File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_2002/bhaskar.0205, message 33


Date: Mon, 6 May 2002 13:26:49 +0100
From: Mervyn Hartwig <mh-AT-jaspere.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: BHA: causal bearers in the social world


Hi Ruth, all

A few quick comments (without reconsulting PON etc) mainly on Ruth's
first post in this thread. Sorry to come in a bit late.

First, let's put this thing in context in terms of the development of
ideas. It was Marx who said that 'people make history, but not in
circumstances of their choosing'. The second part is what's usually
emphasised, the later Bhaskar imo is emphasising the first, and in terms
of the tradition of Marx, high time too.

>[One reading, come to think of it, might be to say that it is only individuals 
>who can effect *change*, which is a very specific kind of consequence.]

I think this is indeed the way to go. Two qualifiers. 1) I would say
transformative or qualitative change, i.e. self-transformation at the
level of people and social transformation (the later Bhaskar is saying
that the *former* is prior or the more fundamental, not of course
through some magical mystical revelation, but through a strenuous
learning process and struggle.) This qualifier is necessary because
social structures do effect changes - on people (see below); however by
and large these effects won't be in the direction of a qualitatively
different kind of human being or of social structural transformation.
2). Although the early Bhaskar's discourse is in terms of individuals
and society, I think 'people' (or 'embodied personalities' etc) would be
more in keeping with the spirit of his work overall, as a reminder that
he's not a methodological individualist and that, especially in his
later work, he stresses collective agency (when people work or struggle
together, as in Adam Smith's pin factory and Marx's collective labourer,
they acquire powers they do not possess as individuals; Bhaskar's view
of individuals as of everything else is one of radical relationality or
connectivity - collective phenomena, like the social generally, are
real).

>Is it 
>only individuals who effect consequences, according to Bhaskar, or are social 
>structures also causal bearers?  

As I read him, individual and collective agency are - in terms of the
Aristotelian typology of causes he invokes in PON - the only efficient
causes, i.e. initiators of change. This is quite compatible with holding
that people internalise social norms and won't normally act to transform
themselves and social structures unless the latter are in some kind of
crisis - for crises are the (unintended) consequence of people's
activities (as constrained and enabled by the structures) e.g. today's
eco-crisis.

Social structures are material causes, i.e. they enable or constrain
agency, and as such of course they do effect consequences - on people.
(Structures do affect structures, but only indirectly, via people). If
you're sculpting granite, it certainly enables and constrains your
activity, albeit it doesn't initiate any change; or put another way,
albeit agency qua absenting i.e. transforming existing states of
affairs, resides overwhelmingly in the sculptor. (I agree with others
that they're probably also formal causes).

So social structures are certainly 'things that bring about effects'.
Where your reading mainly seems to differ from mine is in your
understanding of 'causal mechanism'. You seem to want to reserve it for
'efficient cause'. If so, what is the warrrant for this? Surely, in
nature, as in psychology, causal mechanisms can be either efficient or
material, and possibly both effient and material (e.g. in holistic
causation where causes and effects don't go one after the other like
goats on a mountain track but are simultaneously co-present. In the case
of the granite being sculpted, aren't the properties it has as a
material cause the effects of underlying causal mechanisms under certain
boundary conditions)?

Mervyn

PS. I've just read your other post where you confirm my reading of your
understanding of causal mechanism: 

>causal mechanisms in nature (which are in general *efficient* causes) 

I would strongly question this. Biological evolution e.g. is full of
material as well as efficient causes. Why do birds have hollow bones?
The efficient causes (genetic mutations) are selected for by
constraining and enabling environments...




Ruth Groff <rgroff-AT-yorku.ca> writes
>Hi Mervyn, all,
>
>Okay, this is a really basic question, but I am genuinely unsure of the answer.
>
>Mervyn, you wrote that according to Bhaskar's current thinking,
>
>>nothing whatsoever can happen except in and through
>>the activity of people. Only people and their ideas and activities are
>>the active force (efficient cause) in history.
>
>What I want to know is whether or not Bhaskar thinks or has ever thought that 
>social structures are causal bearers.  
>
>Benton early on charged Bhaskar with falling into methodological individualism 
>... and the charge is understandable, given certain passages in PON.  
>Nonetheless, given that the analogy between causal mechanisms in nature and 
>social structures (an analogy that is itself unmistakably and explicitly 
>distinguished from a parallel analogy between causal mechanisms in nature and 
>individuals' essences)  --  given that the analogy makes no sense if social 
>structures are not actually things that bring about effects, I have so far 
>interpreted Bhaskar as ... well ... not really meaning it, when it sounds as 
>though he is saying that it is only individuals who are causal bearers.  
>Individuals are the only bearers of intentions, yes, but electrons aren't 
>*intentional* actors, so not being capable of  *intentional* action isn't 
>necessarily enough to preclude structures being analogues to causal mechanisms 
>in nature.
>
>I haven't been completely happy with this reading, but again, it is the only 
>way 
>I can figure to make sense of the analogy between causal mechanisms in nature 
>and social structures, upon which the extension of transcendental realism to 
>social science rests.  [I appreciate that social structures are themselves 
>reproduced by individuals, but, as noted above, Bhaskar is clear in PON to 
>affirm two different analogies:  natural causal power - social structure 
>(chapter 2), natural causal power - individual essence (chapter 3).  The former 
>authorizes (critical) naturalism with respect to social science, the latter 
>authorizes it with respect to psychology. 
>
>Given that I am right this moment writing a chapter in which I attribute to 
>Bhaskar the view that social structures are causal mechanisms (and thus by 
>extension causal bearers), and  argue against Ellis (not to mention all 
>methodological individualists) that such a view is defensible, I am really, 
>really, REALLY keen to hear how other people read Bhaskar on this point.  Is it 
>only individuals who effect consequences, according to Bhaskar, or are social 
>structures also causal bearers?  
>
>[One reading, come to think of it, might be to say that it is only individuals 
>who can effect *change*, which is a very specific kind of consequence.]
>
>Thanks all,
>Ruth
>
>
>
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