Date: Fri, 01 Mar 2002 15:32:18 +0000
From: "John Mingers" <John.Mingers-AT-mail.wbs.warwick.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: BHA: Causality and essence


I think there are a lot of interesting potential links between CR and systems theory in general, including in this things like complexity theory.

Certainly systems theory is against views of linear causality, thinking instaed in terms of multiple causations and complex patterns of circular feedback loops. 

I think all of this resonates well with CR. Indeed, one version of system dynamics (a la Peter Senge at MIT) talks of "behaviour following structure" and means by this that the observable behaviour of systems is generated by their underlying structure. This is almost identical to Braskar saying that observable events are generated by underlying generative mechanisms or structures.

I have written a paper on CR and management science which demonstrates this:

Mingers, J. (2000) 'The contribution of critical realism as an underpinning philosophy for OR/MS and systems', J. Operational Research Society 51(11): 1256-1270.

John


>
>>>> moodey001-AT-mail1.gannon.edu 28 February 2002 15:56:57 >>>
>Hi Ian and Ruth,
>
>Causality seems to me to be intimately related to essence or natural 
>kind.  Because I received my philosophical training in a Jesuit 
>seminary, 
>in which neo-Thomistic thought was dominant, I never really accepted 
>the 
>total modernist rejection of Aristotle.  One could, I was taught, accept 
>the successive revolutions in physics, without rejecting the Aristotelian 
>four causes.  The linear view of causility is "essentially" a truncated 
>view of efficient causation, leaving out material, formal, and final 
>causes.  Talk of human agency is a way of bringing final causation 
>back 
>into the discussion.  "A functional relation between ongoing events" 
>pertains to formal causality, understood as the intelligibility inherent in 
>those events.  But there are other kinds of intelligibility in events, such 
>as the kind of developmental process so dramatically illustrated by 
>embryonic development, the combination of random variation and 
>environmental selection illustrated not just by biological evolution but 
>also by the selective survival of economic enterprises and of operant 
>behaviors in operant conditioning theory.  And, of course, the dialectical 
>processes examined in DPF provide another way of describing 
>essences as a 
>generative (causal) mechanism.  In dialectic, imo, essences cannot be 
>thought of as inhering in windowless monads.  The "monads" would 
>have to 
>have constitutive internal relations with one another, and these relations 
>would have to include "negation" and "absence."
>
>I am suggesting connections between "real essence" and the 
>combination of 
>material and formal cause that the Aristotelians and Thomists call the 
>essence of material beings.  I am further suggesting that the various 
>kinds 
>of intelligibility developed in the modern sciences, social as well as 
>natural, expand the traditional notion of formal causality.
>
>There is also a whole realm of scientific work that does not fit into any 
>of the four causes -- statistical science.  This has to do with the 
>probability of events, or the relative frequency of their occurance.  
>There 
>is no direct intelligibility, no intrinsic connection, between successive 
>tosses of a coin.  But the relative frequency of heads and tails in a 
>series of sets of coin tosses will oscillate around .5.
>
>It seems to me that catastrophe theory is a way of getting at the 
>increasing probability of an event -- the straw that breaks the camel's 
>back -- and that chaos theory spells out patterns of oscillation of events 
>around much more complicated "attractors" than the .5 of the toss of an 
>unbiased coin.  These both deal with statistical probabilities, and 
>provide 
>a kind of indirect intelligibility quite different from the direct 
>intelligibility of "essences."
>
>Regards,
>
>Dick
>
>At 10:15 AM 02/27/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>>I have been wondering about Bhaskar and causality too.  When I 
>looked at him
>>and Harre and Madden, I see mostly the ontological affirmation that 
>there are
>>causal powers, pitted against the Humean conjunction view.  Part of 
>the
>>disengagement with contemporary thinkers that Ruth talks about 
>relates to the
>>discussion of a different opposition to Hume, the linear view of 
>causality
>>exemplefied in the two billiard balls.  I was hoping to see Bhaskar or 
>Harre
>>talk about 'contemporaneous causation, a functional relation between 
>ongoing
>>events as when a gas expands with heating, etc.  Mandelbaum talks 
>about this
>>at length in his *Anatomy of Historical Knowledge* and other works.  It 
>is
>>another way of bringing back causality, not by affirming that we must 
>discuss
>>powers, which it more or less takes for granted, but by trying to 
>demonstrate
>>the actual process.  What is more, there is common sense support (as 
>well as
>>scientific) support for this view.
>>
>>Ian
>>
>> >
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>How about the following, then:  can anyone tell me what they see as 
>the
>> >>major difference(s), if any, between *RTS* and Harre and 
>Madden's *Causal
>> >>Powers*?  I am about to order *Causal Powers*, so that I can read it 
>over
>> >>carefully, but I'd love to get a jump start by hearing what others 
>think.
>> >>
>> >>Also, there is and has been a fair amount of debate, actually, within
>> >>academic philosophy, over Locke's conception of real essences, 
>the
>> >>existence (or not) of natural kinds and how these issues relate to 
>the
>> >>conceptualization of causality.  The lack of engagement in RTS 
>with
>> >>contemporaries involved in these debates is kind of striking, really.  
>I'm
>> >>curious about it.  Is it just that philosophers of science in the
>> >>mid-1970's never crossed paths with metaphysicians and/or 
>philosophers of
>> >>language?  [For that matter, does anyone know if Bhaskar did his 
>degree in
>> >>a philosophy department?]
>> >>
>> >>r.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>      --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >     --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
>>
>>Ian Verstegen
>>Department of Art History
>>Temple University
>>8th Floor Ritter Hall Annex
>>Philadelphia, PA 19122
>>tel: (215) 204-7837
>>fax: (215) 204-6951
>>http://astro.temple.edu/~iversteg 
>>
>>
>>      --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
>
>
>
>
>     --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---


Dr. John Mingers
Professor of OR and Systems
 Warwick Business School
 Warwick University
 Coventry CV4 7AL UK
phone: +2476 522475
fax: +2476 524539
email: j.mingers-AT-warwick.ac.uk


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