Re: The materialist road...Tony Smith?

["Chris M. Sciabarra" <sciabrrc@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Justin asks me about the meaning of internal relations....
Ironically, one of the clearest statements on internal relations was made
by an absolute idealist, Brand Blanshard.  (For those familiar with Kevin
Brien's work on MARX, REASON, AND THE ART OF FREEDOM, Brand Blanshard
is mentioned prominently...)  Blanshard writes:

"A given term is internally related to another if in the absence of the
relation it could not be what it is.  A term is externally related to
another if the relation could equally be present or absent while the term
was precisely the same."

        The reason why internal relations figures into dialectical method
is that dialecticians normally do not isolate terms from one another.
Rather, they seek to trace the relationships between terms, such that a
change in one leads to necessary changes in the other terms.  This is
because the terms together constitute an organic unity, and like all
organic systems, no part can be understood or abstracted from the other
parts, or from the system they jointly constitute.

        Not that there is anything wrong with abstraction.  Human beings
simply MUST abstract if they are to make sense of the world.  The problem
emerges when the abstraction is treated externally from the whole,
reified as it were, as a whole unto itself.  Hence, all the atomistic
pitfalls of "economic man" and Crusoe economics, external to concerns of
history, culture, and social relations.

        Among writers on internal relations, one should consult some
standard works that are not in the Marxist tradition, but helpful.
Richard Rorty wrote a good introductory piece, "Relations, internal and
external," in the Edwards edited volume, THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY
(New York, Free Press, 1967).  I deal with internal relations throughout
my book, MARX, HAYEK, AND UTOPIA, but more extensively in chapters 2, 5,
and 6 of AYN RAND:  THE RUSSIAN RADICAL.  Bertell Ollman writes on the
issue in ALIENATION, THE LEFT ACADEMY, vol. 3 (a fine introduction), and
also in his DIALECTICAL INVESTIGATIONS.

        Of course, the whole issue of internal relations in social theory
vs. external relations is, as Justin suggests, writ large in
metaphysics.  There are a whole host of discussions in metaphysics and
ontology dealing with whether or not the aspects of a person are internal
to that person... I mean, I have brown hair.  If I were to shave my head,
would I be the same person?  On one level, yes... but on another level,
my appearance may affect my behavior, or how others perceive me.

        I think that a better doctrine of internal relations is
epistemological, rather than metaphysical.  The metaphysicians debate the
question of the ultimate constituents of the universe as if they had --
or could have -- a synoptic grasp of what these constituents are, and
whether or not they are in fact, interdependent EXISTENTIALLY, in some
grand, universal, cosmological sense.  Epistemologists however, would
prefer to concentrate on the theory of definition:  how does a change in
the context of our inquiry affect the definition of something?  By
altering one's context, different relations between things can be made
apparent.  Indeed, the thing itself becomes a "relation" as it were --
that is, it cannot be defined in isolation to its conditions of
existence, or its relationships with other entities.  This then, is an
epistemological issue, which pertains not to the "internal" relationship
of something to everything else in the universe, but the relationship of
something to other entities within a defined, specifiable context.  Once
we have defined the context, we don't have to get into cosmological
debates about whether or not the wind is stronger on the east coast
because a butterfly flaps its wings on the west coast.  That is
ultimately a scientific question, and philosophical distinctions should
not have to depend upon a forever changing science.

                                        - Chris
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Dr. Chris M. Sciabarra
Visiting Scholar, NYU Department of Politics
INTERNET:  sciabrrc@xxxxxxxxxxx
http://pages.nyu.edu/~sciabrrc
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