Over at Footnotes2Plato, Matthew has written a post responding to some of my recent work that also outlines his own positions. Since he mischaracterizes my positions in a few places, a few words of clarification might be worthwhile. Matthew writes:
Levi and I have argued in the past about his materialism and its lack of formal and final causality. I’ve been claiming that ideas and purposes are real, while he continues to argue that only corporeal things, their causal interactions, and the void in which they interact constitute real things. From his perspective, what we call qualitative forms or deliberate intentions are either alternative names for what are really entirely material activities (gene transcription, electro-chemo-neural synchronization, economic exchange, information transfer, etc.), or they are nothing.
Matthew is correct in pointing out that I don’t believe in formal causality. This is because I don’t believe that there’s such a thing as unformed matter. The concept of formal causality only makes sense and is required if one advocates the view that there’s unformed passive matter awaiting form to give it structure. However, in my view, all matter has form or is structured. While matter is formable as a result of encounters with other entities, it is never without structure. For this reason I don’t need a concept of formal causation distinct from matter. A pile of clay is not a formless stuff awaiting structure. It has all sorts of structure (its molecular structure, the contours of the pile, etc). It just doesn’t have the form that the craftsman wants (that of a brick or a vase). Wherever one speaks of matter as formless and awaiting form you can be sure that there’s anthropocentrism lurking in the background. I’ve written about this issue in an earlier post on hylomorphism.
read on!
It’s not quite correct for Matthew to say that I don’t believe in purposiveness or “final causation”. What I reject is the idea that things are designed for any purpose. That is, I reject intelligent design theories of which Matthew’s position is a variant. A star isn’t for anything, a rock isn’t for anything, a tree isn’t for anything, a rabbit isn’t for anything. The causes that brought them into being came from behind. They were not pulled into being by some goal or aim on the part of a designer (in his post Matthew talks about the universe having an aesthetic aim that lures entities into being through the agency of God). With that said, this position doesn’t entail that purposiveness can’t come into being. In other words, as we move up the chain of organic life I think organisms become more and more capable of acting in purposive or self-directing ways for the sake of goals. They develop emergent capacities for self-directed activity. The Koshimi monkeys in Japan really do wash potatoes for the purpose of cleaning them. The dog really does bury its bone for a purpose. I really am writing this post for a purpose. This kind of purposiveness is a real feature of the world. The point, however, is that these capacities emerged out of processes that weren’t purposive.
When Matthew says that I think these kinds of activities are just “electro-chemical-neurological” processes, he confuses materialism with reductionism. While I don’t think that Koshimi monkeys can act in purposive ways unless they have the requisite type of nervous systems, that’s quite different than claiming that I believe their purposive activity is really just electro-chemical-neurological reactions. Emergent capacities are real things in the world and require the requisite degree of system complexity to exist. The fact that the properties of H2O are explained through the properties of hydrogen and oxygen does not entail that water somehow loses its power to wet, to boil at certain temperatures, to undergo a phase transition and become ice or steam, etc. Nor do hydrogen and oxygen have these powers of water if they are not related in the requisite way. With the proper relation between oxygen and hydrogen a new set of powers or capacities comes into being. Likewise with neurological systems and purposive activity. The burden of proof to show that we need design teleology to explain the world around us is on Matthew’s shoulders. So far I’ve only seen him give “god of the gaps” type arguments for his positions. For example, he’s argued that because we don’t yet have a well developed theory of consciousness, consciousness must be distinct from the brain, despite the fact that we know that consciousness changes significantly when one uses drugs, has a stroke, as a person ages, etc.
As I argued in an earlier post, all my materialism commits me to is the thesis that if something exists, it is material. That’s it. It doesn’t commit me to the thesis of reductionism or that the smallest units of matter are the really real things of the world. H2O is a real entity in the world and while it cannot exist without hydrogen and oxygen, we have to observe H2O itself to discover what it’s powers are. Signifying systems are, for me, real material beings in the world that have to be studied in their own terms. While signifying systems can’t exist without electro-neural-chemical systems, we would learn next to nothing about a particular signifying system by studying neurology. At most, we would learn about certain constraints on signifying systems by studying neurology, not how a particular signifying system is itself structured. This is because neurological systems exist at a different level of scale and are composed of different types of elements. Someone will say “but signifying systems are not like rocks!”, and they would be right. But hurricanes aren’t like rocks either and no one doubts that they’re material phenomena. Or maybe they do. It would be peculiar if they did.
Later in his post Matthew writes:
I’d draw on Bohme and Schelling to suggest, in contrast to Levi, that creative productivity, rather than this productivity’s arrested products or corporeal excretions (natura naturata), is ontologically fundamental. Productivity (natura naturans) is the ungrounded ground; it not a substance or multiplicity of substances, but an unspeakable tension which is at the base of all logos and all ontos.
I find Matthew’s characterization of bodies as “arrested products or corporeal excretions” very telling, as it reflects the analogy to craftsmanship that motivates his call for formal causation and that seems to perceive all of his thought. The form/matter distinction is, as Simondon argues, premised on an idea of craftsmanship where matter is a passive, formless, lump awaiting form and where the formed entity is the product of the work of a craftsman or a designer. The product is here conceived as an arrested excretion because all the dynamism or becoming is thought to take place in the work of the craftsman. Under this view, the thing that is produced is a mere result that has lost its animate life. Again we find an anthropomorphism here based on an analogy to craftsmanship as a model– albeit unconscious –of being or existence. Yet as I have repeatedly argued (see here and here, for example), bodies are in a constant state of becoming and development. They are not “lifeless” lumps that are a result of processes or activities; they are processes and activities. If these activities cease so too does the body. Moreover, when bodies enter into interactions with other bodies, they can form new bodies with powers or capacities all their own. What should be abandoned is not the idea of bodies or things, but the anthropomorphic model of the craftsman in which bodies are mere results, products, or excresences with no activity of their own.
May 25, 2012 at 3:17 pm
“productivity, not its products, is ontologically basic” — in other words, creativity is the most general metaphysical category. God, as Whitehead says, is creativity’s first non-temporal accident, itself a creature “shaped” by the creative advance.
As I also tried to articulate, I don’t see form and matter as alienated. Form isn’t stamped on passive material. Matter (the material cause) is creativity, while form is that creativity conditioned by the lures of its own definite possibilities. God is not the all-powerful demiurge corralling materiality from beyond materiality; rather, God is the all-loving Eros of materiality itself, matter’s self-valuation and self-enjoyment. With just creativity and no divinity, there’d be pure infinite process and no opportunity for any definite products to emerge and endure. The emergent endurance of specific things requires that the infinite space of creative possibility be narrowed to certain forms and goals rather than others. As I understand it, this is Whitehead’s divine function. Given an ontology of creativity, there’d still be only abstract possibility and no concrete actuality with this divine function in the world.
May 25, 2012 at 3:19 pm
Given an ontology of creativity, there’d still be only abstract possibility and no concrete actuality withOUT this divine function in the world.
May 25, 2012 at 3:30 pm
Matthew,
On the one hand, I just don’t find the claim that creativity is a ground illuminating or explanatory. I require an explanation of creativity, not a mere assertion. On the other hand, all the claims you make about the divine and form as a lure are just assertions, not philosophical claims. No reason is given to endorse or accept them, they’re simply asserted. Further, in my view, we can entirely get by without them. The don’t contribute anything to the explanation of the world around us, nor do any real empirical explanatory work. They’re metaphysics in the bad sense of the term: completely unfounded claims that can’t be decided one way or another.
May 25, 2012 at 3:31 pm
The Creative Advance manifests through a polar tension held taught between between actuality and potentiality, between matter and form. It is neither one or the other exclusively, but their generative contradiction.
May 25, 2012 at 3:34 pm
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May 25, 2012 at 3:35 pm
It’s a real shame too because there are some things of value in Whitehead, but all the divinity stuff and process theology with its teleology and design arguments makes him thoroughly toxic. This is why process thinkers such as Deleuze and Simondon who get by without all this baggage are far superior. In my view, Whitehead just can’t be a legitimate participant in these discussions without the excision of all these things.
May 25, 2012 at 3:37 pm
Levi,
The claims I am making are assertions seeking a form of aesthetic disclosure, not explanation. Mechanisms can be explained, since we as observers can stand outside them to take them apart and calculate their forces. The life of the universe cannot be so explained, since we are in it and of it. We can only hope to make the facts of the matter more apparent to ourselves in poetic acts of sheer disclosure.
May 25, 2012 at 3:44 pm
Levi,
I don’t see Whitehead’s divine function as a species of design argument, since as I understand such arguments, they refer to designers external to that which is designed, while Whitehead’s God becomes with the world.
I’ve not read much Deleuze directly, though I have read a good amount of secondary material on him… I wonder what you make of what some have called his more occult side? See Mark Bonta’s recent article, “Rhizome of Boehme and Deleuze: Esoteric Precursors of the God of Complexity,” for example: http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/substance/v039/39.1.bonta.pdf
May 25, 2012 at 3:52 pm
Matt,
I don’t think there’s an occult side to D. As for aesthetics, I don’t think that’s a legitimate mode of argument and therefore see no reason to be persuaded by it. You can’t cure cancer aesthetically.
May 25, 2012 at 3:53 pm
If what you’re talking about is just a set of mythologically potent symbols I see no reason to treat it as an account of being.
May 25, 2012 at 5:22 pm
‘The life of the universe cannot be so explained, since we are in it and of it.’
Why is our immanence to the universe a barrier to explaining it?
May 25, 2012 at 5:26 pm
Moreover, regardless of whether God becomes with the universe, if a divine being is selecting forms to serve as lures for feeling in the becoming of entities THAT IS a design argument (and a rather noxious one given the assault on science education in the states). There’s no getting around this. The thesis is that interactions among entities in the world (immanence) is not enough to explain speciation and the emergence of life and that being requires a designer to be accounted for. Darwin blew this argument out of the water.
May 25, 2012 at 6:06 pm
Levi,
I am frustrated by the attack on science education in the US as well, but unlike you, I don’t think the fundamentalists are upset for an entirely anomalous reason. As Darwinism (and the scientific worldview more generally) is often presented by popularizers like Dennett, Dawkins, and PZ Myers, it leaves no room for the moral vision that many people find necessary for human freedom and the adventure of civilization. I don’t think such a huge sector of the population can be entirely fucked in the head: I’d rather say they are wrong in what they affirm (i.e., some variant of creatio ex nihilo by an entirely transcendent God) but right in what they deny (i.e., that scientific materialism provides an adequate basis for human civilization, or an adequate account of cosmogenesis).
I think science education would benefit a great deal if it were taught more along the lines of a sacred story. Scientific materialism tends to bifurcate human value from natural fact, making humanity an anomaly in an otherwise meaningless universe. Meaning needs to be injected back into the scientific picture of the universe, or the major part of society will never be able to accept its truths. The new planetarium show at the California Academy of Science’s called “Life: A Cosmic Story” is a good example of how this can be done. So is the work of cosmologist Brian Swimme, who just recently released a documentary titled “Journey of the Universe.” See also his older documentary, “The New Story”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRykk_0ovI0.
I don’t think Darwin blew the idea of purpose and aesthetic lures out of the water. He uncovered one mechanism that can account for part of a much more complex evolutionary process. I will continue to contest that random variation under natural selection offers a full explanation for living form. There is more to the story.
May 25, 2012 at 7:35 pm
Matthew,
You’re really making an argument from popularity? “Many people believe x therefore x must be true!”. Many people also believed that Jews and blacks are inferior and bitterly contested claims to the contrary. Were they right? The fact that people yearn for eternal and I changing values floating in the sky does not entail that they exist. Moreover if you look at the people crying loudest for these things– people that you are aligning yourself with in your arguments –you will see that what they’re really calling for us justifications of bigotry, sexism, homophobia, destruction of other peoples, environmental devastation, etc. This is the “truth” of the majority you’re defending?
May 26, 2012 at 5:31 pm
From my impaired perspective, it seems any objection to the idea that whatever exists is material comes down to the compelling vividness of experience, and it’s attendant sense of meaning.
So from this view, any “the neuron bone is connected to the synapse bone, the synapse bone….” is not a reduction of compound entities (what isn’t?) to some fundamental insensible thing, but a reduction of the special case of consciousness to the general class of thingness.
In other words, how do we account for consciousness?
But by now, I think neuroscience, while still pretty gap-py, is developed enough to shift the burden to a reformulated question, why should we think that we cannnot account for consciousness? What gaps in neuroscience suggest some basic inabilty to explain awareness in this way?
May 27, 2012 at 5:28 am
Levi,
I’m not making an argument from popularity. I’m expressing an intuition that philosophy procedes best not by generating polemical schisms (e.g., “anyone who disagrees with the knowledge produced by my favored institutional allegiances must be evil or ignorant”), but through reconciliation and reintegration.
I wouldn’t advocate yearning for some set of static values floating in heaven. Value is only real when it is experienced by an actual occasion or society of actual occasions. There is no real value, and no real form, external to actual occasions of experience. I’d be more likely to advocate that one seek to express one’s values in the world through conscientious and collaborative artwork, what the German Romantics called Sympoetry or Symphilosophy.
God’s role as moral law-maker, from my point of view, is a role played through the incarnate presence of others. The commandments are written in stone, yes, in mountains, but also in valleys, rivers, trees, in the faces of all of earth’s creatures, human and non-. Think Levinas, only cosmologized. The transcendent is here among us bleeding for its values. Note that if value and purpose are real and rooted in the non-human cosmos that this is no consolation, no free ticket to heaven. If the cosmos has values it means that our actions are judged by the world. It means we must be responsible beings because Goodness itself is at stake in the world.
If we can return to an earlier issue (see #12 above), my position is NOT as you say, that “interactions among entities in the world (immanence) is not enough to explain speciation and the emergence of life and that being requires a designer to be accounted for.” I am not and have never argued that Darwin’s mechanism needs the supplementation of a transcendent designer. I have been trying to articulate a philosophy of organism, wherein evolution is the creative interaction of societies of actual entities in and as the world. I’d wager that a difference between us is that I take the world itself to be an entity, an organism. The world-organism (i.e., the world-soul) does, in some sense “transcend” all other organisms; but so do each of these organisms in some sense “transcend” the world and each other. Here “transcend” is close to Harman’s “withdrawal,” though it is not an identical concept, since organisms also become-with one another–they are each and all internally related to one another. Their withdrawal from each other is only temporary; each of their innermost experiences and hidden intentions eventually spill out and become publicly perceivable.
…
May 27, 2012 at 1:17 pm
Matthew,
This is an argument from popularity:
I don’t advocate reconciliation nor reintegration with people that defend bigotry, hate, and ignorance.