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________________________________ Date: [ Previous <http://marx.econ.utah.edu/archives/bhaskar/2002m05/msg00061.htm> | Next <http://marx.econ.utah.edu/archives/bhaskar/2002m05/msg00063.htm> ] Thread: [ Previous <http://marx.econ.utah.edu/archives/bhaskar/2002m05/msg00059.htm> | Next <http://marx.econ.utah.edu/archives/bhaskar/2002m05/msg00040.htm> ] Index: [ Author <http://marx.econ.utah.edu/archives/bhaskar/2002m05/author.htm#00062> | Date <http://marx.econ.utah.edu/archives/bhaskar/2002m05/date.htm#00062> | Thread <http://marx.econ.utah.edu/archives/bhaskar/2002m05/thread.htm#00062> ] Re: BHA: me again -- same topic ________________________________ * To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> * Subject: Re: BHA: me again -- same topic * From: Richard Moodey <[EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > * Date: Wed, 08 May 2002 12:43:18 -0400 ________________________________ Hi all, I think it is important to think of "material causality" and "formal causality" in terms of levels of organization of reality. Aristotle did not have the notion of "randomness" to work with, but I think that his notion of "prime matter" can be given a contemporary interpretation as a totally random congeries of energy/particles. There is no pattern or order. This is an imaginary construct, because we have been able to discover patterns in all of the states we actually encounter. The pattern is formal causality, that by which the elements of the state depart from pure randomness. And there are patterns at different levels, roughly corresponding to the kinds of patterns studied by physicists, chemists, biologists, psychologists, and social scientists of various breeds. Each of these studies forms of organization disregarded by those working at the next lower level of organization. The chemist disregards the patterns of organization studied by biologists (with biochemists busily building bridges, of course). In terms of material and formal causality, what falls under formal causality for the chemist is material causality for the biologist. This argument, of course, is unacceptable to reductionists. Dick At 06:48 PM 05/07/2002 +0100, you wrote: Hi Howard, >Mervyn, how can relations be "material"? Well, they're not of course in the sense in which you mean (and Bhaskar is very explicit re this: the material presence of society consists only in its effects on people). Social causes are *like* material causes in the Aristotelian sense, i.e. it's a metaphor or analogy - they 'work' in the same way. But of course, we critical realists can extend the Aristotelian concept to include the relational, since relations are real. I don't dispute that they're also formal causes, in fact I thought Ruth's final formulation was really excellent: "for the Bhaskar of PON both social structures and individual actors (and I think collective actors, too, by extension) are causal bearers. The former are bearers of material and formal causality, if we want to make use of the richness of Aristotle's terminology; the latter are bearers of efficient and final causality." I think you're right that Marx thinks that social structures are bearers of formal causality, but surely he thought they were material causes too in the above sense. This is what I at any rate take him to mean by 'material relations' and more generally 'material conditions' (the latter include physical things but also social, including ideological and semiotic, structures and systems). Social structures are both material causes (we work 'on' and 'with' them just as a sculptor does on stone, they resist and facilitate) and formal causes (they shape our activity and its effects). The main moral of all this for me is that critical realists think dialectically and holistically about causality: there are a range of dimensions to it and in the human context all are operative. Note that Bhaskar's post-PON MELD schema is organised around the different modes of causality (more broadly of being): 1M structural [formal, material], 2E absentive [efficient], 3D holistic ['combines' all modes?], and 4D agentive [efficient, final]. The later work adds 5A fulfilled intentionality or self-reflexivity (theory/practice consistency), which if achieved would perhaps leave a lot of 1M kind of social causality behind us, such that our social relations are not (also) out there and constraining but entirely intra-psychic and as we want them to be (but I'm not sure he's saying this). Mervyn howard Engelskirchen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes > >Thanks Marshall for the great example! > >Carrol, at 28 mecw 195 Marx writes "Society does not consist of >individuals, but expresses the sum of the relationships and conditions in >which these individuals stand to one another." > >The discussion of the determinations of capital in these pages is very >important and bears on the question of how we are to understand social >relations. The significance of relation as form is powerfully developed. > >Mervyn, how can relations be "material"? Marx in fact refers to "material >relations of production" in e.g. the Poverty of Philosophy, but he means >what is said above: individuals and the physical conditions in which these >individual stand --individual persons, earth, rivers, buildings, shovels, >steam engines -- constitute the material of the matter, and we seize the >particular form of those arrangements as relations. In Aristotelian terms, >the material causes of social action are just such physical things; form >captures the specific arrangements so decisive to what in fact gets done. > >Howard > >> [Original Message] >> From: Carrol Cox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > Date: 5/6/2002 10:39:46 AM >> Subject: Re: BHA: me again -- same topic >> >> >> >> howard Engelskirchen wrote: >> > >> > Hi Carrol, Hi Ruth! >> > >> > Carrol, the statement that society is an ensemble of social relations >comes >> > from the Grundrisse. >> >> I'm currently reading the Grundrisse for the third time. Could you give >> me an exact cite for this -- in either the Nicolaus translation or the >> MECW. I'm still a bit bothered by the seeming tautology which results >> from applying it to "society." But then, come to think of it, my usage >> may be a tautology too. >> >> Carrol >> >> >> --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- > > >--- howard Engelskirchen >--- [EMAIL PROTECTED] >--- EarthLink: The > > > > > --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- -- Mervyn Hartwig Editor, Journal of Critical Realism (incorporating 'Alethia') 13 Spenser Road Herne Hill London SE24 ONS United Kingdom Tel: 020 7 737 2892 Email: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription forms: http://www.criticalrealism.demon.co.uk/iacr/membership.html There is another world, but it is in this one. Paul Eluard --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- ________________________________ * References: * Re: BHA: me again -- same topic <http://marx.econ.utah.edu/archives/bhaskar/2002m05/msg00039.htm> * From: howard Engelskirchen * Re: BHA: me again -- same topic <http://marx.econ.utah.edu/archives/bhaskar/2002m05/msg00046.htm> * From: Mervyn Hartwig * Prev by Date: RE: BHA: path dependence <http://marx.econ.utah.edu/archives/bhaskar/2002m05/msg00061.htm> _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [email protected] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
