Date: Sat, 14 Aug 1999 01:54:27 -0400
Subject: Re: BHA: Dialectizing


Hi Amit, certainly we can agree the ozone hole is causally efficacious,
at least as I understand it (although I am not sure it caused the latest
heat wave).  But it being causally efficacious does not establish it as
being social, so we seem to agree.  There is a social cause that created
the hole (again as I understand it), but itself is not social, at least
a social structure as defined in critical realism.  Which I take to be
the emergent social powers manifest from systems of human relations
among social positions, and highly rule-governed possessing normative
force.

The entire section i refer concerns TMSA and structures, so when bhaskar
states "For a structure may survive in one or more following modes: ..."
(DPF:158), I take him to be refering strictly to social structures. 
Moreover, it is not in the least interesting to state natural structures
can exist "*without* any human agency" this is already established with
the distinction between intransitive and tranitive dimensions of
science.

And I wouldn't want to say "societies have a tendency to act in a sexist
way in virtue of their structure".  But something more like 'human
beings have a tendency to behave in particular (sexist etc.) ways, by
virtue of the existence (or absence) of social structures and mechanisms
they tend to reproduce in their action'

I am not sure what you might mean by your statement: "More generally,
one condition for a structure to exist without human agency is that some
of its inner relations are material."  could you offer an example?

thanks,

Hans D.


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