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

[Louis Irwin <lirwin1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Howard,

>Is there a source in Bhaskar,
>Louis, for "information as an ont?"  Meanings are real, but I think
>they are not real like bodies are real and that we have a tendency
>to ignore this distinction "on causal criteria."

Well, surely information is part of the transitive domain, and surely RB
claims the transitive domain is real.  I would think that things in the
transitive domain have to be onts or de-onts, and many are surely onts.  Are
you using "real" to mean "material", or holding that mental productions
inhabit some inferior part of "reality".  It sounds to me like you are
positing a dualism in which meaning and information inhabit some kind of
realm isolated from "real" things.

>In Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation, pp54-55, RB writes:
>"Now if we are to avoid the absurdity of the supposition of the
>production of (new and changing) knowledge ex nihilo . . . . this
>process must be conceived as iteratively dependent upon the
>employment of antecedently existing cognitive resources, taken from
>the same or some other domain. . . ."
>
>Knowledge is here understood by analogy to material, ie causal,
>production.  How could we treat knowledge production ex nihilo as
>absurd, but not causal production?

You say that causal production ex nihilo ought to be as absurd as knowledge
production ex nihilo, and you conclude that absence cannot be causally
efficacious.  Yet if an absence were causally efficacious, then such an
absence would be determinate and present, so we would not have a case of
causal production ex nihilo - we would have the presence of de-onts being
efficacious.  You can argue that the causal efficacy of absence is a case of
causal production ex nihilo only if you assume that the only presences that
are causally efficacious are onts, yet that is really what you want to prove
- what is at issue is whether there is causal production without onts.
Causal production ex nihilo would have to be causal production without onts
or de-onts.

Regarding the causal efficacy of de-onts, it is important to view such
efficacy as components of larger totalities, rather than as isolated de-onts
having independent powers.  In other words, we should not formulate the
problem of causal efficacy of de-onts in terms of an atomistic understanding
of de-onts.  That seems to be where your worry about "nothing" creating ex
nihilo points.

In relation to potential fields, you worry about the ultimate constituents
of matter being mere possibilities as violating materialism.  I think
gravity is much more real than "mere possibilities".  There is quite a
difference between the possibilities related to a potential field and the
atomistic suggestion that anything at all can happen next.

Louis Irwin



     --- from list bhaskar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---