File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_1999/bhaskar.9903, message 19


From: "Howard Engleskirchen,WSU/FAC" <howarde-AT-wsulaw.edu>
Date: Fri, 5 Mar 1999 22:06:23 -0800PST
Subject: BHA: repost re john ridgeway's post


I don't know what's going on with this message.  Sorry for the 
trouble.  Third time's the charm.

Howard


John --

Some weeks ago you thoughtfully responded to my questions on 
C2.4 as to whether contradiction was pervasive.  I have thought 
about your points  a lot since and wish I could work out a whole 
systematic argument in response.  For failure of that I thought the 
best I could do would be to let you know what my thinking was now 
and then perhaps we could keep the question alive as the reading 
progressed.  Here are excerpts from your post presenting the issue:



HE had written,
> > The thing I=92ve been concerned with is the concept which I took
> > from Mao about the pervasiveness of contradiction.  There is a 
> > very interesting critique of the Deborin school of philosophy.  
Mao writes:

> > =93This school does not understand that each and every difference
> > already contains contradiction and that difference itself is
> > contradiction.=94  This is what I=92m interested in.  I take it 
> > Bhaskar's argument is different.
 
You responded
> As I recall, I don't have the book with me, RB argues that any 
> change involves internal contradiction in that for something to 
change it 
> must contain within it the liability to negation. Ch 4 section on 
> diffraction I think. RB is careful to make a distinction between 
change and
> difference. But there seems to be no reason that difference 
> between elements at different levels of reality would be 
necessarily
> contradictory. Am I contradicted by a star. is the sun 
> contradicted by the moon.

HE again
> > Mao
> > says that the problem with the Deborin view is that if we 
maintain
> > that contradiction does not appear at the inception of a 
process, but
> > only when it has developed to a certain stage, then the cause 
of the
> > development of a process before that stage would be external 
not
> > internal and that this reverts to metaphysical  [Humean] 
theories of
> > external causality and of mechanism.

JR:
> I suspect that difference and change are being conflated or else 
> how is difference a process. If the process here is change then 
the there 
> is probably agreement.
 
HE:
> > So there is a legitimate question
> > posed here.  Are there connections and relations which are not
> > contradictions.

JR:
> This I don't know,


What gave me the impetus  to respond was reading the American 
philosopher Charles Peirce.  In an essay called "Some 
Consequences of the Four Incapacities" he argued:  "All 
determination is negation; we can first recognize any character 
only by putting an object which possesses it into comparison with 
an object which possesses it not.  A conception, therefore, which 
was quite universal in every respect would be unrecognizable and 
impossible."

It is from the idea that all determination is negation that I get the
notion that contradiction is pervasive.  We recognize an individual 
thing by putting it in relation with that which it is not.  This is a 
relation between "A" and "not A."  Any individual thing is separate 
from other things.  The thing and the other.  This quality of being 
itself and in relation to what it is not is a contradiction and one 
which belongs to all things.  The evolution of life depends on the 
contradiction between the organism and its environment.

Within any individual thing what characterizes it is its structure. 
Structure is a construct of relations of distinct aspects.  Any 
aspect of a structure is at once itself and in relation to other 
aspects of the structure which it is not.  The structure is a 
construct of contradictions.

I'm perfectly ready to acknowledge that there are different kinds of
contradictions.  Both you and Colin emphasized that not all 
contradictions
are internal contradictions and I agree with you.  I agree with you 
also that not all contradictions are antagonistic.  I think there is
differentiation required also between contradiction as difference and
contradiction as process.  I thought your point about the one being
collapsed into the other was well taken.  

Overall we are more significantly interested in contradiction as 
process.   But that doesn't make contradiction as simple difference 
disappear.  That is,  I can't imagine any connection between 
individual things which is not a contradiction.  As far as I can 
understand, to negate is just to contradict.  It's for that reason I 
can't conceive of non- or uncontradictory connections.  All 
connection reflects determinations and all determination is 
negation. 

Howard


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