File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_2003/bhaskar.0306, message 48


Date: Mon, 9 Jun 2003 11:21:12 +0100
From: Mervyn Hartwig <mh-AT-jaspere.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: BHA: Re: Positivism, Realism, Materialism


Hi Jamie,

Many thanks. You've given me a lot to think about!

>intelligible does not in
>itself indicate the possibility of identity merely meaningful identifiying
>as an ongoing engagement with ding an sich,

Yes, I should perhaps have spoken, not of 'identity' but of 
'(transcendental) identity consciousness'. The later Bhaskar does speak 
of Newton achieving 'identity' with or even 'becoming' gravity, etc, but 
I think this may be taken as metaphorical.

>a CR concept of the  process of investigation (whose ontological
>innovation reduces to we do not see the world how it is but how we are yet
>how we are is part of how the world is), if it is to retain fallibilism and
>the notion that knowledge is work from antecedents, cannot make identity
>claims without also providing a stronger correspondence theory of truth. To
>my knowledge noone has yet provided a defensible one

I agree re correspondence. There are I think many CR adherents to 
correspondence but Bhaskar himself has always rejected it, for the 
basically sound reason I think that a transitive theory is not *like* 
what it is about - you can't look at a sentence and the world and say 
that they match, which is itself a metaphor (Nietzsche's etc point).

>What I'd like to see from Bhaskar is a
>sustained move from the abstract possibility inherent in
>categorial/ontological and alethic realism to accounts of X that are
>persuausively deployed as judgementally rational, this would provide a
>better bridging theorisation of precisely what Bhaskar takes from 'identity'
>thinking (at leastin thise sense) as he reads it from Hegel et al. and would
>also provide a bridge between a philosophy of ontology and a philosophy of
>truth (as well as ethics) since any operational exploration of the former
>implies the exploration or deployment of criteria of the latter and this is
>one of the things that seems to need developing in later CR. MR may perhaps
>be Bhaskar's preferred route for doing this. Has he intimated that to you?

No. But then I haven't asked him. (I don't get a chance to speak with 
him very often about such things). My own view is that he regards 
himself as having accomplished this in the epistemological dialectic he 
adapts from Hegel in DPF. I myself find that a convincing 
meta-theoretical account of the logic of the practice of scientific 
discovery. The criteria deployed are those of the relevant scientific 
community; science, in following the object, develops strict protocols. 
What he seems to be stressing in the philosophy of meta-Reality is that 
we can come to know the world because, as you say, 'how we are is part 
of how the world is' - there's a 'subjective condition' for knowledge. 
Cf Interview II, p. 80, when asked why he re-invokes Platonic anamnesis, 
he describes it as 'just a corollary of the generalized theory of 
co-presence and the priority of the possible over the actual, i.e. 
dispositional realism' and as entailed by the spontaneous moment in 
human scientific creativity: 'Consider what's actually involved in the 
discovery of something like gravity by Newton, or relativity by 
Einstein. If you rule out the subjective condition, if it's something 
purely objective like an idea just hitting you, then it wouldn't have 
happened to Newton--the chances of its happening to Newton were no 
greater than its happening to anyone. But what I argue in these books is 
that Newton was very close--he was thoroughly a master--so that he had 
made the existing field of physics a part of himself; he was so close to 
touching the alethic truth of gravity that in a moment of rest, in a 
moment of un-thought, it could as it were pop into his head, and 
transcendental identification could be achieved. While he was straining 
for it, it couldn't happen. '

> I
>better add that alethic truth in Bhaskar's work is not something I would
>read as an epistemology - it is not an exploration of what is knowledge in
>terms of operational criteria of justification, it seems intended as an
>adjunct to ontology in terms of 'how the world must be' arguments. In the
>terms I'm thinkig about it is more part of aphilosophy of ontology than a
>philosophy of truth. It is the presupposed.

This might be the best way you can make sense of it, but Bhaskar himself 
clearly intends his overall theory of truth to be read as both 
epistemological and ontological, e.g. DPF 215 'it must be recognized 
that there is an inherent TD/ID [epistemological/ontological] bipolarity 
or ambivalence in concepts like 'facts' and 'truth', which cannot be 
completely gainsaid in an adequate truth theory' - a bi-polarity that is 
expressly accommodated  in stage 3 of the 'truth tetrapolity': 'truth as 
referential-expressive', as a biplar ontic-epistemic dual'.

Your position here seems to me the opposite of Ruth's (though I need to 
go back and look at her article) which confines truth to epistemology.

>Clearly there are different kinds of material objects and therefore
>different kinds of intelligibility. The double hermeneutic or Mannheim's
>sociology of knowledge or Marx on ideology all entail this for material
>social objects. Social relations, for example,  are material relations, they
>are inscribed on material bodies, that engage in material transactions and
>employ material effects in terms of events and in terms of the totality to
>which those relations are bound. Social relations are material, sicne they
>are simultaneously conceptual, their intelligibility is part of their
>constittution. This is not a revelation in CR as you know but precisely part
>of its appeal through the agent structure dilemma in PN. Clearly knowledge
>here is radically different in relation than it is in regard of material
>objects like galaxies.

I think two problematic things are going on here.

1). In speaking of social relations as 'material' you're conflating 
causes with effects, the real with the actual. Whatever relations (of 
any kind) are, I think they're very different from physical bodies - you 
can't see, touch etc them (your 'ametrial objects'?) Cf PON 'the 
material presence of society consists only in its effects on people' (or 
words to that effect - I quote from memory). Their effects are inscribed 
on our bodies, but not the relations themselves - they don't have their 
being in our bodies.

So I think Marxists crib somewhat for metaphysical materialism when they 
speak as you do. When Marx speaks of 'material conditions', 'material 
circumstances' he clearly doesn't mean metaphysically material for such 
circumstances notoriously and importantly include ideas and social 
relations.Rather he is invoking Aristotle's notion of a 'material cause' 
as that from which something is produced or reproduced/transformed, 
which of course can be purely ideal as in conceptual emergence though it 
will always have a material sub-stratum. Aristotle's material cause is 
of course also explicitly evoked by Bhaskar in his original formulation 
of the TMSA; it doesn't commit to saying that social relations are 
'material' in a metaphysical sense.

2) I've got a problem with your saying that social relations are also 
'conceptual'. They are concept-dependent and are always conceputalized 
under some description, but the very fact that they can be 
misconceptualized suggests that they're not as such 'conceptual'. I.e. I 
think I'd want to say that relations are the same kind of entity 
wherever they are (within galaxies in space or the human world), but in 
the latter they are mediated by concepts. Perhaps you agree, because you 
don't want to reduce them to concepts.

If relations are not 'material' does this mean that they are 'ideal'? If 
we mean by this 'objectively intelligible', as in Smith's 
non-metaphysical reading of Hegel, clearly yes. If we mean that they are 
literally 'thought', I would say no.

I enjoyed the discussion re the notion of an implicate order and 
problems of intelligibility re emergence.

Mervyn


In message <000a01c32ddd$35af2940$34f5883e-AT-oemcomputer>, Jamie Morgan 
<jamie-AT-morganj58.fsnet.co.uk> writes
>Hi Mervyn I don't see anything problematic in the idea that 'material
>objects have an intelligible inner structure' on one level but there are a
>number of issues to consider aboutknowledge and the material:
>
>1. At a broad level of generality about knowledge - intelligible does not in
>itself indicate the possibility of identity merely meaningful identifiying
>as an ongoing engagement with ding an sich, Kant may be wrong to
>differentiate knowing and knowledge of a real object world in the way he
>does but a CR concept of the  process of investigation (whose ontological
>innovation reduces to we do not see the world how it is but how we are yet
>how we are is part of how the world is), if it is to retain fallibilism and
>the notion that knowledge is work from antecedents, cannot make identity
>claims without also providing a stronger correspondence theory of truth. To
>my knowledge noone has yet provided a defensible one - Searle and Alvin
>Goldman both argue for a weak correspondence - an 'aboutness' of truth that
>acknowledges a world amenable to description and potential if limited
>descriptive success. Here judgemental rationality offers the prospect that
>knowledge of something other than itself may not be infallible but a best we
>have may be a long term 'paradigm' precisely because it is such a good
>account of X. This of course necessarily implies an alethic reality, which
>is Bhaskar's later interest. What I'd like to see from Bhaskar is a
>sustained move from the abstract possibility inherent in
>categorial/ontological and alethic realism to accounts of X that are
>persuausively deployed as judgementally rational, this would provide a
>better bridging theorisation of precisely what Bhaskar takes from 'identity'
>thinking (at leastin thise sense) as he reads it from Hegel et al. and would
>also provide a bridge between a philosophy of ontology and a philosophy of
>truth (as well as ethics) since any operational exploration of the former
>implies the exploration or deployment of criteria of the latter and this is
>one of the things that seems to need developing in later CR. MR may perhaps
>be Bhaskar's preferred route for doing this. Has he intimated that to you? I
>better add that alethic truth in Bhaskar's work is not something I would
>read as an epistemology - it is not an exploration of what is knowledge in
>terms of operational criteria of justification, it seems intended as an
>adjunct to ontology in terms of 'how the world must be' arguments. In the
>terms I'm thinkig about it is more part of aphilosophy of ontology than a
>philosophy of truth. It is the presupposed.
>
>2. Clearly there are different kinds of material objects and therefore
>different kinds of intelligibility. The double hermeneutic or Mannheim's
>sociology of knowledge or Marx on ideology all entail this for material
>social objects. Social relations, for example,  are material relations, they
>are inscribed on material bodies, that engage in material transactions and
>employ material effects in terms of events and in terms of the totality to
>which those relations are bound. Social relations are material, sicne they
>are simultaneously conceptual, their intelligibility is part of their
>constittution. This is not a revelation in CR as you know but precisely part
>of its appeal through the agent structure dilemma in PN. Clearly knowledge
>here is radically different in relation than it is in regard of material
>objects like galaxies. The idea of implicate order tends to bridge the two
>however since it seems to suggest that consciousness is the possibility
>residing in prior forms of entities (ametrial objects?). The knowing
>subvject and their knowledge is implicate in the structure of the universe.
>I'm not sure what to make of this, it canbe taken as trivially true in the
>sense that we exist and we know and therefore it is true that knowing
>entities evolved. But if we consider what we might make of this concept in
>terms of the present i.e. the pursuit of intelligibility as part of the
>dialectic of social change where the conceptual-physical of material social
>objects is developed through knowledge, the idea of an implicate order of
>consciouenss with Hegelian overtones becomes more difficult to conceive,
>though I doubt this is an insurmountable problem. Does it provide a broad
>telos? It certainly doesn't imply the necessity of any given change -
>neither DCR or TDCR  or MR make that claim as far as I recall. Does it
>provide a roadmap to preferred change? If so 2 problems occur that need
>addressing - 1) this implies contingency which is stilll compatible with
>possibility but broadens any notion of the implicate to literally any
>possoble outcome i.e. an intelligible range of change following different
>patterns of inteligibilities. This raises the question what was the relation
>between prior and post? and reduces, in all aspects of a concept of the
>implicate, the notion that 'something emerged because it 'must'. Implicate
>becomes semantically tautologous and operationally weak since any outcome is
>literally to order. On one level this produces problems for a critically
>self-reflexive appraisal of a philosophy of imlicate consciousness (it
>cannot step outside itself to appraise itself since it is a self-defining
>conceptual scheme whose very structure allows only one answer to the
>question i.e. itself). On another level, this of course raises the
>interesting question of a guiding role for knowledge in choosing a right
>path between alternative inteligibilities - dancing between all aspects of
>what is has and could be - this I guess is what an ontology of ethics
>situated to praxis strives for - in a certain sense the need for such an
>ethics and its pursuit by Bhaskar is implicate in the problematic that seems
>to emerge from his own philosophy of ontology. 2) This raises the further
>interesting question of intelligibility - the disjuncture or rupture opoints
>in the pursuit of varieties of explanations, including successive
>retriductions to deeper structures etc. - posed by emergence itself. If
>emergence entails that X is supervenes on Y but cannot be reduced to Y then
>X has properties that are qualitatively new, this raises the difficulty of
>identifying Y once one moves past certain simple cases like
>mind-consciousness since the superveneing of Y on X becoems more ambiguous
>or difficult to identify, at which point the problem reverses i.e. the
>existience of X is parially accounted for by the positing of Y where Y may
>itself noty  be a genuinely exitsent or causally related entity - putmore
>simply one raises the problem of the positing of ever deeper structures of
>reality to accout for aspects of known reality whose actual aexplanation may
>simply be aspects of known reality. In a way this is looking at the Hegelian
>implicate order and identity consciousness problem from the opposite end. It
>doesn't deny them, it rasies philosophical questions about them and the
>intelligibility of the idea in the material. This is a challenge for MR that
>hopefully is addressed in Bhaskar's forthcoming works.



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