BHA: draft

[Louis Irwin <lirwin1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This post follows up my recent one to Caroline and also takes up some
themes Howard raised.

I gave Caroline some examples that show, so I thought, the necessity for
reference to absences.  However even if such examples do provide an
ontological status for absence, they do not show that such a role is more
than subsidiary.  What is needed to deliver the goods is proof that absences
are essential components of causal mechanisms.  Both Caroline and Howard
are raising serious questions here.

The recent discussion on the list used absent persons, like Santa, as
examples of absences, but the interesting instances of absence relating to
persons concern intentions and constraints on persons, so I want to
consider a more interesting example, though still fairly simple.

People form intentions that they would not form were certain information
available.  This lets us argue that absence of information is an essential
component in the formation of intentions.  Consider two cases, case 1 and
case 2, in which a person x is presented with two situations respectively,
the only difference being that x has some information in case 2 that he does
not have in case 1.  In case 1 he decides on the basis of what he knows to
walk through a certain door, behind which, unbeknownst to him, is a tiger.
In case 2, he has the same information as in case 1, but in addition he is
told by a reliable source that there is a tiger behind that door; as a
result of this extra information he decides not to walk through the door but
to do something else instead.

At first sight the information he has in case 1 is sufficent to explain the
formation of his intention to walk through the door.  Yet the same
information he has in case 2 is insufficient to explain his intention there.
We are not actualists, so this causes no problem: the information that
caused his intention in case 1 need not lead to the formation of the same
intention in case 2, because there may have been a countervailing cause in
case 2 countering the tendency in case 1.

However, we are postulating that the only difference between case 1 and case
2 is the extra information x has in case 2.  What caused the formation of
his intention in case 1 seems to be the information (onts) at his disposal.
What caused the formation of a quite different intention in case 2 was the
same information as in case 1 plus some extra information.  So what caused
the
formation of the intention in case 1 was not just the presence (ont) of
certain information, but also the absence (de-ont) of further relevant
information.  The extra information in case 2 is a countervailing cause that
prevented the tendency to form the intention in case 1 from being relaized.

So x's intention in case 1 has to be viewed as a totality that incorporates
not just the onts comprising the information in case 1, but also the absence
(de-ont) of additional relevant information.  If we were to view x's
intention in case 1 as comprising merely the informational onts there, then
x would have to have the same intention in case 2, where he has the same
informational onts (plus some more).  What explains x's intention in case 1
is not just the presence (onts) of the information postulated there, but
also the absence of any other relevant information.  Indeed, x would agree
that his decision was based on best available information.  It is not simply
that in case 1 the extra information of case 2 would have made an effect on
x.  To analyze what happened in case 1 itself requires that the intention be
understood to incorporate absence; case 2 merely serves to bring that out.
We can't view absences as merely presuppositions that let presences (onts)
operates, the latter being where all the causal analyis takes place.

I see a rejoinder from Caroline and Howard as follows.  The absence in case
1 of the extra information may have ontological status, however it only
serves as a presupposition for the tendency of the case 1 intention to be
formed.  The tendency is based exclusively on the informational presences
(onts) of case 1.  All that case 2 shows is that the presence (ont) of the
extra information inhibits the formation of the intention of case 1.  So
presences (onts) are doing all the work in causal explanations of
tendencies.  Absences merely determine whether tendencies are actualized or
not.

Howard suggests that "we cannot understand causal efficacy except in terms
of negation" but absence is not itself causally efficacious.  I would
modify the second part of that challenge to say that causally efficacious
totalities do not require absences as essential components, they can always
be analyzed into presences (onts) alone.  I don't know if Howard and
Caroline are comfortable with that position or not, but it seems to me that
that is where their position leads.  It is not wrong for that, but I don't
see a clear refutation.

Louis Irwin



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