From: "Colin Wight" <Colin.Wight-AT-aber.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: BHA: one last try
Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2000 17:07:35 +0100


Hi Viren,

 Bhaskar defines the intransitive dimension as
> the ontological realm and the transitive as the epistemological realm.

Well you can read him this way, but it doesn't really do it, because what is
epistemological can still become an intransitive object; i.e. any knowledge
claim you make can be the intransitive object for our discussions of it.
Bhaskar's transitive and intransitive concepts are not that mysterious, no
that subsumable to other categories.


> Now an object by definition involves a number of categories that Kant
> would claim that we bring to experience.

And Bhaskar would deny, claiming that the properties it has can be
independent of any and every experience (although as he acknowledges this
formulation undergoes substantial modification in terms of social objects).

 Hegel would say that the
> categories of thought are the categories of spirit.

Again, Bhaskar would not agree with this;, although in FEW he is close to
suggesting it.

 Without certain categories, we would not be able to
> perceive objects.

Absolutely, but there is no reason to assume a priori that objects which
would endure independent of us have to conform to our categories. Moreover,
since we are in this world then there is every reason to assume that our
conceptual categories map quite well onto non-conceptual categories. Bhaskar
is quite big on what he terms categorical realism.

>
> Moreover, I doubt that empirical objects could exist in the transitive
> realm, since, by definition they depend on our experience.

I'm not sure what you mean here. The picture I have just drawn of you Viren
(well I haven't actually, but it makes the point) is quite clearly an
empirical objects, but it is my attempt to arrive at an understanding of
you; but equally, it is not and never will be you.

 Hence, I am
> inclined to agree with Ruth, that Bhaskar's idea of intransitivity is most
> appropriate when discussing structure.

Not being too predisposed to conventionalist epistemologies I hope you will
forgive me when I say this simply makes you, along with Ruth wrong.

When we say that an object exists
> intransitively, I assume that this means not only independent of human
> thought but of human experience.

Not necessarily. This way of thinking arises from a particular
non-relational way of thinking of intransitive objects. The Watson-Crick
model of DNA can be a subject of our theories of it (an intransitive
object), but it certainly does not exist independent of human experience.


> >
> Again your comments are extremely thought provoking.  Here we have a whole
> practice becoming an object.  I am hard pressed to think that practice can
> independently become an object.

Well it depends what you mean. Racism is most certainly a practice, but it
can still be something we study surely, and it can exist independent of the
sociologist of race. In which case theories of race constitute transitive
objects which have as their intransitive object - racism.

It only becomes an object when
> "objectified" by the the positivist.

Not so, CR takes practices as objects of inquiry, I don't think there is
anything particularly positivist about this notion.

Obviously we do not want to reduce
> the practice to thought;  however, by claiming that this practice is an
> object before the it is studied, seems to downplay the role of human
> activity.

Why? Racism exists as a practice and depends upon human activity, but it
does not depend upon the activity of sophisticated post-colonial scholars
for its existence, even if their theories can react back upon racism and
change its nature (and even this is contingent). I, for example have written
a paper on institutional racism, but since it is not published yet I don't
think it is having too much of an effect on the practices of racism.

> Perhaps a related issue concerns whether the distinction between
> transitive and intransitive is itself in one of the realms.  My guess is
> that the distinction would have to be in the transitive realm.

Of course, where else?

Cheers,

=================================Dr. Colin Wight
Department of International Politics
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Tel: 01970 621769
http://www.aber.ac.uk/~cow
===================================>



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