Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2003 23:16:20 +0100
From: Mervyn Hartwig <mh-AT-jaspere.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: BHA: 'Genes of genes'


In message <20030603214928.42851.qmail-AT-web21203.mail.yahoo.com>, shiv 
kumar <iconoclast2050-AT-yahoo.com> writes

>I maintain that reductionism and
>emergentism go hand in hand. In peeling one layer, we find many others,
>and so it goes on.

I think you need to distinguish between *diachronic* and *synchronic* 
reductionism/emergentism. If we knew enough  - which would have to be an 
enormous amount given that the world is open and events are not 
determined before they are caused - to peel back the layers through time 
(diachronically) all the way to the big bang (accepting that theory for 
present purposes) we would indeed eventually come not just to genes but 
to the the particles or whatever there was just before the bang.  But CR 
espouses a *synchronic* emergent causal powers materialism according to 
which nature takes 'quantum leaps' in virtue of which irreducibly new 
causal powers which couldn't have been predicted ex ante are brought 
into being in virtue of a reconfiguration of pre-existing materials and 
which furthermore are capable of reacting back on the materials out of 
which the new entity was formed. - Exactly in fact as in your own 
example of human beings deliberately altering their own genetic material 
(this happens as an unintentional bye-product of social causes too, as 
Peter Dickens has demonstrated  in JCR). Here reasons - a qualitatively 
new kind of causal power in the world since the advent of humans - 
function as causes which react back on the biological 'matter' from 
which humans have arisen; as they do too when, as you yourself also say,

>We are where we are, in part,
>due to what these philosophers said.

Best study philosophy too then, as well as genetics! I would suggest you 
engage from your perspective with the specifically philosophical 
arguments Bhaskar puts forward for emergence in The Possibility of 
Naturalism and Dialectic. That would be more appropriate for this list, 
and would hopefully do something to remedy what sometimes looks like 
sheer spouting out of the top of your head re matters critical realist - 
as in:

>Yet
>to comment philosophically and from a realist perspective, I can say that
>if we augur transphenomenality and counterphenomenality, then this
>issue presents a strong case for consideration. We have to be realists in
>both nocturnal and diurnal philosophy. Otherwise, the views end up being
>too anthropomorphic.


Mervyn








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