Re: [Critical-Realism] rts2-11

["Dave Taylor" <dave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi John

To take a different approach to Ruth - not citation of Bhaskar but direct
explanation in terms expressed elegantly by Arthur M Young in "The Geometry
of Meaning":

 - the intransient is the transient with time still further abstracted (it
being granted that experience provides only a snapshot of time, so even the
intransient may change).

To relate Bhaskar and Young it is perhaps necessary to distinguish abstract
mathematical models from concrete applications of them.  Young explains the
equivalent of Bhaskar's three/four-level reality in terms of a mathematical
sequence in which changes in time are repeatedly abstracted, and illustrates
it concretely in terms of the Newtonian differential formulae for position,
speed, acceleration and controlling force at a point in time.  He argues
that these are not different situations but different ways of looking at the
same situation.  If one changes the force one changes all the others and
thereafter one is discussing a different situation. 

Fairly obviously, in Bhaskar's account, empirical events occur on shorter
timescales than actual things than types of structure than the deep laws of
nature (to try and put it simply).  Likewise, they are all there at the same
time. 

Arguably that is necessary and sufficient to differentiate (but not to
characterise) the "transient" first two from the [relatively] "intransient"
third and fourth [new laws of nature emerging with the evolution of new
types of structure].  

Best

Dave T

-----Original Message-----
From: critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Kitching,
John W
Sent: 15 June 2007 17:05
To: Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List
Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] rts2-11

 

 

Would any members of the list like to say any more about the links between
the intransitive/transitive dimensions? In what sense do transitive objects
of knowledge connect to intransitive objects of knowledge?

 

I am thinking about how to respond to critics who 'bracket out' the
intransitive & who focus on the transitive. The late Richard Rorty comes to
mind as someone who might say don't worry about the way the world really is
as we can never know what it's really like. Better to concentrate on
entering a conversation with others & attempting to build a consensus in
order that we might combine to get things done we all value. 

 

John

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of ehrbar
Sent: 15 June 2007 15:36
To: critical-realism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [Critical-Realism] rts2-11

 

 

======================================================

{RTS2:21} Chapter 1. Philosophy and Scientific Realism

======================================================

 

1. TWO SIDES OF  KNOWLEDGE

 

Any adequate philosophy of science must find a way of

grappling with this central paradox of science: that men in

their social activity produce knowledge which is a social

product much like any other, which is no more independent of

its production and the men who produce it than motor cars,

armchairs or books, which has its own craftsmen,

technicians, publicists, standards and skills and which is

no less subject to change than any other commodity.  This is

one side of `knowledge'.  The other is that knowledge is

`of' things which are not produced by men at all: the

specific gravity of mercury, the process of electrolysis,

the mechanism of light propagation.  None of these `objects

of knowledge' depend upon human activity.  If men ceased to

exist sound would continue to travel and heavy bodies fall

to the earth in exactly the same way, though ex hypothesi

there would be no-one to know it.  Let us call these, in an

unavoidable technical neologism, the intransitive objects of

knowledge.  The transitive objects of knowledge are

Aristotelian material causes.^1  They are the raw materials

of science - the artificial objects fashioned into items of

knowledge by the science of the day.^2  They include the

antecedently established facts and theories, paradigms and

models, methods and techniques of inquiry available to a

particular scientific school or worker.  The material cause,

in this sense, of Darwin's theory of natural selection

consisted of the ingredients out of which he fashioned his

theory.  Among these were the facts of natural variation,

the theory of domestic selection and Malthus' theory of

population.^3  Darwin worked these into a knowledge of a

process, too slow and {RTS2:22} complex to be perceived,

which had been going on for millions of years before him.

But he could not, at least if his theory is correct, have

produced the process he described, the intransitive object

of the knowledge he had produced: the mechanism of natural

selection.

 

         We can easily imagine a world similar to ours,

containing the same intransitive objects of scientific

knowledge, but without any science to produce knowledge of

them.  In such a world, which has occurred and may come

again, reality would be unspoken for and yet things would

not cease to act and interact in all kinds of ways.  In such

a world the causal laws that science has now, as a matter of

fact, discovered would presumably still prevail, and the

kinds of things that science has identified endure.  The

tides would still turn and metals conduct electricity in the

way that they do, without a Newton or a Drude to produce our

knowledge of them.  The Wiedemann-Franz law would continue

to hold although there would be no-one to formulate,

experimentally establish or deduce it.  Two atoms of

hydrogen would continue to combine with one atom of oxygen

and in favourable circumstances osmosis would continue to

occur.  In short, the intransitive objects of knowledge are

in general invariant to our knowledge of them: they are the

real things and structures, mechanisms and processes, events

and possibilities of the world; and for the most part they

are quite independent of us.  They are not unknowable,

because as a matter of fact quite a bit is known about them.

(Remember they were introduced as objects of scientific

knowledge.)  But neither are they in any way dependent upon

our knowledge, let alone perception, of them.  They are the

intransitive, science-independent, objects of scientific

discovery and investigation.

 

         If we can imagine a world of intransitive objects

without science, we cannot imagine a science without

transitive objects, i.e. without scientific or

pre-scientific antecedents.  That is, we cannot imagine the

production of knowledge save from, and by means of,

knowledge-like materials.  Knowledge depends upon

knowledge-like antecedents.  Harvey thought of blood

circulation in terms of an hydraulic model.  Spencer, less

successfully perhaps, used an organic metaphor to express

his idea of society.  W. Thomson (Lord Kelvin) declared in

1884 that it seemed to him that `the test of "do we

understand a particular {RTS2:23} topic in physics

[e.g. heat, magnetism]?" is "can we make a mechanical model

of it?".'^4 And as is well known this was the guiding maxim

of physical research until the gradual disintegration of the

Newtonian world-view in the first decades of this century.

Similarly economists sought explanations of phenomena which

would conform to the paradigm of a decision-making unit

maximizing an objective function with given resources until

marginalism became discredited in the 1930's.  No doubt at

the back of economists' minds during the period of the

paradigm's hegemony was the cosy picture of a housewife

doing her weekly shopping subject to a budget constraint;

just as Rutherford disarmingly confessed in 1934, long after

the paradigm was hopelessly out of date, to a predilection

for corpuscularian models of atoms and fundamental particles

as `little hard billiard balls, preferably red or black'.^5

Von Helmont's concept of an arche was the intellectual

ancestor of the concept of a bacterium, which furnished the

model for the concept of a virus.  The biochemical structure

of genes, which were initially introduced as the unknown

bearers of acquired characteristics, has been explored under

the metaphor of a linguistic code.  In this way social

products, antecedently established knowledges capable of

functioning as the transitive objects of new knowledges, are

used to explore the unknown (but knowable) intransitive

structure of the world.  Knowledge of B is produced by means

of knowledge of A, but both items of knowledge exist only in

thought.

 

         If we cannot imagine a science without transitive

objects, can we imagine a science without intransitive ones?

If the answer to this question is `no', then a philosophical

study of the intransitive objects of science becomes

possible.  The answer to the transcendental question `what

must the world be like for science to be possible?'

deserves the name of ontology.  And in showing that the

objects of science are intransitive (in this sense) and of a

certain kind, viz. structures not events, it is my intention

to furnish the new philosophy of science with an ontology.

The parallel question `what must science be like to give us

knowledge of intransitive objects (of this kind)?' is not a

petitio principii of the ontological question, because the

intelligibility of the {RTS2:24} scientific activities of

perception and experimentation already entails the

intransitivity of the objects to which, in the course of

these activities, access is obtained.  That is to say, the

philosophical position developed in this study does not

depend upon an arbitrary definition of science, but rather

upon the intelligibility of certain universally recognized,

if inadequately analysed, scientific activities.  In this

respect I am taking it to be the function of philosophy to

analyse concepts which are `already given' but `as

confused'.^6

 

         Any adequate philosophy of science must be capable

of sustaining and reconciling both aspects of science; that

is, of showing how science which is a transitive process,

dependent upon antecedent knowledge and the efficient

activity of men, has intransitive objects which depend upon

neither.  `That is, it must be capable of sustaining both

(1) the social character of science and (2) the independence

from science of the objects of scientific thought.  More

specifically, it must satisfy both:

 

 (1)' a criterion of the non-spontaneous production of

knowledge, viz. the production of knowledge from and by

means of knowledge (in the transitive dimension), and

 

 (2)' a criterion of structural and essential realism,

viz. the independent existence and activity of causal

structures and things (in the intransitive dimension).

 

For science, I will argue, is a social activity whose aim is

the production of the knowledge of the kinds and ways of

acting of independently existing and active things.

 

 

 ^1 See Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1.3.

 

 ^2 See J. R. Ravetz, Scientific Knowledge and its Social Problems, pp.

116-19.

 

 ^3 Cf. R. Harre, Philosophies of Science, pp. 176-7.

 

 ^4 W. Thomson, Notes of Lectures on Molecular Dynamics p. 132.

 

 ^5 See A. S. Eve, Rutherford.

 

 ^6 Cf. I. Kant, On the Distinctiveness of the Principles of

Natural Theology and Morals.

 

 

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