
wake up, early in the morning , to get to their jobs, accompanied by many
given activities: eating breakfast , bathing, tooth brushing, putting on a
dress or a tie, shaving etc., these acts forms a sort of behaviourism. In
the opposite direction, they rush from their places of work: get on a bus ,
train , into a car, pick up their kids , then home , bath , prepare dinner,
watch news bulletins  etc.
Can one assert, that in industrial countries, human behaviourism as in
stones falling over the cliffs, there ontological generative mechanisms,
which in that regard cannot be placed in a given domain as the case is, with
that of a worker, who do what s/he does daily, as illustrated above ?
Because, locks as people, do have  tendencies to behave in a certain way
once they are acted upon, by given forces ; though not in a rational manner
that they can actually, avoid falling over the cliff or can stop chemical
weathering acting upon them, as people can stop inertia acting on them,
while standing in queue, either through experience or experiment.
Therofore, copper will not oxidise unless certain creteria are met as I will
not fall asleep unless I am tired for example etc.,

To examine the above we look at a workers action thus:

a. I did not go to work , I felt bad .
b. I did not go to work , I missed the bus or the car did not start because
the battery is down.
c. Or simply because I became unemployed, yesterday. * But,* I will start
work next year when economic growth is expected to rise !

As for the stone not falling over the cliff:

a. The lock though, it has cracks due to chemical weathering it is still
    strongly attached to the mother lock that is why it did not fall over
the         cliff.
b. When a huge lock hit on the other lock nothing happened therefore
     the lock did not fall over the cliff. Therefore it had no cracks or was
not      weaken by weathering prior to the lock being hit.
c. Or simply because i did not push it to make it fall over the cliff, once
i            knew I could not move that huge lock or simply the lock is
still strongly        attached to the parent lock or i simply did not want to.

On the other side, a meteorite hit the earth because there was a big bang on
planet Neptune, which trigged it to travel direct to earth, and subsequently
hitting it .  While, human beings have landed on Mars , because of
diminishing exploitable resources on earth or simply because they are curious.
So, looking at causes or mechanisms is being more observant than being more
experimental. Is it that being intentional is being ontologically dependent
or the opposite is true and as such, establishing intention, neccesitates
experimentation ? There is one more thing : problematicity in both the
natural and social realm. My copper ware are rusting , I will glavanise
them, humans are having few children, pollution is reducing sperm production
in males.



Bwanika. 



> what defines social structures the most are the practices and concepts of
>the long dead, and we the living must work with that inheritance and can
>only do so much.  (And
>in that sense or to that degree, social mechanisms are in important
>respects *independent* of living humans.)  But this leads me to my second
>point: whether you accept that argument or not, it only concerns the *sort*
>of mechanism that social structures might be, and the conditions for
>studying them.  It does *not* concern the issue of whether social
>mechanisms are full-blooded generative mechanisms.  Likewise, biological
>entities are not ontologically independent of chemical entites, but they
>are no less causal beings and generative mechanisms for all that.
>
>What I'm trying emphasize, then, is that the issue of whether or not X is a
>generative mechanism must be kept distinct from the questions of what sort
>of mechanism X is, what the conditions of its existence are, or what
>methods of studying it might be available.  The concept-dependence of
>social structures affects the latter issues, but not the former.  *That*
>hangs only on causal powers.
>
>To return to the question of experimentation, I don't really follow your
>argument.  You say:
>
>>         If generative mechanisms in the natural realm are 
>> ontologically dependent on the existence or interventions of human 
>> beings, then what is the point of RTS?  So, for the purposes of RTS, 
>> generative mechanisms *are*, if experimentation is to be both necessary 
>> and intelligible, independent of humans.
>
>[snip]
>
>>          Now I don't have a problem with 
>> this, particularly, but Marshall's point still seems to me to be kind of 
>> obvious: the case for realism in the natural sciences (viz., that were 
>> generative mechanisms *not* human-independent, experimentation would (a) 
>> be unnecessary and (b) make no sense) --  has not a lot, logically, to 
>> do with the case for realism in the social sciences.        
>
>Are you saying that, in the case of human-dependent mechanisms,
>experimentation is neither necessary nor rational?  Untangling your
>double-negatives, that seems to be your assertion.  Farewell, experimental
>psychology.  In fact, farewell social activism--we really must be crazy to
>try to change things.  Sorry, I'm not trying to be mean, I'm just playing
>out the problematic implications of what I'm looking at.  Actually my guess
>is that, once put in the affirmative, you immediately saw the holes in
>(what I took to be) your statement.
>
>I wrote:
>
>> > 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.
>
>to which you replied:
>
>> But this is silly.  At a minimum, in my first post I noted that in 
>> Dialectic he says he's done without the experiment argument.
>
>Uh, Ruth, you keep talking about the "necessity and intelligibility of
>experiment."  So is experiment necessary or is it not?  As for the rest, my
>apologies, I was not replying exactly to what you had said, but to various
>statements earlier in this discussion, to which you were responding.
>
>Now I better go back into hiding, before I get a hiding.
>
>---
>Tobin Nellhaus
>nellhaus-AT-gwi.net
>"Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce
>
>
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>
>



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