Re: BHA: negativity wins

["Caroline New" <c.new@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hey Jan, How can absences be stratified and structured?  unless their
structure can simply be read off that of the things which are absent.
Mervyn has said something that has made me prick up my ears when he said
nothing has causal power in itself, only in relationship... I suppose what
I'd like to hear more of is how the abandonment of monovalence makes us
rethink the causal powers of onts, and causality generally.  I might find
that more of a way in.  In that case it would be not things with structures
that have causal powers, but the structure of relationships within and
between things, which would obviously involve gaps and absences.
This in turn reminds me of a debate that's been going on in the ESRC realism
seminar. (I'm just waiting for Bob to join the Bhaskarlist and the two of us
will be very happy to chair a thread on this).   Ray Pawson's methodology
proposes that research design thinks in terms of contexts, mechanisms and
outcomes.  I always have a problem with the distinction between context and
mechanism, which often seems arbitrary (the context usually includes other
co-acting mechanisms), but the causal power is attributed to the mechanism.
All the best, Caroline
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jan Straathof" <janstr@xxxxxxx>
To: <bhaskar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, February 27, 2001 1:12 AM
Subject: Re: BHA: negativity wins


> hi Ruth and All,
>
> first let me thank you and the rest of all the contributors to
> the de-ont thread, this kind of debate is what i like most about
> mailing-list, there are pro's and contra's, clarifications and
> counter-examples, new questions, sticky paradoxes .... wonderfull !!
>
> the debate on nothingness, absence, negative existence, de-onts
> and the like, is as old as philosohphy itself and is imo extremely
> difficult to assess from only one philosophical perspective and/or
> vocabulary. It is a set of sets, a debate of debates, each debate
> consisting of many sub-sets of debates ranging from eastern and
> western types of empirism, rationalism, idealism, positivism,
> phenomenology, dialectics ... what a mess over nothing :-)
>
> i'm still in the camp of TDCR as Gary would say, but that doesn't
> mean i'm totally convinced of everything, i guess i'm never totally
> convinced of anything ;-) yet all i think is that it's a compelling and
> stimulating thought to conceive both 'onts' and 'de-onts' as real i.e.
> as causal, transfactual, stratified, structured, emergent, experiential
> (in the ID) and that they exist independent of our knowledge of
> them in whatever field we study: physics, mathematics, history,
> sociology, psychology (TD).
>
> one of the examples i mentioned in my previous post was the
> "absence of gravity in a space station", what i had in mind then
> were these scientific experiments with seeds, spiders, cells, cristals
> etc. that are preformed in space to study the behaviour of these
> beings in an environment of zero-gravity (an environment btw in
> which these beings impossibly could have initially originated and
> evolved); in fact the absence of gravity is here the main constructive
> element of the research design, aimed to the possible discovery of
> new scientific ontologies - and i believe they did discover new
> nano-techniques for producing new cristals, minerals, medicines.
>
> but yes, to call "zero-gravity" a "de-ont" is a choice of perspective
> and/or vocabulary, maybe it's a way of life, i 'see' a de-ont as easely
> as a missing ingredient in the soup as in every TINA compromise
> formation ... and yes, they hate me for it ;-)
>
> yours,
> jan
>
>
>
>
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