Date: Fri, 05 Apr 2002 11:09:28 -0500
Subject: RE: BHA: Ellis, Scientific Essentialism


Hi Ronny,

First on the fine-tuning ...

You wrote:
I think it is wrong to say that they (the tropes) constitute the essence of a substance. ... (As Aristotle says there cannot be any wedge between essence and substance as substance is essence.) ... Properties are ontological dependent on a particular for existence, at the same time to be a substance means to have some properties essentially, especially dispositional properties. 

Hmmm.  You seem to be saying that since it is in a sense the essence of substance-kinds that they *have* essences, the concept of "real essence" shouldn't be linked to property-kinds.  I see the point.  However Ellis, it seems to me, *does* want to drive a wedge -- at least an analytic one -- between substance and essence.  At a minimum, he thinks that process-kinds have essences too; so whatever essences are, they are not unique to substances.  As I read him, Ellis holds that the essence of a substance is what it is necessarily disposed to do -- or, to put it differently, what it CAN (necessarily) and will do, unless stopped, under given conditions.  What a substance is necessarily disposed to do, however, is a matter of what dispositional properties it bears -- which is to say: what trope(s) it instantiates.  That is the sense in which I understand Ellis to be associating tropes with real essences.  [Similarly, the essence of a *causal* process, anyway, is that it is the *display* of a disposition -- i.e., it is what the particular in which the trope is instantiated DOES do (necessarily), in virtue of being (essentially) the bearer of said disposition .]      

To be honest, I'm not sure what my position is on this -- whether I fall closer to you and Aristotle or closer to Ellis.  It is significant,  I think, that you want to maintain the restriction the concept of "kinds" to denoting what Ellis calls substance-kinds. 

  
> > The connection to materialism that I saw is this: To say that all properties
> > are grounded in, or are properties OF, substances is, at some level, to adopt
> > a materialist ontology.   No?  
>
>Well, you can argue for mental substance for example or maybe substance 
>pluralism. But it seems to me that Bhaskar (at least until FEW) accepts the 
>position called (actually many positions) called non-reductive materialism. 

I see what you are saying.  I guess I was just assuming that Ellis' materialism (which I take to be a little bit more of a reductive one in some ways than was Bhaskar's -- though it is obviously not completely reductive) was at the root of his objection to "free-floating" properties, as you put it. Although come to think of it, Ellis *does* say that there can be expressions of pure dispositionality -- I forget the exact way he puts it.


> > Meanwhile, my understanding of what Bhaskar is talking about when he employs
> > the term ontological monovalence is that he uses it to refer not to the kind
> > of ontological pluralism that you correctly ascribe to Ellis, but rather
> > (perhaps idiosyncratically) to the idea that it is only those things that
> > exist which can be counted as real.  As I understand it, then, Bhaskar's
> > opposition to ontological monovalence is a form of meinongianism.  
>
>Well OK. Then it is maybe two philosophers who are not ontological monovalent. 

I just looked up Alexius Meinong in my Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (I *love* the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy).  I was fascinated reading the entry on (written by Dale Jacquette, if you recognize the name).  So far as I can tell, Meinong is where Bhaskar's argument for realism on the basis of reference comes from.  How interesting.  Well, this may help to illuminate Bhaskar's DPF/PE position.

You wrote:
>It seems to me that ontological monovalence is a species of "crazy" metaphysics. 


 From what you go on to say, I am a little confused here -- did you mean to say that *opposition* to ontological monovalence (as RB uses the term) is a species of crazy metaphysics?  (Because it sounds as though you are not in agreement with Bhaskar.)

You continue:
"There have to be another alternative to Bhaskars theory about 
>Absences? What do you think?"


I agree with you.  I don't like it.  There has been much heated discussion of this on the list, though; the position certainly has defenders.


  You wrote of Ellis:

I think he 
>also would be symphatetic to a theory of non-instantiated objects if the 
>objects in question is restricted to abjects that are on some way de re 
>possible (this presupposes a robust theory of possibility).

Now this, for some reason, I don't mind quite as much.  I would still tend to be very conservative, though.  At a certain point, I think that there is a real danger of simply reifying thought.  Of course a nominalist would argue that I'm so far down the slippery slope that any objections I might have are arbitrary.  

[...]

I had written:
 > This gets back to your earlier comment about event causation and what you see
> > as Ellis' residual Humeanism. ... To draw loosely on Ellis'
> > typology of substance, process and property, I would say that Ellis' emphasis
> > is on causality as a species of process-kind.   Harre and Madden, by
> > contrast, emphasize the idea that substances are causal agents.   Bhaskar, I
> > think, implicitly puts the emphasis on the idea that causality is the
> > display, or exercise, of a dispositional property, a power.  It's a matter of
> > emphasis, but I think it is significant.

You responded:

>So you think Bhaskar and Ellis are in the same philosophical camp on this 
>topic? I prefer Harre's (and Aristotle's) account.
>
>It seem to me to be highly problematical in saying that properties bear the 
>capacity to cause. Substances are endowned with causal powers by bearing 
>dispositional propertes, but these properties cannot be said to cause anything.

[...}

>Causation is basically this: Substances endowned with causal powers 
>(irreduclible or not) produces causal processes. This is what causation is is.
>(In some way we may say that this is a "reduction", albeit not an ontological 
>reduction more a explanatory reduction) Causation is reduced to the exercise of 
>causal powers. Bhaskar, Shoemaker, Harre and Ellis would all agree on this.

I'm a little uncertain here, because at first you seem to implicitly agree with me that a distinction could be made between what I will call the Harre and Madden formulation and those of Bhaskar and Ellis, but then you conclude by saying that they're all in agreement.  My view is that there are important differences in emphasis.  I think that, while Bhaskar and Ellis both assume that *mostly* it is substances that bear dispositional properties, neither the Bhaskar nor the Ellis formulations centre on substances.  Bhaskar, for example, adopts all of Harre and Madden's vocabulary [e.g.,  generative mechanisms, real versus nominal essences, natural necessity, etc. (not that these concepts - at least the latter two - are unique to Harre and Madden, but they constitute a conceptual framework, which RB retains in RTS)] --- he adopts all of the vocabulary except for the notable exception of the term "powerful particular," which he replaces with "powers."  Ellis, meanwhile, for whatever reason, talks about causality not in terms of substances but in terms of the relationship between process-kinds.  As I said, I don't think that there is major disagreement between these thinkers, but I think that the differences in emphasis are important.   

[...]

I wrote:
 > > I dont think that Bhaskar would like the conclusion.  I'm not sure whether he
> > would contest it by saying that chairs and computers etc DO have causal
> > powers (if absences can have causal powers, I don't see why chairs can't) or
> > if he would say that there are many things that are real that are not
> > especially causally efficacious.  Bhaskar says that being a cause is one
> > criterion of existence.  But in *RTS*, at least, he also seems to think that
> > being an object of perception is a criterion of existence.  Not sure about
> > Ellis.  But he seems to think that various social phenomena exist, even
> > though he doesn't want to say that they have real essences.  Don't know
> > Shoemaker.  


You wrote:

>I was not arguing for a criterion of existence but a criterion of emergence. 
>What emergent entities are there? It seems to me that only those objects that 
>are endowned with irreducible, independent causal powers are really emergent. 

But look, to specify that an entity is an emergent only tells us that there are certain material conditions of possibility for its existence, to which the entity does not reduce.   What you're really saying is "Of a specified group of entities (i.e., those whose material conditions of possibility lead us to call them "emergent"), only those with independent causal powers *exist*.  This is your answer to the existential question "What emergent entities are there?"  

Thus my response that having independent causal powers is not the only thing that counts as a criterion of existence.  


>An excellent book that discusses these themes are: Sarah Waterlow: 
>Nature, Change and Agency in Aristotle's Physics (Oxford: Clarendon Press) 
>another excellent book on this is Theodore Scaltsas: Substances and Universals 
>in Aristotle's Metaphysics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press).


Thank you, thank you for these references.



>Overall, what do you think about Ellis' book in relation to 
>Harre/Madden's "Causal Powers" and Bhaskar's "RTS"?

Believe it or not, I now have to go.  So this, the most interesting question, I can't spend any time on.  I'm not done with Harre and Madden yet, so I'll have to hold off on them.  The most important contrast with Bhaskar is that Ellis thinks none of this holds in relation to the social sciences.  I'm pretty sure that what I think about this is that I can't imagine how he can have a domain-specific account of what causality is!  Following through such a challenge to RB  -- as I'm doing in the chapter that I am writing now -- is useful though.  Other than that, Ellis' discussion is obviously far more detailed and precise, and Ellis engages with other contemporary philosophers in a way that Bhaskar doesn't, but there are also ways in which Bhaskar's account is further reaching.  I like the way that Bhaskar's analysis of experimentation functions as an immanent critique of the Humean position, but I prefer Ellis' conception of what it is to do metaphysics.  I can say more, but I MUST go!

What about you?

Warmly,
Ruth



     --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---