Re: [Critical-Realism] Comment re: holism

["Andrew Brown" <A.Brown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Mervyn,
 
Let me also comment on your analysis of 'practices':
 
You write that social structures are *not* material social practices 'in the way that natural structures are' but they *are* practices. This seems to mean, from your elaboration, that they are *not* essentialy material at all but have merely a material 'substrate or 'ground'.
 
Well, this is hardly transparent in PON ch.2. We do not find there a distinction between 'social practices' and 'material practices'. Nor is a distinction between 'social practices' and 'material practices' one that is prevalent or well-known in the literature (despite being 'self-evident' apparantly to you).
 
You also write that practices are central to Bhaskar and the TMSA. Quite so. But the question is whether or not they *constitute* *social structures*. In my interpretion (and, I think, Archer's) of PON, they do not. They help reproduce and transform them, but by that very token they do not constitute them.
 
Andy 
 
 

 
________________________________

From: critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx on behalf of Mervyn Hartwig
Sent: Mon 6/4/2007 11:54 PM
To: Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List
Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Comment re: holism



Hi Andy, et al.

It seems to me a nonsense to say that Bhaskar denies that social structures
are social practices. Practices are central to his conception, and why you
should think his emphasis on them 'cunning' (previous post) I don't know.
What he denies is that they and the relations by which they can be
individuated are material or physical in the way that natural structures
are. This seems to me self-evident. They of course have a material context
or ground or substrate, as others have emphasised, and they have material
effects, but this is not the same as saying that they themselves are
material. The word 'material' needs underlining. They are *materially*
present -- they exist materially -- only in their effects.

Mervyn


----- Original Message -----
From: "Andrew Brown" <A.Brown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List"
<critical-realism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, June 04, 2007 4:03 PM
Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Comment re: holism


Doug,

Long time no virtual (or real) conversation!

I hope you can see from my last post that the question isn't merely about
one phrase 'present only in their effects' but rather about the whole set up
of the TMSA, especially as developed by Archer. Once more, I absolutely
agree that social structures are material but you tell me how to uphold this
view whilst conceiving of them as social positions, and their relations, but
denying that they are social practices (denying what Archer terms 'central
conflation')

I would stress that it is this very point that is at the heart of Harre and
others criticism of the TMSA. They do not have an a priori prejuduce against
wholes but, rather, an a priori conception of causality as implying powerful
particulars, where powerful particulars are by definition spatially located.
(Paul Lewis, argues, in reponse, that the TMSA we should look to a different
conception of causality to that of Harre and Madden).

The issue of magnetic fields has certainly come up in this regard and, yes,
the response of Harre and followers is to flatly deny that a magnetic field
is analytically separable from a magnet.

Best wishes,

Andy

________________________________

From: critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx on behalf of Douglas
Porpora
Sent: Mon 6/4/2007 3:31 PM
To: Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List
Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Comment re: holism



Yes, I agree with Howard's last few posts vis-a-vis Ruth and was
similarly provoked by Andy's comments. I think too much has been
conceded by this idea of social structure's existing only in its
effects. Would we say the same of an electro-magnetic field? I don't
hear physicists saying that, but you cannot point to a field either.

doug


>Hi Andy,
>
>Thanks very much for your interesting comments.
>
>In what sense not instantiated in space? Pointing of course is a different
>thing.  The whole point (pun accepted) of realism is to vindicate the
>reality of unobservables, and yes you cannot point at relations, but you
>can
>certainly point at their material ground.  What are relations that have no
>material ground?  A question for Tobin -- are signs instantiated in space?
>There is no sign without a material ground.  So your point Andrew really
>goes to Ruth's critique of Bhaskar's notion that social structures are a
>material cause of actually I forget what -- the TMSA?  Why isn't the
>relation between husband and wife instantiated in space?  Yours is.  It has
>a specific location right now.  I have friends, including you, that are
>long
>distance.  This is a different relation than one that is next door.  If you
>are right about CR, then that calls into question whether the realism of CR
>is in a thoroughgoing sense materialist.
>
>As for 'powerful particulars', that goes to the points I made about our
>reluctance to think about the causal potency of social things.  We get away
>with this because of the pervasive tendency to think of cause as efficient
>cause only.  Do you think the social form of commodity producing labor is
>causally potent?  Capital?  Are these materially grounded?  If they are
>materially grounded, do those material grounds have spatial location?  Are
>they, the social forms of commodity producing labor and capital, causally
>potent?  If they are causally potent why aren't they 'powerful
>particulars'?
>Or fields of them.  Notice, for example, the historical significance of the
>'home market' and its territorial ground.
>
>On your other point, the thing one works on is material cause only insofar
>as one thinks of it materially.  I don't need to reduce everything to
>midsized solids -- I think forms of energy, and, in particular human
>activity, are material.  But it is possible to think of 'the thing one
>works
>on' metaphorically and not concern oneself with its material ground -- and
>it may be indeed that the reference to social structures as material cause
>works like that.
>
>Great to hear from you!
>
>Howard
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Andrew Brown" <A.Brown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>To: "Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List"
><critical-realism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Sent: Monday, June 04, 2007 3:10 AM
>Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Comment re: holism
>
>
>Howard and Ruth,
>
>(1) Howard, the difference between a social structure, as conceived of
>within CR, and the structure of an atom, is that the latter is indeed
>instantiated in space but the former is not. E.g. one cannot point to the
>husband-wife relation as one can to an atom (admittedly pointing to atoms
>requires experiment). It is this that Harre and others seize on in their
>critique of Bhaskar and the TMSA. That is, social structures are 'present
>only in their effects', for Bhaskar and CR, whereas atoms are just present.
>Atoms are 'powerful particulars' but social structures have no spatial
>location so cannot be. This is related to the fact that, for CR, social
>structures are relations of *social positions* (which do not have spatial
>location) not of individuals or persons (who do have spatial location). In
>my view the way out of this is to see structures as relations of
>*practices*
>but Archer calls this 'central conflation'!
>
>(2) Ruth, surely the thing one works on ('material cause') constrains and
>facilitates one's work (your 'formal cause')?
>
>Best wishes
>
>Andy
>
>________________________________
>
>From: critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx on behalf of Howard
>Engelskirchen
>Sent: Mon 6/4/2007 7:11 AM
>To: Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List
>Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Comment re: holism
>
>
>
>Hi Ruth,
>
>There's a critical absence in your argument and a decisive ambiguity with
>the consequence that what is right on lacks the ground it needs.
>
>The absence is the concept of relations.  Bhaskar says this very clearly in
>the second chapter of PON or its various iterations, e.g. ch 5 of
>Reclaiming
>Reality.  This is from Marx, e.g. "Society does not consist of individuals,
>but expresses the sum of the relations and conditions in which these
>individuals stand to one another," v. 28 (Grundrisse) p 195 -- right after
>the beginning of the section from the Chapter on Capital on 'Exchange Value
>Emerging from Circulation.'  This is the point with ontological purchase.
>The alternative is that individuals are the only existent or, by contrast,
>there are individuals and pretty much ill defined wholes like groups or
>nations or populations or societies -- these are the things, as I
>understand
>it, to which 'holism' refers.  Bhaskar is ready to acknowledge the value of
>studying social psychological phenomena like groups, but he would want to
>start, like Marx, from the relations of which they are composed.
>
>The ambiguity is with your use of the word 'agents'.  You say "while
>structures surely arent agents . . . ."  But then you will go on to say
>that
>structures cause things.  But there is an ambiguity in the concept of
>agency
>between the idea of efficient cause, as when Bhaskar says it is only
>individuals that ever do anything, and the way we think of anything with
>causal potency as a causal agent.  The difficulty is a residue of our
>tendency, since the Renaissance, of reducing all cause to efficient cause.
>Yes, individuals are the efficient cause of the reproduction of any social
>relation.  But when we say structures also cause things we are appealing to
>the kind of idea that includes material and formal cause as well as
>efficient cause, and, since social things stable enough to endure are
>always
>reproduced, final cause, also.
>
>As you know I agree with you about social structures -- they are the
>constitutive formal causes of causally potent social entities.  But that
>means that formal causes themselves, the relational structures of social
>life, must be causally potent.  That is the critical thing and corresponds
>to our experience.  We all know passing buckets down a line is a different
>phenomenon from each person going individually to the well or, to use an
>analogy, that you can arrange furniture in a room so people can walk
>through
>or not.  But the point is form cannot be just the idea of it but must be
>materially instantiated, that is, for social things, instantiated in nature
>and the behaviors of individuals, which together may be thought of as the
>material causes of social life.
>
>It is amazing the effective censorship that exists, and self-censorship in
>fact, with regard to questions of social ontology.  It's as if you belong
>in
>a circus sideshow doing phony magic acts if you dare to talk of anything
>besides individuals as 'real'.  But that only works for humans.  We study
>colonies of other living things as if they were discrete entities in their
>own right.  Why do the so to speak hierarchical phenomena of nature
>suddenly
>come to a stop with social life?  Atoms make molecules and molecules work
>according to different laws than atoms but we don't think molecules are
>spooky.  Molecules make the tables we write at, etc.  If the nucleus of say
>a hydrogen atom were home plate, the electron would not only be somwhere
>way
>beyond centerfield, it would be way beyond the stadium wall, but we don't
>have any trouble calling the atom a 'thing'.  But when it comes to calling
>the baseball team a social 'thing' suddenly we lose our nerve.
>
>That's not you doing that by any means, I'm not suggesting that at all.
>I'm
>just musing on why grappling with the ontology of social relations is so
>difficult.  Is anyone familiar with the work being done in Italy on Spinoza
>and relations and substance?  Relations have had a bad rap in Western
>philosophy .  They tend not to be seen as fundamental.  But it's hard to
>think of forms as causal structures without thinking relationally as far as
>I can see.
>
>Howard
>
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Ruth Groff" <RGroff1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>To: "Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List"
><critical-realism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Sent: Sunday, June 03, 2007 8:44 PM
>Subject: [Critical-Realism] Comment re: holism
>
>
>Hi Mervyn,
>
>Your comment re: holism caught my attention.  I think that what I would
>want
>to say is that the Bhaskar of the TMSA is a holist but not a structuralist.
>That is, there is no question from his perspective that structures and
>social wholes such as "society" EXIST.  (Contra Harre and/or Varela, for
>example, who are good examples of real, live atomists who bump up against
>the cr literature.)  What I imagine you to be referencing is instead a
>claim
>about which kinds of things, of the things that exist, are the kinds of
>things that make social phenomena happen.  The claim here is that it is
>only
>individuals that do this.  Am I right to think that it's that point that
>you
>are drawing on when you say that RB and Archer (whose work I don't know)
>are
>critical of holism?
>
>[For the record, I think that while structures surely aren't agents, the
>claim doesn't square as well as I'd like it to with the other part of the
>argument, viz., that we know of the existence of the unobservable whole
>that
>is society via its effects.  (And of course, quite apart from how it fits
>or
>doesn't into a larger argument from RB, the claim in question might just be
>wrong.)  In this regard, I'm pretty sure that I think that structues should
>be thought of as formal causes (i.e., things that enable and delimit agency
>in specifiable ways -- see Doug's great stuff on structures), and not just
>as material causes (i.e. as that which is worked upon by individuals).
>This
>way of thinking about it allows for both individuals and structures to be
>the causes of things, albeit causes of different kinds, but preserves the
>"ontological gap" between them, as RB put it in PON.]
>
>r.
>
>
>
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--
doug porpora, head
Department of Culture and Communication
Drexel University
Phila PA 19104
(215) 895-2404

porporad@xxxxxxxxxx
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