BHA: DPF & DCR

[HDespain <HDespain@xxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

Gary thanks for taking the lead on DPF once again.

(1) The central topic (Colin questioning Gary) whether Bhaskarian 'real
negation' can be understood as "simply meaning that everything that is will
not be.  Or to put it in Bhaskarian terms, everyting that is present now will
be absent".  This went on to a discussion, mainly between Tobin and Louis
(also Michael, Howard, and Colin) about more general realist debates about
mathematics and geometry.  These debates may be very interesting ... but they
can be left aside in this case.  This is not a debate about the category of
*Change*, it concerns rather the category of *Absence*.  We should not
understand 'real negation' as Gary put it ... although perhaps Bhaskar would
commit himself to this way of thinking (though i doubt it) ... better i think
is to say in the end negativity wins, and absences are absolutely necessary,
they exist(!), but it is contingent what is absent, and what gets absented,
etc.

Real negation is the acknowledgment that absences are never absent.  Moreover,
absence is necessary for the possibility of change, emergence, agency, etc.
Finally, not everything can be *absented*, perhaps Tobin offered some
interesting examples, but DCR must be committed to the idea that absence
itself, can never be absented.  In otherwords, there is always forms of
absence.

(2) i did not care for Gary's examples of our attraction to villian characters
as a form or desire to absenting (e.g. the status quo), i don't know that i
like this way of employing the notion absence, that is in a teleological way.
i think the category is more transcendental than it is teleological.

(3) Most interesting to me, was Gary's attempt to link (following Bhaskar's
lead in section 1 of chapter 2) the concept of absence with the four-level
critical realist dialectic (i.e. 1M-4D[5C]).  Gary employs his critique of a
documentary film.  Specially that the poetry of Wright negelects the
exploitation of tea-pickers (put briefly).  Certainly this is a type of
absence, but it is a 3L absence, not a 1M absence as Gary presented it.

i think the important idea here is in the first moment there is non-identity
in a realist sense, not merely in an alienated sense or ideological sense
(3L).  The later being Wright's problem.  But what leads to this is an absence
of other ways of being.

With more time i could attempt to articulate more specifically what i have in
mind.  but briefly and broadly, my argument would go something like this, we
(e.g. Marx) come to understand that under the structure of capitalism there is
a lack freedom, or lack of agency.  We come to know of this lack (or absence)
by identifying the structural constraints of the systems dynamics ... by way
of these constraints, we come to know there is a non-identity or absence that
exists.  We create new or alternative societies, which have their own
constraints, again suggesting some absence ... now the explanation of this
absence, becomes extermely difficult, there is (remains) a particular non-
identity.  Now the gaps, lacks, constraints, absences can be of different
forms ... this is why Bhaskar's introducing new terminology (e.g. onts and de-
onts), including Hare's 'phrastic', 'neustics', and 'tropics' becomes
important (although Bhaskar himself does not employ the terms systematically,
but merely introduces them, never to return?); because they disignate specific
forms of absence.  Not all forms are of the 1M variety.

thats all for now.

Hans


     --- from list bhaskar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---