From: "Marshall Feldman" <marsh-AT-URIACC.URI.EDU>
To: <bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU>
Subject: Re: BHA: real def!
Date: Mon, 24 Nov 1997 14:43:33 -0500


This is a multi-part message in MIME format.


If I remember my physics correctly, weight is force due to a gravitational
field. I wouldn't call this "not real." It may be ephemeral in the sense
that it happens at the moment a force is applied or in the sense that this
is a humanly constructed concept projected onto the world. Nonetheless,
science treats force as real albeit contingent. Force happens and itself has
causal powers.

Underlying this, I think notions of real, actual, empirical can easily slip
into being too static. Real things are intransitive in the sense they exist
independent of our knowledge of them. They need not persist in time.


-----Original Message-----
From: Louis Irwin <lirwin1-AT-ix.netcom.com>
To: bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
<bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU>
Date: Sunday, November 23, 1997 1:31 PM
Subject: Re: BHA: real def!


>Tobin,
>
>I like your weight/mass analogy, and I think it helps draw out one
>difference we do have.  I see you as saying that weight is not real, rather
>weight is a manifestation of mass, which is real, under conditions of
>gravity, also a real structure.  In the same way, you want to say that
>blueness is not real, it is the manifestation of what is real under certain
>optical conditions.
>
>I see an important difference: light waves in the blue range of the
>spectrum are indeed a manifestation of what is real (the strucure of a
>colored object) under certain optical conditions.  However, light waves,
>unlike weight, are themselves real.  To me it seems perfectly proper to say
>that "blue" refers to a real entity that exists independently of us.
>Science provides an identification of that real entity, namely a certain
>range of the spectrum.
>
>Note that this claim is independent of empirical color sensations.
>Arguably these have nothing to do with the meaning of "blue" nor the
>question whether "blue" refers to something independently of our
experience.
>
>Anyway, your original issue was the possibility of a circularity, but I
>think it turned on relating the sensation of blueness with the property of
>blueness.
>
>Louis Irwin
>
>At 12:24 PM 11/22/97 +0200, you wrote:
>>Louis--
>>
>>The "fuzziness" of blue (and other color terms) was what I was getting at
in
>>talking about the arbitrariness behind choosing 4400A, cultural
variability,
>>etc.  So we're seeing eye to eye there (pardon the joke).  But I think you
>>may be mistaking the point I was attempting to make, in the course of
which
>>I distinguished between the physical phenomenon and our mental experience.
>>There is no question that, with suitable training, people will identify
the
>>same thing as blue (even when they depend on different cues, as with the
>>color-blind person).  My concern, however, is that the existence of a
>>scientific definition ("blue = 4400A") may be mistaken to mean "blue" is a
>>real entity that exists independently of us.  Perhaps what I'm saying is
>>that "blue" is an experience and in a sense an event, but not itself
>>real--it emerges from the interactions of various real entities (a body
that
>>reflects light at 4400A, light reflecting off that body, a human eye
>>perceiving that light, a mind to register and interpret it, socially-
>>determined color terms).  Humans may well be capable of agreeing upon some
>>consistent definition of "blue," but it's the light that's real, not the
>>color as such independently of us.  Or better, one should define blue not
as
>>"light at 4400A," but as "a social interpretation of light at 4400A" or
>>somesuch.  (Maybe I should accuse the former definition of exemplifying a
>>typical positivist erasure of the social! ;-> )
>>
>>I think I would argue similarly about "weight," which is our way of
>>measuring something that's real--mass--under earth gravity, with some
>>socially-accepted measurement standard.  "Weight" can vary all over the
>>place, even to "zero," just by taking the mass someplace where the force
of
>>gravity is different; but the mass remains the same.
>>
>>Of course, my standard answer to the "tree falling in the forest" problem
>>is, "Yes, it makes a sound ... but it's inaudible!"
>
>
>
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