Re: [Critical-Realism] Critical-Realism Digest, Vol 32, Issue 129

[pohanlon03@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Hi

I'd like to say thanks for the summary Ruth and thanks for raising what I 
also take to be very interesting issues and questions Dave. I don't have 
anything to offer but my aagreement with Dave that these are important 
things to be addressed. All I can remember is that in PON Bhaskar 
distinguishes causal interdependency from existential intransitivity in 
order to establish the reality of concepts. So if artefacts are causally 
dependent upon human activity they would still be intransitive although 
relative to said activity, whereas the more fundamental structures and 
mechanisms enabling their production would perhaps be instransitive in an 
absolute sense.

thanks
Phil



On Jun 27 2007, critical-realism-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

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> Today's Topics:
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>    1. Re: One last review (Dave Elder-Vass)
>    2. Re: One last review (Ruth Groff)
> 
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Message: 1
> Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2007 21:31:23 -0000
> From: "Dave Elder-Vass" <d.eldervass@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] One last review
> To: "Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List"
> 	<critical-realism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
> 	reply-type=original
> 
> 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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> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 2
> Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2007 16:45:54 -0400
> From: "Ruth Groff" <RGroff1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] One last review
> To: "Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List"
> 	<critical-realism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Message-ID:
> 	<0E53E25A408CD847A76100C1D5D3479721D05FBE@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
> 
> Hi Dave,
> 
> Many thanks for this great post. I have some things to say, and I'm sure 
> that others will too, but I have to go take care of some cats. I'll see 
> if I can get on to my friends' computer. Otherwise, later.
> 
> One thing I'll say quick though is that I don't think that it is a 
> weakness, or limitation, of a book about natural science that it is a 
> book about natural science. Or maybe what I really mean, because that's 
> not what you are saying, particularly: I think that it is extremely 
> important to read this book precisely for what it is. And it's not a book 
> about social science. He wrote lots of books about that later. I don't 
> think that there is any need to be apologetic about this, just clear.
> 
> Of course, this doesn't get at the ontological questions you raise, at 
> least not directly.
> 
> Okay gotta run.
> 
> Warmly,
> Ruth
> 
> -----Original Message----- From: 
> critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx on behalf of Dave Elder-Vass 
> Sent: Wed 27-Jun-07 5:31 PM To: Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List 
> Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] One last review
>  
> 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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> End of Critical-Realism Digest, Vol 32, Issue 129
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-- 
Reality leaves a lot to the imagination. - John Lennon.


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