From: "Caroline New" <c.new-AT-bathspa.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: BHA: Events and Mechanisms
Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 10:12:25 -0000


Surely the causal action of generative mechanisms always takes place - is
realised - through events.  Events are causes in a sense, but to go no
further would be seriously misleading theoretically, since their causal
powers depend on their instantiation of (usually several) generative
mechanisms.  Caroline
----- Original Message -----
From: "lynne engelskirchen" <lhengels-AT-igc.org>
To: <bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Sent: Sunday, March 04, 2001 10:09 AM
Subject: Re: BHA: Events and Mechanisms


>
>
> Jan, Mervyn and all --
>
> I have not had time to respond to Mervyn's recent post to me, but in
> reflecting on it and reviewing other posts I noticed something that seems
> to be at the root of much of our reciprocal confusions.
>
> We would all agree, I take it on the distinction between Mechanisms and
> Events made consistently in RB's work from RTS to DPF.  Events occur in
the
> ontological domain of the actual.  They are what happens.  REal and
> generative mechanisms are the bearers of causal powers.  The actions of
> these cause events to occur as their effects.  Such generative mechanisms
> belong to the domain of the Real.  Actualism consists in "the reduction of
> the necessary and the possible, constitutive of the domain of the real, to
> the actual." (DPF Glossary 393)
>
> Now would we say that events are causally efficacious?  For Hume cause
just
> is the conjunction of events.  For Bhaskar causes have the power to bring
> about their effects by virtue of a generative mechanism that links cause
to
> effect.  So how are we to understand the first sentence of the entry on
> Cause/Causation in the DPF Glossary:  "A cause is typically either an
> antecedent condition or a generative mechanism."  Does this mean that an
> event can be a cause insofar as it is an antecedent condition?  Would this
> then make the event not merely actual and real, but also a Real mechanism?
> For example, the allies won World War II.  Is this event a cause?
>
> The significance of the question comes from noticing that all the examples
> given of the causal efficacy of absence are actually examples of events.
> Recognizing that should go some way to narrowing differences.  For
example,
> the stapler missing from the desk.  Suppose the stapler were present on
the
> desk.  That would be an event.  The causal efficacy of the stapler's
> presence, say holding down a handful of papers, would be generated by the
> thing, the stapler as a Real mechanism, not the event of its presence.
> Similarly, the stapler's absence from the desk is an event.
>
> So too with Pierre in the cafe.  Pierre's presence in the cafe would be an
> event.  Pierre himself is a generative mechanism and a causal agent.
> Pierre's absence is an event, and like its counterpart, his presence, a
> phenomenon in the domain of the actual.  The same analysis holds for all
> the examples given in Section 1 of Chapter 2 of DPF, eg at 48, the letter
> that didn't arrive, the failed exam, the missed plane, the monsoon that
> didn't occur, the deforestation of the Amazonian jungle, the holes in the
> ozone layer, the collapse of "actually existing socialism," the spaces in
> the text, absent authors and readers.  EAch of these designates an event.
>
> Now events have consequences, but they are not, I have thought, generative
> mechanisms.  Is this wrong?  They have consequences because they are the
> raw material, so to speak, the conditions with which causal agents work.
> (Matter itself is always a causal agent, not an event, because in all its
> forms it is causally efficacious.  The tree dulls the axe that cuts it.
> But matter's presence or absence is an event.)
>
> The same analysis holds for Jan's 2/25 list:  Gravity is a Real mechanism;
> its presence or absence is an event.  The hole in the ozone layer is an
> event.  A father is a causal agent, his presence is an event.  So too his
> absence.  The lost soccer final is an event. The fall of the Berlin wall
is
> an event.  Lack of proper health care is an event.   Fascism is a
> generative mechanism; its presence or absence is an event.  Solving a math
> problem is an event; not solving it is an event.  A stolen letter is an
> event.  A telephone is a causal mechanism; a telephone off the hook is an
> event.  A lurker is a person and a causal agent; her presence or absence
in
> list discussions is an event.  The absence of limbs is an event; nerves
> are real mechanisms carrying messages.  A clock is a REal mechanism; that
> it is slow is an event.  The presence of a real pipe in one of Magritte's
> paintings (a sign!) would be an event; it's absence is an event.
>
> And other examples:  a hole in a sock is an event.  My presence in class
is
> an event; my not being in class is an event.  The class (the ensemble of
> social relations) is a generative mechanism.  It's search for the missing
> student is an event.  The student's missing the bus is an event.  Hitler's
> crushing victory over the Allies is, counterfactually, an event; Lao Tse's
> discovery of gene 43 is an event; Tobin's Nobel prize is an event.
Persons
> working for the government are causal agents; their snooping on the list
is
> an event.
>
> All this gives bite to Caroline's questions.  We have difficulty finding
> structure because structure of the sort that belongs to Real mechanisms is
> not something that belongs to an event.  Also, absences can be stratified
> in the sense that they are events and events can be experienced.  But it
is
> not so easy to show that the stratification extends to absence as a
> generative mechanism because the examples we have of it are of events.
>
> So I guess there are two possibilities here:  On the one hand we can say
> events are causally efficacious as such.  That would then explain why we
> would not have to bother looking for structure as a bearer of causal
powers.
>
> Or, alternatively, we could insist on the distinction between generative
> mechanisms and events.  Then would the effort to treat events as if they
> were generative mechanisms be a form of actualism?
>
> Notice finally that in the chart at RTS 56 (or in Collier), events are
> actual and real, and  experiences real, actual and empirical/meaningful.
> Do we mean real here simply in the sense that events and experiences exist
> or do we mean it in the strong sense that anything that is real is
causally
> efficacious?
>
> Howard
>
>
>
> From Jan, 2/25
>
>
> >but OK, what are real examples of this negative presence in very
> >plain language ? well, personally, the more or less prosaic images
> >that come into my dialectical mind-set are such as:
> >
> >- the absence of gravity in a space station
> >- the hole in the ozon layer
> >- the absence of my dead father
> >- the lost final of the Dutch soccer team at the World Cup in 1974
> >- the fallen Berlin Wall
> >- the lack of proper health care, education somewhere
> >- fascism, racism, sexism as negative presences (blocking Eudaimonia)
> >- the absence of a solution to a mathematical problem
> >- a perloined letter
> >- a telephone off the hook
> >- a lurker on a mailing-list
> >- the experience of phantom limbs
> >- a clock that runs slow
> >- paintings of Rene Magritte
>
>
>
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