Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 15:19:28 +0000
From: Mervyn Hartwig <mh-AT-jaspere.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: BHA: negativity wins


Dear Caroline

>Ruth has expressed my position and my difficulties precisely.

As I have shown in other posts, Ruth has been getting some of the claims
of the proponents of absence completely wrong. *If* the above is true,
it follows that you have been too.

>I did manage to see that it was
>important to the struggle for a better society to not to think only in terms
>of what actually exists, but I'm not sure that's what you mean.

Well, I do mean that, especially where what actually exists is thought
of in purely positive terms. Not that I would claim that because
something is important to emancipation, therefore it is true. Rather,
because it is true it is important to emancipation, which importantly
depends on getting an accurate understanding of the world in order to
change it.

>this way of talking is intelligible and I can do it.  But IF we embrace this
>way of understanding existence and change, we surely need to recognise that
>de-onts and absences are parasitic on onts and presences for their
>specificity.  The causal powers of an absence depend on the causal powers of
>the thing that is absent, i.e. on the nature and structure of this thing,
>since an absence can't have nature and structure in its own right. So if
>de-onts are real, they are real by virtue of the reality of the thing that
>exists, (in whatever sense it does exist) not in the same way onts are real.
>Is this right? 

It seems right up to a point, but still very one-sided. Certainly (at
any rate in the world as we know it), deonts are parasitic on onts - but
the converse holds too: onts are parasitic on deonts. In a *relational*
world neither can exist without the other.

But perhaps you were thinking of the meta-position Bhaskar first
sketched in Alethia 3:1 and elaborated in FEW whereby, from the
perspective of human freedom, creativity and flourishing, generalised
master-slave-type relations are entirely parasitic on the essential
freedom, creativity and goodness of the slaves (our human nature). Here
deonts - the absence of freedom expressed in the social relations (constraints on freedom) seem to be entirely parasitic on onts. But 1)
Bhaskar is here operating at a highly abstract level of analysis. At
more concrete levels, both the world of master-slave relations and our
human nature involve both onts and deonts. 2) Bhaskar's conception of
human nature is highly controversial (and if not purely positive, at
least positively pure!)  3). If the situation is to change, slaves must
act to change (absent) master-servant relations, so even at Bhaskar's
meta abstract level the category of absence is fundamental (as he would
be the first to claim). 

>The causal powers of an absence depend on the causal powers of
>the thing that is absent, i.e. on the nature and structure of this thing,
>since an absence can't have nature and structure in its own right.

'Depend on', yes, but the 'thing' will not be just ontic, it will be
both ontic and deontic, and in a relational world onts don't have a
nature and structure in their own right either. 

What strikes me in all this is the way in which pure positivity keeps
creeping back into the assumptions even of those who accept the reality
of absence - which goes to show how profoundly embedded in our psyche's
monovalence is.

Mervyn

Caroline New <c.new-AT-bathspa.ac.uk> writes
>I've been following this discussion with something of a sense of deja vu.
>Ruth has expressed my position and my difficulties precisely.  I would just
>like to add, though:
>I am willing to accept this way of talking, although the importance of
>talking like this is still not clear to me.  I did manage to see that it was
>important to the struggle for a better society to not to think only in terms
>of what actually exists, but I'm not sure that's what you mean.  However,
>this way of talking is intelligible and I can do it.  But IF we embrace this
>way of understanding existence and change, we surely need to recognise that
>de-onts and absences are parasitic on onts and presences for their
>specificity.  The causal powers of an absence depend on the causal powers of
>the thing that is absent, i.e. on the nature and structure of this thing,
>since an absence can't have nature and structure in its own right. So if
>de-onts are real, they are real by virtue of the reality of the thing that
>exists, (in whatever sense it does exist) not in the same way onts are real.
>Is this right?  Caroline


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