File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_2001/bhaskar.0102, message 160


Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 02:17:35 -0500
From: lynne engelskirchen <lhengels-AT-igc.org>
Subject: Re: BHA: negativity wins




Sorry Mervyn for the "you said, no I didn't" response.  These are difficult
issues and I"m open to clarification on them.  The question of the
ontological status of laws and what their place is in relation to
mechanisms I think is very difficult.  I wonder if others have had problems
working through these issues.

1.	You seem to assume that I argue that Bhaskar's argument depends in some
way or other on whether a total void ever existed.  This is not a fair
reading of my posts.  I am disagreeing with what you find unproblematic:
that, by dialectical argument, we can establish that there could have been
nothing.

You miss my argument on the point claiming that my conclusion is mere
assertion.  Now we can discover by logical argument that the sum of the
squares of the sides of a right triangle is equal to the square of the
hypotenuse.  We can also make a logical argument that infinitely many
angels can stand on the point of a pin.  My point is that the argument that
there could have been just nothing is of the second sort.

I argue this by appealing to our experience:  no phenomenon of our world
suggests an inference to just nothing as a condition of anything.  I look
at a room and I see the space between one wall and another.  I look at the
stars and see the space between them.  I can abstract to the idea of
everything as empty nothing as a logical possibility.  But this is not an
argument about the world.  It does not establish as a real matter that
"there could have been just nothing."  "There could have been no homo
sapiens" I assume was historically a real, not just a logical possibility.
The point of my reference to Marx and the Bhaskar of SRHE 12 ("there is no
philosophy in general") is that there is a point at which logical
possibility is no longer about the world.  We can and should entertain the
possibility that "there could have been just nothing" will tell us
something about the world.  But if it does not, we must conclude, fallibly,
that the argument is of the angels on a pin sort.

2.	You argue that I place positive and negative existence "on a par."  What
I say is that "at any one point, one or another aspect of a contradiction
may be primary."

3.	You say I assume in empiricist fashion the unity of positive and
negative existence and that I assert this is just how reality presents
itself.  I argued pretty clearly in my last post that reality presents
itself to us as positive existence and that our ability to establish being
as a unity of positive and negative existence must be the product of
theoretical work.  I grant you in the first post I did say that "The real
presents itself as a unity of opposites -- as a unity of the positive and
the negative."  I can see that "presents" can be misconstrued here and the
reference to the ontological level you specify as the Real could be missed.
 Anyway, I mean that being is Real and is constituted by positive and
negative existence.  I understand this is not obvious, and may be wrong,
but anyway it is not empiricist.    

4.	You acknowledge that you don't see the problem I raise with respect to
ontological stratification.  No doubt I wrote too quickly.  But part of the
problem may be the unproblematic way in which you handle these issues.  For
example, you suggest that "water is one ontological level, the gases
another, the molecules comprising them another, and so on."  Surely this
cannot be right.  This appears to confuse "onts" (DPF 40) as the
"intransitive objects of specific epistemic inquiries" with levels of
ontological stratification.  It is not every reaction in a chemistry lab
that creates a new level of ontology.  That was my problem.  I assumed
hydrogen was an "enduring mechanism" and thus Real, but not actual.  But
then that didn't make sense.  Hydrogen was as actual as it gets and when in
the exercise of its causal powers it generated effects, these were new
enduring mechanisms in no way ontologically different from hydrogen.  So
where was the stratification?  My experience was, anyway, that until I saw
this as a problem I did not really understand the dimensions of the the
problem in the distinction between causal laws and patterns of events.  The
difficulty of dealing ontologically with laws gets reduced to the easy
familiarity we have with mechanisms such as hydrogen and so the problem
doesn't seem as troublesome as it actually is.

There is more confusion of ontological levels in the following statement:
"Even fictional characters for Bhaskar really exist, i.e. are real
non-being."  Now one can say that fictional characters are real in the more
or less vague sense that you say something is "within ontology."  But I get
the idea from Chapter 2 of DPF that real non-beings are meant to be
enduring mechanisms and Real.  Correct me if I'm wrong.  If fictional
characters are meant to be Real in the sense of enduring mechanisms, then
this is a category mistake.  Sean Sayers in Reality & Reason is very good
on this.  Fictions and errors are caused by real things, without doubt, and
they can always be traced to real things.  But fictions are at the
ontological level of the semiotic, of representation, not of causation.
Don Quixote never actually moved any really existing windmill in Spain.
The distinction between representing, ie using one thing to refer to
another, and causing is ontological and terrifically important.  Just as
being is different than representing, causing and being able to cause are
different than representing.  I think we sometimes forget that.

Thanks,

Howard 



>Dear Howard,
>
>Many thanks. Some comments.
>
>1.
>>there is nothing in the argument at DPF 46 that establishes a
>>"total void" (RB's term) as the condition of possibility of anything.  Nor
>>is there anything that establishes the condition of possibility of a total
>>void, except in a purely speculative, logical way. 
>
>The passage actually claims that it is presenting a dialectical argument
>(which of course is a species of transcendental argument), establishing
>the 'conditions of possibility' of 'the conditions of impossibility' of
>'positive existence' - i.e. a total void (there could have been just
>nothing, in which case something would have been impossible). You don't
>really say why this is not a dialectical or transcendental argument,
>just assert that it is 'purely speculative'. (Re what you have to say re
>the premise - 'positive existence - see below.)
>
>Moreover, you don't seem to have fully taken on board, what the footnote
>makes clear, that Bhaskar is not arguing that 'a total void' does or
>ever did exist, just that dialectically it is a possibility that there
>could have been just nothing. He's not arguing that (given that there is
>something) absence is not always relational to presence, only that it's
>ontologically more fundamental (and then only 'outwith the world as we
>know it', not within it); and it's important to remember that the
>passage you cited only presents the fourth argument in a series against
>the contrary view, that *positivity* has ontological primacy.
>'Negativity wins' doesn't mean that there's ultimately just a void, or
>that absence acts on its own.
>
>2. As far as I can see, you *assume* 'the unity of positive and negative
>existence' (by which I take it you mean that neither has primacy, they
>are 'on a par'). What is the argument for this? You said in your
>previous post that is just how reality 'presents itself', but CR rejects
>that sort of empiricism.
>
>3.
>>the premise of positivity taken
>>alone presupposes an ontologically monovalent view of the world.
>
>Precisely. We live in a world dominated by an ontologically monovalent
>outlook. The whole argument of DPF is directed against this. Bhaskar
>therefore, in keeping with the principles of immanent critique, takes as
>his premise what his opponent asserts, and tries to show that it is
>transcendentally impossible. All too few people disagree with this
>premise - you and I do, of course, but that is beside the point.
>
>4. 
>
>>But I would dispute that beings exist in this sense at all.  I think beings
>>and being are real, but not actual.  What I mean is this.  Occurrences are
>>what constitute positive existence.  What happens.  This is what is in the
>>present.  The point can be made more strongly:  being only ever appears as
>>what occurs.  Appearance here and now is the only form of manifestation of
>>being.  Being, beings, does/do not present itself/themselves to us in any
>>other way.  This is the actual.  The ontology of the actual is events.
>>What occurs.  This is positive existence.  Positive existence is the
>>phenomenal form of appearance of being.
>[snip]
>
>>the real -- things, "enduring mechanisms," beings
>
>You are here confusing Bhaskar's domain of the Real (Mechanisms) with
>the real, what there is, being/non-being, ontology. The domains of the
>Real, the Actual (Events) and the Empirical (Experiences) are
>distinctions *within* the real, within ontology. For Bhaskar,
>*everything* is real (which you yourself sometimes seem to acknowledge
>eg in your PS where you correctly talk of the ideological or the
>semiotic as 'ontological'). Even fictional characters for Bhaskar really
>exist, i.e. are real non-beings. DCR can thus pay full tribute to the
>power of imagination. - But please, let's not have the the great Santa
>debate all over again! (Just tell the kids that Santa really does
>exist!)
>
>
>5.
>>The problem I had a month ago with ontological stratification arose in
>>trying to explain Bhaskar's example of the litmus test.  I wondered what
>>the ontological difference was between the chemical structure of the acid
>>and the litmus paper turned red.  If hydrogen is an enduring mechanism
>>(thus real) and oxygen is an enduring mechanism (thus real) and together
>>they make water, where is the ontological stratification, because water
>>must be real and an enduring mechanism in its own right?  All matter is
>>causally efficacious.  Also, hydrogen, oxygen, water and all other matter
>>are actual in the sense that they appear.  Where are the levels of
structure?
>
>I unfortunately wasn't able to follow the thread on this. From what you
>say here I can't see the problem. In emergence new powers and structures
>are generated when things are brought into different relation with each
>other. So when hydrogen and oxygen are brought into relation in a
>certain proportion the resulting water has different powers (which I
>expect you don't dispute) and a different structure (the new relations
>between the structures of hydrogen and oxygen). So water is one
>ontological level, the gases another, the molecules comprising them
>another, and so on. The litmus paper example seems to confuse the Real
>(mechanisms and structures) and the Actual (events) - there's no
>emergence in this case, just the activity of mechanisms issuing in an
>event.
>
>6.
>>Contradiction is displaced by absence as the motive force of the
>>development of things, and this is really the problem.
>
>Absence is the more fundamental category for Bhaskar, but I don't see
>how it *displaces* contradiction, because on his account absence (and
>absenting) are at the very heart of contradiction, and in turn without
>contradiction there could be no change ie transformative negation, or
>absenting. Perhaps more on this when the present thread has run its
>course...
>
>Mervyn
>
>
>lynne engelskirchen <lhengels-AT-igc.org> writes
>>
>>
>>Many thanks, Mervyn, for your thoughtful engagement of the issues.  I'm
>>sorry my response is so long.  I hope the points are clear.  I'm really
>>interested in the third point, which returns to the issue of ontological
>>stratification that I raised some weeks ago.  It seems to me key here.
>>
>>1.     Transcendental arugment.  I do not find justification in the early
pages
>>of SRHE for the assertion that transcendental arguments "by definition . .
>>. assume that logical possibility is not identical with real possibility."
>>Of course it is the disjuncture between logical possibility and real
>>possibility that makes it possible to think critically about the real at
>>all.  Because we can imagine fictions, we can discover things we would not
>>otherwise have known about the world.  But that doesn't mean every fiction
>>has relevance for understanding how things really are.  For philosophy as
>>an underlaborer for science, the premise of SRHE, logical possibility is
>>tethered to real possibility.
>>
>>For example, at SRHE 11 RB writes that "a transcendental enquiry is
>>identified as an enquiry into the conditions of the possibility of phi,
>>where phi is some especially significant, central or pervasive feature of
>>our experience."  Thus while transcendental argument can properly establish
>>that negativity is a condition of the possibility of our experience of
>>events, there is nothing in the argument at DPF 46 that establishes a
>>"total void" (RB's term) as the condition of possibility of anything.  Nor
>>is there anything that establishes the condition of possibility of a total
>>void, except in a purely speculative, logical way.  And of course that is
>>my point.  There are limits to the process.  Transcendental reflection is a
>>species of retroductive argument (11) and retroductive argument "moves from
>>a description of some phenomenon to a description of something which
>>produces it or is a condition for it."  There is no phenomenon in our
>>world, so far as I know, that suggests it was produced by a total void or
>>that a total void is a condition for.
>>
>>Incidentally, it is not my point, as you say, that "from nothing you can
>>only get nothing, not something positive."  I have actually nothing to say
>>about nothing.  (At least until we get to Lear.)  My point is that I know
>>no such universe and nothing in my experience allows for real inferences
>>about what occurs or does not occur, what is possible or not possible,
>>where there is a total void.  So I withdraw my statement that
>>"contradiciton is not essential to 'absolutely nothing'."  I have no
>>warrant for saying anything on the matter.
>>
>>2.     Initial premises.  If you want to start with positive existence only,
>>fine.  Then you must necessarily retroduce to the reality of negative
>>existence.  My point is that you cannot jump off to conclusions about a
>>total void from a premise of positive existence alone without introducing
>>the intermediate step of the unity of positive and negative existence.  The
>>intermediate step is necessary because the premise of positivity taken
>>alone presupposes an ontologically monovalent view of the world.
>>
>>Hegel identifies the error of taking the poles of a contradiction and
>>holding them apart as if they were mutually exclusive.  Is that a problem
>>here?  There is total presence on the one hand and total void on the other;
>>but neither of them has any real relevance to the conditions of possibility
>>of our world.  Instead the real -- being as real -- is a unity of opposites
>>that interpenetrate:  positive and negative existence.  Bhaskar, of course,
>>also argues this, and effectively.  I'm not disputing that.  What I
>>challenge is the thread that generates the ontological primacy of the
>>negative.  (Also I'm not saying that negative existence may not be primary
>>in this or that instance.  At any one point, one or another aspect of a
>>contradiction may be primary.  Absence of universal health care, the
>>example Eric uses, certainly seems to be the primary aspect of that
>>contradiction in the US today.  But in another conjuncture, presence may be
>>primary.)
>>
>>3.     "Beings exist."  Here is your argument:
>>
>>>>Bhaskar doesn't disagree with your conclusion. But instead of just
>>>>assuming it to be true, takes as his premise what very few would
>>>>dispute: 'beings exist'. The question is whether non-beings do too, and
>>>>if they do, how they relate to beings.
>>>>
>>
>>I don't think whether non-beings exist is the question at all.  I think
>>being is a unity of positive and negative existence.  To say there are
>>beings on the one hand and non-beings on the other makes the mistake I
>>suggested above -- aspects of a contradiction are wrenched out of the
>>contradiction and held apart as mutually exclusive.  "Beings" are reduced
>>to phenomena of positivity, the actual, which they are not; at the same
>>time "non-beings," are introduced as phenomena of the real, which they are
>>not.  So instead of real "being" as an interpenetration of positive and
>>negative existence, we get a mutually exclusive counterposition of the
>>actual and the fictional.
>>
>>When we say beings "exist," there is an ambiguity -- we may mean they are
>>real or we may mean they are actual.  In context you must be taken to use
>>the second meaning because you appeal to what "few would dispute," and what
>>most people know are things as they appear, ie the positivity of the actual.
>>
>>But I would dispute that beings exist in this sense at all.  I think beings
>>and being are real, but not actual.  What I mean is this.  Occurrences are
>>what constitute positive existence.  What happens.  This is what is in the
>>present.  The point can be made more strongly:  being only ever appears as
>>what occurs.  Appearance here and now is the only form of manifestation of
>>being.  Being, beings, does/do not present itself/themselves to us in any
>>other way.  This is the actual.  The ontology of the actual is events.
>>What occurs.  This is positive existence.  Positive existence is the
>>phenomenal form of appearance of being.
>>
>>But what occurs are the actions of things, so we retroduce from occurrences
>>to things as a condition of the possibility of events.  Now what we know
>>about things, as Bhaskar argues at DPF 57, is that "finitude" is the most
>>basic kind of "existential contradiction."  Limit is inherent in things.
>>In other words, things are not only what they are, but what they are not.
>>We do not really understand how things are if we grasp them only as they
>>appear in events.  We do not understand the principles according to which
>>they change.  If we had only an acorn and no understanding of how things
>>grow at all, we would have no understanding of the acorn as a generative
>>mechanism.  It is only in retrospect, from reflection on the oak, that we
>>can form a concept of the structure of an acorn holding the key to the
>>principles of its self-development.  Laws, RB writes in RTS (66) are the
>>ways of acting of things, and the ways of acting of things are how they
>>negate themselves.  Negative existence is essential to being.
>>
>>In other words, the real -- things, "enduring mechanisms," beings -- is
>>intrinsically non-empirical because it is not only what occurs but that
>>which governs the development of what occurs.  For "beings exist" to be an
>>accurate statement we must mean "beings are real," and then this is not
>>something "few would dispute."  (The reverse is true.)  Beings are a unity
>>of positive and negative existence and this is ontologically different from
>>what occurs.
>>
>>So if we have real being as a unity of positive and negative existence,
>>then where is the universe of non-beings, except in fictional speculation?
>>
>>The problem I had a month ago with ontological stratification arose in
>>trying to explain Bhaskar's example of the litmus test.  I wondered what
>>the ontological difference was between the chemical structure of the acid
>>and the litmus paper turned red.  If hydrogen is an enduring mechanism
>>(thus real) and oxygen is an enduring mechanism (thus real) and together
>>they make water, where is the ontological stratification, because water
>>must be real and an enduring mechanism in its own right?  All matter is
>>causally efficacious.  Also, hydrogen, oxygen, water and all other matter
>>are actual in the sense that they appear.  Where are the levels of
structure?
>>
>>The distinction has to be where RB placed it: between things and events.
>>And we need to lean on this -- the distinction is between being and what
>>occurs.  In other words, things, counterintuitively enough, are
>>non-empirical.  the hydrogen in the test tube is what occurs.  The "being"
>>of hydrogen is the unity of what is and what is not, and we come to know
>>this not by means of microscopes and other instruments of measurement
>>alone, but by retroductive argument taken together with experiment.  We can
>>identify the structure of hydrogen.  We cannot taste or touch the laws in
>>accordance with which it (or the acorn) changes.
>>
>>4.     Contradiction.  I think the emphasis on absence in DPF is
terrific.  I
>>have learned an enormous amount from it.  But I disagree that contradiction
>>is adequately presented.  The organization of the second chapter shows
>>that.  Contradiction is displaced by absence as the motive force of the
>>development of things, and this is really the problem.
>>
>>Regards,
>>
>>Howard
>>
>>P.S. On reflection the statement above that "Appearance is the only form of
>>manifestation of being" needs qualification.  Representation also is a form
>>of manifestation of being -- ie by means of a sign we use one thing to
>>refer to another.  Thus we get the separate ontological domain of the
>>ideological (Volosinov) or the semiotic (Nellhaus), what Bhaskar in RTS
>>refers to as the domain of experience.  In fact is is the distinction
>>between postive existence and negative existence, between what a thing is
>>and what it is not, that makes representation possible.  In any event, this
>>is a separate thread of development concerning a third level of ontological
>>stratification and does not change the argument above, which goes to the
>>distinction betwen the real and the actual.
>
>
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>


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