Re: BHA: Re: starting up DPF readings again.

[Louis Irwin <lirwin1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Colin,

>I don't deny the force of
>your argument, but it seems to me to rest on two presuppositions that CR
>would challenge. First, you seem to be saying that everything is, in some
>sense, internally related. RB on the other hand wants to argue that some
>some relations are external. So I have a problem here.

I am the last person to think everything is internally related, and I
thought my example of spatial relations was a case of external relations
par excellence.  I even said "Not necessarily an essential change, of course."

>The second point is
>that you seem to be close to arguing (if you are defending Gary's reading of
>real negation) that absence can be analysed as change (or difference). RB is
>emphatic in denying this.

Your phrase "change (or difference)" ordinarily would be taken to equate
change and difference, a view that is anathema to RB.  So I assume that you
meant I was close to arguing that absence can be analysed as change or as
difference, and you are pointing out that some varieties of absence cannot
be reduced to change, much less to difference.  I don't see that I was
ignoring those cases.  I was merely producing a counterexample that used
one kind of absence involving change in spatial relations.  The
counterexample was intended to refute your contention that not everything
in the world must undergo change.  If SOMETHING changes, then EVERYTHING
changes.  As long as we accept as a premiss that something in the world is
always changing, then everything is always changing.

>Another related point strikes me. I have doubts about the understanding of
>absence as 'real negation', for this implies a present that was negated in
>order to produce the absent. If RB wants to argue the case for absence
>having ontological priority over presence then we need a stronger category
>of absence that is analysed as absence itself, not as a form of negation.
>However, I suspect that we may end up in an awfule mire here since almost
>every present can be descibed in terms of an absence, or vice versa.

A "present that was negated in order to produce the absent" is surely a
case of change, but you yourself just pointed out that not all absence can
be parsed with change.  That is, neither absence nor real negation are in
all cases reduced to change - e.g., caloric.  RB uses both "absence" and
"real negation" to cover such cases.  Don't they constitute the "stronger
category" already?

Louis Irwin




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