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

["Mervyn Hartwig" <mh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

PS. Considered temporally, the vast majority of the causal processes
(structures in motion) involved in the constitution of the things we
encounter in our lives (cities, people, animals, the natural world), which
you seize upon as instancing pure positivity, are negative, present only in
their effects.

Mervyn


-----Original Message-----
From: critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Mervyn
Hartwig
Sent: 07 December 2007 10:28
To: 'Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List'
Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] How can a de-ont exist or
anabsencebepresent?

Hi Louis, Howard

If my inaction contributed causally to the dog's death, then there's nothing
to argue about. However you analyse it, an inaction is not an action. A play
of presence and absence, precisely, is always involved in causation, and
it's conceded that "absence is essential to what a causal structure is". Yet
somehow absence is not casual but presence is. I've consistently denied
that, at least in the world as we  know it, there is any such thing as
"pure" absence, any more than there is pure presence or positivity, yet here
you are attributing to me the notion of "pure absence of action". My
perspective is *polyvalent*, you are putting a *monovalent* gloss on it. The
water rushes through the hole in the levee, but you only see the water
(which itself could have no causal force but for the particular
configuration of its elements involving gaps) not the causally enabling hole
-- which can't be analysed away as that bit of the wall being present
somewhere else. There is no pure presence or absence at work here, both are
in play. And now, Howard,  you start asserting it as fact that "action is
only partly causal" (where did that drop from? -- the generally accepted CR
position is that reasons are causes) and that we can only differentiate
between absence and presence in terms of causality, where the former is not
causal and the latter is. But this contradicts that "absence is essential to
what a causal structure is" - no absence, no casual structure, no cause. And
there are a whole range of other criteria whereby we can discriminate
absence from presence: levels of reality (ontological depth), spatial and/or
temporal distance, mutual relations of exclusion, within discourse
extra-discursive existential import or not, sometimes perceptually, etc.

>From my perspective, what's basically happened in this thread is that I
innocently posted, upon request, a couple of paras re ont/de-ont to clarify
a particular issue and was greeted by a surge of pure positivity from the
other side of the Atlantic. You've only got to look at the headers to know
there's a goodly measure of truth in this, and underneath them it just keeps
flowing along: "being causes, non-being doesn't"; here non-being -- which in
other contexts you admit is an essential part of being -- is being excluded
from being altogether. I don't think this is going anywhere.

Mervyn 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Louis
Irwin
Sent: 06 December 2007 19:54
To: 'Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List'
Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] How can a de-ont exist or
anabsencebepresent?

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 


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