Meillassoux expresses the problem that the correlationist has with the arche-fossil via the concept of ‘the given’. For the correlationist the arche-fossil is quite straight-forwardly a self-contradictory concept because it suggests that there is a ‘givenness of being anterior to givenness’. The correlationist points out that what we should do is conceptualise the scientific quantitative facts that the arche-fossil is aimed at as modes of ‘given-ness’. For the correlationist, “being is not anterior to givenness, it gives itself as anterior to givenness” (AF:14). The presentation of this argument is close to the bizarre notion that somehow God placed dinosaur fossils in the rocks in order to ‘test our faith’, a curious convoluted manoeuvre that is blatantly designed to maintain some sort of ‘biblical consistency’ in the face of science.
In once sense the argument is curiously distorted by the idea of givenness, because if we begin by accepting that ‘the given’ is the starting point from which we know the world then we are already inside the determinative framework which leads to correlationism. Think of this in terms of the analogy with the argument about God and the dinosaur bones. If the existence of god as outlined in the Bible is already axiomatic then any empirical fact must be determined within the determinative framework of the biblical frame. If I find geological evidence of timespans that appear inconsistent with such a framework, if I find fossils that appear to be located in geological layers older than is seemingly possible within the biblical axiomatic, then the appearance must be deceptive. The axiomatic determines the range of possible solutions. This is the crux of Meillassoux’s argument – the axiomatic of the given determines the range of possible solutions available to us in terms of knowledge of the world.
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In the first of these notes on After Finitude the focus was on the initial move in the book, the retrieval of the concept of primary properties. Even though this is the first move it is still vital to realise that it is the starting point for a more prolonged attack on the dominant contemporary philosophical mode of thinking. This contemporary mode of thinking is what Meillassoux calls correlationism. Correlationism begins with the ‘transcendental revolution’, which finds its origin in Kant. If we have no access to the in-itself then what we are left with are different types of subjective representation. It is no longer the case, the correlationist thinks, that we distinguish between representations which are correct because they adequately represent the object and representations which are distorted by subjective influence (primary properties fulfilling the formal role and secondary properties the latter). We should now distinguish between representations that we must all agree upon and representations that do not demand universal consent. “From this point on, intersubjectivity, the consensus of the community, supplants the adequation between the representations of a solitary subject and the thing itself as the veritable criterion of objectivity, and of scientific objectivity more particularly.” (AF:4). Read the rest of this entry »
This is part of a series of notes, intended primarily to work through the arguments in Quentin Meillassoux’s book After Finitude.
The first move made in Meillassoux’s book is to attempt to retrieve the viability of ‘primary properties’ as a philosophical concept that can do serious lifting. The origin of the explicit ‘primary’ versus ‘secondary’ properties distinction is in Locke – although he uses the term ‘qualities’ rather than properties - and it’s core problem is perhaps found in Berkeley. Locke posits primary properties of an object as those which, we might say, are in the object itself and secondary properties as those which are in the perception of the object 1. The former might be extension, solidity and motion whilst the latter might be colour, taste and smell. Berkeley’s objection to the distinction is to the primary property as being ‘in the object itself’ – for Berkeley all we have are ideas and even if there is a distinction among our ideas of an object that matches the ‘primary/secondary distinction, this is still a distinction only amongst ideas and has no necessary bearing or connection on anything outside the mind.
There has been debate over what exactly might be listed under the category of ‘primary property’ but in the initial outlining of the distinction the primary properties are those that are divisible. “Take a grain of Wheat, divide it into two parts, each part still has Solidity, Extension, Figure and Mobility; divide it again, and it retains still the same qualities; and so divide it on, till the parts become insensible, they must retain still each of them all those qualities.” The crucial move here – ‘and so divide it on, till the parts become insensible, they must retain still …’ – indicates the presence of a non-empirical principle. The necessity that these particular qualities must exist in any object whatsoever, no matter how large or small, is not something that we extract from experience but something with which we organise or understand experience. Primary properties, then, are what belong to the objects themselves as objects not as perceived objects. The existence of these properties does not depend on any subject, any observer, discovering them – they are properties in the object itself.
In a report of recent neuroimaging techniques, the lead scientist said the following – “our findings suggest that unconsciousness may be the increase of inhibitory assemblies across the brain’s cortex” (See here). The statement is taken to be supportive of a particular theory about consciousness put forward by Susan Greenfield, which may or may not be the case. Greenfields hypothesis seems, on the face of it, simply another form of modularity thesis about consciousness and although her metaphor of consciousness as a ‘dimmer’ switch rather than a binary state of on/off may be a good metaphor, it’s also rather obvious. Did anyone actually think consciousness was a simple state that one either ‘had’ or didn’t have? If they did, it seems rather absurd. That said, the neuroimaging work, in probing the dynamics of the brain as it rises and falls into consciousness, sounds fascinating. The spectral consciousness that begins to appear on the horizon as a result of increased levels of communication and signalling between neural assemblies in the brain doesn’t directly answer the central problem with any modularity concept when applied to the mind, rather than the brain, however – which is the question of how the parts become the appearance of a whole, the extent of what we might call the ‘holistic reality’ of the mind. There’s much interesting discussion of this problem, some of which is usefully summarised in Carruthers article ‘Moderately massive modularity’. In general Carruthers account of this holistic reality rests in the architecture sketched, in which language enables us to “build non-domain-specific conscious thinking out of modular components”. All of this is fascinating stuff and at some point I want to explore the details of this in more depth. For now, however, I want to pursue another thread, albeit in a kind of rambling ‘thinking out loud’ way. As is common on this blog these are notes for myself, part of the process of thinking through things.
What struck me as I read that phrase from Professor Pollard, the lead scientist on the neuroimaging work, was this idea that the increase of inhibitory processes is the ground of the unconscious.
They will never give it away for free
With new protests against the fees and cuts being made to Higher Education planned for this Wednesday on what’s being called ‘Day X’ (more information here) it’s necessary to avoid getting drowned in the new slave consensus. The ‘cuts’, the ‘deficit’ and the whole new way in which economics is being organised are presented as obvious, necessary, inevitable. They are no such thing. There are always options. There are realities that we can imagine but these realities must be fought for, both physically and mentally. We must dream and demonstrate the new reality. The only other option is to let the new ‘common sense’ drown us. They will never give it away for free, it has always had to be taken from them by force. This time will be no different. Prepare to fight now. It’s the students and universities at the moment, it will be your hospitals, schools and homes next…and soon.
We’re all pretty fucked…It’s not just cuts in education and upping the fees that’s the problem. The problem is that the cuts in general mean we’re all pretty fucked. Whether you’re a student in a F.E college or University, whether you’re a working single-mum, whether you’re self-employed, whether you’re unemployed, whether you’re working a precarious temp job, whether you working a good job in the public sector. The depth of the cuts means most people are going to become worse-off.There are differing trains of thought that link the cuts to ‘The Crisis’ or ‘The Deficit’ or ‘The Tories’ but for many there is a much more simple truth – it’s just called ‘Life as normal’. The rich have been getting successively richer in this country and the poor have been getting poorer. If the cuts are setting out to re-float a busted economy of over-inflated debt and speculation by taking more and more from the poorer section of the population, well, it’s just more of the same for most people. Poverty, crap jobs, insecurity, health problems – well, that’s just how we’ve been living anyway. But do you feel like politicians will sort it out for you? Do you feel like if you keep your head down and work hard, you’ll be okay? Do you feel scared? Had enough of that shit yet?”
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/media/2010/11//468269.pdf
http://anticuts.org.uk/
http://educationactivistnetwork.wordpress.com/
There are few things which sorcerers share, indeed this may even be central to the very practice of sorcery itself. To this extent sorcery forms, almost par excellence, an example of the ‘minoritarian’. This concept, derived from Deleuze and Guattari, names a practice of deviation from a standard. It is distinguished from the merely minor, which is akin to a minority practice, by being instead the process of ‘becoming-minor’. Given a standard (‘I should get a paying job to support myself‘) there will be a majority that incarnate this standard and a minority who do not. The minoritarian, however, is neither the major nor the minor but the resistance to the fixation of any standard, major or minor. The minoritarian resists encapsulation and stasis and not out of a voluntaristic decision but precisely as an ‘impulse’ which is active and dominating, if not actually dominant. It is not that the minoritarian is a response to a pre-existing major position but rather it is a necessary companion or contamination of any major position. The minor might be a reaction to a major and capable of being understood only in terms of the major but the minoritarian is a necessary ‘coming along with’. It comes along with any major position. It is, in this sense, an unconscious of forces. If the major is the name we give to the coalescence of forces in a particular configuration, a stabilised set of values and norms, then the minoritarian is that set of forces which swirl on the edges and underneath the central major current. Sorcery, in this sense, is minoritarian – it has swirled its way through centuries and millenia of human practice and will no doubt continue to do so. Nothing, after all, speaks to its demise and everything to its continual existence. Read the rest of this entry »
From the very beginnings of organised philosophical thought there has been a keen awareness of the problem of causality. In its most basic form this problem arises whenever the concept of freedom is considered. To be free is to be uncaused. This basic axiom has considerable implications. If we agree that ‘to be free is to be uncaused’ then it seems like we face two simple options as implications of this axiom. Either we deny that there is any such thing as freedom or we deny that cauality is universal. This simple axiom, that to be free is to be uncaused, produces a quite strange and difficult tension between these implications. On the one hand we might want to affirm freedom as real and present. In general we might want to go further and not only affirm the actual reality of freedom but also affirm it as something to be valued and retrieved in the face of its removal. On the other hand we want to affirm the capacity to know the world and the conection between the various facts of the world, connections of causality. Freedom breaks open the world, whilst causality constructs its’ connections and it would seem we want the strange mixture of freedom within a connected world. One of the basic responses to this type of tension has been to suggest that there are, in fact, two types of causes. Everything is thus connected through the concept of cause, but the connections are variable dependent on which of the two types of cause is in play. We thus reconcile freedom and cause by turning freedom into a type of causal force. Read the rest of this entry »
My dying breath is a magician.
This sits, written in chalk dust, on the board, bored bored bored board. Metaphor, all three elements from Aristotle, those elements it’s not supposed to have (supposedly), the tradition that’s opposed (opposedly) by Lakoff and Derrida, with metaphor as domain translations or catechresis as metaphoric literality.
The moment that is unexplainable is the new. The poetic metaphor. That which is ruled out of court or which doesn’t fit into the domain maps of Lakof (is it one F or two?) and Johnson, that which doesn’t accept itself as catechresis, which isn’t reducible to simply a concept. He focuses on one moment. For some of the terms of the proportion there is at times no word in existence; still the metaphor may be used. Each time the word that seems to be used is a good metaphor and allows someone to see something.
I never know what to make of this. I remember a long time ago a science fiction story about a community of blind people, about the way in which they adapt their social environment to become a touchable space and interlacing bodies, about – I think – someone on the run who takes refuge in this community, about the strange eroticism of the body in a space where the blind revel in exploring the positivity of the touch that is dominant without ever falling foul of a notion of lack (there is never any lack).
To talk of seeing things is just too facile. So they use the greek don’t they – theorein – to see. Theoria, theoros, the spectator, theoreo, to look at. Supposedly. The greek root seems to be thea. My dictionary cites it as ‘a seeing, looking at’ as well as, in the listing before that which mentions sight – with a minor change of accent – goddess. But they wouldn’t deign to speak of the goddess.
The story, the anecdote (good philosophy always needs a good anecdote), is about a lecturer on Hegel, Professor Harris, this is Paul’s anecdote not mine, a lecturer on Hegel who is tedious, boring, Hegelian (all Hegelian’s are fools) and who is being listened to by Paul and his colleague and Paul turns to his colleague and says ‘Harris is Quixote’ but not the Quixote of the first book alone but also of the second where the Quixote of the first book victimises the Quixote of the second who is the real Quixote of the fictional Quixote that Cervantes invents who now reveals Harris as tilting at Hegelian windmills. ‘Harris is Quixote’ is said with some humour but Harris is then lost, like the Quixote of the second book, under the weight of the metaphor, the new vision.
I see him anew. This is the only form of new metaphor. I see it anew.
I sit and stare at this chalk dust line. The magician brings about a magical event. The magician transforms things.
Like a dying breath.
My explanation is death.
The metaphor can be paraphrased but the poem cannot.
"Metaphor is the application of an alien name by transference either from genus to species, or from species to genus, or from species to species, or by analogy, that is, proportion. Thus from genus to species, as: ‘There lies my ship’; for lying at anchor is a species of lying. From species to genus, as: ‘Verily ten thousand noble deeds hath Odysseus wrought’; for ten thousand is a species of large number, and is here used for a large number generally. From species to species, as: ‘With blade of bronze drew away the life,’ and ‘Cleft the water with the vessel of unyielding bronze.’ Here arusai, ‘to draw away’ is used for tamein, ‘to cleave,’ and tamein, again for arusai- each being a species of taking away. Analogy or proportion is when the second term is to the first as the fourth to the third. We may then use the fourth for the second, or the second for the fourth. Sometimes too we qualify the metaphor by adding the term to which the proper word is relative. Thus the cup is to Dionysus as the shield to Ares. The cup may, therefore, be called ‘the shield of Dionysus,’ and the shield ‘the cup of Ares.’ Or, again, as old age is to life, so is evening to day. Evening may therefore be called, ‘the old age of the day,’ and old age, ‘the evening of life,’ or, in the phrase of Empedocles, ‘life’s setting sun.’ For some of the terms of the proportion there is at times no word in existence; still the metaphor may be used. For instance, to scatter seed is called sowing: but the action of the sun in scattering his rays is nameless. Still this process bears to the sun the same relation as sowing to the seed. Hence the expression of the poet ‘sowing the god-created light.’ There is another way in which this kind of metaphor may be employed. We may apply an alien term, and then deny of that term one of its proper attributes; as if we were to call the shield, not ‘the cup of Ares,’ but ‘the wineless cup’." (Aristotle, Poetics, XXI)
The space of blogging is a particular instance of the space of writing and the space of philosophical blogging is itself a particular instance of the space of writing that intersects with a more general ‘space of reasons’. This last is the name given by Wilfrid Sellars to the particular realm of justificatory discourse, although it is sometimes taken to refer more broadly to the realm of any discourse whatsoever. For Sellars, ‘to know something’ is not a general fact which can be empirically tested somehow by checking a mental or neurological state of the entity claiming to know, it is rather to to identify an object that operates inside a particular ‘game of giving and asking for reasons’. This implies that if we characterise something as a knowledge claim then we are entitled to ask for reasons for the claim – how and why do you know this? That we’re entitled to ask for reasons doesn’t imply that we have to. We may well – and commonly do – accept a large number of claims that we take to be knowledge claims on the basis of a kind of trust, a default acceptance that operates until we are prompted to challenge the claim.
Some people want to extend the space of reasons to be co-extensive with the space of discourse itself. This is the move made in Kukla and Lance’s book, ‘ “Yo!” and “Lo!”: the pragmatic topography of the space of reasons’ (Harvard, 2009). Robert Brandom defines the space of reasons as a space of ‘inferential relations’, in which each participant occupies a slightly different perspective because of their variable observational position but is able nonetheless to engage with others, governed by ‘deontological score-keeping’. Both of these develop Sellars initial idea in interesting directions but the point of the original distinction was to distinguish a space of reasons from a space of causality, thereby enabling a kind of double-articulation theory which prevented radical reductionism. No longer would it be necessary or possible to reduce propositional, conceptual or intentional objects to physical, empirical or material objects. The space of reasons aimed to guarantee an autonomy to propositional, conceptual or intentional objects. These objects would be found in the form of claims of one sort of another.
If the space of discourse is co-extensive with the space of reasons then any mode of discourse is open to a call for justification. The nature of the justification, however, would still depend largely on the nature of the object. If the object is a knowledge claim then it calls for reasons but there is an ambiguity here. Some objects of discourse might be thought of as expressions of knowledge, others as expressions of an absence of knowledge. The latter would, it seems, no longer be subject to the call for justificatory reasons. If the expression ‘I don’t understand’ were responded to with the question, ‘well why not?’ then the ‘justification’ is likely to be entirely circular – ‘because I don’t’. Pedagogically these type of cases call for careful negotiation – a good teacher who is faced with a pupil who simply says ‘I don’t understand’ has a duty, owing to the social role they’re engaged in, to try and work out why there is an absence of understanding. Usually this might involve taking the pupil back to a position they’re happy with and feel they do understand and then slowly working forward again to find the gap or breach in the discursive network. Nothing, however, guarantees that this strategy is capable of success. In principle some things are simply not available to be understood by some understanders. To think otherwise would be to suggest that a complete coincidence of position can occur between two perspectives, which would be absurd since this would render the very ‘perspectival’ nature that prompts dialogue to be non-existent. Put another way, there is only a need to ask for reasons if there is a condition of difference between the claimant and the respondent and a ‘pure co-understanding’ by a respondent of the claimant would render communication and discourse no longer necessary.
The space of blogging offers a curious example of this necessary failure of pure understanding which renders philosophical activity almost redundant if such activity is taken to involve the production of agreement, a kind of commonality akin to pure co-understanding. Occasionally philosophical bloggers produce arguments that are ‘stand-alone’ objects but more commonly they produce arguments in the more mundane sense of a disagreement. Here, in the disagreeable blog, the argument is a series of claims, with justifications, as to why X is wrong, bad, weak, incorrect or somehow or other in error, with a general view to reduce the value of the opponent in what presents itself as a zero-sum game, a trial of strength. There are occasionally ‘argument objects’ produced but these respond not to any specific opponent but rather to the demands of reason more generally. It is more common to find these argument objects within philosophical books, not least because of the mitigation of ‘call-response’ dynamics that are the condition of the space of blogging. It is, perhaps, for this reason that in general philosophical discussion in blogs is weak, limited and riven by a kind of personal politics that is amusing to watch but perhaps exhausting and unproductive to participate in. Philosophy and in particular the production of argument objects benefits less from discussion than might originally be thought. Perhaps this is why Deleuze seems to touch on something important when he decries the value of arguments in general – it is not that he doesn’t want to argue with you, rather that he wants to respond more directly to the demands of reason.
The blog here has been a little quiet as I’ve become more and more immersed in my research. I took a years unpaid sabbatical from the University of Greenwich where I work as a part-time philosophy lecturer in order to work on a book tentatively titled ‘Necessary Matter’. Things are progressing with that project and hopefully there will be some concrete output fairly soon from this long process of immersion in texts and thoughts. In the course of the research, which initially began from a curious encounter between my interests in Leibniz, Deleuze and Brandom, I have engaged more and more with the interest in objects that has arisen over the last few years. The work of Harman and Bryant, coming out of the speculative realist current and drawing on Bruno Latour, strikes me as interesting if unsatisyfing. This, I find, is often the most productive type of encounter. The uninteresting simply passes by, whereas the satisfying offers a kind of succour that might be ill-advised but is often rapidly consumed. Satisfaction leads to passivity, not usually a good thing in terms of thought, although no doubt it is necessary at times.
