Re: BHA: Causal powers of absence - are they real?

[Louis Irwin <lirwin1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Carolyn,

Once again you are asking those hard questions, seconded by Ruth.

>Inevitably, causal powers are only being attributed to determinate
>absences... 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?

>This is a minimal
>conception of causality - to make a difference...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.

In other words, you ask whether absences merely let causal mechanisms, which
are presences, operate.  This formulation is a bit unhappy, in that RB
allows that absences too are present, so the official complaint has to be
that de-onts merely let causal mechanisms, which are onts, operate.
Absences would be at best presuppositions for presences (onts) to be
efficacious, that is presuppositions that let efficient causes, understood
as presences (onts), operate.  So positivity, not negativity, wins.

One initial criticism.  You too readily assume that causal mechanisms are
presences (onts).  Maybe an absence itself, determinate or not, cannot be a
whole causal mechanism, but you should should consider whether an absence
(de-ont) cannot form an essential component of a causal mechanism.  Absences
have to be shown to be essential to the efficacy of causal powers.

Anyway, let me offer a couple of challenges.

"Absence makes the heart grow fonder."  This old saw captures something that
is impossible to analyze by presences (onts) alone.  Sure, you could say
that what makes my heart grow fonder is the presence of various emotions,
but unless you think they just fall out of the sky, it is hard to tie their
cause to just presences (onts).  Let's see you do that.  If you can't, don't
you then agree that absence is at least an essential component of causal
explanation?

Consider the absence of freedom as the real problem of a prisoner (never
mind whether justly or unjustly imprisoned).  Can you analyze the problem
just by presences (onts)?  You can't make it into a presence of bars, locked
doors, walls, etc., because those things aren't a problem except insofar as
they restrain your actions and remove certain possibilities, and those
restraints and removals are absences.  Nor can his problem be wholly
analyzed in terms of presences (onts) of feelings of constraints and other
mental states, otherwise a completely deluded person who is not a prisoner
(except of his fantasies) would have the same problem, whereas their
problems are radically different, a real lack of freedom in the one, mental
illness in the other.  It's the real absence of freedom that explains the
prisoner's problem, unlike what explains the deluded person's problem.  So
let's see you provide an analysis of the prisoner's problem using just
presences (onts)?  If you cannot, do you not agree that absence is an
essential component of causal explanation?

One other thought on the prisoner's problem.  If it cannot be reduced to
presences (onts), why not analyze the absence of freedom = the presence of
oppression (or somnething like that)?  The key question is whether "the
presence of oppression" refers to an ont or to a de-ont.  Recall RB says
that absences can be present and causally efficacious, so we need more
analysis to decide whether "the presence of" something is really an ont.

Consider the example of the final Seinfeld episode in which Seinfeld and
friends go to jail (under a - fictitious? - Good Samaritan law) for failing
to call for help as they chatter away watching someone being robbed on the
street.  They in no way aided or abetted the robber, and they could have
called for help without endangering themselves.  You can't properly analyze
their legal problem solely in terms of presences (onts).  They did not go to
jail for making yuppie comments, for being shallow, etc.  It is essential to
their predicament that they failed to act when they could have.  Is not
reference to absence essential to a proper causal description of the
situation?  Can you analyze the problem without reference to absence?  If
not, do you not agree that absence is an essential component of causal
explanation.

Louis Irwin





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