Traditional extensionalism can be viewed as taking a fixed set of atoms of some sort that are part of a closed system yielding actualist generalities. In a logically extensional language the atoms are atomic sentences which enter into truth-functional relations. For example, 'p&q' is true if and only if p is true and q is true. Truth as a whole can be given a purely extensional definition along these lines. A major problem is that language tends to be highly recalcitrant when you try to interpret it in exclusively extensional terms.
This example is at the level of epistemology, but Bhaskar sees the same sort of thing occurring at the level of ontology and hence his phrase. The world is reduced to atomistic states, and laws are sustained as valid by the tacit assumption of closure. In opposing such an atomistice view, RB of course wants to view totalities as other than atoms bound together by external relations. The concept of absence as essential to this picture.
Copyright © 1997 Louis Irwin
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