Re: BHA: negativity wins

[Ruth Groff <rgroff@xxxxxxxx>]

Hi Mervyn,

You wrote:
>As I have shown in other posts, Ruth has been getting some of the claims
>>of the proponents of absence completely wrong.

How about "As I have done my best to show...?"  [I know that you are
convinced that I have fundamentally misunderstood Bhaskar's presentation of
the concept of absence, but still ... ]

r.
>
>>Ruth has expressed my position and my difficulties precisely.
>
*If* the above is true,
>it follows that you have been too.
>
>>I did manage to see that it was
>>important to the struggle for a better society to not to think only in terms
>>of what actually exists, but I'm not sure that's what you mean.
>
>Well, I do mean that, especially where what actually exists is thought
>of in purely positive terms. Not that I would claim that because
>something is important to emancipation, therefore it is true. Rather,
>because it is true it is important to emancipation, which importantly
>depends on getting an accurate understanding of the world in order to
>change it.
>
>>this way of talking is intelligible and I can do it.  But IF we embrace this
>>way of understanding existence and change, we surely need to recognise that
>>de-onts and absences are parasitic on onts and presences for their
>>specificity.  The causal powers of an absence depend on the causal powers of
>>the thing that is absent, i.e. on the nature and structure of this thing,
>>since an absence can't have nature and structure in its own right. So if
>>de-onts are real, they are real by virtue of the reality of the thing that
>>exists, (in whatever sense it does exist) not in the same way onts are real.
>>Is this right?
>
>It seems right up to a point, but still very one-sided. Certainly (at
>any rate in the world as we know it), deonts are parasitic on onts - but
>the converse holds too: onts are parasitic on deonts. In a *relational*
>world neither can exist without the other.
>
>But perhaps you were thinking of the meta-position Bhaskar first
>sketched in Alethia 3:1 and elaborated in FEW whereby, from the
>perspective of human freedom, creativity and flourishing, generalised
>master-slave-type relations are entirely parasitic on the essential
>freedom, creativity and goodness of the slaves (our human nature). Here
>deonts - the absence of freedom expressed in the social relations (=
>constraints on freedom) seem to be entirely parasitic on onts. But 1)
>Bhaskar is here operating at a highly abstract level of analysis. At
>more concrete levels, both the world of master-slave relations and our
>human nature involve both onts and deonts. 2) Bhaskar's conception of
>human nature is highly controversial (and if not purely positive, at
>least positively pure!)  3). If the situation is to change, slaves must
>act to change (absent) master-servant relations, so even at Bhaskar's
>meta abstract level the category of absence is fundamental (as he would
>be the first to claim).
>
>>The causal powers of an absence depend on the causal powers of
>>the thing that is absent, i.e. on the nature and structure of this thing,
>>since an absence can't have nature and structure in its own right.
>
>'Depend on', yes, but the 'thing' will not be just ontic, it will be
>both ontic and deontic, and in a relational world onts don't have a
>nature and structure in their own right either.
>
>What strikes me in all this is the way in which pure positivity keeps
>creeping back into the assumptions even of those who accept the reality
>of absence - which goes to show how profoundly embedded in our psyche's
>monovalence is.
>
>Mervyn
>
>Caroline New <c.new@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes
>>I've been following this discussion with something of a sense of deja vu.
>>Ruth has expressed my position and my difficulties precisely.  I would just
>>like to add, though:
>>I am willing to accept this way of talking, although the importance of
>>talking like this is still not clear to me.  I did manage to see that it was
>>important to the struggle for a better society to not to think only in terms
>>of what actually exists, but I'm not sure that's what you mean.  However,
>>this way of talking is intelligible and I can do it.  But IF we embrace this
>>way of understanding existence and change, we surely need to recognise that
>>de-onts and absences are parasitic on onts and presences for their
>>specificity.  The causal powers of an absence depend on the causal powers of
>>the thing that is absent, i.e. on the nature and structure of this thing,
>>since an absence can't have nature and structure in its own right. So if
>>de-onts are real, they are real by virtue of the reality of the thing that
>>exists, (in whatever sense it does exist) not in the same way onts are real.
>>Is this right?  Caroline
>
>
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