Re: BHA: RE: de-onts

[Mervyn Hartwig <mh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Viren (and Tobin),

>So would I be correct if I said that
>according to you (Mervyn), the lack of a sock on the Eifel Tower is a
>de-ont without causality?

I don't know what I've said to encourage you to think this. It's not
what I intended. Reality - of both onts and deonts - is ascribed
causally. So the absence of a sock on the Eiffel Tower is not real, but
your statement about its putative reality is (cf yesteryear's scientific
statement about 'the aether').

Also real is the void in any sock for your foot and the numerous tiny
holes in the sock which allow your foot to 'breathe' - they are causally
essential to the work that a sock (while ever it remains a sock) does in
the world. And so is the shape in the shoe for your besocked foot real
too, etc etc - it is not for nothing :-) that such shapes have been
explored in modern sculpture, which emphasizes their reality for
monovalent heads by casting them in a positive form.

When I say that the world is open, and 'full of possibility and hope',
that does not at all imply that 'anything that does not exist' (in
Ruth's phrase) could come to pass. On the contrary. As Bhaskar has it,
the future is (the negative presence of) 'increasingly *shaped*
possibility', in which the shaping is done by (the negative presence of)
the past. (DPF 250ff, etc.; my emphasis)

One possible source of the impression you've got is Bhaskar himself (DPF
43), where he says 'An extreme case of absence is never anywhere
existence', which 'can be expressed in the form of a non-existential
proposition' eg about phlogiston, the aether, Vulcan. He then suggests,
contra Popper, that such propositions are perfectly falsifiable, and
goes on to talk about what happens in 'real science' as distinct from
Popperian philosophy of science. You *could* get the impression - though
I think you'd be wrong - that Bhaskar means by this that anything that
doesn't exist is real, or that mere 'reference' to a 'never anywhere
existent' (aether) makes it real; but this would be either a
contradiction in terms or a gross example of the epistemic fallacy. So I
take him to mean that in such cases the 'absence' concerned is (so to
speak) so 'extreme' that it does not exist (hence 'non-existential'). It
is the concept of aether that exists and can be referentially detached,
not the 'thing' itself.

Mervyn



viren viven murthy <vvmurthy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes
>Hi Mervyn and Tobin,
>
>I enjoyed your explanation of "de-onts", but I was wondering whether both
>of you understand this concept in the same way.  Tobin, you seem to
>conceive
>them as 'determinate non-being", while Mervyn, you seem to conceive of
>them as absence in general.  So would I be correct if I said that
>according to you (Mervyn), the lack of a sock on the Eifel Tower is a
>de-ont without causality?
>
>Best,
>Viren


     --- from list bhaskar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---