Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 12:03:02 -0400
From: Richard Moodey <moodey001-AT-mail1.gannon.edu>
Subject: Re: BHA: on Bhaskar on Hegel on Parmenides


Hi Phil,

Just an irreverent aside about the "pluriverse."   "Universe" once really 
did mean everything.  Then there came equivocations, suggesting that 
perhaps there are multiple universes.  Since there can't be multiple 
"everythings," someone (Bhaskar?) coined a new term that would mean 
everything -- "pluriverse."  The same process of linguistic degradation 
can, and probably will, take place.  Someone will persuade a few others 
that there really are multiple pluriverses.  I am reminded of the response 
of the tribal philosopher who was questioned about the doctrine that the 
known world rests upon the back of a giant turtle:  "What is the turtle 
standing on?"  It's turtles all the way down!

Regards,

Dick

At 08:23 AM 05/10/2002 +0100, you wrote:
>Hi Ruth, Dick, Martti, Mervyn, Gary, listers
>
>In DPF p111 when introducing his concept of "monovalence" Bhaskar writes:
>
>"The effects of monovalence are easy to demonstrate.  If thought is included
>within being, no change is possible; if it is excluded from being, epistemic
>but not ontic change is possible and so the world must be assumed to be
>*closed*."
>
>Just above this Bhaskar writes that (the alleged error of) monovalence
>derives ultimately from Parmenides.  Now what is involved in Bhaskar's
>statement that "If thought is included within being, no change is
>possible..."?  The idea seems to be that thought must be 'outside' being in
>some way, in order for change to be possible.  And the alleged error of
>Parmenides is therefore that his 'universe as a plenitude' unduly restricts
>thought, because, after all, Bhaskar might say, if there is only one
>universe then there must only be a limited number of things to think about.
>This could be one reason why Bhaskar has taken his 'spiritual turn', and why
>he is talking about multiple universes (pluriverse), because he finds it
>psychologically intolerable that we start from where we are in this
>universe.  Having said that, it must also have been a dismal and shocking
>experience for Bhaskar when a work on the scale of DPF received almost no
>comment, and no serious polemic, from the professional philosophical
>community in Britain.  It might also have helped if Bhaskar had discussed
>his major theses more with other philosophers.
>
>So how is change possible if thought *is* included within being?  Well
>Parmenides (cited by Hegel in LECTURES ON THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY, volume
>one, University of Nebraska Press, 1995) suggests:
>
>"Thought, and that on account of which thought is, are the same.  For not
>without that which is, in which it expresses itself, wilt thou find Thought,
>seeing that it is nothing and will be nothing outside of that which it is."
>
>Thus for Parmenides, and for Hegel, thought arises from nature.  Thought
>does not have any autonomy from nature, despite what Sartre tried to
>maintain (and Sartre has influenced Bhaskar in this).
>
>Now to come to my question to Dick about where to put spirit, which I grant
>exists.  Hegel, again citing Parmenides in the same book, writes:
>
>"The dead do not feel light or warmth or hear voices, because the fire is
>out of them; they feel cold, stillness and the opposite, however, and,
>speaking generally, each existence has a certain knowledge."
>
>Hegel comments: "In fact, this view of Parmenides is really the opposite of
>materialism, for materialism consists in putting together the soul from
>parts, or independent forces (the wooden horse of the senses)."
>
>So here we find Hegel referring to materialism.  And perhaps this is Roy's
>understanding of materialism when he comments "metaphysical materialism is
>not very well developed".  To both Hegel and Bhaskar it appears to be
>intolerable that a human being should in any way be a sum of parts.  Rather,
>to Hegel and Bhaskar, a human being contains a soul and it is this that
>makes a human being a sacred whole.  But if Hegel is right in his commentary
>on Parmenides, the "fire" that is in us is brought about mainly by the
>senses, and not by the reflection of the intellect, which is not touched on
>by Parmenides according to Hegel.  I would suggest that spirit resides
>precisely here, in the intellect, for Hegel.  And historical spirit resides
>in the general intellect.  This suggests a big problem for Bhaskar's
>ontology, since for Bhaskar spirit resides at the level of phenomenal forms,
>in terms of people's reaction to their immediate surroundings, and in terms
>of immediate information.  The question of the mediations in the mediated
>development of the general intellect is glossed over in Bhaskar.  From a
>Hegelian perspective, Bhaskar has a greatly impoverished conception of the
>movement of spirit in history.  From this we can see that Freedom in history
>comes from Man's self-consciousness of her/his true position in the
>universe.  This Hegelian stance is not, contra Bhaskar and Mervyn, anything
>to do with a logicist reduction of reality to logical forms, rather it is
>the result of philosophical reflection on reality by the general intellect.
>
>Does that mean that Hegel is beyond criticism?  If we return to the above
>quote from Hegel we find Hegel saying "...for materialism consists in
>putting together the soul from parts".  This appears to be a derogatory
>comment by Hegel - he seems to be saying: "How could the soul possibly be
>dependent in any way on the base and mere material?".  In other words, we
>can see here that Hegel, even though he has comprehended the essence of
>historical spirit (which Bhaskar has not), has an illicit split between soul
>(the intellect) and matter.  This split is addressed in the dialectical
>materialism of Joseph Dietzgen, who put forward the view that spirit exists
>as part of matter, and that we have a natural tendency to think that spirit
>is autonomous from matter, but this is an illusion which we must oppose.
>Dietzgen's philosophy can be found in THE POSITIVE OUTCOME OF PHILOSOPHY,
>(Charles H. Kerr, Chicago, 1906).
>
>Finally, Mervyn, on co-presence.  Bhaskar comments at p141 of DPF that:
>"One could develop a concept of 'strong negative presence' in the case of
>causally efficacious memory, but as the remembered is always liable to play
>a causal role and we are no longer dealing with purely Hegelian dialectic I
>would prefer not to embark on that road."  Now, I do not accept that Bhaskar
>has a more inclusive dialectics than Hegel (I think it is the other way
>around), but I am interested in what you think about this quote.  It seems
>that Bhaskar is saying that it does not matter what is remembered by
>society - note the "always" in that "the remembered is always liable to play
>a causal role" - here we find Bhaskar in a Heideggerian fashion appealing to
>an abstract future to spare us from the problems of (generally)
>intellectually comprehending the presence of the past in the present.
>
>Phil
>
>
>
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