Re: BHA: the litmus test

["Tobin Nellhaus" <nellhaus@xxxxxxx>]

Hi Howard--

I think you raise an interesting question, but I can respond only very
briefly as I'm heading out of town in the wee hours tomorrow.

Bhaskar wrote:

>                                It should be stressed that
> the result that there is an ontological distinction between causal laws
and
> patterns of events depends upon only two premises:  (1) that men are
causal
> agents capable of interfering with the course of nature and (ii) that
> experimental activity, the planned disruption of the course of nature, is
a
> significant feature of science."

To which you asked:

>                   Why is there an ontological
> difference between the transformation of wood in fire and acts of agency
in
> which I participate?  So why is there an ontological difference between my
> interfering with the course of nature by putting litmus paper in acid and
> the chemical reaction which turns the paper red?  Ruthlessly rejecting any
> anthropomorphic perspective (and stepping back figuratively) it is all
just
> a play of powerful particulars doing their thing.  Why is ontological
> stratification implied?

While humans are powerful particulars, their actions -- especially in
activities such as experimentation -- are not like most other particulars:
they are *intentional*.  Humans act with certain ideas in mind, and they
make observations which shape their ideas (confirming them, casting them
into doubt, etc).  The role of planning in experimentation is thus crucial
in revealing the ontological of the world into the real, the actual, and the
empirical (or as I would have it, the semiosic).  Since RTS concerns
science, the intentionality and cognition that go into the production of
knowledge have to fall into a larger ontological framework.  Only then can
the real significance of experiementation be understood.

So I think it would be a mistake -- perhaps even a category mistake -- to
reject an "anthropomorphic perspective" too absolutely: whatever knowledge
we produce is always going to be from a human perspective, and everywhere
shaped by the way humans engage with world.  But this is not tantamount to
saying that the RB's ontological domains (real, actual, empirical) are
anthropomorphisms.  I think RB means them as universals, since the
real/actual distinction would exist whether or not there were people, and
that *any* creature which can sustain intentionality would be doing so in an
empirical or semiosic domain.  (The stratafication of nature that Hans
discusses is, I think, more properly ontic than ontological, in RB's terms.)

I think Hans misconstrues pragmaticism, if by that he's thinking of Peirce;
if he's thinking of William James's pragmatism, that's something else, and I
won't dispute with him there.  But probably this leads us too far afield,
and anyway I have to pack.

Cheers, T.

---
Tobin Nellhaus
nellhaus@xxxxxxxx
"Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce




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