Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2000 23:15:46 +0100
From: Mervyn Hartwig <mh-AT-jaspere.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: BHA: DPF C 2.10


Hi Ruth

About "things", I would just say that on the best scientific evidence we
have, they would seem to be not just positive, but internally related
(partial?) totalities of presences and absences - and at rock bottom
seem to be 'unrealised possibility', as I say in another post.

Roy again and again warns that we've all been socialized to think
ontologically monovalently. We have to work very hard to see it
differently.

Mervyn

Ruth Groff <rgroff-AT-yorku.ca> writes
>Hi all,
>
>I'm really glad that we are back on to the concept of absence.  I never got
>it the first time around.   
>
>I have mostly held the position that Howard has been defending (way better
>than I ever could).  But Mervyn, your post gave me pause.  How does Bhaskar
>relate the earlier definition of causality (the power, or tendency, of
>things) with the definition that comes later (to absent an existing state of
>affairs).  Do we say that causality is the power, or tendency, of things to
>absent existing states of affairs?  And if so, isn't it still the "things,"
>or more properly the *powers* of things, rather than what they are able to
>do, viz., to bring about the absence of other things, that is at the heart
>of the definition?         
>
>On the most generous reading of DPF (the one where we don't charge RB with
>turning "absence" into an entity), it seems to me that what has happened in
>DPF is that the part of the definition that comes after "the power/tendency
>of things" (i.e., the part that now -- at least on the reading that
>preserves the idea that it is *things* that have powers, and not absence
>itself -- continues: "to absent existing states of affairs") has been
>reformulated.  In RTS, the full definition [at least implicitly, because
>often it was just presented as "the powers/tendencies of things," period]
>was "the power/tendency of things to affect other things."   
>
>I can see that the reformulation of "the power to affect other things" into
>"the power to absent things" has some important metaphysical implications,
>but I what I am still not able to see is how it would suggest that absence
>itself has, or is, a (causal) power.
>
>Meanwhile, Tobin (Hi!) I wondered if you could spell the following out for
>me.  It seems important, but I don't know how to connect the dots on my own!  
>You wrote:  
>>Most seriously of all,
>>doesn't your claim that reasons explain but don't generate actions imply
>>that retrodiction, which RB presents as crucial to science (science being
>>fundamentally explanatory, not predictive), fails to give a real account of
>>causation?
>
>Warmly,
>Ruth
>
>
>
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-- 
Mervyn Hartwig
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Email: mh-AT-jaspere.demon.co.uk


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