File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_1997/bhaskar.9711, message 116


Date: Fri, 21 Nov 1997 03:17:37 -0800 (PST)
From: LH Engelskirchen <lhengels-AT-igc.apc.org>
To: bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.edu
Subject: BHA: real def!


 
 
 
A week or so ago in response to the questions raised about
characterizing race I asked whether there could be a "real
definition" of race or patriarchy.  As a follow up I'd like to give
a summary of RB's explanation of real definition in Chapter 3 of
RTS.  
 
Hans, if we are still posting RTS, now would be a good time, I
think, to post the first three sections of Chapter 3.  Section 1
was posted a long while ago and should be reposted.  Section 2 was
never posted.  The real tofu of the matter is in section 3 -- it's
necessary to read that to get the significance of what sections 1
and 2 are driving at.
 
* * * 
 
Section 1 says this:  in earlier chapters RB assumed the existence
of a body of knowledge and asked, "what are the conditions of its
possibility?"  Now he wants to ask, "How does this knowledge come
to be produced?"  In particular he wants to ask how lawlike
statements come to be established as necessary.  That is, how in
the social activity of science does *natural necessity* come to be
ascribed?  (RTS 143).
 
To cut to the chase (section 3):  natural necessity is derivative
of natural kinds.  A thing behaves the way it does because of
whatever it is that gives it its powers.  Natural necessity is
expressed in causal laws; natural kinds is expressed in real
definitions.  
 
The idea is this:  in science typically you start with an invariant
connection between events, then you establish a reason for it that
shows the necessity of the connection.  Transcendental idealism
goes this far.   What is distinctive about critical or
transcendental realism is that it finds the explanation for the
connection at another strata or level and finds it as the power of
a thing to cause its effect.
 
In other words Kantian approaches argue that we can explain
something by comparing it (analogy) to something we already know,
but they do not pretend that the models we offer tell us anything
about the world.  They are "pragmatic devices, servicing the needs
of the understanding."  (RTS 156).  Critical realism trys to
establish that the explanation given refers to structures of the
world which are real and strives to establish their reality by
empirical test.
 
 
A second start:  in section 1 RB argues that in science "we produce
conjunctions to discover connections and apply connections to a
world of non-conjunctions."  This turns on the distinction between
necessary and accidental connections in the world (RTS 144).  The
empiricist cannot sustain this distinction.  Thus as Le Roy
explains it in section 2, the search is for something that will
account for the "surplus element" in lawlike statements:  "that is,
that element over and above the (presumed) constant conjunction
that explains our ascription of necessity" (RTS 149).  Without that
we cannot distinguish between accidental and necessary connections. 
 
For example, deducibility cannot explain the surplus element. 
Among other things if explanation is to deduce a law like statement
from a higher order law like statement, then the problem is merely
shifted to the higher level.  Nor can prediction provide
explanation because accidental generalizations can yield correct
predictions as long as the conditions which give rise to them
persist.  And if models we use are merely heuristic devices to
organize our thinking, this "is liable to encourage the view that
the rationale for distinguishing necessary from accidental
sequences is solely pragmatic" (RTS 162).
 
In short the Humean denies "that there is any objective basis for
the distinction [between accidental and necessary connections]" or
that there is any "justification, apart from habit or custom, for
our asciptions of natural necessity and accident" (RTS 149).  RB
says he must show that Hume was wrong on the first point:  he must
show an objective basis for the ascription of natural necessity.
 
That objective basis is offered by the properties or structures of
things which account for their powers:  "The ontological bases of
powers just are the properties that account for them" (RTS 178). 
Consider this paragraph:
 
RTS 171:  "Now the only kind of necessity that holds between events
is connection by a generative mechanism.  But there are two other
concepts of necessity applicable to the objective world order: 
there is the necessity implicit in the concept of a law, i.e. in
the activity of a generative mechanism as such or the exercise of
a thing's tendencies irrespective of their realization; and the
necessity implicit in the concept of a thing's real essence, i.e.
those properties or powers, which are most basic in an explanatory
sense, without which it would not be the kind of thing it is, i.e.
which constitute its identity or fix it in its kind.  The first
concept of 'natural necessity' is clearly derivative from the
second, dependent upon the contingent feature of the system in
which the thing's behaviour occurs, viz. that it be closed (see 2.4
above).  I am therefore going to refer to the second as the concept
of natural necssity and the third as the concept of natural kinds. 
KNowledge of natural necessity is expressed in statements of causal
laws; knowledge of natural kinds in real definitions.  But natural
kinds exist and naturally necessary behaviour occurs independently
of our definitions and statements of causal laws."  END RTS 171.
 
What this says is that the only kind of necessity that can explain
the 'surplus element' that accounts for the difference between an
accidental and a necessary connection is a generative mechanism --
see RTS 158:  "For transcendental realism the surplus-element
distinguishing a law-like from a non law-like statement is the
concept of the generative mechanism at work producing the effect in
question."  
 
But there are two other concepts of necessity:  first the necessity
implicit in the concept of a causal law -- that a generative
mechanism can be active without its effect being realized.  This RB
calls 'natural necessity'.  The second is the necessity implicit in
a thing's "real essence."  These are the properties or powers which
explain a thing and without which it would not be the kind of thing
it is.  This RB calls "natural kinds."  Natural necessity is
derivative of natural kinds because it is the way things are that
accounts for how they behave.
 
Now we are going to produce conjunctions to discover connections in
order to apply connections in a world of non-conjunctions.  So an
empirical regularity is identified.  Now we have to explain what is
responsible for it.
 
We do this by ascribing powers or liabilities to a thing: "x tends
to do phi in virtue of its nature N" (RTS 172).  Now we have to
figure out what it is about N that explains why x tends to do phi. 
We do this by establishing its genetic constitution or atomic
structure, etc.  Thus hydrogen is a gas with a particular atomic
structure and this accounts for the way it behaves.  This all
depends on a theory of atomic structure of course.  But we can test
the theory empirically.
 
The significant point is that once we have established that it is
the possession of a particular structure or constitution that
accounts for a thing's powers, then we come to define the kind of
thing x is by reference to the structure:  "It is no longer
contingent that hydrogen is a gas with a particular atomic
structure; rather anything possessing that structure is hydrogen"
(RTS 173).  The atomic structure gives a "real definition" of
hydrogen:  
 
RTS 173:  "Scientists attempt to discover what kinds of things
there are, as well as how the things there are behave; to capture
the real essences of things in real definitions and to describe the
ways they act in statements of causal laws.  The real essences of
things are their intrinsic structures, atomic constitutions and so
on which constitute the real basis of their natural tendencies and
causal powers. . . At the Leibnizian level statements of law are
substitution instances of necessary truths about the individuals to
which they refer.  For any individual which did not behave in that
way would not be an individual of that kind.  They may thus be
regarded as analytic truths.  But they are arrived at in the
transitive process of science a posteriori, by empirical means." 
END 174.
 
That is, once we are able to give a real definition of a thing,
then it is analytic that individuals which have that structure have
the powers the thing tends to have.  Thus the necessity implicit in
this analytic truth is what allows us to ascribe natural necessity
to a thing.  Hydrogen burns, and if a thing could not burn it would
not be hydrogen.  On the other hand hydrogen does not always burn,
so the power of a thing may be active and yet its effect remain
unrealized.  Nonetheless the relation between hydrogen and its
tendency to burn is one of natural necessity.  
 
And, Tobin, what about this one:  "The simple theory that things
look blue because they are blue may then be replaced by the
scientific theory that they tend to look blue in normal
circumstances because they reflect light of wavelength 4400A. 
Subsequently we may allow the latter to define the scientific use
of blue; in which case of course it is no longer contingent that
blue surfaces reflect light of that wavelength" (RTS 177).   
 
I'll stop here.  Notice the fundamental difference between "if x,
then y," and "x tends to phi in virtue of its nature N."  I want to
come back to this.
 
Notice also that if naturalism means that social sciences are
sciences in the same way as the natural sciences, then it seems as
if social and cultural scientists must locate real definitions
about such phenomena as race, patriarchy, etc.  The point is this: 
if our social science depends on explaining events and we use
causal laws to do so, then we work with natural necessity.  But
natural necessity is derivative of natural kinds.  So we are
looking for the intrinsic structures of social things which account
for how such social things tend to behave.  But then it must be
that our objective is to give a real definition adequate to such
structures for this is what allows us to establish the surplus
element, the necessity implicit in the relation between structure
and event we investigate.  
 
Otherwise we are doing something other than science.
 
I'd like to come back to this also.
 
I rely on the list to correct any interpretations I have wrong.
 
Howard 
 
Howard Engelskirchen
 
 
 
"What is there just now you lack"  Hakuin
Howard Engelskirchen


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