From: "Tobin Nellhaus" <nellhaus-AT-gis.net>
Subject: Re: BHA: Re: Epistemological relativism
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 22:21:58 -0500


Mervyn--

> One of Bhaskar's main points about 'the pulse of freedom' is that it is
> in our (core universal human) nature to be free, whether we - and
> particularly the oppressors - have any idea of it or not. That
> (clearly!) doesn't mean that people don't have to struggle to have it
> recognised.

I think it's a little more accurate to say that it's our nature to desire
freedom.  But in any case, Bhaskar builds his argument on *agency*: the
intentional absenting of absences (ills, lacks, constraints etc).  He has no
truck with the biologism Marko proposes.

> Daly's summary of the Platonic position, which admittedly suffered from
> 'the distortions of class': 'Socrates and his followers aspired to a
> rational spiritual illumination through unifying dialectical philosophy,
> the aim of which was to guide human beings to ther ideal communal
> fulfilment, in the love (the only subject on which Socrates claimed
> expertise) which unconditionally wills not a particular pleasure but the
> universal good for every human being'.

"Suffered from" is I think a bit of an understatement.  Having dug up my
copy of the Republic, I see my memory was faulty regarding the position of
women.  It certainly wasn't on the matter of censorship.  He does assume
slavery (and slaves could not be citizens of any state, including Plato's).
And I stand by my fundamental point: "reasoning ethically" and "believing in
human rights" are not historically the same, though we may strive to make
them so.

> >>                The
> >> concept of the Universe itself is quite recent.
> >> Is the Universe a social construction? If so how could something exist,
a
> >> human society, prior to the existience of the totality of all
existience?
> >
> >I have no idea what you're on about.  No-one here has suggested anything
> >remotely like this -- you're battling a straw man, and it looks silly.
>
> As I see it, Marko's point is that social construction is being invoked
> as in some sense ultimate, and that that notion reduces to absurdity.
> Again, seems logical to me.

The argument that social products are social and cannot be reduced to
biology is an essential part of critical realism's social theory.  CR
maintains that social powers are emergent, and possess sui generis powers.
In that sense, yes, social construction *is* in a sense ultimate --
ultimate, that is, for the social character of social entities' social
powers.  I'm amazed I have to remind you of this.  The argument for
emergence does *not* dismiss the underlying level from which the emergent
power arose, in this case human biology.  Society is conditioned and enabled
by human biology.  I said so in the post you quote, I said so in my previous
comment in this thread, and I have said so on many earlier occasions.  And I
have consistently rejected the proposition that non-social entities (e.g.
the universe) are social constructions, although our *ideas* about them
certainly are.  I'd be shocked, Mervyn, if you were rejecting emergence.

> >If biology defines
> >what human rights are,
>
> That's not what Marko seems to me to be saying - biology doesn't
> 'define' anything -  rather that the fact that we are one species the
> members of which are by and large all born into the world, no matter
> when or where, with fundamentally similar (i.e. human!) needs and
> capacities forms the indispensable basis for emancipatory politics.

Marko has been quite clear that in his view, society reduces to biology and
"is not a social construction."  He doesn't ever say that it's not
*entirely* a social construction, which of course is a different proposition
altogether.  He says it's not, period.

The fact that we have many fundamentally similar needs is not very helpful,
unless one is willing to maintain that a need or a desire automatically
confers a right.  We all have a need to eat, but does that need confer a
right to eat your neighbor?  Does a person's need for sex confer a right to
commit rape?  The moment one says, "Well, okay, there are some limits and
needs don't confer unlimited rights," one is on strictly social grounds.
Nature doesn't give a damn what you eat so long as it provides nourishment
that suits your physiology and doesn't poison you in the process; sperm can
be ejaculated and meet an egg whether the sex is consensual or not.  People,
however, care a lot.

>            I
> don't understand why the 'social constructionist' camp in this thread
> can't meet Marko half way and concede that we are one species whose
> species being, however differently manifested and mediated in different
> societies, is only very slowly changing.

Why is it incumbent on those of us who argue for the sociohistorical nature
of human rights to make the concessions and meet Marko halfway, particularly
when he's never mounted an argument that included evidence?  Besides, if
"meeting halfway" means rejecting emergence (which reductionism entails),
sorry, I ain't gonna do it.  Fortunately it doesn't, because in certain
respects I *have* tried to meet Marko halfway, twice.  In my first post I
presented an alternative interpretation of social construction that was
consistent with critical realism and recognized biological constraint.
Marko refused to even discuss it -- he just kept talking as though social
construction was flatly equivalent to a rejection of biology and was a type
of super-idealism.  Then, in my second post I again agreed that "the form
human societies can take [is] constrained by our biological nature."  Marko
hasn't yet responded.

> >A fixed concept
> >of human nature necessarily limits the possibilities of what humans can
do
> >and the sorts of relationships they can have -- or can be allowed to have
>
> Nobody is saying that human nature is fixed, let alone its concept. Even
> if it were, your point wouldn't follow in an open, stratified world, any
> more than the relatively enduring nature of causal mechanisms in general
> limits possibility in such a world.

Marko *has* argued that human nature is fixed: that's the point of his
effort to ground it and human rights in biology.  My understanding (he may
of course correct me) is that he fears that understanding human rights as
social makes it too fluid, too malleable, too apt to be cavalierly denied.
These are possibilities he does hope to limit.  I sympathize with these
fears.  But I think trying to solve the problem by defining it away doesn't
work, and creates more dangers than it prevents.  The frustrating truth, as
I see it, is that people have to create human rights, and they have to do so
by struggling for them.  We can't just read them off of biology.

Also, I think you misunderstood what I meant by saying a fixed concept of
human nature limits possibilities.  I was referring to the goal or intention
behind forming such a concept.  Whether or not people acting on that concept
actually "succeed" in limiting human possibilities is of course contingent.
Historically speaking, however, people have gotten pretty damn far.

T.

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




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