From: HDespain-AT-aol.com
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 13:20:51 EST
Subject: Re: BHA: Dialectics in nature


Howard writes:

"I like Hans's original formulation."

and continues, in response to Gary and Doug...
 
 "Gravity has causal efficacy, but we do not experience it.  We experience
only its effects: as far as we know you can't taste, touch, see, hear or smell
the thing itself.  Notice, Gary, (after the voluntarist dig) that the
distinction is essential to the critique of positivism.  Thus it would make
perfect sense to say that absences are real and have causal efficacy, but that
we only experience their effects.  This would be true also, Doug, of  'absence
makes the heart grow fonder.'"
 
This is true of particular types of structures and mechanisms, which may be a
special case of Absence.  However, a certain Absent, such as a Real Negation,
can be experienced.  For example the death of one's spouse or child, or more
trival "a stapler missing from a desk drawer, or a tool from a workbench"
(Bhaskar 1993:38).

Hans D. 


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