File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_2002/bhaskar.0203, message 111


From: "Tobin Nellhaus" <nellhaus-AT-gis.net>
Subject: Re: BHA: Emergence
Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2002 00:11:49 -0500


Hi all--

I'm having to catch up a bit....

Mervyn wrote:

> Re the social construction thing: Marko is a newcomer to the list who
> was attracted to Bhaskar via Chomsky's naturalism. He found what he took
> to be Bhaskar's and CR's social constructionism offputting. Instead of
> pointing out the important differences between pomo etc constructionism
> and CR's position, the response has by and large been to assert social
> construction and attack Marko's reductionism (which btw I have *not*
> defended). At least, that's the way I saw it. I, frankly, am interested
> in retaining Marko's interest in CR, and of course such an interest is
> redundant in the case of other discussants who are veteran addicts.

If you check the path of the discussion, you'll see that my first foray
included precisely the sort of distinction between pomo vs CR views of
social construction that you feel should have been offered.  I think I
presented it in a clear and unabrasive manner, without any form of attack.
Marko simply ignored it and proceeded as though any mention of the social
aspect of scientific analysis was tantamount to the pomo position.  For your
part, instead of discussing the distinction further, you chose not to
contest Marko's monolithic view and instead criticised what you rather
divisively called the "'social constructionist' camp."  Not a great way to
illuminate the differences between CR and poststructuralism, or for that
matter maintain collegiality.  If your goal is to retain Marko's interest in
CR, then focus your attention on explaining CR (and not on distorting my
position).  (Your most recent posts have begun to do that.)

But enough of that.  As for the "slippage" between "social production" and
"social construction," on my part at least I suppose it comes from years of
trying to drive a wedge into poststucturalists' thinking, i.e. use a term
that sounds familiar and try to make 'em see it requires more than they
thought.

>             Bhaskar is in effect prepared to concede that
> scientific knowledge is *not* exactly produced by means of knowledge
> alone - he himself mentions 'technical tools' in the para above. I would
> rather say that science is a practice (which is not reducible to thought
> alone), and that Bhaskar's Althusserian heritage is a little too much to
> the fore here.

[snip]

> That said, I think the later Bhaskar especially is prone to slide into
> the 'by thought alone' or 'entirely social' formulation (see esp. FEW).
> I think this is problematic.

Yes, I agree with these paragraphs entirely, word for word.  Please read
that three times!  I myself don't go quite as far as Bhaskar appears to in
the passage I quoted.  My point was to make it clear that RB does emphasize
the social aspect strongly, and that it is a crucial aspect of CR's
analysis.  But by no means does that entail that social construction (or
whatever term you choose) is the whole of CR!

> I'm not sure what the issue is here. First you concede that
>
> >the social production of knowledge
> >is indeed a form of "intrastructural" emergence.
>
> That means, I take it, that we can say (roughly) that the Einsteinian
> system of ideas in physics is (intrastructurally) emergent from the
> Newtonian.

Not precisely, in the sense that Newtonian mechanics was not the *sole*
basis on which Einstein's theory of relativity emerged.  Nor could it be,
since it vastly departed from Newtonian assumptions.  So ideas from outside
Newtonian mechanics were involved.  More generally, it is not uncommon for
concepts and metaphors from one field to be applied in another.  So I would
rather say that Einstein's theories emerged within scientific discourse as a
general field (or something along those lines), and that similar processes
happen in most other sorts of discourse.

> Then you say that we can't have different ontological levels among
> ideas. But the above is, precisely, an example of the emergence of a
> different ontological level among ideas. (You speak as if emergence and
> ontological levels are two compeletely different things - fair enough
> insofar as one is process and the other product, perhaps, but I don't
> see your point: an ontological level is an emergent stratum.)

As Marsh has excellently pointed out, there are different sorts of
emergence; and as both of us have previously stated, there are
"intrastructural" forms of emergence as well as "superstructural."  That
means that *not* all forms of emergence involve the formation of higher
ontological levels (though obviously some do).  In the paragraph above, you
seem to require that *all* of them do; I think that's mistaken.  Also, I
haven't exactly denied that there could be ontological levels among theories
or philosophies, but I'm skeptical and need to see better defense of the
proposition.  I don't think explanatory power achieves that.

>                    Further,
> the ideas of the new theory will have been assessed in regard to their
> explanatory power, and, in science, that they have greater explanatory
> power is a necessary condition for the new theory to emerge.

Yes -- but that doesn't entail the existence of differing ontological levels
among theories as theories.

> >A wrong idea is not a different sort of entity or at a different
> >ontological level than a correct idea: it has a different relationship to
> >its referent
>
> Yes, but this doesn't at all argue against conceptual emergence as
> indicated above.

Quite right, it doesn't argue against conceptual emergence.  Nor was it
meant to argue against conceptual emergence.  I was debating the idea of
ontological *levels* among theories.  As there are different sorts of
emergence, my argument was more specific than you make it out to be.

>                I think you're confusing two
> things, which I can best get at by analogy with genus and species. As an
> (emergent) genus ideas are all in the same boat ontologically, just as
> all primates are primates. But there may be emergent levels (species)
> within the genus (chimps, homo etc), of which the above is an example.
> Viren has I think made this point (essentially) too.

I agree that there are emergent levels among species, but I'm not convinced
that these are *ontological* levels.  The problem may be that the term
"ontology" is -- in some hands anyway -- ambiguous between general ontology
(i.e. Bhaskar's distinction between the real, the actual, and the
empirical), mode of existence (such as the sui generis complex and partial
totality we call society; or how language exists in a manner that differs
from the way bricks exist), and the specific composition and structure of
particular entities within some general stratum such as living creatures.  I
tend to view the last of these as (generally speaking) intrastructually
emergent, and not the real subject matter of ontology, which I reserve for
the first two senses (though analysis of specific entities often informs
ontology).  (I'm not sure what the proper term is for the third sense;
ontics, maybe?)  Following the meaning of ontology I'm working with, there
is for example no major ontological difference between a theatrical
performance of *Hamlet* and one of *Winnie the Pooh*, since they both
consist of live actors performing characters and actions based on a script
and doing it in front of a live audience; but there's a major ontological
difference between watching a performance of *Hamlet* and reading the
script.  Likewise, while there are major differences between capitalism and
feudalism in their structure and dynamics, they are *ontologically* the same
because they both count as social structures (involving social relations,
productive forces, political institutions, ideologies, etc).  From this
perspective, capitalism and feudalism are emergent in an intrastructural
sense (i.e., within the genus "societies"), and do not establish new
ontological levels but only occupy the ontology all societies must have.

I think this is consistent with the account of stratification you offer from
*Explaining Society*, and I hope it explains my arguments about the
existence of ontological *levels* among theories.  Although come to think of
it, I do want to hedge on that, but in a specific manner.  The question
originally arose in terms of comparing specific theories -- e.g., Hegelian
and Kantian philosophies, as philosophies, would be at different ontological
levels.  I think that philosophies can discuss (refer to, etc) different
ontological levels, but I remain skeptical that *as philosophies* they exist
at different ontological levels.  But so far I've only considered the
question of levels among articulated and conscious thought products (or
processes) such as philosophies.  There are however metaphors, images,
unacknowledged premises and other "patterning structures" which condition
and enable the ways we organize our thoughts, and which may or may not be
conscious; arguably, these are at a "lower" (more fundamental) ontological
level.  Thus ideas are neither generated or combined with absolute freedom,
nor generated or combined in some rigid deterministic way, but rather they
are "motivated" in certain directions by these underlying structures.  I'm
not entirely certain of this argument, but I think a case can be made.

Marko wrote:

> So according to Tobin the cognitive revolution of the past 50
> years is a fallacy. I'd like to see the evidence for this claim. So
> if "knowledge" of human nature is a social construction, and we
> are the objects of that knowledge, it follows that there is no such
> thing as human nature for human nature is a social construction.
> Thus Tobin, upon this logic, agrees that we are a blank slate an
> assumption shared with positivism.

All of these claims of what I said or implied are of course ridiculous
nonsense, purely of Marko's invention and quite the opposite of what I
actually think.

> although Tobin is a Marxist

I don't recall saying that either.  I've drawn lots from Marx, no question.
But like Marsh, there are lots of other things in my soup as well.
Apparently, Marko, you think *I* am a blank slate for whatever absurd claims
entertain you.  You say you reject the sort of social constructivism that
imagines we create the universe out of our heads, yet here you are, creating
a Tobin out of your head that has no connection to reality.  You're
certainly welcome on this list and you can dispute what I say as much as you
like, but dispute what I (and other people) actually *say*.  Cut the
ventroliquist act.

T.

---
Tobin Nellhaus
nellhaus-AT-mail.com
"Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce




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