Re: [Critical-Realism] One last review

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

Thank you Ruth for an admirably clear exposition of the key points. I 
realise this was done in the spirit of helping us to move on, but I'm afraid 
your post has prompted me to think a bit more about the 
transitive/intransitive issue, and in particular about the lack of clarity 
in Bhaskar's own account of it, which for me leaves a number of issues 
unresolved.

Early in the section you cite, RB identifies the intransitive objects of 
knowledge as "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". Now it is clear from the context that he intends 'intransitive 
objects of knowledge' to include more than just these examples, and it would 
seem that he is identifying the intransitive as things (I use the word 
loosely) that do not "depend upon human activity".

The implication would seem to be that objects of knowledge that DO depend on 
human activity are transitive (if this is indeed the case, it would seem to 
contradict the claim in a recent post that the transitive is a subset of the 
intransitive). But transitive objects are immediately connected up to "the 
first side of knowledge", which seems to refer to "knowledge which is a 
social product". The most obvious reading of this is that "transitive 
objects of knowledge" refers to knowledge itself, when it becomes an object 
of further knowledge. But 'knowledge' is itself an ontologically vague term, 
so it would be helpful if Bhaskar was a little clearer about what he means 
by it here. Does he mean knowledge as it exists in the heads of human 
individuals? Or in books? Or in some sort of intersubjective social sense?

However we read 'knowledge', these two understandings of the transitive are 
DIFFERENT. Knowledge does indeed depend on human activity, but so do lots of 
other things, and the meaning of 'transitive' depends critically upon which 
of these other things are to be included. I would say, for example, that all 
social structures, and indeed people themselves, "depend upon human 
activity", as well as knowledge itself. But one could also argue that all 
technological artefacts (e.g. "armchairs and books") depend upon human 
activity (though now we are referring to human activity in the past and not 
in the present) for their existence, and indeed all features of the natural 
world that have been affected by people, e.g. countryside altered by 
agriculture. Where is the line to be drawn? I don't see an answer to this 
question in the source, though perhaps others have a clearer view.

A further question that occurs to me is whether RB intends to exclude from 
the intransitive only those objects that are ACTUALLY produced by people, or 
instead the more radical move of excluding those that COULD NOT be produced 
them. If he intends the former, one interesting implication would be that 
some transitive objects could be type-identical to some intransitive 
objects - e.g. manufactured nature-identical chemicals. Transitivity in this 
case would be a historically contingent rather than an ontological property, 
and it seems unlikely that this is what RB intends. But in principle, just 
about any actual entity or event could eventually be produced (at least in 
part) by people (if they ever become sufficiently technologically capable), 
and so under the latter option ALL actual entities and events disappear from 
the realm of the intransitive. This would presumably lead to the 
identification of the intransitive with the real-but-not-actual domain of 
transfactual mechanisms and powers.

This interpretation is not in tune with the way I have understood the 
transitive/intransitive distinction in the past, or with the way that I 
believe most critical realists understand it, though I may be wrong about 
this too, but it is arguably consistent with one of the uses that RB goes on 
to make of the distinction, in developing the main argument of RTS. This 
interpretation is supported by the examples used here by RB ("the specific 
gravity of mercury, the process of electrolysis, the mechanism of light 
propagation"). But if this is what he intends, why develop two sets of 
neologisms (transitive/intransitive and real/actual) that refer to the same 
distinction?

Further arguments that Ruth cites don't clarify the picture much. At one 
point, transitive objects seem to be identified with "knowledge-like 
materials", though it is not clear either (a) what this means; or (b) 
whether this is intended to restrict the definition of transitive objects to 
such materials. And later we have "scientific activities of perception and 
experimentation already entails the intransitivity of the objects to which, 
in the course of these activities, access is obtained". But perception gives 
us access to the actual in general, including many things that might seem to 
be transitive under anything but the very narrowest readings of 
'transitive'. But if perception really does entail intransitivity of the 
objects of perception, this would seem to contradict the assertion that 
intransitive objects do not depend on human activity, since things like 
people and books can be perceived.

Now it occurs to me that this vagueness of these categories might be 
connected to RB's orientation in this work to the 'hard' sciences of physics 
and chemistry (an orientation that was criticised by Ted Benton in his 
comments on 'The Possibility of Naturalism'). In considering these, it is 
perhaps tempting to see science as an interaction between knowledge and 
natural objects of that knowledge, which is surely the relationship that is 
being pointed to by the transitive/intransitive distinction. But if we 
extend our thinking to accommodate the social world (and to be frank, even 
an analysis of the social process of science itself demands this), then a 
variety of other categories appear, including social structures and 
technological artefacts, that seem only ambiguously addressed by this 
distinction.

This, incidentally, is why I asked in my very brief earlier post 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?"

To summarise, it seems to me that there are a whole series of equally 
plausible, and utterly inconsistent, readings of this distinction. In the 
first reading, the transitive consists only of knowledge in people's heads 
and the intransitive of everything else. In the second, the transitive 
consists of all actual entities and events, and the intransitive only of 
those real-but-not-actual mechanisms and powers that RTS is all about. 
Further options would draw a line somewhere between these two on the basis 
that there are some actual things that "depend on human activity" and others 
that do not, and there are several such options because there is more than 
one way to read such dependence.

Can anyone cast some light in this dark corner?

Dave E-V

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ruth Groff" <RGroff1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List" 
<critical-realism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: 27 June 2007 14:20
Subject: [Critical-Realism] One last review


Hi all,

I'm pleased to move on -- and thanks to Brian for the summary of the next 
section.  I just found myself wanting to review the first section one last 
time, to make sure, now that we've talked about it, that we are relatively 
clear on the main points.  Apologies if it's over-kill.

RB writes:

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 [TO RETURN TO THE FIRST "SIDE" OF 
KNOWLEDGE]
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.


Ruth:  Okay, so RB has set out here very clearly what each of these terms 
means here.  These definitions, I would suggest, are the ones that we should 
adopt for the purposes of reading this text for the first time.  I'm not 
saying that they are good terms, or even that RB's definitions here are the 
best, only that these terms, defined in this way, are given in the very 
first paragraph of the book.

RB:

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.

Ruth:  So this is a statement of the position called "scientific realism." 
Scientific realists are realists specifically about the objects that figure 
in scientific theories.  It's a good term to know, as it helps make 
important distinctions.


RB:

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.

Ruth: So the production of scientific knowledge is not well-conceived as 
merely an encounter with the intransitive object.  It is also, irreducibly, 
the transformation of exisiting ideas.

RB:

Knowledge of B is produced by means of knowledge of A, but both items of 
knowledge exist only in thought.

Ruth:
This interesting phrase contains two different claims.  Both, in my view, 
may be usefully compared with Althusser, as I can't imagine that he is not 
the implicit figure in the background in this passage.


RB:

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.

Ruth: By "the new philosophy of science" I read RB as reference a loose 
collection of anti-positivist thinkers, including but limited to Kuhn, who 
had gained significant philosophical headway by 1975, but who had primarily 
attacked positivism for its flawed epistemology rather than for its flawed 
ontology.

Note that RB is stipulating that it is not just that he is going to argue 
for scientific realism, but for an ontology that is structures-based rather 
than events-based.  This is crucial in setting cr and other forms of 
scientific essentialism and dispositional realism apart from scientific 
realism as a general position vis-a-vis the real existence of the objects 
that figure in scientific theories.

RB:
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.

Ruth: Here he is anticipating an objection to the analysis that he hasn't 
yet given.  He is saying that in asking "What must the world be like for 
science to be possible?" he is not asking what it must be like for specific 
theories to be true, but rather - as we'll see - for experiements to do and 
be what "we" believe them to do and be.


RB:

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.


Ruth:  One last time, note again not just the "independently existing" but 
the "active."  The latter is far more philosophically controversial, for 
moderns, than is the former.



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