Realism Through the Eyes of Anti-Realism

After grading all day and making substantial progress (hopefully I’ll be done tomorrow, yay!), I sat down and read the introduction and first chapter of Lee Braver’s A Thing of This World: A History of Continental Anti-Realism. Although I am of the realist orientation myself, I can already tell that this book will be deeply valuable to my own philosophical project. Braver begins the first chapter with a brief survey of the five core theses he sees as characterizing realist thought. An examination of these theses might be useful in clarifying just where my own Object-Oriented Philosophy diverges from anti-realist positions, but also diverges from classical forms of realism.

The core thesis of any realism is what Braver refers to as the Independence Thesis or R1 (where the “R” presumably denotes “Realism”). As Braver puts it,

The first component in the Realism Matrix is metaphysical: a set of objects or state of affairs, which does not rely upon us in any way, exists. The furniture of the universe does not rely upon us for existence or for essence, excluding trivial examples of things we have made or which depend upon us in a relatively obvious and uninteresting ways such as thoughts and beliefs. (15)

Here I think Braver identifies the shared position of any and all realist ontologies. To be a realist is to endorse the thesis that there are beings that exist independent of any correlation between mind and world. In other words, for the realist the verb “to be” is not shorthand for “to be correlated”. Rather, the questions of metaphysics involve an inquiry into being that possesses no dependency relation within a correlation. Such beings would be what they are regardless of whether or not we relate to them.

read on!

 

Meillassoux and the Centrality of Life

I’m sure these posts are getting old by now, but despite the acrimony and heated nature of these discussions, I do think a good deal of progress has been made in clarifying points, posing questions, and developing positions. I doubt that ultimately there will be any consensus, but this development of respective positions is itself worthwhile and, I think, it is refreshing to see an actual philosophical debate taking place rather than endless exegesis on texts without asking the much broader question “is this position true?”. It’s a shame that these discussions have to get so ugly. I’m guilty of being ugly in some of my rhetorical tactics, as are, I think others. Over at Grundledung, there’s a post up discussing the recent debates surrounding Kant, Meillassoux, realism and anti-realism, announcing a more thorough discussion of Kant to come. At the end of his post, Grundledung writes:

In the posts that follow, I will concentrate on three cases, with an eye towards why the readings of Kant matter. (I won’t address the recent hot topic concerning time and ancestrality, since I can’t devote the energy to it, especially as tempers are flaring once again.). Again, the aim will be to show why a focus on Kant is not a morbid fixation but a useful piece of the puzzle. I want to show how the cases I’ll look at bear upon substantive issues in metaphysics, epistemology and ethics, even when abstracted from the historical issue of what Kant thought. Also, I shall try to counter the second-guessing of the motivations of critics of speculative realism, providing some symptomatological musings of my own. However, I also want to issue a plea for a bit of old-fashioned bourgeois civility, which would not go amiss on all sides. I’ve no interest in questioning other people’s intelligence or integrity.

Unfortunately I’m having difficulty linking directly to the post, but that aside, I cannot agree more. It is difficult to practice this sort of civility in the heat of debate, but I do think it’s something worth striving for. As I’ve remarked before, I do not think that sarcasm and jest translate well in this medium, and they often are counter-productive to the course of discussion, shifting the discussion to the speakers involved rather than the analysis and evaluation of the claims being made. Everything spirals out of control. It’s difficult to understand why these philosophical discussions get so heated or ugly.

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The Question of Time and Meillassoux

Over at Speculative Heresy, I think we get to the core of the issue in the debate between realism and anti-realism, as well as how philosophical debates should be conducted. Responding to Mikhail, Nick gives a succinct summary of Meillassoux’s argument, writing:

I think we may be talking past each other to some degree, but let me try to clarify what I’m saying.

To be clear, ‘absolute time’ is not referring to Newtonian time. Einstein empirically discredited that (and Kant and Leibniz, as you note, philosophically discredited it). Absolute time, as Meillassoux uses it, is just a short hand for a time outside of the correlationist time (again, I’ll take Kant and Husserl as being the archetypes of this view).

Now when I say that absolute time is a fundamental assumption of cosmology, evolution, etc., I mean that these sciences are speaking of a time before the very possibility of correlationist time. To deny that an absolute time outside of correlationist time exists, is to deny that these sciences are speaking about anything. They literally make no sense if we assume time (and really, existence) burst onto the scene with the emergence of thought. But to argue that absolute time exists is only to accept a very minimal definition of it – that correlationism emerged within something larger. What that something is, is undetermined so far and a problem for future work. But that it is, seems indisputable to me. (And I believe Hawking’s quote says no more and no less than that, as well.) But maybe this is another manifestation of our differend, since I take these empirical sciences to clearly show the existence of an absolute time, whereas you are more focused on the philosophical conundrums?

The problem for correlationism then, as Levi succinctly points out in his post, is that correlationism sees the mind as condition for Nature, whereas the existence of absolute time shows Nature to be the condition for mind. (Although I’d need to read Kant’s later work to see how the Opus Postumum fits into this schema. I do have Forster’s book, on your recommendation, which I should really crack open.)

As for Hawking’s quote, I think he’d need to respond to the idea of structural realism. No one is denying that theories are used to give us knowledge about reality. What the instrumentalist says is that these theories are only pragmatic and have no truth-value, whereas the structural realist will say that this is incapable of explaining the predictive success of science.

To this, Mikhail responds, remarking that:

Nick, I think I understand your position but the problem with Meillassoux’s argument succinctly is this: while it looks as though he is critiquing correlationism from “inside” by showing how it cannot account for something like arche-fossil, he in fact is critiquing correlationism from outside perspective by imposing the meaning of time on correlationism that it would not accept. As I tried to show, his refutation of correlationism rests on the assumption that correlationism does not share, i.e. that time is something that is a property of mind-independent world.

Before proceeding to parse Mikhail’s actual argument, such as it is, let’s pause to note something. Mikhail criticizes Meillassoux for critiquing correlationism from the outside. I may be mistaken in my understanding of what Mikhail is suggesting here, but I think this is a revealing moment in his understanding of philosophical methodology and what it means to critique another position. If I am reading Mikhail faithfully, for him the only legitimate critique of a philosophical position would be an immanent critique. From the standpoint of immanent critique, you work within the constraints of whatever philosophical system you happen to be working with, bringing nothing external to bear on the position. A famous example of immanent critique would be nearly any movement in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. When Hegel critiques, for example, sense-certainty in the opening of the Phenomenology, he doesn’t bring anything from outside the claims of sense-certainty to show that this position is inadequate, but rather shows how the very claims of sense-certainty itself fail to say what it purports to say, thereby generating an internal contradiction with itself. Very different examples and procedures of immanent critique can be found in the works of Derrida or in the works of hermeneuticians such as Gadamer. In all of these cases the procedure is to restrict oneself to the text and the claims of the text in analyzing the text. All of us trained in the tradition of Continental philosophy more or less were trained in this tradition of critique and hermeneutics. In far less sophisticated terms than those of Hegel, Derrida, or Gadamer, this would be the standard pedagogical practice where the professor forbids the student from rejecting the claims of Aristotle’s Physics by bringing the discoveries of contemporary physics to bear. Here the reasonable pedagogical aim is for the student to understand Aristotle in his own terms, to attend to Aristotle’s own arguments, and to develop “close reading” skills (as Adrian Peperzak always used to say to us) rather than dismissing texts from the history of philosophy outright. From this pedagogical perspective, the only legitimate critique of a philosopher’s position in a student essay would be the demonstration of an internal contradiction in that position or the failure to take account of something crucial or fundamental with respect to our experience.

While I believe this pedagogical approach is laudable in its aim of cultivating close reading skills, developing an attentiveness to text, and promoting a respect for the history of philosophy, I also think that in textually oriented philosophy programs has had the negative and unintended side effect of developing philosophy students that see this mode of textual approach as the way that philosophy as such should be conducted. That is, rather than a question of determining the truth with respect to these questions, philosophy almost entirely becomes an engagement with texts from the history of philosophy and often texts from a highly specific canon. I also think it is worthwhile to ask why this approach to philosophy has largely been embraced by private liberal arts religious schools, rather than state schools (there are, of course, notable exceptions such as Suny Stonebrook, Memphis, and Penn State). The question here, however, would be that of why Continental philosophy, with its text based approach, has found such a welcome home in private religious schools. I don’t have the answer to this question but I do have some suspicions.

read on!

 

Realism and Naive Realism

Over at Perverse Egalitarianism, Shahar has a brief post up on Mach and realism. Mach, in his The Analysis of Sensations, writes,

It has arisen in the process of immeasurable time without the intentional assistance of man.. It is a product of nature, and preserved by nature. Everything that philosophy has accomplished…is, as compared with it, but an insignificant and ephemeral product of art. The fact is, every thinker, every philosopher, the moment he is forced to abandon his one-sided intellectual occupation…immediately returns to [realism]. Nor is it the purpose of these “introductory” remarks to discredit the standpoint [of realism]. The task which we have set ourselves is simply to show why and for what purpose we hold that standpoint during most of our lives, and why and for what purpose we are…obligated to abandon it.

I think Shahar here draws attention to an important point with respect to the speculative realist movement pertaining to what it is and what it is not. It seems to me that it is important to distinguish between naive realism and other variants of realism. In the passage you cite above, Mach appears to be referring to naive realism. His remark here is not unlike Hume’s famous quip about his skepticism. As a philosopher, he remarked, he is a skeptic, unable to demonstrate the necessity of cause and effect relations, etc. However, the moment he plays billiards (i.e., is no longer doing philosophy), he believes in the absolutely necessity or reality of these cause and effect relations.

read on!

 

Correlationism and Creationism

I promise this series of diaries will come to an end soon, but for the moment I soldier on.

One of the most striking moments in the first chapter of Meillassoux’s After Finitude occurs when he equates correlationism with the philosophical equivalent of young earth creationism. Given that it is very likely that the vast majority of philosophers take a very dim view of young earth creationism, this comparison cannot but seem like a rhetorical low blow. Yet is there something to it? Is there validity in this comparison.

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Time, Turtles, Kant, and Correlationism

As I sit here regarding the eighty student essays I have to grade over the course of the next few days– essays that I’ve already had in hand for too long –I naturally cast about for ways to procrastinate. Having completed my posts on Meillassoux’s argument against correlationism (here, here, and here), and having, over the last few days, had an intense, though very productive, discussion with Mikhail surrounding these and related issues (here, here, here, and here), I find myself wondering just how damaging Meillassoux’s argument is. Does Meillassoux’s argument really land a fatal blow to correlationism? I think that depends.

If we are to understand Meillassoux’s argument from ancestrality and against correlationism, it is necessary to understand why he focuses on time. To do this, we need to recall a bit about Kant and how Kant solved the problems of space and time in the Critique of Pure Reason. That is, we have to look at what Kant actually says about the nature of time. If Meillassoux chooses to stake his claim for realism on the issue of time, then this is because primary qualities, qualities that are said to be “in the thing itself” and not dependent on us, are generally understood to be mathematical properties. All that I can know of mathematical properties, the story goes, are those aspects of these properties that can be mathematized. Thus, as Descartes said, “this class of things [primary qualities] appears to include corporeal nature in general, together with its extension; the shape of extended things; their quantity, that is, their size and number; as well as the place where they exist, the time through which they endure, and the like” (Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, Hackett, Fourth Edition, 61). What are we speaking of when we speak of the mathematical properties of an object if not the spatio-temporal properties of the object? Meillassoux, of course, wants a much broader domain of primary qualities than shape, size, mass, duration, etc., so as to make room for new properties discovered in science. The point is that when he speaks of primary qualities he is basically speaking of spatial and temporal properties that are subject to mathematical representation. The claim isn’t that the property is a number, but rather that it has a mathematizable structure discoverable through measurement, experiment, observation, etc.

read on!

 

Meillassoux III: Rejoinders and Responses

In my first post I outlined Meillassoux’s call to revive the distinction between primary qualities and secondary qualities. In my last post, I outlined Meillassoux’s argument from ancestrality, critiquing correlationism. It will be recalled that an ancestral statement is any statement out the universe or world that precedes the existence of life and human beings. Through the arche-fossil, science, Meillassoux observes, has become capable of making claims about the nature of the world as it was preceding or anterior to all life and consciousness. Arche-fossils or fossil-matter, as Meillassoux calls them, are not entities that exist in the ancestral or time anterior to the advent of consciousness and life, but are rather material traces of the ancestral in the present. Thus the light I see emitted from certain stars in the night sky is an arche-fossil or fossil-matter as, knowing that light travels at 186,000 miles per second, the scientist is able to discover that this light took millions of years to reach us. Likewise, the radioactive decay of isotopes in an atom can function as an arche-fossil by allowing us to infer a time prior to life here on earth. Under what conditions, Meillassoux wonders, are these statements meaningful? Moreover, how is the correlationist committed to interpreting or understanding these claims?

read on!

 

Meillassoux II: Correlationism and the Problem of Ancestrality

In my last post I outlined Meillassoux’s call to retrieve the distinction between primary and secondary properties. Primary qualities, it will be recalled, are non-relational properties that are in the object itself, whereas secondary properties are properties that only exist relationally between subject and object, and, while perhaps caused by objects, nonetheless exist only in subjects. In calling for a retrieval of the distinction between primary and secondary qualities Meillassoux’s aim is to think the absolute or reality as it exists independent of human beings. In that post I argued that every variant of realism maintains some fidelity to this distinction between primary and secondary qualities and that if Meillassoux is correct the key question of realist ontology becomes that of how it is possible to think being without givenness.

Correlationism, by contrast, was seen to be the thesis that it is impossible to think being independent of the relation between thought and being. For the correlationist, thought always is in relation to being and being always is in its relation to thought. As such, it is both impossible and incoherent to think either of these terms independent or apart from one another. Consequently, for the correlationist, the concept of primary qualities is contradictory because it is the concept of properties independent of their correlation to thought. Where for pre-critical, realist philosophers the question was “what is the true nature of substance?”, for critical philosophers the question becomes “what is the most originary correlation?” Is it the relation between subject and object? The relation between language and world? The relation between history and world? The relation between noesis and noema? The relation between power and discourses and world? Or something else besides? Correlationism, in short, is not identical to Kantianism. Kantianism is only one variant of correlationism (held probably, by almost no one today), but nonetheless holds a privileged place in having first explicitly formulated the correlationist argument.

In addition to sharing the common thesis that we can never think the terms of the correlation between thought and being independent of one another, correlationists are also united in rejecting the concept of truth as adequation. If truth can no longer be thought as adequation between an ideal entity like a proposition and an independent referent, then this is because the concept of an independent referent is, according to the correlationist, an incoherent concept. The correlationist has extremely strong and compelling arguments for this thesis. However, in rejecting the notion of truth as adequation, the correlationist does not reject the notion of truth as such. Rather, truth now becomes thematized as universality or intersubjective consensus. For example, in Kantianism, because the correlational structure is the same for all subject, all subjects necessarily arrive at the same conclusion in experimental settings (this is intended only as a very crude summary of Kant’s thesis, please have mercy on me!). Consequently, while we cannot know whether or not our scientific understanding of the world reflects the world as it is in-itself independent of us, we are nonetheless able to establish the universality of phenomena for all subjects structured in terms of our particular correlational structure. Likewise, under one reading of Levi-Strauss, Levi-Strauss, in his ethnographic work, is able to discern identical structures of thought at work in diverse cultures that have no contact with one another because there is a deep structure of mind organized in a particular way that replicates itself in a variety of ways in entirely different cultures, i.e., there is a universality underlying the particular.

In this post my aim is to outline Meillassoux’s critique of correlationism which is, I believe, based on an ingenious and delightfully devious argument. As I proceed, I ask readers sympathetic to the correlationist orientations of thought to be patient and suspend criticisms of Meillassoux’s argument until my next post. As I outline Meillassoux’s argument a number of obvious correlationist rejoinders or counter-arguments will emerge or occur to the reader. My aim in this post is just to get a clear fix on Meillassoux’s argument. Meillassoux is cognizant of the likely rejoinders to his argument (arguments that have appeared often on this blog during the “Kant wars” between Mikhail, Alexei and me) and addresses them after formulating his argument from ancestrality. My next post will be devoted to the examination of these counter-arguments and how Meillassoux addresses them. By forestalling criticisms of Meillassoux’s argument from ancestrality until the next post, defenders of correlationism will have a better fix on what Meillassoux does and does not understand about correlationism and needless repetition will be avoided.

read on!

 

Meillassoux I: Primary Qualities and Correlationism

In addition to the parade of philosophies that populate the history of philosophy, it could perhaps be said that the history of Western philosophy, since its inception, is populated by a series of transformative arguments that impact all that follows. It is, of course, true that every philosopher more or less makes arguments for his or her claims. However, it is not these sorts of run of the mill arguments that I have in mind. Rather, what I have in mind are a literal handful of argument, no doubt collectable between the covers of a slender volume, that seem to reverberate throughout the entire history of philosophy. These sorts of arguments are like remarkable points or singularities on a mathematical curve, functioning like points of density that subsequent thought must respond to. Examples of these types of arguments– and I have no intention of being exhaustive here –might be Plato’s argument for the existence of the forms in the Phaedo or his account of learning as recollection in the Meno, Parmenides arguments surrounding the being of being, Descartes argument for the certainty of the cogito, Kant’s transcendental argument, and so on. The point is not that all subsequent philosophers agree with these arguments, but rather that these arguments function like force fields akin to the bending of time and space by massive objects, calling for responses, pro or con, by subsequent philosophy. These arguments either get repeated with infinite variations, or they become sites of contest. Thus, for example, Heidegger repeats a version of Kant’s transcendental argument in Being and Time, while Husserl repeats a variation of Descartes’ argument in the founding of his phenomenology. Aristotle, in turn, is compelled to respond to Plato’s theory of learning in the Nichomachean Ethics and to overturn his argument for the forms throughout his work. In short, these singular arguments function as profound generative mechanisms. Deleuze declared that the philosopher is an inventor, a constructor, of concepts. However, perhaps the highest athleticism of philosophy is not to be found in the invention of concepts so much as in the invention of entirely new styles of argument.

Although it is still early to tell, Meillassoux’s argument against correlationism in After Finitude has the flavor of such an argument. The first thing one notes upon opening the pages of After Finitude is the clarity and preciseness of his exposition, so unusual for a Continental philosopher, and the manner in which he crafts his arguments like a jeweler carving a fine gem. Regardless of whether or not Meillassoux’s arguments ultimately attain the status of “singular arguments” in the history of philosophy, it is difficult not to delight in the ingeniousness of his arguments, their athleticism, their vigor, even if one does not ultimately agree or know where these arguments will lead. Over the next few posts I would like to outline Meillassoux’s critique of correlationism as it is, for me, the most convincing critique I’ve yet encountered. Given that there has been so much debate surrounding correlationism here and on other blogs, it would be valuable to have a more precise and readily available framework for these discussions. This first post will relate Meillassoux’s call to renew the distinction between primary and secondary qualities and outline what he means by correlationism. Following this post, I will write a subsequent post on Meillassoux’s “argument from ancestrality” or the “arche-fossil” against correlationism. Finally, the third post will discuss his rejoinder to counter-arguments against the argument from ancestrality. My intention here isn’t to take up a position with respect to Meillassoux’s analysis but to simply relate the framework of his argument in the clearest terms of which I’m capable.

Meillassoux opens the first chapter of After Finitude with an astonishing call to retrieve the distinction between primary and secondary qualities. I confess that when I first read Meillassoux’s remarkable little book it almost fell from my hands upon reading this first paragraph. What could be more retrograde, I wondered, than the retrieval of the distinction between primary and secondary qualities? With this first paragraph I felt as if I was being transported back into my Introduction to Philosophy course, entertaining the epistemologies of Descartes, Locke, and Hume, all of whom struck me as irretrievably banished following Kant’s Copernican revolution. The distinction between primary and secondary qualities can roughly be characterized as the distinction between relational properties and non-relational properties. As Meillassoux remarks, “[w]hen I burn myself on a candle, I spontaneously take the sensation of burning to be in my finger, not in the candle” (1). The sensation of being burnt is thus a secondary quality insofar as it only emerges in the relation between my finger and the candle and does not reside in the candle itself. All of those qualities that pertain to the sensible and, by extension, to secondary qualities are thus relational in nature. They are for-us, not in-themselves.

read on!

 

Correlationism

Alexei has written a very valuable response to my post responding to his diary over at Perverse Egalitarianism.

In a previous post, Alexei had objected to my Ontic Principle on the grounds that some differences are more important than other differences. I had responded by arguing that this conflates normative and epistemic issues with ontological issues. Additionally, I pointed out that the Ontic Principle only states that for anything that is, that thing both is a difference and makes a difference. In short, to be is to differ. I have never suggested that all differences are equal. Indeed, as my Principle of Reality states, the degree of reality or power of an entity is a ratio of the extensiveness of the differences it produces. Thus, while by the Principle of Translation or Latour’s Principle there is no difference that does not make a difference, there nonetheless are degrees of power among differences where one or more differences can overdetermine the rest.

Before responded to the passage quoted above, I would first like to thank Alexei for the tone and thoughtfulness of his response above. While Alexei certainly disagrees with my position, he disagrees without being disagreeable. Rather than suggesting that I have failed to understand Kant and should go back to the text, and rather than suggesting that I am equivalent to the disgruntled first-year student that simply has a violent reaction to the difficulty and foreignness of philosophical texts, thereby wishing to simply dismiss them like the horse swatting its tail at an irritating fly, Alexei instead opts to clearly state his own position and argument, showing why he believes that object-oriented philosophy is doomed to failure. As I remarked in responding to another interlocutor here at Larval Subjects, I generally think one is on the losing side of an argument when they begin from the premise that their opponent is ignorant. This is not to suggest that misinterpretations of philosophers do not often take place– indeed, it’s likely that development in philosophy is the result of philosophers misinterpreting one another –but when one makes a charge of misinterpretation, the specifics of this misinterpretation should be clearly detailed and laid out so that those involved in the discussion can get back to the philosophical issues at hand.

Alexei has approached discussion in the right way. Rather than treating the issue as a textual dispute over whether or not Kant has been understood, he instead states his correlationist commitments as a philosophical (not interpretive) claim and proceeded to show both why he believes we must both begin with correlationism and why it poses a significant challenge for realism. I wish I were myself better at emulating Alexei’s approach to discussion. Like Kevin Klein’s ridiculous character in A Fish Called Wanda, I become really enraged when I experience someone as calling me stupid– “don’t call me stupid!” –or suggesting that I am ignorant. It’s something that I need to work on. In my view, charges that another has not understood or that they have misinterpreted something tend to be counter-productive– even when true –because they implicitly send this message and thereby generate polemic. I strongly believe that one of the most serious diseases infecting how Continental philosophy is practiced in the United States lies in a tendency to perceive all philosophical disputes with a philosopher as a failure to correctly interpret that philosopher. Interpretation is a tremendously important activity and skill, but we really need to get over this sort of knee-jerk reaction.

read on!