Validez de las restricciones al derecho a la propiedad colectiva

exists, and that non-being has ontological priority over being. In other words, things not in existence are a feature of our universe and they enable and give ontological status to things that do. He understands these claims may seem paradoxical but it foregrounds the contingency (epistemological and ontological) of existential, not least, human existential questions. In other words our knowledge of the world presupposes a world and our questions of the existence of the things not present are merely contingent questions, they do not mean that what is not present is not real. (Ibid: 39-40).

He then gives examples of his argument based upon the Pierre is/is not in the cafe developed by Sartre. He claims that when he isn’t there it is a real negation', he really is not in the cafe. Real negativity understood as absence (or process of) is vital to dialectic and crucial to a dialectic of change or development according to Bhaskar. He claims that absenting absences is the essential feature of dialectical freedom, in other words taking what isn’t and turning it into what is. He then claims the absence may be trans-factual or actual (potential or actualised) in process or static, internally related or isolated (Ibid: 42). That is to say that a things causal power can remain un-actualised and therefore absent and that the existence of some powers may prevent the actualisation of other powers which would otherwise be capable of coming into being. For example the presence of oxygen in the air enables oxygen breathing animals to actualise their causal powers but its absence means that those causal powers are denied the opportunity to be exercised.

He claims dialectical comment can isolate an absence in the theory/practise relationship, indicating inconsistency or irrelevance and advising against its dialectical universality. In other words we can take a theory, examine its relationship to practise, examine all the things this presupposes and ask whether any of these are impossible or inconsistent with the nature of reality the theory presupposes. We can check for internal/external consistency of the theory-practise relationship. In creativity studies we have already shown that some definitions and theories are not consistent in this sense. The ontological presuppositions they contain are inconsistent with the nature of the social world and with their own theories and definitions. He argues that in critical realism the category of absence is critical to moving from the real to a notion of agency and that dialectics depend upon the positive identification and transformative elimination of absences, or in essence the process of absenting absence; hence the ontological priority of absence. (Ibid: 43)

He uses the example of human agency to demonstrate the argument as he claims in any world where human agency is to be possible (a pre-condition of human agency), the human agent must be able to bring about a state of affairs which would otherwise not have prevailed. He argues that not admitting that absence is possible is contradictory, and claims that if we only

say what is absent by reference to what we know to be present, we only know what is absent from our own viewpoint so we deny the existence of a world beyond our knowledge (Ibid: 44)

(hence a further critique of the hermeneutic tradition is offered).

Having established Bhaskar’s concepts of absence and negation we can now turn to the ex nihilo problem and examine the claims made of this by Bhaskar. I will argue that whilst his concepts of absence and negation are consistent with critical realism, his deviation42 in the text to discuss the concept of ex nihilo leaves an unsustainable argument. I will also argue that the source of the error lies in the argument presented being inconsistent with its own presuppositions. An alternative solution to ex nihilo will be presented which is consistent with the other assumptions of critical realism and as such may offer creativity researchers a new way of dealing with the age old problem of defining creativity.

Although the ex nihilo problem was not part of the central issues developed through the philosophy of critical realism, Bhaskar has written about the concept of ex nihilo and included reference to it within his own definition of creativity (Bhaskar 2002: 107)43. Regardless of intent, the concept of ex nihilo he presents is, arguably, flawed (a) because he fails to fully substantiate his conception of absolute nothing and (b) because the notion of ex nihilo presented seems inconsistent with other critical realist ontological commitments such as the notions of potentiality and causality.

For Bhaskar, the concept of ex nihilo emerges from his concept of absolute nothing and this follows from his logic on absence and negation. For ease of critique I will offer a detailed exegesis of this complex argument before comment:

A world without voids would be a world in which nothing could move or occur, as it presupposes an impossible conjunction of atomicity, rigidity and immediacy. That is to say, in effect, non-atomicity (and hence constitutive absence) and/or action-at-a-distance (and hence across voids) are transcendentally necessary features of an intelligible material object world. Transmission of energy, like information in inter-personal communication, is

42 His claims on ex nihilo seem to be presented as an aside to his main arguments, they do not seem to reveal a