Date: Mon, 06 Jan 1997 14:12:32 +0000
Subject: Re: BHA: Transitive & intransitive


Like I said, I'm busy but just had to reply to Dave's post.


>I have to side with Michael here for two main reasons: Firstly I think 
>that unless we allow there to be some unadulteratedly intransitive 
>objects we will be guilty of some kind of anthropocentrism. Secondly 
>I think that it is just the backdrop of such "truly intransitive 
>objects" that scientific work makes sense, and it is here that 
>Bhaskar's analysis of the poverty of philosophies of science without 
>such realism is at its strongest.

Not necessarily (the anthropocentrism I mean). Clearly, in the natural
sciences we want to talk of a reality that would exist even if there were no
humans around to observe it, but such a strong form of realism is not
applicable to social objects: no people no society. I also can't really get
my head around the notion of "truly intransitive objects" in the social
world. But equally, Dave is actually making my point for me, for what are
the "truly intransitive" objects for the philosophy of science? And doesn't
the answer to this, in good realist fashion depend upon what it is you are
studying? If, for example, you wish to develop a theory of what scientists
do in their practices then surely scientists and their practices are your
intransitive objects. If, on the other hand, you wish to know _why_ they do
what they do, then you may well have to look elsewhere.

>
>To say this is not to deny that any mechanism uncovered by science is 
>not also a phenomena in need of further explanation. 

That's my point exactly. We wouldn't have expected biologists in the 19th
century to have any knowledge of genetics, but nor would we want to say that
only genes are truly intransitive. The body is an intransitive object to a
doctor. Whether or not I have a cold is not dependent upon my doctor's
diagnosis. The cold is intransitive to my doctor (probably to me as well)
and it's not only the nasty germs causing the cold which we would want to
term intransitive. Other wise we are in danger of arriving at a Whiggish
account of science, wherein knowledge of previous generations can't be
counted as scientific.

(Note that we do 
>not _know_ that this process is either bottomless or that it is not, 
>as I see it the point of TR about science is to show that the 
>positivist expectation of an atomistic bottom level is ideological, 
>and also that it is tied up with a programme of reductionism which 
>need not command our respect.) Quite the contrary. The search for 
>better/deeper/more general explanations, though, is animated by the 
>conviction that "something is going on" about which we can try to 
>find out more.

Again exactly, and the same surely applies to the practices of scientists
which positivism  failed to capture.

>
>To assert that intransitive objects are generative mechanisms is 
>neither to say that there is limit of any kind to stratification, or 
>to say that the mechanisms are ar could be exhaustively dragged 
>into the realm of knowledge. 

Yes, but the point is science can't even move to the level of generative
mechanisms unless it can agree on the outcomes that those mechanisms cause.
If, the Bosnian conflict is not intransitive to the wholly inadequate
theories which attempt to describe it, then all it seems we have left are
our postmodern stories, each equally valid. Certainly as critical realists
we would want to bring to light the deeper causes (mechanisms) that made
such a conflict possible. But the term intransitivity cannot simply be
aligned with only those mechanisms. What, we know today we may have not
known yesterday. But our theories of yesterday still had intransitive objects.


>I do agree with Colin that there is often no clear boundary between the 
>transitive and the intransitive, and that some degree of observer 
>relativity obtains. Quite so, and also more: since we cannot remove 
>ourselves from the world we should _expect_ this to be the case, and 
>also we should expect more serious examples of grey areas. 
>Cavendish's instrument for measuring the force of attraction between 
>two massive objects is a case in point: We can all say that the force 
>itself is fairly intransitive, in that period in the history of 
>science, and that Cavendish's paper on the subject is pretty 
>transitive. What about the instrument itself? In quite powerful ways 
>it calls for membership of both groups, since it is an artefact: both 
>object and product. This is not a paradox, its just a feature of 
>the process of examining which contains yourself.

But more importantly is Cavendish's experiment, his life, existence and
work, intransitive to Dave's account of it? CR, at least as I read it, would
demand that it must be, or else we could reduce Cavendish to dave's
description of him: a paradigmatic example of the epistemic fallacy. 

Thanks for the recipe.


>
>Regards,

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Colin Wight
Department of International Politics
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Aberystwyth
SY23 3DA

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