From: "Andrew Brown" <Andrew-AT-lubs.leeds.ac.uk>
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2001 10:13:48 -0000
Subject: Re: BHA: Ontological Stratificatio


Hello Howard,

Ley me clarify re spatial structure and comment on a related point 
you make. Though not engaging with all the detail of your very 
interesting post, I hope there is something of interest here.


It simply does not make any sense to think of spatial structure 
without thinking also of the motion of that structure. Structures 
exist in time and their shape in space is tied to their motion 
through time. This touches upon *dialectics* (which I'm very hazy 
on), but let me consider this statement of yours:

> Now that's clear as far as it goes, but the problem is that realized
> results are material things in the world and all material things are
> powerful particulars, so do we deal here not with an ontological
> stratification as a feature of the world itself, but rather with a
> perspectival switch?  If we consider the furniture of the world as a
> realized result of some causal process, then it is a pattern of events; if
> we consider it as causally efficacious itself, then it has causal power
> and potential.  But then isn't this a difference in how we choose to look
> at the thing, not how the world is?

My hunch is that one could define DCR as precisely the affirmation 
that we are not at liberty to abstract spatial from temporal 
structure. That it is a fallacy to privelidge the spatial, as if 
temporality is a contruction of our mind. So maybe you are 
revealing your distaste [for want of a better word] for DCR here?
Or maybe I have been reading to much DCR and need a holiday?!

It is this consideration re time and space which leads me to prefer 
the term 'form' rather than 'structure'. This is because the term 
'form' has both a spatial and temporal connotation, whereas the 
term 'structure' is more readily associated with space than time.

Best wishes,
Andy

PS See you at the New York EEA?


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