Re: [Critical-Realism] transitive/intransitive, cr and philosophy, etc.

["Dave Taylor" <dave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all

>I'm sorry that I sound frustrated ... [Ruth]

I probably will too.  Tobin babbling on about a theoretical construct of a
Humean science as if it were an indubitably existing material entity and not
just a way of speaking about an energy transfer, and Ruth not seeing the
wood for the trees:-

(1) At least knowers HAVE to exist BEFORE the known, if (despite my
explicitly distinguishing differentiation from characterisation) she wants
go along with Tobin defining intransitives and transitives in terms of the
independence of the unknown from the known. (2) She is ignoring the fact
that I have done/am doing within CR what she is looking outside for -
unless, that is, she is actually looking for demonstrations of "serious
technicality" rather than insights disclosing uncomplicated (even if as yet
unfamiliar) keys to a post-Humean understanding. (3) Science (the meaning
being a usually-myopic generalisation) does not have an "object"; differing
scientists have "objectives" which are far from being even all of the same
type.  On what RB is aiming at Ruth is very helpful, but (4) if she accepts
the need for an ontology involving "dispositions to fall into natural
kinds", why is she not interested in my having derived one logically (using
tangible theory now in everyday use, without recourse to mathematical
muons), given its apparent origins in a Big Bang?  

Even more frustrating, having spent all morning on an earlier reply and then
been diverted into other business, I now find that that discussion has moved
on!

>I will apologize one last time if I sound strident.  I do, I think.  Pay it
no mind.  Please.

At least we have this in common, Ruth!

Gosh, I'm warm too after that!

Dave


-----Original Message-----
From: critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Ruth
Groff
Sent: 16 June 2007 19:23
To: Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List
Subject: [Critical-Realism] transitive/intransitive, cr and philosophy, etc.

Hi all,

1.  I think Tobin is right -- it's not just that temporality isn't key; it's
that it's besides this particular point.  Not all points; just this one.

2.  I will say again that the contemporary philosophers outside of cr who
take on, in a very serious, very technical way, the implicit ontology shared
by empiricism and post-structuralism are the people working in metaphysics
and philosophy of science who are writing about powers, disposition and
scientific essentialism.  That's who is doing it.  I'm sorry that I sound
frustrated; it's just that they really are the ones doing it, and I don't
think that anyone else really is.  Harre and Madden and Bhaskar in RTS did
it a little, but never went as far - because not being so narrowly focused.
But seriously, that's the follow-up literature to engage with.  

3. Meanwhile, back to what it is about the "intransitive object" of natural
science that makes it be different from the transitive object.  The
transitive object, again, is the accumulation of our best scientific
theories about the natural world.  Scientists, in the activity that is
science, do work on this object, as well as on the other object, the
"intransitive object."  

Now RB says that it is obvious that our best scientific theories are not
metaphysically identical to the natural world.  He may be wrong about this.
But I don't see that he gives a lot of direct argument for it, in RTS.  In
this book he is primarily concerned to provide an immamant critique of the
post-Humean account of scientific knowledge, especially the notion that laws
are grounded in the observation of regularity.  That's the target.  Not
subjective idealism, at least not per se, and Kant's transcendental idealism
only indirectly.

What he DOES give a quick, down-and-dirty and compelling argument for - IF
you are already on board with the self-understanding of modern natural
science - is what he says he will do it for: viz., why laws do not depend on
regularity and why the expectation of regularity cannot be what causality
is.

When you push on the above, you get into an ontology that requires, at a
minimum, dispositional properties, at a maximum essential dispositional
properties, on the basis of which things fall into natural kinds.  The
short-hand for this is to say that, contra the entire mainstream of modern
philosophy, from Descartes on, there are too such things as essences.  That
objects in the natural world have their own structures.

Whether we can know what these structures are, and whether the effort to do
so is or isn't what scientists do, and how we would know if we, or they,
were right -- these, as tantalizing as they are, are different questions.

Still, to say that the objects of the natural world have essential
structures of their own is about as radical as you can get, post-Descartes.
A few moderns along the way have done it.  But they haven't tended to attach
the position to materialism, let alone to a commitment to the epistemic
value of modern science.  However, pretty much all of the contemporary
philosophers who are developing this kind of ontology and the re-conceiving
of "laws" that it entails, do.  Hence the general title for the approach:
"scientific essentialism."  The early Bhaskar, along with Harre and Madden,
fit into this now-larger literature.

I've lost track of my numbering, but all of this is to say, in a kind of
round-about way, that although I am CLEARLY not someone who thinks that RB
is the only, or even the best, person to read on these issues, I do feel,
pretty strongly, that we should resist the temptation to get side-tracked
too much in our discussions.  RTS is a good book.  It's really worth reading
it for it's own, limited, questions I think.  And, though I know that I am
sounding like a broken record now - forgive me, please - for pursuing the
dispositional realism at its core, there are a number of very good
contemporary philoosphers doing this work, publishing in mainstream
philosophy journals.

I will apologize one last time if I sound strident.  I do, I think.  Pay it
no mind.  Please.

r.





 



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