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

[Howard Engelskirchen <howarde@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Louis,

This is helpful.  Three kinds of distinctions 
occur to me -- between being and action, between 
action and inaction, and between causation and responsibility.

1.      I've said being has causal structure and 
non-being doesn't, therefore being causes and 
non-being doesn't; in fact, that's how we distinguish being and non-being.

2.      Being is always in action, but it's 
helpful to abstract to structure acting, in part 
because what a thing is is never exhausted by 
what it does.  As you point out, causal 
possibilities are real.  On the other hand, what 
a causal structure doesn't do doesn't cause.

3.      When human beings act, we always act with 
intention and purpose -- our actions are 
semio-causal.  That means absence is always a 
component.  We always project into an absent 
future.  And of course there is a whole 
philosophical tradition that has given that 
absent future pretty ordinary causal 
efficacy.  But Ruth is on target here.  We 
interpret this or that aspect of the present as a 
sign of the future.  And we can also interpret 
our inaction as a sign of what would have 
been.   But this is interpretive, not causal 
engagement.  Venom caused the dog's death, not 
Mervyn.  What causal structures don't do don't cause.

4.      Of course we use causal language all the 
time to express interpretive engagement -- we say 
patients didn't take their course of antibiotics 
to the end, inaction, and this caused a mutation 
of the virus -- but that interpretation doesn't give inaction causal force.

5.      Because what we do can always be 
described in terms of other possibilities,  we 
are quite capable of assigning responsibility for 
inaction as well as action, and in morals and law 
we readily do so.  All negligence is a failure to 
act with reasonable care.  We measure legal 
liability or moral responsibility in terms of 
what someone could have done but didn't do.  We 
do this so that they are encouraged to conform 
their behavior to what the norm requires.   The 
jurist Hans Kelsen, by the way, had the idea that 
as a matter of historical record our notions of 
causation in nature emerge from notions of moral 
responsibility, not the other way around.  Our 
understanding of physical causation had to 
disengage from notions of responsibility.

It looks like we work to do that sort of thing still.

best,

howard






At 01:53 PM 12/6/2007, you wrote:
>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
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Critical-Realism mailing list
>Critical-Realism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism
>
>_______________________________________________
>Critical-Realism mailing list
>Critical-Realism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism
>
>__________ NOD32 2705 (20071205) Information __________
>
>This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system.
>http://www.eset.com
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Critical-Realism mailing list
>Critical-Realism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism
>
>_______________________________________________
>Critical-Realism mailing list
>Critical-Realism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism



_______________________________________________
Critical-Realism mailing list
Critical-Realism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism