Re: BHA: negativity wins

[Ruth Groff <rgroff@xxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

It is finally 7 am here; I've been up since 5:30, beginning day 4 of the
world's worst cold.  I have been waiting to feel better to try to put some
questions about DPF ch 2 into sensible form, but so far no luck.  So forgive
me for the fogginess of what I have to say, but I decided that waiting until
I can compose some lucid thing is not really a viable short-term plan.

So, then, in no particular order: (and forgive me too if much or any of this
is just a less nuanced version of what Howard has said ...)

1. I still don't understand why I have to grant the positive existence of
entities called "de-onts."  Would someone be willing (hopefully one last
time) to explain this to me in very plain language?  (To me, it still just
seems like so much re-description and making-thing-like of "things" that are
either states of affairs or abstractions.)

2. On p. 3, Bhaskar defines dialectical processes as ones in which change
occurs, through opposition of some kind.  By p. 43, he asserts that the
"essence" of such processes is the "absenting of absence."  Again this just
seems like a re-description.  I think "Well, okay, we can think of it that
way if you like."  But I don't understand why I HAVE to think of it that way.

3. On p. 44 RB says that causality (which he used to define in terms of the
powers of entities to effect change) is similarly a matter of absenting
absences.  ["All causal determination, and hence change, is transformative
negation or absenting."]  So, by implication, I think, all causal
determination is dialectical in character.  Well, okay, since "dialectical"
now means "a process wherein an absence has been absented," and change
itself has now been defined as "a process, consisting in the absenting of
absence."

a. But again, I don't understand why I HAVE to think of things this way.  It
still seems like a lot of assertions and word-play.

b. Also, it seems like once we have said that everything that happens (or at
least everything that has been determinately caused) is, by definition, the
result of a dialectical process, the concept of "dialectical process" has
lost its specificity, and by extension much of its theoretical weight.

c. Even though the term "absence" gets *used* a lot from this perspective,
it still seems to me that if everything that happens is the result of an
absence having been absented, a prior (positive) event is always implied.
And isn't the prior existence of an "ont," capable of effecting said
absenting of absence, also implied?  Or can de-onts [i.e., "things,"
fictional or non-fictional, that do not exist (see pp. 40-41 for close
discussion of this)] also engage in the absenting of absences?

d. Finally, about causality.  Bhaskar used to say that entities (by which
I'm pretty sure he used to mean what he now calls "onts"), or powerful
particulars, effect change through the exercise of powers that they have in
virtue of their structure (by which I have always assumed that he meant
something like their essential nature -- which is why I have also always
assumed that the real task of RTS with respect to the history of the
philosophy of science was to revindicate *Aristotle*).  I won't assume that
this early analysis is to be discarded.  So, if we combine it with the new
"to cause is to absent an absence" position, we get something like "Powerful
particulars absent absences through the exercise of powers that they have in
virtue of their structure (i.e., essential nature)."  Okay, so far so good.
But how does this work for "de-onts?"  With respect to the powerful
particular "onts" of RTS, the essential nature in question was a function of
a thing's physical composition.  In virtue of what internal characteristic,
or feature, do "de-onts" have the power to absent absences?

I might not be able to be won over to this version of negative dialectics.
I'm sure I'm a hard sell.  (Bible-thumping dualist monovalentist
correspondence theorist that I am!)  But at this point I don't even
*understand* the argument(s).  Perhaps because of this I don't appreciate
their force.  So I'm genuinely hoping that people will be willing to try to
explain it to me.

Warmly (or, cold-ly),
Ruth





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