Re: BHA: negativity wins

[lynne engelskirchen <lhengels@xxxxxxx>]

Many thanks, Mervyn, for your thoughtful engagement of the issues.  I'm
sorry my response is so long.  I hope the points are clear.  I'm really
interested in the third point, which returns to the issue of ontological
stratification that I raised some weeks ago.  It seems to me key here.

1.	Transcendental arugment.  I do not find justification in the early pages
of SRHE for the assertion that transcendental arguments "by definition . .
. assume that logical possibility is not identical with real possibility."
Of course it is the disjuncture between logical possibility and real
possibility that makes it possible to think critically about the real at
all.  Because we can imagine fictions, we can discover things we would not
otherwise have known about the world.  But that doesn't mean every fiction
has relevance for understanding how things really are.  For philosophy as
an underlaborer for science, the premise of SRHE, logical possibility is
tethered to real possibility.

For example, at SRHE 11 RB writes that "a transcendental enquiry is
identified as an enquiry into the conditions of the possibility of phi,
where phi is some especially significant, central or pervasive feature of
our experience."  Thus while transcendental argument can properly establish
that negativity is a condition of the possibility of our experience of
events, there is nothing in the argument at DPF 46 that establishes a
"total void" (RB's term) as the condition of possibility of anything.  Nor
is there anything that establishes the condition of possibility of a total
void, except in a purely speculative, logical way.  And of course that is
my point.  There are limits to the process.  Transcendental reflection is a
species of retroductive argument (11) and retroductive argument "moves from
a description of some phenomenon to a description of something which
produces it or is a condition for it."  There is no phenomenon in our
world, so far as I know, that suggests it was produced by a total void or
that a total void is a condition for.

Incidentally, it is not my point, as you say, that "from nothing you can
only get nothing, not something positive."  I have actually nothing to say
about nothing.  (At least until we get to Lear.)  My point is that I know
no such universe and nothing in my experience allows for real inferences
about what occurs or does not occur, what is possible or not possible,
where there is a total void.  So I withdraw my statement that
"contradiciton is not essential to 'absolutely nothing'."  I have no
warrant for saying anything on the matter.

2.	Initial premises.  If you want to start with positive existence only,
fine.  Then you must necessarily retroduce to the reality of negative
existence.  My point is that you cannot jump off to conclusions about a
total void from a premise of positive existence alone without introducing
the intermediate step of the unity of positive and negative existence.  The
intermediate step is necessary because the premise of positivity taken
alone presupposes an ontologically monovalent view of the world.

Hegel identifies the error of taking the poles of a contradiction and
holding them apart as if they were mutually exclusive.  Is that a problem
here?  There is total presence on the one hand and total void on the other;
but neither of them has any real relevance to the conditions of possibility
of our world.  Instead the real -- being as real -- is a unity of opposites
that interpenetrate:  positive and negative existence.  Bhaskar, of course,
also argues this, and effectively.  I'm not disputing that.  What I
challenge is the thread that generates the ontological primacy of the
negative.  (Also I'm not saying that negative existence may not be primary
in this or that instance.  At any one point, one or another aspect of a
contradiction may be primary.  Absence of universal health care, the
example Eric uses, certainly seems to be the primary aspect of that
contradiction in the US today.  But in another conjuncture, presence may be
primary.)

3.	"Beings exist."  Here is your argument:

>>Bhaskar doesn't disagree with your conclusion. But instead of just
>>assuming it to be true, takes as his premise what very few would
>>dispute: 'beings exist'. The question is whether non-beings do too, and
>>if they do, how they relate to beings.
>>

I don't think whether non-beings exist is the question at all.  I think
being is a unity of positive and negative existence.  To say there are
beings on the one hand and non-beings on the other makes the mistake I
suggested above -- aspects of a contradiction are wrenched out of the
contradiction and held apart as mutually exclusive.  "Beings" are reduced
to phenomena of positivity, the actual, which they are not; at the same
time "non-beings," are introduced as phenomena of the real, which they are
not.  So instead of real "being" as an interpenetration of positive and
negative existence, we get a mutually exclusive counterposition of the
actual and the fictional.

When we say beings "exist," there is an ambiguity -- we may mean they are
real or we may mean they are actual.  In context you must be taken to use
the second meaning because you appeal to what "few would dispute," and what
most people know are things as they appear, ie the positivity of the actual.

But I would dispute that beings exist in this sense at all.  I think beings
and being are real, but not actual.  What I mean is this.  Occurrences are
what constitute positive existence.  What happens.  This is what is in the
present.  The point can be made more strongly:  being only ever appears as
what occurs.  Appearance here and now is the only form of manifestation of
being.  Being, beings, does/do not present itself/themselves to us in any
other way.  This is the actual.  The ontology of the actual is events.
What occurs.  This is positive existence.  Positive existence is the
phenomenal form of appearance of being.

But what occurs are the actions of things, so we retroduce from occurrences
to things as a condition of the possibility of events.  Now what we know
about things, as Bhaskar argues at DPF 57, is that "finitude" is the most
basic kind of "existential contradiction."  Limit is inherent in things.
In other words, things are not only what they are, but what they are not.
We do not really understand how things are if we grasp them only as they
appear in events.  We do not understand the principles according to which
they change.  If we had only an acorn and no understanding of how things
grow at all, we would have no understanding of the acorn as a generative
mechanism.  It is only in retrospect, from reflection on the oak, that we
can form a concept of the structure of an acorn holding the key to the
principles of its self-development.  Laws, RB writes in RTS (66) are the
ways of acting of things, and the ways of acting of things are how they
negate themselves.  Negative existence is essential to being.

In other words, the real -- things, "enduring mechanisms," beings -- is
intrinsically non-empirical because it is not only what occurs but that
which governs the development of what occurs.  For "beings exist" to be an
accurate statement we must mean "beings are real," and then this is not
something "few would dispute."  (The reverse is true.)  Beings are a unity
of positive and negative existence and this is ontologically different from
what occurs.

So if we have real being as a unity of positive and negative existence,
then where is the universe of non-beings, except in fictional speculation?

The problem I had a month ago with ontological stratification arose in
trying to explain Bhaskar's example of the litmus test.  I wondered what
the ontological difference was between the chemical structure of the acid
and the litmus paper turned red.  If hydrogen is an enduring mechanism
(thus real) and oxygen is an enduring mechanism (thus real) and together
they make water, where is the ontological stratification, because water
must be real and an enduring mechanism in its own right?  All matter is
causally efficacious.  Also, hydrogen, oxygen, water and all other matter
are actual in the sense that they appear.  Where are the levels of structure?

The distinction has to be where RB placed it: between things and events.
And we need to lean on this -- the distinction is between being and what
occurs.  In other words, things, counterintuitively enough, are
non-empirical.  the hydrogen in the test tube is what occurs.  The "being"
of hydrogen is the unity of what is and what is not, and we come to know
this not by means of microscopes and other instruments of measurement
alone, but by retroductive argument taken together with experiment.  We can
identify the structure of hydrogen.  We cannot taste or touch the laws in
accordance with which it (or the acorn) changes.

4.	Contradiction.  I think the emphasis on absence in DPF is terrific.  I
have learned an enormous amount from it.  But I disagree that contradiction
is adequately presented.  The organization of the second chapter shows
that.  Contradiction is displaced by absence as the motive force of the
development of things, and this is really the problem.

Regards,

Howard

P.S. On reflection the statement above that "Appearance is the only form of
manifestation of being" needs qualification.  Representation also is a form
of manifestation of being -- ie by means of a sign we use one thing to
refer to another.  Thus we get the separate ontological domain of the
ideological (Volosinov) or the semiotic (Nellhaus), what Bhaskar in RTS
refers to as the domain of experience.  In fact is is the distinction
between postive existence and negative existence, between what a thing is
and what it is not, that makes representation possible.  In any event, this
is a separate thread of development concerning a third level of ontological
stratification and does not change the argument above, which goes to the
distinction betwen the real and the actual.



At 06:52 PM 2/18/01 +0000, you wrote:
>Dear Howard, Gary
>
>Thanks for your post Howard, it's made me think a number of issues
>through more adequately (I hope).
>
>Certainly Bhaskar's argument at first glance seems to be idealist in the
>sense you indicate - it seems to confuse logical possibility (in the
>transitive) with real possibility (in the intransitive) dimension, hence
>to be an example of the epistemic fallacy, of identity-thinking.
>
>I (now) don't think it is/does however. First, it's a transcendental
>argument and such arguments by definition seek to go beyond what is
>given in thought to what is not, i.e they assume that logical
>possibility is not identical with real possibility. In the early pages
>of SRHE, where he is at pains to establish the credentials of
>transcendental realism (TR) over transcendental (subjective) idealism
>(TI), Bhaskar claims to have 'snapped' the 'umbilical cord uniquely
>tying thought to things in traditional philosophy' (4) - and the warrant
>for this is 'discontinuism' in science ie the fact of scientific
>revolutions. A condition of possibility of scientific change is that
>what there is to know is not given in our means of knowing - a kind of
>meta-justification for transcendental argument as such is derived from
>the history of scientific practice, later from practice as such. (This
>does not entail that TR is incompatible with objective or ontological
>idealism, at least where such ontology is emergentist or stratified.) Of
>course, a logical argument (what else?) is used to establish this
>position, but that is not at all the same as conflating logic with the
>real. If this is not so, TR or scientific realism collapses.
>
>Second, IMO Bhaskar does not in fact in this passage or anywhere else
>equate logical with real possibility.
>
>When you yourself say:
>
>>our initial premise is the real as a unity of positive and
>>negative existence as opposites
>
>aren't you assuming what you need to prove (your conclusion is in your
>premises)? If you say (as you do), Well, that's just how the world
>'presents itself', isn't that (idealist!) empiricism i.e. identity-
>thinking?
>
>Bhaskar doesn't disagree with your conclusion. But instead of just
>assuming it to be true, takes as his premise what very few would
>dispute: 'beings exist'. The question is whether non-beings do too, and
>if they do, how they relate to beings.
>
>I must say I long found myself perplexed by several things in the
>lengthy footnote to the passage you cited. On the face of it, it seems
>to contradict the passage by calling into question that there could have
>been a unique beginning to everything out of nothing:
>
>1) It says that the presupposition in much cosmological discussion that
>the beginning of our cosmos was '*the* unique begining of everything -
>and in particular of matter, energy, space and time, the concepts of
>which therefore cannot be employed for or outside it' is called into
>question by 'the Lucretian dictum "nil ... fieri de nihilo" [nothing ...
>would be made out of nothing] and the Hobbesian maxim that "nothing
>taketh a beginning from itself'.
>
>2) It also seems to suggest that the 'beginnings of our cosmos were 'of
>a dyadic/polyadic-fusing kind (e.g. as involving an asymmetric
>compression of *pre-existing forces*)'. [My emphasis].
>
>Of course one of the main points of these remarks is doubtless that
>there may be 'parallel and multiple universes, or ... an infinite and
>unbounded extension (plurality) of universes' (as Bhaskar now says in
>FEW, 50). So does he mean, I wondered, before *them* there could have
>been nothing? But if 'nothing would be made out of nothing', where does
>that leave creation ex nihilo?? It looks as if he's conceding Howard's
>point - from nothing you can only get nothing, not something positive.
>
>And of course he *is* conceding it. As so often with Bhaskar, when you
>think you have caught him out contradicting himself and then go back to
>the text and reconsider, you discover that he hasn't. He does not in
>fact claim that there could have been a unique beginning to everything
>out of nothing. The text carefully uses and emphasises the hypothetical
>or conditional (the emphases are omitted in Howard's copy):
>
>>if there was a *unique* beginning to everything, it could only be from
>nothing by an act of radical autogenesis. So that *if* there was an
>originating Absolute, nothing would be its schema or form, constituted
>at the moment of initiation by the spontaneous disposition to become
>something other than itself.>
>
>It doesn't say there *was* a unique beginning to everything from
>nothing, nor even that there *could* have been. *On the contrary*. The
>conclusion (at the beginning of the next para) is that
>
>'Within the world as we know it, non-being is at least on a par with
>being. Outwith it the negative has ontological primacy.'
>
>This is a through and through relational view of absence and presence,
>and, pace Howard, fully caters for contradiction (as we know from the
>section on 'Contradiction' in DPF, being is pervasively contradictory
>for Bhaskar.) Even 'outwith' the world as we know it, the negative only
>has 'primacy' over the positive, it doesn't exist alone (nor could it,
>logically, given that beings exist). (He does say that that logically
>there *could* have been just nothing [surely correct]; in fact, however,
>there *is* something, and given that there is, absence and presence must
>be viewed relationally.) Moreover, as we now know from FEW he now
>believes that there was *not* in fact a unique beginning of everything,
>nor was there  in fact ever just nothing - God/the cosmos is
>beginningless; the big bang of our universe is just one little event
>within it...
>
>The only possible unique beginning we're witnessing in these passages is
>that of Bhaskar's own belief in God - and even that was very probably a
>rebirth, if you'll excuse the pun. The fundamental logic of what he's
>doing here is to use the extraordinary achievements of science to show
>just how limited science really is - this paves the way for the
>synthesis of science and religion in FEW in which a religious or
>Romantic worldview overreaches and embraces the scientific outlook - as
>James Daly has tried to tell us.
>
>Where does this leave creation ex nihilo and God as the 'dynamic void'
>in FEW? Possibly intact. One way of putting it would be to say that God
>(the cosmos/cosmoi) is an infinite totality in which absence has primacy
>over presence and whose creativity is ultimately ex nihilo in that to
>absent is to cause is to change. God is of course by no means *just*
>nothing, a void. (To say that would be transcendent, not transcendental,
>realism ie a form of irrealism, 'purveying "news from nowhere"' - see
>SRHE 8-10). So when Bhaskar says 'ex nihilo' he does not, and cannot
>with hermeneutical adequacy be taken to, mean 'ex nihilo solo' ('from
>nothing alone' - 'absolutely nothing' in Howard's words), only that real
>non-being is fundamentally involved.
>
>This position *is* of course an (objective) idealist one, but that is
>something that critical realists of whatever ilk might have to learn to
>live with. As I've argued in a post re Sean's book, given that it is
>emergentist as well as avowedly conditional (praxis-dependent), such
>idealism is quite compatible with scientific realism (= transcendental
>realism = epistemological realism) and with practical materialism and
>historical materialism.
>
>BTW, I don't think the process of abstraction can be *equated* with
>transcendental argument or deduction; the latter is involved in the
>former, but that's not all that's involved...
>
>Mervyn
>
>PS. Corrections, please, if I've got any Latin wrong.
>--
>Mervyn Hartwig
>Editor, Journal of Critical Realism (incorporating 'Alethia'),
>International Association for Critical Realism
>13 Spenser Road
>Herne Hill
>London SE24 ONS
>United Kingdom
>Tel: 020 7 737 2892
>Email: <mh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>     : <ess.critical.realism@xxxxxxxxx>
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>
>
>
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