File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_1998/bhaskar.9805, message 35


Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 17:01:03 -0400
From: Louis Irwin <lirwin1-AT-ix.netcom.com>
Subject: Re:  BHA: Re: starting up DPF readings again.


Howard,

>On your example of the perceptibility of one person standing next
>to another, then all relations are perceptible ... since all
>must be materially embodied.  

I don't agree.  I gave an example of a relation that is perceptible.  I did
not propose a universal criterion.

>Pi also is a relation which is
>materially embodied in, e.g., Pinocchio's nose.  The things in
>which it is empirically embodied change; the relation doesn't
>change.  

I agree.  I also never meant to imply otherwise.  I think you are also
making a sense/referent confusion (see my last post to tobin).

>If A is standing to the left of B, then I can perceive A
>and I can perceive B.  I can perceive absence between them.  The
>spatial relation between them can be expressed by conceiving of A
>as something representing B or vice versa.  "Who is B?  Oh he's the
>one to the right of A."  A becomes a way of saying something about
>B.  This is because of their relation.  

I agree with you, and nicely put, as long as you don't mean to imply the
relation consists of just the ingredients A, B and the absence between them
(you need more to determine which is to the left).

>But while the relation is
>materially embodied in A and in B, and this has consequences, the
>relation itself is imperceptible. 

Why?  I don't see how this follows.
    
>On the question of an empty world, I think this is not an
>interesting question unless we are actually grappling with the text
>and making sense of that.  So I'm ready to let my freeway
>ruminations go in favor of the text.  You say:  "Let me try to put
>the ball in your court.  We can think of lots of things whose
>existence is contingent, and we can imagine a universe without
>them.  If you think that we cannot, then you must think that some
>things necessarily exist (although perhaps not necessarily specific
>things, just some things).  If you think that, then you must have
>a transcendental argument that there cannot be a completely null
>world.  So it's up to you to state it.  If you cannot, then on what
>grounds could you possibly rule out a null world."  
> 
>A transcendental argument is of the form, given such and such, what
>must be the case for it to be possible?  Given the universe exists,
>what must be the case?  e.g. starting from existence I find its
>fundaments, fields of potential, necessary.  How do I start from
>totally no being?  So the problem is to start from existence and
>make a transcendental argument that a null world is either possible
>or not possible.  I don't know how you would do either one, nor
>does Bhaskar actually make such an argument.  

I'm not convinced there is much of a problem here, but I can't nail it down.

>Consider this at 41:  "But patently I can refer to, as I can
>perceive (or be in a position to infer), Pierre's absence . . . ." 
> 
>That's a very interesting string of words 
>"I can perceive (or be in a position to infer)."  Why the
>parenthetical?

Suppose I am blind and in the cafe.  I call out "Pierre?" and hear no
response.  So I am in a position to infer (fallibly) that Pierre is absent
even though I can't perceive he is absent.

>And suppose we don't perceive but only infer; where
>does that leave our ontology?  Well we do that all the time, don't
>we.  That is the point of retroductive argument.  We infer one
>thing from another, and it is empiricist to argue that what we
>perceive is real, but not what we infer.

Our inferences will still tie up with our perceptions in some sort of web,
so I don't see a problem for ontology.

>(By the way, please explain the error involved in thinking that
>"perception is always grounded in sensation.")

Color blind people are able to make certain types of color judgements
correctly without having sensations of redness.  The fallacy this type of
situation refutes is the belief that the meaning of color ascriptions is
based on specific sensations of color.  People know the meaning of "red" if
they can make correct judgements using "red", regardless of what sort of
internal sensations they have.  This issue has loing roots back to Frege,
Wittgenstein and many others.

[snip]

>I don't know whether sheer indeterminate negativity is impossible
>or not, but just saying that we don't have a transcendental
>argument for its impossibility is not saying much, and in
>particular is not establishing its possibility.  The argument above
>is certainly not a transcendental argument for its possibility.  So
>we are left with a statement without ontological purchase:  there
>is no logical incoherence in totally no being.

Perhaps saying that there is no logical incoherence in the idea of a null
world means that a null world is possible.

[smip] 

>I think Bhaskar's attention to absence is of enormous importance
>and I have learned much from it.  Still I read for a realism
>grounded in materialism and so questions of ontology, e.g. the
>ontology of relations, become thorny ones.  As a consequence I
>would welcome some
>attention to the concrete examples posed by Bhaskar at the end of
>section 1.  Welcoming negativity to our ontology situates some very
>interesting possibilities, he says, and then, I take it, invites us
>to welcome to our ontology the following, p48:  "the letter that
>didn't arrive, the failed exam, the missed plane, the monsoon that
>didn't occur, the deforestation of the Amazonian jungle, the holes
>in the ozone layer, the collapse of 'actually existing socialism',
>the spaces in the text, the absent authors and readers it
>presupposes, both the too empty and the too full."  
> 
>Now we are to test the reality of things by causal criteria.  Then
>what is the causal efficacy of "the monsoon that didn't arrive"? 
>Or "the holes in the ozone layer."  Etc. Does it change anything to
>refer to "the thunderstorm that never materialized"?  Or "the
>letter that was never written"?

I would think "the holes in the ozone layer" have very clear causal
impacts.  We can invent stories for some of the rest.  Perhaps I made
elaborate preparations for the monsoon that never arrived or the
thunderstorm that never materialized.  Perhaps Mary's life changed because
she never got the courage to write that 'Dear John' letter.

Louis Irwin



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