The intransitive dimension in the philosophy of science corresponds roughly to ontology and the transitive dimension roughly to epistemology (SRHE 24-5). This tells us little, since every philosophy has an ontology and an epistemology. It is the rejection of subject/object identity which requires a special understanding of their relation for critical realism. Knowledge exists as a real social object in the transitive dimension and is about real objects in the intransitive dimension, which exists independently of mental activity. Intransitive objects exist and act independently of our knowledge of them (except when we use our knowledge to intervene), so knowledge is irreducible to what it is about and constitutes an object with its own level of social causality (SRHE 51-2).
Note that knowledge has both intransitive objects, namely what knowledge is about, and transitive objects, namely the antecedently existing knowledge from which new knowledge is formed (SRHE 54). Transitivity represents the social character of science and thus is in opposition to solipsism, while intransitivity is tied to the existence of causal structures and is in opposition to phenomenalism (RTS 24, 26).
It should be kept in mind that the transitive/intransitive distinction applies both to reality and to our knowledge of reality. Within reality there is a distinction between intransitive features of reality and the transitive production of knowledge, which is a component of reality. Within that part of reality comprising the transitive production of knowledge, one can find the philosophy of science with a distinction between the intransitive dimension (ontology) and the transitive dimension (epistemology). One can also find a metacritical dimension which scrutinizes the philosophy of science containing those dimensions. So the intransitive, transitive, and metacritical dimensions are all found within the transitive process of knowledge construction, which is itself a part of a broader intransitive reality (SRHE 24-25).
Copyright © 1997 Louis Irwin
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