Re: BHA: Emergence

[Mervyn Hartwig <mh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Tobin

>For example, let's say that a pack of wolves and a pack of
>coyotes meet and interbreed, giving rise to coy-wolves.  I would consider
>the new breed to be an instance of intrastructural emergence within the
>canine world.  Can you clarify how it would also be superstructural
>emergence?  What new structure has emerged, with capacities that can react
>back on the original structure (which is what I take "superstructural" to
>mean)?

I'd have to know a lot more about genetics to answer this confidently -
I take it we're talking about genetic mechanisms. But I can't see any
prima facie reason why the two models couldn't be deployed
simultaneously here too, in fact it looks mandatory:

Model A                                    Model B

polity sets boundary conditns for     economy sets boundary condns for

economy                               polity


coyote genetic mechanisms ditto       wolf GMs ditto

wolf GMs                              coyote GMs


In the case of interbreeding it would seem impossible to determine which
is the 'base level', so a better example would perhaps be genetic
mutation; but here again the new genetic material could be seen as
superstructurated or intrastructurated on or in the base level. I expect
much would depend on the particular case - the metaphor of
superstructuration might prove more fruitful in some cases,
intrastructuration in others, and both in yet others.

I actually don't think we differ a lot, except in what we are choosing
to emphasise. You are seeing the 'reacting back' Bhaskar stresses as
internal to the emergent configuration of mechanisms (coy-wolf), with
the superstructure reacting on the base (I think this should be
superstructure/ instrastructure); whereas I am seeing it as also
'external' - the emergent configuration as such can now react back on
coyote and wolf and other causal mechanisms. I think we should be
emphasising both.

Cf the 'meta' diagram in PE 74 which envisages the practical and social
orders as emergent from the natural order - there are feedback loops
running both ways. I rather think that a close study of Bhaskar's
brilliant unpacking and defense of functionalist explanation in
*Reclaiming Reality* would shed some light on this. (A commitment to
functionalist explanation is not of course the same as being a
functional*ist*, which Bhaskar clearly is not.)

I put 'external' in scare quotes above because there is of course a
sense in which all reacting back is internal - i.e. it occurs within the
world as  a whole, as an expanding multiply stratified system. Within
that, what is 'external' and what internal will depend on which totality
is the focus of your explanatory interest - there are innumerable valid
perspectival switches that could be made!

Mervyn





Tobin Nellhaus <nellhaus@xxxxxxx> writes
>Hi Mervyn--
>
>>                    While I didn't intend
>> it to be so, I accept that 'camp' was an unfortunate choice of word and
>> am sorry I used it.
>
>Appreciated; my own "rather divisive" was stronger than necessary.  But the
>main issue was that I had repeatedly pointed out that Marko quite
>insistently and you to a limited extent had misrepresented or distorted my
>position.  While I recognized that Marko was using a reductio argument, it
>was an argument against a position sharply at odds with what I had said (a
>position that I oppose).  Misunderstanding a position on the role of social
>activity in science but being willing to engage the matter is one thing;
>treating all claims for social aspects as being outright super-idealism is
>quite another.  The flip side would be for a someone to say "Hi, I'm here to
>learn about critical realism" but then treat your claims for the real
>existence of things outside the mind as precisely and absolutely identical
>to the worst and more reductive sort of positivism, and time after time
>attack or dismiss every one of your statements in that manner (with a fellow
>realist saying "Well, he has a point" to boot!).
>
>Anyway, if Marko takes my criticism of his manners as personal abuse and
>cause to leave this list, I think that's a regrettable decision on his part.
>
>Re intra- and superstructural emergence, I think all superstructural
>emergence is necessarily also intrastructural, and I fully agree with the
>perspectival switch on that.  But I'm still not convinced that the converse
>is true -- that all intrastructural emergence is necessarily also
>superstructural.  For example, let's say that a pack of wolves and a pack of
>coyotes meet and interbreed, giving rise to coy-wolves.  I would consider
>the new breed to be an instance of intrastructural emergence within the
>canine world.  Can you clarify how it would also be superstructural
>emergence?  What new structure has emerged, with capacities that can react
>back on the original structure (which is what I take "superstructural" to
>mean)?
>
>T.
>
>---
>Tobin Nellhaus
>nellhaus@xxxxxxxx
>"Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce
>
>
>
>
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--
Mervyn Hartwig
Editor, Journal of Critical Realism (incorporating 'Alethia')
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