Re: [Critical-Realism] Breaking news:Copernican breakthrough in the social sciences

[Fred Zaman <agent.redstone@xxxxxxxxx>]

  There is a fundamental unity to A Critical-Realist Theory of 
  America for those willing to pursue it. The transfactual 
  mechanics of open systems in this essay can be likened in its 
  theoretical development to an arch whose left support is 
  Althusserian Marxism (underground currents, aleatory materialism, 
  etc.) to include it?s elitist Machiavellian connections (elitist 
  conspiracy theory), whose right support is the Jamesonian Marxism 
  (class-based political unconscious) of American culture, and 
  whose keystone locking the arch?s left and right supports in 
  place is a Bhaskarian critical realism theoretically grounded in 
  Newtonian terms as indicated in the paper?s introduction and 
  section 1 given below.
   
  In this view, Marxism by itself fails to answer the needs of an 
  emancipatory program for humanity, as does the theorizing of 
  Althusser, Machiavelli, Jameson, and Bhaskar each taken alone. 
  What is needed is a broader theoretical perspective that shows in 
  just what way each of these and other theoreticians contribute to 
  a comprehensive theory of society in which humanity?s 
  emancipation from modernity?s capitalist noir can be achieved, 
  realistically and practically. This is what ?A Critical-Realist 
  Theory of America? is argued to point the way toward.
   
  -----------------------------------------------
   
  0.a What follows is a critical-realist theory of American 
  capitalism that social critics perhaps can employ as a guide to 
  political action in this 21st century. The article is very long, 
  but it provides a high-level Marxist (class-based) account of 
  capitalist hegemony in the United States that arguably answers 
  the question ?what next?? To which the answer given is: a 
  politically effective Marxism for social democracy in 21st century 
  America and elsewhere. The key to this effort, it will be argued, 
  is a systematic elaboration of Bhaskar?s philosophy of critical 
  realism. This essay, through its critical-realist theory of 
  American capitalism, explains--at a very high level of 
  conceptualization in terms of class struggle--the course of 
  American history circa 1650 to the present, and predictably 
  onward into the future.
   
  0.b The theoretical basis of this Bhaskarian elaboration is a 
  systems theory that in one bold stroke cuts through the Gordian 
  knot of the causal link between structure and agency, the 
  solution to which to this day has been beyond the reach of 
  definitive philosophical analysis. Nature itself provides the 
  solution, whose laws in this theory of critical-realism?s (CR) 
  open systems are the instruments by which agents physically 
  control the reality in which they exist. CR ?systems theory? thus 
  formulated provides for the first time a rational, naturalistic 
  explanation of the causal connection between structure and 
  agency. The ability of agents to employ the laws of nature as 
  instruments of control in the physical world, intentionally and 
  with purpose, is here held to be essential to any agency that 
  claims to be included in ?the category of the real.? For without 
  this ability, one can--as the natural sciences currently assume--
  only conform to the constraints imposed by structure according to 
  nature?s laws, blindly and wholly devoid of purpose. Lacking the 
  ability to employ nature?s laws as instruments of control, there 
  are no agents whatever in the physical world; because all there 
  are then are structures that constrain activity that is without 
  purpose, and the product of no agency whatsoever.
   
  0.c This essay?s critical-realist theory of American capitalism 
  exemplifies a new, high-level application of Newtonian 
  principles, which previously have been employed only in closed 
  systems where constant junctions prevail, to qualitatively 
  explain high-level phenomena in CR open systems (American 
  economics, politics, and culture) in which constant conjunctions 
  do not prevail; but where the tendencies thereof nevertheless 
  manifest themselves over the long term (some 400 years) through a 
  high-level ?transfactual mechanics? of nature?s laws qua 
  intransitive objects. The essay thus is fundamentally concerned 
  with establishing the necessity for an ontological distinction 
  between laws of causation and associated patterns of events in 
  American history, thereby clarifying the generative mechanisms 
  and structures involved in the historical development of American 
  society. And key in this effort is the noveau critical-realist 
  premise of this essay in which:
   
  Newton?s laws of motion, in the ?open systems? of critical 
  realism, form a ?transfactual mechanics? that in American history 
  was activated by the nation?s political unconscious.
   
  1. CR?s transfactual mechanics
   
  1a. The philosopher in Roy Bhaskar?s critical realism ,  is one 
  who observes what scientists are doing; and from this concludes, 
  obviously, that the world is such that the methods employed by 
  scientists tell us things about the world that are very important 
  to know. In critical realism the philosopher starts with the 
  success of the practices of modern science and explores what 
  these practices tell us about the world.  Reasoning of this kind, 
  concerning what the world must be like in order that science is 
  even possible, which has been called second-order or 
  transcendental reasoning, is the domain of the philosopher. The 
  philosopher?s objective here is to aid the scientist, by serving 
  as an ?underlaborer? that assists those who are scientists by 
  investigating the conditions that make the successes of science 
  possible.
   
  1b. Several results of the philosopher?s transcendental, second-
  order reasoning in critical realism will be central to the 
  present essay.  One, certainly, is that the world is such that 
  scientists are able to employ, de facto as instruments of control 
  in their research and in the conduct of their daily lives, laws 
  of nature that for all intents and purposes are objective and 
  exist independent of the scientist?s rational knowledge of such. 
  Another result of this kind of reasoning is that the ability of 
  humans to make a difference, as they employ nature?s laws as 
  instruments of control in their actions, is not self-deception 
  but real. And yet a third result of transcendental reasoning in 
  the philosophy of critical realism is knowledge that nature?s 
  laws, which constitute its causal powers, determine the ability 
  of things to act; of which humans are not the only beings to act 
  thusly, through the causal powers of nature?s laws employed as 
  instruments of control. So that, in this interpretation, the 
  causality of every law of nature is ultimately transfactual in 
  character. That is, it may or may not be active depending on the 
  causal powers of nature--or society--calling for its activation.
   
  1c. Finally, a fourth aspect of critical realism, in the social 
  sciences, is that second-order arguments are needed for an 
  objective understanding of society. , ,  The individual and 
  society, both existing independently, are related like two 
  animals in symbiosis.  Individuals as members of society are in 
  essence the organs of the much larger social body, which as a 
  whole is a primal ?social animal? that can act but does not 
  possess consciousness. The basic question that thus arises in the 
  sociology of critical realism is: how does the primitive animal 
  that society in effect constitutes employ nature?s laws as 
  instruments of control, unconsciously. Individuals presently have 
  little control over the society in which they live. Perhaps this 
  would change if there was a better understanding of just how 
  society as a whole, functioning in essence as a sociopolitical 
  primate, unconsciously employs nature?s laws as instruments of 
  control.
  1d. It thus seems that something fundamental is missing still in 
  Bhaskar?s critical realism (CR); that there is yet an unstated 
  principle, on which CR fundamentally rests, that concerns the 
  causal relationship between the structure of society and the 
  agency of individuals. As Margaret Archer has put it, there are 
  two sets of causal powers: objective structures and subjective 
  projects, one inanimate and the other animate, which possess 
  different sets of emergent properties and powers.  How are these 
  to be reconciled and harmonized? In what way can CR explain the 
  causal interaction of objective structures and subjective 
  projects? The ?first principle? that here is assumed to 
  accomplish this is that the laws of physics, chemistry, biology, 
  etc?, by which objective structures constrain subjective agents, 
  constitute as well the instruments through which agents carry out 
  their projects. Nature?s laws here, which determine the objective 
  structures that place constraints on the subjective projects of 
  agents, also are the instruments through which these agents carry 
  out their projects.
   
  1e. This noveau ?first principle? of CR allows a system-theoretic 
  approach spelled out in terms of CR closed and open systems. 
  Closed systems in CR thus grounded are systems in which the 
  effects of human agency on the system dynamics are determined at 
  the outset by a predetermined system structure and initial and 
  boundary conditions specified. These establish the pre-conditions 
  of scientific analysis in closed systems, so that nature?s laws 
  then determine the system behavior independent of the further 
  actions of human agents. CR open systems, on the other hand, are 
  then systems in which the voluntary actions of human agents--
  whether conscious or unconscious--are integral to the system 
  dynamics, by virtue of their purposeful employment of nature?s 
  laws as the instruments of subjectively-informed guidance and 
  control. The essential difference then, between systems in CR 
  that are open and closed, is whether or not--by virtue of their 
  employment (or not) of nature?s laws as instruments of 
  subjectively-informed guidance and control--human agents are 
  included in the system dynamics. The subjective dynamics of CR 
  open systems is here objectified through a ?transfactual 
  mechanics? of their politically unconscious generative mechanisms 
  and structures.
   
  1f. In the open systems of CR in this essay, the transfactual 
  mechanics of their generative mechanisms, in its Newtonian form 
  as exemplified in the historiography of American capitalism in 
  Figure 1, can be defined as follows:
   
  1. Inertia of the political unconscious: In the absence of a 
  motive force for change, a generative mechanism is either 
  motionless, in the space of its political unconscious, or moves 
  uniformly along a straight line in the same. The inertial forces 
  of the generative mechanism tending to maintain its current state 
  of motion include those commonly characterized as the forces of 
  ?political correctness.?
   
  2. Motive forces of the political unconscious: A motive force 
  changes that state of motion of a generative mechanism tending to 
  be maintained by inertial forces that include those of ?political 
  correctness.? The change induced is in the direction of the 
  force: in direct proportion to the magnitude of the force and in 
  inverse proportion to the mass of the generative mechanism?s 
  political unconscious. In its mathematical representation the 
  force is F = ma, or more generally F = d(mv)/dt if the mass of 
  the political unconscious varies.
   
  3. Action-reaction forces of the political unconscious: The 
  motive force experienced by the political unconscious of 
  generative mechanism A is experienced by the political 
  unconscious of generative mechanism B as an equivalent but 
  opposed force pointing in the opposite direction, and vice-versa. 
  In it mathematical representation this is FA = - FB.
  It is a basic premise of this ?transfactual mechanics? of open 
  systems that the social function or functions of every group is 
  determined by the political unconscious of one or more generative 
  mechanisms that conform to the above mechanics. Here, every 
  social group is political at bottom; no matter whether discourse 
  at the surface is about things conventionally labeled 
  ?political,? ?economic,? ?cultural,? or whatever. The generative 
  mechanisms and structures elaborated in this essay, as a way of 
  explaining the transfactual mechanics of open systems, are those 
  of a triad of classes considered to be the ?generative 
  mechanisms? of American capitalism.
   
  1g. The basic ideas of CR apply more or less directly to this 
  transfactual mechanics of open systems. That is, they seem to 
  carry over to this systems-theoretic account of CR with little or 
  no modification. The primary difference perhaps is the absence of 
  explicit references in CR concerning the employment of nature?s 
  laws (nature?s most basic intransitive objects), specifically as 
  instruments of both personal and societal control, guidance, and 
  knowledge production. In this transfactual mechanics, for 
  example, paralleling CR philosophy, a key assumption--in order 
  for experimental activity to be rendered intelligible--is ?that 
  natural mechanisms endure and act outside the conditions that 
  enable us to identify them[, so] that the applicability of known 
  laws in open systems, i.e. in systems where no constant 
  conjunctions of events prevail, can be sustained. The corollary 
  that a constant conjunction of events cannot be necessary for the 
  assumption of the efficacy of a law is true for this transfactual 
  mechanics as well.
   
  1h. The weakness of theorizing in the natural sciences is that 
  nature?s laws are tied to closed systems, viz. systems where a 
  constant conjunction of events occurs.  The consequence of this 
  is that neither the experimental establishment nor the practical 
  application of our knowledge thus garnered can be sustained in 
  open systems.  So that once we allow for open systems, then laws 
  are universal only if they can be interpreted in a non-empirical 
  (trans-factual) way, i.e. as designating the activity of 
  generative mechanisms and structures independently of any 
  particular sequence or pattern of events.  The transfactual 
  mechanics of this essay does this; it provides an ontological 
  basis for a concept of natural necessity in open systems that 
  exists independent of men or human activity.
   
  1i. In this transfactual mechanics of open systems, agents carry 
  out their subjective projects in the material world through laws 
  of nature they actively engage as instruments of control--which 
  projects nature nevertheless does constrain structurally through 
  the very same laws. The physical sciences, through the ?first-
  order reasoning? they employ in their study of the structural 
  constraints imposed by nature?s laws, methodologically omit the 
  subjective, transcendent I and We. It now may be time, however, 
  to bring subjective being back into science, through the second-
  order reasoning of CR systems theory in which subjective agents 
  actively employ these same laws as instruments of control, 
  intentionally and with full purpose. ?Transcendent? here simply 
  refers to agents that, although constrained in what they do by 
  nature?s laws, nevertheless stand above and exist independent of 
  those laws in the sense that they actively employ the very same 
  laws to successfully conclude their projects. 
   
  1j. Nature?s forces and the laws that govern their operation, 
  those that the physical sciences have discovered, objectively 
  constrain the subjective projects agents seek to accomplish in 
  the world. According to the above principle, however, those same 
  agents at the same time employ, actively as instruments for 
  realizing projects both conscious and unconscious, the very same 
  laws by which they are materially constrained. Nature?s forces 
  and laws are precisely the means by which agents actively employ, 
  in reaction against the constraints imposed by structure 
  according to nature?s laws, to accomplish their subjective 
  projects. Physicists, chemists, and biologists are exemplars of 
  this phenomenon, who employ nature?s laws in science projects for 
  the purpose of furthering knowledge of the same. Engineers 
  similarly do this in the furtherance of technological 
  development.
   
  1k. This principle can be clarified at an elementary level by 
  examples from daily activity. For example, holding an object in 
  hand, let?s say a billiard ball, the transcendent I of critical 
  realism can employ the law of gravity by simply letting the ball 
  fall to the ground, which in this hypothetical case is the 
  intended objective. By first holding the ball in hand, however, 
  the transcendent I of CR also employ nature?s laws as well, as 
  these are manifested physiologically in the act of holding the 
  ball. Along every link in the physiological chain linking the 
  transcendent I we each are, to whatever objective we intend, 
  nature?s laws are instruments employed for fulfilling the 
  intended purpose; which in the present hypothetical example is 
  simply the holding, and then letting go, of the ball so that it 
  falls to the ground under the force of gravity. Obviously, 
  countless examples of this can be entertained. The 
  instrumentality of natural law thereby demonstrated with regard 
  to our conscious efforts, however, as indicated in the 
  transfactual mechanics of open systems just elaborated, clearly 
  extends to the subterranean realm of the unconscious as well.
   
  1l. According to this first principle, agents as we know them--
  emerging out of the evolutionary processes of life--are not only 
  constrained in their subjective projects by nature?s material 
  forces and the laws thereof; they also at the same time employ 
  the same as instruments of control--instruments that in truth are 
  the only means of one?s subjective control of the physical. They 
  do this not only consciously in direct physical control, but 
  also--it is argued in the transfactual mechanics of open systems-
  -indirectly through evolved, transfactual homologues of nature?s 
  laws, by which a transcendent coordinating ?unconscious? sustains 
  supporting material processes both internal and external to the 
  body (that material entity which is host to the unconscious).
   
  1m. CR thus grounded, when further considered with regard to the 
  social order of collectives, applies to society?s economic, 
  political, and cultural development. Society here is dominated by 
  unconsciously evolved, transfactual homologues of the forces and 
  laws of physical systems--which function as the second-order 
  instruments of an unconscious that, unknown to the individual 
  consciousness (i.e. secretively and conspiratorially), controls a 
  society?s overall development. These higher-level societal forces 
  are considered to have historically evolved out of nature?s 
  lower-level forces and laws, in such a way that they may remain 
  mathematically similar--or perhaps in some abstract way even 
  formally identical--to the lower-level forces and laws of nature 
  discovered through the first-order reasoning of the natural 
  sciences.
   
  1n. The upshot of CR systems theory thus grounded is that 
  applications--to ethical naturalist theory, social morphogenesis, 
  ontological realism, process metaphysics, and the analysis of 
  strategic social change to give a few examples--then can be 
  framed through the second-order reasoning of the social sciences, 
  in ways that mediate the natural and social sciences causally in 
  both theory and practice--perhaps the prime objective of CR 
  research. I develop in this essay a theory about a class-based, 
  Jamesonian political unconscious in American history, in the 
  terms of a systems theory of the political unconscious here 
  called the ?Transfactual Mechanics of Open Systems? (TMOS). This 
  essay is a high-level development and application of TMOS to 
  American society, on a scale of broad historical sweep in which 
  high-level generative mechanisms and structures in economics, 
  politics, and culture have created subterranean fissures in the 
  nation?s political unconscious that have been the source of an 
  always denied, but nevertheless very real, class struggle in 
  American history.
   
  Fred
   
    Roy Bhaskar, A Realist Theory of Science, second ed. (New York and London: 
  Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1978).
    Margaret S. Archer, Tony Lawson, Andrew Collier, eds. Critical Realism: Essential 
  Readings (London: Taylor & Francis,1998).
    Roy Bhaskar, Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation. Verso. 1986.
    Hans G. Ehrbar, Marxism and Critical Realism (Seminar Presentation at University of 
  Utah, 1998) http://www.econ.utah.edu/~ehrbar/index.htm
    Roy Bhaskar, The Possibility of Naturalism: A Philosophical Critique of Contemporary 
  Human Sciences, second ed. (New York and London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989).
    Roy Bhaskar, Andred Collier (ed.) Possibility of Naturalism: A Philosophical Critique of 
  the Contemporary Human Sciences (London: Taylor & Francis, 1999).
    Andrew Sayer, Realism and Social Science (Thousand Oaks, CA; London: Sage, 
  2000).
    Margaret S. Archer. Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach (Cambridge: 
  Cambridge University Press, 1995).
    Margaret S. Archer, Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation  (Cambridge, 
  Cambridge University Press, 2003).
    The transcendent nature of being in the science of critical realism thus founded can be 
  viewed as affirming the religious-spiritual viewpoint of human existence, but this issue 
  nevertheless remains open in the theory of this essay.
   
   
   
   


Fred Zaman <agent.redstone@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:  Mervyn,

Thank you very much. I am very appreciative of the value you see in my work. I am able to respond to Yahoo mail only at home evenings and weekends, however. The email at my work blocks Yahoo mail. I can read the archives at work but cannot respond there (and should not). I am preparing a longer response that I will post later today or tomorrow.

Best regards,

Fred



Mervyn Hartwig wrote:
Hi all,

I have now had the opportunity to read the full text of Fred Zaman's 'A Critical-Realist Theory of America' and have no hesitation in announcing that I have changed my mind about it as completely as Fred changed his when he converted from postmodernism to critical realism. It puts forward a comprehensive Marxist critical realist analysis of the course of US history, underpinned by a qualitatively new CR systems-theoretical approach to the study of the sociosphere, which absents the absence in our consciousness of class struggle and a capitalist conspiracy at the level of real transfactual mechanics which has dominated America since the mid-seventeenth century, thus serving as the basis of a new and truly radical and speedy vanguard's way forward to a 'new American Revolution'.

The theory is unquestionably itself a revolutionary break-through. Fred himself has hailed it as a Copernican Revolution in the social sciences, but this is far too modest. Having effectively deconstructed Newtonian physics in his postmodernist phase (itself a truly Copernican achievement), Fred now reconstructs it as the basis of an entirely new philosophy, social theory and theory of geo-history. Only a Newton, Marx, Freud and Einstein rolled up into one could carry off such an achievement. Throw away your Bhaskar and read Zaman.

On the basis of this stunning performance we can confidently expect the meteoric rise of our man Nostromo (deep entrist) through the ranks of the United States Air Force. Critical realism will then be truly in command of the intellectual high ground. Yea!

Mervyn 
_______________________________________________
Critical-Realism mailing list
Critical-Realism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism



---------------------------------
Choose the right car based on your needs. Check out Yahoo! Autos new Car Finder tool.
_______________________________________________
Critical-Realism mailing list
Critical-Realism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism


 
---------------------------------
Bored stiff? Loosen up...
Download and play hundreds of games for free on Yahoo! Games.
_______________________________________________
Critical-Realism mailing list
Critical-Realism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism