There are works of philosophy and theory that help clarify the thought of a particular philosopher or a particular concept without unsettling our presuppositions about the nature, key assumptions, and primary aims of philosophy. There are then works of philosophy that remind us what philosophy itself is, which call us to philosophy, and which have the effect of unsettling those assumptions that are so proximal, so basic, that they are all but invisible. Quentin Meillassoux’s After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency certainly belongs to the latter category. Regardless of whether one agrees with his conclusions (and I am not at all decided), should Meillassoux never write another book– this is his first –he will have already made a substantial contribution to the history of philosophy.
As developed by Meillassoux, the predominant orientation of thought in contemporary philosophy is that of correlationism. Written in a crisp, transparent style characterized by the highest argumentative rigor that recalls the work of Descartes or Spinoza, Meillassoux’s task is to find an opening, a path, by which we might break out of the correlationist circle.
The first decision is that of all correlationism– it is the thesis of the essential inseparability of the act of thinking from its content. All we ever engage with is what is given-to-thought, never an entity subsisting by itself.
This decision alone suffices to disqualify every absolute of the realist or materialist variety. Every materialism that would be speculativve, and hence for which absolute reality is an entity without thought, must assert both that thought is not necessary (something can be independently of thought), and that thought can think what there must be when there is no thought. The materialism that chooses to follow the speculative path is thereby constrained to believe that it is possible to think a given reality by abstracting from the fact that we are thinking it. (AF, 36)
As articulated by Meillassoux, “…’correlation[ism]’ [is] the idea according to which we only ever have access to the correlation between thinking and being, and never to either term considered apart from the other” (AF, 5). As a result,
[c]orrelationism consists in disqualifying the claim that it is possible to consider the realms of subjectivity and objectivity independently of one another. Not only does it become necessary to insist that we never grasp an object “in itself”, in isolation from its relation to the subject, but it also becomes necessary to maintain that we can never grasp a subject that would not always-already be related to an object” (5)
Elsewhere Meillassoux expresses the position of correlationism as follows:
Correlationsim rests on an argument as simple as it is powerful, and which can be formulated in the following way: No X without givenness of X, and no theory about X without a positing of X. If you speak about something, you speak about something that is given to you, and posited by you. Consequently, the sentence ‘X is’, means: ‘X is the correlate of thinking’ in a Cartesian sense. That is: X is the correlate of an affection, or a perception or a conception, or of any given subjective act. To be is to be a correlate, a term of a correlation. (Collapse, Volume III, 409)
From within this framework, the realist,
…posits… an X supposed to be independent of any position. In other words, he posits the X as non-posited. He pretends to think what is independent and exterior to any conceptualisation, but in doing so he doesn’t say what he effectively does. He says his X is indifferent to thought, but what he does, of course, is simply to conceptualise an X perfectly dependendent on his own thinking. (Collapse, Volume III, 412)
Part of Meillassoux’s value lies in his articulation of the core argument common to a diverse variety of different contemporary philosophical orientations. The correlationist strategy consists in demonstrating that the object can only be thought as it is given, and it can only be thought as it is given for a subject. In drawing our attention to givenness for a subject, correlationism thus demonstrates that we can never know what the object is in-itself, but only what it is for-us. In short, any truth one might articulate is not a truth of the world as it would be regardless of whether or not we exist, but only a truth for-us.
The inauguration of correlationism begins, of course, with Kant (though arguably already with Protagoras) who argued that objects conform to the mind rather than the mind to objects. For Kant the transcendental subject takes the matter of intuition (sensations) and gives them form and structure by organizing them in terms of the a priori categories of the understanding and the forms of intuition. As everyone knows, Kant is compelled to make this move in order to respond to Hume’s scepticism which had shown that we cannot establish that causal relations are necessary relations if all of our knowledge arises from sensation. However, if, as Kant argues, 1) it is not mind that conforms to objects via the agency of sensations or impressions, and 2) the structures of transcendental subjective (the categories and forms of intuition) are universal and invariant for all rational subjects such as ourselves, then science can be saved for the structure of appearances will thereby be invariant. Kant is able to save necessity, and therefore the sciences, at the price of the conclusion that we only ever know objects as they appear to us and not as they are in themselves.
With the inauguration of correlationism we get a battle of the correlationists. Which relation, the correlationist asks, is the genuine correlation? Which relation is the genuine relation that governs the production of the given for the subject? Thus Kant locates the genuine correlation in the relation between transcendental subjectivity and the matter of intuition conditioned by the categories of the understanding and the pure forms of intuition imposed by mind. The phenomenologist locates the correlation in the sense-bestowing activity of transcendental subjectivity in lived experience. Wittgenstein finds the correlation in language games constituting the world. Habermas in the universals of communicative action. For Foucault the correlation is to be found in the dynamics of power and discourse. The cultural Marxist discerns the correlation in the socio-economic structures of history. The hermeneut argues that the correlative structures are to be found in historically informed linguistic consciousness. The sociologist and anthropologist locate the correlational relation in social, communicativve, and cultural categories belonging to a particular group. And so on. All of these orientations agree in the basic claim that the object is only an object for a subject and the subject is only a subject for the object, and that we never know an object as it is in-itself independent of the structures that condition appearances.
Philosophical debate thus becomes a debate as to whether there are universal correlative structures shared by all of humanity (Kant, Husserl, Habermas, etc), or whether we have a generalized relative wherein there are many incommensurate correlative structure that are irreducible to one another (late Wittgenstein, Lyotard, Derrida, Foucault, perhaps Marx, etc).
Although Meillassoux does not point this out, insofar as each of these frameworks is self-referential or auto-performative (we are unable to appeal to the in-itself, but only the immanent criteria of the framework of givenness belonging to mind, the subject, society, language, or history), we are left without the means of deciding among these alternatives. At best we choose among these alternatives through a sovereign gesture that cannot itself be grounded or justified. What, for example, leads me to articulate the framework of givenness in terms of Wittgenstein or Derrida rather than phenomenology or Marx or Freud or Lacan or Gadamer or Levi-Strauss or Bourdieu? Like a fly trapped in a bottle, I shuttle back and forth between these alternatives, finding all equally plausible as ways of accounting for givenness while simultaneously finding none plausible. I make the argument that lived intentional consciousness is the ground of givenness, only to then recognize that I can only articulate this lived experience through the framework of language, only to then recognize that I only ever encounter lived experience through the framework of the social characterized by power relations and discursive relations, only to then discover that every thought and practice I engage in is conditioned by a history not of my own making. Each of these frameworks appears equally compelling and equally contingent. We are presented with critique after critique, each one calling for a hyper-self-reflexive analysis of the conditions for our relation to the object; this critique Kantian, that Husserlian, this one Heideggerian, that one Merleau-Pontyian, this one linguistic, that one Foucaulto-Bourdieauian analyzing power, practice, and discourse, this one Marxist analyzing our historical and socio-economic conditioning, that one Freudo-Lacanian analyzing the unconscious and desire.
While we can elect to take up any of these self-reflexive, hyper-critical positions and say a good deal about givenness, we are never really given a criteria as to why one ought to be preferred over the other. Or, perhaps a bit more precisely, each justification seems to be circular insofar as it seems to presuppose the very position it seeks to ground. Each claims that its ground is the fundamental ground, yet each is unable to really demonstrate that this is the ultimate ground. The Wittgensteinian claims that language is the ultimate ground, yet the Kantian or Husserlian can reply that language would not itself be possible without transcendental subjectivity or the sense-bestowing intentional activities of lived experience. The Wittgensteinian then replies that lived intentional experience is not possible without language, and the structural anthropologist snears at both, pointing out that neither are possible without invariant cultural structures shared by the savage and modern alike. And so it goes with each choosing their position according to their preference.
As Badiou has observed, accompanying all of this is a general disappearance of philosophy. Admittedly, this might be progress if, in fact, philosophy is akin to alchemy. As correlationism becomes more refined and developed, philosophy comes to be replaced by linguistics, economics, sociology, anthropology, psychoanalysis, cognitive science, and so on. In the language of cybernetics, each of these discourses are second-order cybernetic discourses that observe how observers observe the world while remaining agnostic about the truth-values of these first-order cybernetic discourses. From the perspective of the correlationism in the social sciences, the world of the Pentacostal fundamentalist is every bit as legitimate as that of the quantum physicist. Both are correlative structures that posit their own objects and produce their own givenness. How could we decide between either? There is thus a general “textualization” of the world, where the correlationist does not speak directly of the world– to do so would be to fall into naive realism –but where one talks about talk about the world. This, perhaps, is the reason that philosophy as practiced in philosophy departments consists in commentary over texts.
One of the central ambitions of Kant’s correlationist project, of course, was to overcome dogmatic metaphysics characterized by the belief that we can directly talk about things as they are in themselves (sans the Protagorean dictum) and, for example, demonstrate the existence of God. This is one of the central reasons that all the heirs of correlationism has proven so attractive. As Meillassoux puts it,
Correlationism is not, in my definition, an anti-realism but an anti-absolutism. Correlationism is not the modern way to reject all possible knowledge of an absolute: it is the claim that we are closed up in our representations– whether conscious, linguistic, or historical –with no sure access to an external reality independent of our specific point of view. (Collapse, Volume III, 427)
In some inspired passages from the second chapter of After Finitude, Meillassoux shows how correlationism, despite its central critical impulses, has opened the door at a conceptual level to all forms of religiousity. For where the in-itself is barred from knowledge, there is nothing to prevent one making any claim about the in-itself he might like so long as it remains at the level of faith or belief. Thus, paradoxically, correlationism, which destroyed the dogmatic path, provides the greatest and most secure refuge for religious irrationalism against the Enlightenment project. As such, Meillassoux will write, “[w]e are trying to grasp the sense of the following paradox: the more thought arms itself against dogmatism, the more defenseless it becomes before fanaticism” (AF, 48). Philosophy which is born with the rejection of mythos now finds that it must suffer the proliferation of superstition, religious fanaticism, and ideology everywhere due to its own internal constraints. The question of whether or not we can think a world without thought is thus the question of whether or not philosophy is possible.
Within the space of this post I have attempted to articulate the problem to which Meillassoux’s thought responds. I have said nothing of how he goes about responding to that problem. I am still mulling through these arguments and seeking to determine whether I find them persuasive or not. I am, however, convinced that Meillassoux has formulated the problem of contemporary thought in a compelling and truly radical way. Read this book.
Larval Subjects . 
June 13, 2008 at 8:26 pm
“We are presented with critique after critique, each one calling for a hyper-self-reflexive analysis of the conditions for our relation to the object; this critique Kantian, that Husserlian, this one Heideggerian, that one Merleau-Pontyian, this one linguistic, that one Foucaulto-Bourdieauian analyzing power, practice, and discourse, this one Marxist analyzing our historical and socio-economic conditioning, that one Freudo-Lacanian analyzing the unconscious and desire.”
I like this point a lot – it’s something Harman really criticizes too, albeit with an emphasis on Heideggarian scholarship. It’s time to move beyond the permanent “one-up-manship” involved in the endless pursuit of more fundamental conditions. That being said, one potential problem is, with the suspension of the critical project, how do the speculative realisms escape falling into speculative and dogmatic metaphysics? There’s at least 4 speculative realist authors (Meillassoux, Harman, Grant, and Brassier) with Zizek, Badiou, and Deleuze all possible candidates too – but each offers a radically distinct vision of what the absolute would consist of. How can we adjudicate between these competing visions without some sort of critical apparatus? I suspect you’re not sure yet either, since you’re careful to note that you make no judgment yet on Meillassoux’s response to the problem of correlationism.
I completely agree, though, that even if the responses offered so far turn out to be untenable, Meillassoux’s articulation of the problem is central to modern philosophy.
June 13, 2008 at 9:06 pm
“Every materialism that would be speculativve, and hence for which absolute reality is an entity without thought, must assert both that thought is not necessary (something can be independently of thought), and that thought can think what there must be when there is no thought.”
Interesting assertion. Could it be that in arguing that there is absolute reality without thought, what realists/materialists mean is that not everything (i.e. not all reality) is thinkable, that there is something beyond what we (or someone else, whoever) can think? So even as there is an interaction between thought and “reality,” even as thought is able to think some of reality, this thought may not necessarily accurately think reality (which, I guess, leads to relativism) or that there is always something that thinking would miss (the “material” “reality” that some variants of materialism would posit as the “true reality,” if not at least the basis of thought which thought may possibly distort).
I feel uncomfortable with the correlationist assertion that all reality is that which is thinkable. For two reasons: 1. Does not this tend to lead to the quest for the “right” way of thinking about reality (thought’s content). Having then discovered that, well, all other ways of thinking about the same reality will be dismissed. Hence leading to rigid correlationism between a reality (a specific topic, for example) and one–and only one–thought about it.
2. It seems humanist, hubristic. Thinking is an inherently human capacity, no? Usually attached to a cogito, an ego. What about those things beyond what we can think? Not only at the present moment (as in the psychoanalytic unconscious) but things that our mind/faculties just won’t be able to grasp. As of now, there are many things we can’t seem to think (e.g. political questions, but also other things, as is perhaps most glaringly demonstrated by the limitations of science, of medicine, to be specific). And while I do not want to disparage or be discouraged with human abilities, I feel skeptical with the suggestion that time will come when, even though we won’t fully understand it, we humans will be able to think (even just in the sense of posit) everything. These things to be thought about, of course, are not just physical or material (as in materialism), but, to put it simply, “reality” in general (as in realism).
June 13, 2008 at 9:10 pm
Great. I forgot to add to the second paragraph of my reply (the paragraph after the text I quote) the main point:
Thus even if we are not able to think all of “absolute reality,” it doesn’t mean that thought is rendered unnecessary. Rather than taking “absolute reality” in its totality, perhaps we can say that realism thinks about it partially: part of reality is thinkable, part is not. Hence the detachment of “reality” from “thought” does not render them mutually exclusive such that their dissociation does not make one (or both) disappear (or unnecessary).
June 13, 2008 at 9:48 pm
I’d be really curious to know how exactly transcendental materialism differs from speculative realism, as it seems to me that Zizek’s incarnation of Hegel goes beyond “correlationism.” I suppose this means I should probably read *After Finitude*.
June 13, 2008 at 10:18 pm
Ryan, I think the speculative realist is saying the exact opposite of this:
I really did not develop Meillassoux’s account of how correlationism opens the door to religious fanaticism in the detail the issue deserves, but part of the analysis runs that insofar as correlationism prevents us from having a knowledge of things as they are in themselves, it opens the door for the religious fanatic to assert, on the basis of belief (not knowledge) the nature of God, etc., insofar as the in-itself is “not thinkable”. Meillassoux wants to claim that the in-itself is, in fact, thinkable. This is what he is getting at with his discussion of the arche-fossil (entities that pre-exist human existence such as dinosaur bones or stars that are now long gone) at the beginning of After Finitude. The question runs as follows: When the scientist tells us about fossils, is she telling us about something real that exists regardless of whether or not any humans exist, or something that only is for the correlationist subject? If the latter, then the correlationist is implicitly claiming that the correlation regulates and legislates science and that, in fact, what the scientist is talking about is nonsense since we cannot even conceive what the world would be independent of the mediating categories whether they be cognitive, linguistic, historical, sociological, and so on.
Nick, I think you pose the key question and I have no answer to it. Minimally I’d say that the fact that there is competing positions doesn’t disbar the truth of the speculative realist position, though it does raise a number of philosophical questions about how to adjudicate between these positions. The record of the conference at the end of Collapse III is especially interesting, in this connection, as, looking at the discussions, it seems to me that there’s still a great deal of uncertainty as to how to pose these questions at all. Based on what I’ve read there, it seems to me that Harman and Grant still vacillate between speculative realist positions and correlationist positions (though I’m only a bit of the way through Tool-Being and haven’t even looked at Grant’s book which is hugely expensive, so I can’t say for sure). On the other hand, it seems like the requisite epistemic work just hasn’t been done in Meillassoux or Brassier. Badiou seems to avoid the problem altogether through his understanding of mathematics as neither realist nor constructivist, though I’m still not clear on how to think this and find his account of situations to be underdetermined even in his most recent work.
Bryan, I confess that I have a hard time recognizing anything materialist in Zizek’s work. Arguing that the “whole is not” does not strike me as sufficient for describing a robust materialism. Moreover, Zizek explicitly remains tied to finitist conceptions of cognitions (cf. his critique of Badiou in The Ticklish Subject where he basically rejects Badiou’s discussion of the infinite based on Kant’s antinomies, missing, it seems to me, the distinction between the thinkable and the knowable that underlies Badiou’s argument). Further, it seems to me that while the Real certainly plays a key role in Zizek’s thought, the symbolic nonetheless takes the upper hand as a sort of correlationist framework. Indeed, he consistently argues that the real is a function of the symbolic. It could be that I’m being unfair to Zizek here. I’ve yet to read Johnston’s latest book, so perhaps this will answer these questions for me. As it stands, it seems to me that Zizek is embracing the term “materialism” more for reasons to do with sex-appeal in the context of contemporary continental debates, than for anything having to do with materialism that would necessarily have a connection with contingency, the actuality of situations, matter(!), etc.
June 13, 2008 at 10:32 pm
It’s also worth adding that the view of the speculative realist is going to be very different depending on what sort of constructivist we’re talking about. No doubt someone like Meillassoux or Brassier would take a very dim view of the sort of constructivism you find in someone like Berger or Luckmann in The Social Construction of Reality as there the claim will be that we have to remain absolutely agnostic as to what reality is in itself as we only ever encounter the world through social constructions or mediations. It is this move that opens the door to the defender of faith (belief in the absence of demonstration), for just as the correlationist cannot claim to know what the thing is in itself, he also cannot disbar the possibility that in-itself the world might be as described by the Pentacostal snake handler. In other words, the world of the scientist is no more privileged or accurate than the world of the Pentacostal snake handler or defender of radical orthodoxy. They are just differing world-schemes with neither having a greater claim to truth. It is not at all unusual to hear such refutations of the atheist: that the atheist is no more able to disprove the existence of God than the theist is able to prove the existence of God.
By contrast, it’s like that the speculative realist would be approving of constructivisms such as we find in Latour and Stenger. Latour’s project, for instance, does not consist in showing that the ozone hole or the bacteria in the petrie dish are constructions that lack any reality in themselves apart from human beings. Rather, Latour treats these things as entirely real, though, no doubt, artificially isolated from the rest of the world through laboratory conditions. Rather, what Latour wishes to think is the intersection or network between discourse, power, and entities in an assemblage where none functions as the condition of all the rest (as in the case, for example, of linguistic idealism). The difference might appear to be slight but it makes all the difference in the world.
June 15, 2008 at 4:08 am
Isn’t Latour’s position basically a correlationism, however, since he wants to reject thinking of things-in-themselves in a strict nature/culture divide? Meillasoux would seem to require an idea of nature as an in-itself.
June 15, 2008 at 4:29 am
I think the thesis is that culture is a part of nature such that there isn’t one thing, nature, and another thing, culture, but only the world and various assemblages in that world. Meillassoux isn’t rejecting culture, so much as the thesis that culture overdetermines the given such that we have no relationship with the in-itself.
June 15, 2008 at 5:16 pm
But few of the “correlationists” mentioned are simply social constructivists. What most of them would deny is that we can think something such as it is without thinking it, and Latour would seem to be in agreement with this. Nature in-itself is only such in contradistinction to nature as it is received through a linguistic, transcendental-consciousness, social or cultural lens. This is what Hegel is concerned to deny the possibility of in the Introduction to the Phenomenology, and most modern continentalists take his argument very seriously. I fail to see where Latour is trying to get to an in-itself; he seems entirely unconcerned with this question, whereas Meillasoux seems to demand it.
June 15, 2008 at 5:48 pm
Well as I said previously, Latour is up to something quite different than the social constructivist. This is the key difference between assemblage theory and social constructivist. Latour constantly emphasizes that things such as ozone holes, bacteria, etc., are real. Things such as discourses and power are, for Latour, also real. Latour is analyzing the way in which all of these things hang together in a network in much the same way that you might examine the ecosystem of a rain forest.
Allow me to push the analogy a bit further. The analyst of the ecosystem wishes to see how the ant fits together with particular plants and other animals in a system. All elements of this system are absolutely real. No one is more real than the others. This is how Latour analyzes a network. He looks at how a discourse fits together with a particular object which in turn fits together with power. They’re all real for him. This is also why Latour is quite happy to claim that the bacteria would exist regardless of whether the discourse about it existed or the power relations exist. The power relations and discourse do not make it exist. This is also why you find references to Latour throughout the work of a number of speculative realists (Harman, in fact, has a book forthcoming on Latour).
The social constructivist by contrast, is making the claim that the discourse and power makes the bacteria what it is. Returning to the ecological analogy, the social constructivist is doing the equivalent of saying that the ant makes the plant, grass, etc., be what it is, i.e., that it has no independent or non-related being.
Hegel is doing something slightly different. Where the epistemological correlationist says that there is something else but that we can never know it because we only ever know the world through our various categories whether they be of transcendental consciousness, power, language, and so on, Hegel argues that the relation between subject and object is the real. As such, he is a metaphysical correlationist. As a consequence, for Hegel the idea of a world without a subject or independent of the subject is nonsensical as the two necessarily have an intrinsic and internal relation to one another. It is then fair to ask after the ontological status of events prior to the onset of thought such as the big bang in Hegel. Does Hegel believe that the astrophysicist is suffering from a sort of delusion when he speaks of such events because these are events that pre-date any of our categories or ways of relating to the world?
June 16, 2008 at 12:51 am
I never said that Latour was a social constructivist, nor did I think it. And I also said that many of the correlationists mentioned are not social constructivists either. I only mentioned the Intro to the Phenomenology to refer to Hegel’s argument against the possibility of knowing an in-itself, not to propound the Hegelian solution to the problem. So I still have to question whether Latour is not some sort of correlationist in Meillasoux’s terms, because for Latour we do not try to think an in-itself or think what there is apart from thought–to the contrary, Latour wants to criticize a nature/culture binary construction and explore the networking and intertwining of the two. This is NOT what Meillasoux seems to be doing–he seems to require an absolute, in other words an in-itself that is absolved from all the distorting effects that its being thought, said or intuited would have on it. So either I have Meillasoux wrong or I have Latour wrong, but I don’t think your comments have really borne on what I’m saying here.
June 16, 2008 at 12:59 am
Sorry, I wish I could edit because that was done in a hurry. I should have said “PERHAPS I have Meillasoux wrong” etc. As for things being real, that doesn’t strike me as the salient distinction. For Kant, phenomena are empirically real but transcendentally ideal. For Heidegger, beings are only such as they are in being revealed, but they are perfectly real (or at least they ARE, since “real/wirklich” is a term that is deconstructed by Heidegger). In fact, few if any of the cited “correlationists” would deny the reality of phenomena, and the crux of correlationism as it is presented here is not whether things are real apart from their being thought or said or intuited,to deny which sounds like a sort of Berklianism, but whether we can think what things are without their being thought, in other words whether there is an absolute in-itself that would be the, or at least a, matter for philosophy.
June 16, 2008 at 1:32 am
But, you see, this is the key point for Meillassoux:
Meillassoux is rejecting the notion of phenomenally real altogether. In asking the question of whether it’s possible to think a world without thought or whether to think a world prior to and after the human, he is asking whether it is possible to speak intelligibly of something that has nothing to do with phenomenality, but the in-itself. In short, he’s rejecting the entire framework of your post. Whether or not he’s successful in doing so is another question. The final sentence of your most recent post suggests that perhaps you haven’t read Meillassoux, as his key argument lies in undermining the notion of phenomenally real. If you haven’t read him, I would politely ask that you please not waste my time.
June 16, 2008 at 1:44 am
Or to put the point more bluntly, Meillassoux’s entire project consists in undermining the distinction between transcendentally ideal and empirically real that forms the essence of the correlationist position in its many variants. This is what he’s getting at when he asks whether it’s possible to think a world without thought and seeks to undermine the logic of positing. It is therefore odd to bring this up in response to Meillassoux’s arguments, as this is the whole point of his critique of positing consciousness or the “for-us”. Now Meillassoux’s arguments can certainly fail in accomplishing this task– I’m not entirely convinced at this point –but it’s strange to rehearse the basic axioms of the correlationist position in a discussion of these arguments.
June 16, 2008 at 5:38 am
I was not defending the correlationist position, nor was I insisting on transcendentally idealism. The original point is that Meillasoux, as you have now stated yourself, insists on an in-itself, and Latour does not–to the contrary, Latour thinks a distinction between an absolute in-itself and a culturally constructed for-us is the hallmark of modernism, which, since we are practically and theoretically undermining this distinction at every step, is why “we have never been modern.” Is your point that Meillasoux accepts an in-itself and completely rejects the idea that ANY knowledge is conditioned by thought, language, or culture? So that all knowledge is knowledge of an absolute? If that is not your point, I am confused.
I have not yet Meilasoux, just some reviews and your synopsis above. However, I don’t think I’m wasting your time by asking these questions, I think you’re wasting your own time by continually misreading my remarks and explaining things to me I already get. I have yet to see where I have imputed anything to Meillasoux that you don’t also, since the only thing I’ve said about him is that he insists on knowledge of an in-itself or an absolute. This is also what you say about him. I am asking these questions in order to learn from you about Meillasoux, whom I do plan on reading this summer. I still don’t see how Latour and Meillasoux are on the same page, for reasons I’ve articulated several times now. Perhaps I am being obtuse, if so I’m sorry, but your responses don’t seem to address my question. Please tell me if you disagree with any part of the following statement:
Yes, Latour thinks the assemblages he talks about are real. But no, he doesn’t think they are an absolute nature in-itself. Meillasoux does, however, think that we can think an absolute nature in-itself.
June 16, 2008 at 6:58 am
This article might help the discussion here:
Click to access HarmanGraham.pdf
Briefly, yes, Latour overcomes the nature/culture divide by elaborating the concept of hybrids – ontological entities that are both substances and networks. Now, in a certain sense, I’d argue that these hybrids themselves are already realist in Meillassoux’s sense: this is because Latour takes everything to be ontologically equal. This isn’t to deny that social objects have unique properties (e.g. those that make them correlationist), but they also participate in a grander, realist ontology of objects indifferent to being natural or social. In that sense, they escape correlationism. Insofar as a social object participates in this ontology of hybrids, it contains a portion that is ontologically realist and in-itself – i.e. everything in the world, even typically correlationist phenomena, are ontologically hybrids.
Now, to be sure, this points to a distinction between the realism of Meillassoux and Harman/Latour – Meillassoux seems to privilege natural science (remaining stuck within the nature/culture divide), whereas Harman/Latour are ontologically beyond this divide. The problem for Meillassoux now is to account for correlationism – how does the absolute generate such a thing? The basic problem is, what is the reality/materiality of correlationist phenomena?
But Harman brings up a problem in Latour, too. Namely, that he tends to emphasize social objects (not surprising considering he’s a sociologist). But Harman criticizes him for this in the article above, and argues that to make it more rigorously realist, Latour needs to supplement his work with Harman’s concept of an obscure reality that goes unexpressed within the network of the hybrid. With this supplement, even social entities retain a measure of reality that goes unexpressed within thought, thereby meeting Meillassoux’ requirements for a realist ontology – but also encompassing social entities.
June 16, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Nick articulates the point I’ve been trying to make nicely. The important difference between Latour and Meillassoux is that for Latour the entities discovered in laboratory work would not have existed without the laboratory. For example, pure water or H20 can’t be found anywhere in nature as far as I know, but is purified and produced under laboratory conditions. The point I was trying to make is that the water is no less real for all that, nor can it be said to be simply a discourse or effect of power. Discourse and power might indeed contribute to the production of pure water in the lab for whatever reason, but that water is nonetheless real and something more and different than simply discourse and power.
For Meillassoux, by contrast, the in-itselves that he’s talking about would exist regardless of whether or not human beings or labs were there to talk about them, think about them, or isolate them. I do not think that Meillassoux is making the strong claim that no knowledge is conditioned by thought, language, or culture, though it’s difficult to say at this juncture as he might restrict knowledge to such things and such things alone. Meillassoux’s more modest claim is that it is possible for us to think something not conditioned by thought, language, and culture.
June 16, 2008 at 4:40 pm
OK, I’m still not convinced the cut between realism and correlationism is being articulated correctly, and here’s why. Many correlationists are not social constructivists of any kind. Heidegger is listed as a correlationist, but for Heidegger, natural beings are not produced by language, culture, or consciousness. Nature and culture are regions of being, so natural and social objects participate, as Nick says, in a grander ontology. This is complicated because this doesn’t mean they are in an indifferent sense–in fact, the sense in which they are is historical. That means that this sense has a history, NOT that it is somehow dependent on human history–if anything, the reverse is the case. In other words, beings are not human artifacts. They are not produced by language or culture. Being precedes and conditions human thinking and doing, but humans are called to witness the unfolding of being, which is itself historical. This seems to be a more complicated picture, but it does not allow for any social, transcendental or linguistic construction. Now, either Latour would have to accept Harman’s adjustment, which I don’t think he’d be inclined to do, or as Nick implies, he still is somewhat of a correlationist.
The biggest problem for Meillasoux seems to me to establish the necessity of the relaist move. If transcendental frameworks are chosen as stated (tendentiously) above by “preference,” then what is the necessity of choosing to take “arche-fossils” or scientific artifacts (another tendentious word, I know!) as ontologically decisive? How does M’s realism ground itself on something other than a decision, however we want to construe the word?
June 16, 2008 at 5:09 pm
I have never suggested that all correlationists are social constructivists. Social constructivists are one species of correlationist just as dogs are one species of mammal. Kant and Husserl– who I mention a number of times in the post –are not social constructivists. What’s important is that the basic schema of thought is the same in all of these orientations. Meillassox’s argument is directed at any form of philosophy that claims that it is impossible to speak of a subject or object independent of one another. For Kant this takes the form of mediation through the categories of the understanding that are not social construction, i.e., what you referred to as the phenomenally real. For someone for Foucault, by contrast, who is a social constructivist, this would take place through cultural categories. For someone like Heidegger it involves the openness of Dasein to the world. Three very different theories, but forms of correlationism nonetheless.
Meillassoux addresses your points about transcendental subjectivity versus empirically real humans in the second or third chapter chapter of After Finitude, and also treats them in terms of Dasein. He shows how these points apply equally to Heidegger’s ontology. I made all of these references in the original post. The discussion of social constructivism was a particular case of correlationism that’s particularly relevant given our contemporary situation of thought which has tended to move away from transcendental universals to cultural categories.
In a nutshell– and I cannot do the argument justice here –Meillassoux attempts to show how correlationist systems of thought are always tied to empirical real subjectivity. In short, he attempts to show how the correlationist relation always arises in natural history. This is why the example of the arche-fossil is something more than a mere “preference”, for the arche-fossil is something that predates the advent of human beings. As such, we are faced with the alternative that either scientists are discussing something nonsensical when discussing the arche-fossil (as it predates the advent of the human and thus is something other than a relation in a correlation), or the scientist is making claims about something that is both intelligible and not dependent on a correlative relation whether that relation take the form of social constructivism, transcendental idealism, absolute idealism, phenomenology, fundamental ontology, etc. There are very straightforward criteria for refuting Meillassoux’s argument here: demonstrate that the correlationist relation no matter what form it takes is not tied to the advent of empirically real humans.
June 16, 2008 at 5:31 pm
The argument as you’ve presented it is circular–we have to accept an empirically realistic ontology on the basis of evidence that is evaluated on the basis of an empirically realistic ontology. For Heidegger, scientific evidence of natural beings that prexist humanity is not nonsense–it is scientifically valid but speaks of beings that are only evaluable on the basis of an ontology, and thus can tell us nothing ontologically. These beings are not produced by our ontological stance in the world, they don’t blink into being the moment humans begin to think, it’s just that we only have access to them on the basis of our ontological stance. A natural being is not something that only exists as a relation in a correlation, it is something that is cleared and allowed to stand before us on the basis of our stance toward beings–one that is not arbitrarily chosen on the basis of preference, but arises when we respond to a fundamental claim.
But if we are fundamentally claimed by a certain realism–if this realism becomes for us a historical necessity–this still tells us nothing about how such claims come to prevail or how ontologies become historically necessary.
(The only alternative to this that doesn’t involve a preference, it seems to me at the moment (for instance, preferring not to dismiss science as nonsense, in your terms), would be some sort of dialectic. )
June 16, 2008 at 5:48 pm
Bzfgt, respectfully this discussion is getting extremely tiresome as you have not read the book and are asking me to resconstruct the entire thing. Meillassoux attempts to show that the breakdown of correlationism must be conceived within the correlative structure itself. It is this argument that addresses the point about circularity that you raise. It is also an argument that is very intricate and that I cannot reproduce here.
The mode of access issue is precisely the point. The correlationist position is that we can only speak of beings in terms of how they are given to us or our mode of access. From within this framework, the notion of talking about an entity independent of givenness is unintelligible because entities can only ever be thought in terms of how they are given. This begs the question of what the scientist could possibly be doing when speaking of entities either prior to the existence of humans or following the ultimate demise of humans. Here we are talking about a world, according to Meillassoux, where non of the mechanisms by which the given is given are operative. Meillassoux attempts to show that while the correlationist vigorously attempts to deny that he is in any way advancing a subjective idealism of the sort of Berkeley, he is nonetheless doing so insofar as he is logically committed to the claim that a being prior to the human and human modes of givenness is unintelligible. I note that your talk of clearing and standing-before us indicates that you have basically chosen a Heideggerian framework within which to articulate this question. My point in the original post is that I see no more reason to select a Heideggerian frame than a Wittgensteinian, Derridean, Foucaultian, anthropological, or Kantian frame. I can explain each of these frames in terms of the others. As such, the frame becomes a decision based on preference rather than any sort of formal demonstration. I can show, for example, that Heidegger’s account would not be possible without the more fundamental ground of language games and then turn around and show that Heidegger’s account is more fundamental than language games. What I am not able to do is to show why one should be preferred over the other.
June 16, 2008 at 6:12 pm
bzfgt:
You will probably find the third chapter of After Finitude interesting. That is where Meillassoux outlines his argument for why it does not come down to preference.
Basically, and quite simplified, one part of the argument involves accepting the arguments of correlationism against naive realism. The other part is that correlationism is not, and must avoid, absolute idealism.
Tied together, this means something like the following: The correlation is necessary (against naive realism) but also contingent (against absolute idealism). One might call it empirically/expirentially necessary but transcendentally contingent. But if the transcendental contingency is itself contingent then there might always be some dialectical progression to the Absolute, ala Hegel, waiting just around the corner. If you want to claim (as I think most correlationists do) that this is not possible, then you have to say that the transcendental contingency is necessary. And voila! There you have it, Meillassoux’ absolute contingency.
(This does require an independent argument for why Hegelian idealism is untenable. I don’t think Meillassoux provides one, at least I don’t remember him doing so. But at any rate, I gather that correlationists view Hegelian idealism as untenable, and thus his argument, if successful, forces them to choose between absolute idealism and speculative realism)
June 16, 2008 at 6:24 pm
“I can explain each of these frames in terms of the others. As such, the frame becomes a decision based on preference rather than any sort of formal demonstration. I can show, for example, that Heidegger’s account would not be possible without the more fundamental ground of language games and then turn around and show that Heidegger’s account is more fundamental than language games. What I am not able to do is to show why one should be preferred over the other.”
There is a Rorty quote (probably several) encapsulating this point really well. I think it is in one of his essays on Derrida or Heidegger, where he switches philosophical vocabulary from sentence to sentence, explaining them in terms of each other. I find it quite interesting that according to the arguments of Meillassoux, Rorty seems to be the “truth” of correlationism. It is even brought out in their discussion in Collapse III….
June 16, 2008 at 8:01 pm
OK, you’re probably right that I am placing an unfair burden on you by continuing to argue at this point without having read the book.
June 22, 2008 at 7:57 pm
[…] Meillassoux kutsuu tätä traditiota "korrelationismiksi", ja Larval Subjects on taas ensimmäisenä esittelemässä argumentteja. LS:n mukaan ongelma on […]
June 22, 2008 at 11:25 pm
I’m not sure Meillassoux is as excellent in weilding realism as a speculative baton to batter down all the various discourses (snake charmers and RO) who are at the same level of “truth” as the result of correlationism.
Indeed, the vast majority of social constructivisms, for example, Lyotard’s postmodernism, spoke of developing an agnostic stance towards universal truth, precisely because those who are fundamentalists (Fascism particularly, but fundamentalisms religious or otherwise more broadly) operate by claiming they have a grasp of truth that is uncorrelated. To say that truths are constructed, that times change, was a move precisely in the direction away from the various concerning movements you describe, demonstrating not, in the knee jerk argument against postmodernism, that all things have the same status as truth, but that all truth, even true truth is constructed, and often claims to truth, in particular unmediated/correlated truths (objective discourses comprehending nature etc) are merely claims to power. While Meillassoux might claim this an unneccesary arming against dogmatism, I see no way in which this goes along with opening the door to fanaticism, since it was a movement against both. In addition, it is hardly correct that the rise of correlationism is causually linked to that of fanaticism since philosophical subtlies such as correlationism do not concern anyone but philosophers.
As someone above pointed out, like theories of realism in analytical philosophy, the theories of speculative realism are myriad – how does one have a way of adjudicating them?
One should also not believe Meillassoux wants us to close forever the questions of religion – his embryonic divinology shows us as much.
June 22, 2008 at 11:52 pm
Meillassoux acknowledges that the correlationist critique of religion and absolutes is one of the most attractive things about correlationism (the passage I quote from his paper in Collapse III on absolutism is speaking to precisely this). We need not even restrict this accomplishment to someone like Lyotard, as Kant had already accomplished this with his critique of dogmatism and the proofs for the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. Meillassoux’s point is that despite correlationism’s critical pretensions, a new form of religious obscurantism has emerged in the form of what he calls “fideism” which no longer has, like dogmatism, the conceit of being capable of demonstrating religious truths, but instead defends religious beliefs on the grounds that it is a belief that can neither be proven or disproven by the lights of the correlationist thesis. Religion comes to be grounded on conviction alone. Since, the fideist argues, we can have no knowledge of the in-itself but only being as it is given for-us, the correlationist is as little able to demonstrate that the fideist religious beliefs are false as he is able to demonstrate that they are true. Therefore, the fideist is justified in maintaining his religious conviction based on belief, rather than knowledge, and the correlationist would be overstepping his own epistemological limits by attempting to disprove the fideist. Often this discourse takes the form of demonstrating an inherent limit to reason (as in the case of Marion, for example) that opens the space for the possibility of the transcendent outside the logic of being and presence. In this connection, one could point to the re-emergence of religious obscurantism in the work of later Derrida, Levinas, Marion, perhaps Milbank (who, as I understand it, turns the arguments of the postmodernist against the postmodernist), etc.
The problem with competing theories among correlationists isn’t that we have a variety of different theories, but that insofar as they’ve rejected any access to the in-itself, there’s no longer any criteria for selecting among them. Suppose, for example, all you had were fictional texts, among which there was one text that truly accounted for the world. Moreover, suppose you had no access to the world. Would there be any way of distinguishing the fictional texts from the genuine text beyond mere decision? This is where the polemics among the realists would, presumably, differ in that there would be some way in which the facts themselves could adjudicate. I say “presumably” because the verdict is still out for me as to whether their arguments are successful. Correlationism is a wily beast and, I think, extremely difficult to get out of.
Based on everything I’ve read by Meillassoux so far, it seems to me that he categorically wishes to close questions of religion forever. Is “divinology” your term or one of his?
June 22, 2008 at 11:54 pm
Meillassoux also cites Wittgenstein’s unspeakable at the end of the Tractatus and Heidegger’s discourse on the veiling of being as instances of this sort of return of the religious within correlationism.
June 23, 2008 at 6:36 am
KNOWLEDGE – VIRTUAL REALITY
Let us examine knowledge and its functions as well as its capacities and dimensions. Knowledge requires a platform to operate, which called language. As a beginning, will it not be easy to explore what we speak and write? How do we acquire linguistic skills? Is not the word an abstract entity all by itself? Finally, are we using the word or used by it?
To think of thinking is the need of the day, but do we know what thinking is or do away by the process itself? Word is a window to its knowledge and feelings generated. The teacher and taught, without two elements there is neither education nor the world we visualize. The same gap is from word to real, since the word apple is not real, so the gap is the problem. To solve this problem are we not creating innumerable problems? Simply we say that the problem lies in ones own perception, alternatively the world we experience.
Do we aware of the functioning of linguistic patterns or just carried away by presumptions and assumptions, which are part of linguistic ideology? It is surprising to note that all philosophical statements are logical derivations. Logic based on two, one is constant and the other is variable. Out of these we derive, the third, which is a name, imposed on real. Name – its image – feeling – idea, the steps we call functioning of language. Linguistic operation is three dimensional in its volume, directional, and dynamic in its character. Is it not the whole of the intellect, which we carry all the time with different names, such as mind, heart, consciousness, inner world etc?
Knowledge is the outcome of interactive principle which is result oriented in its conceptual form. Therefore, concept drives humans to its result. However voluminous in its stature and predictive in its character still it is partial and indirect by its nature. The relational arrangement between nouns – verb – tense is the relational attitude between subject and object. This relation may be rational or irrational. Opposites ingrained in language, so pessimism verses optimism, order – disorder, theism – atheism, and so on rooted in language but not anywhere in nature. Essentially languages constructed for memorizing past events and experiences so to refine them in present. Even the refined state of consciousness is inadequate to meet the present. Therefore, there is continuous strife for better knowledge in the world in which we live. By its very inception, knowledge is divisive phenomena hence can offer division only. It is the witness to its own activity, which is the reason of its expansion. These are the grounding factors for conceivable reality and experience. Memory is past and functioning in present and projects the future project.
It is clear that the trio KNOWER – KNOWN – KNOWLEDGE is all past and time bound. If there is no transformation to intelligence, this knowledge remains a mere tin. Formulas require explanation. Explanation may be in the shape of a song, dance, and drama but there is every chance of deriving mythical ideology, so to save from this kind of diversions, there is philosophical enquiry. Enquiry is full of logic, which is based on mathematics, when not used in conjunction of subject, express disastrous and conflicting statement
Knowledge is a cluster of statements. Essence of accumulated knowledge is called as intuition, which instigate, HOW? Word as is an image and its produced image is mounted upon primary image. Two lifeless images are interacting because of sound.
The whole of thought process depends on calculation. Movement of thought is calculation, but only factual but not real. Natural intelligence is covered by accrued intellect like fire is covered by smoke, mirror is covered by dust, but smoke is taken for granted as fire. Since there is no clear distinction between factuality and reality, all suffocated ideas are expressed as real. Ignorance verses intelligence, these two opposites are responsible for tons of literature. Phenomenal approach to language may solve problems since it deals with what we see, hear, feel etc in contrast to what may be real and true about the world we feel and live.
We have to bear in mind that we are exploring virtual world, otherwise known as linguistic knowledge, which has a fraction of relation with the real. This relation is only with image, which we get out of sound. Sound and touch are the basic ingredients to formulate a picture. Our so-called mind is nothing but the analysis of these pictures. Here we are not going to propose any new idea or concept but investigating the gifted knowledge from our ancestors and trying to find out its relative strength, which we inherit as a language. So let us begin with our own mother tongue, which we learn in the form of a song, story, an epic, or sayings, which stand as a translator throughout the rest of our lives. We call this translator as mind, heart, etc. We live in a pluralistic world which in fact is not real but a virtual one, which is also called MAYA (Sanskrit).
Belief plays a vital role in our lives, without which, we cannot even imagine. Thus, derived imagination is the stepping-stone for entire human activity. Language is not as simple as it appears to be. Arranged relation between sound and symbol and their picture is thought and its provocation, now the question is whether it would be possible to examine this invisible provocation? If with what?
Relation with a mirror is the same with a language. Whatever formulae, theories, explanations, and concepts thus derived are only limited to those images which help our movement both inside and outside. Habituated to live in a conceptual environment, without which we feel homeless. Yet we talk of mukthi, moksha, freedom etc. This we may call self-deception. Education through a language advocated since eons. Veda (Sanskrit) means to know and this functions over two, one is (memory) smrithi and the other is sruthi (order of sound) but both are invisible. Therefore, there are different names for the outcome of combinations and permutations. Unfortunately, we hang on to these names. All invisible feelings are generated in-between two images, one is of self and the other is of the object, and the activity continues forever until there is true enquiry. Then only knowledge acquired can function in a sane order.
KUMARILA BHATTU (Vedic exponent) said that words convey their own meanings, not related to something else. Descriptive sentences are significant. Sentence meaning as composed of separate word meanings held together in a relational structure. Word meaning formed is the simplest unit of sense. Persons thus learn the meaning of words by seeing others talking as well as from advice of elders.
MANDAN MISRA said that phenomenal distinctions are unreal and appearance of immutable word essence.
K LANGER said that language is only means of articulating thought. Essential act of thought is symbolization. World of humans made of symbol and its meaning.
PRABHAKARA said that all knowledge is verbal which is inferential in its character.
HUXLEY said that we sin by attributing concrete significance to meaningless pseudo knowledge as real understanding. We are amphibians living simultaneously in the world of experience and the world of notions.
SANKHYA PHILOSOPHY explains that the language is the base of intellectual games we play with ourselves. It is responsible for the division of SEER – SEEN which is an egocentric ideology. This virtual reality is the cause and its effect of illusion.
PATANJALI YOGA describes that two different feelings like pain and pleasure never occur simultaneously. Inference we derive out of a paragraph is only feeling.
POORVA MEEMAMSA said every symbol is a picture and its experience is SEER. Entire linguistic pattern is only indicative. So the index and indicated are images. Combinations of several meanings of words are the meaning of a paragraph.
GOUDAPADA (mandookya karikalu) explained that cause and its effect are interdependent and prone to change.
SANKARA Acharya said that group of symbols is a word and expression of these words is creation. However, mature logical ideology may be still it is partial and different from the real. Negation of all psychological impressions is to be wise.
PANINI (Creator of Sanskrit grammar) warned to check phonetics to understand the cause of difference in time. Sound is traveling in the human body in the shape of symbol. Totality of A to Z is self and its practices.
JIDDU KRISHNA MURTHY said that word is not the real thing.
NAGARJUNA said that the experience and reason do not give us genuine knowledge.
RAMANUJA said that we could not prove the existence of an object without attributing, even in case of self-consciousness and in the object of intuition.
WITTGENSTIEN Main source of our failure to understand is that we do not command a clear view of the use of our words.
VIDYARANYA (panchadasi) Because of verbal sounds we get pictures of existing objects and a doubt. This happens even when there is no object.
What we are destroying is the house of cards and clearing the ground on which they stand. Philosophy does not result in propositions, but rather in clarifying them. The end of language is the end of human world.
Document compiled and presented by
lalithasekhar
June 23, 2008 at 9:22 am
I have actually read the book and I am aware of Meillassoux’s arguments concerning the political/ideological arguments in favour of correlationism. I just don’t find them convincing, as I don’t think they take into account the reasons for the correlationist move and the problems with the opposite ‘realist’ move. It seems to me that the problem is that both correlationism and
As with regards to Milbank, he is very much in favour of both Brassier and Meillassoux, precisely because it clears the ground for a full bodied return to metaphysics. You assume that the results of a realism mean no more questions about God, but religion doesn’t need to justify itself as a mere ‘story’ among others, but can at least try to do so on the grounds of realism, objective structures of the universe etc, and can provide reasons much like Meillassoux why this is inherently more desirable than correlationism – ie objective structures really do acknowledge the God etc etc. Indeed, Milbank’s objection to theological developments such as the Yale school is precisely against the idea Christianity is a ‘story’, ie against correlationism. His invective has always been directed against phenomenology, voluntarism and idealism he detects in both Derrida, the lack of modesty he finds in the supposed modesty of Kant. I just think your concerns about correlationship opening the window to religion misplaced, as religious people almost always fight the battle on the grounds of realism of some kind, not some agnosticism. In fact, Milbank calls Meillassoux’s move the end of agnosticism (whether this is a good reading or not is up for debate) and reads this positively. Meillassoux and Milbank will be going head to head in a panel at the Grandeur of Reason conference in Rome, with a few other speculative realists, so it should be very interesting indeed.
As for divinology, it’s in Collapse IV. I don’t have time to detail its arguments here, but it is an absolutely explicit argument about God that attempts to open the way for something called divinology, which thinks not that God exists but (viz contingency) he may well do in the future. This doesn’t seem to be anything like a closing of questions of religion, and watchers of speculative realism not quite as friendly to religion as me have reacted with dismay as to this development.
June 23, 2008 at 9:23 am
It seems to me that the problem is that both correlationism and realism are extremist points which may neither be desirable…it should read.
June 23, 2008 at 12:51 pm
Alex, I think there are a variety of different ways in which religion defends itself, correlationism being among them. I think you’re right about realism. I take it that this is why Meillassoux’s arguments about the contingency of existence and the impossibility of a necessary being are significant. It will also be interesting to see where he takes his use of transfinites, which, as of After Finitude, he claimed he couldn’t yet prove. Looks like I’ll have to track down Collapse IV now.
June 24, 2008 at 5:08 pm
The argument in chapter three of After FInitude clearly implies that God or gods could pass into or out of existence, this is not only not a problem for Speculative Materialism, but it is required by it. But this God can only be conceived as an entity, and not as a necessary entity but as a contingent one like any other, so its not clear how godly this God could be; it would almost be more like a cosmic superhero. It remains possible, on the basis of the argument (I haven’t made it past chap. 3 yet, so again I’m leaving myself open for revision), for there to be a more or less all-powerful entity that is contactable by prayer and that answers prayer, since no particular natural contingency is excluded, the only necessity being contingency as a whole. But all this would result in a very bizarre theology, I would think.
One possible flaw in his argument seems to be that many “correlationists” are trying to give a second-order account of how truths become binding for us, not undermine the bindingness of said truths, although it’s hard (impossible?) to keep these levels completely separate. There are other criticisms I have been mulling over, but I’ll hang fire and finish the book…
June 24, 2008 at 5:09 pm
–clearly implies that God or gods could pass into or out of existence, this is not only not a problem for Speculative Materialism, but it is required by it.–
Meaning the possibility is required, not the actual appearance of a god.
June 25, 2008 at 4:02 pm
Whole trouble lies with human nature is trying to correlate.A noun correlate with a verb,a digit correlate with a noun but not with the real.Basically any language is divisive within itself and can offer only division.Symbol and sound combined to form a word and this happens to be our idea regarding correlation.The beginning is the end.Even though not being conscious of we correlate.Then how do we deny this correlation?
June 26, 2008 at 12:11 am
Human feeling is the correlative effect of name-form-time-space.Theism & atheism both are the subjected opposites which were ingrained in language. Lingering thought structure is linguistic.Do we experience the feeling as it is or we merely feel either the object or subject?Initially one has to clarify himself before discussing about God and reality.I may be wrong.
Usually people do not mean what they say & and say what they never meant.These opposites lie in prefixes of a word.
July 2, 2008 at 4:48 am
Perhaps the discussion on correlationism has gone stale, but as an admirer of larvalsubjects, an having recently discovered this post, i have some thoughts about not so much about correlationism as such as about french philosophy in general. Please educate me where necessary. Also, this is being written 6 am after lots of beer…
I have been trained in analytic philosophy but have dissatisfied left it for the continental strand.
It seems to me that some french pilosophy is (unfortunately) recently picking up analytic themes, badiou on logic/set theory, and now this. It would seem that it rehearses themes of the classic anti-realist/realist debate of analytic philosophy. E.g. the qoute
“The correlationist position is that we can only speak of beings in terms of how they are given to us or our mode of access.”
If “how they are given” means 1-person-wise, phenomenological, or something like that, then there are plenty of other positions within analytical philosophy, e.g. causal theories of reference, varieties of externalism and so on…
To say that the problem with correlationism is that it makes it unable to choose between correlationist frameworks would seem to confuse epistemology with ontology. And even apart from that, coherence is an immanent criteria to go by, but then maybe different frameworks are just as coherent, and so on.. this as been discussed to death…
And the connection between non-realism and faith (the claim that correlationism gives rise to fanatism) is (in its explicit form) at least as old as kant (“to limit reason to give room to faith”)
Now, i have personally become dissatisfied with analytic philosophy in general, and with these “realism”-debates in particalur, finding them to be “pre-critical”, in a sense that goes beyond (but which has its origin in) that kantian technical definition. Really, the reason one likes continental philosophers (like Hegel) is that one experiences the need to deal with these questions in a deeper way (in a way that doesn’t naively operate with the triptyk of an “un-reacheable in-itself”, “the world as constituted for-us” and “our thoughts about that world-for-us”)
So why this return to these (sorry about this word) “naiv” questions about reference, realism, in-itself, ontology and so on… Is there an explanation for this “turn” in french philosophy. Is it a turn? I am just speculating on the basis of badiou and this correlationism-idea, please correct me and maybe these questions are themselves too naive…
July 2, 2008 at 5:00 am
and, just to add, it seems even more naive to instead of an un-reachable in-itself believe in a (metaphysical rather than just tarskian) correspondance theory, which after all is not completely un-heard-of. Grahams claim in is article (just started to read it) that analytic philosophy is philosophy of acess is simply false. (And it seems to me to be false of much continental philosophy as well, since the premise, the strict division between epistemology and ontology, the idea of “acess”, would seem to make it pre-critical)
July 3, 2008 at 12:32 am
Fredric, correct me if I’m wrong (and I’m truly interested in how the continental realists differ from analytic realists), but don’t most (all?) analytic realists believe in a realism discovered by natural science? Sure, what’s discovered can be unobservable in any simple positivist sense (as in Bhaskar’s scientific realism), but ultimately what’s real is what makes a difference to our scientific experiments and observations – right?
On a related note, do you have any recommendations for some stuff to read to understand the realist/anti-realist debates in analytic philosophy?
And just a minor correction with this quote of yours:
“If “how they are given” means 1-person-wise, phenomenological, or something like that, then there are plenty of other positions within analytical philosophy, e.g. causal theories of reference, varieties of externalism and so on…”
Continental philosophy has similar approaches, with structuralism being the most notable attempt to denigrate the phenomenological 1st-person experience. So the ‘mode of access’ in question in Meillassoux and Harman’s positions isn’t simply phenomenological or anything. Paraphrasing from Meillassoux’s discussion in Collapse, Vol. III, I’d say the correlationist position is the apparently tautological expression that any attempt to think the real-in-itself is necessarily an attempt to think it, and thereby submit it to all the structures of language and thought (however they may be defined).
The easiest way out of this would be to suggest that thought simply is matter, but then you get into problems of how to account for the validity of this theory. In other words, if evolution has presumably produced these particular structures of the brain (and by consequence thought), what leads us to presume that evolution has given us accurate representations of the real (rather than just pragmatic representations)? Given that we can’t assume this, this ultimately means that our theory (matter=thought) has no guarantee of its validity. (Ray Brassier gets into all these issues in more depth in his discussion of Churchland in Nihil Unbound.) (And perhaps this problem may already be well-known in analytic philosophy?)
And to answer your last question, I’d say there’s definitely a very recent turn in continental philosophy towards realist thought. Most of it, I would say, is a response to all the endless theorizing that’s been done over language. Although as Meillassoux argues, it has a much longer heritage stemming back to Kant and even Hegel. So while the turn to realism may be an immediate response to language-centered philosophy, it’s also a turn against anthropocentric philosophy in all its subtle forms.
July 4, 2008 at 12:00 am
Thanks for your reply! In i sober state i still find the topic (that of a turn in contintental thought) extremely interesting.
Just some points:
Realism is probably a minority position withing analytic philosophy.
And just to be picky: if you think that “ultimately what’s real is what makes a difference to our scientific experiments and observations”, then your are not a realist, but adhere to an epistemological theory of truth.
I intepreted “mode of access” epistemologically, but if you refer to the fact that our “conceptual scheme” interpret the world and we cannot speak of an i-itself apart from it you have some version of what is sometimes called “linguistic idealism” nelson goodman being perhaps the most famous (relativist) proponent.
And on the question of evolution an realism of representations, believe me, there is an enormous analytic literature.
Now, my problem… I wouldn’t say that these are prima facie bad question, thay certainly seem interesting when you start to think about them, but to my mind they are seriously wrong in their metaphysical version (e.g. thinkgin about “the validity” of our theories in metaphysical corrsepondence terms) In fact, what deepest thinkers in continental thought, like Hegel, Heidegger, Adorno have all problematized metaphysics in this sense, and they have made in a way which goes beyond the purely “theoretical” if you know what i mean, in way that could never happen within the analytic tradition.
That’s why it seems sort of sad to me if these question are returning within continental thought (if it really are THESE question, i haven’t read Meillassoux Brassier et al so might be completely off mark here of course…) Sad because it has already been discussed in extremely subtle ways within analytic, so all the analytics will have there gut reaction that continental is justa confused version of themselves confirmed, and sad becauce it seems to be a return to precritical metaphysics.
But i also get the impression that the horizon of M and B are much wider then simply the question of metaphysics (they are after all continental philosophers…) and maybe the context gives it a genuine new force and meaning that i’ve just missed.
anyway, thanks for you answer. And hmm.. the fact that peaplo just is tired with the linguistic turn, well perhaps it is that easy.
July 4, 2008 at 12:02 am
lots of typos, sorry about that, “i-itself” should “in-itself” of course, read with care! :-)
July 4, 2008 at 3:51 am
Thanks Fredric!
I would say that Brassier and Meillassoux and all the others are definitely well-versed in Hegel and the like – and they’re certainly not trying to install some sort of theory of correspondence between their own theories and a reality in-itself. Each, in their own way, is trying to break free of a concept of the in-itself that would be dependent on a necessary relation with thought. Even philosophies that nominally provide for an ‘independent’ real, make this independence related to thought in various ways (Meillassoux gets into all this in his book, and Francois Laruelle also provides an analysis of the reasons why this occurs).
Which is why, when you read the ‘speculative realists’ you get these really bizarre ideas of the real (Meillassoux says only contingency is necessary, Graham Harman gives a neo-Leibnizian account, etc.). So I think there’s some definite divergences from analytic realism – you’d never hear some of these ideas coming from analytics. Although ultimately they may be grappling with similar problems, but coming to varying answers, I’m not sure?
On the issue of whether they are precritical or not, I’m not sure. I tend to think Meillassoux is the one who most grapples with this, making him post-critical rather than pre-critical. The others I’m not sure about yet.
And to add to my earlier comment, I shouldn’t really have implied it was solely a response to the linguistic turn, although I think that plays a big role. To return to Kant, we know that he saw himself as effecting a Copernican revolution in philosophy, but really it was the entire opposite of a Copernican revolution. He made philosophy centered around the subject and centered around questions of our mode of access to it, rather than removing man from the center. So in a sense, these speculative realists are trying to take Kant at his word, and follow in a scientific lineage which progressively removes man from the center of the universe. (And science plays a huge role in the speculative realists work.) So perhaps that’s a better answer to your question?
Cheers!
July 4, 2008 at 3:35 pm
In addition to what Nick so nicely articulates, I think we can also add that philosophies that take the correlationist route necessarily abdicate the ontological project. Insofar as the question of being, it is said, can only be posed in terms of questions of access or givenness, being comes to be said in two or more senses. Being is what it is for the transcendental subject, culture, language, history, etc., and being is in some other sense that can never be named or articulated because it falls outside of all access or givenness. In the case of absolute correlationists where the correlative relation becomes an ontology rather than an epistemic thesis, everything becomes shackled to spirit. But as Deleuze puts it so nicely in his little book on Bergsonism,
If being is indeed univocal, then no being can be privileged, no part can be more foundational, in the ontological order of being. Yet this is exactly what we find in correlationisms. Protagoras wins the day, but with more bells and whistles.
With that said, I do have a number of reservations about Meillassoux. First, I have a difficult time seeing how he can avoid falling back into a correspondence theory of truth. This may or may not be troubling. Second, following Brassier’s observation, Meillassoux’s conception of the Arche-Fossil seems to encounter serious problems in relation to Einstein’s understanding of time. Here we need an ontology of time that doesn’t fall back onto anthropocentricism (Whitehead perhaps?). Third, I wonder whether Meillassoux’s declaration of absolute contingency does not run into irresolvable problems when trying to think the emergence of stabilities. That is, Meillassoux argues that stabilities (as opposed to causally necessary relationships) arise from chaos, yet it seems impossible to explain how anything can ever arise from genuine chaos. Thus, while I think Meillassoux is right to treat contingency as ontologically primitive (here he’s really named the central thesis of most French thought since the sixties), the way he develops this thesis leads to insoluble problems (this, incidentally, is why Deleuze was so careful to reject the notion of chaos, instead positing pre-individual singularities as a genetic principle). For me what is most valuable in Meillassoux is the manner in which he has so clearly named and problematized the central axiom of philosophical thought since Kant: correlationism. I do not know that the epithet “pre-critical” should be a dirty word.
July 28, 2008 at 3:47 am
I am not very familiar with the realism/anti-realism debate, but know that ‘physicalism’ is often defined quasi-indexically as ‘what science suggests is physical’, or ‘what IDEAL science suggests is physical’, these both being epistemological criteria. I am curious, however, how a putatively upright stance such as this is supposed to be compatible with realism, when the latter must NOT be defined instrumentally or epistemically?
The sense of ‘realist’ I am most familiar with comes from the discussion of universals, and in relation to which Meillassoux would seem to be (in AF) some sort of nominalist (as I suppose befits his ‘materialism’). [See for instance his discussion of instantiation and exemplification in the first chapter.]
In fact, if we follow the link between ‘materialism’ and ‘physicalism’ in analytic philosophy of science, the link between materialism and nominalism is born out in a different way. It then becomes a interesting question what exactly is meant by the ‘realist’ part of ‘speculative realist’, at least from this particular POV.
I personally don’t find causal theories useful in explaining our access to the given, for reasons somewhat similar to those which motivate Plantinga’s argument against naturalism (alluded to above [“In other words, if evolution has presumably produced these particular structures of the brain (and by consequence thought), what leads us to presume that evolution has given us accurate representations of the real (rather than just pragmatic representations)?” ]). Plantinga’s argument says that naturalism cannot explain why our biological adaptation to the environment should be veridical in the sense required for realism. It is then mildly amusing, in the context of the present discussion, to note that Plantinga thinks this evidences, however indirectly, the existence of a divine being – whereas Meillassoux seems to adhere to some sort of apriori atheism.
[Note that this is a general criticism which probably also affects most versions of externalism (or anything which tries to derive the ‘ought’ of reason/justification from the ‘is’ of causality).]
In any case, I do believe that, even in analytic philosophy, the question of ‘how the given is given’ can be fruitfully viewed as moving towards something like the concept of ‘facticity’ which Meillassoux outlines. What puzzles me is the nature of the distinction between his use of this concept, and Heidegger’s. Obviously the common conception of the latter’s concept – as a sort of ‘axiom’ of correlationism – is unacceptable from the realist viewpoint. But if you look at how Heidegger takes over this concept from Husserl, and develops it, it seems to me that there is more going on here than merely the replacement of some sort of ‘universal humanity’, on the one hand, with the fleeting and sub-scientific particular, on the other. If this were all (and it is often taken to be, I gather), then it would perhaps be guilty of (to use Deleuze’s words) trying to create perspectivism by merely multiplying perspectives.
On the other hand, Meillassoux’s discussion of intersubjectivity does not distinguish between Kantian and Husserlian accounts. This is a shortcoming in my opinion. The former operates with the distinction between ‘general and particular’, whereas for the latter ‘absolute’ and ‘singular’ would perhaps be more appropriate. Husserl’s interest in Leibniz (and maybe Deleuze’s interest in Husserl) relates to this. It is just not unambiguously true that ‘intersubjective consensus’ implies coherentism or ‘group idealism’, and thus not obviously the case that it entails correlationism either. It should instead be viewed as an attempt to avoid these positions without slipping back into dogmatism. Which is exactly what Meillassoux himself is trying to do.
[One interesting paper which is related to these points is: Steven Crowell, ‘Facticity and Transcendental Philosophy’, in Jeff Malpas ed., From Kant to Davidson: Philosophy and the idea of the transcendental, (Routledge, 2003).]
I am not convinced (to take up another point, this time from Fredric), that correspondence theories are ‘wrongheaded’ or uninteresting. But then, the distinction between ‘correspondence’ and ‘coherence’ is precisely what is at issue in the notion of ‘facticity’, or so I would have thought. Question: does anyone feel that Meillassoux returns to dogmatism by looking at the problem in this way? Certainly there is a danger, but it is arguably just the same danger involved in his project as a whole.
Concerning the ‘Tarskian’ theory, as I understand it, this was made popular by Davidson, who inverted Tarski’s own position concerning the primitivity of reference to truth, and who thus operates with a primitive concept of truth which seems to oscillate ambiguously between the Humean and Kantian conceptions of ‘purposiveness’. In other words (and please excuse the obscurity of these remarks), whilst from a purely semantic viewpoint the epistemic problems are deflated and eliminated, this is only made possible by embedding the semantic theory in a wider account of human action (i.e. action involving purposive, teleological and/or aesthetic judgement) in which any similar ‘purification’ or ‘deflation’ is impossible. Instead we get ‘Platonism from the bottom up’, so to speak – this also being the connection between Davidson and Gadamer’s conception of ‘phronesis’ or ‘dialogue’.
[Crowell notes, in the article cited above, that Gadamer was surprised to find Heidegger emphasizing ‘sophia’ (the power of thought or ‘mind-sight’, nous, etc) rather than ‘phronesis’ (practical reason) in his account of facticity. Which is, I contend, precisely what makes it ambiguous vis-a-vis Meillassoux’s own conception.]
Thoughts?
James
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