Date: Fri, 01 Dec 2000 11:31:45 -0500
Subject: Re: BHA:reasons as causes


Andrew --

Thanks for the post!  I think you have responded to the original question
and located a dimension of CR that does depend on reasons as causes.  I
don't think I really understand, though, what it means for thought to be a
stratum of reality like any other.  This is a consequence of the
understanding I take from Marx's observation that "matter is the substratum
of all changes going on in the world."  Not thought, which, he insists, is
impossible to separate out.  

In this connection I have a large questions regarding the status of
psychology and therefore regarding RB's arguments concerning it in
Possibility of Naturalism.  Volosinov in Marxism and the Philosophy of
Language presents a critique on the very point and I find his argument
persuasive.  Consciousness is socially constructed by activity, in
particular the activity of matter thinking using signs.  This subordinates
psychology to ideology -- not ideology in the vulgar sense, but in the
sense that Volosinov uses it: the discipline that studies the construction
of consciousness.

I also have a hard time understanding social structures as material causes.
 RB develops this argument particularly in Scientific REalism and Human
Emancipation.  What is the materiality of a social relation?  So we deal
with metaphor here: social relations are the thing worked on and
transformed and therefore they are like the bronze a sculptor sculpts with.
 I would rather think of social structures as causal ensembles for which we
need to deploy a much fuller meaning of causality than is afforded us by
the philosophy of science since Hume.  I think Marx understood this.  So if
we are to talk of the material cause of social relations I think we want
something actually material, e.g. human agents and their activity, living
and dead.  To grasp the structure of their relations we need to develop a
sense of social form, ie of formal cause.  

Again, pursuing your original insight, which I think is on target, the
reality of meaning also, according to Bhaskar, depends on causal criteria.
The example he gives is an important one:  matter that thinks raises its
arm with an open palm.  What is done and what it causes now depend on
meaning -- it could be a vote, a friendly hello, a sign to stop, a Nazi
salute, etc.  To say that meaning is causal here is more complex than the
hunger/not-eating example because whatever is meant is mediated by how it
is interpreted.  The result must be that meaning is a social ensemble, the
causality of which would need to be approached the way we analyze the
causality of social relations.  Anyway, like thought, meaning is embodied
in action and it is impossible to separate it from its material substratum.

I was intrigued by your observation that because Marx did not treat thought
as a separate stratum he was not a critical realist.  I mean, what
interested me was the sort of idea implicit in the comparison that CR is a
set made up of a, b, c, and d, and while Marx shares items a, b, and c, he
differs on d, therefore he is not a critical realist.  That's one sort of
interpretation that can be put on the comparison you offer.  But I don't
really view the enterprise that way.  In other words, we are not about
creating either holy or political or philosophical sects.  We are involved
in elaborating a tradition of scientific realism, and in that, by any
measure, Marx is a towering source.  To talk of CR is a way of talking
about particular emphases developed at a particular point in time in
response to particular exigences of underlaboring.  If Marx is wrong on the
thought stratum point, then it is a matter of clarifying that; if CR is
wrong, it is a matter of clarifying that.  In either case we swim in the
flood of scientific realism and try to clear away the debris, which
remains, in the social sciences, pretty daunting.

Howard





>
>First let me 'correct' my own previous post, then move on to 
>Spinoza.
>
>I previously suggested that, for CR/DCR, thought had to be causal 
>in such a way as to be irrreducibly real, ie. to fulfil the 'causal 
>criterion' for reality. In this sense, thought must be like any other 
>stratum. Now, this still seems true to me. Surely, we can agree 
>that this is the general approach RB takes in PON? In PON, RB 
>asks if there is a real stratum to which 'psychology' is applicable 
>(to oversimplify rather). To answer in the affirmative he establishes 
>that reasons are irreducible causes.
>
>However, I went on to suggest that in general this entails the 
>*efficient* causality of strata, hence of thought. But how stupid I 
>am, because in the very same book, PON, RB has gone on at 
>length about the nature of social structures as *material* causes!!! 
>So here is one stratum (or set of strata), viz. 'society', which 
>qualifies as real due to its *material* causality, rather than its 
>efficient causality. This undermines my previous argument, it 
>seems.
>
>Moreover, RTS goes on quite a bit about material causality doesn't 
>it? Can't we say that an 'efficient' cause is some actual event 
>'trigger', such as the flicking of a switch, and a material cause is 
>the structure of what is triggered, eg. the electric circuit of which 
>the switch is part. In which case CR would turn out to be a 
>manifesto for the reinstatement of material causality into 
>philosophical discourse. And, more to the point, strata would 
>essentially be grasped as material causes (rather than just efficient 
>ones). Thus thought, in that case, must, for CR, be an irreducible 
>material cause. It need not be an efficient one.
>
>So there we are, I have completely changed my mind in one day!
>
>Now Spinoza:
>
>Yes, I would say the generally recognised hallmark of Spinoza is 
>his argument that thought and extension are two attributes of the 
>same substance. Thought and extension are not two different 
>things, but two different expressions of the same thing. This must 
>be at odds with the view that thought is merely one stratum 
>amongst many others. So I don't think Spinoza was a critical 
>realist. And, yes, as you know, I think Marx took up Spinoza's 
>essential position on this fundamental point, so I don't think Marx 
>was a critical realist either. But there clearly remains much scope 
>for a CR theory of thought between the apparent extremes of 
>Spinozist identity and Cartesian dualism. 
>
>Many thanks,
>
>Andy 
>
>On 29 Nov 2000, at 16:42, lynne engelskirchen wrote:
>
>> Andrew --
>> 
>> Thanks.  The Aristotelian stuff need not be of concern.  What since the
>> Renaissance we commonly think of as causality is pretty much Aristotle's
>> efficient causality.  With the beginning of the modern philosophy of
>> science formal and final causes were ignored and material cause taken for
>> granted so that left cause as efficient cause.  So the question is whether
>> reasons are a cause the way you normally think of cause.
>> 
>> But if the question is a separate stratum which does have the kind of power
>> you suggest, isn't that exactly contrary to Marx's Holy FAmily quote -- a
>> distinct stratum of thought is impossible to separate out.  Instead matter
>> is the substratum of all change.   And anyway what about Spinoza?  Hasn't
>> Marx just lifted this point from Spinoza?    
>> 
>> Howard
>> 
>> 
>> 
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>
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