Re: [Critical-Realism] Causal de-onts: a thought experiment?

["Tobin Nellhaus" <nellhaus@xxxxxxxx>]

Hm, is it?  I can act on the basis of knowing that I'm ignorant about 
something (e.g., when driving around a blind corner I may be a little 
cautious because there could be another car coming), but is that the same as 
acting where I don't even know I'm ignorant (say, singing in the shower, 
unaware that the neighbors can hear)?  I can probably accept that some sort 
of belief is operative (to fill the vacuum, so to speak), for instance in 
the latter example that nobody can hear me singing.  But in that case, isn't 
my ignorance (that someone can in fact hear me) itself operative, in a 
manner that's distinct from my belief?  Certainly if I ceased to be 
ignorant, I might act on the new knowledge, perhaps by taking singing 
lessons.  What I'm thinking (and I'm by no means certain, but it seems to 
make sense) is that there are two semio-causal factors: the absence of 
knowledge; and the belief that "covers" for it, of which there may be all 
sorts of possibilities.

Put differently, ignorance may perhaps always be "enclosed by" or "attached 
to" some sort of belief (I won't swear to that either), but I don't see how 
ignorance *itself* is a type of belief.

(By the way, "semio-causal" a great term, Howard.)

Thanks,

Tobin


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ruth Groff" <RGroff1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List" 
<critical-realism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, 08 December 2007 6:34 PM
Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Causal de-onts: a thought experiment?


Yes, I understand that.  I suggested that ignorance is in fact a species of 
belief, and so is generically efficacious in the same sense that other kinds 
of belief are.

r.


-----Original Message-----
From: critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx on behalf of Tobin 
Nellhaus
Sent: Sat 08-Dec-07 6:24 PM
To: Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List
Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Causal de-onts: a thought experiment?

Hi Ruth--

No, my question isn't about the causal powers of true vs false beliefs: I'm
asking whether ignorance (the absence of knowledge) can itself be considered
a causal power.

Thanks,

Tobin


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ruth Groff" <RGroff1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List"
<critical-realism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, 08 December 2007 5:58 PM
Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Causal de-onts: a thought experiment?


Hi Tobin,

I'm seriously deferring to Howard and to Louis on this, but for what it's
worth, I think that I'd say, at first blush anyway, re: your experiment,
that there is no difference *in kind,* with respect to *the sense in which*
beliefs are efficacious (please read this carefully, everybody, so that the
level of abstraction is clear; I am NOT saying that false beliefs are as
efficacious as true ones, vis-a-vis given objectives), between true beliefs
and false or non-relevant beliefs.  But I could be wrong.

r.


-----Original Message-----
From: critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx on behalf of Tobin
Nellhaus
Sent: Sat 08-Dec-07 4:34 PM
To: Critical Realism
Subject: [Critical-Realism] Causal de-onts: a thought experiment?

Hi Howard--

Sorry for poking into this after being distracted, so I'm not entirely sure
I'm following the argument.  I'd like to clarify for myself what you're
saying by offering a thought experiment rather different from Mervyn's dog.

So: as you may know, during the Renaissance some doctors prescribed
"quicksilver" as a medical treatment.  Quicksilver of course is mercury,
which is highly poisonous; it's a miracle any patients survived.  My
question is this: the patients would not have ingested mercury had it not
been for their doctors, but did the doctors do this strictly because they
possessed a (false) theory about mercury's medicinal powers, or was their
ignorance of its true effects also causal?  More generally, is it in fact
correct to say "They did this *because* they didn't know better"?

As I look at it, the question has to be interpreted in terms of (open,
partial) totalities, what might be called holistic causality, so I would
answer that in this case an absence (ignorance) did have its own causal
powers.  People sometimes do things *because* they don't know better,
sometimes even when they've been told better.  That leads me to ask two
further questions: (1) Is it correct to approach the question in this
holistic manner? and (2) *If* it is, could the holistic approach used for
this instance be generalizable, in particular to non-human causation?  And
there may be a third, namely whether holistic analysis could be correct but
nevertheless perhaps I'm interpreting my own example incorrectly.

Thanks,

T.

---
Tobin Nellhaus
nellhaus@xxxxxxxx
"Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce



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