Drawing on Latour’s Inquiry into Modes of Existence and Luhmann’s theory of distinctions, we can raise questions such as “what makes a particular form of communication recognizably that form of communication.” For example, for Latour, in science or religion– and please folks, knock it off with the use of Latour’s abbreviations such as “REP” and “REL” in these discussions! Open the discussion to readers who haven’t picked up the book yet! –there must be specific “felicity conditions” that render enunciations or speech-acts within these domains recognizable as a “scientific speech-act” or a “religious speech-act”. In this regard, Latour carries out an implicit critique of some of his earlier work. Take his writings in science studies. In those works, he had shown how the supposedly a-political work of science is actually pervaded by all sorts of politics. The Latour of the Modes, however, notes that many working scientists would reject some of the claims that he makes. That is, they wouldn’t deny that politics is involved in this or that aspect of what they do, but they would deny that some of the things Latour draws attention to are scientific utterances.
This places Latour in a difficult position. On the one hand, the core spirit of his actor-network theory lies in respect for how actants describe and understand what their doing. For example, in Irreductions he lambasts what he’ll later call “the sociology of the social” for ignoring the discourse of, say, the nun, by immediately showing how her discourse is just a veiled reflection of economic relations or Oedipal issues, etc. However, when Latour elsewhere gets to the analysis of the work of scientists, he seems to do exactly this. For example, in Science in Action he argues, among other things, that bibliographies and references are forms of rhetoric meant to intimidate the disputant, rather than straightforward support for the claim being made. Through analyses like these he seems to ignore the scientist’s self-description of what she’s doing. If Latour is to remain consistent, he needs a theoretical framework that is simultaneously able to maintain respect for the dignity of the speaker’s self-description while also showing how the speaker’s work is pervaded by these other networks. This is what Modes attempts to do. In quasi-transcendental terms, it attempts to develop a sociology of the felicity conditions that identify an enunciation as being an enunciation of this or that type, while also showing how other enunciations wouldn’t belong to that mode of existence.
Luhmann is up to something similar with his theory of operational closure and distinctions. In Luhmann, an operationally closed system– say religion –is a system that forms enunciations and responds to events in the environment or broader world through the use of particular distinctions and codes. In other words, each domain– politics, religion, science, art, the discourse of love, etc. –has certain felicity conditions that determine whether or not the enunciation is a communication of that type. The community of artists will have a set of distinctions or codes that determine whether or not an enunciation is an enunciation about art or whether a work is a work of art or not. For example, the monthly budget report at a particular art studio would probably not be an enunciation about art because it wouldn’t fit with whatever code governs that form of communication at that point in history (for Luhmann the codes and distinctions governing a communication system evolve and change throughout history). Likewise, for Luhmann there is a communication system governing love that lovers participate in and that determines whether a communication between the two pertains to love or something else that falls outside the discourse of love. Here it’s important to note that for Luhmann anything can potentially enter the domain of an operationally closed system. For example, there will be circumstances under which the studio’s monthly budget report can become an artistic act or utterance, but only when it is integrated according to the code that structures artistic communication (e.g., the budget report is framed and placed on the wall or a group of performance artists correlate the numbers with the movements of their body, costumes, certain props, etc.). In other words, operational closure does not mean that communications from one operationally closed system cannot enter another, but only means that when it does enter that other system it will be integrated according to the codes and distinctions governing the other system.
read on!
If philosophy is a mode of existence or communication system, I find myself wondering what it’s felicity conditions, codes, or distinctions might be. What is it that renders a philosophical utterance or speech act recognizable as a philosophical utterance, rather than a scientific utterance, a religious utterance, a political utterance, an artistic utterance, etc? What conditions must an utterance meet in order to be a philosophical response to a philosophical utterance? In other words, the question here is what norms allow us to identify philosophy as philosophy?
I’m not sure I have an answer to this question, nor even a hypothesis. I raise the question because of a number of discussions I’ve had lately where the issue has come up in one form or another. Thus, in response to my remarks about materialism, a friend recently asked me what it might be that distinguishes philosophy from science if materialism is true? Couldn’t we just abandon philosophy and content ourselves with science telling us what being is? I personally don’t like Harman’s route of claiming that there’s some special type of being of which science knows nothing– I worry that this brings us into the bad kind of metaphysics that’s immune to any criticism and that allows us to reject any empirical findings we happen to find unpleasant –but I am inclined to think that there’s something unique about philosophy that distinguishes it from science. That implies that there’s an operative distinction or set of felicity conditions that allows us to distinguish utterances within the two practices, or that allows us to distinguish a felicitous philosophical utterance from an infelicitous utterance.
In another discussion a friend of mine cited figures like Jesus and certain Indian thinkers as being examples of philosophers. My inclination– and I fully confess I could be wrong here –is that while there might be certain elements of their utterances that resemble philosophical utterances, these nonetheless are not philosophical utterances (though clearly they could be taken up in a way that would transform them into philosophical utterance). Again, the ability to identify these utterances as belonging to another mode of existence or system of communication entails the existence of felicity conditions or distinctions that range over these utterances. What are those felicity conditions? I don’t know.
It seems to me that a good answer to these questions has to meet certain requirements and keep certain things in mind. First, and above all, a good account of that code proper to philosophical utterances or those felicity conditions that define philosophy as a communicative system or mode of existence must be broad enough to include thinkers as diverse as Nietzsche, Carnap, Nagarjuna, and so on (assuming the work of these thinkers are all composed of philosophical utterances… Perhaps Nietzsche isn’t a philosopher, who knows?). Second, such an account should articulate felicity conditions that are plastic enough to allow for a wide variety of mutations in philosophical thought. The question here isn’t what the true philosophy is, but just what allows us to recognize an utterance as philosophical or not. Finally, third it seems to me that such an account must recognize that the codes or felicity conditions are subject to evolution, such that what might have been counted as a philosophical utterance at one time in history would not be counted as such now (perhaps now it would be treated as a scientific utterance, for example) and what might not have been counted as a philosophical utterance in the past might now be counted as a philosophical utterance. In addition to this, a good evolutionary perspective on felicity conditions ought also give us some explanation as to how immanent and internal transformations within the mode of existence or communicative system gave rise to these mutations in distinctions (i.e., it shouldn’t appeal to factors outside the mode of existence). Any thoughts or hypotheses here?
October 24, 2013 at 4:55 pm
I apologise that it’s a bit beyond me but what I read I liked
October 24, 2013 at 5:08 pm
This question has come up in a couple of conversations I’ve had as well. On the one hand, I think it’s noteworthy that Latour doesn’t explore philosophy either as a distinct domain (vis-à-vis modernist categories) or as a separate mode of existence in AIME. This might lead one to conclude that perhaps philosophy isn’t best understood as its own mode with its own felicity conditions – though I don’t think that necessarily means it’s reducible to science (Reference/Reproduction) rather than, say, narrative (Fiction).
On the other hand, if we take the entire enterprise of AIME as a philosophical one, then we could ask in which modes do we find the conditions for this type of second-order inquiry – and I think these would be Network and Preposition (both of which belong to Latour’s 5th group of modes, which are more properly “meta-modes”). So, what would mark philosophical utterance as such would be attention to the felicity conditions of other modes and to differences and crossings between modes, which seems about right as an understanding of philosophy.
October 24, 2013 at 5:38 pm
The challenge here is to limit philosophy somehow (because we want to mark a distinction between what philosophy is and what it is not) without attaching it to a limited content (say, Nietzsche but not Jesus or whatever).
Luhmann himself proceeds by using the concept of function, although he understands it in a rather unconventional way, I feel. If I’m not mistaken, Luhmann defines function as a way to make comparisons possible so that many options can be identified and a selection can be made between all of them. In a way, it’s about operationalizing contingency. Contingency is not eradicated, but adapted or translated in terms relevant to the situation under consideration. Hence, in the system of love for instance, we begin with the question: am I in love or not? Getting involving in the system of love means facing this specific question as opposed to any other questions.
It must be noted that Luhmann defines systems as systems of communication, not as system of action. So if you are in love, it’s not enough to answer yes to the question above. It’s not enough, because what happens in the system also depends on your partner’s reaction. Since your partner is a different person than you, it is always possible for him or her to deviate from your expectations. When deciding what you want to do, you must take into consideration what your partner might do after your action. The other person is a source of uncertainty for you and you can only absorb this uncertainty by making yourself predictable to him or her, that is, by limiting the ways you act in front of him or her.
In other words, systems do not depend on consensus or agreement (about the content of philosophy in this case). They do not correspond to different sets of already clearly separated objects, but to different perspectives over the world. So how to define philosophy as a perspective unlike any others, but beyond (or despite) any internal disputes about the worth of this or that philosophical work?
Maybe the solution requires us to think of philosophy as a multiplicity. In other words, maybe philosophy is an autonomous system today, fully separated from all other systems. But there was a time when this was not the case (until Renaissance, philosophy, science and religion were mixed together). Hence we cannot understand or describe philosophy as one autonomous system unless we can also say something about about philosophy before it becomes such a system. There must more than one state available to the system, which means that our definition of philosophy cannot be simple, but double or triple.
October 24, 2013 at 5:41 pm
I’m no use for your question, but a related question occurs to me. Your example about the accounting reports for a gallery and how under certain conditions they can be brought into art… Indeed, there are many examples of this sort of art, I’ll name Hans Haacke as one that stands out. But what I find myself wondering about may be the flip-side of what you are asking about. It seems to me that one can “as a philosopher”, “as a psychoanalyst” or “as a poet” etc read texts which are in no one’s opinion those of philosophy, or psychoanalytic or poetry and derive something from them. As this seems to be the case, I wonder what makes it possible. Is it something inherent to the text being read (“The Kantian Aftermath as found in ~Hey Dude Where’s My Car?~”), or is it a technique or set of such techniques specific to one’s … er… “home discourse”(?) that when applied, allow such a “philosophical” revaluation or extraction? I’d love to know more about those techniques (if that is what they are). Are they transmissible or too idiosyncratic for that? Is Barthes’ MYTHOLOGIES a text aimed at teaching one such technique – How to find the ‘Myth’?
October 24, 2013 at 6:02 pm
It would seem to me that philosophy, at a minimum, seeks out the conditions of possibility for something, or some set of circumstances, to be true. I realize this definition makes many assumptions, including the transcendental turn. But if you grant these assumptions, philosophy as a communicative system would be those statements that explore or make claims about what assumptions are necessary for something to be the case. I think this is broad enough to be a starting point though I concede it begs many other questions – ontological and epistemological to name two.
October 24, 2013 at 7:51 pm
we could use the posts over @ http://www.newappsblog.com/
as examples if someone would like to make a case for there such a
thing/field/discipline/system/etc as a mode, carve away!
October 24, 2013 at 8:08 pm
Just to comment on the point of Jesus being a philosopher or not, I would say that in the Gospels he is presented as a philosophical critic acting within the closed system of 1st Century Palestinian Judaism. He may not act as a systematic philosopher, working from scratch but that is because he already has a system (a Judaic tradition). If Jesus is not a philosopher, then neither are Socrates or Nietzsche.
If Socrates is not a philosopher, and neither is Nietzsche, then philosophy becomes something much narrower and more closely defined then most would be comfortable with, I think.
October 24, 2013 at 8:20 pm
Powerofnaming, The reason there’s a question as to whether Jesus is a philosopher has to do with how he grounds his claims. Appeals to authority (god, his divinity) or sacred texts fall outside of the domain of philosophical utterances. Rather, you need grounding in reason or observation for an utterance to be philosophical. This is why Socrates and Jesus are opposites. Jesus says “what I say is true because I’m god.” Socrates says “what I say is true because of the reasons that support it.” Discourses based on revelation, I think, can never be philosophy.
October 24, 2013 at 8:48 pm
What about intuition and perception?I think perception is the most important
and Jesus had that.He could not have been an atheist at that time….he had to work within his tradition,like we all do except we have more choice,perhaps like we can become agnostic… or whatever
October 24, 2013 at 8:49 pm
I wonder if it’s possible to limit philosophy by the traditional headings:
Ontology
Epistemology
Ethics
Interesting, though, that there doesn’t seem to be a “master” category for these three!
October 24, 2013 at 8:52 pm
The requirement isn’t that one be an atheist, but a certain practice of grounding. Descartes’s proofs for the existence of god are clearly an instance of philosophy due to how they’re grounded. Intuition/inspiration don’t fit the mark here either as grounds have to be public in philosophy. The claim that Jesus’s utterances aren’t philosophical utterances doesn’t mean they’re not something else, just that they’re not philosophical. It’s no different than saying an economic transaction isn’t a legal judgment.
October 24, 2013 at 8:55 pm
Dave, I’m reluctant to differentiate philosophy in that way. As in the Jesus discussion above, he makes all sorts of ethical utterances but they’re not philosophical utterances. In other words, these domains can appear in a variety of modes without being instances of a particular mode.
October 24, 2013 at 10:15 pm
I think in the end, it is all what we make of it. Philosophy is so huge and every individual has their own philosophers who they follow that in a way it is limitless.
October 25, 2013 at 12:19 am
Alain,
I’ll have to think on that. I’m inclined to agree with you, but then I get nervous asking myself whether all philosophy has this transcendental aspiration. A good account of philosophy’s felicity conditions would be able to comprehend how rival schools and skepticism are nonetheless recognizable as philosophical utterances.
October 25, 2013 at 12:24 am
Interesting question. I’m reminded of Plato’s dialogues ‘Sophist’ and ‘Statesman.’ In ‘Sophist,’ we’re told that there will be three investigations into the essence of the sophist, the statesman, and the philosopher. The first two investigations are recorded, but the third on the philosopher is mysteriously absent. Perhaps this was Plato’s way of saying the philosopher cannot be defined because it is he/she who is responsible for demarcating and relating other modes of existence…?
October 25, 2013 at 12:28 am
Hi John,
Nice to see you! I owe you an email, don’t I? Apologies for not responding. Lots has happened here recently and I’ve had a tendency to lose track of things as a result. Hope all is well on your end!
Anyway, back to your question, one of the things about communication systems inasmuch as I understand Luhmann’s formulations is that they are capable of talking about everything else in the world– on the premise that they’re able to receive utterances from them –but do so in a way that is restricted to their code. In other words, operational closure doesn’t mean that a system doesn’t encounter other things in the world, only that it receives those things within the constraints of the system’s code. Think about this in terms of Lacan’s structure of fantasy. The subject hears what others are saying, but through the filter of the fantasy that structures their interpersonal relations. Jane says something to Mike and this is filtered/processed through Mike’s structure of fantasy in a way that is significantly different from what Jane might have intended. This is how it is with the communicative systems. Economy, for example, is able to engage with every other form of discourse (religion, love, politics, art, etc), but does so in economic terms. If Philosophy is a communicative system and is governed by a code or set of distinctions, it’s able to talk about everything else in the world, but will transform those things according to the code that governs its utterances. I’m not sure that there’s a technique here; it just seems to be what, in fact, happens.
October 25, 2013 at 12:34 am
Jean-Sebastian,
This is a really interesting question: Is philosophy an autonomous system or not, and if so what communicative function does it serve in Luhmann’s sense of the term? I think you’re right on mark with your points about any code or operative set of distinctions defining philosophical utterances not being based on sameness or consensus. A good account of philosophy’s felicity conditions would be able to capture the unity in the multiplicity of rival positions and would theorize how this multiplicity and conflict functions as the motor of autopoiesis in this system, rather than arriving at sameness among philosophies. Then at the next level of analysis we’d have to get into the paradoxes that this distinction introduces into the communicative system and issues of re-entry of the distinction into philosophy.
October 25, 2013 at 12:46 am
Matt,
Nice connection. The Luhmannian could respond, I think, by pointing out that we are capable of distinguishing between philosophical utterances and non-philosophical utterances and that therefore there must be a distinction or code at work. I do think you get at something very Luhmannian here, however. Luhmann’s thesis, following Spencer-Brown, is that for any observation to take place a distinction has to be drawn. In other words, distinction precedes observation (try pointing at the universe or whole, you can’t). Every distinction has a marked space and an unmarked space. The marked space is what is what is observed, while the unmarked space is what is ignored. It is the distinction that brings that marked space into relief for observation. However, in the act of observing, the distinction that brings the marked space into relief itself becomes invisible. We can either operate with a distinction (observe) or observe a distinction, but we cannot simultaneously observe the marked space and the distinction that opened up the marked space. In a very real sense, the observer is not the person looking at the things in the marked space, but is rather the distinction itself. But that distinction always becomes invisible in the act of making indications (pointing out things in the marked space). There’s thus always an air of paradox about observation: the eye cannot see itself seeing and a distinction cannot observe itself observing. There’s always a blind spot and, most importantly, distinctions can always be drawn differently allowing for different indications. Plato’s Sophist seems to allude to this. In observing the sophist and the statesmen, the philosopher as observer somehow withdraws or disappears. For philosophy the upshot of all this is that there can be no foundations for philosophy because insofar as philosophy must necessarily draw distinctions to engage in its system building it will also necessarily contain a blind spot (the distinction that allows its indications in the first place) as well as a series of unmarked spaces that escape observation. Take that Descartes!
October 25, 2013 at 4:31 am
1) [Why care about philosophy? http://t.co/ARDNCYB0wY ]
2) [Master’s Mind: Sri Aurobindo in Western Thought by Daniel Albuquerque http://t.co/Dq0HGXh9Qr ]
October 25, 2013 at 2:30 pm
Larvalsubjects – your description of the “eye cannot see itself seeing” sounds similar to Heidegger’s notion of the clearing. The clearing is that in which anything can appear at all – it is that in which some thing (or idea) can show itself. And of course for Heidegger one does not notice the clearing, or in another formulation, this results in the forgetting of Being. But this may not be too helpful for describing what is specific to philosophic discourse.
October 25, 2013 at 2:43 pm
I’ll accept the more general point that Jesus’ appeals to authority (God, sacred texts) might take him too far from philosophy although I have to note that he does not ever actually refer to himself as God in the the Gospels. Did Nietzsche ground his statements in reason or observation? His works are far more like religious texts than philosophical works in style but is the content philosophical or not?
October 25, 2013 at 3:58 pm
LS: “Finally, third it seems to me that such an account must recognize that the codes or felicity conditions are subject to evolution, such that what might have been counted as a philosophical utterance at one time in history would not be counted as such now (perhaps now it would be treated as a scientific utterance, for example) and what might not have been counted as a philosophical utterance in the past might now be counted as a philosophical utterance.”
I would count here Aquinas and Augustine. Both are grounded in revelation which as you point out disqualifies them now. But each approaches his account of revelation in a philosophical way, and with to one degree or another (Augustine more than Aquinas perhaps) philosophical results.
October 25, 2013 at 4:05 pm
Atomic,
Right. They attemp to give reasons for the truth of this revelation which is why they fall in the philosophy camp.
October 25, 2013 at 4:10 pm
Power,
This is why I raise the question of whether or not Nietzsche is philosophy. I’m inclined to say he is because paradoxically he attempts to demonstrate how reason fails (if, indeed, that’s what he’s up to). This drives home the point that a meta-account of philosophy must be able to show the belongingness of rival positions to the mode of philosophical utterances.
October 25, 2013 at 4:11 pm
Alain,
Yes, I think there’s something similar here. Spencer-Brown’s theory of distinction is a theory of how things become visible (broadly construed) while also necessarily generating invisibility.
October 27, 2013 at 10:56 am
If philosophy is a mode, where would you put it? Along side law, politics, and religion as a mode the produces quasi-subjects? (As opposed to natural philosophy which become reference for Latour and creates quasi-objects). How would philosophy related to morality in AIME? Given the different kinds of philosophy out there, is there a single set of felicity conditions for it? I’m not opposed to the idea and Latour does suggest, though maybe he isn’t all that encouraging, that other modes could be proposed, that the project isn’t complete. I was thinking about pedagogy as a mode that produces and links quasi-subjects.
Two quick questions/points on the general issue of adding modes. 1) I wonder if the last six modes Latour describes (Law, Politics, Religion, Organization, Attachment, and Morality) might not end up proliferating into hundreds or thousands if we start to think about different activity systems in the cultural-historical activity theory vein. 2) What might be telling is what he decides in certainly NOT a mode, i.e., economics. I understand his concern about how economics becomes this over-arching explanation for everything which he tries to confront by splitting it into several modes. But couldn’t we do that with all the quasi-subject and quasi-object modes? Is there a scale argument for modes? Could we describe modes that would be specific to a particular institution or corporation or family or person or event? Latour’s project is to describe the modes for “Moderns” so he imposes a certain level of scale there. How tied do we want to be to the “for Moderns” business?
October 30, 2013 at 1:48 pm
[…] Levi Bryant wonders about “philosophy as a mode of existence.” […]