From: "Wallace Polsom" <wallace-AT-raggedclaws.com>
To: <bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu>
Subject: BHA: Re: An offering
Date: Tue, 11 Nov 1997 20:51:53 -0600


Hi all,

I haven't (yet) put up an HTML-ized version of Louis's glossary, but I have
thrown together a Web page where anyone can have the document sent
automatically to their email box simply by filling out a form. I call it
"The Critical Realism File Distribution Page," and the URL is

http://www.usask.ca/hru/criticalrealism/files/index.html

Also, if, like Louis, you have a few files you would like to make available
to others interested in Critical Realism, and you hold the copyright for
those files, please feel free to send copies to me by email so I can add
them to the list.

Finally, if you have any problems with the system, please be sure to let me
know ASAP so that I can take appropriate action to remedy the situation.

Enjoy!

Wallace



-----Original Message-----
From: Louis Irwin <lirwin1-AT-ix.netcom.com>
To: bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu
<bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu>
Date: Tuesday, November 11, 1997 1:58 AM
Subject: BHA: An offering


I would like to offer the list some notes I recently compiled from
marginalia and notes on my readings of Bhaskar.  They make up about 10
pages or 40K, which is somewhat larger than most uploads on the list.
Instead of inflicting it on everyone, I decided to create a humble Web page
to serve it.  If you are interested, go to

  http://www2.netcom.com/~lirwin1/bhaskar.html

and use the right mouse button, as stated there, to start the download.  If
you prefer me to mail it to you, send me email at

  lirwin1-AT-ix.netcom.com

(Note that "lirwin1" starts with a letter and ends with a numeral, in case
your email font is like mine and barely distinguishes the two.) Please put
"send" in the subject line so I can organize the thousands of requests that
will no doubt be pouring in. ("Requests for Bhaskar document brings
Internet to its knees!") But do try to get it from the Web first, please.

I don't have the diligence to learn html properly, otherwise I would make
the text available on a Web page.  I recall Wallace graciously offered to
support some Web pages, in case my notes are useful.

To give you the flavor, here is the beginning:

"These notes are intended to acquaint those new to Bhaskar's works with some
of the basic concepts Bhaskar uses to formulate his positions, not to state
the positions themselves, and I hope they will be useful as an entry point
for new readers.  One aim is to state the concepts as clearly as possible
in order to enable new readers to orient themselves, therefore many nuances
are not addressed.  An attempt has been made to state the point of a
concept and relate it to the philosophical tradition and/or to other of
Bhaskar's concepts.  I cannot pretend to be completely successful in these
aims.  The material is not meant as a comprehensive glossary nor to cover
the same ground as those which Bhaskar provides in DPF and PE, which vary
in their difficulty.  It is more in the nature of a primer.  Finally, I
should stress that these notes represent my own particular background and
path into critical realism and may not be entirely
congenial to those with a different background, especially those who prefer
historical approaches to concepts.  I welcome suggestions, corrections and
criticisms regarding both accuracy, nuances, and the points of concepts.
Please feel free to distribute these notes to whomever you wish, as long as
they are preceded by this paragraph.  This version is an incomplete draft
based on my marginalia and includes page references to specific works which
will be excised in later versions as I correct errors.  References to PON
and PIF are lacking, because the former is unavailable to me and I have not
had time to read the latter.  --Louis Irwin

Abbreviations: RTS = "A Realist Theory of Science"; PON = "The Possibility
of Naturalism"; SRHE = "Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation"; RR "Reclaiming Reality"; PIF = "Philosophy and the Idea of Freedom"; DPF "Dialectic -  the Pulse of Freedom"; PE = "Plato Etc."

Absence - Bhaskar argues that the world cannot be conceived without
absences, to which we constantly refer and presuppose.  The idea is not
that we add fictional entities like Santa Claus or unicorns to the
presences that we already recognize in our factual discourse, it is rather
that reality even at the everyday level is inundated with absences (an
empty glass, a missing wallet, the failure of a monsoon to have effect,
etc.).  (PE 56-7) Bhaskar does recognize fictional entities as part of
fictional as opposed to factual discourse, but even in factual discourse we
do not have to accord existence in the form of absence to things we talk
about, such as caloric. (DPF 40-41) Generally, absences are causally
efficacious, such as the absence of health, in contrast, say, to
the non-existence of caloric.  Bhaskar understands absences both as product
(something not there) and process (making something absent, or
"absenting").  He also uses iterable hybrids of these: process-in-product
(for example, the causal efficacy of the past or things at a distance),
product-in-process (the exercise of causal powers, as in ongoing social
activity)  (DPF 39; PE 55-6) Bhaskar argues that absence is a concept that
is alien to the classical conception of the world which strived to ensure
that all action takes place by contiguous contact, yet that conception is
incoherent without absence. (PE 57) For example, the transfer of momentum
from one billiard ball to another requires spaces in between them.  More
generally, absence is closely related to change and hence to cause.  For a
change in something is the absence of something that was present, or the
presence of something that was absent; and to cause something is to
make a change, either of the first sort, which is what Bhaskar calls
"absenting" something, or of the second sort, which Bhaskar calls
"absenting absence".  Either way, to cause something is to make something
absent (either a presence or an absence). (PE 56) Now there might appear to
be a symmetry between absence and presence, so that every absence can be
regarded as the presence of something else, and vice versa.  The absence of
hair would be regarded as the presence of baldness, etc.  Even this trivial
example lacks symmetry, because we understand
"baldness" as meaning absence of hair, whereas we do not understand "hair"
as meaning absence of baldness.  Non-trivial examples, such as the absence
of health, bring out deeper asymmetries.  In a narrow sense the absence of
health, say TB, could mean the presence of certain microbes, such as is
occurring in America's inner cities, but as in the baldness example the
symmetry breaks down: we do not understand the presence of those specific
microbes as meaning the absence of TB (we could identify them in an
independent fashion).  There is a broader asymmetry as well, because the
absence of health in general
cannot be equated with the presence of disease.  The presence of disease
manifests itself in a number of ways, such as the presence of microbes,
viruses, carcinogens, etc., however these presences are caused by the
absence of health practices, which is in turn tied to politics. Consider
another example: the absence of freedom equated to the presence of
oppression.  The equation breaks down, because the presence of oppression
is manifested in many ways (death
squads, disappearances, jails, etc.), but the underlying causes of those
manifestations can only be described as an absence of freedom.

Actualism (SRHE 28) - The reduction of causal laws to patterns of events, a
position associated with Hume and classical empiricism.  Bhaskar holds by
contrast that causal laws have a real existence as tendencies which
generate the phenomena (events and situations) in which patterns are
detected and which are subject to empirical observation or verification.
The patterns are reflections of the tendencies, but the latter cannot be
reduced to the former. Bhaskar designates phenomena generated by real
mechanisms and tendencies as "actual", but such mechanisms and tendencies
may or may not manifest themselves in actual phenomena, depending on what
else occurs (and such manifestations may or may not be empirically
ascertained).   The distinction between real and actual pertains to
positivism, the distinction between actual and empirical pertains to
subject/object identity.  This is a key concept for Bhaskar and is closely
related to stratification (see "Differentiation and stratification").  See
also
"Closed and open systems", "Strong and weak actualism", and "Facts".

Change - Bhaskar uses this term in a technical, rather than everyday,
sense.  Underlying the everyday assertion "There has been a change in the
weather" some philosophical theories see no change involved even if the
statement is true.  Yesterday's weather, today's weather, and tomorrow's
weather are viewed as events which exist outside time and thus are
"eternal."  At most a statement that there has been a change in the weather
involves a switch in subjective
attention from one eternal event (yesterday's weather) to another (today's
weather), or from one aspect of a single unchanging Parmenidean 'one' to
another.  Bhaskar wants to reinstate the temporal aspects of reality, and
he characterizes such theories as unable to conceptualize change, which
requires viewing the significant elements of reality as tensed processes
comprising irreducible internal and external temporal relations. (DPF 45)
The absence of change shows up in a number of ways in different theories.
Token monism is the view that the world consists of unchanging tokens, each
one a monad, an isolated Parmenidean 'one'. (DPF 44) For example,
indexicalism (the world as a series of atomistic experiences), punctualism
(the world as a set of atomistic events or facts), blockism (the world as a
closed set of all past, present and future facts, all equally determinate).
(DPF 252-4) Type monism is the view that the
world consists of unchanging types and is hence does not admit emergence.

Closed and open systems (SRHE 27) - A closed system is one restricted in
such a way that laws have uniform effects.  An open system is one that is
not closed.  Closed systems do not usually occur spontaneously in nature
and generally require human intervention, such as in laboratory
experiments.  All sorts of intervening causes may prevent a causal
mechanism or tendency from having its normal effect.  The concept of
closure plays an important role in refuting determinism, because a
determinist case cannot be sustained without the regularity that comes with
closed systems, and ultimately it is shown that the assumption of closure
is an article of faith.  Classical field theories in physics (gravity,
electromagnetism, mechanics) assumed a pure world containing only a single
field and showed how, given any initial state of the field, all subsequent
states of the field were determined.  The question of what happens
when several of the fields are assumed to exist and interact created
problems for the determinism that was irrefutable under the assumption that
only a single field exists and is operative.   Laplacean determinism
extrapolated this narrow truth to all of reality.  Closure is also closely
connected to the understanding of laws other than as merely patterns of
events: that identity can be sustained only so long as systems are assumed
to be closed.  It is important to realize that a closed system is not the
same as a spatially isolated system. To achieve closure one must assure
that there are no countervailing causes (of a kind pertaining to the
phenomena being investigated).  Being cut off from external influences is
in general insufficient to rule out internal countervailing causes.  For
example, a system free of external influences is nevertheless
open in respect to Newtonian mechanisms if it contains quantum phenomena.
(RTS 69) Quantum phenomena are treated by determinists as irrelevant at
some macro level. Counterexamples like a switch that is thrown and thereby
causing some macro event if and only if a geiger counter shows an even
number at a designated time are considered exceptions: determinism applies
only in closed systems, which will by (circular) definition exclude such
example situations.  A potential field is deterministic, other things being
equal, that is, excluding
quantum phenomena, not to say other potential fields which are also
deterministic!  See "Differentiation and stratification" and "Strong and
weak actualism."

Louis Irwin




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




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