Common use of An argument Clause in Contracts

An argument. ‘Agential-Centredness’ of ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇’s Transcendental Realism and the Question of ‘Non-Agential’ This section reflects on mechanisms as tendencies and causal agents. It points out two key features in the account of ontological realism in early CR: the primary mode of things (or beings) is ‘implicit’, and it is ‘agential’. This reflection is crucial for the wider thesis because it enables us to argue the possibility and significance of ‘otherness’, particularly in the critical realist account of social reality, and to argue that this ‘otherness’ seems to produce a point of divergence between the Bhaskarian account of the transcendent, and the Trinitarian account of God in Christianity. 3.1. Mechanisms as tendencies and the primary mode of things as ‘implicit’ As already noted, ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ argues that reality is stratified and differentiated so that what makes knowledge of things possible is the layer of causal mechanisms of things at the real level. He seeks to find the necessary condition for the possibility of scientific knowledge (or scientific activity), and then argues for the possibility of scientific experimentation on the basis of ontological distinction and independence of generative mechanisms (or causal laws) from patterns of events. He explains these mechanisms as the ‘fundamental’ ontological structure of reality (▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇, 2005, p.33), as ‘a real categorial structure of the world [existing] independently of our experiences and historical conceptualisations of that world’ (pp.34-35). The ontological basis of mechanisms is the causal powers of things, ‘which they possess necessarily due to their essential intrinsic structures’ (p.38). Mechanism is the most representative term he uses for the real categorial structure of things. However, mechanisms as objects of scientific activity are ‘unobservable’ or ‘non- transparent’, although their generated events may be the objects of experience (Kaidesoja, 2005, p.35; Agar, 2005, pp.34-35). Unlike transcendental idealism and empirical realism, transcendental realism regards mechanisms (a priori objects or objects-in-themselves) of science as not directly conformed to human reason, but as knowable through the process of scientific discovery (p.35).23 This is because ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ grounds the possibility of science in the object-in-itself, which he can argue is intelligible (that is to say that it is capable of becoming the subject matter of science and philosophy). In that regard he has much in common with the empirical realism of ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ and ▇▇▇▇, but, unlike them (and this is where he can sustain a coherent transcendental realism), he argues that the object-in-itself is not transparent to reason (or, reduction of the object is not a way to know it) (pp.34-5). This knowableness but non-transparency to reason is attributed to the characteristic nature of a mechanism, i.e. its tendencies. What then would be the characteristic tendencies of mechanisms? ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ argues that the underlying generative mechanisms are best understood as tendencies, since ‘[t]endencies may be regarded as powers or liabilities of a thing which may be exercised without being manifest in any particular outcome’ (▇▇▇▇▇▇▇, 1975, p.14). The mechanism 23 ▇▇▇▇ provides the following figure to indicate the transparency or non-transparency of the real objects in transcendental idealism, transcendental realism and empirical realism (▇▇▇▇, 2005, p.35). Object-in-itself Is the Subject Matter of Science Transparent to Reason? Transcendental Idealism Unknowable Yes Transcendental Realism Knowable No Empirical Realism Knowable Yes established as the real gains a status of necessity for its enduring powers, since ‘[n]ecessity is ascribed essentially to the activity of the mechanism’ (p.165). ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ explains mechanisms as natural kinds, and their way of working or behaving (their tendencies) as natural necessity (p.183), since natural necessity is the notion that ‘things have real ESSENCE or intrinsic structures … which possess causal powers and constitute them as natural kind’ (▇▇▇▇▇▇▇, 2007, p.320 emphasis original). But it is necessary to distinguish between what mechanisms can do and the way they tend to do it. ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ suggests that causal laws of mechanisms are better analysed as tendencies than as powers, because ‘in the concept of tendency, the concept of power is thus literally dynamized or set in motion’ (Bhaskar, 1975, p.50). Thus he makes a distinction between two concepts of tendency: tendency₁ and tendency₂. The first refers to ‘a power which may be exercised unrealised, a power normically qualified’ in open systems, while the latter refers to ‘the enduring orientations’ or ‘pre- formed structure’ of a thing, something toward which a thing ‘is predisposed or oriented’ or ‘a state or condition to do it’ of a thing (rather than the possibility of transfactual activities). Hence tendency₂ is a ‘possession of a thing’ (pp.229-230; 235).24 With this distinction it is clear that tendency₂ is something more than a power. It depends upon distinguishing from within the class of actions naturally possible for a thing … in virtue of its being the kind of thing that it is, those which are typical, usual or characteristic of that thing as distinct from others of its kind. (p.230) Therefore, while tendency₁ designates powers of things to exercise, it is tendency₂ that designates a condition or ‘realisation’ of a thing in virtue of its intrinsic essence, although the realisation is always dependent on other stimuli or intervening conditions (p.232).25 This indicates 24 For examples of this distinction, ‘Men, but not dolphins, can (i.e. possess the power to) smoke; but some men are non-smokers’; or ‘To say ▇▇▇▇▇ pushed the door open completely … implies that she … has the power to do it. But to say that she tends to push the door open is to say something more’ (▇▇▇▇▇▇▇, 1975, p.230, italic original).