Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 10:18:28 -0500 (EST)
Subject: RE: Emergence


Hi guys,

I'm sure that Victor is right, and that we are going to get to this soon.
But I'll go ahead and jump the gun.  

In PON, Bhaskar sets out what he calls the "Transformational Model of Social
Activity," or (of course) the TMSA.  The TMSA is a way to think about two
different problems in the philosophy of science: the problem of holism vs.
ontological individualism and the problem of the relationship between
structure and agency.  

In normal-people, non-philosophy speak, the first problem is the question of
whether or not something called "society" actually exists.  Holists say
"Yes." Individualists (or sometimes, especially in political theory,
"atomists") say "No.  It is only individual people who actually exist."  The
second problem is really only a problem for holists.  It's is the problem of
what causes what. Specifically, the question is "Do the actions of
individuals cause society to be the way it is, or does society cause
individuals to be the way that THEY are, or is it somehow a two-way thing?"   

On the TMSA, societies and people both exist.  They are viewed, however, as
very different sorts of things, one from the other.  In particular,
societies are what Bhaskar terms "emergent" wholes.  They are sets, or
"ensembles," as Bhaskar puts it, of social relations.  But they are curious
because they only exist through, and yet do not reduce to, the actions of
individuals.

So that's an answer to question number 1.  Yes, things that we call
"societies" really do exist.  

On to question number 2.  What is the causal relationship between these two
different kinds of entities?

On the TMSA, the relationship is as follows:  society, or social structures,
are what Aristotle called the "material cause" of individual agency.  

[Aristotle had a very nuanced conception of cause.  He broke it down into
four different kinds: material cause, efficient cause, formal cause and
final cause. The material cause of a thing is basically the raw materials
required for it to happen, or that are worked on.  So the material cause of
a house having been built is the bricks, stone, wood, etc.  Efficient cause
is the force that was exercised in order to bring something about
(carpenters hammering nails); formal cause is the plan, or design, that
determines the outcome of an event (the blueprint); final cause is the
purpose for a thing's having happened (shelter, profit realization, etc.).]  

So from Bhaskar's perspective society is something like: that upon which we
act, in the course of specifically and irreducibly social activity [which in
PON he distinguishes from psychological, or interpersonal activity -- think
Durkheim here, if that helps (but only do it for a minute)].  Individuals,
meanwhile, are the agents through which social structures (a) have effects
and (b) are transformed.     

Bhaskar says that his model for understanding the relationship between
individuals and society is different from three other well-established ones.
It is different from the approach - which Bhaskar associates with Weber -
according to which society is voluntaristically produced by individuals.  It
is also different from the approach that Bhaskar associates with Durkheim,
according to which the options available to individuals are completely
determined by society. Finally, the TMSA is different from what Bhaskar
calls the "dialetical" approach, according to which there is a simple back
and forth between the two.  The TMSA is different from the dialectical
approach because on the TMSA the relationship is not the same in both ways.

So Victor, the Marx passage that you cited, about making history in
conditions not of our own choosing, captures exactly the difference between
the TMSA and both the voluntaristic and structural determinist models.  We
do make history (vs. the latter), but we do it in the context of conditions
not of our own choosing (vs. the former).

So with respect to our earlier posts, I'm pretty sure that it is Bhaskar's
view is that it is societies that are emergent (in the technical sense that
Bhaskar uses the term) with respect to individuals.  The fact that society
nonetheless always already exists, vis-a-vis any given individual, or that
we are shaped by social and historical context in which we find ourselves,
is, at least in Bhaskar's work in PON, different from the issue of
"emergence."     

There are all sorts of other important things to focus on TMSA-wise, but
I'll stop with this.

Hope that helps some,
r. 






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