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

["Dave Elder-Vass" <d.eldervass@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I wonder if too much weight is being placed here (by which I mean in this 
whole thread, not in Dave T's post specifically) on the 
transitive/intransitive distinction. Is it perhaps a pragmatic, 
context-sensitive distinction that is useful in organising our thinking 
about the scientific process rather than a fundamental ontological 
distinction?

Dave E-V


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dave Taylor" <dave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "'Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List'" 
<critical-realism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: 16 June 2007 21:20
Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] transitive/intransitive, cr and 
philosophy,etc.


> 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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