BHA: Re: Another try

["Tobin Nellhaus" <nellhaus@xxxxxxx>]

Hi Caroline--

A little bird inside my head is warning me not to get into discussions right
now, seeing I'm about to start a month or so of constantly being in transit,
but another little bird is chirping about some ways of thinking about the
issue, so here goes anyway.

>        No mechanisms, tendencies in the hole qua hole, only
>in the hole as a gap between 'onts', right?  specifically located.  It
>has causal powers as part of the whole set-up up there, but only
>relationally, not in itself.

I think the difficulty may be one of a "figure and ground" relation.  I
don't mean to sound flip, but I think one may consider being as an
interruption of absence (as well as the other way around, as you have it).
After all, causal powers from your perspective too can be manifested, and
arguably exist, only relationally.  For example, gravity will cause no
events if there are not at least two physical bodies, and the structure of
gravity might be described as a relationship between a mass and the
space-time continuum.  (My memory of Einsteinian relativity is a bit rusty,
my apologies if my phrase is off.)  My basic point is that for both "onts"
and "de-onts," causal powers are relational.  And if the exercise of a
causal power requires a "gap" or non-identity between two entities, the gap
as much as the entities has to be considered part of the causal mechanism.

Also I'd like to offer another example of the causal power of an absence:
ignorance.  What we don't know can cause us to do things.  For example, I
don't know that a poem I'm reading is by my friend X and I so criticize it
more harshly than I would have otherwise.  Or my awareness of a gap in my
knowledge may induce me to conduct research.  You might want to say that
it's the awareness (a presence) that's the cause here, but that awareness
depends on the reality of the absence and its effects (and I can still be
affected by my ignorance even when not aware of it).  Presumably one doesn't
research what one already knows!

Hope that's useful a bit.

---
Tobin Nellhaus
nellhaus@xxxxxxx
"Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce





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