From: "Martti Puttonen" <maputto-AT-laatikko.saunalahti.fi>
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 19:13:33 +0200
Subject: BHA: On transdictive complexes



Hi all,

Some comments on the issue of reification, mystification, and 
fetishism without dwelling onto their conceptualizations.

I start psychological phenomena to where Carrol has provided suitable 
material in her ponderations about depression.

How about (if this is right approach in realist sense, but at least 
it is a metacritical issue) the attempt to reify, to form 
transdictive complexes or general abstractions about some ideational, 
experienced or rationally valuationally pre-existing concepts or 
things?

I have difficulties of pinpointing the very starting point, from  
where Carrol's elaboration begins to go wrong, or what is the 
way of recorrecting it in the DCR -sense. 
 
Carrol: 
>  In describing depression I often say that it should be  possible for 
people who do not suffer from it to achieve knowledge *that*  such 
and such a thing is true of it but *not* possible for them to have
knowledge *of* it.

Why to look at human or social things or material things, like  
depression, like this? Because there seems to be a certain thing 
objectivized here, that is depression. This performance 
is generally actualisms, specific scientifically grounded 
irrealist practices with its dualisms (depression and some things 
of it, but not knowlede *that thing*. There seem not be depth 
and stratified ontology at all, because there are experiences about 
actual things, and there are transdictive models in the 
practicioner's head, how this is possible to understand or at least 
approach some kind of understanding which simulates real 
understanding, but prevents real understanding of something real. 

Carroly: 
>My grounds for saying this is that in my own experience almost as 
soon as a bout of depression departs, and certainly within a week or 
so, I no longer have knowledge *of* what it is like.

So you have reified, mystified the phenomenon of *depression* if you 
consider, that depression can enter or depart in general sense in 
somewhere human realm (which is also the ontological real world in 
you considerations?), to where human being has (or not have) real 
access?  Are you saying that human beings allways or never have real 
knowledge to the general theoretized phenomena - depression? Or are 
you saying that you can generalize philosophically in critical 
realist sense the phenomenon of depression?

Carrol:
> It is not a knowledge that sticks in the memory so to speak. And this 
is not unique to me but most or all of the people  with depression I 
have ever spoken to say the same. Depression is something you can 
only have  knowledge *of* during the exact period of time when one
is experiencing it.

What is the result in your real knowing (not of actual things but 
real things), if you elaborate, what is the real life conception 
and argumentation of the person who suffers (or has objectivized in 
his life the phenomenon which he defines or names for his current 
contextual purposes as) from *depression*?   

I am saying, that people who have severe problems labelled or 
named by someone generally, like depression, have arguments and 
other actions in their daily life, which belong to the irrealist 
realm. And I am saying that, that professionals who work on helping 
these people to have real access to their real things and get rid of 
these actualist ensembles and bad constraints and other dualisms 
which is the reason of their mental problems, such as *depression*. 

So the dialecticization of critical realism is a real obstacle for 
people's wellbeing (and for their professionals, too) in my mind  who 
have psychological problems, and there actualist psychology/ 
philosophy  is of no help, but making things worse. 


Regards, 
               Martti P. 


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