File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_1997/bhaskar.9712, message 1


To: bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu
From: Colin.Wight-AT-aber.ac.uk (Colin Wight)
Subject: Re:  BHA: Notes
Date: Mon, 1 Dec 1997 10:09:18 +0000


Hi Howard,

Maybe RB in RTS has just got it wrong and by PON has changed his mind. Note also that in RTS he says:

"society may be regarded as an ensemble of powers which exist, unlike other powers, only as long as they are exercised".

This seems to be a denial of unexercised powers in the social world. Here, I think Benton's piece on PON has to be read in conjunction with it. Benton's critique is fairly powerful. For example, the British state possesses the power to put down armed insurrection, but it is not exercising that power now. So social powers can exist unexercised. (Doesn't RB accept this point in the postscript to the 2nd edition of PON?)

>I think I don't know what this means.  Social forms like marriage,
>RB says in Possibility of Naturalism, are causally efficacious.  Is
>this as material causes only? 

Probably yes.

 I guess in my thinking I have been
>implicitly assuming that if meanings or other social forms are real
>because they are causally efficacious, this must mean cause as an
>efficient cause.  

No no, this is why I consistently insist on agents meaning human agents. Meanings can be causally implicated but they can't act, they can't cause anything on their own. Anyway no matter how much Tobin tries to, I simply refuse to get into this one again. ;-)

 But then what is the
>meaning of social forms as causally efficacious?  I mean what is
>the scope of this "material cause" idea?  

They have to exist in order for the efficient causes to bring about their effects.

> 
>Also Harre's point quoted by Rakesh:  "beyond the icons conceived
>for the explanation of social interactions by social actions lie
>nothing but those very actors, their conformative behavior and
>their ideas."  Is this also saying that social relations are a
>material, but not an efficient cause?  

This seems to me to be a straightforward denial of structures. It is verging on empirical realism (only saved by the throwaway ref to ideas). It is also very individualist in orientation. Which, of course, is indeed Harre's position now. This issue must have been raised at the latest CR seminar on the ontology of the social world. Maybe somebody who was there can comment?

Thanks,



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Colin Wight
Department of International Politics
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Tel: (01970) 621769

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