BHA: Ontological Stratificatio

[Hans Despain <hdespain@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Howard,

It seems to me that there is some ambiguity as to whether the distinction
between the domains of the real, actual and empirical refer to the world
itself or to how human beings are able to persceive it.  Or, it is not clear
to whether the world itself has "depth" or human beings only experience it as
such.  Thus, there is a sort of onotological and epistemological ambiguity.

Now, in critical realism there are actually three kinds of depth that is
refered to:

(1) a distinction between D(r), D(a), D(e)

of course this is a philosophical distinction to make sense of the
experimental situation, an attempt to isolate a contrastive demi-reg.

The second type of depth:

(2) the distinction between the intransitive and tranitive dimension of
science.

Again a philosopical distinciton only, clearly an epistemological driven
insight.

Finally, the third type of depth sustained by critical realism:

(3) multiple strata

here the insight is ontological.  That is stratificaiton is a feature of
nature itself  The key principle is the concept of emergence.  Reality
possess' mechanisms that allows for, and give rises to new forms of being.
Whereby the new form of being is not reducible to older forms of being, and
other level of strata.  For example, chemistry and biology, or biology and
society.

The universe, from God's eye-view, may only appear as a play of power
particulars, collapsing the D(r) > D(a) > D(e) distinction.  Nonetheless,
reality remains open, and with the concepts of emergence and irreduciblity,
even a God's eye-view reality remains stratified, otherwise change is not
possilbe.

Clearly the ontological/epistemological ambiguity stills persists, for God's
eye-view is an abstraction.  However, the philosophical ontological
distinctions (transcendentally) necessary for making sense of our reality,
and *for* the possibility of science, are three types of depth.  For science
to possible, it must be a feature of the world itself.

Even the differentiation implicit in your "play of powerful particular*s*"
implies ontological stratifiction, unless each particular acts or functions
on the same strata.  For example, reality is merely chemical reactions, but
this cannot make sense of the possibility of science, and for the possiblity
for intervention into these reactions, in short, for the possibility of
science itself.

So, yes, a law is the "tendency of something to behave in a particular way",
but interacting with other things, which exist on mulitple strata,
irreducible to one another, in an open reality (hence, change and emergence
remain potentialities).

Finally its seems to me the reason that Pragmaticism (one of the three world
contributions developed in USA) in general is incapable of making clear sense
of how we know that the stone will fall, is that they do not possess an
explicit philosophical ontology of depth realism.  Pragmaticism rejects
empiricism/deductivism, and merely pushes forward based on pragmatics.  I
suppose a pragmaticist can be as successful in understanding reality, but
they do not bother to ask the transcendental question of how is we can be
successful in understanding reality as such.

Hans D.


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