Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2000 10:44:28 +0100
From: Mervyn Hartwig <mh-AT-jaspere.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: BHA: categorial necessities?


Dear Nick,

Well, Roy certainly claims in a number of contexts, pre-EW,  that (his)
philosophical ontology indicates the general shape or contours of
reality, by which I took him to mean precisely what you seem to say:
>it gives us four general, abstract categories and tells 
>us that they refer to characteristics which are always interrelated. Now 
>some people will argue that this is pretty trivial, but . I don't. 
>Nevertheless, *all* it tells us about anything in the universe is that the 
>system of abstractions will be applicable, that we can have abstract 
>knowledge of reality in terms of depth and stratification, process, 
>totality and agentive capacities. We know that these abstract and universal 
>features will be internally related. Beyond that the system tells us 
>nothing. 
I wasn't meaning to imply anything at all specific, nor an identity of
categories in the TD with structure in the ID. But 'the system of
abstractions will be applicable' presumably in virtue of the way the
world is in some sense, and I would have thought this does amount to
(the assertion of) a general, though by no means exhaustive, kind of
structuring or ordering. You yourself have spoken of the philosophical
ontology furnishing 'an ontological grammar', and grammars are
structures (even fundamental ones for language speakers!)... -
Otherwise, it seems to me, you run the risk of doing what Roy accused
Althusser of doing: effectively neutalising the ID, with the real
functioning 'merely as a quasi-Kantian limiting concept'.

I don't see that holding that the DCR system of categories (fallibly)
refers in some general way to (aspects of) the real, in any way
necessarily leads to the moves in EW whereby the ultimate categorial
structure of the world is God. When Roy in EW 33 dissociates CR from 'a
subjectivist account of categories', claiming that 'for critical realism
categories such as causality, substance, process etc... are essentially
constitutive (albeit very abstract or skeletal) features of the world,
defining precisely its most basic properties or ingredients (which is
what the ontology of DCR purports to begin to do). Causality, absence,
space, time, emergence and so on are real features of being', I don't
think his position has changed, really, since RTS - it's what I at any
rate have always taken him to mean. It's the moves that come after this
in EW that make the difference...

Mervyn





Nick Hostettler <nh8soas-AT-lineone.net> writes
>At 11:51 15/10/00 +0100, Mervyn wrote:
>
>>Dear Nick
>>
>>I can't see how referring to 1m-4D as 'universally applicable
>>abstractions' does not commit you to the view, as a realist, that
>>reality *is* structured in the ways indicated - ontological depth and
>>polyvalence, holistic causality, etc - and that these are in some sense
>>fundamental, indicating the basic 'shape' or 'contours' of reality, as
>>Roy put it in RTS. If so, then you do hold that reality has a
>>fundamental structure to which our categories in the TD refer (or can
>>do); and whether we should refer to this as reality's 'categorial
>>structure' or just its 'fundamental structure' would seem a largely
>>terminological issue were it not that Roy seems to exploit the notion of
>>categorial structure to take his system in the direction of idealism and
>>absolutism as you suggest.
>>
>>Mervyn
>
>Dear Mervyn,
>
>The thing is that 1M-4D does not indicate 'shape' or 'contours' or indeed 
>much else. Instead, it gives us four general, abstract categories and tells 
>us that they refer to characteristics which are always interrelated. Now 
>some people will argue that this is pretty trivial, but . I don't. 
>Nevertheless, *all* it tells us about anything in the universe is that the 
>system of abstractions will be applicable, that we can have abstract 
>knowledge of reality in terms of depth and stratification, process, 
>totality and agentive capacities. We know that these abstract and universal 
>features will be internally related. Beyond that the system tells us 
>nothing. It tells us nothing about the specific and individual features, or 
>essentials of the relationality and processuality of any mechanism or the 
>structural totalities within which any such mechanism functions. These 
>latters features, when fleshed out, are 'essential'. DPF fully acknowledges 
>this.
>
>I fully accept that systems of categories are *constitutive* of our 
>knowledge, in the sense that they are significant aspects of the causal 
>structures of our conceptions. Philosophy has the task of discovering 
>implicit generalities (what Roy calls irrealism: anthropism, monovalence 
>etc.)  These implicit generalities are (i) structurally caused by their 
>historical conditions and (ii) structurally causal of thought and meaning. 
>However, there is a problem as soon as we equate the highest levels of 
>abstraction in thought with the wholly dubious idea of what is 
>fundamentally constitutive of reality. This equation entails the 
>identification of abstract generalities with ur-stuff - precisely the step 
>that was ruled out in DPF (quite properly). There are no grounds for making 
>this leap, which is effectively the collapse of the distinction between 
>categorial and dispositional realism. To say that the logic of 1M-4D is 
>universally applicable is not to say that categories are fundamentally 
>constitutive of anything.
>
>When we produce abstractions of this kinds we are emphatically *not* 
>discovering 'essences' or 'fundamental constitutions' or whatever else you 
>want to call it. FEW makes this leap, but there is nothing in DPF to 
>suggest anything of the sort.
>
>Nick.
>
>
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-- 
Mervyn Hartwig
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Email: mh-AT-jaspere.demon.co.uk


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