From Haines Brown:
Critical Studies in History 1 (Dec. 2008): 27-49.
"Simply put, abduction aims to explain a particular outcome as the actualization of a causal potency latent in some prior state of the system. The task of the scientist is to ascertain the probability distribution of these possible outcomes and why a particular possibility was actualized rather than some other. I assume this procedure, even put abstractly as it is here, should sound familiar to the historian, for that is what most historians do most of the time. It is why historians habitually employ a probabilistic language in explaining the past."
"To pull this together, here is a definition of process that hopefully avoids the
difficulties arising from representing the world in terms of hypostated static entities: a
process is a probability distribution of possible outcomes arising from the constraint of
empiria on causal power."
To explore the relation of causal potency and empirical specifics, between the
universal dimension of things that ties them to a broader world and their specific qualities
and location in space and time, it is useful to represent a process as having two
dimensions, although this is an artificial distinction necessitated by the limitations of the
mind. While one dimension is the processes' causal potency, the other as its empiria, its
localization in space-time and its distinguishing features."
"The term empiria used here refers primarily to qualities in local space-time, and it constrains causal potency within a space-time framework to make it a specific probability distribution of causal potency for specific outcomes. Empiria represent the specific aspect
rather than the universal aspect of a process and makes it observable. When causal potency is constrained by empiria to become a probability distribution of possible effects, that combination represents a causal mechanism."
"That is, a
mediation is a structure associated with change in probability distribution; a causal
relation is constrained by the empirical structure of both cause and effect, and results in
change in the empirical dimension of the affected process. The different dimensions of a
process are being affected. "
"However, such a conclusion is not foregone. Following and extending the
suggestion of Kim above, it is entirely possible to see consciousness as an empirical
constraint on the process we speak of as action. Practical activity brings us an immediate
experience of the world, and consciousness is its effect, although as an emergent effect,
the content of consciousness does not reduce to the world of experience and is only
probabilistically constrained by it."
"If our intentions do not represent causal mechanisms
or factors, but instead are represented as being only constraints on action, then the causal
relation of mind and world becomes instead the constraint imposed by society (the
collection of processes we will refer to as social beings) upon the dissipation of causal
power of our natural environment. Our intentions only alter the probability distribution of
the result without being its cause. The more we change this probability distribution away
from its most likely outcome, the greater the effort that we must expend. If we sit back
and allow the most probable outcome to occur, it will takes no work at all. In other words,
it is not the idea that causes change, for it only constrains our expenditure of energy. Ideas
are passive constraints, not active agents. "
"progress in history is manifested, not as cultural progress or in terms of some kind of accumulation, but existentially as achieving improbable outcomes by constraining natural dissipation (a process known as economic production). These constraints (means of production) represent structures that are developed as a result of past production. However, because human needs are emergent, constraints inherited from the past are never sufficient to address our needs in the present. To address them there must in addition be an effort to achieve improbable outcomes (use of forces of production). That is, technological advance is not the cause of progress, but its effect. It is our bringing labor to bear through inherited structures to achieve improbable outcomes that represents progress, not progress in relation to a Telos or some socially constructed standard."
"How, then, do we represent the past, present and future? Action takes place in the
present and, as we have suggested, it is constrained by the mind. However, there are other
constraints, and in particular the constraint of history. The past no longer exists, but it did
leave empirical traces that constrain our behavior in the present. That is, the probability
distribution of what we are able to do in the present is determined by history, and our
creative action in the present aims to alter that probability distribution to arrive at an
outcome that is improbable in relation to the past. The past no longer exists as a process,
but the empirical dimension of that process is the empirical dimension of the present
process.
And, of course, the future does not exist in the present either. And, yet, like the past, one dimension of the future is present, although it is in this case the unobservable aspect of the present process rather than the empirical aspect of the past process. The future exists in the present as its probability distribution of possible futures; its existence in the present is not observable, but is nevertheless real."
"if
we were to understand ourselves to be part of a broader natural process (a naturalistic
equivalent of John Donneís ìno man is an island unto himselfî), it is the empirical
specificity of circumstance that makes creative action possible because it defines for us a
probability distribution of possible outcomes in terms of which we can struggle; it
represents a situation in which creative action becomes possible. So, external
determinations, far from inhibiting freedom, are its condition in that it defines what is
possible to do and how much effort will be needed to actualize our intentions. Our action
is not a struggle against constraints themselves, but against the most probable outcome
they define. The exercise of freedom therefore requires knowledge of what not only is
possible, but also what is probable. The former keeps us sane, and the latter offers the
possibility of moral value as we struggle against the most probable outcome and assume
moral responsibility. Because the probability distribution of the situation in which we
find ourselves is not an observable, but unobservable, it is accessible to us only through
historical understanding."
"A happier alternative is to see individual and society instead as aspects of one
process. Society represents a causal potency that is manifested as the empirical
development of individuation. The more developed the society, the more such an
individuation is possible; the more developed is individuation, the greater is the causal
potency of society.27 When we represent individual and society, not as separate things,
but as aspects of one process, the usual term for it is ìsocial being.î By working with the
social being as a basic unit of analysis, which we can infer from the empirical
development of individuals, we escape the problem of whether it is individuals or society
that shapes history. "
" The alternative offered here is to see these basic units as processes
or even as contradictions rather than as isolated entities. What this means is that what
defines a unit is not its intrinsic properties, but the causal structure inferred from its
empirical change that connects to a source of causal potency. The empirical objects that
share such a causal relation become the units of analysis even though they may be quite
different in empirical terms. "
posted by Lloyd at 7:39 AM 