From: Hans Ehrbar <econ-AT-lists.econ.utah.edu>
Subject: Re: rts2-25
Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 15:03:34 -0700




Viren wrote:

> I found the readings for this week extremely difficult,

I agree, Bhaskar jumps back and forth in his argument.

> Bhaskar distinguishes between cause1: qua causal agent and cause2: qua
> antecedent condition.  He also distinguishes between cause an
> determination.  He then distinguishes between epistemological and
> ontological determination:  the former claims that events can be known
> before they are causes and the latter claims that the antecedent
> conditions for an event may occur before their immediate cause.   Is
> determination cause2?

Yes. I think Bhaskar calls this determination cause2 in
order to point out that the regularity determinist has a
competing concept of causation: the door was closed not
because Rachel pushed it shut, but it and everything else
was already determined by the laws of physics and the
locations and momenta of all elementary particles one second
after the big bang, or at some other intervening time.  Then
Bhaskar argues against this second concept of causation.


> Then on p. 9-10 of my e-mail version(RTS115-6), I was unclear  about Bs
> argument for the claim:

> "This means as a means of discovery, i.e of achieving such a body of
> knowledge reductionism must fail. For it presupposes precisely what is to
> be discovered. "  

> I am not sure why this is the case for predictive
> reductionism.  Previously Bhaskar argued that this reductionism required a
> strategy, but now he claims it must achieve a body of knowledge.  What is
> the relationship between the strategy and the body of knowledge?


I don't understand Bhaskar's argument about reductionism
here either.  He seems to say here that chemistry is
reducible to physics.  If this is what he means I agree,
because it is my understanding that the concepts of valence
etc. can be explained in terms of the quantum physics of the
orbits of electrons around the atomic nuclei.  On the other
hand, biology cannot be reduced to chemistry: each living
organism has its own mechanisms how to grow, its metabolism,
its propagation of the species, etc.  All these are not part
of chemistry.  I think it is a nontrivial and important
question whether one science can be reduced to another or
not; but Bhaskar seems to argue against the concept of
reduction altogether, and I don't get it what he means.
Maybe I am missing something; can someone help out?

> Finally, I was confused about the following claim:

> "The only way of reconciling experimental activity with the empiricist
> notion of law is to regard it as an illusion"

Reading just this sentence on p. 116, and then on the same page

"So a closed world entails either a completed or no science,"

I would immediately agree, because if the world is closed,
then new activity by the scientist is not possible: he may
think that he is setting up an experiment, but everything
he is doing was already determined long ago, like
everythying else.  But when I try to read Bhaskar's
explanation, he seems to say something different and I
don't get it.


Can anybody help out?  This is why a collective reading can
be very helpful.  You may see things which I don't, and vice
versa.  But let's be careful not to be too strict in our
discussions, not with ourselves and also not with Bhaskar.
It is my experience from many mailing lists that people
often are too strict and negative about new ideas.  They are
more willing to look for weaknesses of a theory or its
presentation rather than to build on its strength.  A new
idea also needs nurturing so that it can develop.  I think
there is a lot of new stuff in Bhaskar which awaits people
to appropriate it, re-formulate it, develop it.


Here is my answer to Greg: On pp. 109/10 Bhaskar makes the
point that many laws of nature ar not formulated as constant
conjunctions of events, but as conservation laws, which do
not prescxribe how events must occur but set limits and
prevent certain events (like a perpetuum mobile).  We don't
need Greg's fictional Supersight because of the countless
individuals who tried to invent a perpetuum mobile.  The
fact that none ever succeeded is an excellent confirmation
of the law of the conversation of energy.  The law of
conservation of energy always holds.  In this sense there is
regularity in nature, but it is not the regularity of
constantly conjoined *events*, it is rather a deeper-lying
regularity about how physical processes occur.  There is
regularity, but it lies below the surface.  I think the
surface itself has more regularities than Bhaskar admits,
but the important insight is that science should not
concentrate on these regularities per se, but on the
underlying mechanisms which generate these regularities, and
which may generate other regularities under other
circumstances.

-Hans.









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