Re: [Critical-Realism] Dave's post

["Ruth Groff" <RGroff1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

Dave, you wrote:

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). 

What I think is that you have to read this distinction in context.  I don't think that his purpose here is to set out a metaphysical demarcation for its own sake.  He is talking about the practice of natural science.  That's the frame.  The question that structures the introduction of these categories isn't, then, "How shall I (we) parse the nature of reality?" or "Who's right?  Materialists or idealists or both?"  The question is more like "What is it that modern natural scientists are doing when they do experimental science?"  The distinction, I think, has to be seen as being - as it is in the text - an answer to that question.  To be sure, he later goes on to do all kinds of additional things: we get transitive and intransitive "dimensions" period, rather than "of science"; we get them mapped onto social science; we get the general metaphysical pronouncements that we are so hungry for.  Etc., etc.  But I don't think that reading those things back into this distinction is the way to go, myself. 

You wrote:
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?

I think he means, THERE, "existing theories, especially those that actually figure into the thinking of present-day natural scientists, i.e., the ones that they have to deal with in one way or another in their efforts to make headway in their theorizing."


You wrote:

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.

Again, I don't think that his aim there is to distinguish between "things that people make" and "things that people don't make" -- just to say that theories are things that we do make, and the underlying forces of nature are not things that we make.


You wrote:

This would presumably lead to the identification of the intransitive with the real-but-not-actual domain of transfactual mechanisms and powers.


Yes, I think something like that is right.  It is the underlying powers of physical entities that are the things that we don't make.  We can "make" events, in the sense that we can create artificial conditions under which sequences of event of interest to us will occur - that's what experiments are - but we don't thereby make the underlying powers that cause the sequence.  

But, and this gets to your next point, I would stress the "something like that" part, above.  This because I don't think that you can, in fact, get all of the categories and typologies of RTS to map onto each other.  It's not that seamless of a text.  I think that this is something that is really important to bear in mind in reading it.  


You write:
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.

Here I can only say that I don't think that the fact of perception tells us anything much about the ontological character of the objects of perception.  In saying this we can see that I am pre-Kantian in my thinking: I want to be able to talk philosophically about objects period, not only about objects-as-possible-objects-of-perception.  We also see that I'm not sold on RB's much later claims about the realist implications of "referential detachment," i.e. the fact the we use language to refer.  


You write:
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.

Yes.  But I think that it's fine to write books that are just about natural science.  I mean, why not criticize this book for not being a cook book?!  I'm teasing.  But you see what I mean.  I think the criticism comes because the main people who read RB are social theorists of one sort or another, rather than philosophers of natural science.  (Philosophers of natural science did, some of them, read RTS, and yuo sometimes see it cited in the literature, but RB didn't continue to publish in the area, or engage in those debates, so it became less relevant.) 

So that's my feeling about the transitive object of science versus the intransitive object of science: it's closer to a mole-hill than to a mountain.  The really radical ontological claim in this book is the claim, following on Harre, that nature has powers.

r.

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