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

["Louis Irwin" <louisirwin9@xxxxxxx>]

Nick,

Thanks for a post at once thoughtful, stimulating, well-written, and
jargon-free.  You write the way a lot of us (no doubt on my side of the
Atlantic) wish that RB would.

I would like to focus on a drought example, and ask you whether the
accompanying description fits your framework,; if not, where specifically
does it go wrong.  I'm not saying it is my view, I'm just trying to see why
it won't fly, if it doesn't.

At a low level of understanding, droughts occur due to an absence of water -
that's not a perceptive metaphysical insight, it's a banal truism.  At a
higher level, when a drought occurs, we look for the reasons why water is
absent.  That looking already presupposes that water is present under what
we deem to be 'normal' circumstances, so a drought demands an explanation
for deviation from the norm.  (As I understand you, that normality is part
of the identity of things in the pre-drought environment - correct?)  So we
look for causes that interfered with the normal water levels; these may
include absence of rainfall, diversion of usual river sources to other
locations, etc., and these in turn have their causes.  Let's say that the
cause was a decision to divert water elsewhere; add whatever political
machinations, forces of history, etc. you like to fill in the story.  So in
this specific example, the decisions and actions involved in the diversion
brought about the absence of water.  It seems reasonable to say that the
absence of water is a proximate cause that was in turn caused by the
decisions and actions in the diversion.  It then seems reasonable to
describe the ultimate cause to be those decisions and actions (together with
the background).  So we seem to have presences that caused the absence of
water that caused the drought.  (My intuition is that this is not the kind
co-constitutive presences and absences that you had in mind.)

Louis

-----Original Message-----
From: critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Nick
Hostettler
Sent: Friday, December 07, 2007 5:57 PM
To: critical-realism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] How can a de-ont exist or anabsence
bepresent?

Dear Howard, Louis and Mervyn, 

First off, my apologies for the inattentive responses to Howard's post, and
my thanks to Louis and to Mervyn for clarifying the central issues.
Apologies too for getting carried away: the post is a long one. 

Howard asked about "the causal efficacy of phlogiston," emphasising that his
question was not about "what someone thought or thinks about phlogiston, but
of the de-ont?"

Mervyn's initial contribution was to lay out the point about different
classes of de-onts and I hoped to develop this line of thinking with my
comments on classes of possibility. From the perspective of ontological
polyvalence, this kind of de-ont has no causal significance whatsoever.
Howard was quite right to say that: "The point generalizes. An absence,
absence of being, means an absence of causal structure and hence of causal
efficacy." Absolutely! Phlogiston is an absolute non-entity and entirely
non-causal. 

After the agreement comes the inevitable 'however'. 

Howard indicates a shift in gear, or at least an ambiguity, when he says
"What a drought causes is a result of the causal structures in place, not of
absent non-structures that aren't there." If we take "absent non-structures"
to mean that member of the class of impossible beings, i.e. absolute
non-entities, can have no causal role in the playing out of a drought then
there can be no disagreement. But this is by no means the only way this
could be read. At least, we can read into it the possibility of referring to
the other classes of de-onts: as yet unrealised possibilities and past
presences. So, when Howard asks "How can a de-ont exist or an absence be
present?" it is worthwhile trying to give a useful response, one that
disagrees with the idea that "When we speak of the presence of an absence,
there is actually no causal structure to which we refer." A polyvalent
response to this insists on the co-presence of absences and presences and
argues that the former are, or least can be, integral to any real causal
powers. 

So, this is what appears to be at stake: a polyvalent account of being and
then a similar account of causality. 

I don't have a good feel for the extent to which this is contentious, but
the reality of absence does not seem to be too much of a problem: not only
is reality irreducible to what it is possible to experience through our
senses (ontological depth), it is also irreducible to what is here and now.
Reality also encompasses all that has been (the past) and all that will be
(the future). From the limited perspective of any here and now the past (to
the extent it is no longer present) and the future (to the extent it is not
already being realised) are absences. Also, another dimension of the here
and the now we cannot experience is all the possibilities embedded and
embodied in it. These are real, whether or not they are ever realised. 

In sum, to say that something is absent from the here and now is just to say
that it is at a distance in terms of time and/or space. Absenting, on the
other hand, means that that distance is changing, i.e. something is further
off in time, space, or less of a possibility) or, in the case of absenting
the absence, that distance is diminishing. 

So, reality is essentially polyvalent: it is always-already constituted by a
given ensemble of presences and absences. What is more, that ensemble is
always-already changing: polyvalent configurations are always being
reconfigured. 

Roy's dialectic, though, has several aspects, with absence being only one.
Before we can look at what kind of case might be made for the causal
significance of the relevant classes of absence we should take some other
ideas into consideration. Two such worth mentioning are the unity of space,
time and causality and entity relationism. 

Space, time and causality are necessary ontological relations within and
between all aspects of our universe; their unity binds being together into
causal processes, tensed rhythmics. Entity relationism is closely related to
this. The old philosophical problem of the boat whose parts are so
completely changed over time raises a question about the identity of the
boat. If none of the wood from which it was originally constructed is
present any longer, then can it be said that we still have the same boat? Do
we not now have a different one? Critical realism offers one kind of answer
to this in terms of the persistence of the structure over time. Whatever
pieces are used to repair the boat, the structure remains the same: the boat
retains its capacities. Identity is shifted from the particular material out
of which the boat is built to the way in which that material is organised.
However, this has the unfortunate consequence of formalising identity. The
dialectical critical realist response to this question is to embed the boat
into the social relations which have produced and reproduced it. This shift
in perspective means that the identity of the ship is now to be understood
as changing over time and it has been considerably expanded to encompass its
integration into its social milieu. That is, this particular boat is
spatially, temporally and causally integrated into geo-history, and its real
identity as a particular entity is inseparable from that history. Identity
encompasses the many dimensions of absence: the past, the outside and the
possibilities that might unfold in the future.  

This has important ramifications for the discussion of absence and
causality: the real identity of any entity now encompasses external as well
as internal relations and it encompasses past, present and future changes to
both kinds of relation. It is in this context that it can make sense to
speak of the polyvalence of causality, thereby including absences as
co-constitutive of real change. 

So, coming back to the question about the effects of a drought: what effects
does a drought have, and how? The plants that survive in a given place do so
because their essential needs are being met: they get the water they need to
enable them to sustain their own existence. That water, then, is integral to
what those plants are, both in terms of their external relations to a water
supply and their internal metabolising of the water. Water is integral to
the structures and capacities the plants have, and we could not speak of
those structures or mechanisms without reference to it: there is no actual
structure of the plant that can be abstracted from the water. The drought
means that the external relations of these plants are changed. The breaking
of this relation to nourishment, the absence of water, puts them in danger
of perishing. This change means the plants lose something essential to what
they are. They become incomplete and failing plants, unable to function and
facing the prospect of eventual death. 

These notional plants, then, must be understood as being bound into their
environment such that their identities as living beings encompass their
on-going relations to it. The drought changes those relations, causing
external and internal absences: it generates absences which are essential
components of the causal processes which bring about the death of the
plants. So, Howard is right again to way that the existing causal structures
of the plants are essential to what happens next, but so too is the absence
of the water from them. 

In the end, though, would it be too crude to say that the drought, the
absence of water, kills the plants? Would it really be a mistake to say that
a relation of absence, i.e. lack in the face of need, is causally
efficacious? 

Nick. 


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