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 --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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