Over at Jon Coburn’s blog, we have been having an interesting and productive discussion about normativity that has, I believe, clarified (at least for me) a number of issues and helped to define some basic differences. Apart from some brief moments of ugliness that led to an unexpected and very welcome burying of the hatchet between Mikhail and I, the comments accompanying this post are, I think, a good read. I had been working under the impression that normativity was synymous with deontological ethics (no doubt because it’s only ever people deeply influenced by Kant that I hear raising issues about normativity as a cornerstone to theory), but I’ve been disabused of this notion and assured that it refers to something far broader. I outline some of my own problems with Kantian deontological approaches to ethical questions, so I won’t repeat those arguments here. Pete Wolfendale has promised to write a post about this, which I very much look forward to as I’ve found myself perplexed for years as to just what all the ruckus is about and why it’s considered so important to those coming primarily out of the Frankfurt School (here it’s important to qualify that Pete tackles these issues not so much from the Frankfurt School perspective, but from the Brandomian perspective).
Over the course of discussion, one of the claims that was made by “anonymous” is that discussions of normativity are primarily about the metaphysics of meaning. As anonymous puts it,
The problem, so far as I see it, is that this very discussion — the one you want to have about normativity — can’t even get off the ground until we all realize that normative ethics isn’t a metaethics, that a metaethics is not coextensive with normativity, and normativity is largely an issue concerning the METAPHYSICS OF MEANING, the basic nature of rationality, and a structuring feature of our shared world. It is, as Jon pointed out precisely Humes problem concerning the medium of imperceptible necessary connections.
Pete very quickly followed this up, qualifying anonymous’ suggestion, emphasizing that it is about “the metaphysics of meaning or lack thereof” and that normativity pertain to discussions about correctness and incorrectness.
Now, it seems to me, coming at these issues from my Luhmannian perspective, that the concept of meaning is necessarily more basic and primordial than either notions of correctness and incorrectness, or issues of rationality. From an object-oriented standpoint, one of the reasons I’m attracted to Luhmann’s systems theory is that it emphasizes the autonomy and independence of systems, along with their closure. While systems do enter into relations with other systems, these relations are external and systems are independent entities.
read on!
In his discussions of psychic systems (i.e., minds like yours and mine) and social systems, Luhmann argues that both of these systems are meaning systems (Luhmann suggests that other organisms might be structured in this way as well). Now I cannot develop all of the details of Luhmann’s exceedingly complex theory of meaning here (especially since it’s somewhat tangental to the issues I’m working on now in The Democracy of Objects). For those who are interested, you can check out chapter 2 of Luhmann’s Social Systems or his essay “Meaning as Sociology’s Basic Concept” in Essays in Self-Reference. Hopefully I’ll be forgiven if I give something of a thumbnail sketch of Luhmann’s account of meaning.
Luhmann’s theory of meaning is deeply indebted to Husserlian phenomenology. Luhmann argues that meaning is a structure in which each actuality points beyond itself to other potentialities or possibilities. As a consequence, meaning is the unity of a difference such that every actuality points to other potentialities. For example, I make a cup of coffee (actuality) but could have had an orange fanta or a glass of water. What is specific to meaning events is that each actuality is haunted by a penumbra of other possibilities from which certain actualities are selected. As a consequence, we cannot, as Pete suggests, talk about an absence or lack of meaning for cognitive or social systems. We are irrevocably situated in meaning such that even nonsense produces effects of meaning in the sense that nonsense refers beyond itself to other possibilities. What is peculiar to this unity of difference between actuality and possibility is that while each actualization involves an exclusion or a negation, the alternative possibilities that have been excluded remain within the cognitive system or psychic system such that communication (social systems) or thought (psychic systems) can return to them and actualize them. In other words, meaning perpetually complexifies itself.
Insofar as the phenomenon of meaning always entails selection among a plethora of possibilities that are excluded, it necessarily a selective dimension. Actualizing this involves a negation of that. In this connection, Luhmann is keen to emphasize the contingency of meaning and the manner in which it involves risk. Not only is meaning contingent in the sense that other actualizations were always possible, but every selection or actualization comes to have a penumbra of contingency to it precisely because the alternative possibilities are simultaneously referred to with each selection (“Did I make the right choice?”). If meaning always involves risk, then this is because while meanings always refer to other meanings, nonetheless these meanings relate us to a world that is related to in terms of meaning.
Here, I think, is one of the marks of the superiority of Luhmann’s autopoietic theory in contrast to structuralism and post-structuralist thought. In structuralist thought you only have structure and the immanence of structure to itself. By contrast, Luhmann’s systems theory is always grounded in a distinction between system and environment. In other words, unlike a structure, systems don’t totalize the world, but always have to grapple with an environment that is 1) more complex than the system itself, and that therefore 2) involves risk insofar as the contingent selections the system makes in trying to navigate its environment can be violated. As Luhmann remarks,
All meaning points to this world in its entirety and all meaning provides access to it [in terms of meaning]. This meaningful construction of the world as the reference horizon of consciousness [and social systems] involves high risks, for man lives on the basis of a physical and organic system under real conditions which he interprets as a world but cannot change at will– which he constitutes as meaningful-identifiable but does not create. He accepts, in other words, the risk of negation. His meaning structures remain susceptible to disappointment, to nonfulfillment. His world is contingent; it could be otherwise. This means that there is not only the programmable problem of selection out of an excess of other possibilities to be considered, but also the risks that selection involves… (“Meaning as Sociology’s Basic Concept, p. 44)
It is here that we get some insight into Luhmann’s concept of information. It occurred to me this afternoon that others might have a very different concept of information than the one I’m always talking about. Information is often understood as something that is transmitted from one person to another in communication. Luhmann is very careful to distinguish between information and meaning, and vigorously rejects the idea that information is something that is exchanged between systems (27). Indeed, one of the most mind-bending claims that Luhmann, following autopoietic theory, makes is that systems only ever communicate with themselves and never with their environment. This amounts to the claim that there’s no communication between systems. I’ve written about this elsewhere, in my post on Depression and Capitalism, so I won’t repeat those points here.
Information for Luhmann is not something that is exchanged between a system and an environment, nor something that is exchanged between systems, but is rather 1) constituted by systems themselves, and 2) an event that selects a system state. For meaning systems such as psychic systems and social systems, meaning precedes the possibility of information. In other words, meaning pre-delineates the field of possibilities. If it is said that information is always system-specific and that systems themselves constitute information, then this is because information isn’t something that is already out there in the world waiting to be registered or received, but rather because the organization of a system transforms perturbations or irritations from an environment or another system into information according to the system’s own organization. As a consequence, whenever we discuss information we have to specify what system we’re referring to.
Information differs fundamentally from meaning because where meaning is always the unity of a difference between actuality and possibility, information is an event that selects a system state, narrowing the field of possibilities: “Oh, it was this!” Luhmann emphasizes that information therefore always carries an element of surprise, that it has the capacity to restructure networks of meaning, that it cannot be repeated (once I have heard that Descartes was in the military, this statement no longer functions as information when I read it in another book), and that even disappointments or absences can function as information for meaning systems like psychic systems or social systems (think about Sartre’s famous example of not finding Pierre in the cafe). Thus, while information that is repeated retains its status as meaningful, it no longer selects new system states. At any rate, insofar as the meaning system predelineates possibilities and insofar as this predelineation involves selection, we can see how it also involves risk because we can’t make the world at will, but always open ourselves up, in the contingency of our selections to disappointments that range from the banal to the lethal.
Now why is meaning a more primordial phenomenon than normativity and why can’t it be equated with rationality or correct and incorrect judgment? If it is true that meaning is the unity of a distinction between actuality and possibility, meaning doesn’t first proceed based on a set of criteria determining which set of actualities are to proceed following an actuality. The field of possibilities is literally limitless. To illustrate this point I refer to a game my three year old daughter and I like to play. Lately we’ve been playing the game “When I Grow Up, I want to be…” Now generally when this game is played, the participants give answers like “astronaut”, “microbiologist”, “fireman”, “president”, etc. Our little twist on the game is to choose something that humans can’t become. “When I grow up, I want to be a flower!” “When I grow up I want to be a ceiling fan!” “When I grow up, I want to be a cookie!”, etc. The pleasure of the game is two-fold: On the one hand, we’re playfully violating norms (the rules of the game) and therefore bringing them into relief. On the other hand, we’re playing with how current actualities are capable of linking up to other, completely unexpected, possibilities or how meaning systems can link anything to anything.
This brings me around, at long last, to the issue of just why normativity is derivative of meaning, not the reverse. One of Luhmann’s key concepts is that of “double contingency”. Whenever Luhmann speaks of double contingency, he treats it as a problem to be solved within social systems. Put in non-technical terms, double contingency is what takes place when an ego and an alter enter into a relation of communication within a framework of meaning. Recalling that meaning is the unity of a difference between actuality and possibility where every actuality retains the field of possibilities, the problem of double contingency refers to how mutual expectations can emerge between ego and alter and alter and ego. Because meaning is the unity of a difference between actuality and possibility, the problem is that any potentiality can link up to a possibility. For example, Graham asks me to go get a cup of coffee and I respond with outrage that he’s responsible for the bubonic plague.
The point here is that how to proceed is not given in advance but is something that needs to develop. As Luhmann puts it,
Social structures do not take the form of expectations about behavior…, but rather take the form of expectations about expectations. In any case, it is only on this level of reflexive expectation that they can be integrated and maintained. The sociality of meaning, for example, the social aspect of the meaning of some act, is not exhausted by referring to the fact that another person (of a certain general type, with particular individual characteristics, a personal history, etc.) exists; it lies instead in the fact that the intended meaning can be recognized, and this recognizability has structured relevance, for it tells us something about what the other expects. (45)
Lacanians will note just how close Luhmann is here to the Lacanian concept of fantasy and the subject supposed to believe. The point here is that a system of expectations about what others expect has to emerge for the problem of double contingency to be solved and if communication is to begin being coordinated between ego and alter. And here it is important to note that this development of expectations about expectations precedes any difference between conflict and cooperation, consensus and dissensus. Both conflict and coordination, consensus and dissensus presuppose the formation of expectations about expectations. Even in the case of the unjust torturer and his victims, some field of expectations about expectations has already emerged regulating their relationship to one another. This is one of the reasons that Luhmann takes meaning and the resolution of the problem of double contingency as being more primordial or basic than things such as rationality or correctness and incorrectness. The whole problem here is “…how it is possible, without actually partaking of an other’s consciousness, to successfully expect others’ expectations” (46).
Luhmann argues that “[m]eaning becomes normative to the extent that what is provided for in cases of disappointment or non-fulfillment of expectations is a continued maintenance of these same expectations, i.e., to the extent that learning is excluded. Norms are contrafactually stabilized expectations which are protected– at both the level of behavioral expectations and expectation-expectations– against the symbolic, discrediting implications of nonfulfillment” (46). Luhmann’s point here is that an “is” does not undermine an “ought”. When Luhmann remarks that normativity involves the exclusion of learning, what he means is that the system does not modify its system of meaning in the face of disappointment, e.g. someone murders someone but we don’t abandon the norm prohibiting murder or the expectation that others expect us not to murder.
One way of thinking about norms is in terms of another key Luhmannian concept, that of programs. Normative systems are programs selecting and therefore limiting the range of admissible linkages between actualities. For example, my friend asks me to pass the salt and I don’t jump up and start dancing naked on the table. There are two crucial points to keep in mind here: First, Luhmann perpetually emphasizes the improbability of any particular system of norms. Norms are not foundational but are emergent. In claiming that any particular system of norms is improbable, Luhmann means that it’s always something of a surprise that any particular systems of norms emerges. Why do we sit around the table and eat rather than, as Zizek suggested, going to a private space to eat and sitting in a circle of toilets with others to complete our digestion? Like the evolution of a species, different norms could have always come into existence. Second, Luhmann likewise emphasizes the contingency of norms. They could have always been drawn otherwise, possibility could have been constrained differently, and very different systems could have (and no doubt will) emerge.
It is for these reasons, among others, that I think it is misguided to treat normativity as foundational in philosophy and to treat meaning as derivative of normativity rather than the reverse. The point isn’t that we should eradicate norms or get rid of them, that we shouldn’t fight and struggle on behalf of certain norms, etc. The point is that we must recognize the contingency and improbability of any particular set of norms, up to and including the law of non-contradiction and the law of identity. Meaning systems can function just fine without being subordinated to these particular principles, though they might not function in a way that we would like. However, that’s quite secondary to whether or not a meaning system is operative.
Rather than asking which set of norms are the true set of norms, we should instead approach systems of normativity in the way that a biologist approaches different species. The biologist doesn’t ask which species is the best, most correct, or truest species (though we all know the answer to this question: the octopus), but rather approaches different species as different functional solutions to the problem of the environment. The problem of the environment is not a single problem, but is a multiplicity of problems that can be solved in a variety of different ways. Now, no doubt, I will be accused of arguing that “anything goes”. I believe a lot goes, but certainly not anything goes. However, more fundamentally, the worry that anything goes is implicitly premised on the idea that when we talk about issues of normativity we’re talking about individuals rather than social systems. In other words, it’s premised on the thesis of an implicit humanism. But norms are not propositional attitude of individuals (remember that for Luhmann society is not composed of persons but of communications and that persons are in the environment— i.e., outside –social systems). And these normativity systems are improbable and contingent formations that societies produce over time. Returning to the analogy to biology, we can evaluate norm violations in much the same way we evaluate ecosystems. Just as the rise of the cane toad in the north Australian continent has posed significant problems for that eco-system, we can identify problems within social system that tend to undermine the whole system… And we can debate about these things through communication, generating either new improbable norms or excluding the possibility of learning in response to the norm violation. What we have to avoid, though, is anthropocentricism’s and humanism’s covert friend: ethnocentricism and the ideology of the ruling class, treating norms as ahistorical and a priori, while covertly affirming the primacy of one particular set of contingent and improbable norms arising as a particular way of resolving the problem of double contingency.
Larval Subjects . 
June 24, 2010 at 4:20 am
Hallelujah: some (marginal) progress in the debate!
I was a little surprised to see you claim that you had not realised that deontology and normativity were not synonymous and that normativite inquiry stretched beyond ethics and towards the metaphysics of meaning. I’ve made both these points explicitly in the comments here previously and had thought the penny had dropped when you made this post:
https://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2009/08/11/now-were-getting-somewhere-more-normativity/
Evidently this wasn’t the case though. I might take up the challenge of writing a short primer on normativity — which I haven’t done previously because I didn’t want to be patronising. I guess the lesson is that it’s better taking that risk than watching people talk past each other for years on end!
June 24, 2010 at 5:10 am
Tom,
I look forward to reading such a post if you write it. I do feel compelled to note, however, that this post explicitly argues that questions of the metaphysics of meaning cannot be equated with questions of normativity insofar as meaning precedes norms. Moreover, I continue to believe that the term “normativity” is at best misleading, inviting association to discourses primarily related to morality and deontological moral theory in particular. It is a term I only ever see evoked by those deeply influenced by Kant’s moral theory. You wouldn’t, for example hear most Levinasians evoke this term. As such, I think it’s a way deontological moral theories reframe all ethical meditations in their own terms. Needless to say, I find deoontological forms of ethical thought extremely unhealthy both psychologically and socially for reasons I’ve outlined and independent of the critique of correlationism.
June 24, 2010 at 5:34 am
More fundamentally, I find these discussions of normativity deeply frustrating because they seem to always be returning us to questions of access. Pete’s basic move– and others I’ve discussed normativity with –seems to be to argue that we should instead be interrogating the norms governing our inquiries into being rather than being itself. By way of analogy, Pete would prefer to talk about the properties of a telescope rather than what’s seen through the telescope. Now I’m not disputing the value of such q
June 24, 2010 at 5:49 am
It would be more correct to say that Pete is concerned with making sure the telescope is properly calibrated and that its readings are accurate before we start using it to gather observational data. The concern is that metaphysical speculations that throw methodological caution to the wind will do no better than an amateur stargazing through a spyglass.
June 24, 2010 at 5:59 am
To continue (I accidentally hit “submit”)…
Now I’m not disputing the value of such a reflexive inquiry nor its importance, but I do insist that the questions of ontology are entirely distinct from these issues. A good example of this emerged recently when Pete argued– rather thinly, in my opinion –that epistemology must precede metaphysics because in order to engage in metaphysics we must first have a metaphysically neutral account of what metaphysics is and this is a question of knowledge. In other words, Pete pulled out a variations of Meno’s paradox. I dispute the thesis that this is a question of epistemology. It’s a question of knowledge to be sure, a matter of definitions, but it is not a question of epistemology. Epistemology is concerned with how we know. If Pete is making the point that we have to know the basic concept of something to inquire into it, he’s making a trivial and obvious point. Epistemology, by contrast, would be an interrogation into how we arrive at knowledge in the first place, and that’s something entirely different.
The frustrating thing about the discussions of normativity is that the issue of what beings are is an issue that is entirely distinct from the question of how we access these entities and whatever contingent norms might govern our inquiries. Again, the point is not that there isn’t a place for the sorts of inquiries Pete would like to engage in. Rather, the point is that Pete is conflating distinct domains of inquiry and suggesting that we should all really be talking about the domain of inquiry he’s interested in and ignore the other. By way of analogy again, it’s as if Pete wants to argue that we shouldn’t discuss molecular biology and engage in an inquiry into biological molecules and their functioning, but rather molecular biologists should instead limit themselves strictly to a discussion of the techniques, norms, and tools used in investigating biological molecules. Of course, in such a circumstance, biological molecules never get discussed.
In this particular post, you’ll note that I’ve ontologized questions of meaning and normativity. By this I mean that I’ve treated them as object-specific and thereby have limited their scope to the regional ontology of a particular type of object. In other words, I’ve argued that meaning is a particular component produced or constituted by specific types of objects; namely, psychic-systems and social-systems. In this way, I undercut the foundational pretensions that meaning and one of its derivatives, normativity, might have with respect to ontology. Meaning is indeed a component constituted by a specific type of object– psychic-systems and social-systems –and these systems, among other things, occasionally generate or produce norms (meaning precedes norms and not all meaning is normative, not the reverse). There are a wide variety of other objects, however, that are not meaning systems and that have nothing to do one way or the other with norms or normativity, much less rationality or correctness or incorrectness. In this respect, meaning and normativity become an issue dealt with in a particular regional ontology and cannot be granted any primary or foundational role in philosophy.
Over at Cogburn’s blog, skholiast argued, following Levinas, that ethics is first philosophy. To my ears, this is an absolutely absurd hypothesis, though I concede it depends on what one means by “first”. If, by first, skholiast is referring to what is most basic to being, then this thesis is absurd because it means that being necessarily has a reference to humans. This would be an example of the sort of anthropocentrism and humanism that is rampant in contemporary philosophy. If, by contrast, by “first” skholiast means of what is vital concern to us, then his thesis is a little less egregious, though I still wonder why ethics should be first philosophy and why it isn’t possible for thinkers to be motivated by simple wonder as Aristotle suggested, or amazement as Descartes suggested. I bring this up because I think it marks one of the central problems with the thesis that epistemology is first philosophy or that theories of normativity are first philosophy. Such claims are doomed to be inherently anthropocentric and to trace the being of being back, always, to some relation to the human. Yet, as I contend, questions of knowledge and normativity are questions for the regional ontology of the being of the human, not questions for general ontology. What I would like to see from my comrades fascinated by issues of normativity is a little more tolerance for different domains of inquiry and a willingness to avoid the temptation of making one’s own area of inquiry the foundation for all other inquiries. Then again, perhaps I’m doing this too. The claim that epistemology precedes ontology, however, only makes sense if you’re beginning from the premise that questions of access precede inquiries into the being of being. I’ve abundantly outlined why I do not believe this is the case and why, moreover, I think that epistemology only gets off the ground with a set of ontological premises.
June 24, 2010 at 6:14 am
Reid,
That’s somewhat what Pete is claiming and that would be an instance where I believe epistemology has a proper place. However, I think Pete is making a far more robust claim than the one you’re suggesting. Moreover, I would argue that the order of sequence you’re suggesting is indicative of a desire to “know before we know”. While we certainly provisionally adjust our equipment before using the telescope, by and large the calibration of equipment is something that takes place during and alongside the actual process of inquiry itself. Here I think we encounter one of the things that is so wrongheaded about representational models of knowledge. We begin with the idea of mind as a glassy mirror of world (whether as a representation of things-themselves or phenomena, depending on whether you’re a naive realist or an anti-realist) and then look for adequation between representation and world in a relation of simultaneity. This comes, I believe, from philosophers primarily reading reports about knowledge (e.g., scientific publications) rather than investigating the actual processes through which knowledge is produced.
The theory of meaning I outlined in this post, sheds partial light on this process. As I was careful to note, meaning is the unity of the difference between actuality and potentiality. This takes the form of expectation. And expectations can be disappointed in actual engagement with the world or the environment outside the system. It is this that leads to recalibration. That recalibration, in turn, leads to the reconfiguration of the system of meaning. When I refer to the desire to “know before we know”, I am referring to models of thought that want the calibration done in advance, rather than over the course of the actual inquiry. The suggestion that this throws methodological caution to the wind is, in this connection, a straw man. No caution is being thrown to the wind here, but rather the point is that the sort of calibration you’re talking about occurs in and during the process. The problem with the epistemology-normativity inquiry first model is that it wants to leap out of that process and have the calibration in advance. Here I object to the implicit abstractness of your call for calibration preceding observation. Rather than making an abstract call to lay out norms, be specific. Where are you seeing problems? What specific problems? With respect to which issue or concept? And so on. Or maybe it’s enough for you to simply call others like myself amateur stargazers and suggest that we don’t have arguments to back up our positions and aren’t willing to revise our arguments in the face of compelling critiques. Here I think it’s worthwhile to reflect on the structure of Platonic dialogues and, above all, why Plato wrote his treatises in dialogue form. What do you notice there? A constant testing of hypotheses, critique of these hypotheses, retention of the nugget of truth within them, and enrichment of subsequent hypotheses.
June 24, 2010 at 8:24 am
I’d beg to differ here. My claim is not that we should inquire into the structure of our inquiries *rather* than Being itself, but instead that we should inquire into the structure of our inquiries *before* inquiring into Being itself, *in order that* we may do the latter properly.
I don’t think that questions of metaphysics (or ontology more specifically) should be reduced to questions of epistemology, but I also don’t think that the latter should be reduced to the former. Moreover, all of this amounts to the claim that we must determine what metaphysics is before we do it, and that determining what metaphysics is is an epistemological problem. I’d also add that not all epistemological problems are problems of access, even if problems of access might be epistemological.
I want to do metaphysics, and I’ve written about it quite a bit, I just want to do it in a methodologically sound fashion. I’ve been very clear on all of these point repeatedly over many postings on my blog and comments elsewhere. I just want to be clear about that.
June 24, 2010 at 8:34 am
[…] on! This goes back to a question I raised in comments in response to Tom in my last post (here and here). What exactly are we referring to when we refer to “firsts” (Pete’s […]
June 24, 2010 at 8:45 am
It’s a bit glib, but the astronomer’s answer to this question, since someone brought up the telescope, is usually a bit more ad-hoc. How do you know the telescope is calibrated? Well, you look through it and see if you can see anything. If it’s all blurry, your calibration is off. If you can make out galaxies and nebulae and whatnot, your calibration is good.
(Some autofocus algorithms implement the above narrative pretty literally: a computer algorithm varies the focus until it finds a point where features become sharp, and then hones in on that point.)
June 24, 2010 at 8:47 am
Pete,
This strikes me as a very loose use of the term “epistemology”:
Epistemology, as I understand it, is a meta-inquiry into how we know. It doesn’t presuppose any particular object of knowledge. The question of what metaphysics is, by contrast, a specific inquiry into something. It sets aside the question of how we know, and proceeds to determine what something is. Let’s set aside the question of metaphysics for a moment, and instead look at Plato. When Plato asks, in the Euthyphro “what is piety?” do you believe this is an epistemological question? Is Plato asking how we know piety, or is Plato asking what piety is? I think the latter. The question of how we know piety would be an entirely different question.
Finally, what is the big mystery as to what metaphysics is? Metaphysics is the inquiry into the fundamental structure of reality or the nature of being qua being. How is this definition inadequate or methodologically unsound? Or better yet, what, precisely, is the propaeduetic you think is required before engaging in metaphysical inquiry? What are the sorts of criteria that you’re looking for? Unfortunately I just don’t have the time to read 15 thousand and 36 thousand word posts right now, so maybe you could give me the cliff notes.
Additionally, you’ll note that in my response to Reid I already outlined why I believe the idea of “inquiring into the structure of inquiry before inquiring into any particular area in order that we may do the latter properly” is misguided and wrong. Here I think you’re missing some of the most basic lessons of Heidegger’s hermeneutic structure as well as Brandom’s own expressivism, both of which are very process oriented.
June 24, 2010 at 8:48 am
Yep Mark, that’s exactly my point! And much more pithily expressed than I put it, I might add.
June 24, 2010 at 8:49 am
Unfortunately from the perspective of some philosophers, the astronomer and computer programmer just don’t reflectively know what they’re doing and don’t realize the premises that guide their inquiry and are therefore guilty of dogmatism. Certainly there’s little point in talking to the astronomer to see how they do things, right?
June 24, 2010 at 9:22 am
[I wrote this prior to Pete’s comment and forgot to post it. There’s probably not much here that hasn’t just been covered but maybe it’ll clarify something or another.]
“The frustrating thing about the discussions of normativity is that the issue of what beings are is an issue that is entirely distinct from the question of how we access these entities and whatever contingent norms might govern our inquiries. Again, the point is not that there isn’t a place for the sorts of inquiries Pete would like to engage in. Rather, the point is that Pete is conflating distinct domains of inquiry and suggesting that we should all really be talking about the domain of inquiry he’s interested in and ignore the other. By way of analogy again, it’s as if Pete wants to argue that we shouldn’t discuss molecular biology and engage in an inquiry into biological molecules and their functioning, but rather molecular biologists should instead limit themselves strictly to a discussion of the techniques, norms, and tools used in investigating biological molecules. Of course, in such a circumstance, biological molecules never get discussed.”
I have no idea how you could possibly think Pete conflates issues of normativity with issues of ontology. His blog is called ‘Deontologistics’ and he has repeatedly stated, as I know you’re aware, that norms qua norms do not themselves exist as autonomous phenomena but are nonetheless necessary in order to discourse about the world at all. In that thread over at Jon Cogburn’s blog Pete recently said, as simply as it could be said, that “the normative is a necessary fiction without which we cannot talk about nature.” If you read Pete’s essay on transcendental realism you would also realize that his interest in issues of normativity serves, at least partly, to provide a solid methodological ground for realist metaphysics. Although I obviously can’t repeat Pete’s argument for this here, and I think his paper is clear enough, the upshot is that by analyzing the (normative) structure of thought we can show that there is a metaphysical structure of the world that exceeds the structure of thought. Given this, there’s no reason to think that Pete is ignoring your domain of inquiry (metaphysics, ontology) and attempting to straightjacket you into discoursing about nothing but norms to the ultimate exclusion of the ‘great outdoors’. He simply thinks that an understanding of the normative is required prior to metaphysical investigation.
Also, you’re dragging in this notion that normativity somehow polices discourse rather than, you know, enabling it in the first place in saying that Pete would want to direct how scientists ought to act. Of course, this is trivially true to a point. Scientists, in order to be scientists, ought to do science. But the norms guiding scientific inquiry are pretty basic and I’m sure Pete would agree that he’s not advocating scientists be monitored by professional philosophers lest they lapse into incoherence. A possible norm guiding science might be ‘Do not support a theory which has been repeatedly disconfirmed by experiment’ or ‘Do not contradict oneself in one’s commitments’. The latter norm holds even when dealing with seemingly contradictory phenomena, say certain quantum phenomena, to the extent that one ought to be committed to the claim that there is a real contradiction in QM. To really violate the norm would be to hold that there are and are not contradictions in QM. As I’m sure you can see, these norms are generally implicit in our everyday interactions with others, although most people could probably easily render a number of them explicit if asked. The reason Pete thinks these norms are transcendental is because they underwrite the very possibility of rationality. This is where your appeal to the historical genesis of norms founders. There is obviously a story to tell about how certain norms come about. Nietzsche, Foucault, Marx, Wittgenstein, Bourdieu, and many others are involved in this task. But they need Pete’s deontological, transcendental norms to get this materialist project off the ground. This is not to say that they themselves must first analyze the fundamental normative structure of thought before investigating the real structures of history and society, although it wouldn’t hurt, but that they are bound to certain norms without which they would not be rational agents. For instance, if Foucault argues that Bourdieu is guilty of some contradiction, Bourdieu cannot just say that contradictions are fine by him without immediately collapsing the argument by destroying the norms which make it possible. As Pete has himself pointed out in another context, this is similar to Davidson’s claim that disagreement presupposes a prior dimension of agreement or that there can be no incommensurable conceptual schemes insofar as the way in which we revise our claims about the world must be fundamentally non-revisable lest we render it impossible, albeit only in principle, to distinguish a rational from a non-rational being. This non-revisable structure would then, of course, just be the transcendental structure of normativity. There’s a lot more to all of this, and I’m sure Pete’s upcoming blog post will clarify everything a hell of a lot more adeptly than this meager attempt, but hopefully this helps somehow.
Oh, just came across this:
Regarding your claim about ethics as first philosophy, this is a quote from Pete’s ‘Essay on Transcendental Realism’ after stating that ‘deontology is first philosophy’:
It is important to point out here that this does not mean that, as Levinas claims, ethics is
first philosophy. There are different forms of normativity, and not all norms we are bound
by are strictly transcendental ones. Fundamental deontology deals only with these
transcendental norms, and thus must be distinguished from other normative discourses,
including ethics, which would be interpretational rather than transcendental. This does
not mean that fundamental deontology is completely isolated from ethics. There is a good
sense in which there must be a critique of ethics, just as there must be a critique of
metaphysics, and it must also proceed by describing transcendental norms. Kant obviously
recognised this himself (though we needn’t accept his own deontological conclusions).
This critique plays the role of what is usually called meta-ethics.
June 24, 2010 at 9:44 am
Questions of *how* we know are a subset of epistemological questions. Epistemology is the inquiry into knowledge, and so it is first and principally concerned with *what* knowledge is. There can then be subsets of this type of question such as ‘what is scientific knowledge?’ (philosophy of science) and ‘what is metaphysical knowledge?’ (the critique of metaphysics, in Kant’s sense).
If the question ‘what is knowledge?’ is not an epistemological question, I don’t know what is.
You might want to respond by saying that all ‘what is’ questions are questions about Being. They’re actually questions of essence, which is one of the senses in which ‘Being’ is said (along with existence, identity, predication, etc.). Whether all such questions presuppose some metaphysical conception of essence depends upon getting clear about what metaphysics is and how it relates to other fields of inquiry. These are epistemological issues.
June 24, 2010 at 9:47 am
I forgot to add that your definition of metaphysics is fine as far as it goes:-
“Metaphysics is the inquiry into the fundamental structure of reality or the nature of being qua being.”
But it turns out there’s a great deal of controversy over what these various things mean. We need to actually get clear about what it is to talk about the fundamental structure of reality before we can decide what it is. That’s what I’ve been trying to do for the past few years.
If you don’t have time to read what I’ve previously said on these issues, please stop posting intermediary questions, and give me the chance to work up a single response post.
June 24, 2010 at 10:30 am
Levi wrote:
Epistemology, as I understand it, is a meta-inquiry into how we know. It doesn’t presuppose any particular object of knowledge.
Surely epistemology is as much about what we can know (the scope of knowledge problem) as how we can know it?
June 24, 2010 at 2:11 pm
Epistemological questions are questions about the nature and possibility of knowledge. The possibility of having metaphysical knowledge depends upon our understanding of what metaphysics is, and thus what that knowledge entails. Therefore, the question of what metaphysics is is an epistemological question.
To extend the astronomy analogy a bit further, Mark says that calibration follows from the recognition of poor observational data, like blurry stars. What Pete is saying is that if we don’t have some solid conception of what astronomy is, what its objects are, and thus what it would be to discriminate bad data from good data, then we can fall into the trap of mistaking bad data for good data, such as believing that the stars, while apparently punctual to the naked eye, are in fact revealed to be blurry.
Of course, in astronomy this sort of clarification happens along with the accumulation and correction of data and the corresponding revision of theories. But while the sort of project Pete advocates is more fundamental, insofar as it proceeds from the clarification of a priori concepts to questions of how they are applied in a posteriori judgments, specifically of the metaphysical type, he is doing this while embedded in a tradition that has been going along with, by his measure, relatively imprecise instruments and assumptions about the data they measure, and drawing on that tradition for both metaphysical and epistemological insights. In that regards, he is very much engaged in a ‘ad-hoc’ correction of mistakes in the process of inquiry, on the basis of which both future and past metaphysical claims can be evaluated as to more precise standards of correctness.
June 24, 2010 at 2:47 pm
Sam,
You sound angry. I’m not trying to disingenuously throw unfair potshots at Pete, but am genuinely trying to understand what he’s getting at. In a way I think you make my point for me. You write:
Part of what’s at issue here just just that the issue seems so trivial, which is one reason I find myself perplexed whenever Pete raises it. As you point out, the norms guiding scientific (and no doubt philosophical) discourse are pretty basic and are implicit in our day to day action and dealings with the world. This begs the question of what Pete is asking, exactly, when he asks someone like myself or Brassier where norms are in their discourse. Is Pete asking us whether we obey the law of non-contradiction? Is that it? Well of course we do. The issue then becomes why we can’t just move on from there having agreed that yes, we do obey the law of non-contradiction.
June 24, 2010 at 2:54 pm
Pete,
Again, I think this process of getting clear on what metaphysics is is something that can only take place in the process of metaphysical discourse. That is, I think the question, as you pose it, is far too abstract. Rather we have to look at specific metaphysics. Part of this has to do with the very nature of meaning as I described in this post. As the unity of a difference between actuality and potentiality any definition of metaphysics is going to take on an air of contingency, regardless of how rigorous one attempts to be, precisely because meaning will point beyond itself to excluded possibilities that weren’t selected in the process of actualizing a specific definition of metaphysics. It seems that you want to eradicate this contingency and find a firm and unassailable definition, but I think that’s structurally impossible. So one of my worries here is that such attempts end up never getting beyond endless propaeduetics, thereby never getting to metaphysics at all. For example, this happens with Kant.
June 24, 2010 at 3:08 pm
Reid,
I think what you’re talking about here is a moving target:
In any discipline or investigation we begin with a vague and preliminary idea of what our object of investigation is. Over the course of that investigation, the objects of our investigation broaden and expand, while some of the objects we might have originally begun with are even abandoned. The “solid conception of astronomy” you’re looking for is not something that’s there at the beginning of inquiry, but is a product of inquiry that arrives at a pretty late stage of development. Rather than thinking about these issues in terms of knowledge, maybe it’s more helpful to think about it in terms of learning. Think about when you first began learning philosophy. Did you have a solid conception of what philosophy is? Did you really know what it is? I certainly know I didn’t. I had some questions that people told me were of a philosophical nature and this led me to engage with people and texts in philosophy. How did you or I learn philosophy? By doing philosophy.
This is one of the reasons I find the idea that we must first have a “solid definition” of metaphysics prior to doing metaphysics objectionable. Pete speaks of the need for a definition that everyone can agree on. Where have we ever come across such a definition of anything? As Deleuze remarks in Difference and Repetition, there’s always some ill tempered soul that rises up and objects, refusing the thesis that “everyone knows x”. Irritated with the ill tempered objector, the philosopher in turn claims that such and such is a priori and that the person objecting is just too dense to recognize this or is demented. In other words, he abandons the criteria of agreement with which he began and as a result his argument becomes every bit as presupposition laden as the other positions he was trying to denounce. Kant’s critique, for example, only follows if you accept some pretty dubious claims about what knowledge is. My point is not that we should throw caution to the will and say any old damn thing we want. My point is that we have to leap in and that we have formulate positions and take the criticisms as they come. As I see it, there’s just no way around this.
June 24, 2010 at 3:29 pm
But it is not prior to metaphysics, as metaphysics has been done for millennia. Pete does not deny that metaphysics done before his enterprise is valid metaphysics, otherwise he would have no interest in the metaphysics developed by Deleuze and DeLanda. He is simply claiming that the implicit definition that metaphysics has previously worked with is imprecise, and that the explicit clarifications he is offering can provide better standards by which to evaluate, and consequently advance, metaphysical claims.
But his point is that we do all implicitly agree on basic metaphysical concepts (including the concept of ‘metaphysics’ itself) insofar as we recognize each other as doing metaphysics. He is claiming that we can all benefit from explicating the content of this implicit agreement. Whether or not you or anyone wants to agree with the specific manner in which he explicates them is a matter to be argued about, certainly, but rejecting the enterprise out of hand seems excessive, in that you even admit in the comment to which I’m replying that disciplines progress through the gradual explication of implicit points of agreement.
June 24, 2010 at 3:53 pm
Reid,
You’re changing the goalposts here and basically conceding my point. Claiming that metaphysics has been done for centuries and that we have to render explicitly what we have been doing is entirely different than claiming that we must define metaphysics prior to engaging in metaphysics. The latter hypothesis is a thesis that makes absolutely no reference to history and that thinks in a vacuum, while the former recognizes that we begin midway in the course of a transitive social dimension that we’ve inherited (i.e., Bhaskar’s point about the social dimension of scientific knowledge). At any rate, I’m reading Pete’s article on what he calls “transcendental realism” right now, so maybe I’ll change my view once I have a better grasp of what he’s up to.
June 24, 2010 at 4:39 pm
I should have been more clear. While it is certainly methodologically prior to doing metaphysics, it is not for that reason chronologically prior. We can leave these methodological considerations implicit and imprecise, but they are still implicitly present in every metaphysical inquiry, insofar as it takes itself to be metaphysical and thus has a sufficient idea of what metaphysics consists in.
We must define metaphysics prior to engaging in it, and we implicitly already have insofar as we engage in it at all. Pete is simply saying that this definition should be as explicit and rigorous as possible. Again, if you think Pete is ‘thinking in a vacuum’, you’d be ignoring he’s clear admission of the contributions made by Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, Deleuze, DeLanda, etc.
June 24, 2010 at 7:06 pm
I think as helpful as the image of telescope calibration is, it is not quite adequate here precisely because it simply enhances our vision (of the star), while epistemological inquiry would first establish the conditions of vision as such. If you do want to use the example, then looking through an uncalibrated telescope would not give you any idea as to whether it is calibrated because you don’t know what you are looking for (blurry might be just what you are aiming at).
I get the imagery of instrument calibration, but I’m also aware of the substance of Levi’s point that it cannot be completely separated from ontology (however, I don’t think this is what Pete is saying).
I don’t think it’s a fair game to propose the issues of epistemology vs. ontology – both are important and work *simultaneously* – I think the issue with Pete’s (and my) objections is more trivial: it’s a basic “How do you know that?” question which is ultimately not so much about epistemology, but about common sense.
June 24, 2010 at 7:41 pm
Mikhail,
How do I know what in particular? I’ve never suggested that we don’t have to actually engage in inquiry to know things, nor have I ever suggested that we can rationally deduce the existence of particular entities.
June 24, 2010 at 8:09 pm
I suppose “that” in this case would be the specific ontological claim one is making. So, for example, if we are to dispense with epistemology as such, and actually engage in knowing things, then we will ultimately end up with a number of statements about things (let’s skip the issues of “language” as such, just the very basic level of making judgments) – how are those statements evaluated? what are the criteria? I think this, and not some global epistemological agenda, was the main point of most of my questions (and Pete, of course, operates on a somewhere different level, I think, of epistemological theory).
To put it even simpler, in order for me to be able to understand and then somehow wrap my mind around, say, OOO, I would have to test it in the usual way anyone tests any philosophical theories: “interesting, but how do I know that this is the case?” as a reaction to a specific statement such as “all objects are withdrawn from all the relations to other objects” (not a citation, just an example). Does this make sense? I hope it does.
June 24, 2010 at 8:20 pm
Mikhail,
Yes, that makes sense. I don’t think I’ve ever suggested that we should do away with epistemology and if I’ve given that impression then I want to emphasize that I’m not suggesting such a thing. I’m more moderate than Graham on the withdrawal and relations points. For me, the point is not that objects don’t enter into relations, but that they aren’t constituted by their relations. I argue for this on epistemological grounds pertaining to how we produce knowledge. The idea is that in order to conduct experiments we need to be able to create more or less closed environments. That means that we need to be able to detach objects from other relations. The thesis that objects withdraw is, for me, motivated by two observations. First, it has to do with the relation between objects and their qualities. The qualities of an object can change (you can get a tan, for example) yet the object remains that object. This suggests to me that objects are something more than their qualities. Second, I contend that the whole point of experiment is that objects behave differently in open and closed settings. In open settings they can be operative without producing the events of which they’re capable due to the intervention of other causal factors. This is why we do experiments. We create closed settings in which we can trigger objects and determine what events they’re capable of producing. This suggests the withdrawal of objects (in my specific sense of the term) in that an object can be operative in an open setting without producing any observable effects.
June 24, 2010 at 8:59 pm
Sorry the above comment has so many typos, here’s a clean version:
Well, I think the issue then is that if you don’t want to do away with epistemology, then all the questions could be easily answered from the point of view of your epistemological theory. I suppose I was misunderstanding you then as saying “I don’t want to do epistemology, I want to do ontology” and I found that a bit awkward to accept.
I used “withdrawal of objects” an example of a possible statement one might question, but since you explained it so succinctly, I suppose I wonder if I can asks for a clarification on your first point:
So there are objects and their qualities, qualities change, yet the object remains (I’m assuming as a changed object, since it’s qualities are now slightly different), since qualities change all the time (trust me, I don’t tan, I burn), we postulate that even though that is the case, somehow there is an objective kernel that allows us to identify the ever-changing object. Or is object always the same and only its qualities change? In any case, all of these questions, it seems, could be addressed on two basic (connected) levels: 1) the level of ontological speculation (in a good sense) of “I posit objects to be X and their qualities to by Y” (a la Aristotle) or 2) the level of epistemological justification of “while I pose this to be the case, I do so because I am able to know that it is the case via X, Y, and Z” I think you excelled at level 1, there is no doubt here, your constructions are elegant and, one might argue, coherent. However, I think the issue for those of us who wanted to emphasize level 2 was not that you somehow ignore it completely, but that it is not explicit enough. I suppose it’s always unfair to take blog posts as a final result, so I’m only saying this in terms of the final version of your arguments – I do understand how you theorize withdrawal, but I could list all sort of issues that I would have with just the first part of your example (i.e., objects and their qualities) – we discussed some of them in the past vis-a-vis, say, the business of “primary and secondary qualities” and so on.
June 24, 2010 at 9:21 pm
Regarding my citation from Levinas that “ethics is first philosophy,” Levi writes (in comment 5 above),
To my ears, this is an absolutely absurd hypothesis, though I concede it depends on what one means by “first”. If, by first, skholiast is referring [1] to what is most basic to being, then this thesis is absurd because it means that being necessarily has a reference to humans. This would be an example of the sort of anthropocentrism and humanism that is rampant in contemporary philosophy.
Although I write (and indeed philosophize) as a human being, I am willing to stipulate that the fire meets the cotton or the sunlight meets the lawn in a way that is meaningfully analogous to how I meet my pet cat or my coffee mug– that is, in intentionality. What I take Levinas to mean (and it is true, Levinas does speak primarily of human beings, but I do not think his insights need be restricted within this circuit) is that in this meeting, the encounter comes first, before the “what is it?”, and the encounter is a demand for response. As Lingis says very early in The Imperative, “there is a right way” to build or use something, to ride thermals with a hang-glider or shape a symphony. Every being asks something of me.
Now before I’m told that this is just more anthropocentrism– I don’t know what sort of ethics pertains to sunlight and chlorophyll or to fire and cotton; I don’t know what sort of philosophy these might engage in. Levi goes on,
If, by contrast, by “first” skholiast means [2] of what is vital concern to us, then his thesis is a little less egregious, though I still wonder why ethics should be first philosophy and why it isn’t possible for thinkers to be motivated by simple wonder as Aristotle suggested, or amazement as Descartes suggested.
My philosophizing is such as I do with other human beings, but that doesn’t mean with human beings only. I need to “convince,” as Harman/Latour have it, all sorts of nonhuman entities, and they address “arguments” and rejoinders to me as well. As to their conversations with each other, what do I know? (Indeed, what can I know?) I’m interested in anyone’s take on these relations, but since by definition we cannot know what these really are like for any being other than ourselves (I don’t know what it’s like to be Levi, let alone a bat, or a billiard ball), it remains speculative. I think we can adduce other circumstantial reasons to argue that it is parsimonious or elegant or foundational or just cool to say that they encounter each other; and in my book, if there is (even “rudimentary”) experience, there is (rudimentary) ethics… but what that entails is not my business.
As for Aristotle’s “wonder” or Cartesian amazement, I have no problem calling this an ethical response. My whole contention is motivated by the notion that to philosophize (qua human being) is to strive to live deeply, well, happily, in truth, in short that philosophy is a spiritual discipline of sorts. This is one reason I am not hostile to the interface between psychoanalysis and philosophy, though I admit it is not always productive. In any case, wonder seems to me precisely the right way to respond to the fact of being.
So I guess I men both Levi’s [1] and [2]. Which may make me both absurd and egregious, and perhaps even egregiously absurd! (Unless they cancel out, which I hoping).
I think Levi is right to argue, though, that there are problems with any insistence on “first philosophy”. I am less concerned about anthropocentrism than he is, both because I think this anthropocentrism is inevitable as long as its anthropos who’s philosophizing, and equally because I believe we can (and ought to) continually course-correct to compensate for this tendency (Needless to say, I see OOO and indeed SR as such course-corrections). But I do worry about assertions of “first philosophy” morphing from accounts of the “royal road” into accounts of the “one true way,” that is, as conversation stoppers. My only caveat is, of course, that this is an ethical concern.
June 24, 2010 at 9:34 pm
Mikhail,
That’s a really complicated question that I’m working through myself right now. I’ve tried to develop a theory that accounts for both of the levels you’re talking about. At the ontological level, I think the answer to this question depends on the type of object we’re talking about:
I’m not committed to the thesis that objects are indestructible, so there has to be a way in which changes in qualities or parts can generate the destruction of objects. This is something that I need to work out. Getting back to the question of identity and change, I think it depends on the sort of object we’re talking about. Living objects, for example, are such that changes in their qualities can also produce changes in their substantial structure or organization. Here the identity of the living object over time seems to be a dynamic identity. Inanimate objects, by contrast, seem to be objects where substantial structure remains the same despite changing qualities. However, this seems to be only within certain boundary conditions. There can be various interactions between different inanimate objects that cause one or all objects involved to undergo fundamental structural changes that turn them into an entirely new object. For example, when we boil water it turns into a steam, destroying the unity of the water in the pot and generating a plurality of objects.
You might get a sense of where I’m going with question 2 if you read my first response to Pete and some of my recent posts on autopoiesis. In a lot of ways, autopoietic theory is a lot like Kant’s theory of mind. The difference would be that where Kant just talks about the human mind (or rational minds), autopoietic gives transcendental theories of how other living organisms experience the world as well and how their internal structuration produces a sort of reality. So basically what I’m trying to argue is that each entity structures the world in its own particular way according to its own internal organization (much like Kant’s reason, intuition, and categories structure the world). So there are real objects out there that are structured in their own particular ways, but each type of object relates to other objects in its own particular ways. Hopefully that makes some sense.
Here’s where things get difficult and your “how do you know?” questions pose a real potential pickle for ontology. The issues I keep going back for are where the natural cuts are for substances. The problem is that we have two distinct senses of “object” at work in the sort of ontology I’m proposing. On the one hand, there’s the realist sense of objects as self-subsisting substances independent of other substances. On the other hand, there’s the system-specific sense of objects which are objects for a particular object or system. Now, it’s not at all clear to me that the objects that say I or an amoeba experiences (if amoebas even experience objects) map on to real objects in any way. In other ways, system-specific objects might only exist for the system or object that experiences them. I’ll try to make the problem I’m getting at a little clearer through an example. Recently Mitsu challenged me with the question of whether or not drum sets exist. Now Graham would like to argue hands down that drum sets exist, but I have a hard time going this far in my ontology.
Try as I might, I just have a hard time convincing myself that drum sets exist in the sense of primary substances. Or to put it in Kantian terms, it’s hard for me to escape the thought that drum sets are objects (system-specific objects) whereas entities like frogs are things (primary substances). There are a couple of reasons I have difficulty with this. On the one hand, although critters like ourselves (humans) regard drum sets as units and therefore talk about them and relate to them as objects, it’s hard to see drums sets as substantial things given that they’re composed of a number of disconnected parts. For example, the cymbal and stand along with the high hat are generally discrete entities disconnected from the bass drum, the snare and the tom-toms. Doesn’t this suggest that drum sets are only objects for entities such as ourselves or that they are system-specific? Similarly, were all humanity to be eradicated in some awful global pandemic, would it make sense to say that drums still exist? Sure, there would still be something there, but I have a hard time seeing how that something would be drums. In this regard, entities like drum sets, unlike frogs, seem to be objects rather than things.
Graham draws a distinction along these lines in his own ontology between sensuous objects and real objects. If I understand the distinction correctly, sensuous objects exist only on the interior of a real object. In Prince of Networks he gives the example of imagining Monster X and argues that Monster X only exists in the interior of him, that it has no substantial or independent existence, and that when he dies or goes to sleep it ceases to exist (such a thing doesn’t occur with real objects). Drum sets strike me as a lot like sensuous objects in that they only seem to exist either for individuals or for particular social communities. They supervene on real objects. I guess I’ve gotten a little off topic with respect to your real question. What I’m trying to get at is that system-specific objects pertain to your question 2 or how different objects constitute objects for themselves.
June 25, 2010 at 8:18 pm
[…] closed analysand. At any rate, if Reid is interested he can read more about systems here, here, here, and here, or he can do a search for Luhmann on this blog. […]
June 26, 2010 at 10:39 pm
Levi-
Just read through the long conversation about normativity on Jon’s blog. The relevant distinction I found you emphasizing, and correctly so in my opinion, is between an ethics guided by deontological frameworks in the manner of Kant, Habermas, and Rawls, just to name a few, and an ethics of the good life in the manner of Aristotle, Spinoza, Epicureans, etc. I kept hearing the Deleuzian refrain in your replies – let’s be done with the judgment of God! I also agree with you in this thread that objects are to be understood as systems – yet another Spinozist theme as a quick reread of Ethics Part 2 reveals.
June 26, 2010 at 10:54 pm
Jeffrey,
Great to see you here! You pretty much nail it vis a vis what’s behind my issues with normativity.
July 10, 2010 at 9:28 am
[…] series of posts by Levi (the first two responses here and here, with a series of follow-ups here, here, and here). My original comment basically just recapitulated much of what I’d said in […]
July 11, 2010 at 6:32 pm
[…] this clear I first need to address some of Levi’s comments about meaning and normativity (here), and to outline precisely where I differ from […]
July 15, 2010 at 10:39 pm
[…] position, and in doing so address Levi’s criticisms of my use of the notion of normativity (here). However, it will be useful to first get to the core of Levi’s position, in order to reveal […]