Bhaskar argues that the world cannot be conceived without absences, to which we constantly refer and presuppose. The idea is not that we add fictional entities like Santa Claus, unicorns or caloric to the presences that we already recognize in our factual discourse; it is rather that reality even at the everyday level is inundated with absences (an empty glass, a missing wallet, the failure of a monsoon to have effect, etc.) (PE 56-7). Bhaskar does recognize fictional entities as part of fictional as opposed to factual discourse, but even in factual discourse we do not have to accord existence in the form of absence to things we talk about, such as caloric (DPF 40-41). Generally, absences are causally efficacious, such as the absence of health, in contrast, say, to the non-existence of caloric.
Bhaskar understands absences both as product (something not there) and process (making something absent, or "absenting"). He also uses iterable hybrids of these: process-in-product (for example, the causal efficacy of the past or things at a distance), product-in-process (the exercise of causal powers, as in ongoing social activity) (DPF 39; PE 55-6).
Bhaskar argues that absence is a concept that is alien to the classical conception of the world which strived to ensure that all action takes place by contiguous contact, yet that conception is incoherent without absence (PE 57). For example, the transfer of momentum from one billiard ball to another requires spaces in between them. More generally, absence is closely related to change and hence to cause. For a change in something is the absence of something that was present, or the presence of something that was absent; and to cause something is to make a change, either of the first sort, which is what Bhaskar calls "absenting" something, or of the second sort, which Bhaskar calls "absenting absence." Either way, to cause something is to make something--either a presence or an absence--absent (PE 56).
Now there might appear to be a symmetry between absence and presence, so that every absence can be regarded as the presence of something else, and vice versa. The absence of hair would be regarded as the presence of baldness, etc. Even this trivial example lacks symmetry, because we understand "baldness" as meaning absence of hair, whereas we do not understand "hair" as meaning absence of baldness. Non-trivial examples, such as the absence of health, bring out deeper asymmetries. In a narrow sense the absence of health, say TB, could mean the presence of certain microbes, such as is occurring in America's inner cities, but as in the baldness example the symmetry breaks down: we do not understand the presence of those specific microbes as meaning the absence of TB (we could identify them in an independent fashion).
There is a broader asymmetry as well, because the absence of health in general cannot be equated with the presence of disease. The presence of disease manifests itself in a number of ways, such as the presence of microbes, viruses, carcinogens, etc.; however, these presences are caused by the absence of health practices, which is in turn tied to politics. Consider another example: the absence of freedom equated to the presence of oppression. The equation breaks down, because the presence of oppression is manifested in many ways (death squads, disappearances, jails, etc.), but the underlying causes of those manifestations can only be described as an absence of freedom.
Copyright © 1997 Louis Irwin
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