File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_1998/bhaskar.9806, message 79


Date: Thu, 11 Jun 1998 23:51:05 +0100
From: Colin Wight <Colin.Wight-AT-aber.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: BHA: Causal powers of absence - are they real?


Hi caroline,

In the great Santa debate i put in a little aside to Ruth, because I knew I
was coming dangerously close to arguing that santa couldn't cause anything
because he was neither real, nor existed. So I suppose this commits me to
answering your post.

>
>I want to bring this discussion back to the causal powers of absence,
>which is what interests me, and here I am still dissatisfied with
>Colin’s formulations.  Some of the discussion has been about whether
>Santa causes anything, taken as relevant to whether he is real.  But
>even if we did decide that Santa is real, and does cause various
>expectations, practices etc (which I don’t at all accept) surely that
>this would not be an instance of the causal power of absence. 

I agree. If we accept my argument that Santa is not real and does not, and
has not, existed then this is not an instance of the causal power of
absence. Equally, if Santa is real and does exist, then....no more to be
said...

However, (don't you just hate that word?) I don't think that we need to say
that certain absences always produce events of type...This would imply a
humean account of cause would it not? Since we reject this, then we want to
know what event it is we want to explain and what causal mechanisms are in
play. 

After this everything you say makes sense, but why attribute causal power
only to the presences? In any event would we ever be happy to say this (one
thing) is the cause. Think about the examples Sayer gives, or Collier.
Don't they rely on the intrinsic powers of things and the conjuncture of
mechanisms? Surely in an open world we need to identify the multiple causes
at play that produce specific events, some of which may be absences. 

>Santa’s absence makes a difference

Bhaskar actually says somewhere that when we talk of the "cause" of an
event we talk of the thing that tipped the balance under the circumstances.

If you are conceding that absences make a difference I don't think this
constitues a minimal account. It makes a difference. The philosophical
point is made. How much difference? Well once you have conceded that
absences make a difference, then this is an empirical question surely? - 

You say:

i.e. things would happen
>differently if all those Santa-discourses were about an embodied
>presence.  And how!  

Is And How! Minimal. Not in my house it's not I can tell you. Now if santa
were real....

The importance of absence becomes clear in your own post because it is the
absenting of absences....making child care present...Exactly, using the
concept of absence we can locate an absence of child care, which makes, not
a minimal difference, but a major one.


Oh BTW, same question to you....dehydration and water (or its absence).



Thanks,




============================================

Dr. Colin Wight
Department of International Politics
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Wales
SY23 3DA
Tel: (01970) 621769 


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