Re: [Critical-Realism] One last review

["Mervyn Hartwig" <mh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Dave, Ruth, Brian

I agree with Ruth that it's important to try to understand RTS in its own 
terms and context. But I don't think we should stop there. We have a 
dialectical thinker here, hence a developmental process leading from 
scientific realism to critical naturalism to explanatory critiques to DCR. 
This process too is a whole, the integrity of which shouldn't be violated. 
The earlier phases or moments can shed light on the later ones, which are 
implicit in the earlier ones, and the later ones can shed light 
retrospectively on the earlier ones.

Thus by thinking through the implications of what RB is saying in RTS Dave 
E-V arrives at the conclusion that logically the TD must embrace everything 
affected by human activity, including nature insofar as it is so affected.

This is of course precisely the position RB takes in DPF: the TD must 
logically be extended to include 'the whole material and cultural 
infra-/intra-/superstructure of society' (d: 218).

The later position suggests that for RB the TD is everything *currently 
being affected* by human activity (praxis). This is where we draw the 
line -- the moment between the past and the future -- because everything in 
the past is existentially intransitive.

The ID is then everything that cannot be so affected, and in particular, in 
science, the fundamental laws of nature (the proper object of science at the 
level of the real, as Ruth correctly emphasises). But it also includes 
theories etc in their existentially intransitive aspect. We can transform a 
theory into another one in the TD, but nothing will now alter the way the 
theory was when we transformed it -- it is fully determined and so 
intransitive. It thus has two dimensions, in one of which it has become and 
in the other of which it is becoming. This conclusion is necessary inter 
alia because otherwise the crucial distinction between *existential 
intransitivity* (what is fully determined, in the past) and *causal 
interdependence* in the sociosphere doesn't make sense.

On this interpretation the TD of science in RTS in its broadest sense is 
everything currently being affected by scientific praxis - the theories etc 
scientists are working with, the material context, the wider society, etc. 
In the later works (since transcendental argumentation now proceeds from 
human praxis as such, not just scientific), and by implication in RTS, it is 
everything currently being affected by human praxis in general.

However, this does not entail that the TD/ID distinction is either just a 
pragmatic distinction or a gap or divide.

The TD and ID are precisely real *dimensions* of the world we inhabit (RB 
chooses his words carefully), the former constituted by human praxis, the 
latter by the relative or absolute independence of the world from human 
praxis.

Thus the thawing ice caps are transitive insofar as human praxis is 
currently affecting them. But they are existentially intransitive insofar as 
what thawing there has been is fully determined and causally intransitive 
(or relatively so) in that the causal processes that have been entrained are 
extremely difficult to reverse, and of course the fundamental laws of nature 
which govern the process are unalterable by us (they're absolutely causally 
intransitive).

Although they overlap, the TD/ID distinction is thus by no means the same as 
the distinction between the domains of the empirical/actual and the real.

When construed in this way, I don't see a 'lack of clarity' in the RTS 
account. When RB speaks of 'things that are not produced by men at all' he 
is speaking of but one aspect of the ID of science, albeit the most 
fundamental one. So it doesn't follow that objects of knowledge that are 
produced by people are all exclusively transitive -- everything (also) has 
an existentially intransitive dimension in relation to human praxis.

Mervyn



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dave Elder-Vass" <d.eldervass@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List" 
<critical-realism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, June 27, 2007 10:31 PM
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
>


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