Re: BHA: negativity wins

[Mervyn Hartwig <mh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Howard,

Many thanks. Some comments.

1.
>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.

The passage actually claims that it is presenting a dialectical argument
(which of course is a species of transcendental argument), establishing
the 'conditions of possibility' of 'the conditions of impossibility' of
'positive existence' - i.e. a total void (there could have been just
nothing, in which case something would have been impossible). You don't
really say why this is not a dialectical or transcendental argument,
just assert that it is 'purely speculative'. (Re what you have to say re
the premise - 'positive existence - see below.)

Moreover, you don't seem to have fully taken on board, what the footnote
makes clear, that Bhaskar is not arguing that 'a total void' does or
ever did exist, just that dialectically it is a possibility that there
could have been just nothing. He's not arguing that (given that there is
something) absence is not always relational to presence, only that it's
ontologically more fundamental (and then only 'outwith the world as we
know it', not within it); and it's important to remember that the
passage you cited only presents the fourth argument in a series against
the contrary view, that *positivity* has ontological primacy.
'Negativity wins' doesn't mean that there's ultimately just a void, or
that absence acts on its own.

2. As far as I can see, you *assume* 'the unity of positive and negative
existence' (by which I take it you mean that neither has primacy, they
are 'on a par'). What is the argument for this? You said in your
previous post that is just how reality 'presents itself', but CR rejects
that sort of empiricism.

3.
>the premise of positivity taken
>alone presupposes an ontologically monovalent view of the world.

Precisely. We live in a world dominated by an ontologically monovalent
outlook. The whole argument of DPF is directed against this. Bhaskar
therefore, in keeping with the principles of immanent critique, takes as
his premise what his opponent asserts, and tries to show that it is
transcendentally impossible. All too few people disagree with this
premise - you and I do, of course, but that is beside the point.

4.

>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.
[snip]

>the real -- things, "enduring mechanisms," beings

You are here confusing Bhaskar's domain of the Real (Mechanisms) with
the real, what there is, being/non-being, ontology. The domains of the
Real, the Actual (Events) and the Empirical (Experiences) are
distinctions *within* the real, within ontology. For Bhaskar,
*everything* is real (which you yourself sometimes seem to acknowledge
eg in your PS where you correctly talk of the ideological or the
semiotic as 'ontological'). Even fictional characters for Bhaskar really
exist, i.e. are real non-beings. DCR can thus pay full tribute to the
power of imagination. - But please, let's not have the the great Santa
debate all over again! (Just tell the kids that Santa really does
exist!)


5.
>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?

I unfortunately wasn't able to follow the thread on this. From what you
say here I can't see the problem. In emergence new powers and structures
are generated when things are brought into different relation with each
other. So when hydrogen and oxygen are brought into relation in a
certain proportion the resulting water has different powers (which I
expect you don't dispute) and a different structure (the new relations
between the structures of hydrogen and oxygen). So water is one
ontological level, the gases another, the molecules comprising them
another, and so on. The litmus paper example seems to confuse the Real
(mechanisms and structures) and the Actual (events) - there's no
emergence in this case, just the activity of mechanisms issuing in an
event.

6.
>Contradiction is displaced by absence as the motive force of the
>development of things, and this is really the problem.

Absence is the more fundamental category for Bhaskar, but I don't see
how it *displaces* contradiction, because on his account absence (and
absenting) are at the very heart of contradiction, and in turn without
contradiction there could be no change ie transformative negation, or
absenting. Perhaps more on this when the present thread has run its
course...

Mervyn


lynne engelskirchen <lhengels@xxxxxxx> writes
>
>
>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.


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