BHA: Causal powers of absence - are they real?

["Caroline New" <c.new@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Ruth, Colin, Louis, Howard and all,

Ive followed the Santa debate with some interest (though I personally
wish he and all his concepts werent real - never want to see his
grinning rosy face and hear his awful ho ho ho represented (?) ever
again)...  Some clarity seems to be emerging on at least what our
options are, although its not yet clear to me what the implications
will be of our choices.  I think it was Louis who asked a while back,
why should we impute reality (and causal powers) to Santa rather than to
the concept (discourses) of Santa?  Id add: what difference will it
make if we do?  I am on Colins side here, very reluctant to do so.  I
presume, Colin, you want to say that whereas Socrates is both real and
non-existent, Santa is unreal and non-existent.  Both, of course, are
absent.

I want to bring this discussion back to the causal powers of absence,
which is what interests me, and here I am still dissatisfied with
Colins formulations.  Some of the discussion has been about whether
Santa causes anything, taken as relevant to whether he is real.  But
even if we did decide that Santa is real, and does cause various
expectations, practices etc (which I dont at all accept) surely that
this would not be an instance of the causal power of absence.   If a
fictional character influences us, this is quite different from the
effects of the hole in the ozone layer, the telling pause etc.   The
(fortunate or unfortunate) absence of Santa and the effects of THIS, the
effects of his status (even if real) as a de-ont rather than an ont, are
closer to the logic of the hole in the ozone layer or the monsoon that
didnt come.   And to me this highlights the whole difficulty.
Inevitably, causal powers are only being attributed to determinate
absences (the mind boggles even more at the idea of attributing them to
absence in general or to absences - how could we even tell if they were
plural?).  These determinate absences or de-onts are only ever going
to have causal powers as part of a larger generative structure, where
the actual generative mechanisms can be found in various presences.   I
take it this is what Howard was saying a while back, when he asked
whether absence has generative processes, or is it not rather (as I too
believe, so far) that absence permits other causal mechanisms to
operate?

Santas absence makes a difference - i.e. things would happen
differently if all those Santa-discourses were about an embodied
presence.  And how!  The hole in the ozone layer makes a difference.
The lack of child care makes a difference to women.  This is a minimal
conception of causality - to make a difference.  You can imagine a
context in which you might say, with truth: One cause of womens
disadvantage on the labour market is the lack of good quality child
care.  Youd be referring to sets of reasons for acting which actually
operate for women, and ones which might - almost certainly would -
operate if there was no lack of good child care.  At that sort of level
of analysis absence has effects, and its certainly often important to
treat absence as a cause in political analysis.  But what youre really
saying then is - the thing which is not present WOULD HAVE certain
effects if it were present, because of its causal powers.  And for that
positive thing, we can work out the DETAILS of how the effects are
brought about, at many levels.  The causal powers of absence, if you
insist on them, are lacking in generative mechanisms of their own (these
are absent!) and are therefore ontologically flat.

Is it all made clear as the plot thickens in later chapters of DPF?

All the best,

Caroline





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