[Critical-Realism] RTS Reading

["Brian Dick" <briandick51@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Ruth,

I'm not sure who Bhaskar had in mind in terms of sociologists who were
making use of Aristotle's typology.  I did a search of articles on jstor
that was limited to sociology journals pre-1975 and only came across one
article that is relevent--however, they basically just cite Aristotle and
his typology, rather than actually using it:

*Causality and Typology: Alternative Methodological Solutions in Theory and
Practice*<http://www.jstor.org/view/00308919/ap050036/05a00040/0?currentResult=00308919%2bap050036%2b05a00040%2b0%2cFFAA02&searchUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.jstor.org%2Fsearch%2FAdvancedResults%3Fhp%3D25%26si%3D1%26q0%3Daristotle%2Btypology%2Bcauses%26f0%3D%26c0%3DAND%26ar%3Don%26wc%3Don%26sd%3D%26ed%3D1975%26la%3D%26dc%3DSociology>
A. K. Basu<http://www.jstor.org/search/BasicResults?Search=Search&Query=aa:%22A.%20K.%20Basu%22&hp=25&si=1&wc=on>;
R. Kenyon III<http://www.jstor.org/search/BasicResults?Search=Search&Query=aa:%22R.%20Kenyon%20III%22&hp=25&si=1&wc=on>
*The Pacific Sociological Review* <http://www.jstor.org/browse/00308919> > Vol.
15, No. 4 <http://www.jstor.org/browse/00308919/ap050036> (Oct., 1972), pp.
425-441
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0030-8919%28197210%2915%3A4%3C425%3ACATAMS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-1

I've only skimmed the article, but it may be worth looking at in terms of
our discussion of RTS and causality (I apologize to those who don't have
institutional access to jstor.  If you e-mail me off list, I can send you a
copy of the article in pdf format).

Moving on to questions that individuals are not familiar with, I have always
been confused as to exactly what Bhaskar is talking about when he refers to
"monistic interpretation of scientific development."  Is this simply
referring to an internal explanation of scientific development that ignores
external (i.e. social) factors?  Ruth, or others, could you weigh in on
this?

Thanks,

Brian

------------------------------
From:  *"Ruth Groff" <RGroff1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>*
Reply-To:  *Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List<
critical-realism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>*
To:  *"Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List"<
critical-realism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>*
Subject:  *Re: [Critical-Realism] RTS Reading 1*
Date:  *Tue, 12 Jun 2007 11:57:32 -0400*
>Hi all,
>
>Mervyn, thanks for the first post.  Here are a few thoughts that I have,
reading this through.  I offer these really just to get the conversation
going, and to encourage people to weigh in.  I think it would be great,
personally, if people would, among other things, ask questions about things
that they don't understand or aren't familiar with by disciplinary training
or interest.  I know many members of the list don't have a lot of philosophy
background.
>
>
>RB writes:
>
>Sociologists are making increasing use of the allegedly discredited
Aristotelian typology
>
>of causes.
>
>
>I don't know which sociologists he means; he doesn't reference anyone by
name.  Does anyone have a sense of this, of who in sociology was talking in
Aristotelian terms in the early 1970s?
>
>For those who aren't familiar with the "typology" in question (which is
connected to an entire metaphysics, one which, unsurprisingly, has a bearing
on the ontology proposed in RTS), it goes like this:
>
>1. material cause: the material cause of a thing what it is made out
of.  The material cause of table that I am sitting at is wood, viz., pine.
>
>2. formal cause: the formal cause of a thing is ... well, it turns out to
be very tricky, actually, to say what it is, and maybe Howard will want to
say something here, but crudely I will say that it is the thing that makes
something be what it is, and not some other thing.  One way of thinking
about it is to think of the formal cause of a thing as the way that the
thing is organized.  So the classic example is to say that the formal cause
of a house (or my table) is the blueprint, which sets out a distinctive
"form" that the material in question will take.  But 2 points of
caution.  One, for Aristotle all matter is already "enformed."    By
analogy, there is (to stick with the example) no such thing as a form-less
house.  The weakness of the "blueprint" way of thinking about it, then, is
that it locates the form outside of the enformed-object.  Two, the example
has perhaps too much of a structural spin.  With living things, for
Aristotle, the "form" is called the soul, and it refers (directly) to those
capacities that are distinctive of the creature in question.  For human
beings it is our rational capacity (differentially distributed, A. though,
between Greeks and non-Greeks, men and women).  With a house or a table, one
tends to think of the structure first, in some way, and then consider that
it has properties of particular kinds (for supporting wieght, e.g.); with
people (for A.) the form just is the capacity.  But this is probably more
than anyone cares about ... sorry.
>
>3. efficient cause: the efficient cause of my table and house is the person
(or people) who made it.  This sense of "cause" is the closest to theone
moderns tend to default to.
>
>4. final cause: the final cause of a thing is its purpose.  The final cause
of my table, we could say, is to support things like my keyboard in a way
that the original pine tree wouldn't.  With Aristotle, the final cause of
everything the same, at one level of abstraction -- namely, it is for each
thing to actualize its form, excellently.  (Most things are, for A., only
potentially what they distinctively are.)  Perhaps the single biggest
division between Aristotelian and post-Aristotelian (i.e., modern)
metaphysics is that most of the moderns - and certainly thosue whose story
matters for the development of the empiricist and Kantian accounts of
science that RB will criticize - explicitly reject the idea that things are
in some sense animated to become what they have the potential to essentially
be.  Contemporary neo-Aristotelian scientific essentialists recover the
dynamism, but separate it out from the sense of purpose, or telos.  The
Greek term for the drive to actualize form is escaping me for some reason
(it's not dunamis, or telos ... o well).
>
>I think it's important to get a handle on these categories in order to
appreciate the alternate metaphysics that RB says he's going to set out, and
that Harre (an a few others, both at the time and earlier) had already begun
doing.  Hence my going on ad nauseum.
>
>
>RB writes:
>
>The basic principle of realist philosophy of science, viz. that perception
gives us
>
>access to things and experimental activity access to structures
>
>that exist independently of us, is very simple.  Yet the
>
>full working out of this principle implies a radical account of the nature
>
>of causal laws, viz. as expressing tendencies of things, not conjunctions
of
>
>events.
>
>
>This is the crux of the proposed alternate ontology.  Laws express the
"tendencies of things."  To unpack this is to wind up back on recognizably
Aristotelian ground.  The claim is that things have ways that they are,
properties that make them be what they are.  The further claim is going to
be the these properties are dispositional -- that is, they are ways of
behaving.
>
>That things have essential dispositional properties is what makes
experiments be intelligible, RB will argue.  It's also what makes the
problem of induction not be a real problem.
>
>Harre and Madden say this too.  So I would argue with the way RB positions
himself relative to the two "strands."  He is not clear enough, in my view,
that the one "strand" is already saying this.  Though there are plenty of
things to be argued about, amongst those of like mind on this point, and RB
certainly contributes new and different things to the discussion.
>
>Anway, those are my thoughts about what is absolutely crucial about the
Preface.
>
>But this is just meant to get discussion going.
>
>Warmly,
>Ruth

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