Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 02:02:25 +0100
From: Jan Straathof <janstr-AT-chan.nl>
Subject: Re: BHA: events (2)


John asked i.a.:

>This raises another question that had not occurred to me before -
>what is the relation between actual/empirical and
>transitive/intransitive? Surely the empirical, by involving observers (ie
>us) must be part of the transitive domain rather than the intransitive?

John, allow me to sketch roughly my view on this question:

a) the are two basic ontological dimensions (scientifically speaking):
    - the intransitive dimension (ID)
    - the transitive dimension (TD)

b) the ID comprises three (scientifically relevant) subdomains:
    the Real, the Actual and the Empirical

c) the TD comprises all (scientific) actions, observations, intuitions,
    propositions, institutions, conventions etc. concerning our dealings
    with/in the ID.


Below some excerpts from a (DCR) syllabus i wrote for some
of my students.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Bhaskar's ontology:
The core principles on which Bhaskar's transcendental realist (TR)
ontology pivots are: Intransitivity, Transfactuality and Stratification.

< Intransitivity >
- according to Bhaskar "western philosophical tradition has
mistakenly and antropocentrically reduced the question of
what is to the question of what we can know. This is the
_epistemic fallacy_ viz. the failure to distinguish between
the intransitive and the transitive dimensions of reality."
(or "the reduction of being to our knowledge of being, and
by so collapsing ontology into epistemology")

- intransitivity here refers to the reality of entities (things,
structures, tendencies) which exist and act quite independently
of our identification and description of them. Here intransitive
entities are conceived as "non-observable generative
mechanisms possessing causal powers" featuring also
"(relative) endurance and relationality".

- transitivity refers to the reality of knowledge (science, theory,
meaning) which is a "socially produced, transient and geo-
historically contingent account of intransitive entities (e.g.
in so called 'laws of nature')".

- from this it is recognized that "being contains, but is
irreducible to, knowledge, experience or any other human
attribute or product. The domain of the real is distinct from
and greater than the domain of the human-empirical."

< Transfactuality >
- transfactuality refers to the 'trans-f/actual' operation of
intransitive entities independently of the states (opened or
closed) of the system in which they occur, and thus "the
domain of the real is distinct from and greater than the domain
of the actual (and hence the empirical too). Failure to appreciate
this results in the _fallacy of actualism_, collapsing and
homogenizing reality. ...laws of nature must be analysed as
ransfactual, as universal (within ther range) but neither actual
nor empirical."

< Stratification >
- stratification refers to the notion ontological depth (contra the
monolithic and/or monovalent ontologies of various monisms)
claiming that reality contains multiple, different and overlapping
ontological strata which Bhaskar primary identifies as "the
domains of the Real, the Actual and the Empirical, whereby
the causal conatus of real entities can be possessed unexercised,
exercised unactualized, and actualized undetected or unperceived".

- 'the causal structures and generative mechanisms of nature
exist and act independently of the conditions that allow men
to access to them; events occur independently of the experiences
in which they are apprehended. Structures and mechanisms then
are real and distinct from the patterns of events that they generate;
just as events are real and distinct from the experiences in which
they are apprehended.'

- thus: (i) the Real is comprised by structures & mechanisms; and
(ii) the Actual is comprised by events of actualized structures &
mechanisms; and (iii) the Empirical is comprised by experiences
( and conceptualizations) of events of actualized structures &
mechanisms.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

yours,
Jan





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