RE: BHA: me again -- same topic

["howard Engelskirchen" <lhengels@xxxxxxx>]

Hi Carrol, Hi Ruth!

Carrol, the statement that society is an ensemble of social relations comes
from the Grundrisse.  This doesn't seem inconsistent with the different
formulation in the Thesis on Feuerbach, though certainly they are different
assertions.

I'm not sure I follow you Ruth.  I do not agree that social structures are
material causes.  They are causally efficacious insofar as they correspond
to the physical mechanisms, ie human individuals, that transform the
material world.  A social relation like capital is a social form that gets
reproduced.  So a thing does not have to be a material cause or an
efficient cause to be causally efficacious; it can be a formal or final
cause.  But the relational causes have to be embedded in the physical ones
in order to be causally efficacious.  The physical ones, on the other hand,
are differently efficacious depending upon the relations that characterize
them.

I've made a point before that Bunge makes in his book called, Causality,
namely that the drift of modern science since the Renaissance has been to
equate all causation with efficient cause.  This was the only one the
causality of atoms and their conjunctions left room for.  But Marx cannot
be adequately read in those terms -- among other things in the Grundrisse
he places significant emphasis on "form determination."

I can't really give you textual help, but I don't think the extending to
social science you're talking about goes forward by analogy.  We really are
causal agents in the world; we are not "like" causal agents.  But while you
can presumably give an adequate chemical account of say hydrogen without
recourse to intentionality, you can't do that with humans as causal agents.
So we can speak of social structures as causal ensembles -- say marriage --
and establish the reality of the relations which characterize them by
causal criteria.  But to explain what we mean, we can not limit ourselves
to the vocabulary of efficient or material cause only.

The issue of psychology is difficult.  Volosinov argues that first there is
ideology, then,derivatively, pyschology.  That is, if we were to follow his
lead, there must first be a science of ideology; then there could be a
science of psychology.  Anyway, I'm not sure what you mean by saying
"People's real essences are, or give rise to, final causes, just as certain
physical entities are efficient causes?" Again, people are physical
entities and, however it be with essences, when they act causally they act
intentionally.  So this would require, wouldn't it, a human science
different from one which accounted for social relations and their
reproduction.

Hans, I must take more time than I now have to review your post.

Howard




> [Original Message]
> From: Ruth Groff <rgroff@xxxxxxxx>
> To: <bhaskar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
 > Date: 5/5/2002 9:00:21 AM
> Subject: BHA: me again -- same topic
>
> Hi everyone,
>
> Thanks a lot for your post, Howard.
>
> So, with the benefit of Aristotle's nuance, would you say that the
analogy upon which the extension of  transcendental realism to social
science rests is:  social structures are material causes (though we want to
amend this to say that they are also formal causes), just as certain
physical entities are efficient causes?  [With the parallel case for
psychology, in ch. 3 of PON, being "People's real essences are, or give
rise to, final causes, just as certain physical entities are efficient
causes?"]
>
> Sorry to be so text-focused about this, but I am really trying to figure
out what the PON position actually is.
>
> r.
>
>
>
>
>
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--- howard Engelskirchen
--- lhengels@xxxxxxx
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