As I sit here regarding the eighty student essays I have to grade over the course of the next few days– essays that I’ve already had in hand for too long –I naturally cast about for ways to procrastinate. Having completed my posts on Meillassoux’s argument against correlationism (here, here, and here), and having, over the last few days, had an intense, though very productive, discussion with Mikhail surrounding these and related issues (here, here, here, and here), I find myself wondering just how damaging Meillassoux’s argument is. Does Meillassoux’s argument really land a fatal blow to correlationism? I think that depends.
If we are to understand Meillassoux’s argument from ancestrality and against correlationism, it is necessary to understand why he focuses on time. To do this, we need to recall a bit about Kant and how Kant solved the problems of space and time in the Critique of Pure Reason. That is, we have to look at what Kant actually says about the nature of time. If Meillassoux chooses to stake his claim for realism on the issue of time, then this is because primary qualities, qualities that are said to be “in the thing itself” and not dependent on us, are generally understood to be mathematical properties. All that I can know of mathematical properties, the story goes, are those aspects of these properties that can be mathematized. Thus, as Descartes said, “this class of things [primary qualities] appears to include corporeal nature in general, together with its extension; the shape of extended things; their quantity, that is, their size and number; as well as the place where they exist, the time through which they endure, and the like” (Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, Hackett, Fourth Edition, 61). What are we speaking of when we speak of the mathematical properties of an object if not the spatio-temporal properties of the object? Meillassoux, of course, wants a much broader domain of primary qualities than shape, size, mass, duration, etc., so as to make room for new properties discovered in science. The point is that when he speaks of primary qualities he is basically speaking of spatial and temporal properties that are subject to mathematical representation. The claim isn’t that the property is a number, but rather that it has a mathematizable structure discoverable through measurement, experiment, observation, etc.
read on!
Traditionally– that is prior to Kant and the critical revolution –these properties were understood as being in the object itself. Unlike the taste of my wine as bitter or sweet and which arises only in the relation of my wine to my taste buds and neurology, objects have their primary qualities quite regardless of any relation to us. For example, an atom has such and such an atomic weight. It might very well be true that we use arbitrary measuring systems to get at this weight, but what is measured is not in the object as a result of how the object relates to me, nor is it arbitrary. So the realist story about primary qualities change.
One of Kant’s major revolutions was to show that time and space are not primary qualities, but exist only in relation to the subject of science. Where previous philosophers and scientists thought of time and space as being real and independent of humans, Kant argued that time and space only exist for humans and do not belong to things themselves. Newton, for example, believed in the existence of absolute space. The claim that space and time are not real, but rather exist only in relation to us might strike one as very peculiar. After all, the evidence of our lived bodies and our five senses seems to indicate with certainty that that things are side by side, at a distance from one another, that one event follows another, that the future is not here and the past is gone, etc. However, Kant gives a very compelling set of epistemological arguments and observations for the consideration that space and time are for-us and not in things themselves. These arguments revolve around mathematics.
Kant observes that my knowledge of all objects that exist independent of me must be received through my sensibility a posteriori. The key feature of empirical sensibility is that I cannot know, a priori and with certainty, what qualities an object will have, but must rather go to the object to find this out. For example, while I might be warranted in thinking that my cumbers are likely to have sprouted because of when I planted them, I could not know that they had sprouted until, just now, I stepped outside to take a look at my garden. Additionally, it is just as possible that my cucumbers might never sprout, such that the fact they sprouted this year does not provide certainty that they must sprout next year. Such is the nature of contingent truths, under which empirical objects fall.
Now, if space and time were properties of things in-themselves, or were things that exist independently of me, then we would have to learn the properties of space and time through experience. But all things being equal, if space and time are learned from experience, then how is it that I am able to arrive at a knowledge of necessary relations structuring space and time or underlying mathematics (geometry being the math of space, arithmetic the math of time)? As we just saw, I cannot know the empirical properties of an object a priori, but must rather discover these properties through receptivity. I have to see that my friend Tom is wearing a purple shirt because no contradiction is involved in the other possibility of Tom not wearing a purple shirt. Yet in the case of maths, matters are entirely different. First, I know all sorts of things about space and time a priori or independent of directly experiencing them. Second, mathematical truths are necessary rather than contingent. Where the color of an apple is a contingent truth that could be otherwise without involving any logical contradiction, the sum of the angles of a quadrilateral are not contingent, but rather belong to the essential structure of the quadrilateral. Finally, third, mathematical truths are universal, which is to say that they hold for all times and places. The angles of that quadrilateral will add up to 360 degrees and, fortunately, I do not have to travel to the other side of the universe in order to discover this, but can know it a priori and with certainty by virtue of the properties of space.
Yet how, Kant asks in his best David Lynch Quizat Haderach voice, can this be if space and time are properties of things-in-themselves? If space and time are properties of things-in-themselves I must learn them through sensation. But I can know nothing of the things that populate experience in terms of necessity, universality, and certainly not a priori. Were it the case that my knowledge that the sum of the angles of a quadilateral were based on observation, nothing would warrant me in supposing that quadrilaterals tomorrow or on the other side of the universe will have angles that add up to 360 degrees because sensation presents me with nothing but contingent relations. Yet it is absurd to suggest that mathematical truths are contingent in this way. Therefore it follows that we do not arrive at knowledge of these types of relations empirically or through sensation.
Kant’s solution to this problem is famous: “…[T]he pure form of sensible intuition in general is to be encountered in the mind a priori, wherein all of the manifold of appearances is intuited in certain relations (Critique of Pure Reason, A20/B34). I call this the “turtle hypothesis”. Just as a turtle does not find his home in the external world, but rather carries it about on his back, time and space are not, according to Kant, in the things-themselves, but rather reside in our minds. Although this thesis might initially appear strange and outlandish, it is an elegant solution to a host of problems. First, it explains how phenomena of the world can be mathematical. Because all of our relations to the world are structured by the mind in terms of the pure forms of time and space belonging to our minds, it follows that these sensations will have the mathematical properties belonging to space and time. It is for this reason, second, that we can know many things about space and time a priori. Because our mind is structured in terms of space and time, we are able to contemplate temporal and spatial relations independent of a direct empirical experience of particular objects. Finally, third, this explains why mathematics is not simply a custom belonging to a particular group of people like using chopsticks or not cutting one’s whiskers, but is rather intersubjectively universal. Because our minds are structured in the same way, we are able to independently arrive at the same mathematical conclusions. This is truly a beautiful and elegant solution to a whole host of philosophical riddles about mathematics and the mathematical nature of physical reality.
Kant tells us that the realist about space and time must respond to two riddles:
Those… who assert the absolute reality of space and time, whether they assume it to be subsisting or only inhering, must themselves come into conflict with the principles of experience [i.e., the transcendental conditions of experience]. For if they decide in favor of the first (which is generally the position of the mathematical investigators of nature), then they must assume two eternal and infinite self-subsisting non-entities (space and time), which exist (yet without there being anything real) only in order to comprehend everything real within themselves. If they adopt the second position (as do some metaphysicians of nature), and hold space and time to be relations of appearances (next to or successive to one another) that are abstracted from experience though confusedly represented in this abstraction, then they must dispute the validity or at least the apodictic certainty of a priori mathematical doctrines in regard to real things (e.g., in space), since this certainty does not occur a posteriori, and on this view the a priori concepts of space and time are only creatures of the imagination, the origin of which must be really sought in experience, out of whose abstracted relations imagination has made something that, to be sure, contains what is general in them, but that cannot occur without the restriction that nature has attached to them. (A39-40/B56-57)
The first problem Kant alludes to is that of the metaphysical problem of the reality of space and time. What does it mean to say that space and time are real things? Newton had caused a firestorm when he asserted the reality of absolute space. After all, what could it possibly mean to say that something like space or time, that are not material objects (this claim has become disputable today) and that give us no sensations could possibly be real? This, I think, is a deep metaphysical question. The second problem is the problem of learning. Given that all mathematical truths are necessary and universal truths, given that it is possible to know these truths independent of any experience, how could I possibly arrive at a knowledge of such necessity a posteriori? What would warrant the certitude that triangles on the other side of the universe are the same as triangles on this side of the universe? If mathematical reasoning is synthetic rather than analytic as Kant supposes, then I am able to expand my mathematical knowledge simply through thought. Yet if maths are a posteriori this would not seem possible.
Kant is able to elegantly solve both of these problems in one fell swoop by concluding that space and time are not things-in-themselves or in things-in-themselves, but are rather in the mind. This conclusion, of course, comes at a price. As Kant sums up,
We have therefore wanted to say that all our intuition is nothing but the representation of appearance; that the things that we intuit are not in themselves what we intuit them to be, nor are their relations so constituted in themselves as they appear to us; and that if we remove our own subject or even only the subjective constitution of the senses in general, then all the constitution, all relations of objects in space and time, indeed space and time themselves would disappear, and as appearances they cannot exist in themselves, but only in us. What may be the case with objects in themselves abstracted from all this receptivity of our sensibility remains entirely unknown to us. We are acquainted with nothing except our way of perceiving them, which is peculiar to us, and which therefore does not necessarily pertain to every being, though to be sure pertains to every human being. (A42/B59)
In other words, if we are to side with Kant’s solution, then the price we must pay is that we can never have any knowledge of whether things-in-themselves have the spatial and temporal properties of our experience of appearances, because we cannot get out of our minds to know whether things themselves are this way. Indeed, Kant vacillates here, stating in the first part of the quoted passage that things in-themselves aren’t as we intuit them to be, while, in the the second part of the passage, merely expressing a limit to our knowledge or that we cannot know whether they are like we intuit them. In other words, the sacrifice required by Kant’s elegant gesture consists in a shift from the thesis that the universe is spatial and temporal to the thesis that the universe appears spatial and temporal. This seems like a rather minor sacrifice to make given the epistemological security that this move is able to accomplish.
Why, then, in his critique of correlationism through the argument from ancestrality does Meillassoux fix on time rather than space? The answer to this question, somewhat ironically, has to do with the temporal qualities of space. When we talk about space, what we are talking about– at least before Einsteinian relativity and quantum mechanics –are entities that are simultaneous with one another. Consequently, the fact that I am not currently observing my living room poses no special problems for the Kantian for were I to walk into my living room it would be structured according to the pure form of spatial intuition belonging to my mind. In other words, the counter-factual is sufficient to save the day. Meillassoux addresses this point in his response to correlationist rejoinders (cf. Meillassoux III).
With the advent of science’s ability to make ancestral statements about the universe discussing times that precede or are anterior to both life and humans, matters become significantly complicated. We can very well see how, by Kant’s lights, it makes perfect sense to suggest that the laws of Einsteinian relativity were operative in the time of early homo sapiens (assuming relativity is consistent with Kant), for the structuring forms of givenness or time and space were operative at this time. Yet how are we to make sense of claims that predate any life or consciousness. Let us repeat what Kant says since there is a tendency to fly fast and loose with Kant’s claims among correlationists: …[T]he things that we intuit are not in themselves what we intuit them to be, nor are their relations so constituted in themselves as they appear to us; and that if we remove our own subject or even only the subjective constitution of the senses in general, then all the constitution, all relations of objects in space and time, indeed space and time themselves would disappear, and as appearances they cannot exist in themselves, but only in us (ibid). Whether we take the strong (things-in-themselves are not like we intuit them) or the soft (we do not know whether things-in-themselves are like we intuit them) reading of Kant’s claims about time, we run into significant problems with respect to Kant’s thesis as it leads us inevitably to skepticism about these ancestral claims.
In other words, Kant’s thesis about time as a pure form of intuition that does not belong to things-in-themselves necessarily entails that claims about the ancestral must be dogmatic and therefore empty of any claim to the status of knowledge. If this is so, then it is because an ancestral claim is a temporal claim about things-in-themselves, not time for consciousness. It presupposes a time anterior to consciousness. As a result, the correlationist must reject the thesis that humans evolved or that we can meaningfully talk about a time prior to humans because things-in-themselves are not, for the correlationist, structured in terms of time. This is the point that Husserl when he remarks that, “[t]he existence of nature cannot be the condition for the existence of consciousness since Nature itself turns out to be a correlate of consciousness: Nature is only in being constituted in regular concatenations of consciousness” (Ideas I, 116). Aye, the correlationist gives us stellar grounds for the universality, necessity, and a priori knowledge we know to belong to our mathematics. He is able to explain why being has the mathematical structure discovered by thought. But only so long as we talk within the framework of the existence of human beings. Whenever we stray from this framework, to a time anterior to the existence of life our humans, all of this breaks down because we cannot intelligibly talk about a time belonging to things themselves. As a result, the consistent correlationist must reject the theory of evolution, the big bang, and, as follows from Husserl’s remark, neurology as well. This seems like a rather high price to pay.
Setting aside the issue of the metaphysical status of time or what it would mean to say that time and space exist, it seems to me that the most attractive and compelling features of Kant’s thesis is its ability to account for both how we are able to arrive at mathematical knowledge through thought alone, yet in such a way that the objects of our universe themselves have mathematical properties. As Kant famously says,
Up to now it has been assumed that all our cognition must conform to the objects; but all attempts to find out something about them a priori through concepts that would extend our cognition have, on this presupposition, come to nothing. Hence let us once try whether we do not get farther with the problems of metaphysics by assuming that the objects must conform to our cognition, which would agree better with the requested possibility of an a priori cognition of them, which is to establish something about objects before they are given to us. (Bxvi)
Kant here, I think, hit on a deep and profound metaphysical and epistemological riddle. We don’t expect the world to conform to a story or a novel (entities produced through thought), yet somehow the world does conform to the mathematical truths we discover in thought. How can this be? Kant provides one of the most convincing solutions to be found. Yet is it true that Kant provides us with the only viable solution to this profound problem? Can we not find a solution that both preserves Kant’s deep insight into the a priori status of mathematics (our ability to establish something about objects prior to them being given to us), while simultaneously being able to assert that mathematical properties belong to objects as they are in-themselves regardless of whether or not humans exist? It would seem that the theory of evolution, coupled with the thought of Whitehead and Deleuze provides us with precisely such an alternative. Unfortunately, Kant labored in a philosophical period that began from the premise of fully formed or actualized subjects regarding or contemplating the world. Under this model, knowledge was either analytic, a priori, and innate, or knowledge was empirical and received through sensibility. Empirical knowledge, of course, lacked the claws of necessity. Moreover, everyone is agreed that mathematical knowledge is a priori (though Kant disputes that it is analytic), while they were unable to explain how objects could also be mathematical, how we could know certain mathematical properties prior to the object being given, without an untenable appeal to God as co-ordinator between a priori mathematical knowledge and the structure of the world. In this context, where subject and object, mind and world, agent and environment, are abstractly opposed to one another and the question is one of how object migrates into the mind as an adequate representation, Kant’s solution is the best solution in town.
The theory of evolution offers an alternative to this line of thought. From an evolutionary standpoint, our ability to know something of objects prior to them being given has to do with the fact that our minds evolved in a universe with a mathematical structure. That is, evolutionary theory gives us the possibility of an ontogenetic account of our cognitive structures. Just as my bone structure, my cells, my digestive system, etc., is fitted to a particular environment that has a specific range of pressure, heat, gravity, light, etc., so too could our cognition have evolved in a way that was fitted to the mathematical structure of the world. It is precisely such a theory of cognition that Whitehead and Deleuze offer in their respective genetic ontologies. Whitehead describes the subject as a “superject”. To describe the subject as a “superject” is to describe it as the result or product of the process by which it is formed and the manner in which it internalizes its relations to the rest of the world. Likewise, Deleuze, in his account of individuation, understands individuation not as the question of the criteria by which one entity is distinguished from another, but rather as the genesis of an individual from what he calls a “transcendental field” or its relations to the world about it. In each of these cases we’re presented with a genesis of cognition and certain structures of thought that both allows us to maintain a realist theory of spatial and temporal properties belonging to things-themselves and an account of how something like a priori knowledge or knowledge prior to and even independent of givenness is possible. These mathematical structures of cognition, resulting from evolution, could be very simple and minimal. All that would be required are a few minimal or rudimentary structures upon which more complex forms of mathematics could be built. In this way, we wouldn’t have to make the sharp sacrifice of Kant’s Copernican revolution.
Larval Subjects . 
April 6, 2009 at 10:22 pm
Traditionally– that is prior to Kant and the critical revolution – these properties were understood as being in the object itself.
What about Leibniz-Clarke correspondence? That’s before Kant. You seem to be completely ignoring Leibniz.
In other words, the sacrifice required by Kant’s elegant gesture consists in a shift from the thesis that the universe is spatial and temporal to the thesis that the universe appears spatial and temporal. This seems like a rather minor sacrifice to make given the epistemological security that this move is able to accomplish.
You speak of this sacrifice as if it is your choice to make it or not, to accept Kant’s arguments or to reject them. You accept and get security, you reject and get whatever. This is not a matter of your existential decision, is it? It’s not a matter of accepting or rejecting, it’s a matter of disproving, right? Or am I gone crazy? What is the argument against Kant’s theory of space/time as forms of intuition? That they are disconcerting and weird?
Again, I think your presentation of Kant’s arguments is great, but then I don’t see how making time back into a metaphysical category (a substance, a primary quality of an object), and don’t forget space and movement – all mathematized qualities, therefore primary qualities, you are doing anything but taking us back to Descartes and his problems?
By skipping over Leibniz and his “relative time/space” argument (versus Clarke/Newton’s absolute space/time), you give us Kant as a kind of genius who singlehandedly solves the problem of space/time, then you don’t really give a counter-argument but simply suggest that there’s an area of statements Kant cannot explain (ancestral statements), then suddenly every type of correlationism is doomed because if one denies that we know Big Bang took place, one is a creationist fundamentalist Christian and we all know that’s bad.
QM himself is very confusing on the matter, because his main response to the first correlationist rejoinder is this: “How to conceive of a time in which the given as such passes from non-being into being?” [21] That is, an example of spacial/temporal lacunae is not working because ancenstral statements refer to time before givenness, right? But correlatinist would say that there was no time before givenness because time is a form of intuition, and is not something that is absolute. QM then jumps out of the bushes with his “Aha” and states that correlationism denies that Big Bang took place! Well, if part of collerationist view is that space/time are forms of intuition, then unless I experience something in space/time, this something in-itself is not in space/time, therefore question such as “did Big Bang take place and when?” are nonsensical. Therefore, a correlationist is not denying the FACT that Big Bang took place at some point in time, but the QUESTION itself because it is without meaning, since as you elegantly show, space/time are part of human mind’s work, not independent characteristics of reality.
QM’s talk of “conscious time emerging in time” is a further confusion because it’s not clear which time he is talking about – Kantian form of intuition or Newtonian absolute time? The latter, by the way, turns out to be false, if I understand my Einstein (and I can’t swear to that). QM thus presupposes some commonsensical notion of time, some line of time that goes from 0 to now (absolute time, it seems, mythical “time of science” – what is that?), presents his argument with this time in mind, then talks nonsense like “time before time”…
It turns out that “time” as QM means it is the kind that from its very conception presupposes that correlationism cannot be true: “To think science is to think the status of a becoming that cannot be correlational because the correlate is in it, rather than it being in the correlate” [22] The desk was stacked from the very beginning against correlationism, no one wonder QM wins! Everyone go have a beer and celebrate the death of cursed correlationism!
April 6, 2009 at 10:36 pm
Hi Mikhail,
I don’t think I’m ignoring Leibniz. Like most pre-critical philosophers, Leibniz draws a distinction between primary and secondary qualities. For Leibniz time is a secondary quality. Presumably, however, the same argument would apply to Leibniz. I personally don’t think it’s confusing as to who QM is referring to throughout the book when discussing time and space. Certainly he’s not referring to Newton’s conception of space is not correlational. QM’s thesis, I take it, would be that his critique destroys every form of correlationism. QM’s thesis would be that there is real time (and science tells us what that is) within which lived time of correlationism emerges through evolution. I don’t think the deck is stacked as you suggest. The point is that ancestral statements, insofar as they speak of a reality prior to any correlation, require a time that is excluded by correlation. In other words, QM is proceeding very much like Kant does. Kant begins with the supposition that geometry, arithmetic, and Newtonian physics are genuine articles of knowledge (he was wrong about the third, but not woefully wrong). The question then becomes under what conditions is knowledge is possible. QM is beginning with the premise that evolution and the big bang are genuine knowledge. The question then becomes under what conditions is this knowledge possible.
April 6, 2009 at 10:41 pm
What is this “real time” or “time of science”? Why should we concede such an important philosophical question as “What is time? What is space?” and wait for science to tell us what they are? What kind of a special magical property does science have that it is easily solving these eternal philosophical issues by simply stating that “there is real time”?
April 6, 2009 at 10:45 pm
QM is beginning with the premise that evolution and the big bang are genuine knowledge. The question then becomes under what conditions is this knowledge possible.
That’s called dogmatism, excuse my French. Kant’s critique was precisely that we have to first examine the conditions of possibility before claiming any knowledge – to begin with an assumption that X is true and then proceed to ask under what conditions it is possible for X to be true is not different (formally) then saying “God exists” and then come up with awesome proofs of God’s existence.
April 6, 2009 at 11:26 pm
Here we have a significant disagreement as to how we interpret Kant:
This simply is not, in my view, an accurate representation of how Kant proceeds. Kant works from the premise that first mathematics and then Newtonian physics are indisputably knowledge. This is the quid facti dimension of his argument. He then proceeds to determine the conditions under which this knowledge is possible. That is the quid juris or transcendental dimension of his argument. The reason his transcendental argument is convincing is because it is founded on the soundness of these knowledges. Were there not this dimension of the quid facti that is already established, his analysis wouldn’t be able to get off the ground at all as there would be no matter to find conditions for at all. The existence of God is not analogous to Newtonian physics, geometry, or arithmetic. In geometry and arithmetic everyone comes to the same conclusions or solutions, and therefore it is indisputable that these disciplines yield us knowledge. In Newtonian physics, the science is validated through experimentation and its ability to predict the movements of the planets. As a finer point of interpretation, it is not by mistake that Kant first begins the Critique with geometry and arithmetic. Because geometry and arithmetic are apodictic or certain, they ground his overall argument. Newtonian physics, by contrast, shares a somewhat lesser degree of certainty. Kant’s question is thus not what is knowledge?, but rather how is this knowledge possible? Science does not need to await philosophy to find knowledge, and really the only interest of Kant’s critique from the standpoint of knowledge is its ability to draw limits to what we can and cannot know vis a vis the questions of metaphysics. Meillassoux is proceeding in exactly the same way with evolutionary theory and the big bang. That is, he takes it that these are well established facts and then proceeds to ask how this knowledge is possible.
As for the question of the time of science, I just don’t think the question “what is time” is a philosophical question. You ask what “magical property” science has that allows it to answer this question, and I respond, empiricism and the scientific method. Certainly a philosopher sitting in his armchair would not have been able to discover Einstein’s theory of relativity or the way in which time-space bends and shifts as a function of speed and mass. Even though Einstein discovered these things through a series of thought experiments and mathematical equations, he was only able to do so on the basis of a great deal of empirical research and experimentation done scientists since the 17th century. This shift of certain questions out of philosophy and into the domain of science is not so unusual in the history of philosophy. For example, physics used to belong to philosophy. At any rate, right now I’m reading Brian Greene’s Fabric of the Cosmos which is a very nice read. If he speaks authoritatively on questions of physics– and being a physicist at Columbia is nothing to turn your nose up at –then the questions of what exactly time and space are still remain very much up in the air in physics. This doesn’t mean that great progress hasn’t been made in answering these questions, but there’s still a long way to go. This also doesn’t mean that philosophy might not have an important role in discussing the nature of lived or correlational time as in the case of thinkers like Husserl, Heidegger, Bergson, Merleau-Ponty, etc. What would be foreclosed would these conceptions of time having some sort of foundationalist role.
April 6, 2009 at 11:40 pm
Certainly a philosopher sitting in his armchair would not have been able to discover Einstein’s theory of relativity or the way in which time-space bends and shifts as a function of speed and mass.
As opposed to, of course, Einstein himself who was tirelessly measuring things up, and empirically testing time-space bends like there was no tomorrow, right?
…the questions of what exactly time and space are still remain very much up in the air in physics. This doesn’t mean that great progress hasn’t been made in answering these questions, but there’s still a long way to go.
Again, pardon my bemusement then, Aristotle discusses time, not sure what to make of it, Brian Greene (is he the guy who does amusing Nova documentaries on PBS?) discusses time, not sure what to make of it – great progress indeed, if you ask me. What happened to Harman’s idea that we need to take all these things back form science? I thought you sort of agreed with it. Are you saying that now we should let the scientists tell us what is time/space and motion? What is left for philosophy then? What else if foreclosed? There’s no way to do “philosophy of science” then, right?
I suppose we do disagree on the ultimate focus and a starting point of Kant’s critique then indeed.
April 6, 2009 at 11:43 pm
If you’re just tuning in, dear readers of Larval Subjects, I am sorry that I am so presumptuously addressing you, unless you mistake my tone for snark and dismissal, I’d like to say that this is a long conversation that started over at PE and sort of drifted over here, I think the tone is just carrying over as well and I am by no means trying to be disrespectful here, just playing my favorite role of a “snarky critic” (there’s a post about it here, I believer, somewhere)…
April 7, 2009 at 12:07 am
Mikhail,
As I said with respect to Einstein, his accomplishment wasn’t the accomplishment of one man, but required nearly 300 years of careful observations and experimentation before it could be formulated. Once the theory was formulated it had to be tested and there was actually a time lag there before the appropriate observations could be made to see if he’s right.
Yes, Aristotle is a marvelous example of exactly what I’m talking about. Aristotle believed that rest is the most natural form of motion. We now know this to be wrong. Aristotle gives us a wonderful framework to begin asking these questions and engaging in these investigations, but I’m not sure how relevant he remains where questions like what are time, what is matter, etc., are concerned. I do believe that scientists should tell us what time/space and motion are. As I recall, both you and Alexei argued the same thing in our prior discussion of these issues on this blog. You argued that philosophy in no way legislates science.
The question of what else is left for philosophy is a good question. Right now I would say we’re engaged in a philosophical discussion with respect to knowledge. Science doesn’t reflect on what knowledge is, but rather takes it for granted that we can know and sets about investigating the world. By contrast, we are engaged in a meta-theoretical discussion about the nature of knowledge. It seems to me that often throughout the history of philosophy philosophy has been parasitic on things outside of philosophy. That is, new forms of politics, science, math, art, etc., emerge and philosophy asks how this transforms our understanding of the nature of being. For example, Plato draws on the geometry as his principal inspiration. The great philosophers of the 17th century draw on the new physics, optics, and so on. Under this model, philosophy produces no truths of its own, but rather draws truths from other forms of human practice. It formalizes these truths into a model of the world, knowledge, politics, and so on. I guess my point then would be that philosophy has always been dependent on other discourses and knowledge. This is not to deny, of course, that there are a number of figures throughout the history of philosophy that are both philosophers and scientists, or philosophers and artists, or philosophers and statesmen, etc. This would be roughly Badiou’s conception of what philosophy does.
As for Graham’s philosophy, Graham is a friend and I find myself provoked by much of what he writes, but Graham and I do not share the same metaphysics. I like the term “object-oriented philosophy” because I like the idea of realism (or rather, I am persuaded by the realist arguments) and because I think objects have gotten short shrift in philosophy during the last century. That said, I do not share the conviction that philosophy needs to steal something back from science. This idea that philosophy and science are opposed to one another, that philosophy has lost something due to the triumph of Enlightenment or Galilean science, strikes me as borne of instutitional anxieties revolving around questions of just what we’re supposed to be doing as philosophers. In certain respects, it strikes me as reinforcing a hostility to science that we find in Continentally oriented philosophically thought where we proceed as if we can just entirely ignore what has been discovered in contemporary science and how it provokes thought. Here I think the 17th century philosophers had the right idea. Galilean science called, in their view, for an entirely new metaphysics, ethics, politics, and epistemology. It was not seen as taking away from philosophy, but as an exciting opportunity for philosophy and the chance to escape from the dusty schoolmen. Sadly, I think, we haven’t been nearly as heroic in response to the monumental transformations of our time. Rather than seeing the developments in biology, mathematics, physics, neurology, and so on as an exciting opportunity to generate a new metaphysics, ethics, epistemology, and political theory, us Continentalists have instead tended towards a reactionary stance, sticking our heads in the ground, restricting ourselves to discussions with text in the history of philosophy, and pretending as if these fundamental reorientations haven’t taken place. In many instances we’ve even argued in such a way as to discount these things altogether, as in the case of Heidegger’s notorious claims about science and mathematics and how they don’t think. When I talk to my phenomenology and hermeneutics friends they assure me of how interesting and fascinating about science but how all of this falls outside of philosophy… As if philosophy can somehow just ignore these things.
April 7, 2009 at 12:50 am
You argued that philosophy in no way legislates science.
I still don’t – why is the relationship between philosophy and science should be that of some sort of hierarchy? Philosophers should be able to think about time as much as scientists. I think you are presenting a very sad picture of what philosophy should be doing and trying to make it look all exciting and positive – I can’t help but feel sad for poor philosophy, I wonder if I should be doing something else with my life.
Let me ask you one question though, just for clarification, what do you think a dogmatic epistemological procedure would look like? who is a dogmatist in your view?
April 7, 2009 at 1:09 am
I guess I just don’t think philosophy is very well equipped to tell us what time is because this is an empirical question requiring observation and experiment. Of course, nothing prevents the philosopher from thinking about time disclosed by the scientists. Certainly Whitehead developed an elaborate philosophy and metaphysics drawing on the implications of quantum mechanics and relativity physics. A good deal of this ontology had to do with questions of time and space.
I’m inclined to think that correlationism is a dogmatic epistemological procedure because it believes that it is able to make claims about the world without any observational evidence whatsoever beyond its own introspection and reflection on consciousness. I am also sympathetic to Kant’s claim that arguments for the existence of God are examples of dogmatic philosophizing, not so much his antinomies and paralogisms, though.
April 7, 2009 at 1:22 am
So dogmatism would be something like “making claims about the world without any observational evidence whatsoever”?
April 7, 2009 at 1:58 am
Mikhail,
This is a difficult question to answer because “dogmatism” isn’t really a term in my philosophical vocabulary. Rather, “dogmatism” seems like a concept that requires something like a Kantian framework. I really have to think about your question a lot more to determine what I might have to say about it. The reason that I get edgy with talk of dogmatism in Kantian terms is I do think we’re beginning to arrive at answers to certain questions he excluded from the domain of possible knowledge. For example, at this point I think there’s abundant evidence to indicate that the soul is not immortal. The point of the parologisms then falls by the wayside. Admittedly, however, the paralogisms deal with the impossibility of rational psychology or proofs for the immortality of the soul. However, they implicitly suggest that we cannot determine one way or another whether the soul is immortal. I think the lion’s share of evidence is on the side that the soul is not immortal but is the brain. I think Kant’s first antinomy still holds up pretty well, as even if time and space as we know it began with the big bang, it remains possible that there were times prior to this universe. On the other hand, it is becoming increasingly apparent that space is material, that it has a quantum structure, which comes as quite a surprise to me. If that the case, it might be possible to demonstrate that space is finite. I don’t know. The second antinomy fairs less well. There are indicators that we are approaching a point where it will become possible to know that there are ultimate atoms of matter. The third antinomy, I think, only holds up if we accept the in-itself/appearance dichotomy, so Kant’s solution to the problem of free will won’t work for the realist. Other realists, such as Roy Bhaskar, however, have developed arguments for the existence of free will without requiring this sort of split. Finally, the fourth antinomy and the problems with the ontological proofs still hold up pretty well. I’m inclined to believe that we will never be able to determine one way or another whether a necessary being exists. On the other hand, the more our understanding of the world proceeds the less the world seems to need something like God as an explanatory hypothesis.
Getting back to what I said before, if someone says something like “string theory is true” I would call that an example of dogmatism. The reason I say this is because while string theory is a very elegant and well worked out theory, we have, as of yet, no experiment evidence whatsoever for string theory. As I understand it, however, the Haldron supercollider might change this. Likewise, I think that correlationisms are often dogmatic because they think that we can just ignore the findings of, say, neurology, and claim on high what the nature of mind is and whatnot. The Husserlian correlationist will tell me that I’m making a category mistake in conflating the transcendental ego or subject with empirical subjects, but I don’t think so. It is impossible for me to see how something like a transcendental ego can function unless it is attached to a physical body. As such, it is dependent on brain. Well here we get to the crux of the problem, because the Husserlian believes that he can trust his ability to introspect (what he calls “intuition”) to know the nature of the mind. Because of this it risks falling into a dogmatic and naive folk psychology that is not at all reflective of how brain processes work. Our neurology– and admittedly that neurology is only about 30 years old due to technological limitations that we only began to surmount in the 70s, but it’s made massive strides since –indicates, for example, that there is nothing like a unified self that presides over decisions or that “reasons”. For example, “choosing”, at the neurological level, is more a competition between different networks of neurons in the brain, than anything like we think of as “choosing” at the conscious level. In other words, just as both Nietzsche and Spinoza argued, it appears that this model of choosing is a sort of illusion.
Now, I’m not suggesting that neurology is right (though certainly it is the more impressive of the hypothesis in terms of what it’s able to predict and explain), I don’t know. But I am saying that we can’t simply rest assured that we can ignore these things, rely on “intuition” and introspection, and have an accurate picture of our own minds and the world around us. Merleau-Ponty understood this and was happy to look at the findings of the hard sciences. Most phenomenologists don’t, in my view. This raises the disturbing spectre that all of this transcendental talk is really just a legion of fictions, not unlike the spirits the ancients attributed to various nature phenomena to explain them, rather than anything reflective of the world or how things are.
Really if you think about it, the philosophers of the last 60 or 70 years are really the first philosophers in all of Western history that have believed they can sew up philosophy in a self-contained discipline that addresses only its own internal problems (though very likely the schoolmen thought this way at various points). This is really remarkable. In other periods, even among Kant, Schelling, and Fichte, philosophers understood that they needed to be intimately acquainted with the science, mathematics, etc., of their day. In some respects, I think this strange phenomenon has to do with a trauma, we as philosophers, suffered at the end of the 19th century. Then natural philosophy increasingly came to refer to itself as natural science, separating itself from philosophy and generating a number of highly successful disciplines. I’m not sure that philosophers really recovered from this stunning achievement and separation, and we’ve been suffering a crisis of identity that has reverberated in our ranks ever since. Just as Kant famously said “time was when metaphysics was queen of the sciences”, it would not be far off the mark for us to today say “time was when philosophy was queen of the disciplines”. We struggle about, trying to figure out what it is that we’re supposed to be doing. Sometimes we convince ourselves that our job is to determine the conditions and limits of knowledge and science, but no one really seems to be listening and scientists seem to proceed oblivious to our protestations. At other times we seem to think our vocation is to preserve the history of philosophy, to retrieve that which has been lost through a “naive natural attitude” or an interpretation of being in terms of being-as-presence, yet then our practice seems to become purely textual and self-referential in character, addressing only those others that preserve the tradition of philosophy. We smugly believe we have a secret knowledge of our age and who we are through the hermeneutic retrieval of the tradition, yet no one seems impressed but us. Yet others see philosophy as messianic, being the harbinger of social and political revolution through the development of concepts that will allow for emancipation. In psychoanalytic terms, all of this conceptions of philosophy seem more or less like narcissistic defense-formations, seeking to hide from just how much things have changed (it’s much more difficult for us to get a fix on our world, our time, than it was for Kant or Descartes due to just how much our knowledge has expanded), rather than confronting this transformation as the very matter that should provoke our philosophical speculation.
April 7, 2009 at 2:28 pm
That’s a long answer to a very short question, I’m not sure exactly what you said, but I suppose that was probably the intention, right? Anyways, good times…
April 8, 2009 at 1:08 am
I have to say, I’m a bit more interested in this historical critique of modern philosophy’s identity that has arisen than I am realist ontology as it’s solution
April 8, 2009 at 6:32 am
Benoit,
Care to elaborate?
April 10, 2009 at 5:05 am
I take it that the big breakdown in understanding about time occurs precisely because the two of you are defining time differently. this, of course, is the very issue itself, so, if I may intervene, I think the problem is as follows:
Kant quite convincingly argues that time is not a thing, but a form of intuition. which is to say that we could never have an intuition of time; rather, all of our intuitions are in time. this does not mean that the big bang could not have been, but that, if it was, it was not in time. but this type of event outside of time is unthinkable for us. we cannot but think of it as happening at a certain point in time.
on the other hand, it is certainly true that science has discovered various ways to measure time “objectively” by means of employing radioactive half-lifes and so on. but, this level of onjectivity does not give us time as an absolute. in other words, while it may mean that objects themselves experience time, it does not, in any direct way, imply that time is absolute or a being itself. it may be that time is always an experience of some thing, such that, if there were no things, there would be no time. (the problem is that we are still compelled to think of the “beginning of time” in terms of time, as though there would be something before it..)
I take it that this is actually Deleuze’s point when he discusses the pure and empty form of time (and the reason for 3 syntheses which give to ‘time’ three different sense) – it would be a “time” which no one, no thing, could experience; a pure order of time without measure. if we accord being to time, if we make it absolute, then we must think a time that is unthinkable (the thought of the eternal return as the transcendent exercise of thought).
I don’t know if that was helpful at all, but you all at least inspired me to think. I hope I may have done the same.
April 22, 2009 at 2:07 am
[…] challenge to the Kantian position. As I argued in my posts on Meillassoux (here, here, here, and here), the “arche-fossil” poses a significant challenge to the Kantian thesis because it […]
April 27, 2009 at 11:10 pm
[…] Now, Mikhail claims that Meillassoux’s argument only makes sense if we’ve already rejected “correlationist time”, but it seems to me that this is a distortion of Meillassoux’s actual argument. Meillassoux’s line of argument can be summed up by quoting a single passage from After Finitude. Meillassoux writes, “…why is this [correlationist] interpretation of ancestrality obviously insupportable? Well, to understand why, all we have to do is ask the correlationist the following question: what is it that happened 4.56 billion years ago? Did the accretion of the earth happen, yes or no?” (16). For those interested in a thorough discussion of Meillassoux’s argument and his response to counter-arguments, you can refer to my posts here, here, here, and here. […]