For Ruth was Re: BHA: de-onts

[Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Like Dick I am following this with a great deal of interest.  It is
frustrating that I do not have the time to really get into it.  But it is
crucial.  It is not simply a matter of using a new word.  Nor is it a
matter of retranslating the obvious into the obscure as Ruth is inclined to
think, I believe.

It is necessary to use a new word like 'de-ont' to reorient our thinking
away from ontological monovalence. If folk doubt me here they should go
back and read some Popper or Magee and see the  mind of a monovalent at
work. For these thinkers 'What is - is' and that is all there is to it.

At the heart of all this is the difficulty with learning to think
dialectically. In some ways one is either a believer or not here.  My own
take on this is that thinking the world differently is a necessary but not
sufficient preliminary to changing it.  And there is no better way to
thinking the world differently than thinking dialectically.

As for absence as I understand it there are two main positions here.

1.  This is where the absent/ the void has ontological priority.  In the
beginning with nothing or as the Rig Veda puts it

"Then was not non-existent: there was no realm of air, no sky beyond it.
What covered in, and where?  and what gave shelter? was Water there,
unfathomed depth of water?
Death was not then, nor was there aught immortal: no sign was there, the
day and night's divider."

Bhaskar I feel holds this position which Nick and others hold as a
non-relational view of absence. Bhaskar has developed from this his notion
of creation 'ex-nihilo" in from East to West.  For what it is worth I am in
this camp as well.  The contemplation of the prior to the non-existent is a
great comfort.

2. The next position is that of a dialectical relationship between the
absent and the positive. If I understand Howard's great posts correctly he
argues that absolute absence or negativity can logically be thought to
exist but we know only the dialectic of the negative and the
positive.  Mervyn (as I read him) has pointed out here that within the
dialectical pair negative -positive the negative has priority.  Thus just
as we can have truth alone but not lies alone, we can have the negative
alone but not the positive alone. So in a sense negativity always wins.

As far as I can judge from the list position two is the dominant one within
the dialectical critical realist camp.  Again if we go back to the Vedas
and in particular the dialogue between Gargi and Yajnavalkya in the
Upanishads we get a statement of the relational view of absence. When Gargi
asks

"Across what then, pray, is space woven, warp and woof?

Yajnavalkya replies

"That o Gargi, Brahmans call the Imperishable (aksara)."

Predictably Yajnavalkaya then proceeds to define "aksara" negatively.

Like Ruth I must dash.

regards

Gary








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