Re: [Critical-Realism] How can a de-ont exist or anabsencebepresent?

["Louis Irwin" <louisirwin9@xxxxxxx>]

Mervyn,

Your story is a good example to use to clarify things, so let's stick with
it.

You say that your inaction contributed causally to the dog's death.  I don't
disagree, but what does this really mean?  Would anyone say, for example,
that my inaction contributed to the dog's death?  Certainly not, even though
I took no action to help, because I was a continent away and so was in no
position to help or even know of the need for help.  Why then was the
absence of action on your part causally contributory and mine not?  Because
your knowledge and presence made potentialities to help that could have
triggered actions on your part that would have saved the dog's life, so you
had some causal responsibility while I did not. 

So now I would say that it was not a pure absence of action that causally
contributed to the dog's death; it was rather the combination of the
PRESENCE of causal potentialities to help and the ABSENCE of the triggering
of those potentialities that causally contributed to the dog's death.  And
of course, as you more or less say, the absence of the triggering had
separate determinate causes.

Do you agree with that analysis?  And I wonder if Howard does.

I think it is arguable that the absence is simply part of an explanation of
the dog's death, rather than a co-cause of it.  Not all explanations are
causal explanations (didn't someone point that out in a recent post?), and
it demands some subtle arguments to make out the case here.

Louis 


-----Original Message-----
From: critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Mervyn
Hartwig
Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2007 2:13 PM
To: 'Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List'
Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] How can a de-ont exist or
anabsencebepresent?

Louis

Sorry, yours got lost until now.

Neither (A) nor (B).

An absence of an inaction would be an action.

And inaction can't be analysed away as action. It is not some hypothetical
"action whose presence would have saved a life" but a really present
not-acting.

A true story as a concrete example: Somebody told me that they had seen a
big venomous snake go under my dog's kennel. I did not move the kennel and
kill the snake. After a while the snake bit the dog and the dog died.

My inaction contributed causally to the dog's death. It can't be reduced to
some hypothetical action because it is part of an actual causal chain
leading to a determinate outcome. A whole lot of specific causal processes,
which I could have overriden but failed to do so, conspired to produce
inaction which was then itself part of a causal chain, none of the moments
of which can be analysed in purely positive terms, leading to the dog's
death (absenting).

In a world in which we are causally co-responsible for what goes on, failure
to act (e.g. re reducing greenhouse gases) can it seems to me pretty
obviously be hugely important causally.

Mervyn 
 

-----Original Message-----
From: critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Louis
Irwin
Sent: 05 December 2007 22:24
To: 'Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List'
Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] How can a de-ont exist or
anabsencebepresent?

Mervyn,

I may have misread Nick's example on inaction of "the inaction that could
have saved the life".  Which of the following is Nick's example: (A) An
action whose presence would have saved the life; or (B) an absence of an
inaction which would have saved the life? I understood it to be (A), but
Nick's words (I now see) and your reply seem to take it to be (B). (B) seems
rather recondite, a case where apparently some damaging action was taken but
whose absence would have saved the life; in other words, what was absent was
the absence of the damaging action.  The absence of the damaging action was
present, and its absence (the absence of an inaction) would have save the
life.  I wonder if that is really what Nick had in mind, but in any case
your riposte seems to deal with (B).  I think the other examples he offered
were of the straightforward kind (A) rather than the recondite form (B).

Louis
 

-----Original Message-----
From: critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Mervyn
Hartwig
Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2007 7:17 PM
To: 'Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List'
Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] How can a de-ont exist or an
absencebepresent?

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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