File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_1997/bhaskar.9711, message 144


From: "Tobin Nellhaus" <nellhaus-AT-gwi.net>
To: <bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU>
Subject: Re: BHA: real def!
Date: Sun, 30 Nov 1997 16:39:28 +0200


Hi y'all--

Marshall wrote:

>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.

I think this is basically correct; my saying that weight is "not real" was,
at the least, a poor choice of terms.  But I still feel there's a difficulty
or distinction that we haven't adequately clarified.

Anyway I've continued to mull over this in the background.  Right now I'm
thinking that "color," "weight" and various other terms are basically
relational concepts, in which the relata are real and interact in such a way
as to produce a relational concept that lacks an "essence" (or more exactly,
their essence is that they are concepts, nothing more).  Thus "blue" can be
used to refer to a certain quite real wavelength of light (as Louis
suggests), without there being a discrete essence of blueness.  This thought
was partly suggested to me when I came across the following in *Reclaiming
Reality*: "Of course some kinds of things (carbon atoms, dogs) but not
others (tables, chairs) have essences" (169, citing RTS 210).  Chairs and
tables certainly exist, but they lack a real definition of the sort Howard
was asking about vis a vis racism.  I am *not* suggesting that all
relationships lack essences or real definitions, aside from being concepts;
some (like capital) have real definitions, but it may be that some do not.
My sense is that, like "table" and "chair," "color" and "weight" do not--and
it may be that racism doesn't either.  The difficulty is deciding which
things do and which ones don't, particularly since concepts--whether or not
they correspond to a real essence--are causal and hence real *as concepts*.
(Person X can act on her belief in God whether or not there is a God, and
likewise for "races," etc.)

I'll admit, this discussion is not altogether clear, but I hope it sheds
some light on my qualms over the way Howard posed his original question.
One can interpret the question as *assuming* racism has a real definition
(that is, the reality of racist concepts and practices "proves" the
existence of a corresponding entity, like the concept of God "proving" the
existence of God, hence the possibility of circularity).

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




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