Re: [Critical-Realism] deon (the real connection is praxis)

["Tobin Nellhaus" <nellhaus@xxxxxxxx>]

Hi Mervyn--

The revisions you're considering seem reasonable.

I'll accept your rendering of "need," even though it depends on pushing
certain background concepts rather firmly forward (a need of course is not
precisely a lack, even though there wouldn't be a need if there weren't some
type of absence).  So long as you don't overstate the case, it seems okay.

In response to my comment:

> "If it turns out that few languages have a word that combines the two
> concepts, Bhaskar's theory would not in the least be harmed."

you wrote:

> You seem to have philosophy and real life in separate compartments.

I wasn't speaking of philosophy's relationship with reality, but ordinary
language's.  Language is (as they say) relatively autonomous from other
parts of social activity (e.g., economics, politics, etc) -- not in the
sense of being disconnected from them, for obviously language is affected by
other social realms and intervenes within them, but rather in the sense of
not being rigidly tied to them, having sui generis powers and dynamics, and
being a field of social struggle in its own right.  As a result there are
all sorts of expressions that don't correspond to (scientific) truth or
reality.  For example, we say "sunrise" even though the sun doesn't rise:
what's actually happening is that the earth is rotating -- which most
children learn before they're 12, so there isn't even a problem of obscure
information to excuse the linguistic holdover.  The fact that in this case
ordinary language clearly hasn't and probably will *never* catch up with our
scientific knowledge does not vitiate the science to any degree.

Thus if a particular concept-pair emerges philosophically (as with need and
constraint), an absence of that pairing in ordinary language doesn't
necessarily disprove or weaken the theory.  The idea that it would do so
requires invoking a false theory about the relationship between language and
reality.  That's why I emphasize the importance of not overstating the case
and have strongly resisted what I consider over-interpretations of certain
words: language's relative independence makes it open to all sort of
influences, few of them philosophical, and forcing words into a procrustean
bed creates all sorts of problems and distractions.  (For that matter,
there's also no necessary direct bond between language and philosophy, or
between philosophy and reality.  If there were, philosophical analysis
would be a whole lot easier!)

As for how well language represents the truths of social being and social
practice, the situation is more complex but not fundamentally different.
Ideological analysis and critique is basically all about the disjunctions
between social reality and its representations (in language, visual images,
etc).  Marx's analysis of commodity fetishism offers a paradigmatic example 
of how social structures can generate language and understandings that are 
in fact false.

To some (and maybe a great) extent I'm restating things you know, as shown
by this passage:

>   Of course, no complex and highly abstract theory is directly disproved
> or confirmed by the presence or absence of words of a particular kind in
> languages, but if people in different forms of life did not tend to
> experience need as constraint this would indeed be a problem for the
> theory,
> and if they did it would lend it support, and linguistic (and other forms
> of) research could have a bearing here.

It would certainly damage Bhaskar's theory if people didn't *experience*
need as a constraint, but my point is that there's no special reason for the
experience to be represented by particular words.  After all, people
experience *lots* of things as a constraint.  Going to work is a contraint.
Being married is a contraint.  Being single is a contraint.  Wearing clothes
is a contraint.  Being awarded a research grant is a contraint.  Being smart
is a contraint.  Being either male or female is a contraint.  Etc.
Conversely, not all constraints involve needs (at least not in the ordinary
sense of the word).  For instance, one can only eat so much.  In addition,
if need always implies constraint, then there's no particular need to spell
out that implication as a distinct meaning, just as one never mentions that
the mushrooms in this morning's omelet were of an edible, not poisonous,
variety.

So, final bit of business:

> Re your final point, Bhaskar's abstract models such as the TMSA and
> four-planar social being, derived as they are from analysis of
> praxis/intentionality as such, must have applicability across the whole of
> human geo-history. Were there no continuity between forms of life this
> could
> not be so, the models would fail as general theory, and the question would
> arise as to which bits of geo-history they *are* relevant to.

Does the theory have applicability across the whole of human geo-history?
Yes.  But the applicability of a theory doesn't necessitate a "continuity"
of the things one applies it to, and while I'm not sure what precisely you
have in mind with "continuity between forms of life," I *hope* you don't
mean that all spheres of life are in lock-step with each other.  That would
deny emergence, and reality.  Society is much more polyrhythmic, disjointed
and conflicted than that.

Thanks,

Tobin


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mervyn Hartwig" <mh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "'Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List'"
<critical-realism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, 12 December 2007 8:36 AM
Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] deon (the real connection is praxis)


Tobin:

Just so we know where we stand, here's how I would now revise the entry on
"ont/de-ont":

1. First line: I'd indicate that "de-" is Latin, not Greek.

2. I'd take out the last paragraph, as "de-ont" can't be interpreted as
calling attention to any of the meanings of "deon", and I now think
"de-ontology" was probably a typo.

3. I'd relocate the points about the correspondence between two of the
meanings of "deon" and the main ethical inflections of "absence" and about
the unification of ethics with the theory of being under the sign of absence
to another entry, probably that on "absence" (I didn't do the one in
"ethics"). And I'd briefly indicate why I think the correspondence is not
coincidental - there's a real connection via human praxis.

Why does "absence" have these two ethical interconnected inflections in
Bhaskar? First, because analytically a "need" (e.g. lack of food in a belly,
lack of autonomy) is also a "constraint" on flourishing, and this is also
the case in practice - if people lack food they will experience it as a
constraint, and this is likely to be reflected in their discoursal practice.
The English "need", like "deon",  seems to embrace both meanings among
others. There's interesting work to be done here by discourse analysts or
whoever the relevant researchers are (if it hasn't been done already, I
don't know). It's hardly for me to do this work. I confined myself to "deon"
because that supplies the root for "deontology". Secondly, because a "need"
is by definition an absence and "constraints" may be seen as "ills", thence
as absences.

Why does this unify (Bhaskarian) ethics with the theory of being? Because
the concept of "absence" provides the fundamental logical infrastructure for
both.

"If it turns out that few languages have a word that combines the two
concepts, Bhaskar's theory would not in the least be harmed."

You seem to have philosophy and real life in separate compartments.
Bhaskar's dialectic seeks to express the geo-historical process (inter alia)
in thought at a highly abstract level, i.e. it's *about* that process. If it
didn't have any purchase on it, and vice versa, what would be the point of
it? Of course, no complex and highly abstract theory is directly disproved
or confirmed by the presence or absence of words of a particular kind in
languages, but if people in different forms of life did not tend to
experience need as constraint this would indeed be a problem for the theory,
and if they did it would lend it support, and linguistic (and other forms
of) research could have a bearing here. Just as, if people were not prone to
fight for freedom and did not sometimes do so, that would be problematic for
the theory of the pulse of freedom.

Re your final point, Bhaskar's abstract models such as the TMSA and
four-planar social being, derived as they are from analysis of
praxis/intentionality as such, must have applicability across the whole of
human geo-history. Were there no continuity between forms of life this could
not be so, the models would fail as general theory, and the question would
arise as to which bits of geo-history they *are* relevant to.

Mervyn


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