[Critical-Realism] CR systems theory: Emergent phenomena

[Fred Zaman <agent.redstone@xxxxxxxxx>]

  Louis,
   
  First two questions, before I respond to your post. Do you agree 
  (or not) that we each, as subjective beings that also are active 
  physical agents, can and do employ nature?s laws (physics, 
  chemistry, biology, etc.) as the instruments by which we--as 
  subjective beings?physically control the material world, to the 
  extent we are each able? And also answer please, if you know, 
  what this question has to do with emergence in ?open systems? 
  defined in terms of the above? Your answers to these questions 
  will guide my response to you concerning emergent phenomena in CR 
  ?systems theory.?
   
  Fred


Louis Irwin <louisirwin9@xxxxxxx> wrote:  Fred,

I would like to say in brief why I think your ideas not only have little to
do with CR, but moreover are wrong through and through.

Talk about open and closed systems does not by itself prevent one from being
pretty much a determinist of sorts, if all such talk means is that we are
conceived as vector products of opposing tendencies; and I get the
impression your views are very determinist at bottom. We need to make sense
of ourselves as rational and social subjects, and not simply as the result
of competing tendencies that fight it out in an open realm of physics. It
seems to me that you lack any genuine concept of emergence and in
consequence your copious talk about open vs. closed systems is vacuous.

In my opinion emergence can be best understood as the need for forms of
explanation that are inapplicable at lower levels (and irreducible to those
lower levels). For example, in explaining individual human behavior and
action one has to relate it to beliefs, desires, reasons, etc. in such a way
as to make the behavior intelligible, and not simply show (even if that were
possible) that it exemplifies those tendencies that constitute the laws of
physics (or chemistry, or biology). Without needing to assume any special
mentalistic ontology, some of the descriptions of what people do can be
explained only in terms of a repertoire of concepts - belief, desire, acting
for a reason, perceiving that something is in one's interest, perceiving
that something is the right thing to do, etc. - which cannot be
systematically translated into more basic, physical descriptions by which
they could be subsumed under the laws of physics (or chemistry, or biology).
[This idea was initiated in philosophy by Donald Davidson in the '70s and
has been much discussed since. "Emergence" seems to be RB's spin on it.]
Similar things apply to explanations of what happens in society; in fact,
the explanation of individual actions has to be closely tied to explanations
of the social. But again the explanations have to be seen as a type of
explanation that is not applicable at (nor reducible to) the lower levels,
and the repertoire of concepts deployed in such explanations cannot be
systematically translated into lower-level concepts.

Perhaps you are just trying to emulate a famous hoax. If so, then no one on
this list seems to be biting - except Tim Murphy, who can be very biting!
But if you are serious, then your ideas seem to lack merit, and you need to
grapple more with ideas - what would count in their favor, what against -
and not simply play with the terminology.

Louis Irwin


-----Original Message-----
From: critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Fred
Zaman
Sent: Sunday, June 24, 2007 11:59 PM
To: Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List
Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Breaking news:Copernican breakthrough in
thesocial sciences



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 

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