Date: Sat, 30 May 1998 09:32:37 +0100
From: "Caroline New" <c.new-AT-bathspa.ac.uk>
Subject: BHA: Another try


Hey folks,
I may not have got the hang of this list business yet, and raised too
many questions in one post, having saved up a good few.  So far the
responses from Colin and Tobin have not helped me, which suggests my
understanding of causal powers is off.  I can generate any number of
examples of the sort you offer!  That's not the point, the point is that
I can't square them with my understanding of generative mechanisms etc -
and I'm not sorry to be obliged to focus on that, for my own sake
anyway.  I can see that gaps, constraints, absences are essential parts
of structures that have certain causal powers.  I can see that if there
weren't a hole in the ozone layer it would perform its previous
protective function (from an anthropocentric angle), and in that sense
the hole causes skin cancers.  But in order to go further than that, to
get to what I have always thought of as causal powers,  won't we have to
bypass the hole?  No mechanisms, tendencies in the hole qua hole, only
in the hole as a gap between 'onts', right?  specifically located.  It
has causal powers as part of the whole set-up up there, but only
relationally, not in itself.  Similarly the effect of the letter not
coming is not really caused by the absent letter, but by the incongruity
between my expectations as reasons, and events 'on the ground'.
I can see, oh can't I just, that the way you two just re-iterate the
sort of examples RB offers already speaks a sort of 'obviousness' that
probably means I have missed the basic, central point of all this. Well,
here's an opportunity for your pedagogic skills.  They haven't worked so
far!

Thanks,

Caroline



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