Re: [Critical-Realism] How can a de-ont exist or an absence bepresent?

[Howard Engelskirchen <howarde@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Mervyn,

I had already noticed that the water molecule is 
composed of gaps between its constituent elements, but thanks anyway.

1.      One way to talk about this, simpler, 
really, is to say that the things of the world 
are composites of matter and form.  As I 
suggested in my response to Nick, arrangements of 
matter and its gaps can vary enormously with the 
result that the same constituents can have very 
different causal effects.  The water molecule 
differently arranged causes steam or ice.

2.      Non being is without causal 
structure.  Because it lacks causal structure it 
has no causal potency, force, efficacy, 
consequence or "impact";  no amount of rhetorical 
shock and awe can obscure that.

3.      Ruth is absolutely right to call 
attention to the terrific utility of our ability 
to linguistically redescribe the world, including 
our ability to imagine things that aren't 
there.  Our success as a species is an important 
consequence of our ability to imagine a future 
(absent) different from the present.

4.      But it is important not to confuse 
linguistic redescription with the way the world 
is.  Any actual transformation of the present 
into the future requires the efficacious 
operation of ordinary causal mechanisms.  See 
point 2.  Meanings are causal, but they are so 
only in virtue of engaging ordinary causal 
mechanisms.  My idea that it would be nice to have a breeze opens no windows.

best,

howard




At 10:01 AM 12/5/2007, you wrote:
>Hi Howard
>
> > tell me where to look and what to look for
>
>Try starting in the US of A with two of the most momentous absences and
>absentings in recent world history: the holes in the New Orleans levees and
>in the cityscape at Ground Zero. You want to say they don't/didn't have real
>causal powers?
>
>The main problem seems to be that you're thinking in a monovalent rather
>than a polyvalent way about being in general - you're tacitly assuming that
>it's all pure positivity ("material"). So if "something material is shot
>through with with positivity" this must somehow preclude its being shot
>through with negativity. What about the level-specific gaps or voids in it,
>and the deep structure that is absent from the level of the actual?
>
>In like manner, you're (presumably, as a CR) thinking in terms of real
>emergence (e.g. of the Twin Towers), but not of real dis-emergence. The Twin
>Towers were a complex, emergent reality. They're now absent, absented, gone.
>The positive bits and pieces (together with the multitudinous gaps and voids
>in the original complex) doubtless still exist somewhere somehow, but that
>is rather different from the emergent reality that was, and is now not
>(non-existent). This real non-being causally both impacts on people in
>multifarious ways and will (other things being equal) help to enable new
>emergent structures (shot through with voids).
>
>This is not to say that something can come out of just nothing (any more
>than out of just something, in the sense of pure positivity). In the
>polyvalent world we know, there's no such thing as "pure negativity" (any
>more than "pure positivity"), nor probably was there before it came to
>exist. It's true that, if the question of the coming to be and ceasing to
>exist of any world containing presence is posed in the context of current
>cosmological theory, it could only be from absence to absence. But this does
>not entail that there was ever absolutely nothing: there may be degrees and
>modes of absence we do not fully comprehend. We need to take the
>implications of modern science seriously in this area, not ignore them.
>
>But you want to say that the causal impact in the example I give is all to
>do with the states of mind of those present. What is it then that impacts on
>these minds? Not the presence of the Towers (or of Pierre) but it's absence.
>You can see it (along with many other gaps and non-gaps). Ah, but we
>remember the presence. What then is a memory if not of something past, now
>gone - absent?
>
>Another problematic thing you're doing is forgetting that people are
>causally co-responsible for events in the transitive dimension. So your
>failure to turn the heating on (inaction) has nothing to do with causing the
>water in the pipes of your heating system to freeze. What can one say, this
>is absurd, like the metaphysics of pure presence in general (which is in
>fact pure superstition). The causal mechanisms in the H2O could not have had
>a freezing effect if they'd been offset by heat in the system. Human action
>is crucial in heating systems, as in experiments, and if you leave it out
>you've got problems!
>
>But you're real problem with the heating is that you think of causal
>mechanisms in a purely positive way. But it's impossible to give an account
>of mechanisms in purely positive terms. Without gaps between the molecules
>nothing could happen and analytically a mechanism is a power to negate an
>existing state of affairs.
>
>You seem to think that you can't be a "materialist" unless you cling to a
>conception of a purely positive world. But this is not so. Ideas and
>relations are not in themselves "matter", and the materialist analysis of eg
>Marx fully allows their causal force, besides of course having negativity
>and negating at its very centre. Your own materialism seems, in the end,
>very reductive and monist - everything must in the final analysis come back
>to just matter, which is all positivity.
>
>Is your actual death present or absent? Is it a real possibility? Are social
>worlds conducive to generalised free flourishing real possibilities? Are
>they actually present? Do you have a shadow? Is there night as well as day?
>
>Mervyn
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>[mailto:critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Howard
>Engelskirchen
>Sent: 05 December 2007 05:14
>To: Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List
>Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] How can a de-ont exist or an absence
>bepresent?
>
>Hi Mervyn,
>
>It would help me a lot if you could explain this:
>
><An 'absence of causal structure and efficacy' is itself causal as the
>examples imply.>
>
>What I want to know is what it is that makes the
>absence of causal structure and efficacy itself
>causal.  It cannot be something material because
>that would be shot through with positivity.  Is
>there a substance new to science and philosophy
>being suggested here?  If I ask why water freezes
>I can trace it to the particular structure of the
>water molecule.  What do I trace the causal force
>of the absence of causal structure and efficacy to?
>
>Of course, Dave has explained -- and Dave, far
>from disagreeing, I think you make my point --
>what accounts for the causal impact of Pierre's
>absence from the cafe; it's the states of mind of those present in the cafe.
>
>Incidentally what would be the rigorous
>distinction (ontological?) I need to make between
>'efficacy' and 'impact' insofar as efficacy can
>be absent and still have an impact.
>
>Thanks, Nick for the response.  Mostly I have
>nothing to add to what Louis said.  The
>possibility that water might freeze, of course,
>depends on the way hydrogen and oxygen are joined
>in a water molecule, so possibilities do not
>raise for me the question I pose to Mervyn
>above.  Suppose I forget to turn on the heat when
>I leave the house for a weekend and the pipes
>freeze.  Then they freeze because of the
>structure of the water molecule, not because of
>what I forgot to do.  Suppose I intervene in
>nature, e.g. put litmus paper in acid.  It turns
>red because of identifiable processes.  Suppose I
>grab the wrong piece of paper.  It doesn't not
>turn red because of absence.   So I am interested in your point:
>
><"One of Roy's important insights is that there
>is no positive description of any state of
>affairs which necessarily entails the precise
>absence we are referring to when we speak of a
>determinate absence. We cannot describe inaction
>by refering solely to actions actually undertaken.">
>
>I suspect that attention to the negative here is
>profoundly important, but I also don't want to
>get seduced away into explanations that depend on
>immaterial structures that can only be appealed
>to but never traced.  If determinate absence
>contributes a causal force to what happens in the
>world, then tell me where to look and what to
>look for.  What do I need to investigate besides
>the states of mind of those present in the cafe
>to account for deeply consequential impact of
>Pierre's absence.  To tell me the form of what
>persists is altered by absence won't do because
>then I am dealing precisely with the form of what persists.
>
>best,
>
>howard
>
>
>
>
>At 06:16 PM 12/4/2007, you wrote:
> >Louis
> >
> >An 'absence of causal structure and efficacy' is itself causal as the
> >examples imply. Inaction that did not save a life is by no means the same
>as
> >action that would have  saved it -- as you will discover if you are ever
> >involved in a situation in which an action could have saved a loved one's
> >life and didn't. Cf. Pierre's absence from the café - by no means the same
> >as his presence somewhere else. It's palpable and causally impacts those
> >present.
> >
> >The main thing is the world is polyvalent, not monovalent or filled with
> >pure presence. Every action is also an absenting. To cause as such is to
> >absent an existing state of affairs. The positive is shot through with the
> >negative (not to mention surrounded by it - the bottomless and endless sea
> >of negativity), and couldn't move without it. The negative enters
> >fundamentally into the very constitution of 'causal structure and
>efficacy'.
> >In the end it expresses the incontestable transience and finitude of what
>we
> >think of as the positive.
> >
> >Mervyn
> >
> >
> >
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >[mailto:critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Louis
> >Irwin
> >Sent: 04 December 2007 23:26
> >To: 'Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List'
> >Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] How can a de-ont exist or an absence
> >bepresent?
> >
> >
> >Nick,
> >
> >Your examples don't seem to refute Howard's contention that absence means
> >the absence of causal structure and causal efficacy.  For example:
> >
> >** "The inaction that could have saved the life?"  Is that not a case where
> >what is absent is the causal structure and efficacy that an action would
> >have brought with it?
> >
> >** "The money we didn't put aside for the holiday?"  Is that not a case
> >where what is absent is a causal structure whose presence would have caused
> >things to be different?
> >
> >** Howard did not say that droughts reduce to absence of rainfall.  He said
> >rather that "What a drought causes is a result of the causal structures in
> >place, not of absent non-structures that aren't there."  So your comment
> >seems beside the point. All those various things you point out are absent
>do
> >seem to be again absence of causal structures.
> >
> >Louis Irwin
> >
> >
> >
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>
>
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