tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-65800391550186038142024-03-13T16:44:22.194-07:00Being's PoemAttempting to think, with some difficulty.Daniel Sacilottohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06107600124995445921noreply@blogger.comBlogger101125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6580039155018603814.post-71558273537233151772014-10-11T06:14:00.002-07:002014-10-13T02:54:23.260-07:00On Wolfendale and his Critics - OOO<div abp="1266" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
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<span abp="1274" style="line-height: 115%;"><a abp="1275" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCJchUDJoMqh-1slKxkLZ-a3uDh6kMOnY9hf-w_bkU2bMOH7ptBHZSZYGkKWd5flRALJ5Z5bXu0VuDj2Tm0dyhh4dNl4OuzQ61EQoRkYdZqDuO5_lrTH7xZyBTd5tYHnIcT-LZMa9kYtu0/s1600/crucible.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img abp="1276" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCJchUDJoMqh-1slKxkLZ-a3uDh6kMOnY9hf-w_bkU2bMOH7ptBHZSZYGkKWd5flRALJ5Z5bXu0VuDj2Tm0dyhh4dNl4OuzQ61EQoRkYdZqDuO5_lrTH7xZyBTd5tYHnIcT-LZMa9kYtu0/s1600/crucible.jpg" height="532" width="640" /></a></span></div>
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<span abp="1279" style="line-height: 115%;"><b abp="1280" style="line-height: 115%;"><span abp="1281" style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;"><br abp="1282" />- ON WOLFENDALE AND HIS CRITICS -<br abp="1283" /><br abp="1284" />\-On OOO-/</span></b></span></div>
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<span abp="1290" style="line-height: 115%;"><b abp="1291"><b abp="1292" style="line-height: 115%;"><span abp="1293" style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;">______________________________</span></b></b></span></div>
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<span abp="1301" style="line-height: 115%;"><span abp="1302" style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span abp="1303" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 115%;"> I have become quite upset at the recent criticism
directed at Pete Wolfendale's comprehensive critique of Harman's philosophical
program, criticisms waged by both <a abp="1304" href="http://drjon.typepad.com/jon_cogburns_blog/2014/10/on-speculative-realism-and-circular-firing-squads.html" target="_blank">Jon Cogburn</a> and <a abp="1305" href="http://doctorzamalek2.wordpress.com/2014/10/11/notes-from-the-naked-emperor/" target="_blank">Harman</a> himself. Now, I am
good friends with Pete and with some of the folk more sympathetic to OOO and
its philosophical virtues (Levi Bryant notably, is my friend). And, despite some
agitated polemics with their crowd, I have tried to express my disagreements
always in a civil manner, on philosophical grounds.</span></span></div>
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<span abp="1307" style="line-height: 115%;"><span abp="1308" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br abp="1309" /><o:p abp="1310"></o:p></span></span>
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<span abp="1313" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 115%;"> What is conspicuously
missing from all of this recent commentary on Wolfendale's work is an actual
engagement with the philosophical contentions made by Wolfendale, though Cogburn has gone through it. Instead, his post and Harman's read like severe indictments to Wolfendale's motivations and temperament
as a thinker, alongside those of Ray Brassier, who was a direct inspiration - as
well as the most sympathetic figure among the original SR crew - to
Wolfendale's project. To be fair, Harman has not read Wolfendale's book, so he's working on the provisional previews offered by Cogburn. This is problematic in itself, since he is endorsing a criticism of a book which he hasn't read, and is more explicitly disputing Ray's contribution though he hasn't read it. </span><span abp="1314" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;">But let's leave that aside.</span></div>
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<span abp="1316" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span abp="1317" style="line-height: 115%;"><br abp="1318" /> Let me get right into the issue; Cogburn questions the
motivations behind Wolfendale's monograph, by drawing attention to the
lyrically charged verdicts posed in the preface of the book. Now, obviously ,the
justification for these severe verdicts would have to be supported by the book
itself. Yet Cogburn preemptively writes:"<span abp="1319" style="background: white; color: #141823;">"only the already
converted give the polemicist a pass on the uncharity needed for the polemic to
be rhetorically effective"<br abp="1320" /></span><o:p abp="1322"></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span abp="1325" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span abp="1326" style="background: white; color: #141823; line-height: 115%;"> That is just not true. One can be polemical and yet genuinely
impartial or even sympathetic to the views one is raising polemics about
without being uncharitable. Why assume that polemics entails uncharitability? Can
no one disagree on charitable grounds? That seems gratuitous to me: if that is
true, then it threatens not so much 'polemics', in the sense of agitated
debate, but disagreement or consideration of counter-argument <i abp="1327">tout court</i>. Unless we pathologize critical
engagement, it will be necessary to accept some debate is charitable and fair. Cogburn
claims about any text being addressed that "</span><span abp="1328" class="apple-converted-space"><span abp="1329" style="background: white; line-height: 115%;"> </span></span><span abp="1330" style="background: white; line-height: 115%;">If it's worth reading, it's worth reading
charitably."<span abp="1331" class="apple-converted-space"> </span>So either
charitable criticisms are possible, and then he is just begging the question
about why Wolfendale is uncharitable, or else the only charitable engagements
are non polemical ones. <br abp="1332" /></span></span></div>
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<span abp="1337" style="background-color: white; line-height: 115%;"><span abp="1338" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Cogburn continues questioning the
motivations and pertinence of the background debate that led to Wolfendale's book. He calls attention into the claim that this extensive
engagement seems oddly against the verdict that Harman's work is unworthy of
philosophical esteem. What Cogburn misses from Wolfendale's account is that it
was Harman who requested that if a debate were to be had with the philosophical
detail Wolfendale imposed in the blogosphere, such a debate would be better
suited for a formal kind of publication. And this because the payoff for such a
discussion in the blogosphere and with a relatively unknown interlocutor would
be not be appropriate or sufficiently beneficial for Harman. I cannot but
conclude that, in writing these background considerations, Wolfendale is simply
making clear that by writing the long book he is in fact just agreeing to carry
out the polemics in the medium Harman himself determined, with the degree of
rigor expected of the medium.</span></span></div>
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<span abp="1340" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span abp="1341" class="apple-converted-space"></span></span><br /></div>
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<span abp="1344" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span abp="1345" class="apple-converted-space"><span abp="1346" class="apple-converted-space"><span abp="1347" style="background: white; line-height: 115%;"> But why do this if you so much
consider Harman's position as fundamentally confused and unworthy of
philosophical esteem, you ask? Well, one might think it is important to make
explicit why a particular position that is gaining relative influence be
addressed concretely on its perceived philosophical grounds and virtues, so as
to deem whether this popularity is warranted or not. That is, to evaluate
whether Harman's work is persuasive because he has actually cogent
philosophical theses, or whether instead it is merely because, as he says, </span></span><span abp="1348" class="apple-converted-space"><span abp="1349">"I write often, in an engaging fashion, and don’t imply to my potential audience that they are irrational idiots. If you seek influence for your ideas, these three steps are a good start." <span abp="1350" style="background-color: white; line-height: 115%;"> That seems like a healthy enough philosophical practice. </span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span abp="1361" class="apple-converted-space"><span abp="1362" style="background: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 115%;"> Next, Cogburn targets those who,
from outside academia, take issue with the fact employed professors might not
have time or desire to respond to every objection leveled at them. Cogburn
writes:<br abp="1363" />
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<span abp="1367" style="background: white; color: #141823; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 115%;">"Yet a whole bevy of people routinely heap
scorn on people like him because they doesn't stop everything to respond to
every blog post or paper ever written about them."</span></div>
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<span abp="1373" style="background: white; color: #141823; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 115%;"> This is fair and true. But the question that rises becomes:
is Wolfendale one of these people? I don't think so; he is not <i abp="1374">demanding</i> a response from anyone, but simply engaging Harman
through the medium that the latter deemed most fitting for the debate to ensue.
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<br abp="1376" /> But again, what is most
conspicuous about Cogburn's text is that no serious mention is made on the
philosophical indictments leveled against Harman, though they comprise the bulk
of the book in question. This is particularly serious considering Harman's own
response. I agree with Harman that Brassier's aversion to the blogosphere goes too far, that in doing so he is rhetorically excessive, and that it must
accept at least of exceptions deemed of quality lest he deem Wolfendale's own
ventures as obsolete. <br abp="1377" /><br abp="1378" /><o:p abp="1379"></o:p></span></div>
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<span abp="1382" style="background: white; color: #141823; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 115%;"> The issue is
this: Harman accuses Brassier of resenting that his plot to make those involved
in the Goldsmith conference more visible worked. Brassier, so we are told, is
the victim of a mixture of dogmatism and resentment. Dogmatism, because he
refuses to accept the philosophical import of the social sciences and praises the reality of physics only (something,
to my mind, which Ray has never endorsed; he in fact thinks the connection
between the social and natural sciences to be of paramount philosophical
interest) Resentment, because others publish more works and have fallen
behind the OOO cause than his own program. Thus, Harman concludes, Brassier cannot but be but the most interested party in seeing the whole Speculative Realism house burn down, while Harman and his copious readers run the show.<br abp="1383" /><br abp="1384" /><o:p abp="1385"></o:p></span></div>
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<span abp="1389" style="background: white; color: #141823; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 115%;"> But Ray's
text, which again Harman has NOT read, does not complain about the relative popularity of OOO, or criticizes the exposure to the work of the authors involved in Goldsmith's: he questions
not the desire to expose the body of work of those involved (a generous enough
goal), but the feasibility of characterizing "speculative realism" as
a <i abp="1390">philosophical movement</i> on the grounds of actual philosophical content, and
more particularly, Harman's philosophy, since all the other three members have parted ways with the term.<br abp="1391" /><br abp="1392" /> First, because the term 'speculative' does not bind these authors in any meaningful sense. Meillassoux explicitly calls 'speculative' any philosophical position that is non-metaphysical in scope, to designate a kind of dialectics that makes no assumptions about what there is. In this sense, neither Ray, Iain nor particularly Harman, are speculative, since the latter explicitly endorses metaphysics as first philosophy. That the conference was named after a particular program should indicate nothing but an anchoring of the congregation on Meillassoux's own program, but not the sudden emergence of a movement.<br abp="1393" /><br abp="1394" /> Second, because the 'realism' involved in each case is immensely different, and incompatible. Grant proposes a process ontology following Schelling, Harman an ontology of objects, Brassier a scientific realism, and Meillassoux a kind of mathematical Platonism inspired by Badiou. There is more in common between Badiou and Meillassoux, or between Sellars and Brassier, than between Meillassoux and Brassier on what they take realism to be (or 'materialism', for Meillassoux). The aversion to correlationism is common to many realists, analytic and continentals, even if they do not share the same terminology or address the same authors. </span></div>
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<span abp="1396" style="background: white; color: #141823; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 115%;"><br abp="1397" /></span><span abp="1398" style="background: white; color: #141823; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 115%;"> So, Brassier argues, 'speculative realism' designates little but a sociological construct, not a philosophical movement. That much interesting work has resulted from this sociological construct is not in dispute, but only that the phenomenon as it stands does not exist as a philosophical movement, but as a series of divergent positions grouped for contingent reasons, and specifically an identification of it with OOO and Harman's project.<br abp="1399" /><br abp="1400" />What is truly baffling to me, is thus the
following line of attack:<br abp="1401" />
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<span abp="1404" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Meanwhile, Brassier has not published a substantial piece of work since 2007, an eternity in our fast-moving period of blog-driven philosophy discussion. There have been perhaps 20 new books by OOO authors in that same time period, 8 of them written by me. Brassier writes deeply unpleasant, insecticidal prose, filled with expressions of contempt for the irrationality and pathetic emotions of others. He proclaims derision for the blogosphere, yet inhabits it as he pleases through biannual angry interview eruptions and through the daily work of his surrogates. He truly believes that physics is a real discipline but sociology is not, and that an object does not exist unless it is the object of a possible (natural) science. He has expressed a significant degree of contempt for the role of aesthetics in intellectual life. In my admittedly more limited experience of Wolfendale, he shares each of these traits."</span></div>
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<span abp="1407" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span abp="1408" style="background: white; color: #141823; line-height: 115%;"> Does publishing less books or articles show one is less productive or relevant philosophically? Does this not obliterate questions about the <i abp="1409">standard </i>of what is being published? If anything,
this confirms Brassier's thesis that, according to Harman, an author's
philosophical import, or that of the position he-she defends, should be measured
against the standard of the amount of talk about it or publications on the
subject by those who address it critically or in support. But this assumption
is truly perverse: Wittgenstein might
have written a fraction of the books written by Deepak Chopra, but this says
nothing of philosophical accomplishment, or the cogency and virtue of the
their respective projects. What is again conspicuously missing from Harman's post, as it
is from Cogburn's, is any real engagement with the philosophical content of
Wolfendale's contentions with OOO. These should be the grounds for debate:
after all, they comprise basically the totality of the book's content. </span></span></div>
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<span abp="1415" style="line-height: 115%;"><span abp="1416" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Much more could be said
about this unfortunate first wave of responses to Wolfendale's work. It is no
secret that I am sympathetic to both Brassier and Wolfendale's Sellarsian
tendencies; but that is well besides the point. The point is, it is the
philosophical content of Harman's work that is being examined, and it is to
this examination that criticism or endorsement should be primarily addressed.
With that said, whether Wolfendale's position is charitable or uncharitable,
whether it effectively is the work of philosophical fairness or of a
compromisingly 'colored' vendetta, is an open question. But this should be
decided on philosophical grounds, not on those Cogburn and Harman present in
these posts.</span><span abp="1417" style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p abp="1418"></o:p></span></span></div>
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Daniel Sacilottohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06107600124995445921noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6580039155018603814.post-67363522651862571602013-06-27T04:42:00.001-07:002013-12-04T20:49:13.972-08:00Two Articles and Potential Buh-Bye<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBsoyCc-fygxL9AwHvbXUxE7Z4okpCStAbe2tz4lECFPH3QT0MUHhy5IHuUytcNtT9MQN3UI_45jo5BOBYI9XnQX-Biqxbgoi4Bsmyrt70ACzM-aCfob9At2OIDyV14nF3ZybZaNVPdnMq/s1600/gh1344.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="444" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBsoyCc-fygxL9AwHvbXUxE7Z4okpCStAbe2tz4lECFPH3QT0MUHhy5IHuUytcNtT9MQN3UI_45jo5BOBYI9XnQX-Biqxbgoi4Bsmyrt70ACzM-aCfob9At2OIDyV14nF3ZybZaNVPdnMq/s640/gh1344.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span id="goog_1596782323"></span><span id="goog_1596782324"></span><br /><br /> I'm thinking of migrating away from blogspot quite soon, since the comments section has apparently been taken over by Nick Land's A.I space, and the whole thing just sucks basically. I'm not sure whether I find blogging nearly as stimulating as I did before though, since most 'live proto-philosophizing' seems to happen through facebook now. Guess we're back to where we started, with the dialog-form. That said, I'm not sure I will even decide to open up a new blog; although I might just to have a medium to vent off any provisional thoughts. This might actually be the last post I write here.<br /><br />On a happier note, two articles of mine were published this month. The former, titled 'Realism and Representation', appears in the excellent new issue of </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.speculations-journal.org/current-issue/" target="_blank">Speculations</a> </i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">and develops an outline for my basic take on speculative realism and the 'ontological turn', outlining a Sellarsian defense of representation. The second came out in the <a href="http://badioustudiesorg.ipower.com/cgi-bin/ojs-2.3.6/index.php/ijbs/issue/current" target="_blank"><i>International Journal of Badiou Studies</i></a>, and is a somewhat lengthy piece discussing Badiou's attempts to reinvigorate the dialectic by proposing a rationalist materialism, advancing what I take to be a pretty strong critique of his view. Both essays will probably end up in some form in the monograph piece I am preparing. That beast is clocking at around 105k words now, and still has some bit to go. Hope it finds a way out. With that said, here go the links:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&ved=0CDoQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fspeculations.squarespace.com%2Fstorage%2FSacilotto_Realism%2520and%2520Representation_Speculations_IV.pdf&ei=cCLMUfehN8KJiALwz4CgAw&usg=AFQjCNEjd37G97O1oEYw4sA1uexw-g_aLg&sig2=tl2nf0epHU07j4GISLSS0w&bvm=bv.48572450,d.cGE" target="_blank"></a><a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&ved=0CDoQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fspeculations.squarespace.com%2Fstorage%2FSacilotto_Realism%2520and%2520Representation_Speculations_IV.pdf&ei=cCLMUfehN8KJiALwz4CgAw&usg=AFQjCNEjd37G97O1oEYw4sA1uexw-g_aLg&sig2=tl2nf0epHU07j4GISLSS0w&bvm=bv.48572450,d.cGE" target="_blank">Speculations IV - Realism and Representation: On the Ontological Turn</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://badioustudiesorg.ipower.com/cgi-bin/ojs-2.3.6/index.php/ijbs/article/view/27" target="_blank">IJBS - Towards a Rationalist Materialism: Plato, Hegel, Badiou</a><br /><br /><br />Thanks to those few, scattered souls that gave this dumpster a read every now and then. </span></div>
Daniel Sacilottohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06107600124995445921noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6580039155018603814.post-53391020280163141442013-05-13T04:06:00.004-07:002013-05-13T04:08:10.659-07:00The Rise of the Anti-Realist Novel: On Defoe, Sellars, Foucault and Ishiguro<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<b><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;">- THE RISE OF THE ANTI-REALIST NOVEL -</span></b></div>
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The following is a modest attempt to engage critically with the historical narrative about the rise of the novel proposed by Ian Watt in his influential study <i>The Rise of the Novel</i>, and in which he draws a complicity between what he designates as the <i>philosophical realism</i> of the early modern period, and the emergence of the novel form. My contention is that Watt's reading betrays a correct understanding of the philosophical climate and ideas which nevertheless must be correctly understood as inspiring the emergence of new literary forms, and specifically the novel. That said, I diagnose in the <i>individualist turn</i> proposed in the early novel a complicity with what can more correctly be diagnosed as the anti-realist tendencies that followed from incipient skeptical doubts raised in early modern philosophy.<br />
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<b>I - Parallel Shipwrecks: On Desert Landscapes </b></div>
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The American philosopher Wilfrid Sellars was fond of speaking about the empiricist philosophies of the early modern period by using the expression "Robinson Crusoe theories of knowledge", referring to their primitive epistemological explorations. For him, the deserted islands of Defoe's Crusoe provided a handy metaphor to conjure what in his mind were the isolated provinces of individualist thought. These philosophers, he argued, "... did not really think out the problematic of intersubjectivity", but remained confined to the narrow and austere expanses of an individual exploration, or quest for self-knowledge<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftn1">[1]</a>. Besides the apparent light-heartedness of the comparison proposed here, of course, Defoe's genre-inaugurating work details the ruminations of the one who survives a shipwreck, void of provisions, and threatened by the hostile forces of nature. The imperative implied in the incipient modern beginning is at once epistemological and practical; it informs both the awakening of the individual's critical powers before the present, and accordingly assigns to individual thought the singular destiny of emancipatory production. Through Crusoe's autistic triumph, Dafoe tethers truth to the impersonal deployment of the individual's rational powers, so that "“He that hath truth on his side is a fool as well as a coward if he is afraid to own it because fo other mens's opinions.<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftn2">[2]</a>” </div>
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The novel's rupture with literary traditionalism, in this inaugural gesture, is thereby aligned to the image of the single individual, castaway, destined to survive alone in his exploratory ventures, against the opprobrium of a time and place foreign to its example. Yet, behind what appears as an otherwise playful locution, Sellars is ultimately leveling a critique on such early modern views, precisely insofar as in privileging the subject or individual they thereby become insensitive to the social, intersubjective dimension of knowledge. Insensitive to intersubjectivity, "The Robinson Crusoe conception of the world as generating conceptual thinking directly on the mind is too simple a mode. The perennial tradition long limited itself to accounting for the presence in the individual of the framework of conceptual thinking in terms of a unique kind of action of reality as intelligible on the individual mind.<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftn3">[3]</a>" </div>
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Continuing the thrust of Sellars' metaphor, we would be tempted to ask what shipwreck, indeed which unsuspecting vessel, had to be sunk in order for thought to meet the deserted islands of epistemological reflection. That under the name of traditional metaphysics, perhaps? The realist naivety that mind could simply apprehend the vast domains of the Real without a propadeutic enquiry into its own facultative powers? However laudable their enterprise, and however playful in tone Sellars' insinuation is, one cannot but wonder whether the individualist thought that marks the advent of these philosophical forms finds not only the triumphant and parallel shipwrecks of traditionalist forms in philosophy and literature, but also a castaway's desolate arrival in the shores of a myopic, indeed claustrophobic individualist terrain. </div>
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We are obliged to ask, it seems, about what the novel's epochal rupture with the literary forms of its time consisted in, more precisely, in its complicity with individualism. In this regard, Ian Watt's The Rise of the Novel teases out that "The novel is the form of literature which most fully reflects this individualist and innovating reorientation. Previous literary forms had reflected the general tendency of their cultures to make conformity to traditional practice the major test of truth: the plots of a classical and renaissance epic, for example, were based on past history or fable, and the merits of the author's treatment were judged largely according to a view of literary decorum derived from the accepted models in the genre. This literary traditionalism was first and most fully challenged by the novel, whose primary criterion was truth to individual experience - individual experience which is always unique and therefore new. The novel is thus the logical literary vehicle of a culture which, in the last few centuries, has set an unprecedented value on originality, on the novel; and it is therefore well named.<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftn4">[4]</a>" And, indeed, the truth which Dafoe announces becomes often quite a solitary matter, in the side of individual creation, rather than a continuation or a repetition in the side of tradition. </div>
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Watt notes in the incipient novel-form proper to Dafoe and Richardson thus an interruption of the dependence of narrative fiction on mythological, religious and popular wisdom, a dependence however that ubiquitously enveloped literary production until then, and that would not be definitively interrupted, he claims, until the 19th century<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftn5">[5]</a><a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftn6">[6]</a>. He writes in this regard that "Defoe and Richardson are the first great writers in our literature who did not take their plots from mythology, history, legend or previous literature. In this they differ from Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare and Milton, for instance, who, like the writers of Greece and Rome, habitually used traditional plots; and who did so, in the last analysis, because they accepted the general premise of their times that, since Nature is essentially complete and unchanging, its records, whether scriptural, legendary or historical, constitute a definitive repertoire of human experience." (13-14) Against the stasis of the traditionalist world and the narrative redundancy of its literary forms, Watt aligns the novel with the modern spirit and its avowal of originality, creativity, and individual defiance, not at all unlike the critical force behind the modern secularist thought probed by the philosophers, which challenged the theological discourse of the preceding Scholastic metaphysics, and questioned through unprecedented methodological scrutiny the lineage of the tradition, from antiquity to its present. Yet Watt does not hesitate to align the historical vector leading from the novel to literary vanguardism to what he calls the realist tendencies of empiricist philosophies<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftn7">[7]</a>. Those philosophers which, Sellars tells us, rummage in the solitude of self, in what appears to his eyes to be something of an autistic slumber. </div>
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At this juncture, Watt's proposal to align the emergence of the novel form with the progressive spirit set by modern philosophers through the common aspiration towards realism seems suddenly at odds with the timid insinuations bestowed to us by the philosopher himself. For hasn't Sellars' metaphor pointed to what is, in fact, short of a great emancipatory gesture for thinking, in fact a colossal shipwreck, a destitution of thought from its populous ports, failing as it is to account for the intersubjective and the impersonal? A thought finally incapable of breaching the solipsistic court of self and stray farther out to the 'great outdoors' coveted by any philosophy worthy of the name? One might be tempted, thereby, to critically assess Watt's appropriation of the term 'realism' to describe the advent of the novel form by drawing close analogy to the modern philosophical context, calling attention to the common pursuit for an anti-traditionalist individualism that, in some sense, remains confined to deserted islands. But more than a potential historical corrective to Watt's reading, a reconsideration of the impetus behind realism and individualism, if indeed a wedge can be driven between the literary and the philosophical through these slippery terms, can also serve to diagnose the expiration of the emancipatory potential incumbent in the primitive modern exemplars. </div>
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Once the complicity between realism and individualism is shown to be suspect, the secularist thrust motivating the inflection to self in the early novel and epistemology is shown to come at the price of implicating its secularism in tandem to philosophical idealism, or else, to use Quentin Meillassoux's useful term, to pave the way idealism by way of a correlationism, i.e. the view that thought can at best aspire to think that which is relative to itself<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftn8">[8]</a>. Or, to speak like Sellars, we are soon led to the austere result that thought cannot but explore its own deserted islands. And so the novel seems to find in individualism the only response to the traditionalist narrative, much like modern epistemology sequesters thought away from the naive realism of the ancient metaphysicians only to find itself entrapped within the subject's own narrow expanses. </div>
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<b>II - Realism, Individualism, Correlationism: The Rise of the Anti-Realist Novel </b></div>
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In order to set up our dispute, it will be helpful to narrow down precisely in what sense Watt seeks to read the rise of the novel as marked by the realist orientation in philosophy. This is necessary, since Watt clearly distinguishes a different sense in which the term "realism" acquires force within the context of 19th century artistic production, namely that of the French school, in which the term was used term in a properly aesthetic key: "The main critical associations of the term 'realism' are with the French school of Realists. 'Réalisme' was apparently first used as an aesthetic description in 1835 to denote the 'vérité humaine' of Rembrandt as opposed to the 'idéalité poétique' of neo-classical painting; it was later consecrated as a specifically literary term by the foundation in 1856 of Réalisme a journal edited by Duranty.<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftn9">[9]</a>" Watt draws no explicit historical connection between this sense of the term realism and the sense he borrows from the philosophical schools; yet his suggestion is clearly that there is more than a trite semantic resonance linking the two, a deeper affinity, where crucially individualism comes to bear. </div>
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Provisionally, let us recall that the classical philosophical dispute between realists and anti-realists found its locus classicus in debates surrounding the thesis of the existence of the external world. The history of this dispute is itself long and contrived, and I do not intend to revisit it here. Instead, I specify the most general determinations that are relevant to comprehending how Watt understands the philosophical ideas that animate the origins of the novel, and the spirit of the times in which such an invention occurred. I use the expression metaphysical realism to refer, in short, to any position according to which there exists a world independently of thought. Accordingly, I call metaphysical anti-realist or idealist any position according to which there is no world independently of the mind, i.e. the view according to which mind and world are identical. What is most salient about these positions is that they are formulated in ontological terms, i.e. they concern the question about what is Real and the attempts to answer it. </div>
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Within the context of the modern period, a further complication of this original division would come by the introduction of the epistemological problematic, which is also the point at which the individual qua knower becomes both methodologically and substantively central to philosophical reflection<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftn10">[10]</a>. As it turns out, it is this aspect that will become most salient when connecting Dafoe's deserted islands to the modern philosophy of mind. I will thus call epistemological realism any position according to which it is possible to know of the world independent of our minds. Accordingly, I will call epistemological anti-realist or correlationist any position that denies that such knowledge is so possible<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftn11">[11]</a>. What is most salient about these last two positions is, in contrast to metaphysical realism and idealism, that they are formulated in epistemological terms, i.e. they concern the question about how we know what is Real, where the bearer of this knowledge is, of course, the cogito, the thinking subject or individual<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftn12">[12]</a>. </div>
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Framed within the scope of these terms, Watt explicitly identifies the philosophical sense of realism that bears on the rise of the novel as that pertaining to the epistemological realism of the early moderns, in terms which are surprisingly cogent with our own proposed terminology. Yet he claims that, far from proposing a direct engagement with the philosophical issues implied by these positions, the novel merely took up the "spirit" of their problems: </div>
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"But the view that the external world is real, and that our senses give us a true report of it, obviously does not in itself throw much light on literary realism; since almost everyone, in all ages, has in one way or another been forced to some such conclusion about the external world by his own experience, literature has always been to some extent exposed to the same epistemological naïveté. Further, the distinctive tenets of realist epistemology, and the controversies associated with them, are for the most part much too specialized in nature to have much bearing on literature. What is important to the novel in philosophical realism is much less specific; it is rather the general temper of realist thought, the methods of investigation it has used, and the kinds of problems it has raised.<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftn13">[13]</a>" </div>
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The passage above is tantalizing, but ultimately unperspicuous. What are these general "problems" which according to Watt define the early modern spirit? And what was, finally the spirit raised, if not that informed by the very philosophical theses and questions that Watt just stated it would be folly to assume were taken up by the early novelists? What are these 'kinds' if not the set of epistemological directives that, according to Sellars, sent our ships into atrophying rocks? At this juncture, somewhat predictably, the question of individualism enters into the picture. For the 'general temper' in question will concern first and foremost the upsetting of the traditionalist avowal of Universals in favor of what Watt calls "the particulars of experience." </div>
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"The general temper of philosophical realism has been critical, anti-traditional and innovating; its method has been the study of the particulars of experience by the individual investigator, who, ideally at least, is free from the body of past assumptions and traditional beliefs; and it has given a peculiar importance to semantics, to the problem of the nature of the correspondence between words and reality. All of these features of philosophical realism have analogies to distinctive features of the novel form, analogies which draw attention to the characteristic kind of correspondence between life and literature which has obtained in prose fiction since the novels of Defoe and Richardson.<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftn14">[14]</a>" </div>
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But of course, the particulars of experience alluded to by Watt amount to nothing else but the experience of particulars, that is, the account of the life proper to singular individuals. Accordingly, Watt celebrates the greatness of the Cartesian method as having done away with mankind's blind trust in dogmatically prescribed forms and beliefs, a skepticism which the novel takes up in focusing on the primacy of an "...individual experience which is unique and therefore new.<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftn15">[15]</a>" Defoe's adoption of the first person auto-biographical form is then exemplarily seen as a timely analogue to the thematization of the Cartesian cogito, while Locke's call for the preponderance of experience through the givenness of sensibility seems adequate to a new narrative seeking to explore the experiential indoors of the individual. Finally, "The parallel here between the tradition of realist thought and the formal innovations of the early novelists is obvious: both philosophers and novelists paid greater attention to the particular individual than had been common before.<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftn16">[16]</a>" </div>
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For Watt, the alignment of realism and individualism, in philosophy and the novel, consists therefore in the secularist vector that it initiates for thought. The disruption of tradition, the avowal of critical distance with respect to textual forms, the raising of strong methodological questions (the epistemological, the meta-narrative...), the prime on experience… all become symptoms of a burgeoning incredulity slowly wearing away at the rocks of tradition. All of these gestures are ultimately aligned to a realism that tacitly affirms the creative potency of the subject, over and against the prescriptions of its time and culture. Watt summarizes: "The novel is thus the logical literary vehicle of a culture which, in the last few centuries, has set an unprecedented value on originality, on the novel; and it is therefore well named.<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftn17">[17]</a>" </div>
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But what about the properly philosophical question about the external world? Was this, as might be expected, too specific a demand or theme to concern the novelists, as Watt suggests? And even if this is so, might this exclusion or obviation in the appropriation of the term realism to describe the advent of the novel nevertheless not veil what perhaps sided the individualist turn of the modern period more specifically to forms of epistemological and metaphysical anti-realism, in the sense we outlined above? For it is clear that Watt's alignment of the early modern philosophers with the banner of epistemological realism is only adequate insofar as one considers the latter as part of the secularizing break that individualism implied with respect to traditional narrative forms. Nevertheless, as Quentin Meillassoux points out, what the modern philosophers enacted through the turn to the individual, was quite the opposite of a triumphant epistemological realism, a secure knowledge conquered by the methodological awakening of epistemology and later the critical method. Indeed, although Descartes' rationalism attempts to rescue thought from the moment of radical doubt and thereby defy the solitude of the cogito back onto the physical world and the Divine, the empiricist who plays so central a role (according to Watt) could not be said to uphold an epistemological realism, in the strict sense. Indeed, suffocated by skeptical uncertainties, this tradition initiates the epistemological anti-realism or correlationist vector towards idealism that finds its radicalization in Berkeley's subjectivation of primary properties (those thought by the rationalist to give knowledge of the external world), and reaches its apex in the great German Idealist tradition, from Kant to Hegel, and beyond<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftn18">[18]</a>. </div>
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Is it not also then cause for suspicion that the bulwark of the 18th and 19th century Idealist tradition plays no comparable role to that of the mistakenly dubbed epistemological realisms of the early rationalists and empiricists in setting up the stage and development for the early novel, according to Watt's genealogy? Yet, as we have been insinuating, the empiricist precursors to overt idealism had already portended a general skepticism against the possibility of reaching beyond our perception of the immediate present, as disclosed to experience. The loss of justification when securing the causal necessity said to obtain between events in the world rendered the postulate of natural law as precarious as the immediate existence of the outside world. Or, as Meillassoux condenses brilliantly apropos Hume and the problem of induction, the question raised by the empiricists was: “Can one establish that in identical circumstances, future successions of phenomena will always be identical to previous successions?” (Meillassoux: 2008, Pg. 85) Where knowledge about the natural world and its lawfulness started to seem ever more precarious, only the new order of individual, subjective law, could fill in the gap. </div>
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If the "general temper" that aligned philosophy and the novel was therefore to latch onto its individualism, then must we not accept the novel also inserted itself, perhaps unreflectively, into the history that leads from the correlationist skepticism about the viability of realism to the idealist's ultimately identification of mind and world? For, as we surmised above, the modern secularist break found in the critical interstices of our particular experience and our subjectivity the only domain to find shelter from the said ubiquity of tradition and dogma that passed in the name of universal law. As I read it, Sellars recommendation can be interpreted as waging critique against critique itself, refusing the individualism of correlationism or idealism, however implicitly assumed, as the only possible answers to traditionalist narrative forms. Is there no destiny for a progressive literary production, finally, other than to emancipate itself from all universalism in the name of an anthropocentric odyssey, making of the literary nothing but a confessionary box for the human? Or, put differently, what would a literature adequate to the thrust of a genuine philosophical realism be like? A realism, that is, that does not sacrifice thought to deserted islands to safeguard itself against traditionalism, but that might open us into the inhospitable outdoors under the imperative that, in the words of Ray Brassier, "thinking has interests that do not coincide with those of the living.<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftn19">[19]</a>" How to appropriate for the novel a contemporary sense of realism which would not stop at the secularizing amputation of traditionalist forms, but would push this secularizing vector further, setting itself against the anti-realist philosophical arena in relation to which it began, unsuspectingly to Watt? </div>
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To conclude I try to narrow down this predicament to tease out a possible new direction for the realist novel to be understood. To awaken and ask, in the spirit of Foucault's appropriation of the Kantian call for an Enlightenment in the present day "Quelle est mon actualité?<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftn20">[20]</a>" I believe this question might, once qualified to the domain of narrative production, be more perspicuously stated as: what is (or would be) a contemporary literary form? What is the truth of literature, if indeed it can be said to be concerned with truth at all, and if this truth is to be perhaps no longer plausibly tethered to narcissism of the individual thinker, but must rise, like Sellars says, to the intersubjective, and the social. How to advance such a vision without vitiating our realist impetus in the name of a social constructivism, instrumentalist pragmatism, and the threats that idealization presents at every corner? </div>
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<b>III - Towards a Contemporary Realist Literary Form </b></div>
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Further strands in the history of individualism can be traced through Michel Foucault's symptomatic diagnosis, dating back to the Hellenistic period, and extending as far as today. Far from being a nested modern phenomenon, Foucault highlights how individualism's ancient lineage relays through a 'family resemblance' three central and yet relatively autonomous (though often interconnected) ideas: the individualistic attitude, the avowal of private life, and the intensification of self-relations<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftn21">[21]</a>. From these at least the last two seem continuous with the phenomena Watt diagnoses apropos the modern period, while Foucault focuses on the disciplines of the third strand which concerned the emergent normative practices within the so-called "cultivation of the self", understood as the process whereby "...the art of existence- the techne tou biou in its different forms- is dominated by the principle that says one must "take care of oneself""<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftn22">[22]</a>. Foucault explicitly aligns this 'existential art' to modernity by way of adapting Kant's Enlightenment-call for a separation from the present, by way of the critical operation of the subject's rational faculties against dogma, constituting what he call the "art of the living"<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftn23">[23]</a>. </div>
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But whereas for Kant the call for an Enlightened care-of-self was transferred to the political domain by way of a "public use of reason", where the individual's critical capacity and the intersubjective domain coveted by Sellars would coalesce, Foucault proposes instead to move away from any such subjectivist epistemology into the hermeneutically attuned "historical ontology of ourselves.<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftn24">[24]</a>" For Kant, the practical, social and by extension political range of epistemological reflection can only be attained by critique insofar as the individual "finally learns to walk alone", perhaps in Dafoe's deserted islands, once pure reason is distilled in its empty form. For Foucault, as for Sellars, one begins rather in the populated ports of the socio-historical domain, while individuality is indeed not the condition but the result of emancipation and production, i.e. the subject is not the substantial 'given' that orchestrates revolution, but the material embodiment of a new socio-historical reality. Indeed, the disenchanting, securalizing force assigned to philosophy consists, if anything, in continuing "... to emphasize the extent to which a type of philosophical interrogation- one that simultaneously problematizes man's relation to the present, man's historical mode of being, and the constitution of the self as an autonomous subject- is rooted in the Enlightenment... not a faithfulness to doctrinal elements, but rather the permanent reactivation of an attitude- that is, of a philosophical ethos that could be described as a permanent critique of our historical era.<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftn25">[25]</a>" The specificity of a 'technics of self' that would be adequate to confront the biopolitical assimilation of individualist thought, must in this sense be adequate to a post-subjectivist or post-individualist attitude; critical thought is no longer anchored on the traditional (modern) vessels of the Cartesian cogito, or even in the undoubtedly more complex cruise of the Kantian transcendental subject. It must be, in Foucault's words, adequate to think of such a historical ontology of ourselves (rather than 'fundamental' ontology in Heidegger's sense, or critical-transcendental epistemology, in Kant's sense). </div>
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In the face of this diagnosis, the potency of the modern individualism avowed by the philosophers and early novelists would, in their critical solitude, remain amputated from the socio-political progressiveness avowed by the call for Enlightenment, the latter being only reflexively accessible via a futile exercise of hermeneutic acumen. Indeed, Foucault preemptively announces, like Heidegger before him, a furious critique of the modern attitude by virtue of which individualism, like epistemology and subjectivism, remains too metaphysically encumbered, too laden and latent with unquestioned dogmas, so as to perform the liberating function Kant and his predecessors expected from it. Only the contemporary liberation from the subject promises to be truly modern, to contest to the modern Ptolemaic counter-revolutionary individualist turn, and nod towards man's destitution from the centrality of experience. I would suggest furthermore that an additional step is necessary, whereby we distance ourselves from Foucault's residual anthropocentrism, captured in his overt ontologizing of human history. In my estimation, to denounce subjectivism by ontologizing the social is to trade one form of idealism for another, one for which once again being must be rendered correlative to thought, not only epistemically, but metaphysically. We may thus risk a first imperative for a coming realist literature: it must simultaneously capture the social dimension of knowing that is constitutively social, as Foucault insists, while not reifying this dimension ontologically. It must insist on the separation between thought and the world. This is precisely the alternative that is explored by Sellars' own philosophical project, which seeks to reconcile a social conception of knowledge as a practice, with a naturalist ontology. Yet the decisive first task, in what concerns the fictional narrative, must be to question the ubiquity of individualist doxa, which confusedly continues to elide both the social dimension knowing, and a reality whose interest for thought, as Brassier puts it, "...do not coincide with those of the living."</div>
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We can ask with Foucault: what happens when the very call for individual creativity, originality, and the ostracizing of tradition become the very instituted forms of tradition, or the very vehicles for repetition, like the subject was for philosophy in Sellars' and Heidegger's eyes? What to do when the novel form is delivered to the disempowering force of an all-too ubiquitous call for self-creation, as prescribed as it is disempowering, and where the individual, having exhausted its emancipatory potential, creates no further a stir than a parrot wilting as it aimlessly recites inherited phrases, flapping hopelessly in a cage? When we are struck by the 'literary mediocrity' that reeks "…particularly today; the belief that to make a novel, for instance, it suffices to have a personal matter at hand." and waging instead that "…writing is not the private matter of each one of us. It is to set oneself in a universal matter. Whether in the novel or in philosophy.<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftn26">[26]</a>" The difficulty consists in determining how to set oneself in such 'universal matters' without reinstituting the traditionalism of the pre-modern form, nor coming up short in the merely subjectivist attempt to transcend it with Kant and the moderns. Is it through the "hermeneutic ontology of ourselves" predicated by Foucault's tentative foretelling? The radicalized realism in the form of a "constructive deconstruction" proposed by Zadie Smith, which rummages in the cynical acceptance of our slumber amidst "inauthentic" expressions, only captured (but never escaped) through meta-narrative awareness? A fetishized attempt, that is, to avoid the tradition and the perils of cliché; to seek a moderate authenticity gauged in the negotiation of spectral "inauthenticities", and in spite of the deconstructionist precautions against the nostalgia for lost origins behind those who reify any sense of the 'authentic'<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftn27">[27]</a>? <br />
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In my estimation, Heideggerean-inspired patheticism does not seem too consoling. Indeed, can any constructive, positive alternative be found in a perspective that sees in an exacerbation of critique to the proto-nihilist conclusion "…that the world is what it is, and, moreover, that all our relations with it are necessarily inauthentic.<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftn28">[28]</a>"? One thing seems clear, as long as the critical awakening aroused by the modern venture is not met with an equally resilient potency for construction, thought is fatally destined to the reveries against the sacred, to the reification of the individual's incredulity, and to the precautionary cynicism that paralyzes any positive ambition as fatally sealed in advance. Of course, it would be folly to assume that the novel had to remain confined to the interests which defined its authors at its time of inception. Still, it must be possible to ask what would be a novel-form adequate to such an imperative be, if indeed, the novel remains the adequate form for such a contemporary Enlightenment? </div>
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As a possible prolegomena to a contemporary literature, Kazuo Ishiguro's <i>Never Let Me Go</i> provides a fitting statement of the unspoken distress provoked by our contemporary predicament, facing the limitations of the potency that individuality and subjective creation once harbored. Set in a dystopian post-WWII setting, Ishiguro narrates a society where generations of clones, seemingly indiscernible in their human features from their 'original' models, are sacrificed to become organ donors for the rest of the population. In the meantime, the isolated clone population is prepared for martyrdom in various 'educational institutes', where eventually they become caretakers or 'carers' for those clones who have already begun donating, around the age of thirty. Narrated through the memoirs of young protagonist Kathy, already aged thirty one, the story tells the destined short lives of three young friends as they are brought up together in one of the institutes, Hailsham, until they become close to ripe for their donations to begin. Short circuiting the memoir-form at the hands of a young girl, Ishiguro's disarming exhibition of childish and juvenile drama exacerbates the fatal urgency these 'recluses' must invariably face. </div>
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Yet Hailsham's peculiarity transpires by way of a superficial hospitability; the children are supervised to maintain good physical health, they grow to develop normal relationships, and are routinely encouraged to be creative, and artistically productive. They engage in seasonal 'exchanges' where they trade-in all sorts of self-made items for donated paraphernalia, and their best artistic work is taken up to be exhibited at "the Gallery", an unseen and mysterious exhibition of almost mythical status, presumably held to display the children's best artistic work. Ignoring their invariable fate, nevertheless, Kathy's narrative voice expresses the sense of urgency imposed by the institutional demand for subjective creation, drawing analogy to her social anxiety in the face of sexual awakening, as she proclaims "sex had got like “being creative” had been a few years earlier. It felt like if you hadn’t done it yet, you ought to, and quickly.<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftn29">[29]</a>" Short of being depicted as a reservoir for potential transgression, the call for artistic creation is represented from the start of the novel as somehow sedating and prescribed; however enthusiastically assumed, it amounts ultimately to nothing else than an additional routine which plays right into the predetermined fate that awaits them, rather than opening the gulf to shatter it. </div>
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As it turns out, we learn that the much vaunted "Gallery" really pertained to a futile attempt by the educators at Hailsham to prove to the invisibly distant civilian population outside the institutes that the clones were humans, that they were no different than the rest of humanity, exhibiting their artistic works as evidence for the authenticity of their subjective depth. Confronted by their nearing end in hopes of a mere 'deferral' for their donations, Kathy and her friend Tommy unearth the disarming truth from their former teacher, Miss Emily, who candidly confesses: "You said it was because your art would reveal what you were like. What you were like inside. That’s what you said, wasn’t it? Well, you weren’t far wrong about that. We took away your art because we thought it would reveal your souls. Or to put it more finely, we did it to prove you had souls at all.<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftn30">[30]</a>” </div>
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Stripped helpless before the steady track towards his death, Tommy breaks down in an outburst of rage, just like the ones he experienced since he was a child as a reaction to being powerlessly bullied. The novel presents no fitting consolation for the reader; indeed, it refuses to reify the clones' evident humanity into a latent source for revolutionary political power, or their artistic creation as a potentially transformative engagement to be channelized through creativity and defiance. Instead, the characters for the most part seem to accept their fate, against the background of a largely anonymous State-power which has reduced them to sacrificial vessels for a population that is likewise invisible. In an epiphanic moment towards the book's conclusion, the three characters, reunited after separation, decide to visit a fabled beach where an old boat famously lies shipwrecked, deserted on the shore. Seemingly unsupervised, the characters' dialog does not offer any subsiding fantasies about escape, salvation, but merely negotiate over their proximate demise. Kathy proclaims, fatalistically: "“We’ve seen the boat,” I said, “but now we’ve got to get back.<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftn31">[31]</a>" Ishiguro's virtue resides precisely in avoiding any palliatives to the discomforting powerlessness that blankets over once the kernel of rebellious potency and individual creativity have been assimilated to the biopolitical machinery. A State, that is, no longer confined by borders or forced to tame the unruly tendencies, since even the vital élan has become cynically decomposed, nothing but the host for pathetic exhibitionism. The critical purchase of thought achieved by rendering explicit the trodden capacity of subjectivity before power is ridiculed and reduced to nothing but an implicit surrender; the invisibility of the novel's dampening world only matched by the deafness of its unobtrusive silence; the moral indifference of the perpetrators only matched by the incapacity to even think of another world. The shipwreck no longer signals a triumphant survival or arrival, it underlines the indifference of a world, as Brassier describes, truly indifferent to the interests of the living. </div>
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At the deepest level, the novel refuses even to fetishize hope in the form of ignorance: rather than having the donor-carer system be a secretive operation of the State at the margins of an unsuspecting population, it is unabashedly public and accepted. Even before the resounding evidence of their artistic works, it is tacitly conveyed that both the political powers and population remain undisturbed in unison. The end of the book pushes the predicament faced by the characters to its limit, as it deflates the last thread of hope when, in a morbidly pathetic climax, Kathy risks insinuating to Tommy that his regular raging outbursts must have entailed that he had at least knowledge of what lied ahead of them, to which he sternly responds: "Don't think so Kath. No, it was always just me. Me just being an idiot.<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftn32">[32]</a>" The timid laughter that accompanies Tommy's sobering yet somber comment snatches any remnant of hope in the reader to find some final comfort, a reservoir of meaning or in the character's intuition, thought or memory, trivializing the power of thought to its extreme: 'They might die, but at least one of them knew!', this is precisely the consolation that never arrives, and lends the book its discomforting radicality. The book's concluding line depicts the tragic junction of resolve and hopelessness, as Kathy yields confessing: "... I wasn't sobbing or out of control. I just waited a bit, then turned out of the car, to drive off to wherever I was supposed to be.<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftn33">[33]</a>" </div>
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It is to Ishiguro's tremendous credit to avoid the pitfalls of supplanting a facile heroism of invention adequate to the modern ideal of self-creation for the provincialist apologies of the pre-modern lifestyle. However fatalist in its predicament, Ishiguro's plot does not hesitate to embrace a hyper-objectification of subjectivity, before which the apologies for the irreducibility of the human, of the subject, of life, cannot but seem exhausted philosophical shoptalk at best, and quasi-religious consolation at worst. It reckons the brutal truth that thought faces once it disowns and re-articulates itself within the objective efficacy of a worldview for which the reveries for man have been assimilated to a higher-order normative power, a nameless economy for which the individual matters less than nothing.<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftn34">[34]</a> </div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftnref1">[1]</a> SELLARS, Wilfrid, Kant and Pre-Kantian Themes: Lectures by Wilfrid Sellars, Ridgeview Publishing, Pg. 7. </div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftnref2">[2]</a> DAFOE, William, Robinson Crusoe, Pg. 45. </div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftnref3">[3]</a> SELLARS, Wilfrid, Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man in Science, Perception, and Reality, Ridgeview Publishing, Pg. 16. </div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftnref4">[4]</a> WATT, Ian, The Rise of the Novel, Peregrine, 1956, Pg. 13-15. </div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftnref5">[5]</a> And although this interruption with traditionalist prescriptions was certainly not limited to the Anglophone context of the novel, the propriety of the latter seems to lie in its progressive refusal to borrow from historical narratives of the past to examine the present. Thus, although Cervantes' Quixote was also clearly challenging and mocking the narrative conventions of the time (the interruption of academicist and scholastic conventions; the demand of great poetry as prefacing the works, the saturation of references...), its plot was thematically tied to the traditional mythology of chivalry even if, it must be accepted, to do so with unprecedented critical and ironic distance. </div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftnref6">[6]</a> Ibid. </div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftnref7">[7]</a> Ibid. </div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftnref8">[8]</a> The term is Quentin Meillassoux's. See his After Finitude, translated by Ray Brassier, Continuum, Pg. 9-11 </div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftnref9">[9]</a> Watt, Pg. 23. </div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftnref10">[10]</a> For a historical account see Wilfrid Sellars, Kant and Pre-Kantian Themes. </div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftnref11">[11]</a> MEILLASSOUX, QUENTIN , After Finitude, translated by Ray Brassier, Continuum, Pg. 9-11 </div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftnref12">[12]</a> In spite of this obvious difference in key, it should be apparent that although epistemological realism entails metaphysical realism, the observe is not the case. For to say that the external world is knowable implies that there is a world so as to be known; while one might think in turn that such a world exists or could exist but is nevertheless unknowable. This amounts to saying that epistemological anti-realism does not commit one to metaphysical anti-realism: it is perfectly possible to say one cannot know of the world even if one claims that it exists. </div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftnref13">[13]</a> Watt, Pg. 34. </div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftnref14">[14]</a> Ibid. Pg. 7 </div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftnref15">[15]</a> Ibid, Pg. 8. </div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftnref16">[16]</a> Ibid. Pg 13 </div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftnref17">[17]</a> Ibid. </div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftnref18">[18]</a> This vector eventually leads properly to the Romantic privileging of aesthetic production over rational cognition (Schiller, Nietzsche...) that would coincide more properly with the avowal of individual creation that Watt finds in complicity with the rise in novel. The philosophical background sets this stage: Kant had agreed with Hume in taking sensibility to constitute an amorphous manifold which is then formed by mental associations, but proceeds to define a transcendental structure of pure reason that gives the necessity sought by Hume in the outside world. For Kant, sensibility is passive, and although is given under the minimal forms of space and time, he agrees with Hume in that the manifold of sense lacks determinate content; perception yields nothing but a 'bundle of sensations'. This is where the categorical work of the understanding operates thus. Objectual determinacy, which defines the Natural field of causation, constrains the aesthetic by synthesizing it with the understanding (into the pure unity of apperception). Thus, in the end, for Kant, freedom is paradoxically that which emerges from within the constraint to universality, as a kind of pure adequation to reason. The amorphousness of experience did not fall prey to skeptical interference insofar as it preserved the rationalist ideation. </div>
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What the Romantic aestheticist avowal of feeling and sensibility does is to dislodge the residual rationalism from Kant's idealist project. Practical reason is reserves a space for action for the act of pure freedom as that which is 'purposeless', that defies all natural 'law' or rational synthesis. Thus the avowal of the dictum that life is 'purposiveness without purpose' comes to disavow the categorical imperative with a kind of vital imperative. If we take this back to the incipient rise of the novel; the ideals of individual creation found its definitive expression during this time. The sensible particularity of the individual affirmed itself in exception to the universal constriction of Universal reason, delivering thought to the pure will, which can assert in the form of creation the determinations of reason, rather than submission. The amorphousness of sensibility the gulf constitutes a proper excess to the determinate constraints of reason and nature. From here it is not difficult to see how the category of the aesthetic has been reified as a political antidote to dogmatisms, and how such a view may have influenced literary production. </div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftnref19">[19]</a> BRASSIER, Ray, Nihil Unbound, Pallgrave, 2007, Pg. 3. </div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftnref20">[20]</a> Although we might be tempted to translate Foucault's ' actualité" with the English "present", and though it certainly asks about the timeliness of the question, I think 'actuality' preserves the philosophical contrast to 'potentiality' that is pregnant in Foucault's writing. The idea is to develop those potentials thus, to bring into the present those individuations which have hitherto remain unactualized by asking which ones define one's temporal situatedness. This tension is more palpable in his references to Kant, made explicit during his 1982-1983 lectures, where he asks "Quel est le champ actuel des experiencés possibles.", which we might thereby translate as "What is the actual terrain of possible experiences." Le Gouvernement de soi et des autres: Cours au Collège de France 1982-1983, ed. FrançoisEwald, Alessandro Fontana, and Frédéric Gros (Paris: Gallimard, 2008) </div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftnref21">[21]</a> FOUCAULT, Michel, Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, UMP, Pg. 34. </div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftnref22">[22]</a> Ibid. </div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftnref23">[23]</a> I do not intend to revisit the arduous history that Foucault details in his text, but rather propose to assess directly the ways in which individualism, in the abovementioned senses, become configured from the modern period onwards, before suggesting a potential haven where the contemporary novel becomes implicated within this tradition, as a way to complicate the story set by Watt. </div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftnref24">[24]</a> Ibid. 44 </div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftnref25">[25]</a> FOUCAULT, Michel, What is Enlightenment?, pp 7. </div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftnref26">[26]</a> DELEUZE, Gilles, Abecedary, H for History of Philosophy , translation by author, available in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHJna7X29bs </div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">
SMITH, Zadie, Two Paths for the Novel, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2008/nov/20/two-paths-for-the-novel/?pagination=false </div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftnref28">[28]</a> Ibid. </div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftnref29">[29]</a> Ishiguro, Never Let me Go, Vintage, 2006, Pg. 136. </div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftnref30">[30]</a> Ibid, 201. </div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftnref31">[31]</a> Ibid, 178. </div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftnref32">[32]</a> Ibid, 204. </div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftnref33">[33]</a> Ibid. 278.</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Downloads/Parallel%20Shipwrecks.docx#_ftnref34">[34]</a> For an exemplar of how this dialectical negotiation between the manifest and scientific images of man in the world within a literary context, see Scott Bakker's stellar Neuropath, Tor Books, 2010.</div>
Daniel Sacilottohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06107600124995445921noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6580039155018603814.post-20629745532543218532013-04-25T18:53:00.001-07:002013-05-01T00:57:09.248-07:00Funky Matters<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXXZrHAhN265nyAIzV6gcZYTiABQLboKfBNtNxUQdrSNTau2ldeEGnUGTP8vwlNapTPgJxkspIruH1sjfapap6lqysQIlOnYU22WMh_CTf3Lvj3i1v7KZbeMKRNFHm2TNHUJ7-ukqxwNAm/s1600/Dr_Jason_Wakefield_PhD_(Cantab.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXXZrHAhN265nyAIzV6gcZYTiABQLboKfBNtNxUQdrSNTau2ldeEGnUGTP8vwlNapTPgJxkspIruH1sjfapap6lqysQIlOnYU22WMh_CTf3Lvj3i1v7KZbeMKRNFHm2TNHUJ7-ukqxwNAm/s640/Dr_Jason_Wakefield_PhD_(Cantab.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;"><br />FUNKY MATTERS: </span></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><span style="font-size: large;">- Jason Wakefield, Funky Bubblers, and Avello Publishing Press -</span><br />_________________________________________________</span></b></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> It has been a while since
I have written anything here, but I'm happy to report this has been for a good reason. I have been
mostly occupied writing a monograph-piece that is now clocking at around 86k
words. I will post some information on this ongoing project shortly, but I wanted to
use this opportunity to talk about something else. Something real funky. A stinker in fact. </span></div>
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</span>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">About a year ago I was contacted by the likes of a certain fellow by the name of
Jason Wakefield whom I knew nothing about. He contacted me first through facebook, and upon seeing that he was friends
with many in my philosophy-circles, I accepted his friend request. Why not? Shortly after, I would
find out that Mr.Wakefield ran the cross-disciplinary journal 'Avello', which in turn was the offspring of some publishing agency by that same name. Needless to say, at the time all of this was unbeknownst to me. I was surprised to see many respectable folk
listed in the editorial board, however, including Adrian Johnston and Catherine
Malabou. And the journal claimed to be affiliated with Cambridge University. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://avellopublishing.wordpress.com/?s=editorial&search=Go"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">http://avellopublishing.wordpress.com//?s=editorial&search=Go</span></a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">More surprising still, Mr.Wakefield's facebook profile revealed that he was
also related to a strange organization that went by the name of 'Funky Bubblers
Entertainment'. And just by judging from the photos, boy, did it look entertaining alright. Boats, champagne,
electronic music, and overt womanizing. Mr. Wakefield, hereby The Funky One,
sure knows how to party, and unabashedly professes a love for beautiful women. He even thanks Pamela Anderson in his last monograph. But we'll get back to that.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://funkybubblersentertainment.webs.com/"></a><a href="http://funkybubblersentertainment.webs.com/">http://funkybubblersentertainment.webs.com/</a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As if all of this wasn't enough gold, I soon came
to learn that The Funky One went also by the name of DJ Luga, and was
responsible for some musical concoctions whose qualities I'm in no position to
comment on. I will say that he got me hooked on Rihanna's Closer, for what it's worth:</span></div>
<br />
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</span>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&ved=0CEIQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fdjluga.podomatic.com%2F&ei=V8V5UZHPOI20igL30YHYDg&usg=AFQjCNEqORdM6Z1SmwQGwoEt0Xvb8aCJcw&bvm=bv.45645796,d.cGE</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Here the ordeal turns sour, however.</span></div>
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</span>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> After having no interactions that I can remember, I was approached by The
Funky One through Facebook, July of last year (2012). He cordially invited me to
participate in the upcoming issue of his journal, which was about to take off, including contributions by some of the distinguished folk I cited above. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">At the time, I thought yet again, "Why not?", and so I proceeded to send him a few
candidate papers that I had amassed from my first year of grad school, and which I offered to sculpt into a publishable piece for his journal. At the time, I expressed preference for a
paper on Lacan that I had been working on for some time, and which I eventually
made available through the blog. Here is the email I sent The Funky One, Friday
August 3rd, 2012:</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">______________________________________</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">From: Daniel
Sacilotto <supercalme hotmail.com=""></supercalme></span></div>
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span>
<div style="color: #444444; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Subject: Papers</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #444444;"></span></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #444444;">To: avellopublishing@yahoo.co.uk</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #444444;">
</span>
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #444444;"></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #444444;">Date: Friday, 3 August, 2012, 4:12</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #444444;">
</span>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Dear
Jason,</span></div>
<div style="color: #444444; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Here are some candidate papers. They are all long, and fairly technical. They
are not formatted for publication yet, so do let me know if any one of these
fits your expectations so I can go ahead and make the appropriate
edition. </span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #444444;"></span>
</span>
<br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Best,</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #444444;">
</span><span style="color: #444444;"></span></span>
<br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Dan</span></div>
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
<o:p></o:p></span>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">____________________________________________________</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> The attachments included
four papers of mine, including the Lacan piece that I mentioned above. In short
notice, The Funky One requested that I send him a bibliography for that paper,
and said it would go through an editorial board peer-review process, as
expected. I agreed, only to receive, barely a week later, an e-mail
detailing which revisions to make. So, everything in being in order, I
proceeded to work on editing the paper in question during the ensuing weeks,
preparing it for publication. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And then it happened. All of a sudden, on September 7th, I was tagged on a
facebook thread made by The Funky One himself, announcing the online publication of
Avello's latest issue. Slightly perplexed, I went to see if they just went
ahead and published the Lacan essay without the due revision I had been working on, and in spite of rejoinders sent to me. But no. None of that, folks. Instead I saw <i>another</i> paper of mine listed and uploaded there, a paper which I had sent originally but not edited for him, nor authorized him to publish in the form it was. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> I immediately contacted
Wakefield to express my perplexity, to which he responded by claiming that a
'misunderstanding' had taken place. After talking a bit with Paul Ennis, and consulting with
Jodi Dean over facebook, I became increasingly suspicious of The Funky One's antics. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Still, I decided to let the whole matter slide, since I had no real problem with that paper
being disseminated, even if I would have not authorized its publication had I been consulted. Instead, I simply
decided to avoid further professional contact with The Funky One, and limited
myself to giggling over the many-a-thousand wondrous funky bubbles that popped in his facebook wall:
endless praises for Cambridge University, shameless self-publicity of all sorts for his 'work' and his journal, automated responses to every query raised to him, and lots of happy times partying.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> With all this in mind, and having more serious matters to attend to, I would
have been merry just to forget about The Funky One's unethical slide. Times of
peace were upon us. But when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> A few months later, towards the
end of the year 2012, I was startled to hear yet another issue of the journal announced and, shortly after, published. This time, alas, I was not invited to participate. Boo-hoo, right? </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Little did I
know, I was invited all along; an invitation I couldn't really refuse. For I was fortunate enough to catch my name
evoked by Mr.Wakefield, publicizing an essay of mine, in the wall of my friend
Nick Srnicek. To add to my confusion, the title of the paper attributed to me
was totally unrecognizable: "<i>Badiou and
Brassier: Conditions with Problems?</i>"</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://avellopublishing.wordpress.com/journal/volume-2-issue-1/contents/"></a><a href="http://avellopublishing.wordpress.com/journal/volume-2-issue-1/contents/">http://avellopublishing.wordpress.com/journal/volume-2-issue-1/contents/</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> If things aren't superlatively clear, allow to be more blunt. The
Funky One just went ahead and published <i>another</i>
of the <i>drafts</i> I originally sent him,
without consulting me whatsoever. Needless to say, at no point did I authorize the
publication of that piece, let alone for the title to be changed to whatever he
thought might serve to lure an impressionable demographic. Nor would have I allowed for the publication
to take place had I been asked at that point; not in Avello nor anywhere else
for that matter. The piece in question was no longer representative of my
thinking at the time, nor was it in publishable form. </span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Let me make this
absolutely clear: I did not authorize the publication of that piece, nor was I
consulted about it.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> So,
I immediately responded to the thread where I had been tagged, instructing
Jason to take the piece down, and warning him that I would press charges were
he to use my work from then on without my consent. Predictably, I got another
automated message from him, claiming for yet another 'misunderstanding'. To this day, the essay has
not been taken down.</span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><o:p></o:p>
</span>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> But
it never ends with The Funky One, sadly. He just published his first "book",
under the very Avello Publishing Press he proudly proclaims himself CEO, of course. He even sells it through Amazon, and plagues everyone's walls with robotic prescriptions to buy it:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Question-Non-Methodology-ebook/dp/B00CC6UKM8"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">http://www.amazon.com/The-Question-Non-Methodology-ebook/dp/B00CC6UKM8</span></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;"> </span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Now, I am fairly congenial
to cross-disciplinary exchanges, and actively encourage the mating of different
forms of thought. I can even get behind the wild partying gig; we could sure
use some funk and bubbles, and less boring soirees, methinks. There is a place for a
Funky Bubbler among us, even if, alas, it seems that the funk has indeed taken him
a bit too far at times:</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Cambridge/Drunken-attack-lands-student-in-jail.htm"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Cambridge/Drunken-attack-lands-student-in-jail.htm</span></a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I have no comments on The Funky One's less successful ventures. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> But boy oh boy, it just has to be said...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It is simply incomprehensible to me that thinking of this caliber could
pass for 'philosophy':</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> "<i>Hamlet </i>is central to Deleuze's philosophical
project in <i>Difference &
Repetition </i>because of this universal
question of Being.9This ontological questioning is shared by Alain Badiou in a
very different way in his <i>Being
and Event.10 </i>Badiou thinks about
non-being in a more mathematical way than Deleuze. Meillassoux's use of
Cantor's mathematics is a clear influence of Badiou's teaching. Indeed Badiou
wrote the preface for <i>After
Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency. </i>Heidegger's central preoccupation with
being and non-being, was to answer the question of what is <i>is</i>, as <i>is </i>is
part of the verb <i>to
be, </i>which in turn is obviously
the verb of being. This is the crux of Hamlet's question 'to be, or not to be?'
Two contrasting sets of metaphors structure this particular soliloquy. Being
impedes and hampers life as an actively hostile mortal coil, whilst non-being through
death is a consummation of this struggle through a reiterated sleep. Hamlet
uses the pronouns 'we' and 'us' later in this soliloquy, alongside the
utilisation of the impersonal infinitive, which opens up the question of being
to us all as a universal question. For some analytical thinkers, Heidegger's
answer to Hamlet, may seem like a pointless querying of an absolute
presupposition, but for Badiou, perhaps being and non-being can only be
re-investigated through Heidegger's ontology."</span></div>
</blockquote>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> I mean, this spiel makes Latour litanies look like a groceries list. It's as if Meillassoux's factiality suddenly obtained, producing an inexplicable amalgam of senseless blather, a seemingly unruly tirade only cogent under the hypothesis of a chaosmos. This is the philosopher's version of The Room folk.<br /><br /> Anyway, to wrap up, those of you being contacted by The Funky One are
thus advised not to fall to his trap. The guy is a conman; a hilarious one, to
be sure, but a conman nevertheless. To this day I have not been able to exactly
figure out what's his affiliation with Cambridge University, nor whether he in
fact holds a philosophy doctorate, as he claims. Even less have I been able to figure out if
indeed Johnston, Malabou, or any of the other professors allegedly in his editorial board are even
aware of this guy's existence, let alone whether they participate in this charade. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Now he's pervasively publicizing the forthcoming
Avello Conference; and I would just encourage those of you in his periphery to
avoid it like the plague. Or maybe just go and see what the Hell is going on with this guy? I'd be weary about getting the sour end of the funky bubbles and ending with some brain damage.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">http://postimg.org/image/u0k4r3jn5/</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But, in the end, it is his philosophy that is ethically irrefutable, not the man, nor his doings. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It's all about
DJ Luga, indeed. </span></div>
Daniel Sacilottohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06107600124995445921noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6580039155018603814.post-10875059297056642052012-09-11T19:39:00.001-07:002012-09-20T04:40:53.444-07:00Lacan, Zizek, Badiou: Why Sellars Matters in These Debates?<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;"><br />LACAN, BADIOU, ZIZEK:</span></b></div>
<b></b><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><b><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;">Why Sellars Matters In These Debates?</span></b></b></div>
<b>
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;"></span></b>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;"><b><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;">______________________</span></b></span></b></div>
<b><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;">
</span></b>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />As a response to my last post about Zizek's
claims to realism, and my latest post on the theoretical cogency of
psychoanalysis, I have been receiving some critical commentary, all roughly
along the same lines. Characteristically, by my friends Levi Bryant, and Javier Urbina, all defend Lacan from my criticisms. As far as I can
gauge, the main criticisms are that:</span></div>
<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">a) Lacan, and by extension Zizek, are not
interested in a notion of the Real like that of philosophers. Therefore that
the questions about realism raised by people like Meillassoux or Brassier,
concerning our access to the in-itself, are not to be conflated with Lacan's
own questions.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span><br />
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</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">b) Badiou, similarly, has no analogous concept
of the Real as impossible, but rather of Being as inconsistent, which is
radically different, and should not be identified.</span></div>
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</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Levi wrote the following:</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
<o:p></o:p></span>
<br />
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</div>
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</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"You
treated psychoanalytic practice in terms of knowledge, presupposing a set of
transcendent criteria for evaluating it, missing the entire point that the
psychoanaytic clinic is a site of evental truth and a truth-procedure for the
analysand that undergoes it. The psychoanalytic clinic is not after
*knowledge*, nor does the analyst *have knowledge*. The psychoanalytic clinic
is after that which *escapes* knowledge and language. This is what the term
"subject" means in psychoanalysis. Subject is precisely that which is
in excess of any linguistic category and that through this excess generates a
series of signifying effects as language strives to gentrify it."</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">In private, a friend wrote the
following:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"Dear Daniel,</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I just read your post on realism and your critique of Zizek which
is very good and makes an excellent point about how Lacanians (and Zizek) in
general are trying to enter into the debates started by the speculative
realists/materialists/etc. I have a few questions though, I hope you don't my
launching directly into criticism.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">Perhaps the real -subject/object issues are not really the same
between the Lacanians and, say, Brassier. This is one of those situations where
the question already defines the answer. This is ultimately Zizek's error but I
think you err precisely in taking him too seriously. To be specific, Lacan's
Real occurs within an economy of the symbolic and imaginary: the barred subject
faced with objet a does not correspond to those discussions of the real being
addressed in realism, neither ontologically nor epistemologically. The legacy
of structuralism is right here: the price we pay for the generation of semantic
distribution is the alienation from the real.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">Zizek's point precisely is that it is this precise exchange that
is the real. I would disagree here with your paragraph that starts "put
simply". If Zizek and other Lacanians want to argue that the rule is
precisely a fracture within discourse itself (barred S <-> a) and that is
what truth is: well obviously there is no real conversation to be had with
Sellars, Brassier, etc. We are talking about different things.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">Now we get to your brief comment about Badiou. I would say that
the matheme does not touch the real in Badiou because there is no real. Being,
yes. Truth, yes. Knowledge, yes. No real. What is more important is that
despite all the differences between Badiou and the Lacanians, they share on
this point that you are criticizing. That is: for Badiou the very possibility
of ontology is rooted in the inaccesibility of the unity that underlies the
Parmenidean condition in its original meaning: what is not one, is not. By
arguing that the one is not, mathematics doesn't really "touch" the
real. What it does is fully flesh out what is being "not one". This
is a version, again, of Zizek's point, which locates being (if we want to call
that "real") on its incapacity to be grasped "adequately"
or "qua ens".</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Having said this about Badiou, I want to empahsize again that I do
not think there is a real in Badiou nor do I think that he can play any
significant role in these discussions. The problem is that they talk past each
other.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Let me know what you think of these brief reflections.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Hope you are well.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">Despite the pertinence of these rejoinders, I
think my original criticisms, if read carefully, anticipate these potential
rebuttals, and show that nevertheless the indicated problems remain for these
thinkers. But I thought I might use this as a way to clarify what I think is
precisely at stake in the axis composed by Zizek, Lacan and Badiou, in spite of
their differences. Predictably, Hegel
turns out to play a somewhat important role here.</span><br />
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</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span>
<br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I - Zizek and Lacan: Why
it's not just a different question<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As indicated above, the main problem both Levi
and my friend indicated apropos my reading of Lacan and Zizek, is that I
illegitimately import standards proper to the concept of the Real in
contemporary realist debates, and which are enveloped by ontological and
epistemological concerns, with Lacan's psychoanalytic concepts. Levi targets the
residual concern with representation in my account; my other friend, in turn, simply
indicated that the Real couldn't be thought of as pertaining to a
mind-independent reality, and therefore couldn't be judged in accordance to
standards set by philosophers in regards to that problematic. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">With regards to Lacan and Zizek, I think a few observations are in order. I certainly agree in that Lacan does not<i> want</i> to formulate
his thinking about the Real in epistemological, or indeed ontological, terms.
Nevertheless, I think it is important to distinguish between what an author
says they are doing and what they effectively end up doing; or put differently,
between what they want to say and what they commit themselves to saying. I
recently wrote in more extensive length why I think that, in spite of Lacan's
'anti-philosophical' attempts to wrest the theory of desire that psychoanalysis
produces away from classical ontologico-epistemological concerns, he ends up
effectively cornered into a sort of methodological quandary, that results from
the elision of representation. Finally, I think that this quandary demands, in spite of its protestations to the contrary, from us to read Lacan as moving within a philosophical register, which indeed implicitly relies on representation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> With that said, I think that
Lacan's account of the Real is certainly ambiguous: on the one hand, we have
the structuralist adherence to the immanence of the signifier, and therefore of
the articulation of desire between the imaginary and the symbolic. On the other hand, we
have a conception of the Real as that which resists symbolization, and of the
recalcitrance of Real desire to the order of the signifier. But how to attempt
to give an account of this separation between the Real and the
symbolic-imaginary, without thereby ontologizing desire, in its structural
coupling between the barred subject and the Real object? My contention is that,
beginning from Seminar XI onwards, Lacan begins to flirt with the idea that
mathematization allows precisely for this kind of operation. On the one hand,
as Russell had already noted, the <i>matheme</i> subtracts itself
from the order of the symbolic, because it is not inherently meaningful. Thus,
we cannot 'translate' mathematical formulas or their syntactical composition into
ontological, or epistemological terms. Of course, for Lacan, this is precisely a
crucial requirement in dislodging psychoanalysis from (ego)-psychology, which
continues to reify the subject as an individual, and which must therefore
tacitly remain encumbered in the imaginary-symbolic envelopment of the
signifier, and of the symptom. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">What the <i>matheme</i> offers, in turn, is a non-translatable formal
ideography recalcitrant to such operations. But the question then becomes about
how we can distinguish between the Real of the mathematic inscription, and that
of the Real phenomenon or 'Real desire' that psychoanalysis is in the process
of providing a theory of. And my claim is that this forces Lacan, and
consequently Zizek, into a methodological quandary. On the one hand, it is
clear that he cannot avow for the separation between Real inscription and Real
phenomenon without reactivating the distinction between representing and
represented, signifier and signified, that marks epistemological discourse. On
the other hand, it seems clear that if psychoanalysis is to be a <i>theory</i> of
desire, rather than just another phantasy, circulating around its own proper
impossible object, the formalizations it carries out and the claims it makes <i>about</i> desire
cannot be identical to the Real desire that the analyst is set to deal with in
practice. This is because if we conflate the generality of the
statements/formulas with the analytic transference with the analysand, then the
theoretical practice that psychoanalysis embodies, and the clinical practice,
become conflated. But short of accounting for this separation, it renders suspect the theoretical status of psychoanalysis, purporting to have done away with representation.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
So the question becomes: what is the relation between these three crucial
levels:</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
a) The Real of desire, in its structural coupling between the barred subject,
and the object-cause.</div>
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">b) The <i>claims</i> of psychoanalysis, that are still
formulated by way of the signifier.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">c) The<i> formulas</i> of psychoanalysis, that
formalize the structures described by those claims.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And I think here is where Lacan must tacitly rely on both an
ontologization of Real desire, on the one hand, and an epistemological account
of the relation between the </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">claims</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> that psychoanalysis makes, the formulas it produces, and the Real phenomena that these claims describe. For the </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">matheme</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> would
be truly 'meaningless', and couldn't count as a formalization of </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">anything</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">,
unless psychoanalytic discourse and claims held a prerogative when describing the general
structure of desire. But what sets this prerogative for psychoanalysis,
considering that Lacan insists that there is no 'meta-language', and that, like
structuralism demands, the signifier does never reach out onto things, but
defers invariably to other signifiers, eliding any representationalism? And by
the same token, how are we to understand the difference between the formal
reality of desire and the subject, which 'slides through the signifying chains'
tethered to the formal vacuity of the impossible object, and the formalization
of psychoanalytic claims? My position is then that although Lacan wants to say
that 'Real desire' preconditions its objectification in discourse, it is
actually the objectification of desire in psychoanalytic discourse which
conditions the reification of desire as Real, and the </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">matheme</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> as
adequate to its formalization. These are the relevant passages from my paper, which
begin by a statement from Lacan, and which the reader should obviate in case they have read the paper in the past, or if they so wish to forward to the conclusions:</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">______________________________</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"There is a fundamental ambiguity in the use we make of the
word 'desire'. Sometimes we objectify it- and we have to do so, if only to talk
about it. On the contrary sometimes we locate it as the primitive term, in
relation to any objectification." (S2, pp. 225) This ambiguity is not
trivial whatsoever. For if desire must be objectified in order to be spoken
about, in what sense is it any different than any of the other terms that
philosophers or scientists purportedly use to describe phenomena of all kinds,
desire included? How are we to understand the claim that desire is
simultaneously of the order of signifier and that which conditions any objectification
whatsoever? How to address the Real of the libidinal subject and the Real of
the object if, like Zizek insists, "There is no ontology of the Real: the
very field of ontology, of the positive order of Being the Real are mutually
exclusive: The Real is the immanent blockage or impediment of the order of
being, what makes the order of Being inconsistent..." (LTN; Pg.
958). <span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> This problem is particularly
acute: Lacan insists that desire cannot be ontologised. But then what is it
that psychoanalytic theory is doing when they 'objectify' desire "if only
to speak of it"? How could such an act constitute anything but the making
of an ontological valence? Despite his precautions, by flattening the
symbolically enveloped epistemological relation between knowing individual and
known object into the relation between the Real of the unconscious subject and
the impossible object, Lacan seems to be effectively ontologizing the relation
between the desire and its object-cause. The deflection of the transcendental
relation between words and things at the level of the symbolic is coupled to a
reification of the relation between the desiring subject and desired object, at
the point where the Real of both becomes indiscernible. The Real of desire
appears thereby as the ontologization of the relation between the Real subject
and the Real object, as the distinction between them becomes a nullity. Desire
as precondition for symbolic-ideal objectification is the reification of the
transcendental correlation between subject and object, by reducing it to a
formal difference allegedly intractable by conceptual means. For psychoanalysis
to be a theory of desire, it's symbolically enveloped statements must
conditioned by Real desire, rather than statements being the condition for mere
'talk' about the Real. For the latter would merely duplicate the philosophical
'myths' in question.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Yet to claim that desire is not just one more signifier in the commerce
of the symbolic, but rather the enabling condition for signification and
objectivation, is once again to reactivate the relation between signifier and
signified, only this time in terms of desire as Real precondition for objects
understood as linguistically individuated posits. In other words,
although Lacan has done away with the transcendental relation of reference at
the level of the symbolic, he still depends on such connection between the Real
of desire, in its formal vacuity suspended in the subject-object polarity, as
the condition of possibility for the symbolic individuation of the signifier.
This is to covertly ontologise desire as an Aristotelian 'first mover', as the
'ground of being', as Ineffable Being stripped even of the honor of the name.
And since symbolic objectification occurs on condition of the Real
unobjectifiable cause, it follows that even the theory of desire, that
psychoanalysis purports to advance, is conditioned on separation between the
claims and formulas about desire, and desire itself. In other words, if
Lacan claims that the objectification of desire relates to a pre-objectified
desire, then he has reactivated the referential relation between signifier and
signified, sign and referent, in the dichotomy between objectual desire-for-us
and unobjectifiable desire-in-itself. This surrenders Lacan to a bizarre,
libidinal paradox of Kantianism. But to do that he must once again rehabilitate
not just the ontological valence of desire as such, but the epistemological
valence of the relation between desire's objectification in language and the
depths of the desire that it bridges us to in the act of theorizing it, that
is, in the making of claims and formulas that express it or which are about it.
It is impossible to understand Lacan's claim that desire is a 'precondition'
for its objectification unless one reenacts this philosophical cunning of the
original psychoanalytic coup against philosophy and science. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">...</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">First, a possible answer
is to leave it open that psychoanalysis may gain traction with respect to Real desire,
via the objectification of the signifier. That is, the signifier might grant
access to desire as an <i>unknowable</i>,
unobjectifiable, but nevertheless <i>thinkable</i>
condition of possibility for signification (a variety of 'weak correlationism'<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/Philosophy/Personal%20works/Dear%20Tzu.docx#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[1]</span></span></span></a>). Under this light,
Lacan's account of desire as Real precondition begins to startlingly resemble
the minimal realism of Heidegger, for whom the opaqueness of the Earth <i>qua </i>unobjectifiable being stands as
necessarily refractory to the variegated structure of Worldhood, with its
populating entities and individuations at the ontic level. Real desire would be
the proto-ontological motor conditioning, ironically, the merely ontic register
of being and the symbolic investment of symptoms. The early Lacan seems to
indicate this much when he claims in a rather cryptic passage: "Desire...
is the desire for nothing namable... this desire lies at the origin of every
variety of animation. If being were only what it is there wouldn't be room to
talk about it. Being comes into existence as an exact function of this
lack." (SII, pp 223). This is the direction in which the later Lacan,
through his idea of the Real as that which resists symbolization, seems to have
succumbed, as we shall see below<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/Philosophy/Personal%20works/Dear%20Tzu.docx#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[2]</span></span></span></a>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Alternatively, in this first re-philosophizing
scenario, the structure of desire remains epistemically accessible without
residue, but confined to the signifying order, in which case Lacan is involved
in a bizarre structuralist parody of textual idealism. Yet as we surmised
above, this cannot be done, strictly speaking, without a qualitative
distinction that vitiates the structural uniformity of the signifier. In other
words, it requires a qualitative distinction <i>within</i> the order of the signifier, a typology that sets those signs
which map the structure of desire from those which are merely within the
libidinal commerce of phantasy, and so those which are theorized by the former
in expressing their conditions of possibility. Both options in this scenario rehabilitate
the philosophical spooks that Lacan took to have demoted, at the price of
reactivating the possibility of a special kind of reference or relation between
signifiers, apart from the articulation of the four discourses, and with it one
must accept the neutral possibility of attaining the status of a
'meta-language' to save psychoanalytic theory from itself.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
The second alternative, foreclosing the
explanatory purchase on desire, and leaving the exteriority of Real desire <i>unthinkable</i>, shuns the status of
psychoanalysis as a theory and surrenders it to a sophistic endeavor marking
its internal contradiction (a variety of strong correlationism). This is the
tragedy that we surmised above, when showing that psychoanalysis couldn't even
surrender its rights to knowledge if it fully relinquishes its epistemic
vocation, and the possibility of distinguishing between Real desire and its
theorization. For in this scenario, the Lacanian edifice ends up undermining
itself, rendering the conceptual endeavor it pursues into utter incoherence,
the knowledge of desire undermining its theorization, and the theorization of
desire undermining the possibility of knowledge of it<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/Philosophy/Personal%20works/Dear%20Tzu.docx#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>.<br /> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> As we suggested above, however, Lacan
seems to have progressively realized that he couldn't do without explaining how
a <i>theory</i> of Real desire relies on
such a conceptual envelopment, as evinced in a particularly telling passage: "[Our]
conception of the concept implies that the concept is always established in an
approach that is not unrelated to that which is imposed on us, as a form, by
infinitesimal calculus. Indeed, if the concept is modeled on an approach to the
reality that the concept has been created to apprehend, it is only by a leap a
passage to the limit, that it manages to realize itself. We are then required
to say in what respect- under what form of finite quantity, I would say- the
conceptual elaboration known as the unconscious may be carried out." (SXI:
pp. 19) The metaphor is that of an <i>asymptotic</i>
approach to the Real via the <i>matheme</i>,
forever removed from the concept's touch.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
Yet
at this point, signaling both the beginning of a mathematical obsession and
that of a poetic escape, Lacan begins to opt for the first horn of the dilemma
and to surrender psychoanalysis to what appears under all lights to be a
re-philosophizing of its fundamental task, along with the valence of knowing. A
passion for the purity of formalization and the inscription, which begins
sliding down to the notion that the <i>matheme</i>
is closest to the Real. The <i>matheme</i> becomes
the receptacle of a pure transmission, insofar as formalization subtracts
writing from its conceptual envelopment, prizing it free from any semblance of
meaning or intention. This is why, for Lacan, "The mathematical
formalization of signifierness runs counter to meaning." (SXX, pp. 93) The
<i>matheme</i> is said to be closest to the
Real insofar as it formalizes while symbolizing <i>nothing</i>: it has a Real status insofar as<i> </i>it cannot be positivized in a representation. The Real subtracts
itself from all positive content and all imaginary-symbolic envelopments; it is
delivered only to the pure act of transmission, the transference of the
analyst's intervention which opens the promise for the traversal of the
phantasy. Just like the subject, there can be thus no theoretical knowledge of
the Real: the latter cannot be totalized or unified by a predicate, or thought
of consistently through definable properties. Therefore, it cannot be
qualitatively determined so as to be tractable conceptually: "<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">If there is a notion of the real, it is
extremely complex and, because of this, incomprehensible, it cannot be
comprehended in a way that would make an All out of it."<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/Philosophy/Personal%20works/Dear%20Tzu.docx#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; line-height: 115%;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a></span>
What formalization enables, Lacan wants to say, is not a representation <i>of</i> desire and so <i>of</i> a knowledge <i>about</i> the
Real, but rather an experience or 'act' with respect the Real, a possibility
for transference in analysis: "Truth cannot convince, knowledge becomes
act.<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/Philosophy/Personal%20works/Dear%20Tzu.docx#_ftn5" name="_ftnref5" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>" (Ibid; Pg. 104)<br /> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> And yet, as we saw, as much as the <i>matheme</i> itself remains recalcitrant to
the symbolic, it is just as true that Lacan cannot dispense of the task of
deploying the <i>matheme</i> to formalize
psychoanalytic concepts and structures. Lacan himself says that the
formalization is the formalization <i>of</i>
the signifier: of whatever is articulated through the signifier, psychoanalytic
claims included. But if mathematics can operate to <i>formalize</i> psychoanalysis, this is because formalization operates
over the <i>concepts </i>and claims that
psychoanalysis deploys. But in order for psychoanalytic claims and concepts to
be any more apt for the formalization which 'touches the Real' of desire, then
the claims of psychoanalysis must be in some respect peculiarly related to the
Real of the unconscious, or else the formalization would appear arbitrarily
dependant on a discursive register. Yet the on what methodological grounds
could we assess whether psychoanalytic enjoy this priority, if not
epistemological or semantic?</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> At this juncture, the claim that the <i>matheme</i> resists translation is merely to
refuse to explain how it is that it functions as a <i>formalization</i> adequate to the statements of psychoanalysis, and which
concern the Real as much as the symbolic or the imaginary. The <i>matheme</i> is said not to obey the norms of
knowledge or enter into the rule of the symbolic, but at the same time is
coordinated with a series of theoretical interpretations, granting it rights
before the Real. But what grounds this proximity between the <i>matheme</i> and the Real, as regulated by
psychoanalytic concepts? Without explaining this connection, psychoanalysis
fails to adequately account for the relation between the practice of
formalization and the theoretical statements which provide the semantic
interpretation for the mathematical formulas. For the psychoanalyst needs not
only the matheme which is recalcitrant to meaning, but a series of theoretical
claims explaining <i>how</i> the matheme
formalizes certain structures. Without this connection, any mathematical
inscription cannot count as the formalization of anything, is truly
'meaningless', and there would be nothing to distinguish pure mathematical forms
from Real psychic structures<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/Philosophy/Personal%20works/Dear%20Tzu.docx#_ftn6" name="_ftnref6" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>. This would render
psychoanalysis complicit with a kind of Pythagorean upsurge. Just like
unobjectifiable desire was 'objectified' in theory only to speak of it, the
Real non-translatability of the <i>matheme</i>
is translated by psychoanalytic theory since, without such a theorization, the <i>matheme </i>could not stand for the formalization
of anything whatsoever. The interesting paradox is therefore that although in
order for the <i>matheme</i> to be
non-translatable to any discursive register that operates under the symbolic it
must, paradoxically, be able to be translated into the conceptual register of
psychoanalysis, for the latter provides the interpretation without which, the
abstract terms would fail to account for anything.<br /> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> What this evinces is that
psychoanalysis ultimately is forced to speak of the Real ambiguously: in one
sense it said to pertain to formalization in its <i>untranslatable</i> dimension, and in another to desire as the <i>unobjectifiable</i> condition for any
discourse. It is precisely at this juncture that the unobjectifiable Real of
desire, touched only in the <i>act</i> of
transference, is <i>mediated</i> by a tacit separation
from the <i>matheme</i> that ordains it, evincing
a division that psychoanalysis ultimately cannot resolve. Much like for Heidegger Being <i>qua</i> the unobjectifiable opaqueness of
the Earth cannot be apprehended conceptually but must be delivered to the
poetic word of the thinker and the act of the artist, the Real <i>qua</i> unobjectifiable opaqueness of desire
cannot be known but must be delivered to the epistemic opaqueness of the <i>matheme</i> and the transference occasioned
by the analyst in act. As Lacan puts it: "Mathematization alone reaches a
real - and it is in that respect that it is compatible with our discourse, with
analytic discourse- a real that has nothing to do with what traditional
knowledge has served as a basis for, which is not what the latter believes it
to be- namely, reality, but rather phantasy... The Real, I will say, is the
mystery of the speaking body, the mystery of the unconscious." (SXX; pp.
131)<br /> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
However, the call for the
bodily act signals also the inevitable moment of loss for <i>explanation</i>, the moment in which, no longer capable of separating
the thought of the Real from the Real itself, one must surrender all theoretical
pretences and en-act the traversal itself, a clinical pilgrimage before the
inflections of the symptom through the lessons of formalization. <span style="background: white;">The discursive access to knowing-that becomes
delivered to the oblique efficacy of non-discursive know-how. This is how
we should coordinate these two seemingly disparate statements from Lacan:
"There is some rapport of being that cannot be known" (SXX, pp. 119,
TM), and "If analysis rests on a presumption, it is that knowledge about
[subjective] truth can be constituted on the basis of its experience"
(Ibid, pp. 91). The impossibility of a knowledge <i>of</i> being is but the obverse of the possibility of knowing <i>how</i> to speak in bringing about the
transference. Or as Badiou formulates it: "The paradoxical position of
Lacan concerning truth is that there is no knowledge of truth, but finally
there is a psychoanalytic knowledge concerning this absence of knowledge. This
is the great paradox of the unconscious...a subject can have an experience of
its proper Real only in the form of an act." (Badiou, 2010)<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background: white;"></span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background: white;"></span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;"> The levels must be clearly demarcated: the
analytic transference enjoins the traversal of the phantasy and is supported by
the formalization of the symbolic by the <i>matheme</i>.
But as we have seen, the operation of formalization which demarcates the
positions and structures is in turn supported by the conceptual register of
psychoanalytic theory itself. Lacan can thus claim that: "It is in the
very act of speaking that makes this formalization, this ideal meta-language,
ex-sist." (SXX, Ibid; pp 119) The two Reals glare forth in their
unresolved difference: the pure form of the <i>mathematic</i>
inscription, recalcitrant to incorporation within the symbolic order of
language, and Real of desire in the passage to the pure act that deposes all
representational knowledge, where the traversal of the phantasy takes place. As
Badiou stresses: "This act is like a cut in language and also a cut in the
ordinary representation of the world- a representation which is imaginary. So
the act suddenly isolates the Real from its normal collection to the imaginary
and symbolic orders." (Badiou, 2010).</span></span></span></blockquote>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">___________________</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> I encourage readers to take a look at
the rest of the paper, since there I develop my reading and case in much more
thorough fashion. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">With regards to Badiou, I think that he basically appropriates the
structuralist move that Lacan makes apropos psychoanalysis into a philosophical
register. Thus, the </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">matheme </i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">is, for Badiou, adequate to the
thinking of being qua being, because it resists translation into
transcendental terms, thereby refusing envelopment by 'bourgeois
epistemology'. The latter, as one does well to note, remains encumbered in
the "third dogma of empiricism" that distinguishes between form and content, and
which thereby conditions all forms of 'naturalist' epistemology and ontology, even still in the case of Quine. But Badiou goes further than this, because he avows
explicitly the extensional core of set-theory to resist intensionality, which
for him is what remains of Aristotelian essences in mathematized logic. Thus, the mathematization of being allows him to subtract the
latter from the One, or render it 'inconsistent', insofar as it refuses any
qualitative determination. This works to simultaneously deflate the (Kantian
and post-Kantian) transcendental problematic of the distinction between thought
and reality, or form and content, in favor of an immanent ontology of the pure
multiple, and later a phenomenology with a 'subjectless object'. Yet the price
to be paid for this liquidation of 'empirical content' is an ontological
reification of form or ideality, which results in an endorsement of a form of the Parmenidean
thesis according to which being and thinking are one and the same. And at this
juncture, Lacan and Badiou meet again: in conversation, Badiou told me that
precisely because one cannot </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">distinguish</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> between mathematic inscription and
being-in-itself, the matheme is 'closest to the Real'. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> But in my estimation, if <i>epistemic indiscernibility</i> ensues as a criterion for <i>ontological
identity</i>, then short of rendering possible a materialism, Badiou has reified,
like Plato and Hegel before him, the intelligible at the price of eviscerating
sensibility and content. This is the invariable result that obtains when one folds the epistemic into the ontological, or logic and metaphysics, as Hegel shows. Nevertheless, if one cannot distinguish between our thought or
inscriptions<i> about</i> being and <i>being as such</i>, then we yield a form of Platonist
idealism, which becomes difficult to differentiate from Pythagoreanism. Indeed,
in conversation with Luke Fraser and Ray Brassier, I have become increasingly convinced that,
in spite of his extraordinary advances in <i>Logics of Worlds</i>, the
fundamental problem in Badiou continues to be the articulation between mathematical and
non-mathematical situations, so as to avoid reifying mathematics ontologically
(like he claims from the start).</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
Yet whereas in B&E the articulation
between the ontological and non-ontological was tantamount to the distinction
between the mathematical and non-mathematical, where the latter was theorized through the former by a process of analogy (like Lyotard, Deleuze, and others claimed), in LOW Badiou proceeds to give a mathematical formalization of the consistency of Worlds, or non-ontological situations, so
that the crucial connection then becomes the articulation between
set-theoretical ontology, and category-theoretical phenomenology. In spite of these advances, I believe
that the fundamental question about the relation between the mathematical and
the non-mathematical remains, and forced him into a quandary not unlike that of Lacan. That is, if Badiou wants to claim there is such a thing as non-mathematical reality, not of the order of being, but rather the 'unthinkable' or 'unknowable' by cognitive means, then he
has committed himself to a form of correlationism. I am afraid this is the position that one would have to draw if the claim that Badiou is simply 'not concerned with the Real' in any sense analogous to that proper to transcendental philosophers holds. But if Badiou wants to eviscerate any notion of
inscription-independent reality altogether, as Hegel does, then he has effectively endorsed a
form of Pythagoreanism, where all situations, ontological and non-ontological, must be mathematized. It is the latter which, I think, ultimately must be Badiou's position, in spite of his ambiguous proviso that the claim that ontology
is set-theory is a claim about <i>discourse, </i>and not about the world.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Now, the reason why I think Sellars <i>is</i> important for these
discussions, and where I think some crucial cross-breeding can be done, is that
he proposes to reconcile nominalism about semantics, with realism about
ontology. He thus proposes to offer an account that, like structuralism, does
not appeal to a relation between words-things to flesh out semantic
proprieties, in turn offering a full blown inferentialist semantics, while at
the same time advocating a process ontology of his own. I am currently working on a paper
explaining how precisely this works, and what I think is most valuable about
this strategy; but the basic idea I would like to extirpate from it is the
following one:</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
We can agree with Badiou in that materialism, indeed philosophy, requires the
rehabilitation of the Platonic axis between truth and <i>doxa</i>, in
order to stave off the (neo)-sophistic conflation of the former into the latter. But I think it is also important to
understand Badiou's work as operating on the second crucial Platonic axis
distinguishing between reality and appearance, in terms of the intelligible and
the sensible. I think that Badiou, like Plato and Hegel, proposes to identify
reality or 'being' with intelligibility, and demote sensibility to appearance
or <i>doxa</i>. In the three philosophers, what we
obtain is a trivialization of sensibility as that which is not real, at the
price of reifying ideality ontologically, in order to save rationalism from the phenomenological reification of being as an irrational Otherness, only tractable by poetic-practical means.<br />
<br />
The Sellarsian alternative
proposes, in turn, rather to insist on the reality of appearances, while
rendering this reality fully intelligible, while refusing to reify ideality metaphysically. We can understand the ontological
valence of appearances, as part of objective reality, without thereby forcing
us into separating, in dualist spirits, between the ideal and the real. Now, this is not to say all reality is sensible, which is the panpsychist hypothesis. Rather, it means that sensibility can be both a) ontologically investigated, and b) that it conditions our knowledge about the external world. Realism obtains precisely by refusing the ontological reification of the sensible or the intelligible, while recognizing the logical irreducibility of the intelligible, while its causal reducibility. The trick then consists in finding out a way of preserving a positive role
for sensibility to anchor us to the mind-independent world, without thereby render it ubiquitous. And this requires,
in turn, that we distinguish between the semantic-epistemic conditions under
which we can <i>talk</i> and adjudicate claims about the real, and
the positive metaphysical claims that result once we have cleared up our
semantics. Finally, Sellars will propose to think of the connection between language and the world in terms of a non-semantic relation or 'picturing' which, developing on the work of Wittgenstein, seeks to establish how second-order isomorphy obtains between matter-of-factual claims qua 'natural linguistic objects' and real objects and events in the world. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The details here are complex, as ever with Sellars, but the major result is
that in persisting on the Kantian methodological distinction between reasons
and causes, while refusing their metaphysical separation, we can understand how
while there is an <i>ontological priority</i> of the logical on the natural (without
proper evolutionary conditions sapience wouldn't obtain), there is an
<i>epistemological priority</i> of the natural on the logical (only sapient creatures
who inhabit the logical space of reasons can adjudicate claims, and undertake
normative statuses required for knowledge). In short, the Sellarsian
alternative proposes to preserve the distinction between form and content, in
the name of a revisionary naturalism, that avoids reifying intelligibility at
the price of evacuating sensibility (idealism: Plato, Hegel, Badiou), or
reifying sensibility at the price of demolition intellection (Bergson,
Deleuze...).</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I think here some crucial work can
be done in tandem with both psychoanalysis and Badiou. The former integrate a
thinking of how libidinal structures are both causally and normatively
constitutively binding the Real practices and transference, and the symbolic.
The latter provides a formal account of change relative to structural conditions
by modeling truth on generic sets, defusing the romantic exuberance tethered to
creation 'ex nihilo', which including post-Kuhnean approaches reifying change and discontinuity in the way of instrumentalizing science.
Incidentally, this is also a fertile ground to assimilate insight by people
such as Ladyman and Ross, who further the case against instrumentalist
approaches by insisting that discontinuity at the level of content in
scientific theories is underwritten by continuity at the level of form. I think
if can sort out the pragmatics with the semantics here we can integrate both
approaches beyond the strict axiomatics of mathematical Platonist approaches,
while opening the playing field for a discussion of not only traditional
epistemic practices governed by standard proprieties of inference, but all
sorts of intricate articulations. In a larger scheme, I am looking to amplify
the Brandomian project of integrating pragmatics with semantics, with the
Badiouean project of providing a synoptic ontology-phenomenology adequate to
the articulation of different thought procedures. </div>
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Daniel Sacilottohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06107600124995445921noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6580039155018603814.post-81414385755032329262012-09-05T22:18:00.001-07:002012-09-12T22:12:59.203-07:00Response to Levi Bryant: On Methodology and Dispositions<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4iCB4MMqOi59pgMrppvlGh2gpPki9FbA8KPlALDP42sL_FMgsnmzufqruqyWAhkXLP2MRPpTO1-6IZ1OAuRaPQmRqTaIGV2epsIMQ21MzyO6NrsZUvGl6nbvHd7B0wpw-cpBAjKYWzs89/s1600/280841_10100667169523725_1634441933_o+(1).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4iCB4MMqOi59pgMrppvlGh2gpPki9FbA8KPlALDP42sL_FMgsnmzufqruqyWAhkXLP2MRPpTO1-6IZ1OAuRaPQmRqTaIGV2epsIMQ21MzyO6NrsZUvGl6nbvHd7B0wpw-cpBAjKYWzs89/s640/280841_10100667169523725_1634441933_o+(1).jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;"><b><br />RESPONSE TO LEVI BRYANT:</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;"><b>On Methodology and Dispositions</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;"><b>_____________________________________________</b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Levi has <a href="http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2012/09/05/different-questions-some-thoughts-on-sacilottos-review/" target="_blank">recently</a> made some preliminary comments about <a href="http://www.speculations-journal.org/current-issue/" target="_blank">my article-review</a>, published recently in the new issue of the journal Speculations. I
thought I would use his response as an opportunity to say a few things left
pending after writing the review, as well as to respond to some of Levi’s
salient worries about the first half of the paper.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
<o:p></o:p></span>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I – Behind Doors<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Before tackling the philosophical issues, and considering
that Levi begins his post with some rather generous comments, I thought I
should reiterate my general opinion on Bryant’s work, and his temperament as a
philosopher. Levi’s work has been a perpetual source of inspiration for us,
aspiring philosophers, for many reasons. I think his appetite for learning from
new sources, his intoxicating passion for philosophy, and his willingness to
reinvent his positions time and time again, are all examples of philosophical
virtue. His blog has been a constant reference point, sometimes crystallizing
better than most secondary literature on the subject, the views of some notoriously
obscure figures from the Continental tradition. He has a virtue for
demystifying the impenetrable nature of philosophy, making it approachable and
fascinating. It is no wonder that his work has become a source of inspiration
for many outside the academia, and his sometimes fastidious insistence in that
philosophy should always listen to what occurs outside of its academic ivory
walls, is invaluable advice.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
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<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> As someone who has
been deeply influenced by Badiou, as Levi notes in his post, I find such an
attitude in tune with what I take to be a necessary part of any truly
contemporary disposition in philosophy: it can only recover its synoptic
ambition by being attentive to the procedures that condition it, and which
occur independently of it. For all of these reasons, Levi has been, and
continues to be, a mandatory interlocutor and someone for whom I feel much
warmth and admiration. So hopefully, we can continue having a philosophical conversation
without vitiating our mutual respect and affection. With that said, I want to
address some of the philosophical issues raised by Levi, in response to my
review-piece.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">II - On
Philosophical Methodology <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> It is no secret by
now that Levi expresses much hostility to philosophical schools which emphasize
the need and importance of epistemology, at least as the latter has been
understood by the post-Kantian analytic tradition, and more recently, by some
of those who try to integrate concerns proper to this tradition with questions
and ideas proper to the Continental tradition. In his book, Levi targets what
he labels ‘epistemological realisms’, which emphasizes the idea that realism
ought to begin by an examination of the conditions under which we can say that
thought gains traction on being, rather than by an examination of being itself.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> But Levi also
targets all forms of anti-realism that result from an exacerbation of critique,
such as has been emblematic of many Continental figures during the 20<sup>th</sup>
Century, some of which are among Levi’s own intellectual heroes. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> This brings me to
my first point: I think that Levi often construes epistemology as complicit
with forms of anti-realism, or at the very least, that it collides with the
prospect of giving a realist philosophy by way of ontological premises. But it should be always remembered that the anti-realisms
that are in the process of being examined also include the positions of
philosophers who thought they were restituting the priority of ontology in some
form or other. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Of course, Levi
himself is well aware that the term ontology acquires a somewhat different
meaning in the work of someone like Heidegger, where it becomes more a
radicalization of the question of access rather than a positive metaphysical
program. And I think that while Levi subscribes himself to the critiques
advanced by such Continental figures against epistemology proper, he thinks
that the preponderance of the question of access remains complicit with
anti-realist thought. Nevertheless, epistemological realism remains the main
point of contrast to his own ontological realism <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Levi expresses that
he is somewhat amenable to my points about realist epistemology, and even that
these might end up nurturing his thought in unforeseen ways. For this I am
humbled, and grateful. Nevertheless, I should say that my concern in the review
was not so much to defend a version of epistemological realism, but simply to
say that epistemology as a whole is not susceptible to some of the objections
that Levi proposes. In the book, Levi criticizes the priority of epistemology
mainly by referencing the work of Roy Bhaskar, and against classical empiricist
accounts which relativize knowledge to the givenness of perceptual or sensory
data. My rejoinders to this part of Levi’s strategy were simply to indicate both
that Bhaskar’s arguments for ontological realism are questionable when
motivating realism, and that there exist a multiplicity of epistemological
accounts that do not seem sensitive to the criticisms Levi levels against
classical empiricist epistemology. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Levi expresses
himself somewhat strongly with respect to what he takes to be accusations of
irrationalism that function more like a Stalinist bullying, and emphasizes that
we just have different questions in mind, and different concerns. He ends his
piece in a somewhat effusive declaration, which I quote:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #29303b;">Daniel takes this claim as the claim I think
everything is up to individual, subjective, human whim. Indeed, the claim that
everything is up to individual whim is a claim that Daniel often attributes to
me. I’m surprised by this and wonder if Daniel has read Koyre, Lakatos, and
Kuhn. All I’m pointing out when I say such a thing is that certain research
projects are incommensurable with one another. I’m surprised that Daniel, who
has read and been influenced by Badiou so deeply, has difficulty seeing this
point. Daniel seems to miss the point that the Galilean who has resolved to try
to see if nature can be mathematized, cannot respond to questions within the Aristotlean-Ptolemaic
context.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Indeed, one of the
lessons I have learned from Badiou is that philosophy should be sensitive to
paradigm shifts (to use Kuhn’s phrase), that it should develop a dialectics of
change, and that it must include a theory of novelty and creation. But I do not believe that the reasons for why
I insist on epistemology are explained because I am still operating within an
Aristotelian framework, while Levi in a post-Galilean one. To understand this,
I should perhaps say a few words about my own philosophical history, which
might resonate with some of the affective declarations Levi makes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> I started my
studies in a Continental-oriented department in Peru, where philosophy was
mostly aligned with the social sciences rather than with the ‘scientific’ vision
proper to analytic schools, and where figures like Heidegger, the late
Wittgenstein, Foucault, and Habermas were most influential. I remember at one
point my good friend and excellent philosopher Erich Luna (who runs the blog
Vacio) came to me with an article on Plato by Gail Fine, from Cornell. Fine was
my first explicit encounter with contemporary analytic philosophy, and at the
time I couldn’t but feel that I had been indoctrinated all along. As Levi emphasizes,
one of the deficiencies of the Continental tradition is that it breeds generation after generation of historians of philosophy more than philosophers as such. They
tend to nod patronizingly towards any form of critical engagement with the
canonical figures, and prefer a more reverential approach geared towards
hermeneutic precision rather than to argumentative polemics. But Fine was doing
something else: she was actively discussing the cogency of the philosophical
theses in Plato, and doing so in an extraordinarily rigorous manner, while
preserving stylistic clarity, freeing itself of some of the bombast in the Continental rhetoric.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Little did I know, I
would end up transferring to Cornell, and studying under Fine as my advisor.
During my years there, I became quickly astonished and intimidated by the
methodological scrutiny of the analytic tradition, and Cornell’s heavily analytic-oriented department. I found myself out of my depth in most
conversations, and I strived to learn from this tradition its formal tools for the making and defusing of arguments. And
yet, I couldn’t help but feel that something was off. I couldn’t see why this
linguistified philosophy wasn’t subject to the kind of criticisms that
Heidegger leveled, and which detected unsaid ontological assumptions underneath
every attempt at an epistemology. After reading Rorty, I became somewhat
convinced that although the rigor and clarity of the school was of invaluable
support when entering the trenches, the tradition was fundamentally
misguided, and that it continued, somewhat obliviously, to dwell in the shadow
of Kant, whereas Continental philosophy had moved far beyond it, and waltzed merrily into post-Modernity. The result? I ended up writing a thesis on Husserl and
Heidegger, at Cornell.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> I returned to Peru
fairly confident in my Heideggerean proclivities, which I found were
fundamentally correct even in the wake of figures that were critical of Heidegger: Derrida, Foucault,
Gadamer, Habermas, Lyotard, etc. It was not until I read Zizek and encountered
Lacan that my confidence in the Heideggerean project was first shaken. And it
was not until I read Badiou’s <i>Being and
Event</i> that my thinking underwent a full blown ‘paradigm shift’. What was
most striking in Badiou is that he began his treatise by making a significant concession to the analytic tradition, understandably in avowing the valence of formal
thinking. But Badiou did something else too; he summoned from the dead specters
that Continental philosophers had purportedly buried for good: words like
‘truth’, and ‘universality’, and the methodological valence of argument and proof, without the obscurity of style that characterized the tradition. The most important lesson I learned from Badiou
was that philosophy could and ought to reinvent its central concepts in
accordance with the procedures of its time, that no word was a ‘bad’ word in
philosophy, that no view was forbidden
in principle, and that one couldn’t bury corpses for good without the
possibility of their return. Like Putnam emphasized apropos science, history
brings us to retake theses that we had thought to have discarded in the course of progress: the idea that the universe had a beginning being a prime example.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Having laid this out, the work of Meillassoux and Brassier further radicalized this sentiment. Both at an stylistic and
philosophical level, Brassier insisted
on demolishing the sociological barrier that separated concerns proper to
analytics and to Continentals, by demystifying the caricatures that each
projected about the other. Just like Heidegger and Gadamer offered a ridiculous
shadow of the analytic tradition as preoccupied with logic and language games
only, Carnap and Searle did nothing but reinforce the suspicions of
Continentals that analytics didn’t know how to read. From the beginning of his doctoral thesis,
Brassier called into question the very patronizing of knowledge in the name of
ontology that had been emblematic in 20<sup>th</sup> Century philosophy, both
in phenomenology and in vitalism, characteristically. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> In the end, my
diagnosis is that the affective antipathy that Bryant senses apropos
epistemologists can be balanced out by reminding ourselves of some of the attitudes in Continental
philosophers. Philosophical mediocrity begins when one thinks to be beyond
learning, and one's opinions to be beyond revision. Just like the Continentals thought that to be concerned with issues
of formal logic and proofs was myopic, analytics were seduced by the idea of
progress and often patronized history and tradition. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> But I believe in progress, and I think that just like Badiou
and Sellars were perspicuous enough to realize there was much to be learned from
the opposite tradition, we are now in an even better position to realize how
this is so. I think that Bryant’s amenities to art, psychoanalysis, and media
theory are resonant with concerns classically characteristic of the Continental
tradition. But I think that the analytic tradition has done much work in the
formal and natural sciences, to which it always remained close, and that we
must learn from both. Recently, I criticized both Badiou for eliding epistemology
and Brandom for eliding ontology. And I don’t think we have to choose between
the two. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> More recently,
Brassier’s work on Sellars persuaded me to revisit the work of analytic
epistemology, under a more mature, fresh light. And the result was expected.
The idea I had formed myself of the analytic tradition was indeed a
caricature, and soon I realized that the interests that drove philosophers
like Badiou were not incompatible with those of someone like Sellars, but
congruent and indeed although in disagreement, potentially reinforcing. It
showed me that, far from precluding the possibility of ontology in the name of
epistemology, the analytic tradition, less encumbered by anti-realism, had
actively pursued manifold metaphysical programs. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> This brings me to my second crucial point: Levi writes as if
I was interested in the question of truth, and of knowledge, at the expense of
ontology. I think this is a brutally unfair caracterization, and one that
forces one to choose between two things which in my mind are
complementary. The relevant quote is the
following one:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #29303b;">Daniel is obsessed with the question of how a
human being knows what he says (it’s always a “he”) about the world is true. I
find this question to be rather uninteresting as I think it contributes little
to any real practice; scientific, artistic, personal, political, or otherwise.
I see it as the question of a hall monitor. By contrast, I’m interested in
making some small contribution to shifting the issues we discuss. I’d like to
see theorization of how mercury from rain fall affects fish populations and
enters human populations. I’d like to see discussion of why people aren’t
buying hybrid or electric cars, and what this has to do with availability and
semiotics. I want to talk about how sanitation technologies affect the economic
and cultural development of a people. I’m interested in how mantis shrimps or
bees experience the world. If I make claims about how they do, I’m fine with
providing reasons for why I think this is true and how we might come to know
this about <i>bees</i>, but I take umbrage at the suggestion that I’m just
basing these claims on wild speculation and haven’t engaged in any research or
inquiry that might justify these conclusions. I think knowing a bit about bees
might go a bit further in addressing real issues such as their disappearance in
the States than abstract epistemological questions about how we know <i>in
general</i>. I’m not interested in legislating what “true reality” is, but in
shifting discussion from an obsessive focus on how we know, on how our minds
relate to the world, to a discussion of how things, including humans, interact
with one another. Assertions made within this framework are not a mere
“subjective whim”, as Daniel suggests. He’s welcome to question claims and ask
for reasons. It could turn out that various accounts are mistaken. Be specific.
Critique the account. That’s how accounts become better. Don’t, however, throw
sand in the engine of inquiry. Daniel, I’m sure you miss this, but the basic
point is that we’re tired of discussing your issue. We want to ask other
questions and attend to other issues. That doesn’t mean we’re unwilling to
provide reasons.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> I cannot agree with Levi on these points, I’m afraid. First,
my argument was not to claim that Levi did not provide reasons for his claims.
The entirety of the first part of my review goes over Bryant’s arguments against
epistemological realism, and for ontological realism. What I aimed to show was
that his arguments do not do justice to the real work done by epistemologists
today, and that the solutions he proposes to the critical problem about the
connection between thought and reality remain pending and unresolved. It is
no mystery that Levi wants to propose a concept of knowledge that amplifies the
traditional scope on representational accuracy in favor of an account that
takes practice and production as pivotal. But what my review intended to show
is that the idea that concern with representation elided concern with practice
was misguided. Indeed, one just has to read the work of someone like Tyler Burge to realize how proximate his questions go in hand with the practicing
activity of perceptual psychologsts, for instance. My fundamental argument is
that in spite of his arguments for ontological realism, the problem of
representation remains, that the account he offers does not resolve it, and
that furthermore his own account must tacitly accept representation, even if it doesn't explain it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Levi questions the utility of these investigations, but such concerns can be answered without problems on a case by case basis: in asking about how our perceptual faculties work and those of animals, for instance, taking Burge's project as an example, we explore the extent to which we
share facultative capacities with other living beings, assisting us in understanding better the relation between primitive functional capacities and higher cognitive functions. These relations are fundamental in understanding both how we act and react to our environments, as well as how other animals do so in relation to their environments. We learn which kinds of operations we carry out according to which kinds of process, and we develop formal resources to comprehend the intricacies involved, allowing us to understand ourselves and the natural world better. <br /><br /> Burge, Fodor and
Carey, for instance, construe a concept of representation that includes
conditions for veridicality and objective representing that precedes strict linguistic
representation, and which expands our traditionally anthropocentric conceptions
of how we access the structure and features of reality. These are not questions fundamentally about sentences or propositions; they are questions about the kind of things natural scientists are concerned with on a daily basis. Use of propositional logic is no more instrumental in this regard than the use of sentences to express our views about things: just because we write sentences to express a given claim, one couldn't make the suggestion that we are bound to remain in talk about talk, or become enclosed in an anthropocentric prison. And the same goes for using propositions to express the formal structure of thoughts, sentences, states of affairs, and whatever else.<br /><br /> But Levi oscillates between saying that he has resolved the methodological questions indicated above by way of Bhaskar, and saying that he is not interested in these questions altogether. It is the latter which I find objectionable
as philosophical practice: just like a person cannot call themselves an ontic
structural realist and claim at the same time to be disinterested with the queston about the
distinction between mathematical form and content (like Harman notes), the question about how our
thoughts about things are distinct from the things we think of is a necessary
critical filter to all forms of dogmatic metaphysics, and cannot be obviated by any claims to realism in ontology.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Put differently: there is a distinction between the question about WHAT are our ontological theses, and the question about WHY we should
advocate an ontology with such theses. The latter is not itself an ontological question,
but is set to explain the grounds under which we ought to endorse an
ontological program over another. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Without understanding the semantic proprieties of words such as 'being', or 'real', our discussions are bound to be too fuzzy to be of any use, or too lax to be appropriately answered. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And such a propadeutic, methodological investigation, is the condition so
that our metaphysics won’t be arbitrary or dogmatic. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />But if before we say what
out metaphysics is we must say on what grounds metaphysical theses are adjudicated, dissuaded or encouraged, then we must accept that metaphysics is not first philosophy. This
part of the critical legacy remains, I think, and leads one to ask: what status does
such a propadeutic discourse have, if not epistemological? If one has no such account, then
one’s metaphysics become precisely dogmatic. I think that Levi attempts to have
such an account, but also wants to say he is ultimately not willing to engross
himself in this issue.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Levi formulates
his propadeutic methodological enquiry by appears to Bhaskar, and the first part of the review expresses why in my
estimation: a) his argument does not succeed in motivating realism, b) it does
not succeed in motivating an ontology of objects, c) it does not succeed in
establishing the priority of ontology over epistemology. As a result, my
contention was not that Levi was being irrational because he gave no reasons,
but that a) the reasons he provided were not satisfactory, and that b) he
seemed to relapse into pragmatic considerations when claiming that he could
dismiss further argument, and let the epistemology police bitterly scold him
from a distance. But if the latter criteria for dismissal are what drives his obviation of epistemology, then Levi has surrendered his ontological program to a kind of subjective whim, to
pragmatic considerations of the sort caracteristic proper to instrumentalist
approaches, nevermind the talk about bees and Jupiter.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> The important
point is that Levi’s motivations for his onticological program were problematic,
and that without such resolution the program’s feasibility was suspect. When
Levi emphasizes that he is just ‘not interested’ in the same kind of questions that I am interested in, I think he touches precisely on the point of concern. <br /><br />It is not that I believe
all philosophers should do the same thing, or that everyone should ask the same
questions. But from this it is another thing to say that there are no questions
that philosophers ought to answer, or be accountable for. Certain things must be done in order for
us to be doing philosophy rather than something else. The question of whether
we can sidestep the critical quandary about the connection between thought and
reality by way of ontology, or whether epistemology can be motivated before
ontology, are open questions. Indeed, towards the end of the first part, I
acknowledge Levi’s virtuous considerations about this knot, and offer some
arguments in the way which I won't repeat. <br /><br />In any case, the problem about the connection between
thought and reality is at the heart of any philosophy that claims allegiance to
post-critical realism, and against dogmatic metaphysics. My idea, developed elsewhere, is that the
epistemological corollary to ontology is necessary in order to proscribe the
authority of subjective attitudes as admissible in philosophical argumentation. One
can be as disinterested in epistemology as anyone else, but this this not mean that the cogency of one’s project remains without an answer to these questions. To say
these questions are quixotic concerns of a pre-Galilean spirit seems to me a
convenient scapegoat. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Again, this is not
to say that Levi does not offer arguments for his claims. It is to say that if
the arguments he offers are inadequate in establishing what he intends them to
establish, then not being interested in addressing these shortcomings surrenders
one’s account to volitive grounds. It is not that I am not interested in
ontology, or that I think epistemology is the telos of philosophical activity.
It is simply that to acknowledge the separation and connection between thought
and reality remains a necessity, and my arguments insisted in that these are not
problems that Levi can sidestep. <br /><br />I
refuse to accept that epistemology is ‘my issue’ simply because someone is
tired to discuss it. I don’t believe philosophical legitimacy can be subjected
to one’s interests, <i>precisely because I
believe philosophy must be synoptic</i>. It is those who think they can afford to ask
one set of questions at the expense of methodological clarity that end up
making careers out of how many grains of sand make a heap, or whether Gadamer’s
reading of Heidegger is good. One of the lessons I take from Heidegger, is that
the beginnings are the most difficult, and that methodology is required.
Finally, this does not mean that Levi’s ontological theses are false simply
because they lack a proper methodological footing. Nor does it mean that they won’t
help certain people do certain things, perhaps admirable ones. That’s all fine. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> But it does mean that without proper
grounding, these theses are still not obviously yielding the kind of realism
that he considers as a goal. Levi’s Spinozism seeks to inspire creative practices,
and assist our negotiation with a material world in multiple forms. Yet it is
important to remember that the desire to serve the interests of our kind,
however noble, will only motivate philosophical positions at the expense of
other considerations if one ascribes to philosophy primarily an instrumental
status. Needless to say, as an aspiring realist and materialist, I think Levi should contend this possibility. The question is whether he is in a position to. <br /><br />As Badiou
mentions in his latest presentation from the EGS, I think we cannot begin from
anthropologically configured considerations about practice, politics, creation,
and whatnot. We need a new logic, in the primitive sense in which the latter
entails the articulation of the conditions for what is thinkable. In this
respect, I find that the projects of people like Badiou (thinking of a generic form of novelty) and Brandom (thinking of the articulation between semantics and pragmatics) can
mutually reinforce each other, and therefore that ontology and epistemology can
be reconciled in making a truly contemporary philosophy, beyond classical
sociological dividing lines, and without stale strawmans thrown in each other’s
way.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> To close up, I think that Levi has been negatively impressed
by epistemologists to the point where his skepticism against the discipline is
total. My only rejoinder to his remarks on affect would be to say that in
patronizingly dismissing the work that drives many without having a solid grip
on the field’s present state, it is he that seems to emulate Stalinist tactics:
maligning thinkers for their thwarted temperaments, accusing them of endorsing
positions they effectively don’t, and misconstruing their claims so as to
effectively dismiss anything that might appear, even coarsely, as a challenge
to one’s position. I know Levi is far better than this, so I don’t think we
need to reduce the best of us to the worst representatives of each tradition. Lest, that is, if we want to return idiocy with idiocy,
like the analytic lab rat who thinks Continental con artists do nothing but
eloquent sophistry, or the pious Continental that thinks looking to the past suffices to skeptically dismiss or warn against novelties in the present. The real obscurantism comes in facile dismissals, in
unwarranted disavowals, and in overconfidence in one’s assumptions about the
other.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">With that said, I think that Levi’s project is one that is
just beginning, and that in the company of great thinkers, it will only
continue to grow and nurture itself. Finally, we are all in this together, and
if Levi can learn a single thing from my sincere attempts to find out what
works and doesn’t in his incipient project, then I may have returned a fraction
of the wealth he’s given me. <br /><br />_________________<br /><br /><b>Appendix - Added Friday, September 7th</b><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Levi made a <a href="http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2012/09/06/trying-to-move-beyond-anthropocentrism-some-thoughts-in-response-to-daniel/#comments" target="_blank">further response</a>, to which I thought I would attach the following:<br /><br />I think the claim that epistemological concerns are anthropocentric because they ask about relations between humans and the world is a bit like saying that questions about bees are beecentric because they ask about bees. In other words, it tautologically follows that in asking the question about the relation between humans and the world we are, well, asking a question or set of questions about humans. But epistemology is a bit broader that this. And I think anthropocentrism should entail something a bit stronger: namely, not only that a set of questions take place which are about humans or the relations between humans to other things. Rather, anthropocentrism entails that in asking these questions, these thinkers preclude or de-prioritize other considerations. <br /><br /> I think that here it is important to distinguish methodological priority and general priority: to say that certain questions must be resolved before others does not mean that the former questions are more important than the ones which can only be answered on condition that the former have been. Epistemological priority, if it obtains, should be understood in the logical sense in which it conditions how we understand and adjudicate metaphysical theses, not in the sense that it favors or precludes metaphysical theses.<br /><br />I think Levi is right in that much epistemology has been anthropocentric in that it construed its concept of representation on the basis of typical human faculties, and often using the linguistic capacity of humans as determining all forms of knowledge. But epistemology need not follow this route. Epistemology need not restrain itself to asking about language, or it need not suppose that only humans know. A good example is Burge's critique of what he calls 'individual representationalism', which he accuses of over-intellectualizing objective representing, in a way that precludes us from understanding how we share representational cognitive functions with other, non-sapient animals. Similarly, epistemology need not preclude connections between practice and discourse, like Sellars and Brandom propose in articulating semantics with pragmatics.<br /><br />In this regard, I think epistemology is not so different than other scientific fields of investigation. From cosmology to biology and physics, our first theses are encumbered by assumptions, overdeterminations, etc. Epistemology has also had such faults, and one of the virtues of contemporary epistemology is its proximity to advances in cognitive science, in perceptual psychology, in neurophysiology, in ethology, etc. Epistemology today in fact is not constrained to asking questions about how <i>we</i> represent the world, even if the question about our relation to the world conditions this understanding, as the paradigmatic examples of Fodor or Burge show. In any case, epistemology does not in general preclude ontology, but conditions it, while allows us to distinguish between levels of priority by distinguishing ontological from logical priority.<br /><br />This is a point that I think Sellars does well to emphasize: even though there is an ontological dependency of the logical on the causal (sentient and sapient creatures couldn't exist without the proper evolutionary conditions obtaining), there is an epistemological dependency of the causal on the logical (without the capacity to have beliefs, make claims and so on, we don't have theories). Burge and others suggest that, although knowledge in this strict sense depends on sapience, there are pre-linguistic forms of objective representation which we share with non-sapient creatures, and which they set out to investigate. In other words, human knowledge does not exhaust the question of knowledge, indeed of representation.<br /><br />Finally, I would just say that in no way an exploration of the conditions under which we, as knowers, represent or know the world forecloses metaphysical investigation of the sort Levi wants to do. Just like asking about bees might become necessary at a certain stage of our argument without making our entire philosophy beecentric, we can acknowledge the question of our access to the world has a necessity and methodological priority with respect to other questions, without for this reason accepting that there aren't other questions, perhaps ultimately more interesting to us, to be answered.<br /><br />In short, I don't think epistemology either: a) constrains us to ask questions about human knowledge, even if this is constitutive of its investigation, b) that it doesn't foreclose other kinds of investigation, including ontological investigation. My concerns are that by eliding the epistemological component in philosophical thinking, we run into methodological quarrels of the sort I have been exploring, and that ultimately render suspect the status of our ontological claims. <br /><br /> Now, ontological propositions can get off the ground without such footing, but at the price of rendering our metaphysics dogmatic, in the sense that it does not answer as to why we ought to endorse a given metaphysics, or it relies on instrumental considerations as the ultimate court. I think that these two ways are much more deserving of the label 'anthropocentrism', because they subordinate ontological theses to pragmatic concerns about our activities, our creative elan, our search for political emancipation, etc. But I think we can, and should, be concerned with exploring the world in ways that exceed considerations of the human. While scientists can carry an exploration suspending all kinds of questions, and have instrumental efficacity work on the background of no fixed ontological position, the distinctiveness of philosophy is that it, to use Badiou's phrase, begins with the beginning.</span></div>
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<!--EndFragment-->Daniel Sacilottohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06107600124995445921noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6580039155018603814.post-18060772096413461322012-08-31T18:26:00.003-07:002012-08-31T18:26:58.580-07:00Can Psychoanalysis Speak About? The Cunning of Knowing<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">- CAN PSYCHOANALYSIS SPEAK ABOUT? -</span></span></b></div>
<b><div style="text-align: center;">
<b style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Cunning of Knowing</span></span></b></div>
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><div style="text-align: center;">
<b style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">___________________________________</span></span></b></div>
</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Abstract/Introduction<o:p></o:p></span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Throughout the majority of his work,
Lacan purported to establish psychoanalysis not just as an autonomous
discipline with respect to empirical psychology and the philosophy of mind, but
as a clinical and theoretical practice that would reveal what underlies the
very pretensions of those disciplines. A theory of desire, advancing towards
the point of scientific formalization, promised to simultaneously explain and
underdetermine conceptions of subjectivity, consciousness, knowledge, and being
that preoccupied both philosophers and psychologists for centuries. The
question about whether psychoanalysis is a science therefore can be said to
supervene on whether it can position itself as a theory <i>of</i> the libidinal undergirding of philosophy and psychology. Whether
psychoanalysis can indeed fulfill the promise it set itself with Lacan remains
as much of an open question as if the one about its scientific status. This
essay examines how psychoanalysis attempts to constitute itself as a theory.<br /><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> <b> </b>In
what follows, I set myself two aims. First, following Alain Badiou, I seek to
clarify the way in which Lacanian psychoanalysis appropriates and challenges
philosophy, following the characterization of Lacan as an 'anti-philosopher'. Second,
I suggest that an answer to this question reveals a fundamental quandary in the
psychoanalytic edifice, ultimately rendering dubious both the status of
psychoanalysis as a theory and as a clinical practice. More specifically, I
argue that this predicament results from the attempt to elide the referential
relation between mind and world, signifier and signified, that characterizes representational
thought, in favor of the structuralist relation between signifiers that theorizes
desire's inscription into the symbolic order, wherein philosophical
propositions are negotiated as well. This alternative account is then coupled
to a subtractive notion of the Real that refuses incorporation into the
linguistic order. In short, Lacan’s subject of desire attempts to deflate the
ontological-epistemological valences from his theory by supplanting the
structuralist articulation between signifiers for the representationalist
relation of reference between words and things.<br /><br /> It is this re-articulation
between the Real and the conceptual-linguistic order of the signifier that I
seek to evince as problematic, in its purported demotion of representation and
the philosophical task proper. I therefore propose to read Lacan's account of
the unconscious as a bold, but nevertheless failed attempt to supersede
empirical conceptions of the subject, epistemological accounts of knowledge and
desire, and ontological conceptions of objective being. I claim that as a
result psychoanalysis fails not only to secure its scientific status, but more
generally its theoretical status as well.</span></div>
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<o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b> (a)
The Oedipus Complex and the Imaginary - A Mythical Prelude</b> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> But in order to make our contention
clear, a few preliminaries are well in order. First, we must understand
precisely in what way Lacan's account of the symbolic and the Real purports to
hijack traditional philosophical attempts to describe consciousness and
knowledge, subjectivity and objectivity. This proximity to philosophical (and
not just psychological) problems, remains a remarkable feature that sets Lacan
apart from Freud's germinal psychoanalytic endeavor. For as Alain Badiou (2010)
brings to attention, it is only in Lacan's work that we see psychoanalysis routinely
reference, address and challenge the great Western philosophical tradition<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[1]</span><!--[endif]--></span></a>. <br /><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> And yet, Badiou also reminds us, this
relation is not one of continuation or of the integration of psychoanalysis into
the philosophical itinerary. Rather, Lacan deploys the term 'anti-philosophy' to
characterize his position <i>vis a vis</i>
philosophy, and wages against the latter, as every anti-philosopher attempts, hijacking
from within the framework of questions and concepts that philosophy negotiates.
In its Lacanian guise, the usurping of philosophical concepts is carried forth in
the name of a theory of desire, which includes the philosophical desire for
knowledge and truth, both about the subject and the world. Badiou writes that,
"It is typical of anti-philosophy that its purpose is never to <i>discuss</i> any philosophical theses...
since to do so it would have to share its norms (for instance, those of the
true and the false). What the anti-philosopher wants to do is to situate the
philosophical <u>desire</u> in its entirety in the register of the erroneous
and the harmful." (WAP; Pg. 77; emphasis added). Only once we have
understood the grounds for the psychoanalytic attempt to simultaneously reveal
and challenge the feasibility and propriety of the philosophical desire <i>as a desire</i> will we be in a position to
assess psychoanalysis' own "position of enunciation" with respect to
philosophy. In order to do this, I propose first to briefly exegetically
examine how Lacan carries forth his re-elaboration of the classical
philosophical concepts outlined above, so as to articulate them anew in a theory
of desire that would suffice to characterize not only philosophy, but yield a
structural understanding of how discourse emerges and is entangled with desire
in different ways, and according to general structural principles.<br /><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> In this regard, the point of departure
is, nevertheless, already the Freudian one: to supplement an understanding of
conscious psychic life, by way of an account of the unconscious dimension that
animates subjective life. Crossbreeding the structuralist avowal of the primacy
of the signifier with the Freudian account of the unconscious, Lacan proposes thus
to articulate a theory of subjective desire around the singular idea that “the
unconscious is structured like a language”<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[2]</span><!--[endif]--></span></a>. This
enigmatic formula is to be understood by way of Lacan's re-construction of the
Freudian Oedipal myth, which leads to thinking of the subject as constitutively
affected by <i>loss</i>, that is, seeing its
being as lacking in relation to an ideal image. Lacan writes: "The domain of the Freudian
experience is established within a very different register of relations. Desire
is a relation of being to lack. This lack is the lack of being properly
speaking. It isn’t the lack of this or that, but lack of being whereby the
being exists. This lack is beyond anything which can represent it. It is only
ever represented as a reflection on a veil. The libido, but now no longer as
used theoretically as a quantitative quantity, is the name of what animates the
deep-seated conflict at the heart of human action…."<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
The "lack of being" or the idea of <i>being-as-lack</i> condenses the
idea that the Real of the subject is
never commensurate to the ideal identities that representation yields for
conscious thought. Yet, as we shall see, this eventually leads Lacan to fully
separate the ontological domain of being proper to philosophy and ontology, still
engrossed in the symbolic commerce of the signifier, from the domain of the
Real desire, which subtracts itself from the symbolic and which it falls to
psychoanalysis to examine. Philosophy, according to Lacan, masks the vacuity of
a Real subjectivity in the name of knowing, through the objective seal of the
signifier and the idealities it projects. <br /><br /><br />But how does the Real of this voided
subject, incommensurate to any substantive identity, relate to the signifying
order, if not by way of gaining traction before being in representation? And
similarly, how does the subject come to misapprehend or think itself in the
guise of the signifier, as having a fixed identity? Finally, what kind of operation
or place of enunciation does psychoanalytic discourse carry out in order to be
able to speak about this formal subjectivity and the libidinal structure in
which language becomes nested in; wherefrom does psychoanalysis issue its
address? How does one produce a theory about the articulation between the symbolic
commerce of the signifier along its imaginary-ideal envelopments, and the Real,
without claiming we do so by representing the latter, as philosophers and
psychologists purport to do? It is towards answering these questions that we
are headed in what follows. <br /><br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> The Lacanian answer to the
first two questions come of a piece. First, for Lacan, the subject finds and
identifies itself <i>outside of itself</i>,
in the form of an object for thought or an ideal correlate, that it intends
towards and seeks to become equal to. It is this ideal unity which
simultaneously forms the basis of what the subject identifies itself as, but
also of what positions it in the course of an impossible desire for 'reconstitution'.
This decentered (mis)identification of the subject with an-other, indicates
that the ideal identity of one's individuated identity emerges from a
structural <i>alienation</i> of the subject
from itself, a lack that makes subjectivity not fully coincide with the
ideality thus projected. It is insofar as the subject is never equal to its
projected identity that desire, as an infinite tendency, hovers asymptotically
around an impossible object-cause (which Lacan famously calls <i>objet petit a</i>): " …. Desire, a function central
to all human experience, is the desire for nothing nameable. And at the same
time this desire lies at the origin of every variety of animation. If being
were only what it is, there wouldn’t even be room to talk about it. Being comes
into existence as an exact function of this lack. Being attains a sense of self
in relation to being as a function of this lack, in the experience of
desire."<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
The <i>ideality</i> of whatever the subject imagines and explicitly relates to
is then nothing but the <i>symptom</i> or point in its psyche, wherein the empty reality of the impossible object-cause
fixes itself. <br /><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> But what is the relation between this underlying
object-cause, or the impossible Real object of desire on the one hand, and the
also impossible ideal-investments which make up the objective figurations of
the subject, and which constitute its illusory identity as an individual?
Lacan's will answer by explaining the intentionality of consciousness and
explicit "knowing" towards illusory ideals in terms of the intentionality
of unconscious desire, as oriented towards the impossible Real object. We could
tentatively propose that Lacan's initial coup against philosophy and psychology
consists in positing that the <i>libidinal </i>intentionality
of the unconscious founds the cognitive intentionality of consciousness by way
of alienation. But in order to distinguish the Real dimension object from the
imagined semblances that the phantasy of the subject projects, Lacan is forced
into both identifying former with its formal dimension (as opposed to
'substantive' or ontological dimension), and subtract it from the commerce of
the signifier wherein discourse tethers itself symptomatically. We shall first
focus on the latter question, which provides the answer to how psychoanalysis
attempts to trump philosophy, only then to move towards setting up a
controversy as made evident by considering the second question.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> <br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Psychoanalysis must hold this prerogative
as the study of desire, since it is desire that evinces itself as the motor for
any kind of intentional comportment towards being or entities. Lacan's account seeks
to reveal how the objectivation of intentional consciousness is underdetermined
by the psychic split that follows from the Oedipal castration-complex, and in
which the subject is wrested from the <i>immanent</i>
symbiosis with maternal body and into the order of the <i>transcendental</i> Law or language, thereby intending towards the recovery
of the non-alienation which is thought to be lost. Insofar as every knowledge
intends towards an object, all epistemological or phenomenological
investigation into consciousness and its contents are uniformly treated as
iterations implicating the same structure of psychic splitting or alienation.
And it is on the basis of this shared libidinal structure that Lacan seeks to
frame psychoanalysis as a <i>theory</i> that
accesses the libidinal kernel behind philosophy and psychology. <br /><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> The core of the account involves
tracing how the specular images that the subject builds an identity from support
desire by being correlated to "the signifying chain" the symbolic or
language, i.e. how the subject enters the "defiles through the
signifier" within which the subject will circulate around the (impossible)
object of desire: "There
are in the unconscious signifying chains which subsist as such, and which from
there structure, act on the organism, influence what appears from the outside
as a symptom, and this is the whole basis of analytic experience.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn5" name="_ftnref5" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>"
Following Zizek, we can call the
splitting of the subject <i>symbolic
castration</i>, to describe how the division and articulation between the
subject and its imaginary identifications is relative to how the subject
becomes enjoined and invested from an impersonal cultural-linguistic order. Or,
to quote Zizek, symbolic castration obtains where the <span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">"...gap between what I really am' and the symbolic mask
that makes the subject into something. The subject is thus castrated from the
'real' "I" by projecting something else."<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn6" name="_ftnref6" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: black;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
(Zizek, HRL, Pg. 34)<br /><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> The basic idea is that <i>who</i> the subject thinks it is or should be, its <i>placing</i>, so to speak, is determined on the basis of a language that
he acquires by external conditioning, and never immediately or transparently as
phenomenologists surmise. For Lacan, the self-alienation of the subject founds
the notion of an ontologically consistent individual, identical to itself,
thereby veiling the (unbridgeable) gap between its immediate (non)-being (or
the void of its formal subjectivity) and its imaginary-symbolic figurations
(which yield 'empirical' content). Because
self-relation and self-constitution is paradoxically grounded in this moment of
self-alienation, it is both the moment of narcissism and that of absolute
estrangement: "One can sense, one can pick up that narcissism is involved
somewhere, and that this narcissism is involved at this moment of the Oedipus
complex." (S6, L6, pp. 92) <br /><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> The "great outdoors" coveted
by the philosophers turns out on this account to be a function of a subject that
by virtue of desiring is split between the object it identifies itself with,
and the formal void which subtracts itself from every such identification. Lacan's
contentions against philosophy and psychology converge here, radicalizing the Kantian
separation between the transcendental and empirical subject, that Zizek
characterizes as a decisive mark of the modern breakthrough<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn7" name="_ftnref7" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[7]</span><!--[endif]--></span></a>.
Lacan's appropriation of this split, however, defuses any attempts to reify the
transcendence of the subject in terms of a consciousness furnished with <i>a priori </i>cognitive structures to
individuate its contents<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn8" name="_ftnref8" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[8]</span><!--[endif]--></span></a>. <br /><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> This entails that the unity and emergence of
what Freud called the "perception-consciousness system" that
characterizes thinking beings is to be explained by placing it in contrast to a
notion of subjectivity that is recalcitrant with that of the ego <i>qua</i> decentered other. Consciousness is
of the order of the ego, since it thinks that it is the imaginary projection of
itself outside of itself that does the thinking, i.e. it identifies itself with
<i>what it thinks</i>. But Lacan's point is
precisely that the desiring subject is never such identical to what in intends
towards as its objective pole, but precisely the contrary, and against
Descartes, <i>it thinks where it is not</i>.
This marks accordingly the foreclosure of all attempts to think of the subject
of the unconscious as topic for "empirical" investigation. Desire
entails, in short, a <i>Gestalt</i>,
conditioning the entire field of the visible world; the individuated world of
things and persons actually <i>presupposes</i>
the structure of the subject of desire. As a result, the imaginary that furnishes
the disclosure or revelation of being to man, the ideal investments, so dear to
the philosopher, are suddenly made to appear as the ploy of desire's interminable
ruse for the subject's self-reconstitution.<br /><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Alienation therefore effectuates a
commensuration between the images projected from the perspective of the subject's
alienation, and the 'visible world' of things. It serves simultaneously as the
germinal point of entry for both the <i>epistemological</i>
myth of a fully consistent <i>subject</i> or
<i>self,</i> as well as for the <i>ontological</i> myth of a fully consistent <i>object</i> or <i>other</i>; that is, for both philosophy and empirical (ego) psychology.
In other words, the subject-object
dichotomy, from which both philosophy and psychology depart, begins in the
infant's (mis)identification and de-centering: the idea that one's being <i>lacks</i> any unified substantiality or 'selfhood'
(the pure <i>membra disjecta</i>) emerges as
a result of the identification with a subsistent image. It is my primary identification with an image
that locates a gap between the reality of the <i>subject</i> as the agent of thought and as an <i>object</i> of thought. This seems to be the meaning behind the cryptic
statement from Lacan that the ego, in its narcissistic stupor, constitutes
"...a vital dehiscence that is <u>constitutive</u> of man" (E, pp. 4)
But if the philosophical quest for knowledge and consciousness are unknowingly
submitted to the rule of desire, then it what sense does psychoanalysis escape
this fate? How does psychoanalysis prevent itself from trying to <i>know</i> in accordance to its own
figurations, to the own reified individuality of the analyst, to occupy the
position of being an observer of discourse? Indeed, is there room to speak of knowledge
<i>of</i> desire, once we have demoted the
idea that consciousness <i>apprehends</i> in
representational terms? It is at this juncture that Lacan must reconstruct the
traditional philosophical relation of representational congruence between words
and things for the structuralist flattening relations that hold between
signifiers in 'chains'.<br /><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Thus, the next step, for us, is to
explain how the imaginary functions of the ideal ego are at the same time mediated
by the cultural order of language, the "(big) Other", which signals
that it constitutes a <i>decentered</i>
place of identification, like the <i>other</i>
of the imaginary, but also an <i>impersonal</i>
field constituted by the community into which one is inserted<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn9" name="_ftnref9" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[9]</span><!--[endif]--></span></a>.
By tethering the subject of the unconscious to the symbolic Lacan means to say
that language is in a sense a transcendent authority that ordains and issues
the injunctions before which desire sets itself. Desire is the desire <i>of</i> the Other precisely insofar as it is
mediated by an order or Law which pre-exists and determines its organization<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn10" name="_ftnref10" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[10]</span><!--[endif]--></span></a>. Or,
put differently, one never desires what one sees or imagines immediately, but only
through particular prescriptions and normative injunctions issued from the
impersonal order of language. Chiesa explains that "...the specular,
alienating identification of the subject with the imaginary other necessarily
presupposes an earlier, original - and perpetual- alienation in the Other <i>qua</i> language." (Chiesa, 2009, pp.
25)<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> In
order to understand the (anti)-philosophical significance of this move,
consider the following classical statement from Pufendorf, issued at the
beginning of the Enlightenment, on the institution of norms by the rational
adherence of individual agents: "[W]hen a man of his own accord consents
to the rule of another, he acknowledges by his own act that he must follow what
he himself has decided."<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn11" name="_ftnref11" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[11]</span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
The same idea is later found in Kant, for whom it is the rational capacity for
individuals to bind themselves to linguistically articulated norms that
simultaneously subject them to authority and assessment, but also are the
condition for their freedom and choice. Rationality endows the subject the
capacity for freedom insofar as it reckons its power for adhering to the
prescriptions issued as linguistic norms or laws. Ye who is it that binds
itself freely, in advance of all prescriptions?<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Lacan's point is that in order to
'freely' bind <i>oneself</i> to a norm one
must, already be bound by the Other, and that therefore, strictly speaking,
there is no 'free' binding. For an individual to recognize <i>itself</i> as bound to a norm he/she must be already in possession of
an inherited language in terms of which
he/she formulates his/her identity. This individual who presumably binds itself
freely is then, to use an Althusserian expression, always already <i>interpellated </i>by the big Other, rather
than the condition for the institution of the big Other. One always chooses
that which has already been chosen; it is always from <i>within</i> language that one formulates the fantasy of a 'free' binding,
or of the individuality required thereof. It is not a conscious
self-recognition which allows one to bind oneself to linguistic norms; one must
be already implicitly and unconsciously bound to norms in order to desire and
think of a possible self-recognition. This individual who 'recognizes itself as
free to bind itself' is thereby supplanted, by Lacan, for a subject who cannot
but fail to recognize itself in the identity that is prescribed to him from the
big Other. There is no meta-language, no position of an observer: "The subject is nothing other
than what slides in a chain of signifiers, whether he knows which signifier he
is the effect of or not. That effect- the subject – is the intermediary effect
between what characterizes a signifier and another signifier, namely, the fact
that each of them, each of them is an element. "<span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn12" name="_ftnref12" title="">[12]</a><br /><br /></span></span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn12" name="_ftnref12" title=""><!--[endif]--></a></span>
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> This leads us to question, then, about
what possible role could psychoanalysis occupy within the 'sliding chain of
signification', as it mediates the clinical intervention of the analyst by way
of a corpus of theoretical claims that describe and prescribe the very subject
matter for psychoanalysis? Indeed, what is the <i>ethics</i> of this peculiar
discursive enterprise that warns against the temptation to position oneself as
an external observer before the parade of signifiers? Who is, after all, the <i>subject</i>
of psychoanalysis, and from what position does it issue its address? This
question becomes pressing the more we realize that the very clinical practice
psychoanalysis enacts is itself mediated by the series of principles,
statements and formulas that comprise the 'theory' of psychoanalysis, and
without which its practice in the clinical setting would be impossible. How
does the 'binding' to these principles take place' in accordance to what rule,
if not that prescribed by the big Other? In order to see how this problem becomes
particularly acute we must see how the Lacanian conception of a voided
subjectivity in tandem with his adherence to a immanent structuralism within
the order of the signifier leads to the problematic assessment of
psychoanalytic claims, and finally to a quandary concerning its position of
address. This becomes evident once we realize Lacan's liquidation of
representation is the very condition for his claim that there is no
meta-language. Let us examine the details involved in Lacan's account.<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> As we have seen, the logical priority
of the symbolic entails both that the self-identification of the subject with
the <i>imago</i> occurs as the subject is
inserted into language, and that the identification of others <i>as </i>others (both individuals and objects,
persons and things) is conditioned by the linguistic order of the signifier,
i.e. individuation is a function of language, and this articulates both the
epistemic-psychological dimensions of self-understanding, as well as the
ontological dimensions of understanding others and the world<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn13" name="_ftnref13" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[13]</span><!--[endif]--></span></a>. This forms a necessary corrective the myths
of knowledge and thinking that located desire at the level of explicit
consciousness, since for them "... it seemed that consciousness was
inherent to what the subject had to say qua signification" (SV, pp. 105). <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Redoubling the earlier distinction
between individual ego and subject, at the level of the symbolic we can map the
distinction between the <i>subject of the
statement</i> and the <i>subject of
enunciation</i>. The former is expressly formulated in speech or writing, individuated
by the inclusion into the symbolic order and grammatically objectivated within
the sequences of signifiers and sentences that structure discourse. The <i>subject of the enunciation</i>, on the other
hand, is the slippery index for the
subject of the <i>unconscious</i>, which
remains forever subtracted and incomplete from desire’s imaginary-symbolic
operations, and from the statement. Lacan reverses Descartes dictum accordingly:
"I think where I am not, therefore I am where I do not think" (<span style="background: #FAFAFA;">Lacan 1977: 166)</span>. <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> However, the most important point we
must underline here is that the subject of enunciation does not stand to the
subject of the statement as signified stands to signifier, or represented to
representing. Lacan is adamant to insist in that the individuating function of
the big Other is not merely representationalist in the sense that it 'tracks
down things' through words or signs; it refuses to be ontologised or
positivized. This constitutes the kernel of Lacan's flattening of the
Saussurian relation of <i>signification</i>
as holding between signs and things, to one where signification obtains between
signifiers exclusively: "The signifier doesn't just provide an envelope, a
receptacle for signification. It polarizes it, it structures it, and brings it
into existence." (SIII, pp. 224), and "...the sign does not take its
value with respect to a third thing that it represents, but it takes on its
value with respect to another signifier which it is not." (Ibid; pp. 7) Or
yet again: "The signifier is a sign that doesn't refer to any object... It
is a sign which refers to another sign, which is as such structured to signify
the absence of another sign, in other words, to be opposed to it in a
couple." (SXI, pp. 167) <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> What I
would like to suggest is that it is not only the subject of the unconscious which
becomes delivered from the empirical pretences of ego-psychology or
transcendental philosophy into the order of language, but also the intended
objects of consciousness which become delivered from the empirical pretences of
metaphysicians and ontologists to the delirium of the signifier. As a result,
the unconscious is crucially neither the subject, nor an object; it has no
determinate ontological or epistemic status: "...what still becomes
apparent to anyone in analysis who spends some time observing what truly
belongs to the order of the unconscious, is that it is neither being, nor
non-being, but the unrealized." (SXI, pp 30) <br /><br /><br /> As a result, the disjunction
between psychoanalysis and philosophy is total since "the gap of the
unconscious seems to be pre-ontological... it does not lend itself to
ontology" (Ibid. 29) The psychoanalytic relation to the
non-ontologizable reality of the
unconscious is not the search for a pre-linguistic positive content hidden
behind the signifying chain, which would constitute the ‘real subject’ after
sublating and shedding off its feeble illusions<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn14" name="_ftnref14" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[14]</span><!--[endif]--></span></a>.
Whereas the subject of <i>knowledge</i> is
an illusion, the subject of the <i>unconscious</i>
is not merely a myth: "the subject [of knowledge] correlative to the
object, the subject around whom turns the eternal question of idealism, and who
is himself an ideal subject...<u>he is only supposed</u>." (S6, L2, pp.
18). It is not the ideal subject that underlies the signifier, but the pure
formal placement of signifiers that comprises the subject: " The subject is nothing other
than what slides in a chain of signifiers, whether he knows which signifier he
is the effect of or not".<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn15" name="_ftnref15" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black;">[15]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
As a result, both subject and object are delivered to a structure of
signification, void of any ontological status, and to relations between
signifiers, void of epistemological status.<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> And yet, does this leave it open that something
like being-as-such may nonetheless subsist in the order of <i>consciousness</i>, along its much vaunted intentionality? For if
indeed, as Lacan puts it, "the Freudian world isn't a world of things, it
isn't a world of being, it is a world of desire as such", then couldn't
the relation of <i>knowing</i> in which
things, and not just words, come into mind, be said to subsist at some level?
(S2, pp. 222) Yet insofar as the relation between words and things is flattened
to the relation between signifiers, ontology could only be said to subsist trivially
at the price of subordinating it to the structure of desire. This weakens the
ontological valence of 'beings' or 'being' to merely ideal poles for the
phantasies of philosophers, which does not so much <i>deny</i> ontology as much as it <i>suspends</i>
its purported prerogative when securing our access to the "world of
being", understood as that of a mind independent reality. It thereby
flattens the philosophical pretence of gaining traction before the world to the
uniform register of an unconscious desire which, like every other, is supported
in nothing else than in the signifying chain and its metonymic inscriptions. As
Alain Badiou puts it: "An important consequence of this situation is, in
this instance, the fact that the void is not
presupposed in signification from the perspective of its universality. It is presupposed under signification, at the back of signification, as the
slipping, the sliding, the streaming and the channel of our being, in the unpresented that doubles
the signifying chain" (Badiou, Umbra, Pg. 28) <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> This answer seems to preemptively defang
ontology from its capacity to prey on the world, after which its peculiarity
becomes a matter of organization at the level of signifier. In this regard,
Badiou's reading of Lacan as an anti-philosopher stresses how, once demoted to
one more discursive practice among others, psychoanalysis would carry out
"a deposing of the category of philosophy to constitute itself as
theory... philosophy is an act, of which the fabulations about 'truth' are the
clothing, the propaganda, the lies." (Badiou, 2010, pp 75) I will later
suggest why it is not clear, however, that psychoanalysis can legitimize itself
as a theory without reactivating the kinds of distinctions it takes to be
proper of philosophico-scientific discourse, and will proceed to ask what
consequences follow for the <i>formal</i>
coherence of psychoanalysis, as well as for its purported <i>content</i>. That is to say, we shall ask how psychoanalysis relates to
its subject matter.<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Since
there is no substantive content proper to the voided, barred subject and no
statement which predicates its 'proper being', Lacan consistently claims that there
is no Other of the Other: that there is no subject to be captured ‘outside’ of
the Otherness of language or, what amounts to the same, that “…there is no
metalanguage.” (E, 688) Put differently, one never "reaches out"
outside of language, either directly onto an other subject, or, what amounts to
the same, to being as an object, since "...what characterizes the demand
is not just that it is a relationship of a subject to another subject [or
between a subject and an object], it is that this relationship is made through
the mediation of language, through the mediation of a system of
signifiers." (SVI, L3, pp. 27) The movement of the Real occurs by and
through the order of the signifier, not as a foreign transcendence. The
primitive individuation of the imaginary realm, which as we saw constitutes the
entire field of the visible, traverses the order of the signifier constituting
the vain phantasy to regain the impossible object which would endow its void
with an integral consistency. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> (c) The Cunning of Being or the Being of
Cunning?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> If the subject of the reality unconscious
is indeed structured like a language, and desire is nothing but that which
slides in the articulation between signifiers, then the much vaunted Freudian
'world of desire' is an idealized world populated by phantasms; not a world as
much as the height of narcissistic alienation, the nightmare which is nothing
but a dream come true. At this point we should ask again: does this mean that
even if the relation of <i>knowing</i>
between words and things does not hold good for the structure of the <i>unconscious</i>, it might nevertheless be
thinkable within the realm of <i>consciousness</i>?
<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> In this stronger formulation, I
believe that the question must be answered to in the negative. For it is clear
that the "Freudian world" isn't just <i>another world</i> which, in dualist metaphysical spirits, would neatly
leave the innocence of the world of knowing to its own operations, untouched.
Indeed, Lacan is adamant to show not only that the world of desire is not the
world of things, but that the unconscious <i>conditions</i>
the operations of consciousness and seals its every pretence within the economy
of desire: "Relations between human beings are really established before
one gets to the domain of consciousness. It is desire which achieves the
primitive structuration of the human world, desire as unconscious." (S2,
pp. 224) More dramatically still, it's precisely desire's undermining of
consciousness that makes the explicit conscious claims to the <i>universality</i> of being subordinate to the
unconscious <i>singularity </i>of the
symptom, or as Lacan reminds us: "...don't forget that consciousness isn't
universal." (Ibid). If this is so, then the ontological independence of
the 'realm of things' could at best be an epiphenomenal illusion, a veil under
which the iterations of desire and the symptom displace themselves in the order
of the signifier.<br /><br /><br /> In fact, Lacan explicitly subordinates the object of
knowledge to the object of desire, and claims that in the vector leading from
the barred subject to its decentered other, the small impossible object of
desire, one finds the (illusion) of knowledge: "<i>$</i> [stands] in the presence of o and which we call the phantasy,
which in the psychic economy represents
something that you know." (Ibid, pp 214). This is why it is,
paradoxically, desire that is the metonymy <i>of
being</i> in the subject, insofar as it is through the self-alienating
insertion into the impersonal Other of language that the subject releases its
intentionality, and not from the realm of "Being" that offers itself
'as a gift' to immediate experience. What philosophers reify as knowledge of
being is in truth the knowledge of the Other, insofar as it is attributed to
and assumed by the subject as individuated in the impersonal symbolic order:
""What is it that knows?" Do we realize that it is the Other?...
as a locus in which the signifier is posited, as without which nothing
indicates to us that there is a dimension of truth anywhere, a di-mension, the
residence of what is said, of this said whose knowledge posits the Other as
locus." (SXX, pp. 96) <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> The philosophical questioning that
aims at knowledge is thus to be understood as the subject's depositing of his
speech within the punctuation of the symbolic, rather than by corresponding to
the Real. The power of the question brings us closer not to a palpitating realm
behind the order of the signifier, but only to the demand issued from <i>within</i> this order; thought must
subordinate its positivity to it, and find itself always-already lost in it.
For the subject, "what he is questioning himself about is far from being
the response, it is the questioning. It is effectively 'What is this signifier
of the Other in me?" (S1, L9, pp. 132). By fixating itself into the order
of the signifier, ruminating in search for the impossible lost object, the
quest for self proves, ironically, an inversion of the philosophical genealogy
of thought, a predecessor of the quest for being as such: "... the bar is
the hidden signifier, the one that the Other does not have at its disposition,
and which is precisely the one which concerns you: it is the same one that
makes you enter the game in so far as you, poor simpletons, since you were
born, were caught up in this sacred <i>logos</i>
business." (Ibid; L16, pp. 207). And indeed it is telling that the quest
for being should be of no concern for the psychoanalyst, but that he rather
makes of desire that which deserves to be called "the essence of
man", signaling its <i>logical</i>, if
not <i>chronological</i>, priority (S6, L1,
pp 4)<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn16" name="_ftnref16" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[16]</span><!--[endif]--></span></a>. <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> However, this predicament forces
psychoanalysis into a quandary. For if the subject of knowledge is indeed subordinate
to the unconscious, and if the relation between signifier and signified is
flattened to the chains in the former, how are we to understand what for Lacan,
indeed for <i>psychoanalysis</i>, must be a
theory <i>of</i> desire? That is, how can
Lacanian psychoanalysis, in erecting its formidable conceptual structure,
proclaim to give a structured <i>theory</i> and
not just constitute an improvised <i>practice</i>,
i.e. how is it to become a discourse in which the structural features of desire
are outlined and articulated? For if there is no relation between words and
things, then what relation do the theoretical statements formulated in
psychoanalysis purportedly bear to its presumed subject matter? What is the
role of the peculiar signifier <i>"desire"</i>
in the economy of psychoanalysis, if there is, strictly speaking, nothing 'out
there' to be spoken of, no 'thing' populating the world which can escape the
latency of the phantasy? And similarly
for <i>'unconscious'</i>, <i>'signifier'</i>, "<i>subject</i>", the entire roster of <i>concepts</i> that psychoanalysis deploys continuously, when claiming to
<i>explain</i> the generality of desire as a
structure, and not just as <i>manifesting</i>
one more iteration of desire as a symptom, like every other. <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Preemptively, one might answer that indeed
because psychoanalysis elides the priority of the referential relation it is
never trying to 'reach out' onto things or to give an ontology, peeking behind
the words, but is rather consigned to survey the <i>latent</i> content in which the signifying chains become deployed and
used. Thereby, the analyst is not a <i>knower</i>,
claiming to access the 'things behind the appearances', since that would
performatively contradict the purported demotion of epistemology/psychology and
philosophy by reifying the subject supposed to know into a kernel for empirical
investigation. Rather, the analyst is concerned with the reality of appearances
only, with how they find their place <i>within</i>
the structure of signification as such. <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> But this is simply to inflect the
issue into the order of language. For if psychoanalysis is not just one more <i>phantasy</i> caught around its impossible
object, then this is because what Lacan is effectively doing is not simply
writing/speaking to us qua analysands, addressing the particularity of our (paradoxically)
universal symptom. Rather, he is outlining the <i>general</i> structure of desire. In other words, the statements issued
by psychoanalysis allegedly pertain not just to one more discourse in the same
footing before desire as all others, but must rather gain traction before <i>desire as such</i>. If not, then the
artifice of psychoanalytic claims and formalizations would do nothing but make
of the signifier "<i>desire"</i>
its very own symbolic fiction, another specular symptom fixing the localization
of an impossible object, in an attempt to wage against the organization of the
purported hegemony of philosophers and psychologists. Yet Lacan repeatedly
insists on both the preponderance of a Real that is radically recalcitrant to
any symbolization on the one hand, and which is also the subject of
psychoanalsysis itself. How are we to understand the relation between the
claims of psychoanalysis and the Real that it comports itself towards? From
where can psychoanalysis issue an address about the Real without reifying an
epistemological relation between knower and known, which would depend on an
ontologized conception of subjectivity?<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> First, it is clear that the position of
enunciation that corresponds to the analyst's <i>theoretical</i> statements and formalizations cannot be rendered
equivalent to the position he/she occupies as an analyst in the clinical
setting<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn17" name="_ftnref17" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[17]</span><!--[endif]--></span></a>.
But wherein is this <i>theoretical</i> meta-discourse
to be located then? How does it escape the impersonal pretences of the University
discourse, or the hegemonic address of the Master discourse? How does it
function in abstraction from the commerce of the symbol? <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> These questions are pressing, since the
theoretical claims of psychoanalysis function as the transcendental condition
for the division between the different formalizations of discursive positions,
and so also for the delineation of the analyst's role apropos the other three
positional registers. It seems to be, in this sense, functioning as a kind of
exception to the discursive hegemony of signifiers circling around the
object-cause with respect to the place of the signifier. But this is precisely
the kind of meta-linguistic position that Lacan seemingly wants to avoid at all
costs, and it is not clear on which methodological grounds one could purport to
occupy such an exceptional position while denying the valence of transcendence
which conditions epistemological investigation. The transcendental regulation
by the theoretical, however, seems function as the condition for the
displacement of philosophy, by assuming the epistemic rights before desire as a
structure, and against being and ontology. Thus, the theorerical claims of
psychoanalysis condition both the typology of subjective positions fro outside,
as well as the variegated semantic valences that give meaning to its own claims
about the Real.<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> I would suggest that, if as Badiou insists,
Lacan is an anti-philosopher, it is insofar as in waging war against the
ontological phantasy, he nevertheless remains within its confines; where the position
of enunciation of the University and the claim to objective knowledge, that is,
the "cohort of being", is typified within psychoanalytic theoretical
statements themselves. It is crucial to note that this theoretical operation is
not only external to the clinical practice of the discourse of the analyst, but
also that it conditions the separation of the analyst's discourse from the rest
of discourse. For what could the deliberate intent to subvert the 'dominating
discourse' that symptomatically evinces an instance of phantasy in analysis
mean for someone who is addressing the psychoanalytic community itself? From
which position of enunciation could the theoretical statements of
psychoanalysis be issued from, if it is neither a form of the presumed
neutrality of objective knowledge proper to University discourse, but neither
an instance for the discourse of the analyst? What could psychoanalysis claim
to be doing if, as Lacan has repeatedly insisted, there is no meta-language,
and if "there is no Other of the Other? " (Ibid; L16, pp. 206). Yet if knowledge <i>of</i> desire can be obtained or localized from the vantage point of
psychoanalytic theory, there seems nothing to keep the philosopher from claiming
that what Lacan is doing is effectively <i>ontologizing
</i>desire and thus the subject of the unconscious as the libidinal variant of
the realm of appearances, and that therefore Lacan has merely supplanted
philosophy and psychology with its own prescriptive ideational framework, apt
for empirical investigation, i.e. the realm of the unconscious that is "structured
like a language"<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn18" name="_ftnref18" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[18]</span><!--[endif]--></span></a>.<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Indeed, Lacan himself seems to have been aware
of this crucial paradox within his theoretical register from very early on. In
what I take to be a decisive statement, Lacan claims with regards to the
conceptual status of the psychoanalytic theoretical endeavor: "There is a
fundamental ambiguity in the use we make of the word 'desire'. Sometimes we
objectify it- and we have to do so, <u>if only to talk about it</u>. On the
contrary sometimes we locate it as the primitive term, in relation to any
objectification." (S2, pp. 225) This ambiguity is not trivial whatsoever.
For if desire must be <i>objectified</i> in
order to be spoken about, in what sense is it any different than any of the
other terms that philosophers or scientists purportedly use to describe
phenomena of all kinds, desire included? How are we to understand the claim that
desire is simultaneously <i>of</i> the order
of signifier and <i>that which conditions</i>
any objectification whatsoever? How to address the Real of the libidinal subject
and its Real of the object if, like Zizek insists, "<i>There is no ontology of the Real</i>: the very field of ontology, of
the positive order of Being the Real are mutually exclusive: The Real is the
immanent blockage or impediment of the order of being, what makes the order of
Being inconsistent..." (LTN; Pg. 958). <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> This problem is particularly acute: Lacan
insists that desire <i>cannot</i> be ontologised.
But then what is it that psychoanalytic theory is doing when they 'objectify'
desire "if only to speak of it"? How could such an act constitute anything
but the making of an ontological valence? Despite his precautions, by
flattening the symbolically enveloped epistemological relation between knowing
individual and known object into the relation between the Real of the
unconscious subject and the impossible object, Lacan seems to be effectively <i>ontologizing</i> the relation between the
desire and its object-cause. The deflection of the transcendental relation
between words and things at the level of the symbolic is coupled to a
reification of the relation between the desiring subject and desired object, at
the point where the Reality of both becomes indiscernible. The Real of desire appears thereby as the
ontologization of the relation between the Real subject and the Real object, as
the distinction between them becomes a nullity.<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Yet to claim that desire is not just one
more signifier in the commerce of the symbolic, but rather the enabling <i>condition</i> for signification and
objectivation, is once again to reactivate the relation between signifier and
signified, only this time in terms of desire as Real precondition for objects
understood as linguistically individuated posits. In other words, although Lacan has done away
with the transcendental relation of reference at the level of the symbolic, he
must still covertly depend on the connection between the Real of desire as
condition of possibility for the symbolic individuation of the signifier. This is
to covertly ontologise desire as an Aristotelian 'first mover', as the 'ground
of being', as Ineffable Being stripped even of the honor of the name. And since
symbolic objectification occurs on condition of the Real unobjectifiable cause,
it follows that even the theory of desire, that psychoanalysis purports to
advance, is conditioned on separation between the claims and formulas <i>about</i> desire, and desire <i>itself</i>. In other words, if Lacan claims that the
objectification of desire relates to a pre-objectified desire, then he has
reactivated the referential relation between signifier and signified, sign and
referent, in the dichotomy between objectual desire-for-us and unobjectifiable desire-in-itself.
This surrenders Lacan to a bizarre, libidinal paradox of Kantianism. But to do
that he must once again rehabilitate not just the <i>ontological</i> valence of desire as such, but the <i>epistemological </i>valence of the relation between desire's
objectification in language and the depths of the desire that it bridges us to
in the act of theorizing it, that is, in the making of claims and formulas that
express it or which are <i>about</i> it. It
is impossible to understand Lacan's claim that desire is a 'precondition' for
its objectification unless one reenacts this philosophical cunning of the original
psychoanalytic coup against philosophy and science. <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Alternatively, Lacan can insist that
the objectification in question needs of no such relation, and consistently
maintain that the signifier "<i>desire</i>"
is, like every other, merely in relation to other signifiers, but never aiming
towards anything like an ontologically generative 'in-itself'. Thus the terms
of psychoanalysis would escape the faith of standing as signifiers <i>for </i>signifieds, and so avoid tacitly
playing the role of a 'meta-language'. Indeed, this is what at some point Lacan
himself seems to want to claim when he says that "Desire emerges just as
it becomes embodied in speech, it emerges with symbolism." (SII, pp. 234).
In this reading, the original ambiguity is resolved in favor of a pure
objectification of something which, strictly speaking, does not preexist the
act of objectification itself. <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Nevertheless, this raises the question about
how there could ever be a theory of desire (indeed of anything) having done
away with the Real. Without distinguishing how its theoretical statements
fulfill a descriptive role without becoming one more instance of the University
discourse, but neither falling into the other three forms of discourse, this
route ultimately undermines the theoretical status of psychoanalysis. The purported
connection to the <i>phenomenon</i> of
desire, however enveloped by the signifier, becomes in principle proscribed,
and psychoanalysis ends up depriving itself of any authority when describing
the subordination of knowledge to desire in theoretical terms. For there could
be no categorical distinction between those signifiers that will play the role
of "mere signifiers" in their discursive operation according to the
four forms, and those of psychoanalytic <i>theory</i>
which may unravel their conditions of possibility, lest we return to the
philosophical vocation of distinguishing empirical terms from transcendental
terms which condition the former, or occupy once again the position of the
University discourse by prescribing a kind of knowledge. In the light of such
exigency, psychoanalysis must accept that its attempt to objectify desire, if
only to speak of it is finally led by the proto-philosophical urgency to <i>know</i>, despite its protestations to the
contrary.<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> More dramatically, if psychoanalysis cannot
validate itself as a theory, neither can the structure of desire it purportedly
formalizes and describes as being intractable to knowledge be used to undermine
<i>itself</i> in relation to other theories
and discourses in general. In other words, psychoanalysis couldn't even
surrender its rights to desire without already having 'spoken that which can't
be spoken', that is, without already assuming a theoretical position claiming
to know of desire as that which slides through everywhere but is nowhere. The
result is a fundamental paradox whereby psychoanalysis ceases to be a theory
because the exigencies of desire undermine it, and where desire ceases to be
the structural phenomenon psychoanalysis describes because the latter is not a
theory<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn19" name="_ftnref19" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[19]</span><!--[endif]--></span></a>. Needless to say, this paradox threatens to
jeopardize even the <i>clinical</i> practice
of psychoanalysis, insofar as once the theoretical valence of its claims and
principles have been rendered dubious, so are the practices articulated and
prescribed on the basis of those claims and principles suddenly in a precarious
position.<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Two scenarios appear possible at his
point, as the necessary correctives to psychoanalytic theory. Yet, as we shall
see, that the ambiguity of desire as a <i>term</i>
and as a <i>condition</i> is ultimately
irresolvable. Lacan claimed to have superseded the pretences of philosophy but
in turn seems to be forced into the choice between a variant of transcendental
idealism and sophistry. The former scenario has itself two possibilities: a) a
kind of negative-theological epistemic understanding of the foreclosure of Real
desire as that which resists objectification and meaning, and b) a variety of
textual idealism where desire is immanent to the signifier, while admitting of
a typology of signifiers. Let us assess each of these . <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> First, a possible answer is to
leave it open that psychoanalysis may gain traction with respect to Real desire,
via the objectification of the signifier. That is, the signifier might grant
access to desire as an <i>unknowable</i>,
unobjectifiable, but nevertheless <i>thinkable</i>
condition of possibility for signification (a variety of 'weak correlationism'<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn20" name="_ftnref20" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[20]</span><!--[endif]--></span></a>).
Under this light, Lacan's account of desire as Real precondition begins to
startlingly resemble the minimal realism of Heidegger, for whom the opaqueness
of the Earth <i>qua </i>unobjectifiable
being stands as necessarily refractory to the variegated structure of Worldhood,
with its populating entities and individuations at the ontic level. Real desire
would be the proto-ontological motor conditioning, ironically, the merely ontic
register of being and the symbolic investment of symptoms. The early Lacan seems
to indicate this much when he claims in a rather cryptic passage:
"Desire... is the desire for nothing namable... this desire lies at the
origin of every variety of animation. If being were only what it is there
wouldn't be room to talk about it. Being comes into existence as an exact
function of this lack." (SII, pp 223). This is the direction in which the
later Lacan, through his idea of the Real as that which resists symbolization,
seems to have succumbed, as we shall see below<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn21" name="_ftnref21" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[21]</span><!--[endif]--></span></a>.<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Alternatively, in this first re-philosophizing
scenario, the structure of desire remains epistemically accessible without
residue, but confined to the signifying order, in which case Lacan is involved
in a bizarre structuralist parody of textual idealism. Yet as we surmised
above, this cannot be done, strictly speaking, without a qualitative
distinction that vitiates the structural uniformity of the signifier. In other
words, it requires a qualitative distinction <i>within</i> the order of the signifier, a typology that sets those signs
which map the structure of desire from those which are merely within the
libidinal commerce of phantasy, and so those which are theorized by the former
in expressing their conditions of possibility. Both options in this scenario rehabilitate
the philosophical spooks that Lacan took to have demoted, at the price of
reactivating the possibility of a special kind of reference or relation between
signifiers, apart from the articulation of the four discourses, and with it one
must accept the neutral possibility of attaining the status of a
'meta-language' to save psychoanalytic theory from itself.<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> The second alternative, foreclosing the
explanatory purchase on desire, and leaving the exteriority of Real desire <i>unthinkable</i>, shuns the status of
psychoanalysis as a theory and surrenders it to a sophistic endeavor marking
its internal contradiction (a variety of strong correlationism). This is the
tragedy that we surmised above, when showing that psychoanalysis couldn't even
surrender its rights to knowledge if it fully relinquishes its epistemic
vocation, and the possibility of distinguishing between Real desire and its
theorization. For in this scenario, the Lacanian edifice ends up undermining
itself, rendering the conceptual endeavor it pursues into utter incoherence,
the knowledge of desire undermining its theorization, and the theorization of
desire undermining the possibility of knowledge of it<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn22" name="_ftnref22" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[22]</span><!--[endif]--></span></a>. <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> As we suggested above, however, Lacan
seems to have progressively realized that he couldn't do without explaining how
a <i>theory</i> of Real desire relies on
such a conceptual envelopment, as evinced in a particularly telling passage: "[Our]
conception of the concept implies that the concept is always established in an
approach that is not unrelated to that which is imposed on us, as a form, by
infinitesimal calculus. Indeed, if the concept is modeled on an approach to the
reality that the concept has been created to apprehend, it is only by a leap a
passage to the limit, that it manages to realize itself. We are then required
to say in what respect- under what form of finite quantity, I would say- the
conceptual elaboration known as the unconscious may be carried out." (SXI:
pp. 19) The metaphor is that of an <i>asymptotic</i>
approach to the Real via the <i>matheme</i>,
forever removed from the concept's touch.<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Yet
at this point, signaling both the beginning of a mathematical obsession and
that of a poetic escape, Lacan begins to opt for the first horn of the dilemma
and to surrender psychoanalysis to what appears under all lights to be a
re-philosophizing of its fundamental task, along with the valence of knowing. A
passion for the purity of formalization and the inscription, which begins sliding
down to the notion that the <i>matheme</i>
is closest to the Real. The <i>matheme</i> becomes
the receptacle of a pure transmission, insofar as formalization subtracts
writing from its conceptual envelopment, prizing it free from any semblance of
meaning or intention. This is why, for Lacan, "The mathematical
formalization of signifierness runs counter to meaning." (SXX, pp. 93) <br /><br /><br />The
<i>matheme</i> is said to be closest to the
Real insofar as it formalizes while symbolizing <i>nothing</i>: it has a Real status insofar as<i> </i>it cannot be positivized in a representation. The Real subtracts
itself from all positive content and all imaginary-symbolic envelopments; it is
delivered only to the pure act of transmission, the transference of the
analyst's intervention which opens the promise for the traversal of the
phantasy. Just like the subject, there can be thus no theoretical knowledge of
the Real: the latter cannot be totalized or unified by a predicate, or thought
of consistently through definable properties. Therefore, it cannot be qualitatively
determined so as to be tractable conceptually: "<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">If there is a notion of the real, it is extremely complex
and, because of this, incomprehensible, it cannot be comprehended in a way that
would make an All out of it."<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn23" name="_ftnref23" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: black;">[23]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a></span>
What formalization enables, Lacan wants to say, is not a representation <i>of</i> desire and so <i>of</i> a knowledge <i>about</i> the
Real, but rather an experience or 'act' with respect the Real, a possibility
for transference in analysis: "Truth cannot convince, knowledge becomes
act.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn24" name="_ftnref24" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[24]</span><!--[endif]--></span></a>"
(Ibid; Pg. 104) <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> And yet, as we saw, as much as the <i>matheme</i> itself remains recalcitrant to
the symbolic, it is just as true that Lacan cannot dispense of the task of
deploying the <i>matheme</i> to formalize
psychoanalytic concepts and structures. Lacan himself says that the
formalization is the formalization <i>of</i>
the signifier: of whatever is articulated through the signifier, psychoanalytic
claims included. But if mathematics can operate to <i>formalize</i> psychoanalysis, this is because formalization operates
over the <i>concepts </i>and claims that
psychoanalysis deploys. But in order for psychoanalytic claims and concepts to
be any more apt for the formalization which 'touches the Real' of desire, then
the claims of psychoanalysis must be in some respect different than all others;
or else the formalization would appear arbitrarily dependant on a discursive
register. Yet the on what methodological grounds could we assess whether
psychoanalytic enjoy this priority, if not epistemological or semantic?<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> At this juncture, the claim that the <i>matheme</i> resists translation is merely to
refuse to explain how it is that it functions as a <i>formalization</i> adequate to the statements of psychoanalysis, and which
concern the Real as much as the symbolic or the imaginary. The <i>matheme</i> is said not to obey the norms of
knowledge or enter into the rule of the symbolic, but at the same time is
coordinated with a series of theoretical interpretations, granting it rights
before the Real. But what grounds this proximity between the <i>matheme</i> and the Real, as regulated by
psychoanalytic concepts? Without explaining this connection, psychoanalysis
fails to adequately account for the relation between the practice of
formalization and the theoretical statements which provide the semantic
interpretation for the mathematical formulas. For the psychoanalyst needs not
only the matheme which is recalcitrant to meaning, but a series of theoretical
claims explaining <i>how</i> the matheme
formalizes certain structures. Without this connection, any mathematical
inscription cannot count as the formalization of anything, is truly
'meaningless', and there would be nothing to distinguish pure mathematical forms
from Real psychic structures<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn25" name="_ftnref25" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[25]</span><!--[endif]--></span></a>.
This would render psychoanalysis complicit with a kind of Pythagorean upsurge.
Just like unobjectifiable desire was 'objectified' in theory only to speak of
it, the Real non-translatability of the <i>matheme</i>
is translated by psychoanalytic theory since, without such a theorization, the <i>matheme </i>could not stand for the formalization
of anything whatsoever. The interesting paradox is therefore that although in
order for the <i>matheme</i> to be
non-translatable to any discursive register that operates under the symbolic it
must, paradoxically, be able to be translated into the conceptual register of
psychoanalysis, for the latter provides the interpretation without which, the
abstract terms would fail to account for anything. <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> What this evinces is that
psychoanalysis ultimately is forced to speak of the Real ambiguously: in one
sense it said to pertain to formalization in its <i>untranslatable</i> dimension, and in another to desire as the <i>unobjectifiable</i> condition for any
discourse. It is precisely at this juncture that the unobjectifiable Real of
desire, touched only in the <i>act</i> of
transference, is <i>mediated</i> by a tacit separation
from the <i>matheme</i> that ordains it, evincing
a division that psychoanalysis ultimately cannot resolve. Much like for Heidegger Being <i>qua</i> the unobjectifiable opaqueness of
the Earth cannot be apprehended conceptually but must be delivered to the
poetic word of the thinker and the act of the artist, the Real <i>qua</i> unobjectifiable opaqueness of desire
cannot be known but must be delivered to the epistemic opaqueness of the <i>matheme</i> and the transference occasioned
by the analyst in act. As Lacan puts it: "Mathematization alone reaches a
real - and it is in that respect that it is compatible with our discourse, with
analytic discourse- a real that has nothing to do with what traditional
knowledge has served as a basis for, which is not what the latter believes it
to be- namely, reality, but rather phantasy... The Real, I will say, is the
mystery of the speaking body, the mystery of the unconscious." (SXX; pp.
131) <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> However, the call for the bodily act signals
also the inevitable moment of loss for <i>explanation</i>,
the moment in which, no longer capable of separating the thought of the Real
from the Real itself, one must surrender all theoretical pretences and en-act
the traversal itself, a clinical pilgrimage before the inflections of the
symptom through the lessons of formalization. <span style="background: white;">The
discursive access to knowing-that becomes delivered to the oblique efficacy of
non-discursive know-how. This is how we should coordinate these two
seemingly disparate statements from Lacan: "There is some rapport of being
that cannot be known" (SXX, pp. 119, TM), and "If analysis rests on a
presumption, it is that knowledge about [subjective] truth can be constituted
on the basis of its experience" (Ibid, pp. 91). The impossibility of a
knowledge <i>of</i> being is but the obverse
of the possibility of knowing <i>how</i> to speak
in bringing about the transference. Or as Badiou formulates it: "The
paradoxical position of Lacan concerning truth is that there is no knowledge of
truth, but finally there is a psychoanalytic knowledge concerning this absence
of knowledge. This is the great paradox of the unconscious...a subject can have
an experience of its proper Real only in the form of an act." (Badiou,
2010)<br /><br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> The levels must be clearly demarcated: the
analytic transference enjoins the traversal of the phantasy and is supported by
the formalization of the symbolic by the <i>matheme</i>.
But as we have seen, the operation of formalization which demarcates the
positions and structures is in turn supported by the conceptual register of
psychoanalytic theory itself. Lacan can thus claim that: "It is in the
very act of speaking that makes this formalization, this ideal meta-language,
ex-sist." (SXX, Ibid; pp 119) The two Reals glare forth in their
unresolved difference: the pure form of the <i>mathematic</i>
inscription, recalcitrant to incorporation within the symbolic order of
language, and Real of desire in the passage to the pure act that deposes all
representational knowledge, where the traversal of the phantasy takes place. As
Badiou stresses: "This act is like a cut in language and also a cut in the
ordinary representation of the world- a representation which is imaginary. So
the act suddenly isolates the Real from its normal collection to the imaginary
and symbolic orders." (Badiou, 2010). <br /><br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background: white;"> And
yet we must insist, that for all its purported deflection of knowing-<i>that</i>, the abyss that separates the Real voided
<i>matheme</i> from the Real of desire
merely reproduces the dyad of signifier/signified in the dichotomy between
theoretical inscription and practical transmission. That is, Lacan reproduces
the problem between thought and reality that he takes to be emblematic of the
philosophical forms of 'knowing' in the tacit distinction between the formal
ideography of the <i>matheme</i> in its
presentation, and the singular act of speech in which transference finally
takes place and Real desire 'moves'. For Lacan cannot conflate the speciousness
of the formulaic <i>writing</i> of the
matheme with the act of <i>speech</i>
through which the subject traverses the phantasy, nor with the desire <i>in </i>the subject itself. That this
distinction is ultimately unexplainable, that the connection between the Real <i>qua</i> formalized <i>matheme</i> and the Real qua act cannot be <i>justified</i> but merely <i>presupposed</i>
by psychoanalysis, reveals the latter's internal gulf, delivered as it is, both
to the requirement to forego knowledge, and yet also to ordain it by yielding
knowledge of its own. </span>This separation ultimately makes the status of the Real
undecidable, or fatally ambiguous, i.e. playing the role of a pure inscription
without exteriority (the Real of the <i>matheme
</i>as formalization), or a pure exteriority without symbolization (the Real is
that which resists symbolization). With the Real subtracted from the traction
of knowing, it becomes a noumenal phantasm suspended between the void of an
empty formalism, or a mystical surrender to the ineffable Otherness that
animates the act. <span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: #333333;"><br /><br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: #333333;"> </span></span> And so one notes also, alongside the
obliqueness of the matheme, a desperation against the threat of the
"dialectic" and a helplessness evinced toward the poetic rumination,
thinking from a distance the untouchable purity of an Otherness so unblemished
that it does nothing but subtract itself from the signifier and its operations.
Such is the sliding down to the identification of the Real with that which is
ultimately beyond all capacity for individuation, rendering the conditioning of
the Real of desire excised from its pseudo-objectifications<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn26" name="_ftnref26" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[26]</span><!--[endif]--></span></a>. Unfortunately
then, the question about the legitimacy of desire as a suitable structure to
explain to ontogenesis of thought and being, returns into the market of
theories negotiating an unnamable void for their founding gesture. Perhaps this
is why Lacan struggles, refusing to fully embrace the prospect of ontologizing
the unconscious and desire, to the point of reverting into the desperation of
sophism: "the gap of the unconscious is pre-ontological... it is neither
being nor non-being, but the unrealized." (SXI: pp. 29) <br /><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> We
hear echoes of Heidegger's attempts to reconcile himself with his own theory,
trying to save the Great Outdoors from the clutches of Dasein's world-producing
prerogative (claiming animals have and do not have worlds by saying they are
'poor in them', for instance). Lacan, scavenging for the Real, this being without
the honor of the name, urges the separation between psychoanalysis and
philosophy, much like for Heidegger poetic thought could only free itself by separating
itself from the loudness of metaphysics. A scission, to be sure, that appears as
the uncompromising <i>desire for desire</i>,
stubbornly clinging to its own impossible object, its own unrequited passion.
For the Real does not speak, after all, putting an end to the disguised
epistolary confession of the philosopher and the scientist, as well as the
analysand. Is this not where the tormented psychoanalyst geared towards the
interruption of the symptom by the act and the <i>matheme</i>, and the disillusioned provincialism of the poetic philosopher
traversing metaphysics through poetry meet again: in the desire for <i>silence</i>? <br /><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Ultimately, the Real anchor of desire
and its object, this 'indivisible remainder', does not absolve Lacan from the
faith of the philosophical dictum, but rather delivers him back into what Badiou
has called 'the effects of skepticism': "</span><span style="background: white;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The
effects of this kind of frenzied upsurge, in which the real rules over the
comedy of our symptoms, are ultimately indiscernible from those of skepticism.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn27" name="_ftnref27" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">[27]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>"
(LOW: Pg. 563) And indeed, I think Badiou is correct here: Lacan's cryptic
statement from 1977 that "truth can only concern the Real" is perhaps
the point of the unique symptom, the torsion where, suspended between the
choice between being and nothingness, Lacan nods for the all-too-familiar
philosophical maneuver, and proceeds to identify them. The sliding void of the
object names the passion for the unnamable stain that, repudiating the
stringency of the symbolic demand, refuses to extirpate itself from thought,
however elusive to its feeble touch. The Real nothingness of Being, and so
philosophy, appears now as the stain for psychoanalysis, refusing to let the
words come to an end. That is, without ever traversing its own fantasy,
absolving the tormented analyst from his own confessional delirium. </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span lang="ES-PE"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Index of Abbreviations</span></span></b></div>
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<span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="ES-PE"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">E = Ecrits<br />
SII: Seminar II<br />
SIII: Seminar III<br />
SVI: Seminar VI<br />
SXX: Seminar XX<br />
SXI: Seminar XI<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[1</span></span></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[1]</span><!--[endif]--></span> The attempt to define and restrict the scope of the
thinkable in terms of fixed categorical determinations already presupposes the
libidinal core of the subject as void of any content, as it passes through the
experience of alienation by becoming integrated into language: "If what Freud discovered, and
rediscovers ever more abruptly, has a meaning, it is that the signifier’s
displacement determines subjects’ acts, destiny, refusals, blindnesses,
success, and fate, regardless of their innate gifts and instruction, and
irregardless of their character or sex; and that everything pertaining to the
psychological pre-given follows willy-nilly the signifier’s train, like weapons
and baggage" (E, Pg. 30)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoFootnoteText" style="margin-right: -.5in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[1]</span><!--[endif]--></span> This
explains Jacques -Alain Miller's formulation apropos Lacan's teachings during
1955 under the title "From the small to the big Other", which also
marks Lacan's more pronounced reworking with the structuralist tradition in
linguistics, and thus with the problematic of language in general. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[1]</span><!--[endif]--></span> It is
clear that, at least in the 1950's, Lacan's concept of the unconscious is
deeply influence by the Hegelian-Kojevian notion of desire as the desire of
recognition of the other. </span></div>
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[1]</span><!--[endif]--></span> </span></div>
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[1]</span><!--[endif]--></span> <strong>Seminar
XX, p.50<br /><br /></strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[1]</span><!--[endif]--></span> This structure is simultaneously that which provides
thus the condition for consciousness as consciousness <i>of something</i>, and that which eludes the explicit 'aboutness' of
conscious intentionality. It is insofar
that the subject constitutes its unconscious as a result of this alienating
operation of 'symbolic castration' that the latter is not a mere <i>myth</i> to be allotted alongside the
inventions of philosophers and psychologists alike: “...what is not a myth,
although Freud formulated it just as early on as he formulated the Oedipus
myth, is the castration complex” (E; Pg. 695). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[1]</span><!--[endif]--></span> More
subtly, it attempts to find <i>within</i>
the signifying chain itself those symptomatic points of capture and torsion,
the anomalies and ruptures which locate the subject’s unconsciously articulated
desire, i.e. its metonymic points of torsion and articulation. Thus Lacan
emphasizes the “…the radical role of metaphor and metonymy, substitution and
combination of signifiers in synchronic and diachronic dimensions" (Ibid).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[1]</span><!--[endif]--></span> <strong>- </strong><strong><span style="font-weight: normal;">Seminar XX,
p.50<br /><br /></span></strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[1]</span><!--[endif]--></span>
Indeed, the word "ontology" is not mentioned once in Seminar VI.<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[1]</span><!--[endif]--></span> For
the development on the four discourses, see especially Seminar XII, Norton
2007.<br /><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[1]</span><!--[endif]--></span> It is
obvious at this point that Lacan cannot mean that the unconscious is determined
by a language, since this would make it a kind of signified upon which the
signifier would work. Rather, the unconscious is the very process of
signification: You see
that by still preserving this ‘like’ [<em>comme</em>], I am staying within the
bounds of what I put forward when I say that the unconscious is structured<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em>like</em><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>a language. I say<em>like</em><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>so as not to say – and I come back to
this all the time – that the unconscious is structured<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em>by</em><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>a language. The unconscious is
structured like the assemblages in question in set theory, which are like
letters" <strong><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Seminar X</span></i></strong><strong><span style="font-weight: normal;">X, p.48
(Edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, W.W. Norton, 1999) Although the appeals to set
theory here are obviously metaphoric, they point to the idea, emphasized by
Badiou that, just like sets are not multiples <i>of </i>anything, language is not <i>of
</i>the unconscious; the latter would be to reconstitute the relation between
signifier and signified that Lacan is in the process of dismantling. <br /></span></strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[1]</span><!--[endif]--></span>
MEILLASSOUX, Quentin, <i>After Finitude, </i>translated
by Ray Brassier, Continuum, 2006.<br /><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[1]</span><!--[endif]--></span>
Roughly, from Seminar XI onwards. <br /><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[1]</span><!--[endif]--></span> Even
if we agree with Badiou that psychoanalysis is indeed closer to politics in
seeking the singularity of the individual symptom rather than the repetition of
the scientific thought, it must be stressed that, irrespective of the clinical
practice, the theoretical endeavor carried out by psychoanalytic thought cannot
but be subject to the norms of conceptual consistency which binds scientific
thought. If this is the case, then the way that psychoanalysis shields itself
against the dogmatism of embracing alienation in the signifier to its fullest
extent would not be to simply listen to the 'affirmative' vocation of political
thought, but also to the scientific vocation for what renders its theoretical
posits possible, i.e. formal coherency of its ideography.<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[1]</span><!--[endif]--></span> <span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">Lacan, J.,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Le triomphe de la religion, précedé
du Discours aux catholiques</i>, Paris: Seuil 2005, p. 96, 97. <br /><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[1]</span><!--[endif]--></span> Accordingly, the object-cause of desire as a Real is
thought through the formalization of a vanishing object, non-identical to
itself, always alienating the subject from the place of enunciation. This is why the phallus, as the mask hiding
the displacement of the object, constitutes the metonymy <i>of the subject</i> in being: the object of desire is 'subjectivized'
insofar as it refuses to ever coincide with the phallic semblances under which
it appears or is formulated. This 'becoming subject of substance', to speak
Hegelese, is what makes the meaningless formalism 'nearest' to the Real object
and so to the unconscious desire. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[1]</span><!--[endif]--></span> This
is why Zizek calls "the scientific Real" that <span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;"> "...of a
formula which renders the nature's meaningless functioning." (Zizek, How
to Read Lacan, </span><a href="http://www.lacan.com/zizalien.htm">http://www.lacan.com/zizalien.htm</a>)<br /><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[1]</span><!--[endif]--></span> It is
not only the structure of unconscious desire that is beyond recalcitrant to
ontology: the object of desire itself is, paradoxically, unobjectifiable
insofar as it remains impossible, non-self identical, never coincident with
a being with fixed qualities and
properties. This indicates another level of the fundamental coincidence between
the non-symbolic inscription of the object, and the object itself. This is
because <i>objet a</i> is both resolutely <i>material</i> (it is localized) and a <i>formal</i> index signaling that which is
never localizable, but which functions as an impasse for meaning, and so which
indexes the asymptotic horizon of the subject's intentional desire. The object
of desire is neither being (it resists objectification or self-identity, thus
enacting the infinity of subjective
desire) nor non-being (it must nevertheless be indexed as impossible <i>object</i> cause, 'if only to speak of it',
as that which consists as inconsistent, subtracting itself from the signifying
chain). The Real <i>object</i> can only be Real insofar as it is also, and paradoxically, a
'non-object', that is, insofar as it is on the side of the formal stringency of
the <i>matheme</i> and not of the
symbolic-imaginary operations of the signifier. Only the pure matheme
approaches it in its barren formalism by ordaining it to the act of analytic
transference facilitating the traversal of the phantasy: "[Objet <i>a</i>] would have us take it for being, in
the name of the following- that it is apparently something. But it only
dissolves, in the final analysis, owing to its failure, unable, as it is, to
sustain itself in approaching the real." (SXX: Pg. 95)<br /><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[1]</span><!--[endif]--></span> In
this regard, I would emphasize that, in spite of Badiou's commendable attempts
to characterize psychoanalysis as a candidate for <i>thinking</i> but perhaps not a <i>science</i>,
where the latter term is understood as "the unity of a theory and a
practice", does not help solve the issue. This can be easily seen if we
realize that the incapacity to separate theory and practice is not something we
can straightforwardly allot to science; even if psychoanalysis is thought as
closer to politics, the question about the relation between the <i>statements</i> of such a thought and the
thing itself remains. To stipulate an absolute inseparability between thought
and world is to surrender to idealism; to claim such a distinction is possible
is to rehabilitate the valence of knowing within a philosophical thought. I
believe, for reasons that Ray Brassier has pointed out, following Wilfrid
Sellars, that the <i>methodological</i>
separation between the space of reasons and the space of causes is the
condition of possibility for the <i>ontological</i>
unity between thought and being, reason and nature. The consequence, against
Badiou's depiction, is not a thinking of the articulation between a theory and
a praxis, but rather <i>how</i> such an
articulation is to be understood as that between world that is not thought and
thought that thinks the world.</span></div>
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Daniel Sacilottohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06107600124995445921noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6580039155018603814.post-25191597624953546092012-08-30T04:32:00.001-07:002012-09-10T17:41:03.914-07:00Žižek Against Brassier: On Conditions for Realism<br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;"><b><span style="background-color: #ebebeb; line-height: 18px; text-align: start;">Žižek</span> Against Brassier:</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;"><b>- On Conditions for Realism -</b></span></div>
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<b style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: xx-large;">______________________________</b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;"> In </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">Less Than Nothing, </i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">
</span><span style="background-color: #ebebeb; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">Žižek</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;"> attempts to defend
his Lacanian position as being the most cogent realist alternative,
while challenging Brassier's older Laruelle-inspired account. His basic claim
is that the question of realism as formulated by Meillassoux remains encumbered in the
transcendental problematic of how one's inner world represents external
reality, while the only true materialism requires<i> objectifying thought</i> by
making the subject coincide with the Real, or in other words, to account for how reality 'appears to itself'. So far so good; things seem fairly
congruent with the unilateralization that Laruelle himself pursues. But the
argument he offers for the Lacanian option is, well, very sloppy. The first crucial
passage is the following one:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> "The
difference between Brassier's position and the Lacano-Hegelian position can be
summed up by a simple replacement: Brassier refers to Freud's triple
de-centering or humilliation of man's narcissism- Copernicus, Darwin,
psychoanalysis- but he replaces psychoanalysis with cognitivism. The latter
fully naturalizes our mind, reducing it to a phenomenon arising out of
evolution- but perhaps Brassier proceeds too fast here: while cognitivism
de-centers the human mind from outside, treating it as an effect of objective
natural mechanisms only psychoanalysis de-centers it <i>from within</i>, revealing how the human mind involves not only
objective neuronal processes which are inaccessible to it."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span> <span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It goes without saying that Z<span style="background-color: #ebebeb; line-height: 18px; text-align: start;">ižek</span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span> here <span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">misidentifies Brassier's position with a neurophysiological reductionism, or
eliminativist materialism. It's already a bit remarkable that Zizek would
attribute this position to Ray, when the latter's argument vis a vis the eliminativist
project of the Churchlands is pointing out its conceptual incoherence. And needless
to say, Brassier's new Sellarsian position goes rather well with the idea that
subjectivity has a dimension that is irreducible to causal, objective processes. This
is, as we know, precisely the separation that Sellars proposes to make, following Kant, between <i>reasons</i>
and <i>causes</i>: subjectivity is defined not metaphysically, but functionally in
terms of the capacity of exhibiting intentional behavior, i.e. the capacity
to undertake normative statuses by entering the 'logical space of reasons'.
According to this conception of subjectivity, although the neurophysiological provides the
ontological substratum for sapience, it is only insofar as the latter entails
rational subjectivation that one comes to know of the former. In other words, while there is an ontological priority of the logical on the causal (there would not be thought without the proper biophysical evolutionary conditions obtaining; purposiveness arises out of purposeless mechanisms), there is an epistemological priority of the causal on the rational (only sapient creatures that inhabit the space of reasons can undertake normative statuses, and commit themselves to claims).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Accordingly, Brassier proposes in terms of the
distinction between <i>phenomenal
consciousness</i> and <i>rational
subjectivity</i>, the former being the illusory projection of a unitary self-model
which is causally explainable in terms of the functional role of our
neurophysiological system, while the latter provides the irreducible dimension
wherein we understand the necessary concepts for concept-attribution and revision: justification,
entitlement, belief, commitment, evidence, etc. Provisionally we might say then that psychoanalysis
is not, contrary to what </span>
<span style="background-color: #ebebeb; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: start;">Žižek</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span> <span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> suggests, the only option that 'de-centers' thought 'from within', since Sellarsian nominalism also describes the internal conditions required for
any empirical explanation or for indeed an investigation of facts, i.e. Sellars emphasizes that the capacity to make claims or have beliefs about what it the case requires that we know have to use modal notions, i.e. in order to believe or know that the cat is on the mat we need to be able to separate what inferentially follows from being a cat from that which doesn't. Thus, fact-stating or objective discourse logically depends on modal talk about what ought-to-be the case, and so it requires natural necessity, as well as pragmatic necessity (we need to know what we are committed to by having beliefs about cats as opposed to something else, and this obligation is to be understood in terms of proprieties for action in the making of inferences, observation reports, and action).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But while the
structuralist and the nominalist seem to coincide in their preservation of an
irreducible dimension of subjectivity, whether rational-procedural or
libidinal-symptomal, they disagree with respect to the role, if any, reserved for the transcendental conception of subjectivity. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Brassier, like
Sellars, conceives of his nominalism as not only compatible with but as the
condition for a naturalist metaphysics. However immanent to his semantic
nominalism, the functional conception of subjectivity thus proposed is still </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">transcendental</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Sellarsian philosophy is not transcendental in the strong
sense in which it gives the conditions for how mind or language 'reaches out into world',
but in the weak sense in which rational norms provide the transcendental conditions for any empirical investigation of objective processes. The
irreducibility of the normative is thereby methodological and epistemological, not
metaphysical. Representation being a function of conceptual role in an
inferentially-articulated linguistic economy, Sellarsian nominalism refuses the reification of
intuition as a kind of subjectively constituted species of representation, of the sort that would wrap the correlationist leash around the mind by keeping the great outdoors proscribed from our reach. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span>
<span style="background-color: #ebebeb; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: start;">Žižek</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, in turn, wants to liquidate the mediating function of epistemological knowing, and of
linguistic 'rationality' as the core of the subject, the better to safeguard a
purely voided conception of the subject which is less than ontological, which means also less than transcendental. This is of course because Zizek understands the transcendental problematic of access as still encumbered in a pre-Hegelian stage, which is overcome by asking about the emergence of real appearing as opposed to the separation between reality and appearance. So as to avoid the reduction of subjectivity to objectivity without reifying subjectivity metaphysically, </span>
<span style="background-color: #ebebeb; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: start;">Žižek</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> searches for a purely formal conception of Real subjectivity.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /><br /><br /> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Lacanian story is familiar: the subject 'slides'
through the signifiers, as a pure functional index that operates invisibly, at the point in which formal
inscription is indiscernible from Real phenomenon. The </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">matheme</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> adequate to the psychoanalytic theorization of the Real desire subtracts itself from the commerce of the symbolic, undergirding the delirium
of the phantasy and the symptom with its structural universality, i.e. its irreducibility and ubiquity. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And this impossibility of translating the mathematic inscription of the subject into any positive, qualitatively specific, philosophical register, is supposed to wrest any sort of ontological baggage from its pretenses.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> At this juncture, the second quote compendium from <span style="background-color: #ebebeb; line-height: 18px; text-align: start;">Žižek</span>, in alleged agreement with Laruelle, makes the Lacanian position apropos realism very slippery:</span></div>
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<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">" [T]he
problem is not how to think the in-itself without mind, but how to think the
'objectual' status of this zero point of thinking itself...[T]he very distance
which separates us from the In-itself is immanent to the In-itself, makes us
(the subject) an unaccountable/"impossible" gap or cut within the
in-itself. Insofar as, for Lacan, "what is foreclosed to thought in the
object" is the "impossible" </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">objet
a</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, and "what is foreclosed to the object in thought" is </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">$</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, the void of the barred subject
itself, this overlapping brings us back to Lacan's formula </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">$-a</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">... The Lacanian
Real-impossible is precisely such a 'given without givenness', without a
phenomenological horizon opening the space for it to appear, the impossible
point of the ontic without the ontological... What we call 'external reality'
(as a constituent field of already existing objects) arises through subtraction,
that is, when something is subtracted from it- and that something is the </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">objet a</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">. The correlation between subject
and object (objective reality) is thus sustained by the relation between the
same subject and its objectual correlate, the impossible-Real </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">objet a</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, and this second correlation is
of a totally different kind: it is a kind of negative correlation, an
impossible link, a non relationship, between two moments that can never meet
within the same space... not because they are too far away, but because they
are one and the same entity on the two sides of a Mobius band. This
impossible-Real virtual object is not external to the symbolic but its immanent
impediment, what makes this symbolic space curved... What this means, in
effect, is that </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">there is no ontology of
the Real</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">: the very field of ontology, of the positive order of Being the
Real are mutually exclusive: The Real is the immanent blockage or impediment of
the order of being, what makes the order of Being inconsistent... </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Lacan is not
a discourse idealist who claims that we are forever caught in the web of
symbolic practices, unable to reach the In itself. However, we do not touch the
Real by way of breaking out of the prison of language and gaining access to the
external transcendent referent- every external referent ("fully existing
positive reality") is already transcendentally constituted. We touch the
Real-in-itself in our very failure to touch it, since the Real is, at its most
radical, the gap, the "minimal difference", that separates the One
from itself." (Pg. 954-9)</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I find </span>
<span style="background-color: #ebebeb; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: start;">Žižek</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">'s
ruminations here to be profoundly unpersuasive, even confused. To see why it is simple enough to realize that for all his defenses against the charge of idealism-correlationism, the conception of the Real provided here is still correlational, however reduced to formal aspects, and however much </span>
<span style="background-color: #ebebeb; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: start;">Žižek</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> wants to say that the Real 'resists ontology'. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /><br /> Put simply: if the
<i>reality</i> commensurate with ontology is epiphenomenal and the Real is its non-ontologizable "ontic residue", then </span>
<span style="background-color: #ebebeb; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: start;">Žižek</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> has bought into the idea that the Real is
indeterminate categorically, an ineffable remainder, forcing us to render the objective status of our that which our claims are about and our ontological valences merely
for-us. This is the typical move which renders the Real almost like a negative-theological pole. The theory of the Real 'desire' cannot be ontology, because the world of ontology is relative to the commerce of the symbolic and the signifier, underwritten only by the formal vacuity of unconscious desire.<br /><br /><br /> More crucially, the Real </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">objet
a</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> is described as that which <i>alongside the subject</i> cannot be positivized, but for which nevertheless the subject remains its condition
of possibility. Yet here is where the realist must pull the breaks. The question of the
Real is <i>not</i> just that of a gap between the subject and its object, or the gap
<i>in subjectivity itself</i>. No! The question about the Real is, as Meilassoux and Brassier insist, and contra</span> <span style="background-color: #ebebeb; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: start;">Žižek</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, that of a world radically indifferent to thought.<br /><br /><br /> Dissolving the transcendental, </span>
<span style="background-color: #ebebeb; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: start;">Žižek</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span> <span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">cannot but end up conflating the epistemological and the ontological, and so sense dependence and reference dependence. To remind ourselves of this crucial distinction:</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">1) <i>Sense dependence</i><span style="font-size: small;">
- For any x, x is sense dependent on y iff x cannot be known unless y is known.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">2) </span><i>Reference-dependence</i>:
For any x, x is reference dependent on y iff x cannot exist unless y exists.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /><br /> The result of this is that the fear of thinking that knowledge of an external reality requires vitiating the immanent account of language in favor of an old 'mirror theory', is unfounded. Sellars' contention is to preserve an immanent understanding of semantics in his nominalism, while refusing to say that, because language is the condition for knowing, all ontological valences or claims must be ontologically for-us as well, leaving us with a barren conception of the Real as the impossible inconsistency of being, however lacking the honor of the name.<br /><br /><br /> We must insist that while the categorical specificity of the object as thought is </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">epistemologically </i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">relative </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">to a subject, this is </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">not</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> to say its </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">being</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> is dependent on a subject. The question anyone should address to </span>
<span style="background-color: #ebebeb; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: start;">Žižek</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> is simple:
can one think of the Real object as not just the zero-point of </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">thinking</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> or its correlative object, but as that which requires no
thinking <i>at all</i> for its <i>being</i>? The problem is that eliding the epistemological and ontological levels, along the Hegelian identification of logic and metaphysics, one cannot but claim that logical dependency is metaphysical dependency. But to deny the possibility of categorical determination in being is to continue to reify being as an
ineffable chimera, or impossible inconsistency, reducing the phenomenal
determinacy of the world to being subjective constructs. And to continue to
claim that the Real is a function of the subject's emergence, as that which
subtracts itself from every positive valence, is still to be a correlationist, or an idealist even. Indeed, if it makes
no sense to speak of a Real that </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">precedes</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">
ontologically the emergence of the subject, even if the latter conditions its
epistemic appearing, one begins to sound like a strange proto-creationist
according to which the emergence of mind occasions the Real as a byproduct or
splitting. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">At this point it
seems clear that, eliding the transcendental,</span>
<span style="background-color: #ebebeb; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: start;">Žižek</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, like Lacan, just has no
resources to distinguish between the Real subject and its Real object (</span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">$<>a</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">) in such a way so as to avoid
reifying the relation between the two ontologically, neverming his protests to the contrary. This seems to be the
result of every attempt at eliding the referential relation between knower and
known: it becomes impossible to distinguish between the thinking of the Real
and the Real itself, since by proposing a formal conception of the Real in which the
vacuity of the subject is knit to its objective polarity, any criterion of distinction between the two becomes a nullity. Just like in Badiou's endorsement of the
Parmenidean thesis, the </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">matheme</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">
'touches' the Real and the subject its impossible objectual pole insofar as it cannot distinguish itself from it, since any such positive delineation involves a pathological ontologizing of the difference between thought and the object,
like transcendental correlationism is imputed to do. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span><br />
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</span>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> But the price to be paid for this destitution of epistemology is the
inability to explain the distinction between the Real inscription of the <i>matheme</i> which formalizes the Real's structure apart from the commerce of the symbolic, and
the Real phenomenon or the voided subject-object gap, which subtracts itself
from all ontology. There are thus three gaps:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">- Between the Symbolic and the Real.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">- Between the Real Object and the Real Subject</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">- Between Real inscription or <i>matheme</i> and the Real of the object/subject <i>as such</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The incapacity to distinguish being from thought is the inevitable consequence of trying to wrest the Real from the symbollic by making the latter not just epistemologically constrictive, but ontologically afoul. Against the drama of the void which, however proud of its formal stringency, remains the gulf for a residual romantic fideism, we must insist on the difference between knower and known, between sign and referent, as that which provides the conditions to separate mind and world. <br /><br />If the Real cannot be understood as ontologically autonomous
from the subject, then dialectical materialism proves to be just another correlationism
or idealism, one in which the Real is the non-ontologizable intrusion of that which, however recalcitrant to the Word, glares forth in its formal presence without remainder.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span>Daniel Sacilottohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06107600124995445921noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6580039155018603814.post-8983301463628157962012-08-20T17:09:00.000-07:002012-08-21T03:44:24.283-07:00The Destruction and Reconstitution of Experience: On Sellars' Account of Ur-Conceptuality and Sensibility<br />
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 17px;"><b><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">THE DESTRUCTION AND RECONSTITUTION OF EXPERIENCE: </span><br /><span style="font-size: large;">On Sellars, Sensibility and Correlationism</span><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;">__________________________________</span></span></b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 12.75pt;"><br /> <br /><br /> I have been re-considering Sellars' account of "ur-conceptuality" from the Lever of Archimedes in the Carus Lectures, after
evaluating my contention, presented during the Bonn summer school about a month ago, that these
are not to be understood in terms of 'pre-linguistic' cognitive capacities, but
are rather more like 'rudimentary concepts', already linguistically mediated,
if not fully functional in the logical space of reasons. In what follows I intend to present this issue which, I believe, ties up some essential knots on the questions about the relationship between Sellars' nominalism and his realist metaphysics.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">1. Ur-Concepts and Primitive Representation</span></b><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> In a
discussion with Roderick Firth, Sellars sets out to separate the primitive conceptual
capacity of pre-adult humans to discern secondary qualities as component-parts
of physical objects. He thereby seeks to pin down precisely how it is that
appearances already enjoy a primitive ontological status, the better to eventually
offer successor concepts in order to supersede not only the base conceptual attributions that children make, but also our available 'adult'
concepts for secondary qualities. The
ur-concepts that Sellars attributes to the infant Jones Junior are as follows<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 115%;">[1]</span></span></span></a>:<br /><br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">1.
Junior has an ur-concept of volumes and expanses of red stuff.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">2.
Junior has an ur-concept of seeing a volume of red stuff.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">3.
Junior has an' ur-concept of a physical object as an individuated volume
of color stuff which is endowed with certain causal properties.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">4.
Junior has an ur-concept of seeing a volume or expanse of red stuff not
only <i>as</i> a volume or expanse of red, but <i>as</i> a
constituent of a physical object.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">5.
Junior has an ur-concept of what it is to see <i>of</i> a
physical object a volume or expanse of red which is one of its constituents. If
the constituent is the surface of an opaque object, e.g., an apple, it is <i>the
very redness</i> of the apple.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">6.
Junior has an ur-concept of what it is to <i>see the very redness</i> of
an object.<br /><br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> The problem at hand is what precise status these ur-concepts have; are they linguistic capacities or representations? Or are they another species, perhaps psychological, of intentional representation? What is behind Junior's capacity to do all of these things?<br /><br /><br /> At Bonn, Ray Brassier flirted with the idea that these might be understood best as pre-linguistic capacities, while I contended the opposite. Essentially,
I think my original contention was fundamentally correct, but I think I can see
why Sellars' own formulation of the problem might nevertheless tempt us to
identify ur-concepts with <i>pre-linguistic capacities, </i>especially judging from
what he says in other writings. Moreover, in his influential study, James O'Shea identifies ur-concepts with pre-linguistic capacities, which would seem to settle the case once and for all. I think the issue is more complicated, and ultimately important.<br /><br /><br /> The two crucial texts that I think help us
figure out what's going on, however tentatively, are <i>Some Reflections on
Language Games</i> and the <i>Mental Events</i> paper. These will also shed a lot of light into
why many consider Sellars' venture into process metaphysics to constitute a
relapse into a form of the Myth of the Given, or finally a form of adherence
into naturalist prejudices that strictly speaking are 'pre-Sellarsian'. The
separation between left and right wing forms of Sellarsianism can be mapped to
some of the neighboring issues as well. But anyhow, I think these texts allow us to see why the thesis that ur-concepts are pre-linguistic is infelicitous.<br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="color: #2a2a2a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
In <i>Some Reflections on Language
Games</i>, Sellars considers the original empiricist or naive realist appeal to
pre-linguistic ur-concepts as facilitating the capacity to associate undefined
descriptive predicates ('red) with items in the world. The basic idea that
these thinkers shared is that the meaning of our observation statements derives
from our primitive cognitive capacity to apprehend the categorical structure of the
world, and specifically the content concerning perceptible qualities. The
subsequent idea was that the predicates involved in observation statements (as
paradigmatic ways in which causal stimuli trigger linguistic responses or "language-entry
transitions") acquire meaning as we
learn to obey "semantical rules" which in involve recognizing colored
things. Say, our concept of 'red things' acquires meaning as we learn to
explicitly obey the rule <i>red objects are
to be called 'red'</i>, and so on. This is not to say, of course, that we need
to have a concept of the rule in order to obey it; but that our behavior
exhibits conformity to the rule in a sense in which we count as having
internalized it, as exhibited by regularities of behavior, and specifically in
learning to recognize objects of the right sort. But what grounds the
surreptitious pre-linguistic capacity for recognition that subjects make
explicit as they learn to deploy observation talk? Sellars critically considers
two such candidate accounts for these ur-concepts that allow pre-linguistic
categorical apprehension:<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">1) <i>A symbolic structure or language</i> -
Under this hypothesis, there is a fundamental language or symbolic
system that is not itself acquired by obeying rules, but that rather conditions
that possibility of identifying different terms in different languages as being
about the same thing, beyond their functional role. For if learning to use a
concept requires identifying by way of its use an appropriate kind of
object/properties or class of objects/properties, then we need to explain how
we come to identify such objects or properties of being of that kind. <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> If in order to learn the meaning of 'rot' we
obey the rule 'red objects are to be called <i>rot</i>'
then, in pains of regress, we need to say that the symbolic language by virtue
of which we identify 'red objects' is unique, and not itself learned by virtue
of obeying a further rule, for this would obviously unchain an infinite
regress. This must hold necessarily since obviously the ur-concept of 'red
object' would have to be different than the concept we learn by virtue of
obeying the semantic rule in which the ur-concept is formulated, in order not
to fall to the inconsistent hypothesis that we acquire concepts on condition
that we already have them. Thus, some basic language is primitive in the sense
that it is not acquired by obeying rules and in that it conditions all further
learning by relating the functional role of a term in another language to the
objects/properties that we identify primitively in the base language.<br /><br /> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> It is precisely on the basis of such an
ur-conceptual economy we can then learn the functional role that specific
linguistic tokens bare to empirical reality, i.e. the contents of descriptive
predicates (redness, red items...etc). I think this preemptively anticipates
the nativist hypothesis championed by Fodor and Lepore, among others, according
to which innate conceptual structures precede and condition that capacity for
learning, and thus full-blown linguistic rationality. <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">2) <i>The capacity to apprehend items as belonging to kinds or resembling
classes of particulars</i> - Sellars
castigates this position as a variant of the 'mental eye' view which ascribes
to the mind the capacity to immediately apprehend the categorical structure of
the physical world, sense qualities, or whatever else, by fixating itself inwardly
and outwardly at once. But it seems clear that were Sellars to endorse this, he
would be delivered right back into both the matrimonial account of meaning and
the epistemological Myth of Given. For it would require postulating both that
we have immediate awareness of abstract entities which furnish the categorical
structure of reality ('redness'), and that it is by virtue of such awareness
that words acquire meaning. But this is to reactivate knowledge by acquaintance.
<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> At
this juncture it becomes clear that the the first, proto-Fodorian hypothesis
must also postulate a pre-rational cognitive symbolic economy that simply
staples mind into world. But this is another version of the Myth of the Given
since, it seems that whatever this system is, it works to grant a sort of
luminosity into at least the undefined color qualities of objects. <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> It is important to note that in SRLG,
Sellars rejects both accounts of pre-linguistic ur-concepts as facilitating the
rule obeying usage of observational language. The solution seems to be clear:
we have to account for language acquisition not as the explicitation of a
semantic protocol for recognizing 'red things' via some dubious 'semantic
intuition'. We don't learn to say red <i>because</i>
we learn to obey the rule that we should utter 'red' when we see a red thing.
For then the ur-conceptual protocol as a foundational discourse is introduced
simply to halt the inevitable regress that follows from the thesis that we need
a meta-language to learn a language. The obvious alternative thesis is to say that
an observation-language is, if not learned as rule-obeying, a conditioned responsive behavior. We can relax
our account to claim that although one does not obey rules to apply
observational discourse, one must nevertheless be <i>conditioned</i> to respond to the right sorts of entities in the world.
Thus, to say that "...the fact that the word 'red' means the quality <i>red</i> may be identified with the fact that
'red' is a conditioned response to red things" (Sc. 38). But while Sellars
accepts that indeed the proper application of the word involves being capable
of reliably responding to the occurrent stimuli, he warns against the dubious
claim that this entails that words acquire meaning by being associated with
things. Reiterating the distinction between acting in accordance to rules and
acting in accordance with conceptions of rules, Sellars' suggestion is that in
acting in accordance to rules we are simply conditioned to respond to red
things in the right circumstances, rather than assigning a term to an object we
have already recognized in advance by some prior intentional mechanism. This is
obviously a corollary of Sellars idea that there is no form of <i>intentionality</i> that precedes the
linguistic; neither psychological nor practical. <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
What is going on, then, when
Sellars speaks of ur-concepts in Junior's talk?<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Now, it seems tempting to claim that when
formulating his account of ur-conceptuality to open the space for the analysis
of sensibilia or <i>sensa</i>, Sellars
reverts into something like the second variant of the empiricist/ naive-realist
account outlined above, in virtue of which we have some kind of immediate
awareness of the categorical contents of reality. This might be reinforced by
considering that Sellars also wants to account for something like
pre-linguistic, "animal representations" or proto-cognitions roughly
around the same time as the Carus Lectures, in Mental Events (1981). And yet it
seems just implausible that Sellars would have suddenly relapsed into a
mind's-eye view, of all people! How are we, then, to account for the
ur-conceptual status of Junior's experiencing of sensible qualities as
constituents of physical objects?<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
I think Sellars' remarks in S. 38 of SRLG point towards the right
solution. Although it is true that our we cannot have a concept of red without
being capable of reliably responding to instances of red, it does not follow
that we must equate the meaning of the word with a relation to an item in the
world. We can simultaneously accept that our capacity to use undefined predicate-quality
words as conditioned by capacity to differentially respond to environmental
stimuli in a way that precedes rational rule-obeying, while maintaining that
the meaning of the word is nothing but its role in a conceptual economy. Sensibility
itself plays no epistemic role, even if it is necessary to acquire knowledge.
Sellars must preserve his nominalist account: meaning is functionally specified
within a conceptual economy.<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> But this means that Junior's ur-concept of
red is not 'pre-linguistic' in the sense that it involves the operations of a
nativist ur-language (hypothesis 1), nor the fixation of the mind's eye upon
the categorical structure of the given via intellectual intuition or some other
pre-linguistic intentional mechanism (hypothesis 2). Junior clearly is
conditioned to respond with the verbal output 'red' when he sees red things,
and can do so somewhat reliably. He uses language already in a self-conscious manner, even if lacking full fledged capacities to enter into deliberative reason-giving behavior. <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Furthermore, his ur-concept is not
one of something <i>looking red</i>, but of
something <i>being</i> red, since he lacks
the contrastive concepts of 'looks/is' introduced upon further conditioning. Junior
attributes the redness he sees to the objects he interacts with rather than to
private experiences, fields of sense, or whatnot. This is not to say that
Junior has a fully-developed concept of 'physical object, extended in space' at
that stage, or something so sophisticated. It's clear Junior is not yet capable
to playing the game of giving and asking for reasons, or of using the
contrastive concepts of 'looks/is' to enact withdrawal of endorsement, or to
characterize episodes as merely <i>ontensible
seeings</i>. He reports redness as pertaining to objects, and is flummoxed when
some evil grown-up tampers with lighting conditions so that what he takes to be
a red object suddenly appears blue. He
must then simply retort to thinking that a blue object is before him, and needs
eventual introduction into the contrastive concepts to distinguish between mere
seemings/lookings and actual features of objects, by modifying his entitlement
towards the content of the claim. Thus, Sellars' 'ur-concepts' are utterly
linguistic capacities; they cannot be understood as primitive capacities at the
level of mere sentient registration and causal responsiveness. Junior's
repertoire is surely already more sophisticated than that.<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> So what does then, this ur-concept of
redness, encompass? Sellars list is amply clarifying.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
It clearly already involves the capacity to see a red thing <i>as red</i>, or <i>that it is red</i>, since Junior attributes redness to that which he sees.
Although Sellars characterizes this <i>as-content</i>
as being 'of a physical object' this should be taken in tandem with his
qualification in section 32, where he makes it clear that Junior has the notion
of an object as a 'determinate thing-stuff'; but not the full-grown concept of
physical we attribute to adults and which evidently Junior could not have. This
is of a piece with his reductive semantics of sensa that he provisionally
already proposed in <i>Some Reflections on
Perceptual Consciousness</i> (1975).<br /><br /> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
Junior also has the capacity to see <i>of</i>
the thing the redness which is a extended <i>surface</i>
of the object, i.e. Junior is not shocked if when splitting an apple in half
the inside of the apple is not red too. Junior sees of the object the facing
side, which is non-conceptually given to him through his senses. But having an
ur-concept of what it is to see <i>of </i>an
object, Junior thus both is capable of attributing redness to the object, and
at the same time realizing that this redness pertains to something like the
extended surfaces of opaque objects, rather than being a thorough
characteristic of objects through and through. This is crucial, since it is the
first step towards untethering expanses of sense-qualities from objects; a move
that Sellars subsequently exploits for metaphysical speculation. This is what
is fundamentally added by conditions (5) and (6).<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Junior's ur-concept of red is thus
conditionally acquired and not rule-obeying, linguistic insofar as it involves
predicative attributions and the capacity to see things <i>as</i> such-and-such, yet too rudimentary to count as an 'adult
concept' since it lacks the contrastive concepts that allows one to formulate
one's endorsement or lack thereof, on the basis of warrant tethered to a notion
of standard conditions, and so on. And precisely
because Junior's ur-concept of red is simply a 'rudimentary' rather than
'foundational' concept that Sellars can resist the <i>myth of the categorial given</i>: it's not that Junior, before learning
language, already accesses the categorical structure of the physical world.
Junior is <i>conditioned </i>to respond in
ways through which he becomes capable of characterizing the contents of his
experience, but this already involves linguistic mediation/acculturation. Junior has no <i>determinate</i> category of colored physical objects extended in space,
he has an <i>determinate</i> concept of something-being-colored
as a colored-expanse more generally. This is the only way to reconcile the
psychological nominalism with the holistic account of linguistic rationality, I
think.<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> On this account, it becomes a lot
clearer just where the Carus Lectures depart from the account of the Myth of
Jones, and the looks-talk analysis. Sellars' eventual supplement to the Myth of
Jones is to say that before the contrastive concept of looks, which can be
applied to color-qualities as easily as dispositional ones, we have a
proto-concept of color-qualities or 'the proper sensibles' characterizing them
as constituent parts of physical objects, if not identical with them. There is
a positivity of appearance that precedes the epistemic regulation of looks talk,
which does require fully grown linguistic rationality or integration in the
game of giving and asking for reasons. Understanding this also allows us to
understand why looks-talk, when applied to color-concepts or
sensible-predicates operates withdrawal of endorsement in the form of
ostensible seeings, i.e. to merely see red is not just to refrain from claiming
that something is red, but to report on the autonomy of the colored expanse
from the properties of the object. The
occurrent properties of sense can thereby be examined positively in a
metaphysical account.<br /><br /><br /><b>2. Against Correlationism </b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> On a different but related note, this
allows us to see how Sellars is precisely not a correlationist. Correlationism
requires three conditions: <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">1) the sense dependence of objects on
concepts, </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">2) the reference dependence of
concepts on sensibility, and </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">3) the ontological identification
of sensibility with subjective appearances. Sellars' trick is to accept the
first claim, qualify the second, and reject the third. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Yes, knowledge of anything requires
concepts. This is true, but somewhat trivial. Even people like Tyler Burge
think knowledge requires justification of the sort only sapient creatures
enjoy. Yes, the empiricist is right in insisting that our concepts and so our
knowledge of the world begins in sensible experience. But, against the
sense-datum theorist or phenomenalist, this is <i>not</i> to say that there is a reference dependence of concepts on
sensibility, but only another form of epistemic dependence. That our knowledge
is anchored in the world through sensibility is not to say that all knowledge
is <i>of the sensible</i>. This is not to
refuse that there is such a thing as sensibility, or to say it cannot be
metaphysically investigated. Rather, it is simply to say that sensibility can
condition our knowledge of that which is not sensible. We can investigate the non-apparent structure of
appearances as belonging to the domain of physical nature, just like we can
investigate the micro-physical constitution of the manifestly described world
of middle-sized objects and properties apart from their phenomenological
conceptual envelopment. Thus, against (3), it is simply false to equate the
content of sensibility with 'subjective appearances', where the latter are understood
as self-presenting episodes. <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> The properties of sense-qualities,
although relative to sentient organisms, are irreducible to the
phenomenological categories that furnish our commonsense description of the
world. Granted, phenomenology reveals that there is a dimension of appearing
that must be accounted for. But this is not to say we are forced into construing
appearances as subjective correlates. They can be accounted at the genetic neurocomputational level in
terms of how environmental inputs relate to our cognitive faculties by
triggering appropriate neuronal onsets. <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Now, Sellars thinks on top of this
you can actually characterize the apparent particularity of <i>sensa </i>as ultimately non-object bound physical
phenomena, which have irreducible qualitative properties. Sensa turn out to be features that are objectively
constituted only in relation to sentient organisms, but they are no less
objective for that. In other words, that <i>sensa</i>
are dependent on sentience does not render them <i>subjective</i> in any interesting sense. Again, no basic categorical stratum
of the sort phenomenologists fetishize over can hope to undergird the
objectivity of the physical within which even appearances are constituted.<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Whether that much is tenable remains an
open metaphysical question. But the point is that once we have defused the ontological equation between
sensibility and subjective appearances, both forms of epistemic dependence
won't do to motivate correlationism. The link between knowledge and
conceptuality, and that between conceptuality and sensibility requires that we
investigate precisely how observation statements, qua language entry
transitions, are articulated with complex causal mechanisms that relate
environment to organism. Even if it turns out that the presentational content
of experience is fundamentally tethered to sense-data, this is not to assert
that sensibility has an autonomous categorical status apart from the physical,
nor that the content of our judgments is reducible to sense data just because
we require sense data to make them: we can examine the link between appearance
and reality by examining the reality of appearing, refusing the
phenomenological hypostasis of the categorical status of subjectivity as
foundational, by reintegrating sensibility to physical theory, acknowledging it
as our anchor to the world, rather than our solipsistic prison.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
<div id="ftn1">
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Daniel Sacilottohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06107600124995445921noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6580039155018603814.post-9771850669130261582012-06-18T22:23:00.001-07:002014-02-08T11:39:14.802-08:00The Non-Politics of "The Politics Of": Politics and Economy<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOghOXq5eRCzJe0tAoc3-m3Y9x1AX-INhWlF35FztW4q0sM7-Ft919hnT5YHLX0VoGU_hJGPc1VrN1xs38FcHTv1uKgod4rPBsPDU4WbJMx7iW4VAVF3jZjL4Fq_aRGChrKtrugdryxCvk/s1600/luke.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOghOXq5eRCzJe0tAoc3-m3Y9x1AX-INhWlF35FztW4q0sM7-Ft919hnT5YHLX0VoGU_hJGPc1VrN1xs38FcHTv1uKgod4rPBsPDU4WbJMx7iW4VAVF3jZjL4Fq_aRGChrKtrugdryxCvk/s640/luke.jpg" height="512" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;"><b>THE NON-POLITICS OF "THE POLITICS OF":</b></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: large;"><b>Politics and Economy / The Manifest Image and the Scientific Image<br />__________________________________________</b></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>Introduction - Methodological Preliminaries, the Analytic-Continental Division Again, Science and Politics</b></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Levi has been making some interesting comments about the connection between politics, analysis and critique, which devolved in a few responses from my part that might be worthy to integrate into a blog-post of its own. The main comment that triggered the responses was the following one</span></div>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"It's interesting that discussions about the analytic/continental divide almost never mention politics. Almost nothing can be understood about continental thought and debates without understanding the political horizon upon which it unfolds. The same is not true of analytic thought. You could say analytic thought is dominated by an epistemological telos (truth), whereas continental thought is dominated by an ethico-political telos. These are very different codes or operative distinctions."</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">My response proceeded as follows: first, I agree in that politics is much more pervasive in
Continental discussions, even where some of its canonical figures didn't write
all that much on politics (Heidegger; Bergson...). </span><span style="background-color: white;">A similar argument can be said about science in Continental
theory. Much of the self-proclaimed 'materialisms' are correlationist hybrids,
including Marxist conceptions. Even materiality, when it is accepted in the name of a "materialism", is
relativized to 'relations of production', or whatnot. I think the ubiquity of
the political is in a sense a consequence of the hegemony of anti-realisms: the
contextualization of every philosophical valence transforms
ontological-epistemological questions to questions about the ways in which
discourse organizes human practice.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">
</span><o:p></o:p>
<br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This also illuminates why the analytic tradition, when
committed to metaphysical and epistemological programs, did not think it
necessary to pass through the socio-discursive grinder. Even instrumentalisms
and (neo) pragmatism were for the most part restricted to methodological questions
about a specific practice, rather than inflating the ubiquity of the political
in every affirmative gesture. There's obvious exceptions to both rules. </span></div>
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</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I think, for my part, that the lesson to be learnt is
twofold. For the Continentals, the concept of materiality needs to be dislodged
from its residual humanism, as made visible when reducing it to 'relations of production'. The
materiality of practice is still too anthropomorphically sealed. Any contemporary
Marxism that seeks to be truly materialist cannot be encumbered by such a
parochial notion. Any stringent concept of revolution to follow cannot continue to avow
the heroic revolutionary elan, while keeping economy, techno-scientific insight
subordinate to the classical dynamics of class struggle. This kind of weakness leads to thinkers like Badiou
being able to claim for example that economy is just the State, and that politics is rather where subjective decision takes place. I think Land is right to mock this
romantic exuberance.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">For analytics, I think it's clear that the purported realism of
their metaphysical positions came at a price of political naivete, which
undermined their pretences. Brassier shows this in <i>Nihil Unbound</i> apropos the
Churchlands for example, and I think Graham and others show a similar result in
Ladyman and Ross, where appeals to the authority of science subordinate realism
to pragmatism, and therefore end up becoming victims of a tacit political prescription behind
their alleged normative neutrality.<br /><br />T</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">he interplay of the normative and the causal, or the
rational and the natural, is what is at stake here. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The irony is that each side appears infected by a excess of
unquestioned commitment, or dogma. When the analytic naturalist endows science
the authority before the real as a matter of principle, the Continentals
patronizingly wave the 'positivist!' card, and with due cause. But when the
so-called Marxist materialist retorts with such gnomic formulations like
"there is no outside of capitalism!", the analytic rightfully scorns
what appears to reduce even what telescopes allow us to see to our practice,
and take it as an idealist excess. It's clear that both are victim to a kind
of methodological naivete: the analytic elides the rationalist obligation to
adjudicate metaphysical claims to the in-itself, and the Continental elides the
ontological and epistemological levels of description in correlationism (because
even science is a human practice, it is said that science cannot know of the in-itself).
Pragmatism and correlationism; two sides of the same anti-realist predicament. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>a) Hegel and Marx</b></span></div>
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</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I think a beginning for those of us involved in 'Continental
theory' is to be uncompromisingly critical with the purported materialism of
Marxist philosophy. The whole Marxist 'materialist' reversal of Hegel grossly insufficient. It wants to subvert the idealism latent in Hegel's dialectics in sight of a truly materialist conception of change. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">To do so, Marx naively transplants dialectical categories proper to the Concept to the material. Thus, Marx frames nature ubiquitously and historically as governed by the principle of contradiction and the law of
negation. So he wants to inject negativity into the Natural to make it a dynamic force of material production and to avoid tethering it to the narrow confines Conceptual, and so to an exercise in theoretical-reason for subjective consciousness; the materiality of practice is instead set then describe how qualitative forms emerge in matter, leading to the
commodity-form as a mixture of 'pure' Nature (matter) and labor, and where the latter transforms the former into the 'inorganic support' or body of man. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />This view, mostly to be found in the early Marx (1844, the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts), is still the most bluntly dialectical attempt to reconcile the becoming of the Concept with that of Matter, while not sacrificing their inextricability. But Marx's move doesn't quite work. Contradiction makes sense as a <i>metaphysical</i> principle to describe the dynamism of Nature<i> if and only if</i> one identifies logic and metaphysics, like Hegel did, because one can say that
the principle of identity of indiscernibles leads to the conceptual equivalence of being
and nothingness, and one can thus give blunt conceptual contradictions ontological content, from which the dialectical process takes off. One can equate c<i>onceptual indiscernibility</i> with <i>metaphysical identity</i> through PII, because for idealism there is nothing in the order of being external to the identity issued by the rational Concept; the rational is what is actual. This makes sense
for Hegel because you can begin with a pure abstract concept of being and have
no predicative quality separate it from Nothing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But when you want to begin from the multiplicity of Nature, before entwining with the Conceptual, it makes no sense to speak of negativity or contradiction. Marx is forced into saying ridiculous, proto-obscurantist things such as 'everything in
nature has an opposite'. But what is the 'contradiction' or 'contrary' of a finger? Or of a
planet? Or of a finger-part, for that matter? Marx wants the rationalist baby without the idealist bathwater, but
instead ends up in methodological confusion, dislodging negativity from the Concept, where it is imbued and enveloped. Dialectical negativity cannot be transplanted into the material as an ontological motor without vitiating the rationalist coherence of the theory.<br /><br /> In the end, the attempt to even say what Nature could be prior to the interplay of labor
and matter becomes impossible, and the later Marx is much more bluntly descriptively empirical than 'philosophical' about Nature. The corollary of the incapacity, however, to dialectically disassociate the materiality of Nature from that of labor, the dyanmics of matter from that of production, is what allows Marxist orthodoxy to claim materialism means acknowledging that reality is determined by the dynamics of relations of production, rather than by blunt intellectual speculation. But in doing so it forgets its internal incapacity to theorize the mind-independent world of matter on which production is conditioned metaphysically. This is not going to change until the residual Hegelianism can be done away with and the theory given proper methodological footing. Otherwise, we get preposterously proto-correlationist or idealist claims like "there is no
outside of capitalism!". No Marxism can survive the brutal reality of the
contemporary without re-assessing its fundamental conceptual quandaries. It is
clear the classical Hegelian dialectics won't do, and that negativity and
contradiction/opposites are insufficient as metaphysical principles. The essential question remains: how to
reconcile a rationalism with a materialism.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />Of course, much Marxism has moved away and beyond the early conceptual frame that Marx inherited vis a vis Hegel (Althusser being maybe the most rigorous example). But much work still is left here; I don't think structuralism will do the trick just like that. But that is a discussion for another time.<br /><br /><br /><b>b) Politics and Economy / Reason and Nature</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Levi also mentioned, in a more recent comment:</span></div>
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<o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"There are two very different types of political theory. On the one hand, there is the sort of political theory you find in thinkers like Marx, Foucault, and Deleuze and Guattari who hold that the most effective way to engage is by mapping the field of power, how it functions, its mechanisms so that people can engage better, more logistically, more strategically, more effectively. These theoristsgenerally say little about what is to be done. Their contribution is to uncover the problem.</span></o:p></blockquote>
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<o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">There's another type of political theory that thinks what's important is declaring what you're against, establishing what a subject is, establishing that we have freedom or agency, and denouncing. This doesn't seem to contribute much as it seldom understands the concrete problems, how the field is organized, or how to engage. But it's fun, at least."</span></o:p></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">In response to this insightful passage, I mentioned the following points:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"> I am generally suspicious of political theories that divorce
<i>diagnosis</i> or <i>critique</i> from <i>strategy</i>. These are separate tasks, of course, but part of what
probably reeks on both ends as ultimately impotent when thinking of a new possible societal organization is the saturation of
descriptive-prescriptive discourse by insufficiently nuanced conceptual
categories, following from an insufficient appreciation for the binding between politics and economics.<br /><br /> This I find for instance in Foucault's strict historicist outlook, which is
ultimately humanly sealed to the point of demoting the empirical
reality of market economy. He has nothing to say about the concrete movement of
economy, but plenty to say about agency, institutions, and power. I think there
is some untapped 'structuralist' potential here, when dislodged from the
residual humanism, however stringently Foucault's denouncing might have been
against everything claiming itself to be 'human'.</span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /><br />I insist in that as long as theorists routinely disavow
economics when doing political investigation they're repeating in a variation
the nefarious move that post-Heideggerean phenomenologists-hemeneutic
historicists did when routinely subordinating science to the subject, to the point of patronizing it as 'derivative abstractions' (even
Habermas does this). </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">All this to say: the patronizing of the intricacies of
economy is the corollary of the correlationist reification of subjectivity,
agency and "power". </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />Now, does this mean that we must go the 'reductionist' route, and attempt to describe a political process in terms purely immanent to the material 'primacy processes'? Not quite. Recent Deleuzian-inspired
accounts which follow this route face something of the opposite problem than the historicists, in that the category of agency
becomes either impossible or extremely problematic, which leads into an equally impotent,
and even more alienating, fetishizing of 'material process' (Nick Land
anyone?). In the name of ontological univocity, and waging war against the <i>logos</i> of every representationalism and humanism (Deleuze included), thinkers like Land deflate the empirical-transcendental distinction to the point of effectively destroying the rational kernel in which political categories are articulated: decision, agency, obligation, all fall out the window. <br /><br />These are normative categories, and as such operate within the space of reasons in which man conceives of itself through obligations and responsibilities. In destroying the autonomy of the normative, Landianism procures not just a pragmatic contradiction where all agency is dissolved, and at which point the only possible imperative is to 'intensify' the native process into which you're invariably embedded. But more fundamentally, one elides the capacity to adjudicate one's claims in rational terms, vitiating the theoretical status of one's enterprise, by destroying the logical basis of argumentation, thereby eliding the possibility of a real basis to adjudicate normative claims. It's your sci-fi counterpart to the classical romanticism of the
historicists. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The resulting deficiency explains also what I take to be the
brutal flaccidity of contemporary positive political visions. Without having
the capacity to envision a new form of economical organization, political
'theory' is doomed to remain confined to vituperations against the State,
the endless celebration of subjective and collective freedom, and the
glorification of the moments of riot and demonstration. Not to demean the valence
of the latter, of course. But it is clear that something like what Marx did,
that is, to have a political vision sufficiently attentive to the intricacies of political economy to envelop the global
scope, will need to get a grip into the concrete dynamics of the contemporary
market. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Without that, talk of 'relations of production' can never
get off the academic conceptual commerce, which results in a placebo more than anything,
encouraging the next parade of books with titles such as "The Politics of
Lamentation". Romanticized historicist genealogies can do as fascinating
history, and are absolutely necessary. This is not to simply identify politics
with economy, but to insist that discontinuities in politics, global or local,
cannot be excised from a dialectical interplay with the economic, insofar as the latter is
the material support of collective organization and life. Critique of political economy is essential, and cannot be done away with.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-color: white;">So what is the alternative? Here I would
timidly suggest that the necessary articulation between the normative and the natural
is somewhat analogous to the articulation between the political and the economic. This
would need some reconstructive surgery of course, but the idea, would be roughly along the following lines. We can't agree with Badiou in claiming that economy is something like the bare normality of the
State, because this delivers the complex dynamics of market and the possibility of an economy to the 'fixity' of a structure, while reserving political action for the supplementary category of subjective decision, still beholden to romanticist voluntarism. It plainly divorces political subjectivation from its necessary intrication within the structural dynamics not only of a societal-state apparatus, but to a social-link determining the relations of material exchange, production and labor. Zizek criticizes the residual voluntaraism in Badiou thus as the Kantian supplement in the revolutionary's thought, somewhat justifiably. However, we must agree with Badiou and every apologist of the "free revolutionary subject", in that the economic stratum of abstract transactions and processes, or <i>the Market</i>, does not <i>by itself</i> produce wholesale structural changes, if by the latter we understand the sublation of its axiomatic efficiency.<br /><br />One cannot fully dislodge the impersonal potency of market-forces from the interest of agents, and their complex social envelopment. Reducing individual and collective will to a facile moralistic Manichean distinction between the 'revolutionary elan' and the reactive capitalist 'greed', one fails to secure the proper integration of will into the pragmatics of political and economic decision, and how they make the latter not only axiomatically operational but structurally contingent. The twofold axis of rational subjective/collective decision/deliberation and the automatism of impersonal causal/axiomatic processes saturates the political and the economical in their mutual inextricability. Here, the function of <i>critique of ideology</i> overlaps with the <i>making explicit of implicit norms</i> which, inculcated by the State apparatus and the ruling class, articulate the logical nexus of the social space across a field of material inferences relaying concepts and practice, organizing at the highest level the operational circuits of market dynamics. Ideological critique becomes of a piece with the exposing of implicit rules, challenging their normative valence. Economics here overlaps with the political, insofar as the mechanisms of deliberation proper to the latter can, once wrested from the blind efficacy of implicit norms through the use of logical and critical vocabulary, interrupt the axiomatic efficacy of the market by placing a burden of proof on the agencies that support it, and issues a challenge to its internal mechanics.<br /><br />Political <i>becoming</i> cannot be counterposed to economic<i> being</i>. Being and becoming are native to economy through politics, once it is understood that the axiomatics of economy dynamize themselves by integrating decisional processes at the level of the normative. It is possible to understand discontinuities in economy without relapsing into haecceitism, while also avoiding glorifying the 'subjective revolutionary' elan at the expense of understanding the dynamics of local change. Thus, economics needs to be understood so as to explain how the dynamic processes of the market are mobilized in interaction with the dynamics of agential processes proper to deliberation in individuals, institutions, and so on </span></span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(it is this intersection wherein certain concepts acquire concrete valence: share-value, risk analysis, probabilistic enveloping of financial speculation...)</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">. So what of politics then?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-color: white;">The possibility of structural change, in various degrees, or what I propose to call <i>politics</i>, concerns a possible way in which these two registers are entwined; it is not the emergence of subjectivity when the 'evental decision' disowns itself from all economic reality, breaking the latter's stasis. The Political Event cannot be dislodged from economy; we must be more Hegelian than Kantian here. Which means also, of course, more Marxist. By this I mean that in politics change is thought of in the articulation between the agential-institutional and the processual-causal at the pivotal joints, rather than in the sublation or elision of the economic in the name of the political. <br /><br />But we must be more Badiouean or Sellarsian when accepting that the articulation between relations of production and the dynamics of class struggle cannot be construed in terms of a precarious concept of matter that introduces dialectical negation into it. The trick is to preserve the autonomy of political process with the natural efficacity of natural process in methodological terms, so as to avoid enveloping materiality with the conceptual (Idealism), but so as to avoid their indistinction (Land). Economy is dynamic in relating into its axiomatic aspect the agency of individuals and institutions, and subjectivity is structural in formally conditioning the dynamics of economy by virtue of being integrated into the latter's axiomatic process by the functional relaying of norms within the social space.<br /></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> The political natively related to economy is to be found at the moment not just when the former outstrips the regularity
of the latter, but when it <i>composes</i> a
dynamics of production sufficient to a set of needs, new possibilities and demands, and re-articulates the integral dynamism between the three in the form of labor and production dynamics. Demands cannot be understood outside the mediation of language and practice that informs the manifest image of man in the world, any more than it can be understood irrespective from the formal reality of value-form that inserts it into the field of commerce. But the incapacity to move outside the commodity-form which governs exchange value in capital dynamics is contingent on the present ubiquity of market-economy. Which means: any new articulation between the kernel of normativity and economics must depart from the contemporary situation. This is the only sense in which there being no outside of capitalism makes any sort of sense.<br /><br />Thus, the question would be, how is it possible to have an organization of the formal reality of the economic and the materiality it supports, outside the form of the commodity? That is ultimately the task, but it cannot be resolved right away. How to have a conception of use-value adequate to the exigencies of our world outside the dynamism of generating surplus-value through the commodity form? What could such a conception of need or demand constitute, and under which practice?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">Provisionally, we can muse: needs and demands are
not fixed, but are partly empirically fixed by material constraints on the agents normatively articulating the social space (for example: food, health, housing...). This requires that the normative binding set the space of production-labor by developing an economic alternative to certain tasks (agriculture, medicine, construction...); or to propose the latter's axiomatization in an alternative model to market. Yet these spaces of economic reality cannot be reduced to wills that organize 'the greed of capitalist consumerism' any more
than we can inflate collective action by deflating organization to 'Riot! No
State!'. The latter is as powerless before Wall Street as it is when devising
an effective means to organize labor so as to grow crops and distribute them
across a population. We're still going to have to sink our teeth into the
dynamics of market, and have the conceptual tools to devise new forms of
articulation. If not, then 'bourgeois epistemology' flinging pebbles against
the capitalist Iron Wall is all we have.</span></span></div>
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</span>Daniel Sacilottohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06107600124995445921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6580039155018603814.post-28109272515489871282012-06-07T02:00:00.000-07:002012-06-19T06:04:03.049-07:00The Animal Beyond Being: Heidegger, Derrida, Agamben<br />
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<b style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">- The Animal Beyond Being -</span></b></div>
<b></b><br />
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<b><b style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Heidegger, Derrida, Agamben</span></b></b></div>
<b>
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<b style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">_________________________________________</span></b></div>
<br />Introduction<o:p></o:p></span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> This paper examines some of the
ramifications which follow from Heidegger’s characterization of the animal as
being ‘poor in the world’, for our understanding of the human/animal divide
through scientific practice. I take the
enquiry undertaken in the lecture course <i>The
Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics</i> (1995) as a point of departure. I first
show how Heidegger attempts to clarify the ontological valence of the
human/animal split from the constrictions metaphysically set by his transcendental
framework. I then propose to show how Heidegger’s position, as well as the
posterior attempts to radicalize his approach, as seen in Derrida’s <i>The Animal that I Therefore Am</i> (2008)
and Agamben’s <i>The Open: Man and Animal</i>
(2003), are unable to avoid the metaphysically-loaded demotion of the animal in
lieu of a tacit hypostatization of the human, as well as resolve the
fundamental quandary about the possibility of a thinking of animality
irrespective of ontologico-metaphysical categories. I propose thus to question
whether the post-Heideggerean critique of all attempts at a <i>positive</i> account of animality, waged
against both science and philosophy, can successfully advocate a thinking of
animality unencumbered by metaphysics, but without relapsing into mysticism. <br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Lead to the disavowal of
being-in-itself, I first argue that the transcendental purview within which
Heidegger situates himself construes scientific understanding and categorical
intellection as a mere case of the occlusion of being proper to the modality of
presence-at-hand (<i>Vorhandenheit</i>),
resulting in an anthropocentric approach towards the animal. The valence of
these abstractions become reduced to a product whose specificity is relativized
to man. According to Heidegger, a progressive ontological disavowal of <i>metaphysical concepts</i> enroots man
further down the detrimental obsession for a technical manipulation of the
world through <i>scientific categories</i>. This will later be thought of by Agamben as the
compulsive <i>disclosure</i> of beings by man,
impervious to the co-constitution of man and animal being. Scientific insight,
in delineating the human/animal distinction, must thus be confronted and
either:<br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b> a)<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></b>Be
provisionally <i>suspended</i> – as in the
later Heidegger’s prescribed attitude of releasement (<i>Gelassenheit</i>), since science produces merely a present-at-hand,
human-relative caricature of the animal; or Derrida’s ambiguous prescription
for an attitude of ‘letting-be’, that complicates the affirmative being of the
apophantic ‘as such’, and approaches the animal outside metaphysically
specified essence (‘whatness’, <i>Wassein</i>)
through the <i>euche</i>, or request.<br /><br /><br /><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> b)<span style="font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;">
</span>Be <i>integrated</i>
within an obscurely defined, modified practice - as in Agamben’s attempt to
radicalize the ontological difference, which dissolves the anthropological
machine and with it the biopolitical investment carried through the
human-animal divide. <br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Having
accepted that the objective specificity from which scientific predication
results is merely an ontic/derivative abstraction proper to the human kind, the
Otherness which resists ontologization in the animal leaves us in turn with an
exceedingly impoverished picture of animality as ‘captive in its environment’,
recalcitrant to any explanatory attempt to inform thought. This constriction forces
us into accepting the animal’s reduction to an automaton, in spite of Derrida
or Agamben’s attempts to wrest Heidegger’s insights from their
metaphysical/biopolitical residues. The lack of a transcendental disclosure in
the animal, and its intractability by the conceptual means of science or
metaphysics, ultimately entails that any ontological ascription becomes in
principle refractory from animal (non)-being. The latter is left thus to the
anonymity of a quasi-mystical, unknowable Otherness, against which categorical
stratification cannot but appear as a violent transgression or imposition from
the part of man, a <i>noocentrism</i> worthy
of interruption.<br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Finally, I conclude that a philosophy
which can escape the methodological subordination of science to transcendental conditions
of access could contest the reduction of scientific phenomena to human
apprehension. Such a view may thereby seek to rescue scientific practice from
performing the ontological occlusion esteemed by Heidegger, and which he takes as
being responsible for our modern derailment. Science could be rather thought of
as penetrating into the being of the animal as it is <i>in-itself</i>, and not merely into how the animal appears <i>for us</i>. This would imply, as Quentin
Meillassoux (2008) and Ray Brassier (2007) have proposed, that the <i>correlation</i> between man-world (and
therefore the relativization of being to conditions of disclosure,
existential/linguistic/cultural) deemed inescapable by philosophies of access<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[1]</span></span></span></a> may
be shattered, and that the epistemic dependence of concepts of thinking should
not entail the ontological dependence of the objects conceptually described on
thinking. Science can be taken then to be a cognitively enriching activity on
the part of man, plainly informing human practice rather than obscuring our
ontological ground, without loss, once the disambiguation between
epistemological and ontological dependence is thus clarified, and the
ontological relativization of objects on concepts is shown to stand on
fallacious grounds. </span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /><br />
I – Transcendence and Essence; Metaphysics and Science<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Heidegger’s (1995) <i>FCM </i>proposes to secure p<span class="apple-style-span">hilosophy’s
propriety against science, art, religion, worldview and history. Metaphysics</span><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="apple-style-span">does not
concern itself with</span><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="apple-style-span"><i>a </i>particular being (God, the animal, the human…),
a stratified</span><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="apple-style-span"><i>domain</i></span><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="apple-style-span">of beings like science does (biological, physical,
social…), or even with</span><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="apple-style-span"><i>all</i></span><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="apple-style-span">the different beings or domains of beings. Conceptual typologies
are delegated to the secondary <i>ontic</i></span><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="apple-style-span">enterprise
expressed by <i>scientific categories</i>,
while philosophy in turn unearths their <i>ontological</i>
‘ground’ or enabling conditions through <i>comprehensive
concepts</i> (Heidegger: 1995, Pg 9). Philosophy occupies itself thus with the general
phenomenon of</span><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="apple-style-span"><i>worldhood</i>, which provides the understanding of</span><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="apple-style-span"><i>beings-as-a-whole</i>,
i.e. it thinks the unified, transcendental horizon for human being wherein beings
are made manifest: “The fundamental concepts of metaphysics and the concepts of
philosophy, however, will evidently not be like this [scientific understanding]
at all, if we recall that they themselves are anchored in our being gripped, in
which we do not represent before us that which we conceptually comprehend, but
maintain ourselves in a quite different comportment, one which is originarily and
fundamentally difference from any scientific kind.” (Ibid)<br /><br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> As fundamental, metaphysical comprehension
(<i>begreifen</i>) becomes the condition of
possibility for the rest of the sciences or merely ontic enquiries: “there are
only sciences insofar as there is philosophy, not the other way around.",
or even more dramatically “…all science is perhaps only a servant with respect
to philosophy.” (Ibid; Pg. 5) The ontological status of scientific description
is thereby deemed derivative from the transcendental structure of worldhood
proper to Dasein, and which it falls to philosophy to clarify. Heidegger's
point is thus that whatever <i>science
thinks</i> can only obtain by abstracting itself from the horizonal disclosure
of worldhood in its richness, as it is a matter for the existential attunements
(<i>Stimmen</i>) or comportments (<i>Verhalten</i>) of Dasein's disclosure of
beings. But what kind of 'attunement', if not natural-scientific, could be
adequate to clarify the <i>being</i> of the <i>objects</i> in question? That is, how are we
to think of the "being of beings", if not through scientific
abstraction?<br /><br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> To ‘fundamentally attune’ (<i>Grund-stimmen</i>) oneself in order to gain ontological/metaphysical
comprehension requires, Heidegger argues, to "step back" from the
scientific cognition of nature, understood as a categorically stratified domain
of beings, and move towards the transcendental disclosure of being in general:
“This turning away of philosophy proper from nature as one particular domain,
from any such domain at all, is a <i>going
over beyond</i> individual beings <i>over to</i>
this other”. (Ibid: Pg, 39). Since every objective particular must be rendered
problematic, even the pure ‘I’ of the Cartesian cogito must be questioned, and
with it the idea of cognition or consciousness as a property pertaining to a
specific ‘substance’, a property which would furthermore be the locus for thought,
i.e. the ‘rational’ animal, the <i>res
cogitans</i>, etc (Ibid; Pg. 55). Consciousness <i>of</i> particulars, that is to say the traction of <i>knowledge</i>, is thus strictly the opposite of fundamental <i>attunements</i>, which <i>release </i>(<i>Lassen</i>) and
awaken Dasein to the constitutive structure of worldhood, away from the abstract
slumber amidst individuated beings: “If, however, we make an attunement
conscious, come to know of it and explicitly make the attunement itself into an
object of knowledge, we achieve the contrary of an awakening. The attunement is
thereby precisely destroyed, or at least not intensified, but weakened and
altered.” (Pg, 61)<br /><br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Since for
Heidegger metaphysics must ‘pass over’ beings in order to attune Dasein for unified
worldhood, it is the latter which defines Dasein’s being; the peculiarity of
its being resides precisely in its <i>being-in-the-world</i>
(Ibid; Pg. 24). Given that only metaphysics enquires into the world as such, and
since having a world constitutes Dasein’s ownmost being, Heidegger can claim
that “Philosophy has a meaning only as human activity. <i>Its truth is essentially that of human Dasein</i>” (Ibid; Pg 19). <br /><br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="apple-style-span"> The
pragmatic inflection in the appeals to 'activity' should not be underestimated,
but must nevertheless <i>not </i>be thought
of as pertaining to a relation between a consciousness and a set of explicitly
thematized possibilities <i>in </i>that
consciousness. This is obvious once we realize that such a move would surreptitiously
reactive the dyadic polarity of the subject-object dichotomy, which remains still
beholden to the ideal-categorical category of <i>substance</i> (<i>ousia, </i>whatness,
<i>Das Was</i>) in Heidegger's analysis.
Rather, it is only Dasein, as the being who discloses being in a <i>purposeful</i> manner, that articulates local
'meaning', i.e. meaning is not a semantic or epistemological category, but is
rather a pragmatic-existential category relative to a nexus of aim-oriented
comportments which onto-logically precede thematized theorization. It is <i>for</i> Dasein that <i>possibilities</i> exist, insofar as it can integrate itself to a nexus
of significance, operate circumspectly in an 'equipmental-whole' (<i>Zeug</i>). Possibilities are open to Dasein primarily
in action, and not by abstracting away from purposeful activity in theory. One
doesn't so much <i>represent</i> the world,
Heidegger insists, as much as <i>concern</i>
(<i>Sorge</i>) oneself with it, through
activity, in various manners and dispositions. By the same token, the
appearance of objectivity, and the substance-property amalgam proper to the
ontic enquiry of science, must be thought of as <i>derivative functions</i> of the 'interruption', or breakdown of ongoing
practical activity</span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[2]</span></span></span></a><span class="apple-style-span">. It makes <i>no
sense</i> to speak of an object as being 'in-itself', since the modality of
being proper to presence is correlative to Dasein's activity.<br /><br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="apple-style-span"> This way, in trying to wrest metaphysics
from the purely ontic purview of an enquiry centered on consciousness/science over
into the general features of worldhood, Heidegger allots scientific
representation to being a <i>derivative</i> comportment
(<i>Verhalten),</i> and its objective
phenomena are thereby made <i>ontologically</i>
relative to Dasein. As Ray Brassier (2007) notes, in denying the ontological
primacy of nature and beings, both debased to something that is
‘present-at-hand’ (<i>Vorhandenheit</i>), Heidegger
anticipates the thesis that the world as described by the sciences, and the
stratification of beings in it, are mere empty abstractions relative to man:
“What is ironic about Heidegger’s critique of metaphysical subjectivism is that
it is precisely his refusal to hypostatize the world as present-at-hand object
of representation that precipitates him towards the arch-idealist conclusion
according to which ‘If no</span><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="apple-style-span"><i>Dasein</i></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><i> </i></span><span class="apple-style-span">exists, no world is “there” either’” (Brassier: 2007,
Pg. 162) Insofar as it remains tethered to an exploration of consciousness,
fundamental ontology cannot supersede the substantialist taint that marks every
epistemology, or indeed every existentialism. Humanism appears as yet another
symptom of the essential forgetting of the ontological question, and the
occlusion of being by science.<br /><br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 200%;"> <span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 200%;">Yet even if
scientific representation is the height of anthropocentric myopia, Heidegger
wants to rescue the peculiar role that Dasein has as that being on whose basis
the question of being becomes meaningful, i.e. as that being "for whom his
being is an issue" (B&T, pp. 102). Dasein is the caretaker of being,
insofar as it is the structure of care (</span><i style="background-color: white; line-height: 200%;">Sorgen</i><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 200%;">)
which makes it possible to relate to anything whatsoever, i.e. what </span><i style="background-color: white; line-height: 200%;">opens </i><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 200%;">(</span><i style="background-color: white; line-height: 200%;">Offen</i><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 200%;">) Dasein to the possibility of being not just opaquely absorbed,
but existentially invested. And as Derrida will point out, it is in this
prerogative still allotted uniquely to Dasein that Heidegger reiterates the
Cartesian dualism of mind and world, separating the world-disclosing function
proper to Dasein from the self-enclosure of all other 'things'. Only Dasein </span><i style="background-color: white; line-height: 200%;">discloses being</i><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 200%;">, and there are no </span><i style="background-color: white; line-height: 200%;">beings</i><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 200%;"> except </span><i style="background-color: white; line-height: 200%;">for </i><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 200%;">Dasein; the latter is uniquely "Being's Sheppard".
Thus whatever is </span><i style="background-color: white; line-height: 200%;">not</i><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 200%;"> within the scope
of Dasein's world must lack even the </span><i style="background-color: white; line-height: 200%;">ontic</i><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 200%;">
status of being-</span><i style="background-color: white; line-height: 200%;">within</i><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 200%;">-the-world, and
not just ontological disclosing status of being-in-the-world. This follows
since it is </span><i style="background-color: white; line-height: 200%;">only </i><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 200%;">Dasein that enjoys
the prerogative to disclose beings </span><i style="background-color: white; line-height: 200%;">as </i><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 200%;">beings,
and such disclosure is simultaneously their constitution. In doing so,
Heidegger installs the intimate link between Being (</span><i style="background-color: white; line-height: 200%;">Sein</i><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 200%;">) and human
being (</span><i style="background-color: white; line-height: 200%;">Dasein,</i><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 200%;">) and the latter’s disclosure of the former, thus
cementing their indissociability. Our contention below is that far from
deflating the anthropocentric excess that Heidegger takes to be proper to every
humanism, the transcendental framework of fundamental ontology ultimately
remains within the Cartesian confines, as anticipated and diagnosed by Derrida.
We shall examine in detail the consequences of this </span><i style="background-color: white; line-height: 200%;">cunning of humanism</i><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 200%;"> below.</span></span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span class="apple-style-span"><span class="apple-style-span"><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="apple-style-span"> We must
underline first that the roots of this intimate connection ultimately lies in
Dasein's Temporality (<i>Zeitlichkeit</i>),
as the logical condition of possibility for any comportment, and so for any disclosure
of beings to take place. Whereas man</span><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="apple-style-span"><i>qua</i></span><span class="apple-converted-space"> substantial 'essence' (<i>Wesen</i>)</span><span class="apple-style-span"> is but one animal amidst
the ontic distribution of species/genera described by science, the ontological
ground of his existence (Dasein) as ecstatic-horizonal transcendence is the
condition for the disclosure</span><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="apple-style-span"><i>of all beings</i>, from rocks to spiders, from
nations to black holes.</span><span class="apple-converted-space"> This is
what is described in <i>Being and Time </i>as
the syntheses of the threefold ekstases of Dasein's Temporal being:
being-towards (futural projection), being-already (retroactive appropriation),
and being-alongside (being-with). It is the synthesis of these three modalities
which makes Dasein the peculiar animal who <i>cares</i>,
since it alone can anticipate the future, appropriate itself as being what it
already was, and 'enpresent' itself thus, being-alongside other beings (<i>Mitsein</i>). Without the horizonal
structure of Temporality Dasein wouldn't have the capacity for ontological
attunements (such as anxiety of profound boredom) in seeing the World <i>refuse</i> itself, and thus the recalcitrant
ground of Being as its asymptotic horizon. The refusal of all possibilities is
precisely ontological insofar as it brings forth Dasein's ordainment to the
care of being, in worlds. <br /><br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="apple-converted-space">
Lacking the temporal horizon, Dasein would not have the capacity for
care itself, thereby shutting off the capacity for local ontic dealings with
what is present-at-hand or ready-to-hand, i.e. being is only disclosed to the
extent that they appear in some comportment or other within Dasein's
being-at-hand; from engaged practice to the abstractions of science.<i> </i>The predicative function of the
apophantic <i>logos</i> that characterizes
the being of <i>particular</i> entities is thereby
made entirely relative to being-at-hand <i>for</i>
Dasein; that is, it is relative to appearing within the horizon (<i>Horizont</i>) of worldhood disclosed <i>by</i> Dasein, and through the latter’s comportments
and attunements: </span><span class="apple-style-span">"Being at hand or not being at hand decide
concerning being and non-being...the stone, in its being away [in its not being
at hand], is precisely</span><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="apple-style-span"><i>not there</i>. Man, however, must be there in order
to be able to be away, and only so long as he is there does he in general have
the possibility of an away." (Heidegger: 1995; Pg. 64) <br /><br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="apple-style-span"> Whereas the stone’s ‘being-away’
implies its non-being, man must always ‘be there’, since being is only <i>for and through</i> Dasein, i.e. in man the
crucial distinction is between authentic ‘awakening’, triggered by fundamental
attunements, and the inauthentic slumber amidst beings proper to science and
‘idle-talk’ (<i>Garede</i>)</span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[3]</span></span></span></a><span class="apple-style-span">. However, if stones have no being outside relation to
human Dasein, then this is because particular beings all belong to the sphere
of presence-at-hand objects described categorically; the entire wealth of
phenomena described by the natural sciences included. At a loss for a horizon
for disclosure, the specificity of animal life must be likewise ontologically
relative to man. Nature (<i>phusis</i>) as a
whole is in turn ontologically characterized in terms of the givenness of the <i>phusei onta</i> to Dasein within the
latter’s transcendental opening. Only Dasein is transcendental insofar as it
projects itself temporally, coming outside-of-itself, and enpresenting the
projection of possibilities oriented towards the future in the present. As Heidegger
says: </span>‘<i>Transcendere </i>means to step over; the <i>transcendens, </i>the
transcendent, is that which oversteps as such and not that<i> </i>toward which
I step over’ (Heidegger 1982: 299)<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[4]</span></span></span></a><span class="apple-style-span">. Uprooted from its metaphysical ground, scientific
phenomena can therefore have no being apart from Dasein’s world-forming
capabilities (<i>weltbildeng</i>). There is
no being ‘in-itself’, but only being ‘for-us’:</span> “Of course only as long as Dasein <i>is </i>(that
is, as long as an understanding of Being is ontically possible), ‘is there’
Being. When Dasein does not exist, ‘independence’ ‘is’ not either, nor ‘is’ the
‘in-itself’. In such a case this sort of thing can be neither understood nor
not understood. In such a case even entities within-the-world can neither be
discovered nor lie hidden. <i>In such a case </i>it cannot be said that
entities are, nor can it be said that they are not.” (Heidegger 1962: Pg, 255)<br /><br /><br /><span class="apple-style-span"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="apple-style-span"> A being lacking the threefold structure
of temporal ekstases would thereby lack the capacity to enpresent, to be alongside,
and therefore to encounter any beings. It would be impossible for it to articulate
anything like purposefulness that constitutes practical activity in
readiness-to-hand, as well as theoretical abstraction in presence-at-hand.
Lacking a temporal horizon, whatever is not Dasein lacks a world, and lacking a
world, they would lack the structure of concern under which contact with all
beings is made possible. Only Dasein can 'bind' itself to purposes; however
irreflexively, by having its temporal horizon synthetically integrated to its
being. It is only by having the possibility of resolutely appropriating its
worldly conditions that it may set itself free from the automatism of Das Man,
i.e. worldhood, in its full richness, is the condition for freedom and thus for
choice. However, doesn't Heidegger entail something stronger: namely that
whatever is not Dasein or <i>for </i>Dasein <i>is not</i> in-itself either? How can
Heidegger speak of that <i>which is not
within the horizonal disclosure of Dasein</i>, but nevertheless <i>is</i>? Doesn't this require the
hypostasization of being-it-itself, which Heidegger has deemed the supreme
fiction of the metaphysical reification of presence? But if we don't accept of
the being of Dasein-independent entities, have we not thereby unleashed a
furious idealism, even more anthropocentric than the epistemological courts
suffered? As we shall see below, the question about the ontological status of
Dasein-independent entities corners Heidegger into an irresolvable quandary.</span> Having laid out these preliminaries, we
will next address how Heidegger attempts to describe by contrast the animal’s ‘poverty
in the world’, given the lack for the transcendental structure proper to Dasein
which is world-forming. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">II – Poverty in the World: Captivated
Noumena<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Heidegger attempts to situate "animal
being" somewhere in-between the wordlessness of inanimate objects (stones)
and the world-forming capacity of Dasein. In order to do so, he first raises the
question: what could it mean to say that the animal is ‘poor in the world?
(Heidegger 1995: Pg. 186). From the
start, he attempts to establish a crucial dividing line between animals and
lifeless stones, while keeping from the former the full-richness of the world
such as formed by Dasein’s transcendental horizon (Ibid: Pg 196). However, it
is precisely this ‘middle ground’ between the rich world of Dasein and the
wordlessness assigned to inanimate beings which becomes impossible to occupy, and
which finally seals the fate of the animal into being little more than the
worldless machinic automaton depicted by the tradition. This will be shown to
be a necessary conclusion given Heidegger’s subordination of scientific categorization
to metaphysical comprehension, and of both to Dasein. <br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> In continuity with his earlier
debasement of scientific categories, Heidegger begins the analysis by rendering
the ‘essence’ of animality impervious to the path of the natural sciences: “For
if we follow this path we shall fail to address the question from the
perspective of the animality of the animal, and simply misinterpret in turn
what has already been misinterpreted and distorted by the physico-chemical perspective,
employing a psychology crudely adopted from the human domain”. (Ibid: Pg, 189)<br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> For Heidegger, the suspension of the scientific
outlook is esteemed necessary in order to avoid an anthropomorphizing imposition
which distorts the <i>essential</i> being of
the animal, such as has been the case with the entire philosophical tradition.
The ‘metaphysical interpretation of life’ proposed thus must reestablish and
clarify the organic continuity between originary philosophical comprehension and
positive scientific research. The severed link between these two poles
Heidegger deems symptomatic of our contemporary situation, devolved in
scientific hyper-specialization and its instrumental technical obsession,
already prefiguring the fatalistic vision of the world as seized by modern
technology. Oblivious to its metaphysical grounding, “such a state of affairs
is symptomatic of contemporary science and represents its innermost danger…
science will not allow itself to enter such a crisis because it is already much
too preoccupied with the realm of serviceability” (Ibid). Thus the approach to
the animal must also demand an attunement or awakening towards the generality
of its being, and a passive releasement (<i>Gelassenheit</i>)
of the scientific outlook centered in beings. In this sense, to say that the
animal ‘is poor’ is simply meant to illustrate, Heidegger tells us, that it is
deprived of something fundamental, but it does not imply a hierarchical value
judgment of any sort (Ibid; Pgs, 196-7). But what is it exactly that is lacking in and
for animal being then, if not a world?<br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Heidegger specifies his account further
claiming that the poverty in question entails particularly a lack of access
towards being; that is “…having no access to those beings (<i>as</i> beings) amongst which this particular being with this specific
manner of being is.” (Ibid; Pg. 197) The
lack of an ontological horizon would seem to imply that the animal cannot ever
encounter beings <i>as such</i>; that is, it
could not encounter specific entities disclosed within a world, or find itself
integrated within a purposeful nexus of practical activity in an 'equipmental
whole'. Nor obviously could animals be said to 'theorize' in any substantive
sense. Yet Heidegger sees the danger in conflating the <i>worldlessness</i> proper to rocks to that of animals, or all non-human
entities more generally. When the lizard basks in the rock under the sun it
surely seems to relate to ‘something’. But instead of the properly ontological
disclosure of beings ‘as such’, which is peculiar to Dasein, the animal is said
to encounter its own proper ‘things’: “One
is tempted to suggest that what we identify as the rock and the sun are just
lizard-things for the lizard, so to speak. When we say that the lizard is lying
on the rock, we ought to cross out the word ‘rock’ in order to indicate that
whatever the lizard is lying on is certainly given in some way for the lizard,
and yet is not known to the lizard <i>as</i>
a rock…” (Ibid; Pg. 198)<br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 3.25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> However, how can these anonymous
‘animal-things’, void of precise ontological valence, be said to be encountered
by the animal, so that they can be said to be <i>things</i> nevertheless, remains obscure. How can there be a
stratification of individuated ‘things’ <i>outside</i>
being, and more specifically, outside the being of presence-at-hand <i>for</i> Dasein<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn5" name="_ftnref5" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[5]</span></span></span></a>?
This is enigmatic, given that the ontic specificity of <i>any</i> particular entity, abstracted from a purposeful nexus, has been
rendered entirely correlative to Dasein in presence-at-hand, as a modality <i>of being</i>. Without a horizon of meaning upon
which the malfunction of equipment (<i>Zeug</i>)
may devolve in specific categorical abstractions which give particulars, it is
unclear in what sense the lizard or the non-human animal can generally
encounter ‘things’. Indeed, if worldhood entails temporal horizonal disclosure,
then it seems that the animal would require the ecstatic syntheses in order to
allow itself to encounter anything as <i>alongside</i> itself. But this would entail endowing the
animal with a horizon for-being already, and would make of these 'things' finally
<i>beings</i> within the ontic disclosure of
<i>worlds</i>. The dilemma between granting
the animal freedom and denying it any ontological disclosure renders
problematic how one can legitimately grant to the animal even a minimal horizon
of worldhood apart from categorical construal in scientific reflection <i>for us</i><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn6" name="_ftnref6" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[6]</span></span></span></a>. <br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Heidegger
proceeds to depict ‘life’ as the animal ‘form of being’ wherein it sees itself
“confined to its environmental world, immured as it were within a fixed sphere
that is incapable of <i>further</i>
expansion or contraction.” (Ibid). The stratification of this
environmental-world is therefore left in absolute anonymity, part of the opaque
animal Otherness to which we have no access, but which remains void of ontological
specificity, and which is never disclosed within a horizon of possibilities in
the encounter with beings proper<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn7" name="_ftnref7" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[7]</span></span></span></a>.
This is also why the animal is said not to <i>exist</i>
properly, but to merely <i>live</i>, insofar
as existence is relative to having a horizon of possibilities, and so to Dasein
(Ibid; Pg 210). Yet we have seen that Heidegger seems reluctant to reducing
‘life’ to the machinic automatism often described by the scientific
instrumentalist conception of organisms and their vital processes: “We must attempt
to make biology and zoology recognize that organs are not merely instruments
and that the organism is not merely a machine.” (Pg, 217) <br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> We must note nevertheless that for Heidegger
this precautionary move is based on the supposition that scientific accounts of
life cannot but be distorting without a proper metaphysical footing of the sort
that renders bio-physical space-time ontologically derived functions of Dasein's
existential temporality. This fuels the idea that science is the 'handmaiden of
philosophy'. For as we saw above, there is no time before or after Dasein,
since it is only for the latter that a horizon of temporality allows it to
project, appropriate and enpresent, and so to eventually encounter beings
alongside, as extended in space and (chronological) time. Yet one must ask whether accounts of animality
would necessarily result in a distorted picture of the animal as a machine, as
Heidegger surmises here, if one is suspicious about the ontological
subordination of natural space-time to temporality<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn8" name="_ftnref8" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[8]</span></span></span></a>.
Given that accounts of the relations between entities and their properties seem
to entail a "deterministic picture" of organic life, we might
stipulate that science remains fatally delivered over to a machinic vision of
the animal, condemned to denying its autonomy. Whether the instrumentalist
conception of science advanced by Heidegger, which makes of its phenomena
heuristic fictions or abstractions for human being, is tenable, remains open.<br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> In any case, this leads Heidegger into
rejecting that any enquiry into the essence of animality and its organic
capacities could deal with determinate causal factors between particular
entities or properties through science: “Thus the real problem which is
involved in determining the essence of life cannot even be seen because life is
now handed over to some causal factor.” (Ibid; Pg. 223) Organic <i>capacities</i> (<i>Fahigkeit</i>) or ‘drives’ (<i>Trieb</i>)
are said to precede causal interaction between particular organisms themselves,
and so “the organ which arises in and through the capacity is <i>subservient</i> [to these capacities].”
(Ibid, Pg. 226) Accordingly, it falls to Heidegger to clarify how these
‘capacities’ obtain outside the ontological framework of disclosure. <br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> In order to develop his account of animal
capacities in contradistinction to Dasein, Heidegger goes on to distinguish
more precisely animal <i>behavior</i> (<i>Benehmen</i>) within environments from human
<i>comportments</i> (<i>Verhelten</i>) within worlds (Ibid; Pg. 237). Whereas the latter
involve the ‘towards’ of ekstatic transcendence reaching out onto beings,
behaviors are said to act according to an instinctual ‘driven performing’ (<i>Treiben</i>), void of reflexivity,
concernful comporting, and so of any ontological horizon. In behavior, animals
are ‘absorbed into themselves’, says Heidegger, folded inwards without
reflection. Consequentially, environments are unlike worlds in that they
‘captivate’ the animal without the possibility of refusal or withdrawal (such
as is possible in Dasein’s fundamental attunements, i.e. profound boredom,
anxiety…). <br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Beings never become present for the
animal, but the latter are ‘taken over’ by their own animal-things or
‘disinhibitors’ without explicit recognition: “This <i>being taken</i> is only possible where there is an <i>instinctual</i> ‘toward…’ Yet such a driven being taken also excludes
the possibility of any recognition of presence.” (Ibid; Pg. 242) Animal
behavior (<i>benehmen</i>) is thus directed
by instinctual drives in an unrecognizing movement towards the anonymous things
it is excited and rendered captive by. As Heidegger tells us “there is no
apprehending but only a behaving here, a driven activity which we must grasp in
this way because the possibility of apprehending something as something is
withheld from the animal.” (Ibid, Pg. 247). The bee is simply ‘given over’ to
the sun; the relations it has with its things are ‘preprogrammed’ as it were,
organically and unknowingly, i.e. it has no relation to present-at-hand,
particular beings. And it has no binding to equipment in practical holistic
frameworks, no 'for-the-sake-of-which'. In captivation, the animal is suspended
“between itself and its environment, even though neither is experienced as a
being” (Ibid). The crucial question must then become how to characterize these
non-ontological ‘things’ which the animal exhibits ‘openness for’., if not
ontologically (Ibid; Pg. 248) Heidegger finally describes the animal’s
captivation within an environment through the metaphor of ‘encirclement’ in
‘rings’; a holistic and hierarchical system of drives in which the animal
orients itself instinctively, in automated fashion.<br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> We
should note that in spite of his precautionary warnings to overcome the
machinic vision of animality, Heidegger’s account provides finally a picture of
the animal no less ‘automated’ or machinic. For how are we to interpret that
the animal is merely captive, incapable of “ever properly attending to
something as such”, if not as the claim that the animal simply cannot
deliberate or discriminate between explicit possibilities, implicitly or
explicitly, but is rather given over to blind instinct and its organic ‘drives’?
One might then raise the question about whether the prescription not to ontologise
the animal in terms of present-at-hand relations between particulars and their
causal interactions, like science does, is really any more ‘distorting’ or ‘impoverishing’
than the barren description of the animal as captivated. Perhaps it is rather
the transcendental framework wherein Dasein becomes the sole ‘shepherd of
being’ which is in turn impoverishing, reducing every qualitative difference to
emptying human abstractions. <br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Significantly,
as is well known, that Heidegger restricts his analysis to insects (moths,
bees…) and unicellular organisms seems to obviate the place of higher-end
mammals and other animals which, science tells us, presumably engage in
deliberative behavior akin that of humans. That Heidegger chooses to stay
within the realm of insects is perhaps not simply a matter of convenience,
given their comparative ‘simplicity’, but symptomatic of an incapacity to gauge
the possibility of attributing <i>any</i>
form of ontological horizon for <i>any</i> animal<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn9" name="_ftnref9" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[9]</span></span></span></a>.
Since Heidegger has made it abundantly clear that being-in-the-world, and
thereby existence, is Dasein’s peculiar mode of being, and that only the latter
possesses the ‘as-structure’ which is tantamount to having a horizonal
deliverance in the Open, required for the encounter with <i>beings</i> as such, he seems forced into allotting all non-human
animals into the same machinic straightjacket. This results in a cunning of
(machinic) reason, a Cartesian coup. <br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> This image of the animal, as we have
seen, makes of the animal not just a non-linguistic being, but one which is
absorbed into itself, ‘encircled’ in environmental ‘rings’, and captivated by
anonymous disinhibitors to which it remains captive through the organic whim of
drives.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn10" name="_ftnref10" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[10]</span></span></span></a>
It is of outmost importance to notice that this does not simply mean that
animals do encounter beings but are not ‘aware’ of them at a loss for
reason/language, but rather that they do not deal with beings <i>at all</i>, i.e. behavior is never
comportment: “Yet behavior is not blind either, in the sense in which we might
want to say that that beings are certainly there for the animal even though it
cannot grasp them because it is not endowed with reason and does not think.”
(Ibid; Pg. 253) And yet because it seems impossible to characterize these
anonymous ‘animal-things’ without granting them some form of ontological
valence, Heidegger finds himself at odds trying to characterize the animal
poverty of the world without anthropomorphizing it through conceptual means: “The
difficulty of the problem lies in the fact that in our questioning we always
and inevitably interpret the poverty in world and the peculiar encirclement
proper to the animal in such a way that we end up talking as if that which the
animal relates to and the manner in which it does so were some being, and as if
the relation involved were an ontological relation that is manifest to the
animal. The fact that this is not the case forces us to claim that <i>the essence of life can become accessible
only if we consider it in a deconstructive fashion</i>.” (Ibid; Pg. 255)<br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Since science remains oblivious to its own
tacit ‘ontologization’ of the animal, it is thereby blind to the
anthropomorphizing violence it enacts, and to the metaphysical exigency it
would require to avoid its instrumentalist insertion of the animal into a
machinic cog. The attitude of ‘releasement’ and of ‘letting be’ is thus of a
piece with the anti-anthropomorphic or anti-noocentric imperative. Yet it is
precisely when attempting to overcome the (Cartesian) machinic picture of
animality that Heidegger’s account comes up short, in turn reproducing an image
of the animal as helplessly captivated, which applies just as easily to spiders
as it does to chimpanzees, unable to gauge any relevant dissimilarity between
the two, and impervious to anything science might say in this regard. <br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> As we shall see in the next section, this reduction of the animal is precisely what Derrida and Agamben
attempt to overcome. They at once accept and at the same time radicalize the
ontological difference between beings and being which secured for Heidegger the
inseparability of ontological transcendental speculation from ontic scientific
reason, the better to render philosophical conception just as dubious as
science. Nevertheless, their attempts are finally incapable of enriching the
barren image of the animal as set by the philosophies of access. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirq4aQ5Pqahf0tHkJ_BGIxeba9gpHwjBXr2B3ykvkF7I2jTWNJIE6Mxpm9gG-4f0Ejc2SYEzrNDm-qjiuz7pMnzPNYHGTIrZafafL26x5GhnODKjXbr8eQDIfQ-WzgFDvT7HlK4fw-QUcS/s1600/to+drown.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="427" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirq4aQ5Pqahf0tHkJ_BGIxeba9gpHwjBXr2B3ykvkF7I2jTWNJIE6Mxpm9gG-4f0Ejc2SYEzrNDm-qjiuz7pMnzPNYHGTIrZafafL26x5GhnODKjXbr8eQDIfQ-WzgFDvT7HlK4fw-QUcS/s640/to+drown.jpg" width="640" /></a> <span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">III - The Animal Beyond Being <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Both Derrida and Agamben diagnose in
Heidegger an unstated adherence to the tradition he wishes to deconstruct. In <i>The Animal that I Therefore Am</i> (2008),
Derrida claims that Heidegger’s account is still too ingrained in the Cartesian
tradition he claims to have overcome, which as we have seen translates into
another machinic vision of animality: “When Heidegger’s gesture is to move
forward in the direction of a new question, a new questioning concerning the
world and the animal, when he claims to deconstruct the whole metaphysical
tradition, notably that of subjectivity, Cartesian subjectivity, etc. insofar
as the animal is concerned he remains, in spite of everything, profoundly
Cartesian.” (Derrida: 2008: Pg. 147)<br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Derrida locates the undeconstructed
aspect in Heidegger’s edifice in the ontological structure of the ‘as-such’
ascribed by Heidegger only to Dasein (Ibid; Pg, 158). But instead of granting
the animal this structure, which would thereby rehabilitate it in order to make
it eligible for worldhood proper, Derrida asks if it can be said that even
Dasein encounters the ‘as-such’. That is, he questions whether man can indeed
be the privileged locus for the openness to the being of the Other, or whether
instead it cannot but distort it to an anthropomorphized fiction, even as it
metaphysically approaches it: “Precisely
when it comes to beings or to very determining experiences, those that mark us
in particular… can one free the relation of Dasein (not to say “man”) to beings
from every living, utilitarian, perspective-making project, from every vital
design, such that man himself could “let being be”?... Is there a relation of
apprehension to the being –‘as such’- the “ontological difference,” therefore-
to the being of the being, such that it lets the being of the being be, such as
it is, in the absence of every kind of design, living?” (Ibid; Pg. 160) <br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Derrida asks whether it is
possible to actually transcend the ‘logocentric’ structure of transposition
which, as we saw, permeated even into metaphysical comprehension. He thus seems
to accept the ontological difference, but anticipates its radicalization,
wresting the ‘being of beings’ from the grasp of metaphysical discourse and its
'comprehensive concepts' in order to ‘let beings be’, i.e. let them stand as
they are outside of the strict correlation to man, wherein it is distorted. <br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> As
we saw, for Heidegger, the strife between inauthentic scientific anthropomorphizing
and authentic metaphysical comprehension found its apex in trying to
characterize the animal’s relation to the ‘things’ it encounters in its
environment. This placed Heidegger in the uncomfortable, seemingly
contradictory position, under which animals both have and do not have worlds. However,
given that worldhood was for Heidegger entirely subservient to the ontological
structure which encounters being (the ‘as such’ denounced by Derrida), strictly
speaking, the animal could simply have no world. The ‘animal-things’ or
‘disinhibitors’ described by Heidegger, void of ontological specificity, would
not suffice to grant the animal the horizonal structure of transcendence which
guarantees world-forming capabilities. And indeed, it is unclear how anything
such as 'things' could be said to subsist, without surreptitiously reactivating
the populating 'in-itself' of a transcendent beyond, which seems like
Kantianism run amok. And yet however audaciously he may have struggled to grant
the animal a world, impoverished as it might have been, Heidegger’s attempts to
do so seem vitiated by the construal of animal captivity; the latter’s fatal
absorption into itself. This is precisely Ray Brassier's (2007) conclusion: <span class="apple-style-span">“Heidegger’s attempts to wriggle out of this dichotomy
by claiming that the distinction at issue is not between having or not having a
world but rather between entities that are ‘rich in world’ (i.e. human beings)
and those that are ‘poor in world’ (such as animals) is a desperate sophism since
he makes it perfectly clear that there can be no common measure for degrees of
‘richness’ or ‘poverty’ in world and hence no possible transition from one to
the other.” (Brassier: 2007, Pg. 254)</span>
<br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> By contrast, Derrida stipulates that
metaphysical concepts, and so philosophy altogether, cannot be "comprehensive"
in the sense foreseen by Heidegger, i.e. metaphysics is no different than
science in that it fails to gain traction on ‘being as such’, and thus cannot secure
an ontological difference by putting itself in a prerogative before being. It
then becomes impossible, within metaphysics, to exceed the anthropomorphizing
function proper to the <i>logos</i>. Derrida thus calls into question the
pertinence of the ‘as-such’ altogether, rather than to attempt to re-place it
within the animal being as such, by castigating its alienation. Being does not
disclose itself transparently to Dasein anymore than it reaches the animal; the
constraint is, in every case, absolute. Or, put differently, there is no ‘being-as-such’
disclosed <i>for</i> any being. Indeed, it
is the very appropriation-of-being that Derrida thinks is ultimately the source
of the discourse of Domination that enacts the ontological violence against the
animal, and which transfers over from the Cartesian self-presentation of the
subject, to the self-appropriation of Dasein's being-in-the-world:
"Heidegger's <i>Dasein</i> is defined
by a deconstruction of Cartesian subjectivity (nevertheless, and this is what
counts, it concerns a matter of a Dasein anchored in an 'I am' and in a <i>Jemeinigkeit</i>)". (Pg. 78)<br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> The Derridean strategy thereby consists
in rendering the human equally lacking of any access to being-in-itself, making
it just as ‘deprived’ from the Heideggerean construal of the ‘as such’, given
that even philosophy cannot escape its own mediating function (Derrida: 2008;
Pg 160). This is what leads Derrida to side with Nietzsche that the hope to
think of the animal 'in-itself', positively through reflexive means, remains a
hopeless ordeal: "Is there a relation of apprehension to the being
"as such- the "ontological difference," therefore- to the being
of the being, such that it lets the being of the being be, such as it is, in
the absence of every kind of design, living? It is evident that the difference
between Nietzsche and Heidegger is that Nietzsche would have said no:
everything is in a perspective; the relation to a being even the 'truest', the
most 'objective', that which respects most the essence of what is such as it
is, is caught in a movement that we'll
call here that of the living, of life, and from this point of view the
difference in question between animals, it remains an 'animal' relation."
(Pg. 160) Thus, any positive thinking on animality remains caught in the
distraught of the violence and dominance of discourse, without repair. Yet his
own proposal suggests a reworking of the concept of the as-such, rather that
its wholesale destitution. We must complicate the 'as such' so as to show the
primacy of privation in both Dasein and animal alike. This is what Derrida
tantalizingly proposes to think, with Aristotle, as elaborating a non-apophantic,
and therefore non-affirmative, function of the <i>logos</i>. A negativity of the <i>logos</i>,
primary with respect to its affirmative function, that would allow to situate
both man and animal under the same light. "Aristotle himself takes into
account a non-apophantic moment in the <i>logos</i>,
a moment that isn't declarative, enunciative, and the example he gives is that
of requesting...And the possibility of a non-apophantic <i>logos </i>here would, in my opinion, open a breach in the whole
apparatus, but I don't have time to show that." (Ibid; Pg. 157)<br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Although he does not develop this line
of thought in detail, Derrida hints toward the Aristotelian <i>euche </i>as a kind of<i> request</i> that would logically precede the affirmation of the <i>logos apophantikos</i>, as a candidate for
the re-elaboration of the as-such so as to guarantee a 'transport' (<i>versetzen</i>) to the animal unencumbered by
the violence of presence. He thereby also hints at the possibility of prayer
occupying this non-assertive role, so that it "...doesn't show anything,
[and] which in a certain way, "doesn't say anything" (Pg. 157). What
seems to be tacitly at stake for Derrida in this crucially underdeveloped
moment is the anticipation of an elaboration on the old Mallarmean
confrontation between the Christian drama of the passion against Greek
paganism. He takes the fundamental lesson of the Eucharist to be the enacting
of the possibility of an <i>anticipation </i>(Salvation)
and a <i>remembrance</i> (the Passion) as
the <i>political</i> condition for a new
form of collective life, separated thus from the pure presentation or
representation of the Gods<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn11" name="_ftnref11" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[11]</span></span></span></a>.
In other words, the function of the <i>euche</i>
is to indicate the possibility of a comportment not beholden to the primacy of
presence, thus escaping the Greek preponderance of <i>par-ousia</i> and judgment such as construed for Heidegger in
presence-at-hand predication. As Quentin Meillassoux (2012) develops: "To
take up Mallarme's vocabulary- and his evocation of 'God [...] there, diffuse'-
we should speak to signify the Eucharistic mode of presence, whether or not it
is transcendent, of a <i>diffusion </i>of
the divine, opposed to its <i>representation</i>
(the Greek scene), or its <i>presentation</i>
(Christian parousia)." (Meillassoux 2012; Pg. 112) Derrida seems to seek
thus an <i>immanent </i>rather than
transcendent diffusion of the divine in the form of the Other-animal, before
which only the 'Eucharistic' politeness of the request may avoid the dominating
violence of affirmation. <br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Yet
for all the timid insinuations that Derrida provokes in his text, some
rejoinders are in order. First, it is unclear why Derrida attributes to
Heidegger the unlikely view that the entire horizonal disclosure of beings is
determined by the <i>logos apophantikos</i>.
Indeed, Heidegger is adamant to point out that while apophansis constitutes the
basis for the propositional form which expresses present-at-hand comportments
in propositional judgment, Dasein primarily discloses being and intends beings
circumspectly, in readiness-to-hand, <i>before</i>
apophansis takes place. And so there is a sense in which already the
aim-oriented comportments of Dasein are not 'saying anything'. What is peculiar
to apophansis is then the saying that Derrida seeks to render problematic. However,
what is at stake for Derrida is also not to rehearse the primacy of practical
comporting over theory or discourse. The Greek-Christian <i>euche</i> is not the German <i>Zeug</i>;
the request or demand is not circumspection. <br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> We must note at this point that Heidegger also insists that there is
a distinction between animals and Dasein not only insofar as the former lack
discursivity or propositional<i> </i>comporting.
Rather, they lack comportments<i> as a whole</i>;
as we saw above, behavior is <i>never </i>comporting.
What this means is that animals lack the <i>intentionality</i>
not only of objectual consciousness (presence-at-hand), but also that of
purposive practice (readiness-to-hand). And surely also of the ontologically
elucidating "fundamental dispositions". Their privation from being is
absolute, it cannot be commensurate with the privation which would lead to the
request or prayer in the <i>euche</i>, which
is discursively enveloped, even if not affirmative. But discursivity <i>still</i> entails apophansis <i>qua </i>making-present, and making-present
entails the horizonal disclosure of temporality, which is stipulated to
constitute Dasein's existence. If so, then the possibility of a different form
of intentionality which simultaneously speaks without 'saying anything' would
still require endowing the animal the temporal ekstases which we saw above
constitute the possibility of any disclosure of being, practical or
theoretical, Eucharistic or apophantic. For as we saw, the 'as-such' of
Dasein's intentionality is not fundamentally <i>discursive</i>, but ekstatico-horizonal. What the animal lacks is
precisely the horizonal disclosure of Worldhood <i>as</i> temporality that defines the being of Dasein, as the being of <i>care</i>. <br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Indeed, the <i>euche</i>, being resolutely discursive, operates within the temporal
horizon which defers <i>parousia</i> in
futural anticipation and past recollection. And we must insist that, for
Heidegger, against Mallarme and Derrida, that the Greek <i>euche</i> is indeed <i>not</i>
logically <i>anterior</i> to <i>parousia</i>, but on the contrary is rather <i>derived</i>, since it operates within the
discursive parameters of objectual individuation: one always prays <i>for</i> <i>something
or someone</i>, which presupposes the being-of-that One as <i>a being</i>. That is, the content of the prayer consists of discretely
individuated beings and properties, and thus presupposes <i>judgment</i>. Thus both the<i> euche</i>
and the 'prayer', reified by Derrida as announcing the possibility of a non-affirmative
relation to the Other, an immanent diffusion of the divine, would still require
the structure of the 'as-such' as thought of already by Heidegger, rather than reworking
its conceptual status. Derrida's crucial mistake is thereby to think that the
exhibition proper to the <i>logos
apophantikos</i> is identical to <i>affirmation</i>.
Therefore, a non-affirmative discourse, as in the prayer or request, would
resist 'saying or showing anything'. But this is incorrect: in order to
individuate particulars, apophansis presupposes judgment and so predication,
but this need not be in the form of declarative utterances. Conditionals,
requests, and all forms of speech act, all presuppose and exhibit according to
predicative content all the same, as inherent to discursivity.<br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> One may object that Derrida is concerned <i>neither </i>with discursivity (not even the
non-affirmative Eucharist) nor with practical comportments, but that he is
ascribing a resolutely <i>non-intentional</i>
function to the <i>euche. </i>This is, I
believe, explicitly refuted by Derrida's own exemplification of the <i>euche</i>: "Me, I am speaking to
you" <i>is </i>discursively enveloped.<i> </i>Yet as we have surmised, the
Aristotelian function of the <i>euche</i>,
although certainly <i>not</i> affirmative,
is nevertheless only possible under the onto-logical condition of conceptual
determination and linguistic predication. It follows trivially that the <i>euche</i> must also be loaded with
apophantic intentionality. For it simply makes no sense to <i>address-oneself-to-nothing</i> in the act of requesting, anymore than
it makes sense to think of an intentionality with no correlate, whether this be
<i>an</i> object (Husserlian phenomenology,
epistemology...) or significant aim (fundamental ontology, the existential
analytic of Dasein's everydayness...). It is one thing to stipulate that
non-affirmative forms of intentionality occur; indeed, Heidegger's crucial
insight is that such forms precede the apophantic modes of disclosure reified
in Greek philosophy. It is another to claim that it is possible to have an <i>address</i> without <i>any</i> sort of intentionality; indeed, to have something which one's
thinking or action is about, either in an address or request, <i>is nothing but the definition of
intentionality</i>. <br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> But perhaps there is a kind of
non-linguistic intentionality that is nevertheless not practical either? A kind
of anticipation amorphously directed at the void of being? Although such an
alternative seems resonant with the Heideggerean account of fundamental
dispositions (<i>Grundstimmen</i>;<i> </i>anxiety, profound boredom, love...),
these seem radically opposite to the <i>euche
</i>and so the prayer, since the latter are the opening to specific
possibilities, whereas the former are nothing but the <i>refusal</i> or leveling (i.e. in-differentiation) of all possibilities.
Perhaps the stern Derridean might insist, contra Heidegger's insistence that
any ontic encounter with the thing as presupposing the apophantic predication of
<i>parousia</i>, that a <i>pure opening</i> to a <i>particular</i>
Other is possible. An opening to <i>some-animal</i>
that is, although individuated in general as <i>one-being</i>, not yet predicated of in any way, and so is devoid of
any 'judgable content'. This would be to a kind of 'immediate encounter' with
the Other in thinking, in similar spirits to Russell's thought that it was
possible to know <i>particulars</i> by
acquaintance in sensing. The latter has been perhaps the most popular candidate
for a pre-linguistic intentionality of particulars, whether it be called
psychological or mental, and whether it takes the form of a naturalist
empiricism or a perceptual phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty). <br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> As Wilfrid Sellars (1956) points out,
the Thomistic theory of the 'mental word' already attributed a non-predicative,
and so non-judgmental, intentional propriety to sensation. Yet in order to
ground propositional intentionality in a primitive psychological intentionality
of individuals, Thomism had to stipulate an isomorphy between the objects of
thought and the "mental word" imprinted on the senses<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn12" name="_ftnref12" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[12]</span></span></span></a>.
It thus makes sense to say that a kind of intentionality still obtains there,
since there is a minimal objectified correlate functioning as the individuated
content in (immaterial) isomorphy to the object stipulated as being externally
impressing on the senses: "According to the Thomistic position although
sense belongs to the intentional order, it does not judge, i.e. the 'language
of sense contains no statements or assertions. Apparently sense can signify <i>this white thing, </i>but not <i>this thing is white, </i>nor <i>this white thing exists</i>. (Sellars, Pg.
45) What the Thomists argued, Sellars thinks, would attest to the possibility
of a non-apophantic mode of disclosure or intentional comporting which is nevertheless
individuating its content, a kind of 'psychological intentionality' which would
precede any kind of capacity for judgment or assertion that is neither
pragmatic nor merely a refusal of all possibilities. This intending would be like presence-at-hand
in intending towards definite particulars, and like readiness-to-hand in being
resolutely non-discursive. By the same token, it would be unlike presence at
hand in that it would not be predicative or apophantic, and it is not like readiness-to-hand
in that it is has particulate <i>address</i>
and not just an equipmental whole <i>in act</i>.
Perhaps, then, the animal could be said to be approached as a particular in a
similar way, if not through the <i>presentation</i>
to <i>sensing</i>, at least through the
affective <i>anticipation</i> of
intellection in request and the <i>euche</i>?<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn13" name="_ftnref13" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[13]</span></span></span></a>
And wouldn't this escape, indeed, the apophantic seal of predication, and the
dominance of <i>parousia</i>? <br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Now, I think it is instructive to see
why this option becomes unacceptable for Sellars, just as it was for Heidegger.
For Derrida's argument to get off the ground, it surely cannot suffice that one
in prayer or request directs oneself at an 'anonymous thing' blindly, with no
differentiated content, just like the sensation of particulars is not supposed
to be of just 'a thing in general'. But it neither can it amount to the mere
capacity to elicit differential responsive dispositions interacting with an
environment, as even thermostats do discriminate between salient features in
their surroundings without us thereby attributing to them any kind of
intentionality. What both Derrida and the Thomist require is then that the
subjects in question sense/request the thing sensed/requested <i>as</i> a thing sensed/requested. But this <i>encountering something as something</i>,
both Heidegger and Sellars argue, is what requires apophansis and so language. <br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Objectification
already in place, it is <i>guaranteed</i>
that any kind of comportment stipulating an isomorphy of a) the sensing/praying
<i>of/for</i> a particular <i>as a particular</i> and b) the particular
sensed/prayed-for, <i>must</i> presuppose
the apophantic structure of affirmation. For to intend a thing <i>as a thing</i> one must already abstract it
as a subsisting particular, and attribute to it determinate predicative
content. In other words, in order to think any-thing as a thing one must be
able to judge them to be the things whose specific content they seem to have,
however minimally defined, i.e. "<i>you
</i>to whom I address myself". Even indexical acts must do so, for to
intend 'white horse' presupposes '(this) is a white horse)', etc. As Sellars
puts it, "Predicates cannot be in sense unless judgment is there
also." (Sellars, Pg. 49). The same holds for anticipatory intellection,
request, or any other such mental state. Without such individuation, nothing
makes the purported act properly an <i>intending
towards</i> anything determinate whatsoever. The intentional apprehension of
particulars is intelligible within an apophantic horizon of disclosure in
judgment, as holistic intentionality is intelligible within a pragmatic horizon
of non-particularized purposive activity directed at disclosed possibilities. And
so just like for Heidegger and Sellars there cannot be an intuition of particulars
before intentionality, so <i>every speech
act that intends particulars must presuppose apophantic intentionality</i>. To pray
or request <i>for</i> anything must thus
presuppose the predication and so affirmation of the being of that which is the
object of the request<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn14" name="_ftnref14" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[14]</span></span></span></a>. Intentionality cannot flap in the void
without any ontico-ontological specificity, and it cannot have any
ontico-ontological specificity abstracted from predication or practice. Only in
predication there is room for the distinctive kind of comporting which defines
the <i>euche</i>, finally more Greek than
either Mallarme and Derrida seem to suspect. And predication implies, finally,
the showing of the <i>logos apophantikos</i>.<br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Subtracted from intentional comporting,
Derrida's allusions the request that 'says' and 'does' nothing finally ring
hollow; and so with it the promise for a positive approach towards the animal. In
short, it is not clear that the <i>request</i>
is any less correlationally and so any less 'violent' simply because it <i>does not</i> take the form of an endorsement,
since conditional statements, demands, and every kind of propositional attitude
presupposing apophantic objectification, cannot but reiterate the disclosing or
showing abjured by Derrida. Yet if the latter wants to allude to a 'request' or
demand that is not cognitive, thematized, or addressed in such a way that it
presupposes intentional objectivation, or holistic integration into an
equipmental whole, then he must provide an account for a kind of intentionality
that paradoxically does not intend towards <i>anything</i>;
that is, that neither 'says' or 'discloses' anything, as he himself claims. But
this is a conceptually incoherent endeavor: such an attempt does nothing but reiterate
the mystical idea of an ineffable call to the Other, the diffused divine now
immanent to the expanses of the world. This seems to once again foreclose the
animal from thought, reducing it rather to what Hegel would have deemed the
height of abstraction: an empty Otherness or noumenal phantom, alluded to only
in its opaqueness, recalcitrant to any cognitive traction or description. <br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Such is the ultimate import of the
Derridean extension of the privative aspect of animality into ontology and so
to Dasein. The same result that obtained for Heidegger thus repeats itself in
an exacerbated form within the deconstructive procedure pursued by Derrida: all
claims "about" the animal are, again, nothing but heuristic fictions
relative to man. Indeed, instead of a subordination of science to
transcendental philosophy, Derrida simply reinforces the correlation between
man and world (construing the latter as the function of the former) so that
nothing like ‘being as such’ ever enters into it, not even in a gesture of
withdrawal. Thus, no sufficient metaphysical effort could then clarify the
abyss of separation through the appropriate metaphysical speculation. Ontology,
as much as the rest of the sciences, is flattened onto the filiations of all
human-relative discursive practices that do nothing but attempt to 'speak the
unspeakable', appropriating everything as a correlate of itself, 'owning' the
Other: "[T]his filiation governs... all domains that treat the question of
the animal, indeed, where the animal itself is treated: zoology, ethology,
anthropology, but first of all ontology, mastery by means of knowledge and
(zoo-bio-genetic) technology, as well as ethics, politics, and law."
(Ibid; pp. 89) <br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Through deconstructive consciousness, one
aims to destroy thus the anthropocentric residue in Heidegger, which endowed
Dasein prerogative of setting itself before the withdrawal of being-as such. No
longer aghast before being's unrequited flirting, Dasein nevertheless finds
itself now confronted in a solipsistic abyss, a Cartesian <i>epoche</i> leading to slumber, without the hope for clarity or
distinctness to pierce the membrane of its autistic shell. Yet since this way
what ‘withdraws’ from both man and animal alike is not, strictly speaking, <i>being’s givenness</i>, since it makes no
longer any sense to speak of being-itself as the prerogative of Dasein's
disclosure. It then becomes impossible to provide an <i>account</i> for the animal without relapsing into the kind of
logocentric violence Derrida deems ubiquitous in all discourse. This renders
the animal world, or lack of a world, utterly intractable by speculative-theoretical
means, or artistic-pragmatic means. There where knowledge fails, the brooding
mystical spell is cast. <br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> However, let us note that, for Heidegger,
the ‘as such’ never meant to imply that being gives itself <i>transparently</i> to Dasein, such as it would be supposed to obtain outside
the correlation or the strictures of the for-us which renders Worldhood
relative to comportments. For one of Heidegger's main points is that indeed
Dasein is indeed affected by privation, in the withdrawal of being from beings,
or eventually the strife between Earth and World. The point was, simply, that Dasein alone is
given over onto beings, so that the privation proper to the animal was not that
of the concealment of beings as an the stretching of an asymptotic horizon,
always extending beyond the present, but<i>
the closure of the horizon itself</i>. The crucial difference, for Derrida,
thus seems to be that no concept, metaphysical or not, comes closer at gauging
anything like an authentic comprehension of being <i>as such</i>; there is no non-latency that remains in co-appropriation
with Dasein. The question is then, what is the nature of the privation, if it
is not that strictly that of the strife between being and beings, Earth and
World? How could such a difference be mobilized without reifying <i>that which is deprived</i> into either <i>a</i> being (ontic) or <i>the</i> being of beings, as the opaqueness of the receding Earth? It is
important to note that Derrida does not, and perhaps <i>could not</i>, formulate an answer to this question, resolving instead
with yet another tantalizing predicament: <br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="layout-grid-mode: char; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> "I</span><span lang="X-NONE" style="font-size: 10pt;">nstead of simply
giving sp</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;">eech </span><span lang="X-NONE" style="font-size: 10pt;">back
to the animal, or giving to the animal</span><span lang="X-NONE" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span lang="X-NONE" style="font-size: 10pt;">what </span><span style="font-size: 10pt;">th</span><span lang="X-NONE" style="font-size: 10pt;">e human deprives
it of, as it were, in marking that the: human is,</span><span lang="X-NONE" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span lang="X-NONE" style="font-size: 10pt;">in a way,
similarly "deprived," by means of a privation that is not a
privation,</span><span lang="X-NONE" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span lang="X-NONE" style="font-size: 10pt;">and
that there is no pure and simple "as such."</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;">..</span><span lang="X-NONE" style="font-size: 10pt;">.</span><span lang="X-NONE" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span lang="X-NONE" style="font-size: 10pt;">That would
presume a radical reinterpretation of what is living. naturally,</span><span lang="X-NONE" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span lang="X-NONE" style="font-size: 10pt;">but not in terms
of the "essence of the living." of the "essence of the animal.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;">"...</span><span lang="X-NONE" style="font-size: 10pt;">. Naturally, I am
not hiding this</span><span lang="X-NONE" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span lang="X-NONE" style="font-size: 10pt;">the
stakes</span><span lang="X-NONE" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span lang="X-NONE" style="font-size: 10pt;">ar</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;">e</span><span lang="X-NONE" style="font-size: 10pt;"> radical that
they concern "ontological differ</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;">ence</span><span lang="X-NONE" style="font-size: 10pt;">," the "question of</span><span lang="X-NONE" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span lang="X-NONE" style="font-size: 10pt;">being." the:
whole framework of</span><span lang="X-NONE" style="font-size: 10pt;">
</span><span lang="X-NONE" style="font-size: 10pt;">H</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;">e</span><span lang="X-NONE" style="font-size: 10pt;">id</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;">e</span><span lang="X-NONE" style="font-size: 10pt;">ggerian
discourse.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;">" (Ibid; Pg.
160)</span><span lang="X-NONE" style="font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="X-NONE"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> That the as-such is always affected by
privation means not only that being as concealed is never identical to the
disclosure of beings, but rather that strictly speaking that "there is no
pure and simple as-such" (Pg. 160) In the end, Derrida's re-elaboration of
the ontological difference consists in denying that being is ever something
which ‘gives itself’ to a privileged locus for disclosure, a ‘gift’ to any
being to bear the burden of caring for it. This leads Derrida to consider the
generality proper to the concept of ‘animal’ to constitute a ‘stupidity’,
occluding the depth of differences in the animal as Other, now rendered wholly
impervious to conceptuality, scientific or metaphysical. The latter’s occlusion
of depth is rather the root of all violence exerted by humans against the
animal:<br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> <span style="font-size: 10pt;">“When one says
‘animals’ one has already started not to understand anything, and has started
to enclose the animal into a cage. There are considerable differences between
types of animals; there is no reason one should group them into one and the
same category… <br /><br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> To place them all in one category is a
very violent gesture indeed; that is, to put all living things that are not
human in a single category is, first of all, theoretically ridiculous; and
partakes in the very real violence that humans exercise over animals. That
leads to slaughterhouses, their industrial treatment…all this violence towards
animals is engendered in this conceptual simplification.</span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn15" name="_ftnref15" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[15]</span></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 10pt;">” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(Derrida:
Interview, 2004)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> And yet the generalizing function proper to
conceptuality, which Derrida esteems as being both symbolically violent and at
the same time responsible for the ‘very real violence’ enacted against animals,
obviously would also apply at the level of <i>species</i>,
i.e. to group all ‘apes’ under a singular term constitutes another
generalization, as does any concept deployed by thought to describe and
stratify phenomena into sets/categories. There are considerable differences
between specific apes, and such generalization can likewise be said to
constitute a form of ‘violence’ under Derrida’s own strictures<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn16" name="_ftnref16" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[16]</span></span></span></a>.
Extending to the wholesale deconstruction of the apophantic ‘as such’ mobilized
by metaphysical discourse, the prescription against textuality’s violence is
thereby no longer targeted merely against ‘animality in general’, but to the
entire edifice of logocentric thought. As a result, it is not just the world
and the affirmative ‘as such’ for Dasein which gets dismantled, but the <i>animal</i> <i>as such</i> in its ontic specificity, which becomes deflated into a unfathomable
Otherness to be approached cautiously from the non-metaphysical stance of
‘letting be’. However, as we have suggested, by jettisoning the in-itself from
speculative thought, Derrida’s construal of the animal seems to approach the
position of endowing the animal a sort of mystical ineffability, while
sacrificing thought’s affirmative purchase on being to the constraints of mediation:
“Hence the strategy in question would consist in pluralizing and carrying the
“as such” and instead of simply giving speech back to the animal, or giving to
the animal what the human deprives it of, as it were, in marking that the human
is, in a way, similarly “deprived” by means of a privation that is not a
privation, and that there is no pure and simple “as such.” (Derrida: 2008, Pg.
160) In what follows we shall examine one final attempt to resolve the quandary
of the recognition of the animal in its specificity and its intractable
reality, in the work of Giorgio Agamben.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> (b)
The Inhibition of Being, or The Being That Dare Not Speak Its Name<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> For Agamben (2003), rather than contesting
Dasein’s privilege as the locus for the disclosure of being, the task is to
unearth the tacit co-determination between man/animal at work in Heidegger’s
text, the better to incorporate the disclosing activity of man to a peculiar
iteration of what he calls the ‘anthropological machine’ (Agamben: 2003, Pgs
33-38). The latter becomes then symptomatic not just of an undeconstructed
Cartesian remnant in Heidegger’s thought, but one more example of a ‘space of
exception’ in which the co-determination of man and animal becomes the nest for
biopolitical power to distribute itself<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn17" name="_ftnref17" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[17]</span></span></span></a>.
The anthropological machine in particular creates a ‘zone of indeterminacy’
where what lies outside of man is the exclusion of its inside (the ‘non-human
within the human’), and at the same time its inside becomes only the exclusion
of an outside (the ‘human within the non-human’). <br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> We obtain thus simultaneously the
animalization of man and the humanization of the animal, as they co-constitute
each other: <br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">
<span style="font-size: 10pt;">“Like
every space of exception, this zone [of indifference] is, in truth, perfectly
empty, and the truly human being who should occur there is only the place of a
ceaselessly updated decision in which the caesurae and their rearticulation are
always dislocated and displaced anew. What would thus be obtained, however, is
neither an animal life nor a human life, but only a life that is separated and
excluded from itself- only a bare life… <br /><br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> We must learn instead to think of man
as what results from the incongruity of these two elements and investigate not
the metaphysical mystery of conjunction but rather the practical and political
mystery of separation” (Agamben, Ibid; Pg 38).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Agamben locates the zone of
indistinction between animal and man nested within Heidegger’s discourse in the
latter's characterization of the unrevealed ‘disinhibitors’ proper to the
former, the non-ontological quasi-things which ‘excite’ animals in their
ontologically undisturbed captivity. Lacking access to ‘The Open’ (<i>Offen</i>) in which they are helplessly
seized, the animal experiences the constitutive lack of a horizon of
possibilities, that is, the lack of a World proper. As we saw, this fundamental
constraint, derived from the lack of horizonal temporality, made the animal’s
relation to his ‘disinhibitors’ ambiguous: not transcendentally anchored on
being, but neither indifferent to all relations in some sense. These
‘quasi-beings’ attest simultaneously to a pure refusal of being and to an
openness to something other than being. But an openness for <i>what</i>, if not being? Void of ontological status,
the ‘disinhibitors’ of the animal remain <i>anonymous</i>
forces outside of them, noumenal phantoms without the hope for disclosure, destined
to their self-enclosure in a purely negative refusal of possibility which
characterizes their captivity in the Open: “Plant and animal depend on
something outside of themselves without ever “seeing” either the outside or the
inside, i.e., without ever seeing their being unconcealed in the free of being.
On the one hand, captivation is a more spellbinding and intense openness than
any kind of human knowledge; on the other, insofar as it is not capable of
disconcealing its own disinhibitor, it is closed in a total opacity.” (Ibid; Pg
57)<br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Agamben’s strategy is then to extend the concep
"disinhibitor" to let it play a constitutive function for Dasein’s
own relation to being. For Agamben, both Dasein and the animal have their own
proper disinhibitors; the difference resides in that for the former it is <i>being itself</i> which becomes its own disinhibitor,
while the animal’s disinhibitors remain shrouded in mystery, foreclosed to any
ontologizing function of disclosure (Ibid; Pg. 60). It is through the mediating
function of the non-ontological disinhibitors that Agamben locates the ‘zone of
indeterminacy’ which broods between man and animal. <br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> In particular, Agamben compares the
animal’s closure to his own disinhibitors to Dasein’s experience of a wholesale
refusal of beings, such as lived in profound boredom. As Agamben says, “in
becoming bored Dasein is delivered over to something that refuses itself,
exactly like the animal, in its captivation, is exposed to something
unrevealed." (Ibid; Pg. 65) This is the space of co-determination between
man and animal envisaged earlier. The experience of a wholesale refusal of
one’s own disinhibitors reveals that Dasein’s being resembles the poverty of
the animal’s captivity precisely where it is most fundamentally attuned to the
call of being-as-a-whole. Like Derrida suggested, Agamben thereby makes Dasein
victim to a constitutive lack, just like the animal, albeit his own lack
remains ontological, unlike the animal’s lack which is tethered to anonymous
disinhibitors. In ‘being left empty’
from the call of beings, man is ‘left open to a closedness’; in ‘being left in
suspense’ he experiences the deactivation of all factical possibilities, and so
his own existence as a potentiality-for-being (<i>poter-essere</i>) (Ibid; Pg. 67). Whereas the animal remains seized by
his own unrevealed disinhibitors, for Dasein fundamental attunements allow for
the ontological suspension of its own disinhibitors, evincing the <i>unrevealed</i> as what simultaneously constitutes
man and animal: “Profound boredom then
appears as the metaphysical operator in which the passage from poverty in the
world to world, from environment to world, from environment to human world, is
realized; at issue here is nothing less than anthropogenesis, the becoming
Da-sein of living man…In this suspension, in this remaining-inactive (<i>brachliegend</i>, lying fallow) of the
disinhibitor, the animal’s captivation and its being exposed in something
unrevealed can for the first time be grasped as such… the jewel at the center
of the human world and its <i>Lichtung</i>
is nothing but animal captivation” (Ibid; Pg. 68). The ontological revelation
is that being closes itself, just like for the animal its own disinhibitors
remain foreclosed from its being.<br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> What
is most intriguing about Agamben’s construal of the Heideggerean
‘anthropological machine’ is that it relies on making the unconcealment of
being for Dasein a particular <i>kind</i> of
disinhibitor, since only then it can operate in both animal and man alike.
However, as Heidegger has made clear, unconcealment in Dasein is specifically <i>ontological</i> in the sense that it
conditions the encounter with <i>being</i>,
and not simply to anonymous ‘human-things’ lurking behind their disclosure,
stratified on their own account. For the crucial distinction between the animal
and Dasein is that it is only the latter which discloses <i>being</i>, whereas the former’s disinhibitors remain simply
ontologically undetermined, separated from man by an abyss of which we know
nothing (Heidegger: 1995, Pgs 371-372). But this is to conflate epistemological
with the ontological level: it is one thing to say that a disinhibitor might be
qualitatively unbeknownst to us, it is quite another to say it is possible to
have a numerically and qualitatively specified being without <i>it being</i> at all. <br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> If so, then nothing solicits the
thesis that being is one ‘kind’ of disinhibitor, given that this already
tacitly ontologizes the latter within a particular, trans-metaphysical
typology. 'Disinhibitors' thus take place in a kind of meta-ontology which
distributes disinhibitors across the axis of Dasein relative being(s) and
animal 'things'. Like Heidegger himself, Agamben refuses to accept that <i>stricto sensu</i>, it is incoherent to
attest to the reality of 'things' outside of the ontico-ontological valence
proper to Dasein's temporal being. And like Derrida, it threatens a transgression
into the unknown beyond, by claiming that 'things', being themselves less than
being, nevertheless lie as a 'zone of exception' within the human, as a subtractive
amorphous soul stripped of its religious envelopment, but none the less
mystical for it. <br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> This gesture, we must insist,
threatens to performatively contradict the absolute anonymity of disinhibitors <i>qua</i> non-ontological valences, and thus
their separation from Dasein’s world. To claim disinhibitors constitute the
most general category proper for the common intentionality of both animal and
Dasein alike is just to relapse into a metaphysical reification of being, by
claiming to know that which separates the self-enclosed world of human being,
and that which, oblivious to it, concerns the animal only. The signifier
'disinhibitor' plays a paradoxical role as that which <i>cannot</i> be known by any human comportment, and that which allows us,<i> by considering it,</i> to separate what it
properly human from that which isn't. But this is an irreconcilable duality:
either one insists that being is a matter for Dasein and therefore that it
makes no sense to speak of non-human things, in pains of paralogism, or one reactivates
the metaphysical task and proceeds to typologize being into categories. The
former results in the kind of agnostic correlationism we saw apropos Heidegger
and Derrida, where the latter leads the slippery route towards a kind of
neo-Aristotelian metaphysics of substance and properties. <br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Just like Derrida, Agamben diagnoses in
the specific relation of Dasein towards being (his own ‘brand’ of disinhibitor)
the compulsion to disclose, which leads to the forgetful technocratic
unbecoming which seizes the anonymity of the Other into the cog of human
serviceability: "To be sure, such a humanity, from Heidegger's
perspective, no longer has the form of keeping itself open to the
undisconcealed of the animal, but seeks rather to open and secure the not-open
in every domain, and thus closes itself to its own openness forgets its
humanitas, and makes being its specific disinhibitor. The total humanization of
the animal coincides with a total animalization of man.” (Agamben: 2004, Pg.
77)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Whereas
for Heidegger the compulsion to disclose coincides with the <i>ontotheological</i> <i>forgetfulness </i>of being ‘as such’; for Derrida and Agamben it marks
the <i>logocentric</i> transgression proper
to all ontology, and the <i>biopolitical</i>
obliviousness to how the co-constitution of man and animal wage biopolitical
power, respectively. The three agree in
that the attempts to approach the animal from the purview of scientific
categories (which include metaphysical/ontological concepts for Derrida/Agamben)
underlie the anthropomorphizing distortion against the animal. By the same
token, they agree in that a reasonable ethics which would let the animal ‘be’
in its intractable Otherness requires a suspension of invasive scientific
practice, as the latter continues to enact an ireflexive violence against the
animal through the generality of the concept. Agamben puts it best, when he
says that to let the animal ‘simply be’ would mean “to let it be <i>outside of being</i>” (Ibid; Pg. 91). <br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">
However, neither Derrida nor Agamben seem content to accept utter apathy
or inertia towards the animal, such as in the purported ‘three hundred years of
silence’ envisaged by Heidegger to repair the damage done by the tradition<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn18" name="_ftnref18" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[18]</span></span></span></a>.
For Derrida, the ethics of ‘letting be’ consists in generalizing the structure
of privation to Dasein, so as to dissolve the ‘as such’ which grants the latter
a horizon towards being itself. It remains entirely undetermined what a
practice correspondent to this prescription would be, however, except in that
it pulls red lights on philosophy as much as science. For Agamben, the breakdown
of the ‘anthropological machine’ would altogether suspend the divisions of bare
Life which regulate biopower, the better to show the empty kernel which lies at
the center of the separation between animal and man: “The suspension of the
suspension. Shabbat of both animal and man.” (Ibid; Pg 92) What both thinkers share is an eventual
agnosticism about the animal ‘in itself’, now delimited away from the reach of
thought; that is, not just as <i>unknowable</i>,
but as <i>unthinkable</i>. The figure
retrieved is that of the animal outside all essence (‘whatness’, <i>Wassein</i>), without ontic specificity, or
the figure of “great ignorance” which lets both man and animal be in their
incommensurable difference. <br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Both Derrida and Agamben thus <i>exacerbate</i> the relativization of conceptual
categorization to instrumentality or serviceability, which already for
Heidegger entailed the provisional suspension of scientific practice, and which
signals for Derrida the apex of our 'stupidity' before the Otherness that is the
animal. As we have seen, science was to be rehabilitated from its blind
machinic drive after metaphysical clarification had shown their co-dependence
and continuity. For Derrida and Agamben, even more so than the later Heidegger,
metaphysics above all is paradigmatic of the human arrogance which, by way of
the politically invested <i>logos</i>,
attempts to close the unbridgeable abyss that separates man and animal, and enacts
an immeasurable violence against the latter. It is this philosophically nested
fixation on the ontologically invested <i>logos
</i>which attempts to disclose what ought to remain shrouded in mystery. The
“face in the sand” that the human sciences have drawn are thus to be eventually
erased, Agamben concludes, in favor of an avowal of the unsaveable ‘mystery of
separation’ which sets them forever apart (Ibid). </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Conclusion – Science, Materiality,
Animality<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> In
the end, what these post-Heideggerean approaches to the animal share is an
unremitting conviction that the circle of correlation is inescapable; that
justice to the animal can at best come in the way of a passive, ethical stance
towards its opaque Otherness rather than by an
active, cognitive attempt to comprehend it. Radicalizing the ontological
difference, both Derrida and Agamben remain skeptical towards conceptuality,
rendering it void of its purported ontological value, or overburdened by its
biopolitical weight. Science or ontology cannot but be ‘speciesist’, since they
illegitimately transpose what is merely relative to us onto things ‘in
themselves’. They thereby renounce the prospect, envisaged still by the early Heidegger,
of an eventual thought of the ‘essence’ of the animal, where science and
metaphysics would converge. Dissolving the logocentric ‘as such’ which attempts
to think the animal essence, or shattering the anthropological machine which
wagers power over Life, becomes thus continuous with the prescription of
releasement and ‘letting be’ which brings science to a halt in its approach.
What one ‘lets be’ is finally the non-ontological Otherness of the animal, free
from the shackles of scientific/metaphysical instrumental reason. <br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> An alternative approach to the animal could,
by contrast, contest the primacy of transcendental conditions of access, so as
to describe an immanent plane of material production, within a univocal
ontological field. Such a perspective is pursued by thinkers such as Gilles
Deleuze or Alain Badiou. Under the former’s ‘vitalist’ panpsychist view, everything
emerges within ontological field of intensive multiplicities, in which animal
and man are actualized ‘morphogenetically’<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn19" name="_ftnref19" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[19]</span></span></span></a>.
For Deleuze and his followers (Jane Bennett for example) this leads to the
dissolution of the <i>ontological</i> split
between humans and animals by making them both partake in the same material
ground. Deleuze dissolves the
transcendental function of representation and existential access, the better to
introduce all beings into the same process of differential becoming, which
requires the restitution of ontology against transcendental philosophy and its
historicist/deconstructive offspring. <br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> It is therefore the alternative of
giving a positive ontology that does not begin with the consideration of our
fundamental <i>access</i> to the world. It is this evasion of the problematic of
access in favor of metaphysics which is taken to have the resources to overcome
the anthropomorphizing function of representation and conceptual identity, obviating
the epistemological distinction between thinking and reality, concept and
object. Yet this alternative obviously raises questions about our warrant in
pursuing a metaphysics irrespective of methodological concerns about access. I
shall not press on these issues at this time, but simply indicate it as one
possible alternative. <br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> For Badiou’s (1996, 2006) radically anti-phenomenological
mathematical ontology, experience does not provide the conditions of access to
ontic reality, as it does for Deleuze. In a sense they both displace rather
than resolve the critical quandary by deflating, to its fullest extent, the
problematic of our access to being in favor of a purely abstract notion of
being itself. Science then becomes a generic procedure for the production of
truths, while ontology is in turn taken to be radically a-subjective, and just
one more situation among many. But the subject still separates from the animal
at the point where it resists its local objectivity and incorporates itself
into a new truth-procedure, transcending his finitude and ascending to the
eternity of the Idea. Under this view, science accesses the being of the animal
precisely by virtue of its mathematicity; which Heidegger esteemed as the most
empty and removed form of understanding. Endorsing the Parmenidean
identification of thinking and being, science can thus never fall into the
‘crisis’ envisaged by Heidegger as
necessary, given its dubious foundation in human experience: “<span class="apple-style-span">[T]here is no [phenomenological]
subject of science. Infinitely stratified, adjusting its transitions, science
is a pure space, without a reverse or mark or place of what it excludes. It is
foreclosure, but foreclosure of nothing, and so can be called the psychosis of
no subject, hence of all; fully universal, shared delirium, one only has to
install oneself within it to become no-one, anonymously dispersed in the
hierarchy of orders. Science is an Outside without a blind-spot…There are no
crises within science.” (Badiou: ‘Mark and Lack’, Pgs. 161-2) The only subject
for science is the very immanent productivity that is carried out <i>within</i> science, rather a threat from
outside of it.<br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Yet
another alternative route is to insist, contra-correlationism, that it is the
sciences which provide the material ground and the conditions for the
instantiation for human thought, rather than the other way around. To insist
that the subordination of bio-physical time to existential temporality is to be
resisted, and so that the being of intra-temporal entities is ontologically
prior to that of existential temporality as construed by Dasein's ekstases.
This option would insist that instead of explaining the purposefulness of the
world in terms of Dasein, we explain Dasein in terms of a purposeless world;
that the bio-physical death and time in which Dasein emerges is primary both
ontologically and chronologically to the temporality of experience. To do this,
one diffuses the purported transparency of immediate experience, intentionality
and comportments, and proceeds to identify the latter as mediated processes
proper to sapient creatures, within an evolutionary narrative that develops
from functional sentience. The distinction between the sapient humans and the
merely sentient animality ceases therefore to be one of an ontological abyss,
but is merely a matter of degree; the rationality and intentionality proper to
thought is merely a peculiar kind of activity proper to clever beasts, endowed
with the capacities for commitments and normative assessments, i.e. of animals
inhabiting the 'logical space of reasons'. This is the 'transcendental realist’
option, taken by Ray Brassier (2007) and Wilfrid Sellars (1956), among others.
For them, the impossible grounding of science in transcendental philosophy is
overcome if we situate man’s subjectivity in a homogenous ontological field
where the correlation emerges and will perish, while nevertheless insisting,
contra the vitalist materialist, that the normative register of the logical
space of reasons must remain formally autonomous. This alternative thinks that
scientific conceptuality is not reducible to the instrumentalist vision
described by the philosophies of access, nor that its phenomena are reducible
to heuristic fictions. Rather, science is thought to be capable of supporting the
empirical-transcendental / ontico-ontological difference by distinguishing the
realm of reasons from the realm of causes in methodological terms. While the
field of reasons emerges within the univocal ontological domain of natural
causes, it is only in the former that we know of the latter. To avoid
collapsing the distinction between the knower and known, a move which turns
ontology into the unbeknownst accomplice of idealism-correlationism, a
methodological dualism allows that one may gain progressive traction on the
‘in-itself’, robustly stratified through conceptual means.<br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Under such a realist view, science would not
constitute a cognitive imposition from man upon the animal, but would be a means
of gaining insight on animal being, enriching our understanding of it rather
than occluding its metaphysical ‘essence’ or transgressing its unfathomable
Otherness by logocentric impositions / biopolitical iterations. This option is sympathetic to the thought that
an appropriate ethics towards the animal supervenes on drawing out crucial
categorical divisions between species or natural kinds, rather than unearthing
the ontological essence of animal and man through metaphysical speculation, or
preserving the abyss which irremediably separates them both. One may thus not
shy away from rejecting the transcendental philosopher’s claim in that gauging
the animal through conceptual understanding constitutes an illegitimate
transposition, forgetting the metaphysical ground of science. Brassier writes
on this account:<span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 200%;"> <br /><br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> “Instead
of cultivating a self-enclosed terrain from which to adjudicate
transcendentally upon the claims of the natural sciences, philosophy should
strive to rise to the challenge of the latter by providing an appropriate
speculative armature for science’s experimental exploration of a reality which
need not conform to any of reason’s putative interests or ends. Once we have
discounted the claim that the empirical–transcendental division of labor
presents a satisfactory resolution of the speculative problems put to
philosophy by science, we can re-establish a level-playing field upon which it
becomes incumbent for philosophy to rehabilitate the notion of a
non-correlational reality the better to explicate the speculative implications
of its scientific exploration – rather than continually reigning in the latter
by tightening the correlationist leash.” (Brassier: 2007, Pg 63)<br /><br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> The questions raised by such alternatives are
obviously outside the scope of this paper, but they should point towards a
range of possibilities available for speculative thought, which are not
constrained to the transcendental framework which correlationist philosophies
deem inescapable. The realist/materialist alternatives advocate a thought in
which conditions of access to the world are perfectly explainable through the
resources of discursivity; what the latter describe are not human-relative
derivations which must be relativized to experience, or language. Without the
burden of having its results reduced to mere abstractions/distortions <i>for humans</i>, science or philosophy does not
have to disown its pretensions to be ontologically clarifying. Dissolving the
ontological difference, the precautionary skepticism against science’s ‘speciesism’,
or the agnostic avowal of the ethics of ‘letting be’, appears as the residue of
a philosophy which attempts to disown the ontological valence of categorical
insight in favor of a precautionary
apathy before the sacred. While these indications do not suffice to establish a
vindication of philosophy or science of any sort, they show that the correlationist
straightjacket may perhaps be loosened, its impasses rendered problematic, and
thus new, unforeseen options made ripe for thought.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p> </o:p><o:p style="line-height: 200%;"> </o:p><b style="line-height: 200%;">References/Cited Works/ Bibliography</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 0in left 4.5pt list .25in; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">1.<span style="font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;">
</span>Agamben, Giorgio. <i>The
Open: Man and Animal, </i>translated by Kevin Attell, Fordham University Press,
2003.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 0in left 4.5pt list .25in; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">2.<span style="font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;">
</span>Agamben, Giorgio. <i>Homo
Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life</i>, translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen,
Fordham University Press, 1998. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 0in left 4.5pt list .25in; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">3.<span style="font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;">
</span>Agamben, Giorgio. <i>State
of Exception</i>, translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen, Chicago University Press.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 0in left 4.5pt list .25in; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">4.<span style="font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;">
</span>Badiou, Alain. <i>Being
and Event</i>, translated by Oliver Feltham, Continuum Press, 2006.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 0in left 4.5pt list .25in; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">5.<span style="font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;">
</span>Brassier, Ray. <i>Nihil
Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction</i>, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 0in left 4.5pt list .25in; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">6.<span style="font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;">
</span>Brassier, Ray. <i>Concepts
and Objects</i>, forthcoming in <i>The
Speculative Turn</i>, Re Press, 2010. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 0in left 4.5pt list .25in; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">7.<span style="font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;">
</span>Derrida, Jacques. <i>The
Animal that I Therefore Am, </i>translated by David Willis, Fordham University
Press, 2008. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 0in left 4.5pt list .25in; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">8.<span style="font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;">
</span>Deleuze, Gilles. <i>Difference
and Repetition</i>, translated by Paul Patton, Columbia University Press, 1994.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 0in left 4.5pt list .25in; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">9.<span style="font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;">
</span>Deleuze, Gilles; Guattari, Felix. <i>Capitalism and Schizophrenia: A Thousand Plateaus, </i>translated by
Brian Massumi, Continuum Press, 2003. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 0in left 4.5pt list .25in; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">10.<span style="font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;"> </span>Heidegger,
Martin. <i>Being and Time</i>, translated by
John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, Harper & Row, Publishers,
Incorporated, 1962. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">11.<span style="font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;"> </span>Heidegger,
Martin.<i> Kant and the Problem of
Metaphysics</i>, translated by Richard Taft, Indiana University Press, 1997</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 0in left 4.5pt list .25in; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">12.<span style="font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;"> </span>Heidegger,
Martin. <i>The Basic</i> <i>Problems of Phenomenology</i>, translated by
Alfred Hofstadter, Indiana University Press, 1982.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 0in left 4.5pt list .25in; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">13.<span style="font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;"> </span>Heidegger,
Martin. <i>The Fundamental Concepts of
Metaphysics</i>, translated by William McNeil and Nicholas Walker, <st1:city w:st="on">Bloomington</st1:city>: Indiana
University Press, 1995</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 0in left 4.5pt list .25in; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">14.<span style="font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;"> </span>Meillassoux,
Quentin. <i>After Finitude</i>, translated
by Ray Brassier, Continuum Press, 2008.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br clear="all" />
</span><br />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<div id="ftn1">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[1]</span></span></span></a> The expression ‘philosophies of
access’ was first coined by Graham Harman. See Harman, Graham. <i>Guerrilla Metaphysics</i>: <i>Phenomenology and the Carpentry of Things</i>,
Open Court, 2005.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn2">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[2]</span></span></span></a> For
reasons of space, we cannot undertake a thorough review of how this process
occurs in Heidegger’s account. Let us just note here that the breakdown of
ready-at-hand equipment occurs in three successive stages, leading to bare
reflexive abstraction from a primary dimension of engaged practice. Usefulness
and serviceability withdraw thus, and equipment is reduced to the form of an
extant, present-at-hand object (<i>Vorhandenheit</i>).
The three stages are correspondingly: <i>conspicuousness</i>,
<i>obtrusiveness</i>, and <i>obstinacy</i>. It is this latter ‘objectual’
form which roughly corresponds in Heidegger’s account to the object or
representation indexed earlier in three varieties. It is thus, for Heidegger
only the most derivative, or abstract stage wherein the indistinction in act
between Dasein and tool-beings qua an equipmental-whole is severed. For
details, see <i>Being and Time</i>: Part I;
Chapter I.</span></div>
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn3">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[3]</span></span></span></a> <span style="font-size: 10pt;">It may be noted that this implies that for Heidegger
there can be no temporal horizon outside Dasein; therefore no time in which
there are no human beings or in which the correlation fails, since it is the
correlation which makes possible any experience of being: Strictly speaking we
cannot say: there was a time when there were no human beings. At every time,
there were and are and will be human beings, because time temporalizes itself
only as long as there are human beings. There is no time in which there were no
human beings, not because there are human beings from all eternity, but because
time is not eternity, and time always temporalizes itself only at one time, as
human, historical <i>Dasein</i>.” (Heidegger 2000: Pgs, 88-9) This makes
Heidegger susceptible to the challenge of the arche-fossil presented by Quentin
Meillassoux (2008), and so forced to deny the reality of beings prior to the
possibility of the correlation, i.e. ascending ancestral phenomena described by
science, as well as descending statements. See Meillassoux, Quentin. <i>After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of
Contingency</i>, translated by Ray Brassier, Continuum Press, 2008. <br /><br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn4">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftnref4" name="_ftn4" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[4]</span></span></span></a>
Heidegger notes that the specificity of Nature was given in Greek metaphysics
through the concept of <i>Ousia</i> which he
translates as ‘essence’ or ‘substance’ (‘whatness’, <i>Wasein</i>). However, this constitutes for Heidegger already a
hypostatization of a particular temporal mode of being; being-present, and thus
cements the Greek unquestioning of temporality. For Heidegger therefore, as for
Derrida as we shall see, the ontological difference between beings and being,
must be described without a surreptitious appeal to substance or quiddity. This
is why for Heidegger <i>phusis</i> is
ultimately a general concept which targets the givenness of being-as-a-whole,
and not the stratification of being. It further dislocates metaphysics from the
categorization proper to the sciences.
See Heidegger (1995): Pg, 33-36; 1962: Pg. 225. <br /></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn5">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftnref5" name="_ftn5" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[5]</span></span></span></a>
The question of particulars must be exclusively subordinate to the modality of
presence-at-hand, since it is only there that objects and properties are
encountered. One might say that this is to ignore the fact that the tool-beings
can also appear in practical activity. But this is to misread Heidegger: the
distinction between presence-at-hand and readiness-to-hand is <i>not</i> that between entities thought of in
theory and entities thought in practice. The hammer <i>qua</i> hammer is individuated within the spectrum of presence-at-hand;
when Dasein 'is hammering' there is <i>no</i>
distinction between the hammer and Dasein, which is why Heidegger calls such
nexuses 'equipmental wholes', and that strictly speaking there is never <i>an </i>equipment. For if we said that the
'hammer' appears as ready-to-hand, Heidegger would simply be making the trivial
point that subjects encounter objects practically first, and theorize about the
same objects later. But this cannot be right: Heidegger's point is rather that <i>objects</i> are construed as a function of
the malfunction of practice, and therefore ontologically devolve on Dasein's
engagements within an pre-individuated equipmental-whole, projected towards a
future aim, rather than imbued with properties.<br /></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn6">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftnref6" name="_ftn6" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[6]</span></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> It also remains unclear how the lizard’s encounter
with ‘lizard-things’ differs specifically from the non-ontological relation
between plants or between non-living entities and their own environments, i.e.
rocks and trees also come into contact with other objects, but Heidegger
doesn’t seem to think this entails for the rock/tree <i>any</i> kind of encounter with non-ontological ‘things’</span><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[6]</span></span></span><span style="font-size: 10pt;">. Heidegger’s
construal of ‘rocks’ as lacking Life proper to animals does not suffice to
clarify how rocks relate to other ‘things’, if they do so at all. A legitimate
question arises thus about how are relations between inanimate objects are to
be construed in Heidegger’s account, beyond present-at-hand derivations for
Dasein. Their independence from human comportments becomes this way also
problematic.<br /><br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn7">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftnref7" name="_ftn7" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[7]</span></span></span></a> As
we shall see in the next section, this non-ontological realm of ‘things’ is
described by Agamben as the field of ‘disinhibitors’ encountered by each being,
humans included. It thereby functions as a more general, non-ontological
category, which mediates and co-constitutes man and animal alike. <br /></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn8">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftnref8" name="_ftn8" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[8]</span></span></span></a>
Although it is beyond the scope of this paper, it must be said that freedom is
correlative to the transcendental horizon of possibilities which is
Dasein-specific, and so therefore that it becomes difficult to imagine any
account of science which could obviate such a metaphysical footing and yet
legitimately ascribe freedom to the animal in terms of qualities or powers. <br /></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn9">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftnref9" name="_ftn9" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[9]</span></span></span></a>
This follows given Heidegger’s characterization of behavior as the essence of
animality <i>as such</i>, and not simply of
a ‘region’ of animals. Of course, given that he has disavowed the philosophical
pertinence of scientific description as a suitable index to base metaphysical
speculation on, it remains unclear how exactly Heidegger begins with a concept
of the ‘animal’ with coincides with the traditional sense of non-human animals.
As we surmised above, we might find perhaps similar traits to those of <i>behavior</i> (<i>Benehmen</i>) in certain forms of plants. For example ‘pitcher plants’
exhibit stimulus-response mechanisms to specific environmental interactions-
say when insects land on the septum they close and release acid- which could be
said to be instinctual in the sense that they are organically predisposed and
non-reflexive. Given the generality of Heidegger’s descriptions, it becomes
impossible to gauge the relevance of such distinctions. <br /></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn10">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftnref10" name="_ftn10" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[10]</span></span></span></a>
For reasons of space, we cannot address here Heidegger’s characterization of
drives as essentially eliminative, i.e. they reject things and seek their
satisfaction rather than comporting themselves towards beings (Ibid; Pg. 250-253).
<br /></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn11">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftnref11" name="_ftn11" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[11]</span></span></span></a> See in
particular Mallarme's 'Catholocism', in OC II, 238 [tr. B Johnson as
'Catholicism', in <i>Divagations, </i>244)<br /><br /><br /><i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn12">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftnref12" name="_ftn12" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[12]</span></span></span></a> For the
Thomistic doctrine, the mental word could be both in the intellect and in the
senses. <br /></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn13">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftnref13" name="_ftn13" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[13]</span></span></span></a> That
the object of the address cannot be necessarily of sense seems to me obvious
given that the function of the Eucharist is precisely to challenge the parousia
of the given God. <br /></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn14">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftnref14" name="_ftn14" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[14]</span></span></span></a> As
Sellars puts it apropos the Thomistic doctrine of the mental word and the
presumed intuition of particulars prior to judgment: <br /></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn15">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftnref15" name="_ftn15" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[15]</span></span></span></a>
ZIERING, Amy; DICK, Kirby. <i>Derrida</i>,
Documentary, published by Zeitgeist Films, Interview from 2004, 2008.<br /></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn16">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftnref16" name="_ftn16" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[16]</span></span></span></a> One can
easily see how this phobia to the violence of the concept can see no end; since
one can say ‘ape’ already simplifies differences between its members; and so on
without apparent limit.<br /></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn17">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftnref17" name="_ftn17" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[17]</span></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> For Agamben’s thorough development on the concept of
the ‘state of exception’ see: Agamben, Giorgio. <i>Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life</i>, translated by Daniel
Heller-Roazen, Fordham University Press, 1998; and Agamben, Giorgio. <i>State of Exception</i>, translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen, Chicago
University Press.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn18">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftnref18" name="_ftn18" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[18]</span></span></span></a>
HEIDEGGER, Martin. <i>Spiegel Interview</i>,
<a href="http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~other1/Heidegger%20Der%20Spiegel.pdf">http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~other1/Heidegger%20Der%20Spiegel.pdf</a>
1966. </span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn19">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftnref19" name="_ftn19" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[19]</span></span></span></a> DELEUZE, Gilles <i>Difference and Repetition</i>, translated by Paul Patton, Columbia
University Press, 1994.</span></div>
</div>
</div>Daniel Sacilottohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06107600124995445921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6580039155018603814.post-52244896965514266492012-05-02T20:11:00.001-07:002012-05-03T14:00:57.680-07:00The Desire for Desire: Can Psychoanalysis Speak About?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;"> THE DESIRE FOR DESIRE</span></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;">- Can Psychoanalysis Speak About? -</span></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;">_______________________________________________</span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Abstract/Introduction<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>
</b>In this paper I seek to raise some questions concerning the status
of psychoanalysis as a theory. I propose a reading of Lacan’s enigmatic 'graph
of desire' as articulated in Seminar VI and in his canonical essay <i>The Subversion of the Subject</i>, using it
as a didactic tool towards unraveling the structure of desire. I show how this
graph articulates Lacan's reading of the Freudian Oedipal-myth, the castration
complex, and his structuralist-inspired departure from psychological and
traditionally philosophical schemas of the subject. In this regard, I propose
to read Lacan's account of the unconscious as articulated in the order of the
signifier as attacking both empirical conceptions of the subject, epistemological
accounts of knowledge and desire, and ontological conceptions of objectivity. <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> I begin by presenting how Lacan’s subject
of desire articulates two asymmetrical trajectories: that of the subject of the
unconscious, and that of the signifying chain. I briefly explain how Lacan deflates
the ontological-epistemological valence of the contents of thought, by
supplanting the structuralist relation of <i>suture</i>
to and <i>traversal</i> between signifiers
for the representationalist relation of <i>reference</i>
between words and things, using the graph as my didactic anchor. The basic
result I wish to highlight is how every individuated being or agent, every
particularity open for thought, is made relative to the order of language, and
so that the latter admits of no exteriority subject to philosophical seizure.
Such an account illustrates the subordination of all objective individuation to
the traversal of the subject of the unconscious through the meaning-endowing defiles
of the signifier, where the <i>imago</i>
formed during the mirror-stage become fixed onto the symbolic order, wherein
the epistemological and psychological illusions of subjects <i>qua</i> self-subsistent individual of
knowledge emerge, as well as the corresponding self-subsistent other or <i>object</i>, nesting the ontological illusion
of a qualitatively robust conception of being. In the second section I show how
psychoanalysis is forced into a methodological quandary concerning its capacity
to articulate not just a clinical practice, but propose a series of claims
about a presumed structure. I consider some of Lacan's proposed answers to this
quandary through his account of the Real, and suggest that they force him into
a pragmatic contradiction. This is due to the inability to disambiguate between the Real as pure practice or act, and
the Real as a pure <i>matheme</i> or
inscription, void of meaning.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>(a) The Oedipus Complex and the Imaginary -
A Mythical Prelude</b> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Crossbreeding
the structuralist avowal of the primacy of the signifier with the Freudian
account of the unconscious, Lacan proposes to articulate a theory of subjective
desire around the singular idea that “the unconscious is structured like a
language”<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[1]</span></span></span></a>.
To understand this enigmatic formula we must assess how Lacan re-constructs the
Freudian Oedipal myth of paternal prohibition, in order to conceive of the
subject as fundamentally affected by the idea of a primordial loss; an ideal
unity which is simultaneously the basis of what the subject identifies itself
as, as well as an impossible ideality that remains forever alienated from the
subject which hosts the desire. This decentered (mis)identification of the
subject with an-other, signals that the identity of being is directly
correlative to a certain insufficiency, or a lack that makes one not yet fully
coincide with the ideality thus projected. It is insofar as the subject cannot
fully coincide with its projected identity that generates the structural
repetition of desire around an impossible object-cause (which Lacan famously
calls <i>objet petit a</i>). But because the
conscious identification of a determinate thing/one desired can never annul the
gap between the subject and the object, the 'Real' object of desire is rather
perpetually displacing, non-self identical object that can never be attained.
The impossible object is thus that which would interrupt the endless
circulation of desire around a concrete 'being', and rather is that which
subtracts itself from every explicit intending. The subject is thus that which
can never coincide with the individual that it identifies itself with, and the
Real object is that which can never coincide with the explicit being that it
identifies as the object of the desire. This seemingly paradoxical congruence
between the subject and the real object on the one hand, and the individual and
the being of imaginary-symbolic objectivity, and desire as the structure that
generates this insurmountable gap, is what we set ourselves to explore for the
rest of this section.<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> In Seminar VI, and later in <i>The Subversion of the Subject</i> (1967)<i> </i>Lacan finally proposes a series of
graphs which articulate the progressive unfolding of the subject of desire, in
its diachronic and synchronic development, tying together the general iterative
structure of the subject of desire with the developmental account of the organism.
In what follows I propose to assess this
articulation in the task of showing how the psychoanalytic account of desire is
meant to undermine the ontological-epistemological phantasy that reifies
imaginary-symbolic signifiers ("being", "knowledge",
"God"...) on the condition of excluding desire from being given its
proper due. I will suggest towards the end why this deflationary strategy
becomes problematic when assessing the status of psychoanalysis as a <i>theory</i>, and not just a <i>practice</i>. My general contention, will be
to suggest that the Lacanian reworking of intentionality, deflating the
relation of reference between words and things, creates problems when
attempting to disambiguate between the theory <i>of</i> desire that psychoanalysis is supposed to be, and another
manifestation of desire itself. In other words, I propose to show that
conflating the relation between the signifier and the signified, flattening the
latter into the former, creates difficulties when understanding how
psychoanalysis relates to its subject matter. But before we tentatively comment
on these larger consequences of the Lacanian project, some preliminaries are
well in order.<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> As is well known, at the core of the
Lacanian account of the development of the subject, is the attempt to trace how
the imaginary figurations and objectual identifications that the infant
generates between six and eighteen months of age (the so called ‘mirror-stage’<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[2]</span></span></span></a>) constitute
a <i>libidinal economy</i>. I use this term
somewhat liberally to mean simply that during this stage the fundamental
structure of the subject as a subject <i>of</i>
desire is first articulated. For the purposes at hand, I shall not concern
myself with retelling the details of the Lacanian version of the Oedipal Myth,
which has been done in detail elsewhere<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[3]</span></span></span></a>. What
I wish to focus on is on what I take to be the core of the account in tracing
how the images that the subject gathers and builds an identity from supports
desire by being correlated to the symbolic or language, i.e. how the subject
enters the "defiles through the signifier" within which the subject
will circulate around the (impossible) object of desire.<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> It is this iterative structure of desire which
is prefigured and developmentally accounted for in the Oedipal Myth. The latter
shows how the Paternal Law, which is externally imposed as a decentered
Otherness, institutes itself by enacting what we might call, following Zizek, <i>symbolic castration</i>. By the latter I
mean the following: in entering the order of language the self-alienating and
self-constituting split between the subject and its imaginary identifications is
relative to how language prescribes and incorporates the subject, in what Lacan
calls a 'chain of signifiers'. We shall attempt to explain this admittedly
obscure formulation below, but the basic idea is that <i>who</i> the subject thinks it is or <i>should
be</i>, its <i>placing</i>, so to speak, is
determined on the basis of a language that he acquires by external conditioning
as it were, and never immediately or transparently. It is this self-alienation that
articulates the inaugural <i>phantasy</i> of
a self-identical subject, experienced as an injunction to become
equal-to-itself, since what it lacks is precisely that which will presumably
restitute its being as a whole. In other words, the self-alienation of the
subject founds the notion of a subject as
being ontologically consistent to itself, thereby veiling the
(unbridgeable) gap between its immediate (non)-being and its imaginary-symbolic
figurations. Seeing itself <i>outside of
itself</i>, the subject operates according to that oft-quoted motto from
Rimbaud which Lacan was so fond of repeating during the early years of his
teaching: "<i>je est un autre</i>".
Because self-relation and self-constitution is paradoxically grounded in this
moment of self-alienation, it is both the moment of narcissism and that of absolute
estrangement: "One can sense, one can pick up that narcissism is involved
somewhere, and that this narcissism is involved at this moment of the Oedipus
complex." (S6, L6, pp. 92) Because the self emerges as a result of its
paradoxical attempt to become equal to an other, that is, insofar as it
experiences itself as <i>lacking</i>, desire
chases after a 'phantasmatic' image-symbol outside of itself. Or rather, more
precisely, the 'outside' is a function of a subject that by virtue of desiring
is split between the object it identifies itself with, and the void which
subtracts from every such identification. The structure of desire is that of a
'phantasy', a chasing after ghosts that promise to dissolve as soon as one
pretends to occupy their place. <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> This entails that the purported unity and
emergence of what Freud called the "perception-consciousness system"
that characterizes thinking beings is to be explained by placing it in contrast
to a notion of subjectivity that is recalcitrant with that of the <i>ego</i> qua decentered other. Consciousness
is of the order of the ego, since it thinks that it is the imaginary projection
of itself outside of itself that does the thinking. But Lacan's point is
precisely that the desiring is never such an external, objective pole, i.e. <i>it thinks where it is not</i>. This marks
accordingly the foreclosure of all attempts to think of the subject of the
unconscious as topic for "empirical"
investigation. Through the re-elaboration of the Oedipal Myth, Lacan thus aims
to show how the preponderance of those images gathered during the mirror-stage,
and the severing wound enacted by the subject’s violent insertion into the
symbolic order of language, underwrite the entire field of objective
identifications, projections, and phantasmatic hallucinations-illusions that
desire intends towards. It entails, in short, a <i>Gestalt</i>, conditioning the entire field of the visible world; the
individuated world of things and persons actually <i>presupposes</i> the structure of the subject of desire. That is,
insofar as the objectivity correlative to a subject is a function of how the
latter becomes self-alienated and constituted by virtue of desiring. Lacan
writes: "Indeed, for the <i>imagos</i>—whose
veiled faces it is our privilege to see in outline in our daily experience and
in the penumbra of symbolic efficacity—<u>the mirror–image would seem to be the
threshold of the visible world</u>, if we go by the mirror disposition that the
imago of one's own body presents in hallucinations or dreams, whether it
concerns its individual features, or even its infirmities, or its
object–projections; or if we observe the role of the mirror apparatus in the
appearances of the double, in which psychical realities, however heterogeneous,
are manifested." (E: pp. 3)<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> What
is interesting about the formulation above is how it effectuates a
commensuration between the images projected from the perspective of the subject's
alienation, and the 'visible world' of things. It serves simultaneously thus as
the germinal point of entry for both the <i>epistemological</i>
myth of the consistency of a fully consistent <i>subject</i> or <i>self,</i> as well
as for the <i>ontological</i> myth of a
fully consistent <i>object</i> or <i>other</i>; that is, for both philosophy and
(ego) psychology. It is crucial to
notice how the imaginary serves to create a bridge between the ‘inner world’ of
the subject (<i>Innenwelt</i>) and the
objective externalized world of the visible (<i>Umwelt</i>), around the development of self-recognition and bodily-identification<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[4]</span></span></span></a>. In
other words, the subject-object dichotomy, from which both philosophy and
psychology depart, begins in the infant's (mis)identification and de-centering:
the idea that one's being <i>lacks</i> any
unified substantiality or 'selfhood' (the pure <i>membra disjecta</i>) emerges as a result of the identification with a
subsistent image. Being is a house of mirrors. The organic insufficiency or <i>lack</i> which fuels desire is but the obverse
of ideal <i>unity</i>, or as Lacan puts it:
"the mirror stage is the drama whose internal thrust is precipitated from
helplessness to anticipation." (E, pp. 4) <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> This means that the "threshold
of visible externality" that structures the world of being results from the
form-producing trajectory of subjective development. The deception is thus
twofold: the subject comes to believe that it is equal to its decentered other,
and in doing so it also believes that it is endowed with an ontologically
consistent unity. As Lorenzo Chiesa puts it: "The ego not only, as it
were, "finds itself" at the place of the other (the first
misrecognition: the ego is alienated) but also provides the subject with a
deceptive impression of unity (the second and most fundamental misrecognition:
the ego does not recognize itself as alienated). According to Lacan, it is the
ego that makes me accept as true that I am myself and that the other is the
other." (Chiesa, 2009, pp. 16) <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> What Chiesa insists upon here is
that if we are to take Lacan's logic to its extreme, then it's not simply that
the subject misidentifies itself with an image different from that of others.
Rather, it is precisely my identification with an other, with a decentered
image, that allows for the misidentification of the <i>subject</i> with <i>it</i>-<i>self</i>, that is, with what Lacan calls the
<i>ego</i>. In other words, it is my primary
identification with an image that locates a gap between the reality of the <i>subject</i> as the agent of thought and as an
<i>object</i> of thought, i.e. in
identifying itself with the mirror-image, the subject objectifies itself as an <i>ideal ego</i>, which entails that the
objectual is constitutively ideal or imaginary. This seems to be the meaning
behind the cryptic statement from Lacan that the ego, in its narcissistic
stupor, constitutes "a vital dehiscence that is <u>constitutive</u> of
man" (E, pp. 4)<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> The next step, for us, is to explain how
these imaginary functions are at the same time mediated by the cultural order
of language. The symbolic brings about a ‘castrating function’ which throws the
subject out of joint with its imaginary unity, and sets off the unending,
impossible quest for its recuperation. Lacan
refers to the order of language as the (big) Other, which signals that it
constitutes a <i>decentered</i> place of
identification, like the <i>other</i> of the
imaginary, but also that it constitutes an <i>impersonal</i>
field constituted by the community into which one is inserted<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn5" name="_ftnref5" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[5]</span></span></span></a>.
By tethering the subject of the unconscious to the symbolic Lacan means to say
that language is in a sense a transcendent authority that ordains and issues
the injunctions before which desire sets itself. Desire is the desire <i>of</i> the Other precisely insofar as it is
mediated by an order of language which pre-exists and determines its
organization<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn6" name="_ftnref6" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[6]</span></span></span></a>. Or, put
differently, one never desires immediately, but only through particular
prescriptions and mediations issued from the impersonal order of language, on
whose basis the subject intends towards anything whatsoever, in the phantasy
for self-realization. Chiesa explains that "...the specular, alienating
identification of the subject with the imaginary other necessarily presupposes
an earlier, original - and perpetual- alienation in the Other <i>qua</i> language." (Chiesa, 2009, pp.
25) <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> The logical priority of the symbolic
entails both that the self-identification of the subject with the <i>imago</i> occurs as the subject is inserted
into language, and that the identification of others <i>as </i>others (both individuals and objects, persons and things) is
conditioned by the linguistic order of the signifier, i.e. individuation is a
function of language, and this articulates both the epistemic-psychological
dimensions of self-understanding, as well as the ontological dimensions of
understanding others and the world. Castration means at this juncture that a
gap persists not just between the imaginary <i>ideal
ego </i>and the subject, but between the latter and the <i>Ego-Ideal</i> of symbolic-imaginary prescriptions. The latter expresses
the fact that, traversed by language, the ideality of the imaginary is also an
impossible archetypical form which localized the subject's libidinal
orientation. This structure is simultaneously that which provides thus the
condition for consciousness as consciousness <i>of something</i>, and that which eludes the explicit 'aboutness' of
such conscious intentionality, insofar as the phantasy of reconstitution
remains precisely <i>ideal</i>, both an
imaginary form and a symbolic injunction. Castration thus means that language
enjoins the subject to rejoin, entailing its being as disjointed, that is, as
directed towards an external pole which it can never become equal to: (<i>$ <> a</i>).<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> It
is insofar that the subject constitutes its unconscious as a result of this
alienating operation of 'symbolic castration' that it is not a mere <i>myth</i> to be allotted to the inventions of
philosophers and psychologists alike: “what is not a myth, although Freud
formulated it just as early on as he formulated the Oedipus myth, is the
castration complex” (E; Pg. 695). This forms a necessary corrective the myths
of subjective intentionality that located desire at the level of explicit
consciousness, since for them "... it seemed that consciousness was
inherent to what the subject had to say qua signification" (SV, pp. 105).
But if the unconscious is structured like a language, then the intentionality
of unconscious desire is also of the order of the signifier. Redoubling our
earlier distinction between individual ego and subject, at the level of the
symbolic we can map the distinction between the <i>subject of the statement</i> and the <i>subject of enunciation</i>. The former is expressly formulated in
speech or writing, individuated by the inclusion into the symbolic order and grammatically
objectivated within the sequences of signifiers and sentences that structure
discourse. One therefore becomes constituted as the subject who <i>speaks</i> after the act of speech is taken
to <i>have been</i> meaningfully
articulated, i.e. identity emerges in a retroactive assignment of meaning to
the sequentially deployed utterance of the subject who speaks. The <i>subject of the enunciation</i>, on the other
hand, is the slippery index for the
subject of the <i>unconscious</i>, which
remains forever subtracted and incomplete from desire’s imaginary-symbolic
operations, and from the statement. It is utterly meaningless, barren, bereft,
barred, and void of quality. As Lacan
puts it, the subject is split and never present to itself "...by virtue of being a subject only
insofar as it speaks" (E, pp. 269). Or, in his startling reversal of
Descartes: "I think where I am not, therefore I am where I do not
think", i.e. the unconscious thinks and intends <i>subtracted from </i>the explicit forms making the Ego-Ideal. (Ibid, pp.
166) <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> However,
the most important point we must underline here is that the subject of
enunciation does not stand to the subject of the statement as signified stands
to signifier, or represented to representing. Lacan is adamant to insist in
that the individuating function of the big Other is not merely
representationalist in the sense that it 'tracks down things' through words or
signs; it refuses to be ontologised or positivized. This constitutes the kernel
of Lacan's flattening of the Saussurian relation of <i>signification</i> as holding between signs and things, to one where
signification obtains between signifiers exclusively: "The signifier
doesn't just provide an envelope, a receptacle for signification. It polarizes
it, it structures it, and brings it into existence." (S3, pp. 224) Or yet
again: "The signifier is a sign that doesn't refer to any object... It is
a sign which refers to another sign, which is as such structured to signify the
absence of another sign, in other words, to be opposed to it in a couple."
(Ibid, pp. 167) As a result, both subject and object are delivered to a
structure of signification, void of any ontological status, and to relations
between signifiers, void of epistemological status.<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> What I
would like to suggest eventually is that it is not only the subject of the
unconscious which becomes delivered from the empirical pretences of
ego-psychology or transcendental philosophy into the order of language, but
also the intended objects of consciousness which become delivered from the
empirical pretences of metaphysicians and ontologists to the delirium of the
signifier. As a result, the unconscious is crucially neither the subject, nor
an object; it has no determinate ontological or epistemic status: "...what
still becomes apparent to anyone in analysis who spends some time observing
what truly belongs to the order of the unconscious, is that it is neither being,
nor non-being, but the unrealized." (SXI, pp 30) As a result, the
disjunction between psychoanalysis and philosophy is meant to be total since
"the gap of the unconscious seems to be pre-ontological... it does not
lend itself to ontology" (Ibid. 29) Does this leave open that something
like the 'being of the world' may nonetheless subsist in the order of <i>consciousness</i>, along its much vaunted
intentionality? For if indeed, as Lacan puts it, "the Freudian world isn't
a world of things, it isn't a world of being, it is a world of desire as
such", then couldn't the relation of <i>knowing</i>
in which things, and not just words, come into mind, be said to subsist at some
level? (S2, pp. 222) <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> I
wish to defer this question for the moment, but to make a few preliminaries in
the way. My preliminary contention is that insofar as the relation between
words and things is flattened to the relation between signifiers, ontology
might be said to subsist trivially at the price of subordinating it to the
structure of desire. This weakens the ontological valence of 'beings' or
'being' to merely ideal poles for the phantasies of philosophers, which does
not so much <i>deny</i> ontology as much as
it <i>suspends</i> its purported prerogative
when securing our access to the "world of being", understood as that
of a mind independent reality. It thereby flattens the philosophical pretence
of gaining traction before the world to the uniform register of an unconscious
desire which, like every other, is supported in nothing else than in the signifying
chain and its metonymic inscriptions. Yet this answer seems to preemptively
defang ontology from its capacity to prey on the world, after which its
peculiarity becomes a matter of organization at the level of signifier. In this
regard, Badiou's reading of Lacan as an anti-philosopher stresses how, once
demoted to one more discursive practice among others, psychoanalysis would
carry out "a deposing of the category of philosophy to constitute itself
as theory... philosophy is an act, of which the fabulations about 'truth' are
the clothing, the propaganda, the lies." (Badiou, 2010, pp 75) I will
later suggest why it is not clear, however, that psychoanalysis can legitimize
itself as a theory without reactivating the kinds of distinctions it takes to be
proper of philosophico-scientific discourse, and will proceed to ask what
consequences follow for the <i>formal</i>
coherence of psychoanalysis, as well as for its purported <i>content</i>. That is to say, we shall ask how psychoanalysis relates to
its subject matter.<span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> (b) The Castration Complex, the Loop of Desire
and the Symbolic<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> If desire is articulated within the order of
the signifier, then the symptom of the unconscious phantasy must be tethered to
the imaginary-symbolic. The subject of the enunciation thus becomes readable
and visible only within the symptomatic-metonymic elements deployed in the
signifying chain, in an “...extinction that is still glowing and an opening
that stumbles, I can come into being by disappearing from my statement"
(E; Pg. 678). Thus, the psyc<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 200%;">h</span>oanalytic operation towards the unconscious is
not one of digging for a pre-linguistic positive content hidden behind the
signifying chain, which would constitute the ‘real subject’ after sublating and
shedding off its feeble illusions. More subtly, it attempts to find <i>within</i> the signifying chain itself those
symptomatic anomalies and ruptures which locate the subject’s unconsciously
articulated desire, i.e. its metonymic points of torsion and articulation. Thus
Lacan emphasizes the “…the radical role of metaphor and metonymy, substitution
and combination of signifiers in synchronic and diachronic dimensions"
(Ibid). Whereas the subject of <i>knowledge</i>
is an illusion, the subject of the <i>unconscious</i>
is not merely a myth: "the subject [of knowledge] correlative to the
object, the subject around whom turns the eternal question of idealism, and who
is himself an ideal subject...he is only supposed." (S6, L2, pp. 18). I
will later suggest that the problematic of idealism is not entirely done away with
by deflating the valence of knowledge. For now, let us see how Lacan maps the
structure of the unconscious subject across the signifying chain<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn7" name="_ftnref7" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[7]</span></span></span></a>:<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJSDzevC6ZirdHFWQt9v8tS72TnsYJFJ0y4f9T4kERgCwlSjaENcOgaBlrurPplH1fmPHTumKk93HGwIU0K6Nx8RvsuXwWEf4Wo1fgVt9n3NpPdSHxRmo99I_yI8GbD08kJxwhXI9XOqjv/s1600/Graph+of+Desire+(1).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJSDzevC6ZirdHFWQt9v8tS72TnsYJFJ0y4f9T4kERgCwlSjaENcOgaBlrurPplH1fmPHTumKk93HGwIU0K6Nx8RvsuXwWEf4Wo1fgVt9n3NpPdSHxRmo99I_yI8GbD08kJxwhXI9XOqjv/s1600/Graph+of+Desire+(1).jpg" /></a> <span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
The graph transparently presents two
asymmetrical but synchronous trajectories: the parabola of the subject of
enunciation (also called the subject of <i>intention</i>),
and the signifying chain wherein the grammatical subject of the statement
becomes expressed. At the base of both trajectories, we see the symbol ∆, which
stands for the imaginary <i>mythical subject
of need</i>, i.e. the posited notion of the child <i>before</i> the mirror-stage and the castration complex. It is
interesting to note that since Lacan insists that individuation and selfhood
proceeds from traversing the imaginary-symbolic orders, this pre-linguistic
being can only be said to exist as a 'myth', for the developmental story to get
off the ground. Whether this move is theoretically legitimate is a delicate point,
which I believe requires that we confront some general aspects of Lacan's
theory of individuation, which I do in the next section fully. For now, let us
simply grant that this mythical subject is supposed to function as a 'base' in
the trajectory of both lines.<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Immediately above the trajectory of the
subject of the enunciation we see the formation of the ‘spectral image’ or <i>ideal ego,</i> i(o), which corresponds to
the imaginary other objectified during the 'mirror-image'. At the very end of
this trajectory, we can see how this primitive ideality consolidates the <i>Ego-Ideal</i>, i.e. the prescribed identity
issued from the intersection of the imaginary and the symbolic that addresses the statement to the desire of the <i>other</i>, within the order of language
(I(O)). Thus Lacan claims that "every phantasy is articulated in terms of
the subject speaking to the imaginary other." (SVI, L2, pp. 12) The
intersection at (O) designates the "puncturing" insertion of the
subject into the symbolic order (<i>point de
caption</i>), the “big Other” of language from which there is a retroactive
determination of the meaning of the signifying chain which composes <i>statements</i>. As such, the Otherness of
language fixes the presumed identity of the speaking subject of the statement which
constitutes an identity separated from the amorphousness of “the Voice”, the
remainder at the end of this trajectory: "what he [the subject] is
questioning himself about is far from being the response, it is the
questioning;. It is effectively "what is this signifier of the Other in
me?" (S6; L1; pp. 7). <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> This
dual function of the (O) appears clearer once we understand that entering the
symbolic proper entails that language structures one's capacities to act (the
Law), as well as setting a standard for what is expected of the subject to
become. This is why, strictly speaking, desire can only be <i>of</i> the Other, since it is always mediated and fixed retroactively
in a puncturing carried out by the subject.
It is to this meaning-endowing Other that speech is directed: “is what
may be called the punctuation, in which signification ends as a finished
product.” (E; Pg 682) <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> The
insertion of the unconscious into the symbolic order does never, so to speak ,
'reach out' onto things: "...the sign does not take its value with respect
to a third thing that it represents, but it takes on its value with respect to
another signifier which it is not." (Ibid; pp. 7) This is crucial, since
what closes the statement is not finally some stable identification with a
‘real object’ of ostentation, as in Kripke’s theory of rigid designation, but
only a transient signifier to which it tethers its imaginary semblances and
figurations. Thus we have a retroactive determination from the linear vector of
the signifying chain which goes from s(O) - (O), back into s(O), marking where
meaning is assigned only after the subject indexes the closure of the statement<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn8" name="_ftnref8" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[8]</span></span></span></a>: “The
subject's submission to the signifier, which occurs in the circuit that goes
from s(O)<i> </i>to O and back
from O to s(O), is truly a circle, inasmuch as the assertion that is
established in it—being unable to close on anything but its own scansion, in
other words, failing an act in which it would find its certainty—refers back
only to its own anticipation in the composition of the signifies which is in
itself meaningless <i>insignificante</i>”
(Ibid; Pg 683). The “treasure
trove of signifiers” that organizes language forms a circular motion, where the
signifying chain is punctured by the subject’s deliverance to the symbolic so
as to constitute itself, while the latter retroactively fixes the meaning of
the entire statement that makes it a statement <i>of </i>a subject. The identity of the subject of the statement it thus
constituted retroactively, insofar as an otherwise barren chain of signifiers
is punctured by the subject. This clarifies
how desire needs to be objectivated and fixated in the external Otherness of
language by becoming stapled to a (transient) signifier to stand for an object
to endow with <i>meaning</i> the statement
and so for the subject to allow for the possibility of recognition. The point
is that this endless pursuit for meaning and identity masks the void of
desire's repetition, and the latter's perpetual displacement across the
signifying chain. The big Other's insatiable demand enroots the subject in
desire as it wrests it from the bare need of the mythical, pre-linguistic
subject: “Desire begins to take shape in the margin in which the demand rips
away from need… A margin which, as linear as it may be, allows its vertiginous
character to appear… it is this whimsy that introduces the phantom of
Omnipotence- not of the subject, but of the Other in which the subject’s demand
is instantiated.” (Ibid; 689) <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> This also
explains Lacan’s famous proto-Hegelian claim alluded to earlier that “man’s
desire is the Other’s desire… it is <i>qua</i>
Other that man desires.” (Ibid) In other words, desire is always fixed and
objectivated by anchoring the imaginary field of spectral images through the
castrating externality of language, which marks for the subject a constitutive
loss and therefore is experienced as an imperative for reconstitution and
recognition. The desire of the subject
will fix itself thus in the form of a <i>demand</i>
from the Other’s desire, from the big Other which closes the signifying chain
by blessing it with the seal of meaning: "<i>what does the Other want from me?</i>" (Ibid, 690-691) It is <i>within</i> the order of the signifier and <i>to</i> a signifier that desire is directed,
and not outside of it towards a thing or being. This is what Lacan describes as
"...man's capture in the components of the signifying chain." (Ibid,
pp. 6) We must conclude, therefore, that language is, like Heidegger surmised,
the house of being. But the house of language is also a house of mirrors, and one
with no windows.<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> The
final part of the parabola illustrates how, having traversed the defiles
through the signifier, the conjunction of the symbolic and the imaginary once
the subject has been affected by symbolic castration, projecting his ideal
unity in the form of the Ego-Ideal: I(O). That is, the self-image constituted
by the interpellation of the Other’s desire. The space of the Ego-Ideal is thus
the end of the trajectory of the subject of the enunciation in coincidence to
how the amorphous Voice is the end of the subject of the statement. Once again,
there is a retroactive effectuation in order, where the subject determines not
just <i>the object which will have been
meant</i> in the statement, but also the subject “he will have been” (Ibid): “This trajectory which ends in the [ego-ideal]
is a retroversion effect by which the subject, at each stage, becomes what he
was (to be) <i>[etait] </i>before that, and "he will have been" is
only announced in the future perfect tense.” [E; Pg. 684] Desire effectuates
both the metonymic insertion of being in the subject, and that of the subject
in being; it alienates the subject into the other, while the object of desire,
ever impossible, becomes like the subject in failing to become a stable
identity itself: "Desire is the metonymy of being in the subject; the
phallus [qua object of desire] is the metonymy of the subject in being."
(SVI, L1, pp. 15) <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> At the base of the parabolic trajectory,
disconnected from the subject of need and the sequence of the movement, we have
the barred-subject <i>$</i>, which stands
for the formal void of a severed ground. This is a sign that is not part of the
<i>statement</i>, but rather a disjoined
signifier for the unconscious. Since there is no substantive content proper to
the barred subject, no statement which predicates its 'proper being', Lacan
consistently claims that there is no Other of the Other: that there is no
subject to be captured ‘outside’ of the Otherness of language or, what amounts
to the same, that “…there is no metalanguage.” (E, 688) Put differently, one
never "reaches out" outside of language, either directly onto an
other subject, or, what amounts to the same, to being as an object, since
"...what characterizes the demand is not just that it is a relationship of
a subject to another subject [or between a subject and an object], it is that
this relationship is made through the mediation of language, through the
mediation of a system of signifiers." (SVI, L3, pp. 27) The movement of
the Real occurs by and through the order of the signifier, not as a foreign
transcendence. The primitive individuation of the imaginary realm, which as we
saw constitutes the entire field of the visible, traverses the order of the
signifier constituting the vain phantasy to regain the impossible object which
would endow its void with an integral consistency. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> (c) The Cunning of Being or the Being of
Cunning?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> If the subject of the unconscious is
indeed structured like a language, and desire is nothing but the articulation
between signifiers, then the much vaunted Freudian 'world of desire' is an
ideal world populated by phantasms; not a world as much as the height of
narcissistic alienation, the nightmare which is nothing but a dream come true.
At this point we should ask again: does this mean that even if the relation of <i>knowing</i> between words and things does
not hold good for the structure of the <i>unconscious</i>,
it might nevertheless be thinkable within the realm of <i>consciousness</i>? <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> In this stronger formulation, I
believe that our question must be answered to in the negative. For it is clear
that the "Freudian world" isn't just <i>another world</i> which, in dualist metaphysical spirits, would neatly
leave the innocence of the world of knowing to its own operations, untouched.
Indeed, Lacan is adamant to show not only that the world of desire is not the
world of things, but that the unconscious <i>conditions</i>
the operations of consciousness and seals its every pretence within the economy
of desire: "Relations between human beings are really established before
one gets to the domain of consciousness. It is desire which achieves the
primitive structuration of the human world, desire as unconscious." (S2,
pp. 224) More dramatically still, it's precisely desire's undermining of
consciousness that makes the explicit conscious claims to the <i>universal</i> of being subordinate to the
unconscious <i>singularity </i>of the
symptom, or as Lacan reminds us: "...don't forget that consciousness isn't
universal." (Ibid). If this is so, then the valence of the ontological
independence of the 'realm of things' could at best be an epiphenomenal
illusion, a veil under which the iterations of desire and the symptom displace
themselves in the order of the signifier. In fact, Lacan explicitly
subordinates the object of knowledge to the object of desire, and claims that
in the vector leading from the barred subject to its decentered other, the
small impossible object of desire, one finds the (illusion) of knowledge:
"<i>$</i> in the presence of o and
which we call the phantasy, which in the
psychic economy represents something that you know." (Ibid, pp 214). This
is why it is, paradoxically, desire that is the metonymy <i>of being</i> in the subject, insofar as it is through the
self-alienating insertion into the impersonal Other of language that the
subject releases its intentionality through linguistic mediation, and not from
the realm of "Being" that offers itself 'as a gift' to immediate experience,
as in the phenomenological Myth of the Given (to use Sellars' phrase). What
philosophers reify as knowledge is in truth the knowledge of the Other, insofar
as it is attributed to the subject as individuated in the impersonal symbolic
order: ""What is it that knows?" Do we realize that it is the
Other?... as a locus in which the signifier is posited, as without which
nothing indicates to us that there is a dimension of truth anywhere, a
di-mension, the residence of what is said, of this said whose knowledge posits
the Other as locus." (SXX, pp. 96) <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> The philosophical questioning that
aims at knowledge is thus to be understood as the subject's depositing of his
speech within the punctuation of the symbolic, rather than the Real. The power
of the question brings us closer not to a palpitating realm behind the order of
the signifier, but only to the demand
issued from <i>within</i> this order; it
must subordinate its positivity to it, and find itself always-already lost in
it. For the subject, "what he is questioning himself about is far from
being the response, it is the questioning. It is effectively 'What is this
signifier of the Other in me?" (S1, L9, pp. 132). By fixating itself into the order of the
signifier, ruminating in search for the impossible lost object, the quest for
self proves, ironically, an inversion of the philosophical genealogy of thought,
a predecessor of the quest for being as such: "... the bar is the hidden
signifier, the one that the Other does not have at its disposition, and which
is precisely the one which concerns you: it is the same one that makes you
enter the game in so far as you, poor simpletons, since you were born, were
caught up in this sacred <i>logos</i>
business." (Ibid; L16, pp. 207). And indeed it is telling that the quest
for being should be of no concern for the psychoanalyst, but that he rather
makes of desire that which deserves to be called "the essence of
man", signaling its <i>logical</i>, if
not <i>chronological</i>, priority (S6, L1,
pp 4)<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn9" name="_ftnref9" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[9]</span></span></span></a>. <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> However, this predicament forces Lacan
into a quandary. For if the subject of knowledge is indeed subordinate to the
unconscious, and if the relation between signifier and signified is flattened
to the chains in the former, how are we to understand what for Lacan, indeed
for <i>psychoanalysis</i>, must be a theory <i>of</i> desire? That is, how can Lacanian
psychoanalysis, in erecting its formidable conceptual structure, proclaim to give
a structured <i>theory</i> and not just
constitute an improvised <i>practice</i>,
i.e. how is it to become a discourse in which the structural features of desire
are outlined and articulated? For if there is no relation between words and
things, then what relation do the theoretical statements formulated in
psychoanalysis purportedly bear to its presumed subject matter? What is the
role of the peculiar signifier <i>"desire"</i>
in the economy of psychoanalysis, if there is, strictly speaking, nothing 'out
there' to be spoken of, no 'thing' populating the world which can escape the
latency of the phantasy? And similarly
for <i>'unconscious'</i>, <i>'signifier'</i>, "<i>subject</i>", and the entire roster of <i>concepts</i> that psychoanalysis deploys continuously, when claiming to
<i>explain</i> the generality of desire as a
<i>structure</i>, and not just as <i>manifesting</i> one more iteration of <i>desire</i> as a <i>symptom</i>, like every other. <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Preemptively, one might answer that indeed
because psychoanalysis elides the referential relation it is never trying to
'reach out' onto things or to give an ontology, peeking behind the words, but
is rather consigned to survey the <i>latent</i>
content in which the signifying chain becomes deployed and used. Thereby, the
analyst is not a <i>knower</i>, claiming to
access the 'things behind the appearances', since that would performatively
contradict the purported demotion of epistemology/psychology and philosophy,
but is rather concerned with the reality of appearances only, with how they
find their place within the structure of signification as such. <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> But this is simply to inflect the
issue into the order of language. For if psychoanalysis is not just one more <i>phantasy</i> in search for its own
impossible object, then this is because what Lacan is effectively doing is not
simply speaking to us qua analysands, addressing the <i>particularity</i> of our (paradoxically) universal symptom, but rather
outlining the <i>general</i> structure of
desire. In other words, the statements issued by psychoanalysis allegedly pertain
not just to one more discourse in the same footing before desire as all others,
but must rather allow us to gain traction before <i>desire as such</i>. If not, then the artifice of psychoanalytic claims
would do nothing but make the signifier "<i>desire"</i> its very own symptom, its own localization of the
impossible object, in a hysteric attempt to wage against the organization of
the purported hegemony of philosophers and psychologists. Yet, in this case, psychoanalytic
theory thereby elides its own position of enunciation, with the nefarious
result that the discourse of the master and that of the analyst would seem to
conflate <i>through</i> the operations of a
kind of University discourse directed against itself. If Lacan is indeed an
anti-philosopher, it is insofar as in waging war against the ontological
phantasy, he thus nevertheless remains within its confines; where the masterdom
of the University and knowledge, indeed of being, is being subverted in the
name of the psychoanalytic theoretical statements itself. It is crucial to note
that this theoretical operation is external to the clinical practice of the
discourse of the analyst, and also that it conditions the thought of the
separation of the analyst discourse from the other three. For what could the
deliberate intent to subvert the 'dominating discourse' that symptomatically
evinces an instance of phantasy in analysis mean for someone who is addressing
the psychoanalytic community itself? From which position of enunciation could
the theoretical statements of psychoanalysis be issued from, if it is neither a
form of the presumed neutrality of objective knowledge proper to University
discourse, but neither an instance for the discourse of the analyst? What could
psychoanalysis claim to be doing if, as Lacan has repeatedly insisted, there is
no meta-language, and if "there is no Other of the Other? In other words,
for the subject of traditional philosophy, this subject subjectivises itself indefinitely.
There is not in the Other, any signifier which is able on this occasion to
answer for what I am." (Ibid; L16, pp. 206)<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> If the signifier that stands for <i>the subject of the unconscious</i>, the
psycho-biological development story of the castration complex, or the
figurations of desire in the form of graphs, are to count as <i>theoretical</i> at all, then it seems that
Lacan must rehabilitate the distinction between signifier and signified that he
had sworn to abjure. But in doing so, psychoanalysis would need to reactivate
the valence of <i>knowing</i>, indeed of the
subject of knowledge, in making the latter track down and express the structure
of desire as such. As we saw above, this is precisely what was taken to be
impossible: desire trumps knowledge, the latter is only the envelope of the
former. And indeed, if knowledge <i>of</i>
desire can be obtained or localized from the vantage point of psychoanalytic
theory, there seems nothing to keep the philosopher from claiming that what Lacan
is doing is effectively <i>ontologizing </i>desire
and thus the subject of the unconscious as the libidinal variant of the realm
of appearances, and that therefore Lacan has merely supplanted philosophy and
psychology with its own prescriptive ideational framework, apt for empirical
investigation, i.e. the realm of the unconscious that is "structured like
a language".<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Indeed,
Lacan himself seems to have been aware of this crucial paradox within his
theoretical register from very early on. In what I take to be a decisive
statement, Lacan claims with regards to the conceptual status of the
psychoanalytic theoretical endeavor: "There is a fundamental ambiguity in
the use we make of the word 'desire'. Sometimes we objectify it- and we have to
do so, <u>if only to talk about it</u>. On the contrary sometimes we locate it
as the primitive term, in relation to any objectification." (S2, pp. 225)
This ambiguity is not trivial whatsoever. For if desire must be <i>objectified</i> in order to be spoken about,
in what sense is it any different than any of the other terms that philosophers
or scientists purportedly use to describe phenomena of all kinds, desire included?
How are we to understand the claim that desire is simultaneously <i>of</i> the order of signifier and <i>that which conditions</i> any
objectification whatsoever? How can a signifier stand for the barred subject <i>$</i>,<i>
disjoined</i> from the signifying chain in the Otherness of language? This
problem is particularly acute, since Lacan insists that desire <i>cannot</i> be ontologised. But then what is
it that psychoanalytic theory is doing when they 'objectify' desire "if
only to speak of it"? How could such an act constitute anything but an
ontological valence? Yet to claim that desire is not just a signifier, but
rather the enabling <i>condition</i> for
signification and objectivation, is once again to reactivate the relation
between signifier and signified, only this time in terms of desire as real
precondition for objects understood as linguistically individuated posits. This
would be to covertly ontologise desire as an Aristotelian 'first mover', as the
'ground of being', as Ineffable Being stripped even of the honor of the name.
Correspondingly, this makes utterly indeterminate how the posterior
objectification of desire in words relates to desire as a precondition for this
objectification. <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> At
this juncture, neither option will work: if Lacan claims that the
objectification of desire relates to the pre-objectified desire, then he has
reactivated the referential relation between signifier and signified, sign and
referent, in the dichotomy between objectual desire-for-us and unobjectifiable desire-in-itself.
This surrenders Lacan to a bizarre, libidinal paradox of Kantianism (which is
after all how Lacan always read Kant anyway). But to do that he must once again
rehabilitate not just the <i>ontological</i>
valence of desire as such, but the <i>epistemological
</i>valence of the relation between desire's objectification in language and
the depths of the desire that it bridges us to in the act of theorizing it,
that is, in the making of claims <i>about</i>
it. It is impossible to understand Lacan's claim that desire is a
'precondition' for its objectification unless one reenacts this philosophical
cunning of the original psychoanalytic coup against philosophy and science. <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Alternatively, Lacan can say that
the objectification in question needs of no such relation, and consistently
maintain that the signifier "<i>desire</i>"
is, like every other, merely in relation to other signifiers, but never aiming
towards anything like an ontologically generative 'in-itself'. Thus the terms
of psychoanalysis would escape the faith of standing as signifiers <i>for </i>signifieds, and so avoid tacitly
playing the role of a 'meta-language'. Indeed, this is what at some point Lacan
himself seems to want to claim when he says that "Desire emerges just as
it becomes embodied in speech, it emerges with symbolism." (SII, pp. 234).
In this reading, the original ambiguity is resolved in favor of a pure
objectification of something which, strictly speaking, does not preexist the
act of objectification itself. <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Nevertheless, without distinguishing
how the signifiers making up theoretical statements fulfill this role without
becoming one more instance of the University discourse, but neither falling
into the other three forms of discourse, this route ultimately undermines the
theoretical status of psychoanalysis. The purported connection to the <i>phenomenon</i> of desire becomes in
principle proscribed, and deprives itself of any authority when describing the
subordination of knowledge to desire in theoretical terms. For there could be no
categorical distinction between those signifiers that will play the role of
mere signifiers in their discursive operation according to the four forms, and
those of psychoanalytic <i>theory</i> which
may unravel their conditions of possibility, lest we return to the
philosophical vocation, or occupy the once again the position of the University
discourse by prescribing a kind of knowledge.<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> And yet, to attempt such a foreclosing
act, to shun the danger of the 'Great outdoors' by claiming that desire as such
is intractable to any kind of objectification, effectively undermines itself as
a gesture. This is because if psychoanalysis cannot validate itself as a
theory, neither can the structure of desire it purportedly formalizes and
describes as being 'outside all objectifying description' be used to undermine <i>itself</i> in relation to other theories and
discourses in general. In other words, psychoanalysis couldn't even surrender
its rights to desire without already having 'spoken that which can't be
spoken', that is, without already assuming a theoretical position claiming to
know of desire as an asymptotic horizon which forecloses all theorizing. The
result is a fundamental paradox whereby psychoanalysis ceases to be a theory
because the exigencies of desire undermine it, and where desire ceases to be
the structural phenomenon psychoanalysis describes because the latter is not a
theory<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn10" name="_ftnref10" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[10]</span></span></span></a>. <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Two scenarios appear possible at his
point, as the necessary correctives to psychoanalytic theory. Yet, we shall
see, that the ambiguity of desire as a <i>term</i>
and as a <i>condition</i> is ultimately
irresolvable. Lacan claimed to have superseded the pretences of philosophy but
in turn seems to be forced into the choice between a variant of transcendental
idealism and sophistry. The former scenario has itself two possibilities: a) a
kind of negative-theological epistemic understanding of the foreclosure of Real
desire as that which resists objectification and meaning, and b) a variety of
textual idealism where desire is immanent to the signifier, while admitting of
a typology of signifiers. Let us assess each of these . <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> First, a possible answer is to
leave it open that psychoanalysis may gain traction with respect to desire, via
the objectification of the signifier. That is, the signifier might grant
restricted access to desire as an <i>unknowable</i>,
unobjectifiable, but nevertheless <i>thinkable</i>
condition of possibility for signification (a variety of 'weak correlationism').
Under this light, Lacan's account of desire as Real precondition begins to
startlingly resemble the minimal realism of Heidegger, for whom the opaqueness
of the Earth <i>qua </i>unobjectifiable
being stands as necessarily refractory to the variegated structure of world,
with its populated entities and individuations at the ontic level. Real desire
would be the proto-ontological motor conditioning, ironically, the merely ontic
register of being and the symbolic investment of symptoms. The early Lacan seems
to indicate this much when he claims in a rather cryptic passage:
"Desire... is the desire for nothing namable... this desire lies at the
origin of every variety of animation. If being were only what it is there
wouldn't be room to talk about it. Being comes into existence as an exact
function of this lack." (SII, pp 223). This is the direction in which the
later Lacan, through his idea of the Real as that which resists symbolization,
seems to have succumbed, as we shall see below<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn11" name="_ftnref11" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[11]</span></span></span></a>.<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Alternatively, in this first re-philosophizing
scenario, the structure of desire remains epistemically accessible without
residue, but confined to the signifying order, in which case Lacan is involved
in a bizarre structuralist parody of textual idealism. Yet as we surmised
above, this cannot be done, strictly speaking, without a qualitative
distinction that vitiates the structural uniformity of the signifier. In other
words, it requires a qualitative distinction <i>within</i> the order of the signifier, a typology that sets those signs
which map the structure of desire from those which are merely within the
libidinal commerce of phantasy, and so those which are subordinated to the
former. Both options in this scenario rehabilitate the philosophical spooks that
Lacan took to have demoted, at the price of reactivating the possibility of a
special kind of reference or relation between signifiers, apart from the
articulation of the four discourses and with it having the status of a
'meta-language' assigned to save psychoanalytic theory from itself.<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> The second alternative, foreclosing the
explanatory purchase on desire, and leaving exteriority <i>unthinkable</i>, shuns the status of psychoanalysis as a theory and
surrenders it to a sophistic endeavor marking its internal contradiction (a
variety of strong correlationism). This is the tragedy that we surmised above,
when showing that psychoanalysis couldn't even surrender its rights to
knowledge. For in this scenario, the Lacanian edifice ends up effectively
undermining itself, rendering the conceptual endeavor it pursues into utter
incoherence, the knowledge of desire undermining its theorization, and the
theorization of desire undermining the possibility of knowledge of it<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn12" name="_ftnref12" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[12]</span></span></span></a>. <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> As we suggested above, however, Lacan
seems to have progressively realized that he couldn't do without explaining how
a <i>theory</i> of desire relies on such a
conceptual envelopment, as evinced in a particularly telling passage: "[Our]
conception of the concept implies that the concept is always established in an
approach that is not unrelated to that which is imposed on us, as a form, by
infinitesimal calculus. Indeed, if the concept is modeled on an approach to the
reality that the concept has been created to apprehend, it is only by a leap a
passage to the limit, that it manages to realize itself. We are then required
to say in what respect- under what form of finite quantity, I would say- the
conceptual elaboration known as the unconscious may be carried out." (SXI:
pp. 19) <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Yet
at this point, signaling both the beginning of a mathematical obsession and
that of a poetic escape, Lacan begins to opt for the first horn of the dilemma
and to surrender psychoanalysis to what appears under all lights to be a
re-philosophizing of its fundamental task, along with the valence of knowing. A
passion for the purity of formalization and the inscription, which begins the
sliding down the notion that the <i>matheme</i>
is closest to the Real, being sutured itself to nothing but a void. This void
that, to be sure, although not named "<i>Being</i>"
for Lacan, has been nothing but the proper name of Being for dialectical
philosophers for a long time. The nothingness of the Real thus becomes an
absolute abstraction, like Hegel claimed <i>apropos</i>
Being, which is, in itself, indistinguishable from Nothing, that is, from
non-being. The <i>matheme</i> becomes the
receptacle of a pure transmission, insofar as formalization subtracts the
symbol from its conceptual envelopment, prizing it free from any semblance of
meaning or intention. This is why the <i>matheme</i>,
indexes, for Lacan, how: "The mathematical formalization of signifierness
runs counter to meaning." (SXX, pp. 93) What formalization enables is not
a representation <i>of</i> desire and so of
a knowledge <i>about</i> the Real, but
rather an experience or 'act' with respect the Real, a possibility for transference:
"Truth cannot convince, knowledge becomes act" (Ibid; Pg. 104). <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> But since the <i>matheme</i> is closest to the Real insofar
as it formalizes while symbolizing <i>nothing</i>,
this Real becomes<i> </i>that which cannot
be positivized in a representation. The Real subtracts itself from all positive
content, it is delivered only to the pure act of transmission, the transference
of something which opens the promise for the traversal of the phantasy. Just
like the subject, there can be thus no theoretical knowledge of the Real: the
latter cannot be totalized or unified, and therefore it cannot be qualitatively
determined so as to be tractable conceptually: "<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">If there is a notion of the real, it is extremely complex
and, because of this, incomprehensible, it cannot be comprehended in a way that
would make an All out of it."<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn13" name="_ftnref13" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: black; font-size: 12pt;">[13]</span></span></span></a></span>
Accordingly, the object-cause of desire as a Real is thought through the
formalization of a vanishing object, non-identical to itself, always alienating
the subject from the place of enunciation. This is why the phallus, as the mask hiding
the displacement of the object, constitutes the metonymy <i>of the subject</i> in being: the object of desire is 'subjectivized'
insofar as it refuses to ever coincide with the phallic semblances under which
it appears or is formulated. This 'becoming subject of substance', to speak
Hegelese, is what makes the meaningless formalism 'nearest' to the Real object
and so to the unconscious desire. This object-cause of desire is then
necessarily also a "non-object" insofar as it resists the effects of
the symbolization that envelops it in contingent demands, constituting the
non-being that appears under the semblance of being: "Being on the right
path [leading from the symbolic to the Real], overall, [object a], would have
us take it for being, in the name of the following - that it is apparently
something. But it only dissolves, in the final analysis, owing to its failure,
unable, as it is, to sustain itself in approaching the real." (SXX, pp.
95)<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFsls3UasPJc5XR4TqyN5bQKuY2pmiaLYIl7aAdS0esZf4yndNEJvqBaGdH2KLX6oIgTQkitHjroAL8JUgii6zUr7Hs3KGzTGhe0CzcD8_VeUNSyzZvOT2deUaylUKm-GfrqhFf7EsN-jT/s1600/zoe311.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFsls3UasPJc5XR4TqyN5bQKuY2pmiaLYIl7aAdS0esZf4yndNEJvqBaGdH2KLX6oIgTQkitHjroAL8JUgii6zUr7Hs3KGzTGhe0CzcD8_VeUNSyzZvOT2deUaylUKm-GfrqhFf7EsN-jT/s1600/zoe311.jpg" /></a><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> But if this is the case, then the Real
becomes the obverse of castration, the stain of a remainder that propels desire
and before which nothing but a pure <i>matheme</i>,
void of referential pretence, can stand before in its formal opaqueness<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn14" name="_ftnref14" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[14]</span></span></span></a>. And
it is here that the unobjectifiable Real of the act of transference is
construed by a tacit separation from the <i>matheme</i>
that ordains it, evincing a division that psychoanalysis ultimately cannot resolve.
Much like for Heidegger Being <i>qua</i> the
unobjectifiable opaqueness of the Earth cannot be apprehended conceptually but
must be delivered to the poetic word of the thinker and the act of the artist,
the Real <i>qua</i> unobjectifiable
opaqueness of desire cannot be known but must be delivered to the <i>matheme</i> and the transference occasioned
by the analyst. As Lacan puts it: "Mathematization alone reaches a real -
and it is in that respect that it is compatible with our discourse, with
analytic discourse- a real that has nothing to do with what traditional
knowledge has served as a basis for, which is not what the latter believes it
to be- namely, reality, but rather phantasy... The Real, I will say, is the
mystery of the speaking body, the mystery of the unconscious." (SXX; pp.
131) <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> However, the call for the bodily act signals
also the inevitable moment of loss for <i>explanation</i>,
the moment in which, no longer capable of separating the thought of the Real
from the Real itself, one must surrender all theoretical pretences and en-act
the traversal itself, a clinical pilgrimage before the inflections of the
symptom through the lessons of formalization. <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">The
discursive access to knowing-that becomes delivered to the oblique efficacy of
non-discursive know-how. This is how we should coordinate these two
seemingly disparate statements from Lacan: "There is some rapport of being
that cannot be known" (SXX, pp. 119, TM), and "If analysis rests on a
presumption, it is that knowledge about [subjective] truth can be constituted
on the basis of its experience" (Ibid, pp. 91). The impossibility of a
knowledge <i>of</i> being is but the obverse
of the possibility of knowing <i>how</i> to speak
in bringing about the transference. Or as Badiou formulates it: "The paradoxical
position of Lacan concerning truth is that there is no knowledge of truth, but
finally there is a psychoanalytic knowledge concerning this absence of
knowledge. This is the great paradox of the unconscious...a subject can have an
experience of its proper Real only in the form of an act." (Badiou, 2010)<br /><br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> The analytic transference is nothing but the
allowance of the Real traversal supported by nothing but the formalization of
the <i>matheme</i>: "It is in the very
act of speaking that make this formalization, this ideal meta-language,
ex-sist. It is in this respect that the symbolic cannot be confused with being-
far from it. Rather, it exists qua
ex-sistance with respect to the act of speaking." (SXX, Ibid; pp 119) This
separation is finally that between the pure form of the <i>mathematic</i> inscription, recalcitrant to incorporation within the
symbolic order of language, and the passage to the pure act that deposes all
representational knowledge, and where analytic transference for the traversal
of the phantasy takes place. As Badiou stresses: "This act is like a cut
in language and also a cut in the ordinary representation of the world- a
representation which is imaginary. So the act suddenly isolates the Real from
its normal collection to the imaginary and symbolic orders." (Badiou,
2010). <br /><br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"> And
yet we must insist, that for all its purported deflection of knowing-<i>that</i>, the abyss that separates the
voided <i>matheme</i>, suspended from the
Real act and from the symbolic rule of the signifier, merely reproduces the
dyad of signifier/signified in the dichotomy between theoretical inscription
and practical transmission. That is, Lacan reproduces the problem between
thought and reality that he takes to be emblematic of the philosophical forms
of 'knowing' in the tacit distinction between the formal ideography of the <i>matheme</i> in its presentation, and the
singular act of speech in which transference finally takes place. For Lacan
cannot conflate the speciousness of the formulaic <i>writing</i> of the matheme with the act of <i>speech</i> through which the subject traverses the phantasy. That this distinction is ultimately
unexplainable, that the connection between the Real <i>qua</i> formalized <i>matheme</i>
and the Real qua act cannot be articulated, signals the gulf of psychoanalytic
thought, delivered as it is, both to the requirement to forego knowledge, and yet
also to embody it as it tries to give a theory of this process. </span>This
separation ultimately makes the status of the Real undecidable, or fatally
ambiguous, i.e. playing the role of a pure inscription without exteriority (the
Real of the <i>matheme </i>as formalization),
or a pure exteriority without symbolization (the Real is that which resists
symbolization). With the Real subtracted from the traction of knowing, it
becomes a noumenal phantasm suspended between the void of an empty formalism,
or a mystical surrender to the ineffable Otherness that animates the act. Crucially,
the unexplained distinction between the reality of formalization and that of
the act must be supported in the theoretical identification that psychoanalysis
carries <i>vis a vis</i> both the writing <i>matheme</i> and the act of speech, as the
meta-discursive gesture that short-circuits the two in the name of the Real.<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> And so one notes also, alongside the
obliqueness of the matheme, a desperation against the threat of the
"dialectic" and a helplessness evinced toward the poetic rumination,
thinking from a distance the untouchable purity of an Otherness so unblemished
that it does nothing but subtract itself from the signifier and its operations.
Such is the sliding down to the identification of the Real with that which is
ultimately beyond all capacity for individuation, rendering the conditioning of
the Real of desire excised from its pseudo-objectifications. Unfortunately
then, the question about the legitimacy of desire as a suitable structure to
explain to ontogenesis of thought and being, returns into the market of
theories negotiating an unnamable void for their founding gesture. Perhaps this
is why Lacan struggles, refusing to fully embrace the prospect of ontologizing
the unconscious and desire, to the point of reverting into the desperation of
sophism: "the gap of the unconscious is pre-ontological... it is neither
being nor non-being, but the unrealized." (SXI: pp. 29) It is not only the
structure of unconscious desire that is beyond recalcitrant to ontology: the
object of desire itself is, paradoxically, unobjectifiable insofar as it
remains impossible, non-self identical, never coincident with a being with fixed qualities and properties. This
indicates another level of the fundamental coincide of the non-symbolic
inscription of the object, and the object itself. This is because <i>objet a</i> is both resolutely <i>material</i> (it is localized) and a <i>formal</i> index signaling that which is never
localizable, but which functions as an impasse for meaning, and so which indexes
the asymptotic horizon of the subject's intentional desire. This is why the object
of desire is neither being (it resists objectification or self-identity, thus
enacting the infinity of desire) nor non-being (it must nevertheless be indexed
as impossible <i>object</i> cause, 'if only
to speak of it', as that which consists as inconsistent, subtracting itself
from the signifying chain). The Real <i>object</i> can only be Real insofar as it is
also, and paradoxically, a 'non-object', that is, insofar as it is on the side
of the formal stringency of the <i>matheme</i>
and not of the symbolic-imaginary operations of the signifier. Only the pure
matheme approaches it in its barren formalism by ordaining it to the act of analytic
transference facilitating the traversal of the phantasy. <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> We must understand thus that the
object cause of desire, qua non-object, is also the mark of the subject <i>qua </i>non-individual; the gap between
itself as conscious (pseudo)-signified being and itself as unconscious signifier
is the gap between the (pseudo) consistency of the individual, and the void of
the subject as well. The void of the subject, tethered to the illusion of the
metonymy of the phallus, is what subtracts itself perpetually from the Oneness
of the individual, in which the subject objectifies itself by having a
signifier stand for it. As Chiesa puts it: "During the process of
subjectivisation three different ontological ‘levels’ of the multiple emerge
retroactively: the inconsistent undead real as not-one; the consistent
multiplicity given by the metonymic slide of the objects of demand (marked as
letters); the subject as split between conscious signified and unconscious
signifier." (Chiesa, 2012, forthcoming). <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> As a result, the semblance of the
object of the demand in virtue of which 'there is Oneness' constitutes the
intentionality of the subject towards an impossible Real that always eludes its
unifying operation. It is this Real that is designated by the formal opaqueness
of the <i>matheme</i>: "[Objet <i>a</i>] would have us take it for being, in
the name of the following- that it is apparently something. But it only dissolves,
in the final analysis, owing to its failure, unable, as it is, to sustain
itself in approaching the real." (SXX: Pg. 95) The Real of the <i>matheme</i> is therefore non-objective,
since it underlies the symbolic metonymy of signifiers that makes up the phantasy,
which is why the analytic transference that ordains the traversal can't ever be
a matter of <i>knowing</i> or <i>teaching</i> something to the subject,
making it explicit to consciousness, but of <i>intervening</i>
in order to displace the formal localization of the symptom within the unconscious
phantasy. The Real as act is supported thus by the formalization that the <i>matheme</i>, uniquely, subtracts from the
symbolic and the specificity of the demand.<br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Yet, it must be said, the split
between form and content remains ineludible, and the opaque symbol that
embodies the <i>matheme</i> merely <i>formalizes </i>the possibility of a
transmission of a Real thereby delegated to the act. For Lacan <i>cannot</i> mean that the <i>matheme</i> qua inscription is identical to
the act that transmits in virtue of it, without thereby dissolving the
generality of the theoretical practice with the specificity of the clinical
practice. But in order to separate the two he must be able to explain how the
act itself conforms to the formality of the <i>matheme</i>;
without clarifying what this relation consists in, the claim that
"knowledge becomes act" is itself unintelligible. <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> We
hear echoes of Heidegger's attempts to reconcile himself with his own theory,
trying to save the Great Outdoors from the clutches of Dasein's world-producing
prerogative (claiming animals have and do not have worlds by saying they are
'poor in them', for instance). Lacan, scavenging for the Real, this being without
the honor of the name, urges the separation between psychoanalysis and
philosophy, much like for Heidegger the poetic thought could only free itself
by separating itself from the loudness of metaphysics. A scission, to be sure, appears
as the uncompromising <i>desire for desire</i>,
stubbornly clinging to its own impossible object, its own unrequited passion.
For the Real does not speak, after all, putting an end to the disguised
epistolary confession of the philosopher and the scientist, as well as the
analysand. Is this not where the tormented psychoanalyst geared towards the
interruption of the symptom by the act and the <i>matheme</i>, and the disillusioned provincialism of the poetic philosopher
traversing metaphysics through poetry meet again: in the desire for <i>silence</i>? <br /><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Ultimately, the Real anchor of desire
and its object, this 'indivisible remainder', does not absolve Lacan from the
faith of the philosophical dictum, but rather delivers him back into what Badiou
has called 'the effects of skepticism': "<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">The
effects of this kind of frenzied upsurge, in which the real rules over the
comedy of our symptoms, are ultimately indiscernible from those of skepticism.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftn15" name="_ftnref15" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; font-size: 12pt;">[15]</span></span></span></a>"
(LOW: Pg. 563) And indeed, I think Badiou is correct here: Lacan's cryptic
statement from 1977 that "truth can only concern the Real" is perhaps
the point of the unique symptom, the torsion where, suspended between the
choice between being and nothingness, Lacan nods for the all-too-familiar
philosophical maneuver, and proceeds to identify them. The sliding void of the
object names the passion for the unnamable stain that, repudiating the
stringency of the symbolic demand, refuses to extirpate itself from thought,
however elusive to its feeble touch. The Real nothingness of Being, and so
philosophy, appears now as the stain for psychoanalysis, refusing to let the
words come to an end. That is, without ever traversing its own fantasy,
absolving the tormented analyst from his own confessional delirium. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span></o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 200%;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span class="apple-style-span"><b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Bibliography:<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">·<span style="font-size: 7pt;">
</span></span><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Badiou, Alain. <i>Logics of Worlds</i> translated by Alberto
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">·<span style="font-size: 7pt;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">·<span style="font-size: 7pt;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">·<span style="font-size: 7pt;">
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Gallagher, , 2009.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">·<span style="font-size: 7pt;">
</span></span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Lacan, Jacques, <i>Ecrits</i>, translated by Bruce Fink, Norton Press, 2007. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">·<span style="font-size: 7pt;">
</span></span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Chiesa, Lorenzo, <i>Subjectivity and Otherness: a Philosophical Reading of Lacan</i>, MIT
Press, 2007. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">·<span style="font-size: 7pt;">
</span></span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Chiesa, Lorenzo, <i>How To Make One Out of a Multiple?</i>, 2012, forthcoming. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">·<span style="font-size: 7pt;">
</span></span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Žižek, Slavoj, <i>The Parallax View</i>, Verso Books, 2006.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">·<span style="font-size: 7pt;">
</span></span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Žižek, Slavoj, <i>Tarrying With the Negative</i>, Verso Books, 1993. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">·<span style="font-size: 7pt;">
</span></span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Žižek, Slavoj, <i>The Sublime Object of Ideology</i>, Verso Books, 1997.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">·<span style="font-size: 7pt;">
</span></span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Žižek, Slavoj, <i>Woman is One of the Names-of-the-Father</i>, Lacanian Ink 10, 1995.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">·<span style="font-size: 7pt;">
</span></span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Johnston, Adrian, <i>Žižek's Ontology: A Transcendental Theory of Subjectivity</i>,
Northwestern University Press, 2008.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13px; font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><span lang="ES-PE" style="font-size: 10pt;">Index of Abbreviations</span></b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">
<span class="apple-style-span"></span></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">E = Ecrits</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="apple-style-span">
<span lang="ES-PE" style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></span></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="ES-PE" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">SII: Seminar II</span></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="ES-PE" style="font-size: 10pt;">
</span></span></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="ES-PE" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">SIII: Seminar III</span></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="ES-PE" style="font-size: 10pt;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 10pt;">SVI: Seminar VI</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 10pt;">SXX: Seminar XX</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 10pt;">SXI: Seminar XI</span></div>
<o:p></o:p></span></span></span><br />
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="line-height: 26px;"><br /></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: 20pt;">Analyst</span><span style="font-size: 20pt;"> <>
(<i>$</i>
<> a)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 8pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> subject object<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> <b>Desire<o:p></o:p></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></b><b><i><span style="font-size: 28pt;">$ </span></i></b><b><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></b><span style="font-size: 28pt;"><></span><b><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></b><b><span style="font-size: 26pt;">a<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><span style="font-size: 26pt;"> </span></b><b><span style="font-size: 16pt;">Analyst's Desire<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<hr size="1" style="text-align: left;" width="33%" />
<div id="ftn1">
<div style="margin-left: -27pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[1]</span></span></span></a> <a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814" name="top"></a><tt><span style="font-size: 10pt;">1. Lacan, Jacques,</span></tt><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><tt><i><span style="font-size: 10pt;">The
Seminar, Book XX: Encore, On Feminine Sexuality, The Limits of Love and
Knowledge</span></i></tt><tt><span style="font-size: 10pt;">, NY: Norton, 1998, p 48.</span></tt><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn2">
<div style="margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-left: -27pt; margin-right: -0.5in; margin-top: 5pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[2]</span></span></span></a> <tt><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Lacan, Jacques,</span></tt><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><tt><i><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Ecrits:
The First Complete Edition in English</span></i></tt><tt><span style="font-size: 10pt;">, NY: Norton, 1998, p 48</span></tt><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn3">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText" style="margin-left: -0.5in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> <a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" title="">[3]</a></span></span></span>
See for instance Lorenzo Chiesa's (2009) extraordinary systematic
reconstruction.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn4">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: -27pt; margin-right: -0.5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftnref4" name="_ftn4" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[4]</span></span></span></a>
Lacan develops how the formative process of the mirror-stage consists of a
‘temporal dialectic’ which t races a line from insufficiency to anticipation,
from need to desire; an ‘orthopaedic’ development. (E: Pg. 692)</span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn5">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: -27.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftnref5" name="_ftn5" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[5]</span></span></span></a>
This explains Jacques -Alain Miller's formulation apropos Lacan's teachings
during 1955 under the title "From the small to the big Other", which
also marks Lacan's more pronounced reworking with the structuralist tradition
in linguistics, and thus with the problematic of language in general. </span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn6">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: -27pt; margin-right: -0.5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftnref6" name="_ftn6" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[6]</span></span></span></a> It
is clear that, at least in the 1950's, Lacan's concept of the unconscious is
deeply influence by the Hegelian-Kojevian notion of desire as the desire of
recognition of the other. </span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn7">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: -27pt; margin-right: -0.5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftnref7" name="_ftn7" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[7]</span></span></span></a> I present the graph of desire in its second
form, since it should suffice at that stage for our present purposes For these
graphs see (SVI, L1, pp. 7, 12; E, pp. 681-688)</span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn8">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText" style="margin-left: -27.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftnref8" name="_ftn8" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[8]</span></span></span></a>
Slavoj Zizek has famously proposed to read this operation of retroactive
determination along the lines of Kripke’s account of rigid designation; where
the <i>point of caption</i> where the
subject pierces the big Other fixes a referent for the signifying statement
like a rigid designator. For the details see Zizek, <i>The Sublime Object of Ideology</i>, Chapter III, Pg 206. </span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn9">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText" style="margin-left: -27pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftnref9" name="_ftn9" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[9]</span></span></span></a>
Indeed, the word "ontology" is not mentioned once in Seminar VI.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn10">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText" style="margin-left: -31.5pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftnref10" name="_ftn10" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[10]</span></span></span></a>
See Appendix I for an illustration</span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn11">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText" style="margin-left: -0.5in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftnref11" name="_ftn11" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[11]</span></span></span></a>
Roughly, from Seminar XI onwards. </span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn12">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: -31.5pt; margin-right: -40.5pt; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftnref12" name="_ftn12" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[12]</span></span></span></a>
Even if we agree with Badiou that psychoanalysis is indeed closer to politics
in seeking the singularity of the individual symptom rather than the repetition
of the scientific thought, it must be stressed that, irrespective of the
clinical practice, the theoretical endeavor carried out by psychoanalytic
thought cannot but be subject to the norms of conceptual consistency which
binds scientific thought. If this is the case, then the way that psychoanalysis
shields itself against the dogmatism of embracing alienation in the signifier
to its fullest extent would not be to simply listen to the 'affirmative'
vocation of political thought, but also to the scientific vocation for what
renders its theoretical posits possible, i.e. formal coherency of its
ideography.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn13">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText" style="margin-left: -27pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftnref13" name="_ftn13" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[13]</span></span></span></a> <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">Lacan, J.,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Le triomphe de la religion, précedé
du Discours aux catholiques</i>, Paris: Seuil 2005, p. 96, 97. </span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn14">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText" style="margin-left: -27pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftnref14" name="_ftn14" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[14]</span></span></span></a>
This is why Zizek calls "the scientific Real" that <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"> "...of a formula which renders the
nature's meaningless functioning." (Zizek, How to Read Lacan, </span><a href="http://www.lacan.com/zizalien.htm">http://www.lacan.com/zizalien.htm</a>)</span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn15">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: -27.0pt; margin-right: -40.5pt; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6580039155018603814#_ftnref15" name="_ftn15" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[15]</span></span></span></a>
In this regard, I would emphasize that, in spite of Badiou's commendable
attempts to characterize psychoanalysis as a candidate for <i>thinking</i> but perhaps not a <i>science</i>,
where the latter term is understood as "the unity of a theory and a
practice", does not help solve the issue. This can be easily seen if we
realize that the incapacity to separate theory and practice is not something we
can straightforwardly allot to science; even if psychoanalysis is thought as
closer to politics, the question about the relation between the <i>statements</i> of such a thought and the
thing itself remains. To stipulate an absolute inseparability between thought
and world is to surrender to idealism; to claim such a distinction is possible
is to rehabilitate the valence of knowing within a philosophical thought. I
believe, for reasons that Ray Brassier has pointed out, following Wilfrid
Sellars, that the <i>methodological</i>
separation between the space of reasons and the space of causes is the
condition of possibility for the <i>ontological</i>
unity between thought and being, reason and nature. The consequence, against
Badiou's depiction, is not a thinking of the articulation between a theory and
a praxis, but rather <i>how</i> such an
articulation is to be understood as that between world that is not thought and
thought that thinks the world.</span></div>
</div>
</div>Daniel Sacilottohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06107600124995445921noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6580039155018603814.post-17136092335618679522012-03-24T17:02:00.004-07:002012-03-25T06:09:39.085-07:00On Badiou: Truth, Revolution, Decision<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU0eYKFOlguqaQQTnhnKOyBkGf9aV9-Xfljs8mWO8j_2NTuag17OvX4cSUngZjEyQpGqlXiRD6FoKJmx1nJkYOAbOiy99Glf-VkrvrKx-SBE9V07cN8HB76Z6Mc3MPamc0NP8v7q_sEFry/s1600/entryway.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU0eYKFOlguqaQQTnhnKOyBkGf9aV9-Xfljs8mWO8j_2NTuag17OvX4cSUngZjEyQpGqlXiRD6FoKJmx1nJkYOAbOiy99Glf-VkrvrKx-SBE9V07cN8HB76Z6Mc3MPamc0NP8v7q_sEFry/s640/entryway.jpg" width="484" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;">- ON BADIOU -</span></b></div><b></b><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><b><b><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span style="font-size: large;">Truth, Revolution, Decision </span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;">____________________________________</span></span></b></b></div><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Beautiful post by <a href="http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2012/03/24/what-badiou-meant/" target="_blank">Levi</a>, and of course I agree. Even though I have finally parted ways with Badiou on philosophical grounds, he must be acknowledged as one of the greats, if anything, in virtue of having delivered philosophy back to itself. Without remorse, without lamentations. And although, as he himself emphasizes, Deleuze and Lacan were already weary of the exacerbation of critique that became hegemonic after Heidegger in Continental theory, Badiou did the most explicit work to reactivate truth by bluntly invoking the rights to philosophy. For even Deleuze had to frame his struggle in much the same way as the great phenomenologists and vitalists: a struggle against the horizon that philosophy had set for itself. And of course the result is such a radical reworking of the fundamental problems that a lot of the traditional terminology drops out, as it were. </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> But with Badiou we have something quite different: a true <i>neo-classical</i> philosopher. He brings back not just philosophy, but the dialectic, the great system, the old Platonic complicity between the formal and being, etc. And he does this in crystalline style, which has also worked to supersede what had, as Levi often rightly emphasizes, become a lofty vanity in obscurantist prose. For even Deleuze, as well as Derrida, Lyotard and Lacan, for all their brilliant interventions, were impenetrable writers. I don't think they were bad writers, as much as they were ego-maniacal. Maybe the psychoanalysts can make the correct diagnosis! As I mentioned in my last post, the stylistic gesture of self-aggrandizing is of a piece with the philosophical question of how they take themselves to be splitting the field into two. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And indeed, although Badiou preserves the prophetic, priestly tone that his predecessors did, he does so with a degree of clarity that French intellectuals did not tolerate. Perhaps this is the great reason why Badiou actually became popular in the U.S and not so much in France at first! And it's also no surprise that people like Stiegler are much better received there.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Yet the single most important thing to note is precisely what Levi underlines. Badiou brought back something into philosophy that had, from the beginning, been the condition of its separation from <i>sophistry</i>: namely the preoccupation with <i>truth</i>. The passion for universality, the depth of the <i>matheme</i>, and the suspicion against the cult of experience. As Lacan already knew, something was preserved in the transparency of the <i>matheme</i> that resisted its appropiation into bare ideology; the <i>matheme</i> is closest to the real insofar as it 'sheds off' its semantic envelopment every time, in order to stratify itself ever anew.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> The sad consequence is that a lot of people have used Badiou as a platform for a very fashionable, inane pseudo-Marxism, which is often composed of the same people that enlisted in the ranks of deconstructive apathy. Being a 'leftist' has become a trendy moniker for hipsters and graduate students to play revolutionary under extremely elitist circumstances. You have these pseudo-leftists go brag about Marx and then hit the pubs for their weekly dose of booze and Deerhunter.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> This is not at all a new phenomenon: it is a variant of the 60's hippie, New age liberal motif. But in its current 'commie' version, I think it borrows more from what has been happening in South America for the past decade or so. Coming from Peru, I can speak for the ubiquity of the phenomenon: amassing indie-group "leftists" vituperating against the State and its morbid excesses. From the very beginning I noticed something profoundly obscurantist in this gesture, and actually thought that Badiou's typology of subjective types allowed us to diagnose this. Upon analysis, it became clear that this gesture often proceeded according to the formalism of the obscure subject: it presented its own convenient sophistic slogans to tacitly avoid real intervention. The whole theme about how 'resistance is surrender', diagnosed by Zizek, was in place here. <br />
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And although I applaud the recent Occupy movements, and believe activism should be approached without cynicism, it must also be held to the highest critical standards not to let itself dissolve into mere sophistry. And that is effectively what is in danger of happening to the Badiouean terms, much like 'deconstruction' became deflated to the point where a silly chef could lay claims to 'deconstructing' a hamburger by replacing bread with lettuce leaves, or whatever else. I think this is a phenomenon that Badiou himself might have diagnosed apropos mathematics; how every breakthrough in the field becomes subsequently re-enveloped by ideology, forcing itself to break through with new creations again and again. The problem is that today it seems like the capacity of ideological re-appropriation within capitalism has become so powerful that it barely lets thought formulate itself before it exhausts its emancipatory potential, assimilated by the culture industry. <br />
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This is the truly terrifying dimension of capital that I think, perhaps, only Nick Land has been able to appreciate to its fullest consequence. Ultimately, and risking accusations of reactive fatalism, I think that Badiou's apology of the revolutionary spirit will, unfortunately, be seen retroactively as something of a glorious obituary for the spirit of the militant, and the powers of subjective intervention. Yes, the revolutions in the East and South America matter, and remain vibrant. Yes, things can happen, decisions matter. But let us not let these gestures distract us from what is, after all, a still-engrossing empowerment of global capital. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Perhaps this prophetic dimension sheds light as to why at the extreme of this dialectics of 'rupture' and subjective intervention lies also something of a Kierkegaardian religiosity, a Christian variant of the Heideggerean/Hoelderlinean call for the Gods: Meillassoux's reification of hope as the utmost political category, before the prospect of the coming virtual God after an advent <i>ex nihilo</i>. The short-circuit of a contingency so powerful it overturns even the rights of decision reserved for the event. Yet in these obsessions over decision, and escaping the law, one detects finally something of a terrible weakness. The grip of reasons once again dissolves into the vainglorious celebration of the powers of the will, and the romanticism once again overtakes the painstaking rational kernel of the dialectic. And there is, indeed, something almost saintly about this extremity of the dialectic proposed by Badiou. The sacrosanctness of reason delivers us, in the end, to the pure power of decision, in the hopes, perhaps vain, that humanity might reserve itself the power to interrupt that which has taken hold of it with unprecedented strength.</span></div>Daniel Sacilottohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06107600124995445921noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6580039155018603814.post-81121946395420007192012-03-22T06:35:00.016-07:002012-03-25T05:58:48.338-07:00On the Analytic/Continental Divide: Philosophy and the State of Academia<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8Hsv5vIyn0iqbdsa9WbRrC7954f4JoMaJxAfOK55U9fCTlG9aOmQpjpRfr7mkih3tgbwvb3shBhdtE1fzmXOs6SeDaTwtU9A8-0uV5aYj94mq9xOcA1M9ZReK8FtkktS56COydyPdm1fE/s1600/blueee.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="518" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8Hsv5vIyn0iqbdsa9WbRrC7954f4JoMaJxAfOK55U9fCTlG9aOmQpjpRfr7mkih3tgbwvb3shBhdtE1fzmXOs6SeDaTwtU9A8-0uV5aYj94mq9xOcA1M9ZReK8FtkktS56COydyPdm1fE/s640/blueee.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">- On the Analytic/Continental Divide - </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Philosophy and the State of Academia</span><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Levi and others have been debating a bit about certain features of the academic and dialogic practices of analytic and continental philosophy departments. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I myself have experienced all ends of the spectrum in my academic trajectory. I started as a philosophy major in a heavily Continental oriented department in Peru, moved to an extremely analytic oriented department at Cornell; proceeded to write a thesis on Heidegger there, and now I am in UCLA at a comparative literature department majoring in philosophy! I always feel out of place no matter where I am, to be honest. A few things come to mind:</span></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span><br />
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</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">1) The ethos of dialog in analytic-oriented departments I take to be much less vertical and much more 'democratic' in their modus operandi. Even when notable authorities in the field give seminars (here at UCLA: Tyler Burge, Kaplan...) they are routinely challenged to defend their views every time by undergraduates, grad students, and other professors. This is taken to be commonly accepted practice and they seem happy to engage in arguments and disputes, taking themselves rather humbly in argument.</span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">2) By the same token, I have found that Continental-oriented departments are much more reluctant to allow <i>debate</i> to take place. There is almost a kind of protectionism for the authors one is surveying, as if one would sin of being naive if one dared hope to raise contention with the likes of Heidegger, or Lacan, or Badiou. Professors are usually more prone to lecture, and leave discussion to exegetical issues, more than working out whether the theory is a good one. This reverential attitude leads to students developing a kind of inhibition about developing their own views on the matter, or even asking clarificatory questions of the sort that require formulation in the way of a challenge ("how does the mirror stage work in a society without mirrors?"). This last phenomenon results in a lot of jargon just being passed on to students without them having worked out their meanings properly.</span></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">3) I take this to be both a stylistic and a philosophical issue. Stylistically, it makes sense a lot of Continental theory needs unraveling, since the tradition is known, not without justification, for some exceedingly convoluted/obscure writing. Thus the need to lecture and engage in exegesis. By the same token, the clarity and formal coherency, much adored by analytics, goes well with the blunt statements, and openness to debate. </span></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">4) At this point one can already see, however, how the stylistic issue overlaps with a philosophical issue. The Continental tradition is also regarded, not without justification, as engaging in highly synthetic views of the tradition, which challenge the history of philosophy, if not the West, comprehensively. They often take themselves to be enacting some kind of liberation from a thwarting force that plagues the tradition: whether these be thwarted wills bent before Truth (Nietzsche), the nostalgic mourning for a forgetfulness of Being (Heidegger), an aesthetic reapportioning of thought to intuition against intellection and representation (Bergson), </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">a crusade against the atonality of the contemporary (non)-world (Badiou), etc. The thinkers in the Continental tradition are often thought of as performing a kind of historical rupture, both a diagnosis of the shackles that have carried us for long (or, in some cases, since always), and thus also the announcing of a new time for thought. All of them wage war against the specialists, and deplore the hegemony of critique, classical epistemology, and representation.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This is why in tone, as much as content, Continental theory often has a 'bombastic' dimension to it, which fits well within the romantic and leftist-revolutionary spirit of the times in which many of their authors worked within.</span></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Yet one must also note that part of what was ferociously criticized under this tradition was the very idea of systematic comprehensiveness, and the very scientific pretensions of philosophy. The critique of critique, which explodes in the 20th Century post-phenomenological tradition, becomes progressively skeptical of the idea that a systematic philosophy, even in the form of (fundamental) ontology, could take place, or at the very least, be worthy of the thought of the 'genuine' thinker. Philosophy, for a large part of this tradition, became not so much about weeding out the true from the false, but about attaining interpretative leverage, hermeneutic clarity, historical acumen, deconstructive awareness, creative exuberance, affirmative power, militant subjectivity, etc. <br />
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In short, authors were assessed by their methodological placement rather than by the coherency of their views; we are invited to see what a given thinker thought and why, rather than to examine the internal coherency of their theory. A question of methodological delimitation rather than of internal analysis, was surely in order. And the "laboratory"</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">obsession with clarity, with clearly defined 'research programs', and with critique and formal logic to guide its paths, was greatly seen as the evil to be dealt with. Even Hegel, that great foe of immediacy and paragon of systematicity, becomes skeptical with regards to formalization, and the tradition that ensues therein follows the lead. The emblematic example here is perhaps Heidegger's own attempted reworking of the entire academic structuring, to serve the hermeneutic integration of thought to its past, rendering it aware of the ever aggravating history of an essential forgetting. The mystery lies in the word, for "we have no yet understood!" Indeed, could we ever?</span></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">5) Yet the effect of this 'emancipation' from the perils of critique has been awkwardly a profound dogmatism. Reverence takes the place of argumentation, since all one can hope to do is understand, not refute. One can at best go over the old critiques, the old disputes. But to challenge the pillars of thought cannot but result from an overhastiness. This is profoundly reactive: digression is taken to be a symptom of misunderstanding. The tacit assumption is that one can never be wrong since, effectively, one's challenge will always be the result of incomprehension. This dismantles the rational, not to say dialectical, core that set philosophy apart from sophism, and delivers thought back to the adorations of the sacred.</span></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">6) The analytic style, for its part, has obviously emphasized the virtues of clarity and rigor, precisely insofar as it has often strived for the scientific prestige of other disciplines. Its major proponents take pride the more they themselves are taken to disappear from the texts, insofar as they 'let the arguments speak for themselves'. What Continentals chastise as a dullness of style, they applaud as the sobriety of real labor. And of course, close to the pragmatic and empiricist traditions, there is something quite patriarchal and deflationary about the rhetoric for clarity and the 'no bs' policy they promote. They take pride in specialization, for it is the mark of institutionalized prestige. Research programs are encouraged, which means that it is not necessary to ruminate on abstractions like 'being qua being'; Fodor claims he is not interested in skepticism, Burge writes a treatise on the origins of objectivity but doesn't care about idealism. Soames applauds the segmentation of the field, and forecasts an even more violent segmentation, as a sign that philosophy is finally on the brink of living up to its promise. <br />
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To 'not care' is deemed commendable, since it signals that one is serious enough to brush off the 'Looney bin' populated by Continental crackpots (like Searle says, those philosophers whose names start with 'H'). Thus they end up </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> with</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> patronizing dismissal of any attempts to make grandiose statements, a castigation for anyone who seeks to deviate from the seriousness of scientific labor and the resolution of technical issues. Classrooms welcome the argumentative battles, since critique is very much on the side of rigor and technical scrutiny, systematicity is always boon, and the capacity to attain formal coherency and explanatory transparency separates the men from the boys. </span></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span><br />
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</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">There where Continentals see a deficit in soul, analytics see a commitment to serious work. There where analytics see a deficit in rigor, the Continentals see the roots of a subversive stand before the historical status <i>quo</i>. Those 'well defined problems' that are the source for scientific progress for analytics, appear to Continentals as the mark of unquestioned phallogocentric violence, ontotheological forgetfulness, bad wills, desire, power, the State, or whatever. In both cases, one elides the other's work for its purported radicalism, but tacit conservatism. Both are quite right about the other, but wrong about themselves.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">7) The truth is, that both sides end up reactivating a form of dogmatism. Analytics, for their part, think it is philosophically legitimate to obviate those 'big questions', for it is instructive to know that any sensible practice cannot begin 'from scratch', if not less, and so that it must put to the side the full weight of historical exegesis. It barely takes a coarse scanning over Burge's much celebrated 'magnum opus' and its 'attempts' to make brief commentary on Heidegger, or Soames' avowal of how the early forefathers of the analytic 'school' destroyed Idealism in a few pristine sentences, to realize this. Then one cringes, and must in good consciousness be appalled. <br />
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But one cannot simply obviate the idealist, or the skeptic; and one cannot simply 'drop' the 18th Century baggage and raise a generation of experts in debating about whether sixty seven grains of sand make a heap. And again, although many exceptions exist, there is something of a ubiquity in the tradition that corresponds to this. They overlook the difficulties of philosophy insofar as it would be capable of grinding down not just of a 'well defined' subject matter in the company of researchers, but of thinking its time, perhaps in solitude. It forgets what I take to have been the lesson taught to us by Socrates, and repeated in Descartes and Hegel; namely, that philosophy must begin anew, ever again, perhaps with very little, if not nothing, in the interests of never letting itself be decided in advance. And indeed, in obviating the dangers with the 'hard line' rhetorical appeals to the clownishness of crackpots and their lofty prose, they elide, far too often, the proximity philosophy bears not just to its scientific conditions, but to its political, artistic and historical ones, as well. </span></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Continentals, for their part, have often confused the destitution of rationality for an invitation to refuse the demand for rigor and systematic coherency, in favor of an engrossing exegetical interpretation that deflects anything but </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">scholarship</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">. And yet in doing so, their purported radicalism reverts to conservatism, and their purported anti-academicism reappears in the guise of an objection-repellent specialization. For what else could one do once truth has been deposed, once representation holds no sway over the wills of the strong, once the ontological difference precludes the objectification of Being, or once the cunning of desire overturns every cunning of reason back onto itself? What can we, contemporaries, hope for besides toast to the long sought freedom from the shackles of reason, from the Westernized hegemony, from the patriarchal desire, or from the metaphysical obsession? What can we strive for, except to exert a perpetual vigilance against those who, in the name of truth, seek to confront us with the force of reasons? What are we to do but to revert into our cozy corners, and pledge, before an insular wall, not to let these spooks haunt us any more? </span></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span><br />
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</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The result is clear: in what becomes an exacerbated skepticism, historicists patronizingly brush off the attempts to enter into rational deliberation, and not just historical apprehension. Everything is decided for them, until the next 'big thing' out of France acquires guru status and 'breaks the history of the world in two'. Until the next event, metaphysical beginning, act of divine violence, or advent <i>ex nihilo</i> interrupts the stability of the world, rendered otherwise immobile. The obsession with stylistic exuberance passes on, as a sign of spiritual elevation, and everything that reeks of being mundane, of being perhaps immediately comprehensible, is suspected of harboring authoritarian prejudices and is symptomatic of positivist shallowness. The impenetrability of discursive obscurity guarantees that one may dedicate a lifetime to deciphering rather that weaving, and thus philosophy becomes a perpetual deferral of its task, with a presumed <i>modesty </i>camouflaging what in truth enacts stagnancy, a courtesy that veils an order. Twenty years of Aristotle before Nietzsche, no less, ordains the Master! Isn't this exactly the observe of Searle's call for us to 'drop all the bad 18th Century' terminology and its parochial excesses in one fell swoop? </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Perhaps the single most blunt exemplar proper to this pathological tradition comes with Lacan's declaration before a court of agigated, revolutionary-thirsty students: "You all want a Master, you will get it!". Indeed, there is in the political and artistic inflections of Continentally oriented theorists and students a paradoxical congruence between the need for liberation and absolute submission. An urgency to give away that which binds becomes indiscernible from an absolute bindedness, the cult of the individual, the enslavement of the passions, and all the other perils for those who insist on freeing thought from the shackles of reason. Such is the paradox: absolute freedom from rational constraint becomes equivalent to the absolute constraint. Is this not the cunning of reason, after all? This much Kant knew; reason is the condition of possibility for freedom. We are gripped by norms, and the normative dimension of our being is that in which we become beings that are capable of challenging, revising, and endorsing; indeed, of judging and making commitments. One gives away freedom along with reason; one disowns one's capacity to partake in the </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">sensus communis </i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">as </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">the disguised vanity of the skeptic purports to avoid domination</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">.</span></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span><br />
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</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> All of this to say, that in freeing oneself from the (scientific) kernel that illuminates the rational demands for rigor and justification, one gives away that which allowed oneself to engage in debate in the first place. The power of deliberation becomes deflated in the great market for theories, before which one may, at best, choose and hope to <i>understand</i>, but never <i>question</i> or <i>challenge</i>. This is the obverse of the anti-critical nod towards intuition; the normative envelopment of judgment and intellection is given over in the name of an experience which reason cannot touch. In the name of the 'subject', 'culture', 'being', or whatever other deflationary icon for the profane to adore, every commitment becomes weary, and the revolutionary stupor reveals itself for what it is: a liberal, if not 'democratic', relativism. It should come as no surprise then that the moment of <i>opening of liberation</i> is the obverse of the <i>closing of deliberation</i>. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">8) What to do in these confused times? The task ahead is perhaps somewhat obvious: philosophy cannot afford to disconnect itself from the exigencies of its time- it must preserve from science the passion for systematic rigor and formal coherency. It must applaud the scientific </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">irreverence</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> for tradition, in its capacity and ambition to call into question any claim, at any time, albeit </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">not all of them at once</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, as Sellars knew. At the same time, it must appropriate its </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">reverence</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> for the rational scrutiny without which philosophy dissolves into sophistry, and gives away its discursive richness. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span><br />
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</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But it must also applaud the political <i>irreverence</i> towards institutional sedimentation, against the prescription of arbitrarily assigned limits. It must wage war against the sedentary and unspoken rule that can be brought to sight only after patient examination of that which conditions it. That is, it must also appropriate the <i>political and artistic</i> reverence for the unruliness of spirit, for the philological obsession to unearth the roots from a past that unknowingly binds us to an immobile present, and for the affirmative purchase of thought to edify and not just challenge, to revisit and not just renew, ever anew. Systematic rigor without synthetic ambition is indeed too small, but synthetic ambition without systematic rigor is indeed too reckless. Neither the thoughtless enclosure of the Church of the Book, elevated by the adoration of the bovine aestheticist, nor the soulless enclosure of the instrumental demand, with its desacration of every lead bestowed to us by those who came before us, in the name of an enlightenment, far too dim to be worthy of the name. <br />
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Only the conjunction of the two poles, escaping from their self-proclaimed solemnity, can mobilize a significant philosophical traversal of our time. It is ours. </span></div>Daniel Sacilottohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06107600124995445921noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6580039155018603814.post-56554732567786415472012-03-18T22:55:00.012-07:002012-03-18T23:04:47.477-07:00On Sellars and the Inconsistent Triad: Brassier and Brandom<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifSmSnz1FuyVaH8VWAtvECc0InFsq89YY-S9ULTt948qFq-Oo7MjphVDH6hQBreK_kY4BFqTRMkJOky-Hzm0BNhbVMvv4zqPGndv2YqTTz9ClVY1Ql7GKj4UWTSsrMFmFYBghGYs-0KTPb/s1600/thready.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="576" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifSmSnz1FuyVaH8VWAtvECc0InFsq89YY-S9ULTt948qFq-Oo7MjphVDH6hQBreK_kY4BFqTRMkJOky-Hzm0BNhbVMvv4zqPGndv2YqTTz9ClVY1Ql7GKj4UWTSsrMFmFYBghGYs-0KTPb/s640/thready.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: xx-large;"><br />
On Sellars and the Inconsistent Triad:</b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span style="font-size: large;">- Brassier and Brandom -</span></span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">________________________________</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; line-height: 11.55pt; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 11.55pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I have been continuing my study of Sellars' Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, and I think a few crucial points are worth making in relation to Ray Brassier's (2010) presentation of the rejection of the Myth of the Given, at the excellent conference To Have Done With Life.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/RJNQqmkJ1yE?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe><span style="background-color: white;"> </span></span></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
The point in contention concerns how Sellars responds to a quandary concerning the construal of sense contents. Sellars considers the following inconsistent triad:<br />
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A) 'S senses red sense content x' entails 'S non inferentially believes (knows) that x is red.'<br />
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B) The ability to sense sense contents is unacquired<br />
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C). The capacity to have classificatory belieds of the form 'x is F' is acquired.<br />
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In Brandom's study guide to EPM he claims that Sellars drops A, since the latter is a version of the Myth of the Given, i.e. the belief that certain experiential states can serve as foundations for beliefs and epistemic states just by virtue of having them. Now, the interest thing is that Brassier claimed in Zagreb that Sellars endorsed A and C, and refused B instead. With this in mind I was trying to figure out why these discrepancies obtained in their respective readings, and what I thought was going on. <br />
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What Brandom argues is that A must fail for Sellars in favor of a new account of thoughts and sensations, at the order of justification and causation, respectively. Thus, he thinks such an account must disassociate epistemic states which concern the intentionality of thoughts and beliefs, from the non-epistemic realm of causes which concerns the causal order of sensations. This is part of what Sellars envisions as an integration of sensa into the scientific image of thought, as opposed to reifying non-conceptual immediacy as a phenomenological bedrock for the underdetermination of all posterior intentional states. Thus, Sellars contends that linguistic intentionality must be predated by a kind of psychological intentionality, i.e. experience is epistemically mute, both at the level of objectual individuation (Husserl) and of holistic integrated comportments (Heidegger). I shall suggest below why this is an issue of particular importance within the contemporary debates concerning epistemology and psychology that have become central in much philosophy of mind, and in particular in the dispute between externalists and internalists. The point to stress, for the moment, is simply that Sellars takes sensible experiences to be non-cognitive in character, and thus refuses to reify them as foundational items for higher order intentionality. If so, then how could Sellars be said to endorse A in any sense, like Brassier stipulates? <br />
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Now, I think that what Brassier was trying to convey by saying that Sellars retains A and drops B is the fact that non-inferentially acquired states (i.e. causally triggered states) are not for this reason unacquired, since one can give an evolutionary story for how organisms and species come to be in these sorts of states. These states are not miraculously divined capacities, and that much is certainly also a crucial rejoinder that Sellars makes to the Cartesian account of sensory transparency. Now, the delicate issue here is that non-inferentially acquired states can amount to knowledge if the subject is imbedded within the space of reasons, i.e. if the subject is not just capable of reliably responding to the situation in question, but also knows that he/she is reliable in doing so. This means that for a non-inferentially acquired state to count as a knowledge, the subject must be capable of responding to a hypothetical challenge to his endorsement. <br />
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The examples McDowell gives are simple and excellent: one directly comes to observe that one's neighbor is at home when one sees the neighbor's car parked in his parking lot; one does not need to make an inference to arrive at this state. Yet for this state to count as a case of observational knowledge, it must be possible for the us to respond to being challenged about the issue: "couldn't have he taken the bus to work?", in which case I must be able to provide a justification for my claims, or perhaps, revise my commitment and accept that my belief was not a good one. So, to return to the inconsistent triad: the idea behind reading Sellars as endorsing A would be to say that there is a sense in which non-inferential states which serve as observation reports can count as knowledge. Yet one must resist the idea that this entails these capacities are unacquired, since they surely require a period of conditioning and acculturation, i.e. one learns to see that one's neighbor is home on the basis of seeing the car present, and knowing oneself to be reliably reporting in such cases. And even if this capacity required at some stage inferential procedures, the point is that there it is possible to be in a state of knowing that was not arrived at by means of inference: this is what Sellars famously calls language entry transitions, of which perception is the paradigm case.<br />
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Indeed, as Brassier has highlighted more recently, this is what Sellars' thinks in terms of the disambiguation between doing things for a reason and things because of reasons. The former does not require intellection or sapience, while the latter requires that one be engrossed in the logical space of reasons, and thus be capable in engaging in meta-discursive talk about the rules one is following. The former case is exhibited uniformly by sentient creatures and machines, and simply play a functional role, i.e. a thermometer may reliably report on the room's temperature, but it lacks knowledge since it cannot know of its reliability or respond to being challenged. This means that although non-inferential capacity to issue observation reports can amount to knowledge, they only do so on condition that these reports/capacities be properly integrated within the capacity to draw inferences from them, i.e. to be able to undertake logical revision of beliefs and states. Thus, not all non-inferentially acquired states are knowledge.<br />
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However, I think that what is probably at stake for Brandom in the three claims is the idea that insofar as we are speaking about sensory states qua causally triggered states, then these are in strict Sellarsian terminology not epistemic in any case. I believe that he would insist in that we need to be careful not to conflate perceptual states which involve judgments on the basis of perception to function as language-entry moves, with sensations of sense contents qua non-epistemic causally triggered states. And the idea is plainly that while non-inferential perceptual states can be epistemic insofar as they entail that one judges (that some x is the case), sensations qua purely causal phenomena intractable to the conceptual domain of judgment remains resolutely non-epistemic in character. <br />
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Brandom's proposal is to read Sellars along these lines and to say that the capacity to bear sense contents is correspondingly unacquired in the simple sense that such a capacity not gained by virtue of the process of conditioning that we associate with knowledge-acquisition, i.e. hypothesis building, projectibility, etc. So, he thinks that Sellars endorses B in the inconsistent triad. Brandom thinks that Sellars' sense of non-acquisition is narrower than the sense in which Brassier reads him, i.e. he does not take unacquired states to imply that the capacity to have the appropriate causal onsets requires a complex story in the development of the organism's growth, and more broadly its evolutionary history within a species. For in this latter sense 'acquired' appears almost trivially equivalent to 'having appeared in time for some reason', and he thinks that can't possibly be of philosophical interest.<br />
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With this distinction in mind, the disavowal of A seems to run from the disambiguation between sense/perception. If sensation is epistemically mute, then we must distinguish perceptual beliefs qua non-inferential states, and which are already of facts- propositionally articulated by universal subsumption, from the sensory apprehension of particulars. So the idea would be that Sellars drops A in order to distinguish sensation from perception, deflating sense-datum theories, and running with the idea, proposed by (C), that the capacity to be in epistemic states is acquired by acculturation and a process of conditioning which itself might be inferential, without for this reason vitiating the non-inferential character of the states it comprises. <br />
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Perhaps a route out of this dilemma is to claim that Sellars actually endorses (A), (B) and (C) in qualified manners, by reshuffling the terms, albeit he seeks to rescue crucial points from the three claims in their usual form.<br />
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From (A) he seeks to rescue the idea that perceptual states may constitute non-inferential knowings; but he will distinguish conceptually enveloped perceptual judgments from non-conceptual and so non-epistemic sensory states.<br />
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From (B) he seeks to rescue the idea that sensory states are causally acquired capacities while accepting that they are non-conditioned by cultural learning in the sense defined above; so he will distinguish causally triggered sensory states from causally triggered epistemic states.<br />
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From (C) he seeks to rescue the idea that epistemic states require cultural conditioning and so are acquired in that sense; but he will disambiguate between the evolutionary rationality of sensory acquisition that explains causally triggering non-epistemic states, and the causal triggering of non-inferentially acquired beliefs as epistemic states that function as language-entry transitions within the logical space of reasons.<br />
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Thus, both sensations and perceptual judgments are causally triggered in a broad sense, and so acquired, i.e. the evolutionary sense in which nothing happens ex nihilo. We learn to enter a language much in the same way as we are causally delivered into sensory states, we develop capacities by virtue of our evolutionary history, and our causal interactions with the environment. The crucial difference is that classificatory beliefs require conditioning within the sensus communis and social order of language, and sapience marks the transition from merely causally triggered states to the epistemic capacities associated with entering a conceptual economy. But the capacity to have epistemic states, while causally acquired and non-inferential like sensibility, involves a narrower sense of conditioning. We move from merely causal non-inferential state of being to non-inferential knowledge when we move from sentience to sapience, from pure mechanical process to knowledge.<br />
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Thus, we should insist, in that proposition (C) is endorsed, since perceptual judgments are acquired causally, both in the way that sense contents are, but also in the narrower sense in which they require conditioning into language. <br />
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So the tricky word here is 'acquisition', since it is used in three ways:<br />
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a) Generally causal: in this sense both classificatory beliefs and sense contents are acquired (C, holds, but B fails)<br />
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b) Narrowly/Culturally causal: in this sense only classificatory beliefs are acquired (both B and C hold)<br />
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c) Non-inferential: In this sense both classificatory beliefs and sense contents are unacquired (C fails, B holds)<br />
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The trick concerns disentangling these three senses and realizing that while perceptual knowings of the sort required for classificatory belief are also causally triggered, they require a narrow sense of cultural acculturation which distinguishes the sentient strata of species-relative general causality, from full blown conceptual rationality and knowledge. By the same token, sensations are generally acquired in the causal sense, but unacquired in the cultural sense. Both are non-inferentially triggered, and so causally derived in the general sense, but ony knowings involve acculturation and social conditioning in their acquisition, and are so acquired also in the narrow sense. I think this goes back to what Tripplet and Devries call attention to by disambiguating between non-inferential knowing, and independent knowledge. The former simply means that a given piece of knowledge did not result from an inferential procedure. The latter implies the claim that there are knowings of given facts that may be had independently of any other knowings. Sellars endorses the possibility of the former, but denies the latter. Knowledge can be non-inferentially triggered in perception, but in any case, if it is to count as knowledge, one needs to be able to integrate it within a nexus of other beliefs that suffice to render such states justified, i.e. embedding in the space of reasons.<br />
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I think this might be why also Sellars does not flatly say which of the three propositions he would drop; he reworks the triad by amplifying the descriptive scope.<br />
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<b>II - Some Brief Considerations About Sellarsianism</b><br />
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The question that obviously suggests itself is whether in fact it is fair to construe perceptual representation as involving something like conceptual/linguistic judgment. This is the heart of Tyler Burge's contentions against Sellars, and I think they map onto the tricky debacle between externalists and internalists.<br />
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On the one hand, it might seem as if Burge's contention that Sellars over-intellectualizes perception by enveloping it conceptually is really a terminological issue. This is because Sellars is perfectly aware that organisms have a pre-conceptual capacity to react to their environments in reliable or unreliable ways; this is the whole point of RDRD's as a condition for sentience, as Brandom emphasizes. However, by reserving the term perception for the conceptual achievement knit to judgments, Sellars seeks to render it epistemically productive as part of what characterizes sapient activity, and full blown linguistic rationality. Thus, while Sellars reserves a role for sensation simpliter, the latter is plainly non-epistemic in itself, or more precisely is indifferent to the distinction between reasons and causes, i.e. the latter is only a distinction possible from within the normative space which adjudicates claims on the basis of their justification and inferential role. Only creatures embedded in the logical space of reasons could ever articulate knowledge. One could thus just say that perception in Burge's sense would fall within sensation in Sellars' terminology, without there being a substantial disagreement at stake. However, there is a more profound non-terminological issue at stake, and this is the crux of the debate. <br />
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Whereas intentionality remains, for Sellars, restricted to the epistemic domain of inferentially articulated beliefs and reasons, Burge ascribes intentional content to non-conceptual, perceptual states. Sellars warned against this because it became the gulf for versions of the Myth according to which experiential primitives could serve as justifications for conceptually articulates beliefs. However, Burge dislodges intentionality from knowledge; sentient creatures have intentional states without the necessity for conceptual rationality. Thus, although Burge agrees with Sellars in that the primitive ability to have experiences would not be conceptual and so would be not-epistemic, it is nevertheless representational insofar as perceptual states have conditions for veridicality which explain the conditions for success or failure in the performance of a perceptual faculty in relation to its environment. The result is that while for Sellars the domain of sensibilia is delegated to the scientific study of the neurophysiology of the individual, bereft of any appeals to intentionality, Burge follows the nativist lead in thinking rather that perceptual psychology is key to understanding perception as a representational capacity. The latter option becomes then that of the possibility of ascribing intentional states and representational capacities to non-sapient creatures, or whether we cannot do this lest we make a category mistake. The question is whether something like representational states, of the sort that host conditions for veridicality, can be built into the Sellarsian account of sensing as a purely causal-mechanical functional process void of epistemic valence. I think the stakes here are far from clear.<br />
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This is, I think, an incredibly interesting juncture of the debate, since it constitutes a crucial dividing line within naturalist approaches to the philosophy of mind today.</span></div><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 11.55pt;"><o:p></o:p></span>Daniel Sacilottohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06107600124995445921noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6580039155018603814.post-39730891453004950072012-03-11T20:48:00.008-07:002012-03-11T20:55:21.436-07:00In Defense of Semantic Holism<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhplVpLlg9nXTrrlZ_WqhFDW2PUOptVDh-6n63dS-xm7EGY3mpGzQySujWk3iweiC0RCg83lXzGdGoh7aofGZaDhM38ieqS_-pU7K1pByOCW8KAFM2y_kSFkqnU7K5d3JGC9PVZ-MuauzNE/s1600/web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhplVpLlg9nXTrrlZ_WqhFDW2PUOptVDh-6n63dS-xm7EGY3mpGzQySujWk3iweiC0RCg83lXzGdGoh7aofGZaDhM38ieqS_-pU7K1pByOCW8KAFM2y_kSFkqnU7K5d3JGC9PVZ-MuauzNE/s640/web.jpg" width="454" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="font-size: xx-large; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>- In Defense of Semantic Holism -<br />
</b></span><b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Brandom vs. Fodor/Lepore</span></b></div><div style="font-size: xx-large; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>___________________________________</b></span></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></span></b></div><b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 200%;">Introduction</span></b><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
In this paper I propose to assess Jerry Fodor's and Ernest Lepore's (Fodor 2000; Fodor and Lepore 2005) arguments against <i>conceptual role semantics</i> (henceforth CRS). In the first section I present their main contention against those forms of CRS which hold that the internal role of a symbol(s) determines its content or meaning (henceforth CCRS). Their core argument is designed to establish the implausibility of all versions of CCRS, by showing how the latter is forced into an irresolvable dilemma concerning precisely to what the extent conceptual role determines conceptual content. I follow Greenberg and Harman (2005) in arguing that their argument fails to establish that such implausibility obtains, showing that the dilemma that CCRS is allegedly forced into is a false one, and proceed to qualify some of their contentions.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> In the second section, I focus on Fodor and Lepore's (2005) arguments against a particular brand of CCRS in the <i>inferential role semantics</i> (henceforth IRS) advanced by Robert Brandom (1995, 2005). First, I take issue with Fodor and Lepore's claim that IRS is incapable to give a behavioral account of concept use, being forced to a quandary concerning underdetermination which renders the functional account of conceptual specification in terms of rule following explanatorily vacuous. I then dispute their claims for semantic atomism and compositionality, waged against IRS and the latter's commitment to semantic holism. I refute the claim that IRS is incapable of explaining how concept acquisition is possible, on pains of circularity, and that as a result it sets insuperable obstacles for a theory of learning. My contention, following Brandom (2005), is that IRS can provide an account for those processes required for learning without advocating compositionality. In other words, within the framework of IRS, all the standard features associated with learning obtain while endorsing a semantic holistic account, thus showing that semantic atomism is not the only plausible candidate for theorizing learning. <br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I - Semantic Black Boxes?<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> One may characterize CRS as a thesis about semantics, or one about the philosophy of mind. In the former sense, the meaning of a linguistic expression is nothing but the systematic relations it bears to other expressions in the language. In the latter sense, the content of a mental state is nothing but the systematic relations it bears to other mental states. In both cases, these relations may be broadly understood to be informational, causal, inferential, or otherwise. This is important to note, since Fedor and Lepore reserve the name CRS for those theories which deliberately conflate the two levels of explanation, and so for them crucially information-theories are <i>not</i> a species of CSR, but actually in conflict with it. For them, it is the confusion between the mental and the semantic that is a "bad idea" wholesale, since it results in a view of conceptual content delivered entirely to an internalized symbolic economy, which results in creating spurious epistemic impasses for any theory of communication. Since information-theories do not depend on anything like a pragmatics of language delivered to an internalized system of inferences or rules, they don't have to run the epistemological gauntlet Fodor and Lepore deem fatal for CSR, in creating an insurmountable gulf for communication. It is the construal of this epistemic gulf, allegedly besieging CSR, that shall occupy me for the rest of this section.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> In both its semantic and mental aspects, CRS has it that the role that a symbol plays is to be understood in holistic terms, or what we might call a 'top bottom' approach: rather than construing content from the 'bottom up' taking it to be derived out of semantic primitives from which complex expressions are composed, CRS denies that content is intrinsic to any symbol or state prior to its use within a symbolic economy. In this regard, CSR is the likely position to hold for anyone who, following Quine or Sellars, adopts deflationary standards for representation, truth, or reference. More precisely, rather than construing representations as higher-order abstractions which derive their content or meaning from foundational semantic primitives, conceptual representations are to be construed as <i>rules</i> for relating symbols to other symbols<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/In%20this%20paper%20I%20propose%20to%20assess%20Fodor%20and%20Lapore.docx#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[1]</span></span></span></a>. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> In this regard, notwithstanding Fodor and Lepore's reluctance to conflate issues of semantics with those of epistemology or psychology, it is instructive to note that CRS originates as a way to rework the problematic of representation in an epistemological context. Both Quine and Sellars are reacting to peculiar iterations of foundationalism, and they take the latter to be their primary targets. For the former, the main interlocutors were those in favor of the <i>rationalist</i> position according to which representational content was negotiated through the distinction between analytic and synthetic truths, as well as dubiously inflated conceptions of meaning, synonymy and reference<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/In%20this%20paper%20I%20propose%20to%20assess%20Fodor%20and%20Lapore.docx#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[2]</span></span></span></a>. For the latter, the main interlocutors were those empiricist forms of foundationalism that began by distinguishing that which was immediately given to the mind, from that which was added by the mind<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/In%20this%20paper%20I%20propose%20to%20assess%20Fodor%20and%20Lapore.docx#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[3]</span></span></span></a>. Although in its full scope, CRS needn't be aligned to the strong behaviorist bent of its forefathers, it should be stressed that the articulation between the semantic and mental aspects of CRS hinges precisely on whether epistemology ought to be thought about in continuity with such deflationary standards. Such an alternative has it that any theory of knowledge will not concerned with concept <i>possession</i>, but rather with a functional account of concept <i>use</i> or <i>role</i>. As Brandom puts it elegantly: "I accept what I take to have been a lesson Kant taught: to think of concepts as rules or norms we bind ourselves by... For us (post-) Kantians, the principal question does not concern our grip on concepts (e.g. are they clear and distinct?), but their grip on us." (Brandom, 2005, Pg. 334). And again, despite the pragmatic bent that Brandom's inferentialist program gives to what is a variegated assortment of positions under the label 'CSR', the core idea that remains in every case is that understanding representations in terms of conceptual role in the philosophy of mind is just the obverse of taking the semantic content of a symbol or expression to be defined by the role it plays to other symbols. In any case, in what follows I continue Greenberg and Harman's (2005) liberal use of the term CRS to understand "any theory that holds that the content of mental states or symbols is determined by any part of their role or use in thought." As indicated above, this needn't be constrained to inferential role, although it is the latter that will ultimately be my focus. Fortunately, nothing in my argument will depend on this difference in terminology, although I hope to have indicated why the discrepancy is philosophically grounded, and not just a stylistic divergence.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="layout-grid-mode: char; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"> That being said, Fodor and Lepore's main line of attack against CRS attempts to target those variants of CSR for which conceptual role constitutively involves something like the <i>internal</i> usage of terms, i.e. where having a concept would imply having internalized the systems of rules, inferences or implications tethered to such a concept. Such an economy would entail that the meaning of a symbol is holistically articulated, insofar as its content derives from the relations it bears to the other symbols in the theory. It is in this sense in which CSR stands for a semantic holism. The argument they offer is relatively straightforward: how is it possible for two people to ever share a concept, and so how is it possible that communication could ever take place, if it is thoroughly implausible that one's internalized system of inferences and implications, associated with a given word/symbol, is shared in its totality? Since the notion of a shared language becomes immensely problematic, so does communication as an intersubjective capacity. The argument is thus one which is simultaneously about communication and one about psychology; it is formulated in the following passage:</span><span style="line-height: 200%;"> "How can we use the form of words “It’s raining” to communicate to you our belief that it’s raining unless the word “raining” means the same to all of us? And, how can it mean the same to all of us if, on the one hand, its meaning is determined by its inferential role and, on the other hand, no two people could conceivably agree on all the inferences in which “raining” occurs (to say nothing of all the “correct inferences” in which it occurs)?" (Fedor and Lepore, 2005, pp 186).</span><span style="line-height: 200%;"> As interpreted by Greenberg and Harman, the genera gist of the argument that Fodor and Lepore provide can be synthesized as follows, qualifying their reconstruction for clarity (Greenberg and Harman, 2005, pp 28):<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> The Argument for Epistemic/Semantic Opacity<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> 1) <i>Empirical Prediction - </i>For any pair of concept-mongers, S and S', the set of inferences/implications that they internally associate with a symbol <i>x</i> in a given language L are (likely) to be dissimilar.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><span style="line-height: 150%;">With this in mind, CRS may pursue one of two possibilities. Either:</span></i><span style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">2) For any given pair of symbols <i>a</i> and <i>b</i> in a given language L, <i>a </i>has the same conceptual content than <i>b</i> if and only if there is no internalized relation of inference/implication from/to <i>a</i> to/from another symbol (or set of symbols) <i>c</i> that is not an internalized relation of inference/implication from/to <i>b</i> to/from another symbol (or set of symbols) <i>c. <o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in; text-align: justify;"><i><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Or <o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">3) For any given pair of symbols <i>a</i> and <i>b</i> in a given language L, <i>a </i>has the same conceptual content than <i>b</i> if and only if there is a subset <i>d</i> of specifiable internal relations of inference/implication from/to <i>a</i> to/from another symbol (or set of symbols) <i>c</i> that is coextensive with a subset <i>e</i> of specifiable internalized relations inference/implication from/to <i>b</i> to/from another symbol (or set of symbols) <i>c.</i><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in; text-align: justify;"><i><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> If (2) obtains, Fodor and Lepore argue that:<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(4a) It is likely that for any two concept-mongers S and S' whose concepts are articulated in the terms of a language L, no symbol <i>x</i> of L has the same conceptual role for S than it does for S'.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(5a) As a result, no two people ever mean the same thing or convey the same conceptual role, given that their thoughts/expressions lack the same content. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(6a) No people deploy the same intentional laws, and so CSR fails as a theory of communication, i.e. no two people ever share or understand another person's concepts. <br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Although Fodor and Lepore take (5) and (6) to be thoroughly implausible, it must be said that they offer no independent argument for it. For a proponent of CRS could consistently maintain that we <i>may</i> be able to clarify exhaustively the conceptual role of a given symbol within our linguistic economy, however difficultly, through progressive interlocution (for example, perhaps through what Brandom calls 'deontic scorekeeping'). It seems possible two people might come to agree with respect to their use for a subset of symbols that they share the exact same role, however minimal such a subset might be (perhaps some primitive forms of mathematical concepts might be of this 'clear and distinct sort?). This might be true, even if we ought to accept that for the most part we do not really 'agree' with each other on the basis of sharing the same concepts or not, and even if we might naively believe that we do. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Indeed, nothing in the abovementioned argument indicates what it is precisely about epistemic opacity that renders <i>agreement</i> impossible; it simply entails that, strictly speaking, it is overwhelmingly possible concept-sharing is not a reasonable standard to base our theories of communication. Yet, the CRS-defender would insist, this has no bearing on our capacity to agree with others or not; Fodor and Lepore confuse <i>agreement</i> which is a matter of assent, with <i>knowledge</i>. Let us pause in this issue for a moment.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> The tacit premise at work here seems to be that agreement presupposes knowledge, i.e. one cannot agree to <i>x</i> if one does not <i>know</i> what <i>x</i> is. And since, if (1) obtains, such knowledge would be so remotely accessible, it would follow CRS delivers us into an epistemological black box for intersubjective conceptual knowledge, as a result of its semantic commitments. But, again, this needn't be the case. For one might insist that all agreement requires is that some suitably restricted set of shared commitments about the inferential role that a symbol bears be sufficient to mobilize agreement or disagreement, <i>without for this reason</i>, accepting that only such a subset is relevant for the meaning of the concept in question, i.e. assuming that premise (3) fails. Thus, one might claim, all that agreement/disagreement requires is that one might be capable of suitably isolating those inferences/implications that might be relevant for the concept determination that the users of the symbol may in a given context. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Greenberg and Harman stress this point in consideration of color concepts; there it is clear that concept boundaries might be dissimilar between two subjects, and this doesn't preclude them from agreement "... the boundaries between what counts for them as <i>red </i> or <i>orange</i> are slightly different and the boundaries between what counts for them as <i>green</i> and <i>blue</i> are slightly different. Still, they disagree about a color when John calls it <i>red</i> and Mary calls it <i>green</i>." (Greenberg and Harman, 2005, pp. 19) <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> In any case, nothing in Fodor and Lepore's argument seems to give reasons for why such opacity in the sense defined would be so remotely inconceivable, or lead to such calamitous epistemic consequences, or such dire constraints for communicational practice. Greenberg and Harman present another related defense for CRS, by distinguishing an unstated assumption that motivates their case. The assumption in question is the following one:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1a) If all aspects of internal use are relevant to meaning and the aspects of one person's internal use are not exactly the same as those of another person's, then the two people do not mean the same thing by their terms. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> The that point Greenberg and Harman wish to stress by pointing this assumption out is that it is consistent to hold that although all aspects of internal use are <i>relevant</i> to determining conceptual meaning/content, the question of which aspect(s) bears on the meaning of a term can be taken to be a contingent matter relative to contextual conditions or utterance/use. This means that, for any given specifiable implicational/inferential relation that a symbol holds to another, saying that such a relation is <i>relevant</i> to its meaning is <i>not</i> to say that in <i>every case</i> a variation in those relations will result in a change of <i>meaning</i>. By the same token, just because any modification in such relation might not result in a change of meaning in a given case, it does not mean that in <i>every case</i> such a variation will not result in a change of meaning, i.e. that the relation is <i>irrelevant</i> to the internalized conceptual content. The examples proposed by Greenberg and Harman are excellent: "To say that a given aspect of internal use is relevant to meaning is to say that there is a possible case in which a difference in that aspect makes for a difference in meaning, not to say that a difference in that aspect always makes for a difference in meaning. (Similarly, whether the number of students in a class is odd or even depends on the number of students in the class, but that does not imply that two classes with different numbers of students cannot both have an even number of students)" (Ibid, pp. 19). And of course, such a revision is completely compatible with the idea that certain uses might be relevant to the meaning of the concept in <i>every case</i>, i.e. it is true for every case that the concept <i>odd</i> cannot be taken to be applied to the same situation as the concept <i>even</i>, or <i>decimal</i> (understood in their standard definitional roles). This means that (2) above ought to be revised to read the following: <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">2') For any given pair of symbols <i>a</i> and <i>b</i> in a given language L, and in a given dialogic circumstance <i>p,</i> <i>a </i>has the same conceptual content than <i>b</i> if and only if <u>for <i>p</i></u><i> </i>there is no <i>contextually relevant</i> internalized relation of inference/implication from/to <i>a</i> to/from another symbol (or set of symbols) <i>c</i> that is not a <i>contextually relevant</i> internalized relation of inference/implication from/to <i>b</i> to/from another symbol (or set of symbols)<i> c. <o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Once this is pointed out, it turns out that contextually irrelevant relations of inference/implication may be altered without thereby changing the concept's meaning. This is obviously not analogous to (3), since the irrelevance of a set of given relations for a concept is merely contextually defined. The question here becomes how to understand 'relevance' in Greenberg and Harman's sense more precisely. The following is a proposal for (Relevance):<br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><span style="line-height: 150%;">(Relevance): </span></b><span style="line-height: 150%;">For every inferential/implicational relation R from/to a given symbol <i>a</i> to/from another symbol (or set of symbols) <i>c</i>, there is a circumstance <i>p</i>, such that a change in R entails a change in the internalized conceptual content associated with <i>a</i>, such that if the relevant relation R is altered, one wouldn't count as using that concept. <br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> The requirement for (Relevance) allows one to stipulate about the role that seemingly <i>contingent </i>relations bear for CCRS. Interestingly, this issue seems proximally to be part of what motivates Fodor and Lepore's (2005) questions to IRS. They ask:<br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 1in; margin-right: 1.5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> "We’re also not clear what Brandom thinks about the status of utterly contingent inferences like “If it’s a plant in my backyard and it’s taller than 6 feet, then it’s a tree”. he does apparently endorse the idea that “[the concept-constitutive inferences] must include … those that are materially [sic] correct” (MIE, p. 657). But what he gives as examples are two he borrows from Sellars: “A is to the East of B” --> “B is to the West of A” and “Lightning is seen” --> “Thunder will be heard soon”. We find this puzzling since the first of these strikes us as arguably conceptually necessary (whatever that means) and the second strikes as arguably nomologically necessary (whatever that means). So even if we granted that both are concept-constitutive, we would still want to know whether clear cases of purely contingent hypotheticals are too; and, if they aren’t, how Brandom proposes to do without an analytic/synthetic distinction." (Fedor and Lepore, 2005, pp. 183)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 1in; margin-right: 1.5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-top: 12.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> This is of course the core of the dilemma for CCRS for the choice between (2) and (3). Greenberg and Harman's suggestion is that we can accept both that every inferential relation is concept constitutive, that is to say <i>relevant</i>, while accepting that contingent inferences obtain in the sense in that such relevance is capable of altering conceptual constitution within specific context of use. Or put the point somewhat differently: even if we accept conceptual role <i>determines</i> meaning, this needn't entail that meaning is <i>identical</i> to conceptual role. To return to our earlier example: that the concept <i>even numbered classroom members</i> may be correlated at a given time and context with a cardinal extensional determinant (say, <i>two</i>) as what specifies its conceptual content, such a determinant could change without <i>necessarily</i> altering the integrity of the concept, e.g. say two more class members arrive late. With this in mind, Fodor and Lepore might nevertheless insist that in order to isolate those inferential relations that are context sensitive requires something from CCRS which no proponent of the theory has been prepared to satisfactorily give. Namely, they would require, as they do for IRS, an explanation of <i>why</i> and <i>how</i> are the relevant contextual circumstances which determine conceptual content in the use of a symbol defined. In other words, on which basis ought we determine that it is still a concept that we are using and not another? How do we know which inferential relations support which conceptual content at a given time and in a given circumstance, without defining something like analytic and synthetic properties?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-top: 12.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Translational accounts of meaning, for example, define that the meaning of an expression <i>a</i> in a language L is determined by the capacity to find a paraphrase/translation for the term in another language L', nothing is said about which relations come to bear in which circumstances. Thus, is if <i>a</i> plays a functionally equivalent conceptual role to an expression <i>b</i> in a language L', such that they may be translated one into the other, it will not follow that <i>every</i> difference will result in a difference in translation. This leaves the problem of how to construe the role of contingent inferences/implications/relations unanswered, even if as Greenberg and Harman claim, the strategy of the argument is merely meant to indicate that Fedor and Lepore would need quite a bit more to discount the breadth of positions associated with CCRS than their argument provides. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-top: 12.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> That being said, the second horn of the dilemma, that is opting for premise (3), fares no better in Fedor and Lepore's eyes, for reasons we can surmise from what we've said above. Their main claim is that if (3) obtains, then the CCRS is forced to accept that:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> (4b) For every symbol a in a language L, its conceptual constitution is merely a subset of the inferential relations that it holds to other symbols in the language (or other languages); such that those relations that do not form a part of this subset can be said to be contingent as opposed to necessary. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(5b) Therefore, for every concept, we can distinguish between the set of semantically constitutive relations which are context-independent (analytic), and those which are context-determined but by the same token not semantically constitutive (synthetic). Both sets together make up the whole of conceptual role associated with any given symbol. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(6b) Therefore, CCRS is committed to the synthetic/analytic distinction.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> We have already seen how Greenberg and Harman reject this assumption in their rejection of premise (3). Namely, by disambiguating conceptual role from meaning, they leave it open that the relevance that any given inferential relation may have to concept constitute won't entail that such a claim is analytic, i.e. context-independent for concept alteration. Additionally, they point out that although traditional accounts of analycity, as castigated by Quine and others, have it that analytic relations/truths are <i>a priori</i>, while it clearly doesn't follow for CCRS that knowledge of the conceptual role for a given symbol is also <i>a priori</i>, even if its semantically constitutive. I won't belabor these points, since they have been dealt with elsewhere. In the next section I propose to examine a second roster of arguments offered by Fodor and Lepore, geared this time towards a specific variant of CCRS, namely Robert Brandom's inferentialist program. <br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">II - In Defense of Semantic Holism<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="layout-grid-mode: char; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> We have already seen how Fodor and Lepore question CCRS as a plausible candidate for a theory of communication on the basis of what they take to be excessive demands for conceptual constitution, resulting in cases of epistemic opacity that vitiate their plausibility. In what follows, I focus on their arguments to extend this line of attack against a specific version of CCRS, namely inferential role semantics, which are designed to show the implausibility of the "top-bottom" approach favored by semantic holism. By the same token, I seek to indicate, following Brandom (2005), that their arguments in favor of semantic atomism fail, i.e. why their presumed defense of a "bottom-up" approach depends on an unpersuasive case against the semantic holist of an inferentialist bent. With regards to semantic atomism, Fodor and Lepore claim that: <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 1in; margin-right: 1in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> "Qua “bottom-up” theorists, we think something like this: for non-idiomatic expressions in productive languages, the meaning of a sentence is ontologically dependent on the meaning of its subsentential constituents. This is to say, at the very least, that in such languages the sentences have the contents that they do because their constituent expressions have the contents they do, and not vice versa. In fact, we hold this principle in a very strong form; on the one hand, the meaning of a sentence S in a language L must be computable by algorithm from the meanings of its constituents on pain of L being unproductive or S being idiomatic. On the other hand, we know of no reason why it should be possible (algorithmically or otherwise) to recover the mmeanings of the constituents of S from the meaning of S." (Fodor and Lepore, 2005, pp. 182) <br />
<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> By parity of reasoning, in epistemic terms, it will follow that just the content of words is prior to the content of sentences, the content of mental states is prior to judgment, and therefore to the capacity to engage in explicit inferences of the sort IRS thinks constitutes the basis for semantic holism. Put differently, this can be expressed by saying that it is possible to have knowledge-<i>of</i> prior to having knowledge-<i>that</i>, where we should understand that the latter in fact depends or supervenes on the former, both <i>nomologically</i> or <i>ontologically</i> (Ibid). And although Fodor and Lepore think that sentential knowing-that may plausibly be stipulated to enjoy such priority for cases of radical interpretation or translation. In fact, they go even as much to suggest that even language-learning might also exhibit such a priority. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="layout-grid-mode: char; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"> This might seem intuitively at odds with their championing of semantic atomism, but it needn't be so. For it is coherent to claim that there is a basic class of semantic constituents which form the epistemic bedrock of the language learner, and that these constituents are nevertheless sentientially constituted. All that the theory requires is that the subject be capable of deriving the content of derived complex expressions by projection from semantic primitives, as well as analysis of simple constituents, e.g. that learning word-content requires the capacity to have acquired the relevant sentence-contents. This would hold while insisting that the <i>epistemic</i> dependence of word-content on sentence-content does not entail the <i>ontological/nomological</i>-dependence of the latter on the former. Semantic holism, in their view, requires both claims; while semantic atomism is potentially open to the former, and necessarily closed to the latter. As it turns out, their argument will run on the grounds that projectibility and so learning actually seems impossible from a semantic holistic perspective. So they claim, Brandom fails to meet the difficult requirement they set for holism: "</span><span style="line-height: 200%;">Brandom has to show that (and how) word meanings might be ontologically dependent on sentence meanings (rather than vice versa) in a language that’s productive and systematic." (Ibid). </span><span style="line-height: 200%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Their first (peripheral) claim is to dispute the plausibility that any Gentzen-based semantic account for logical terms could serve as a model for lexical or conceptual analysis. Recall that such a framework begins by specifying general operational parameters for logical constants in terms of introduction and elimination rules, in order to then generalize these to circumstance and consequences of application for a given expression in a language (Brandom, 1995, pp 653). Just to use the simplest examples: the introduction rule for the logical-constant for conjunction "&" is "P, Q --> P&Q". Similarly the elimination rule for the same would be "P&Q --> P, Q", etc (Ibid). <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> From the start, Fodor and Lepore protest that it is thoroughly unclear how to deal with the meaning of non-logical terms within such a framework, i.e. singular terms such as "tree" or "red", that are not logical constants. That is, they find it utterly perplexing that one should expect to define introduction or elimination rules for these terms in natural languages, and fear that any such attempt might relapse into question-begging forms of verificationism or surreptitious identification procedures, e.g. "<i>x</i> is a tree iff it is a tree", etc (Fodor and Lepore, 1995, pp 183). <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"> Although this criticism is largely tangential to their main line of attack, we should preemptively notice that it actually misses the point of IRS, which requires that there is no content for a logical constant or singular term that is not definable in terms of its logical conditions for implication and consequence within a language. Therefore, the definition of logical constants is nothing but the grounds on which any such term might acquire any meaning whatsoever, by entering within the inferential economy. Thus, the 'top-bottom' approach advocated by IRS is crucially not concerned with the <i>formal</i> semantics of <i>specified</i> terms within an already given language, but rather with giving a <i>philosophical</i> semantics where the task is to define generally how <i>specifiable</i> items must function in order to be counted as semantically contentful for any language user. The former concerns questions of composition/decomposition and association for the computation of semantic value on the background of an accepted notion of semantic content, while the latter concerns the procedural or pragmatic consideration of how semantic values are correlated with semantic interpretants at large, and not just a specified subset. The latter concerns the articulation between questions of meaning and understanding that, following Dummett, IRS deems essential; Fodor and Lepore elide the distinction. Brandom's own disambiguation of this distinction is highly illuminating: "</span><span style="line-height: 200%;">I am recommending a “top-down” order of semantic explanation, which talks first about what sentences express, and only later about the contribution that the presence of individual words makes to what sentences containing them express. The context is the project I have been calling “philosophical” semantics, by contrast to “formal” semantics. The former concerns how expressions have to be used, or how items must function, in order properly to be thought of as semantically contentful. The latter concerns how, once semantic interpretants of some sort have been associated with some expressions or other items, they can be understood as determining what semantic interpretants are associated with others." (Brandom, 2005, pp 332)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> In short, Brandom insists that while formal semantics can obviate the philosophical-semantic issue about how to coordinate questions of meaning with questions of understanding, and thus the question of how this can be obviated by the formal semantics since it rests on pre-established notion of semantic content. Here the inferentialist focus on the pragmatics or <i>use</i> conditions which are proper to the investigation of philosophical semantics belie the worries that Fodor and Lepore think must apply when defining <i>possession</i> conditions; to 'have' a concept is nothing but to be able to use it and the task for the philosopher then becomes to specify what it means to use the concept correctly in terms of the user's doxastic commitments, e.g. "... to define the inferential role of an expression "&"... one thereby specifies that anyone who is committed to P and committed to Q, is thereby to count also as committed as to P&Q, and that anyone who is committed to P&Q is thereby committed to both P and to Q" (Brandom 2000, pp 62) In this regard, the threat of having to run a specter-invoking slew of verificationist standards come to bear by running a Gentzen-style semantics is moot: the deflationary strategy pursued by IRS renders these terms explanatorily irrelevant, and explains content-preserving use in terms of inference rather than reference, or truth, and so irrespective or any stipulated verification procedures. And although terms such as 'true' or 'reference' might come to bear within the scope of a well-defined formal semantics, as we suggested above, Brandom insists in that they play no part in a philosophical semantics of the sort he is proposing for his IRS. In response to Dummett, he claims: "Formal semantics must be done in an expressively powerful meta-language, and in that context it can be all right to appeal to the expressive capacities of terms such as ‘true’ and ‘refers’. Doing so only becomes a problem when one seeks to appeal to them at the outset of one’s explanatory enterprise in philosophical semantics...My explanatory deflation of ‘true’ and ‘refers’, based on an anaphoric account of their expressive roles, disqualifies them from playing a certain kind of explanatory role in philosophical semantics." (Brandom, 2005, pp. 343)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Incidentally, the issue concerning the split between possession and use conditions maps back onto issues concerning the status of contingent inference within CCRS, within the inferentialist program. In continuity with their earlier attack, Fodor and Lepore argue that the status of contingent sentences remains opaque in Brandom's account at a loss for a analytic/synthetic distinction. I believe Brandom could respond to these worries much like Greenberg and Harman do, as we surmised above, by simply disambiguating between meaning and inferential role; so that contingent sentences may be said to express the subset of those relevant relations/conditions which are context-sensitive, i.e. which although relevant, as all inferences are, to concept constitution, do not for this reason alter the meaning of the concept <i>in every context</i> of use. Of course, the strict inferentialist couldn't accept of <i>contingent</i> inferences if by these we mean that in every such context an alteration of such relation would <i>not</i> result in meaning change for the concept at hand. But this does not require reactivating the synthetic/analytic distinction, since contingent inferences would be simply be defined in terms of their role within context-sensitive contexts, without compromising their relevance for concept constitution. Since there is no difference between conceptual necessity and nomological/ontological necessity for Brandom, the argument we pointed out above deployed as a general strategy for CCSR fails even in its qualified form against IRS. This being said, it goes without saying that to stipulate that <i>purely</i> contingent sentences within an inferentialist account would be trivially true, since IRS systematically excludes any content that would be considered stricto sensu <i>irrelevant</i> for conceptual constitution. As Brandom himself puts it: "Making It Explicit is clear about not treating any inferences essentially involving an expression as in principle semantically irrelevant, in the sense of having no bearing on what one is saying by using that expression. This is a radical policy, which requires giving up many things we have become accustomed to say about conceptual content. Indeed, in a certain sense it involves in the end giving up the idea of conceptual content – since the essential contrast between inferences that articulate the contents expressed by the use of locutions and those that do not goes missing." (Ibid. pp 333)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> As it turns out, the distinction between the two kinds of semantic explanation comes to bear more definitively at a later stage of the debate, as we shall see. Before we go on to assess this, however, we should briefly diffuse one further argument that Fodor and Lepore make against Brandom's pragmatic account of conceptual competence, as opposed to accounts to conceptual use. They argue that any such account that privileges 'know-how' in describing one's conceptual abilities one is lead to a serious underdetermination problem with respect to <i>which</i> rules a specific occasion of overt behavior corresponds too. This objection should be taken to be tacitly supporting the claim against the plausibility of conflating the epistemology of translation and the psychology of leaning with semantics. The argument may be reconstructed for clarity as follows (Fodor and Lepore, 1995. pp 185):<br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Argument Against Behavioral Explanations of Intentional States<br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">1) For any given overtly observable interpretable behavior where it might be said "S acts in accordance with rule R1" it follows that such behavior also is in accordance to any rule R2 that is equivalent to R1, i.e. to any rule that shares the same inferential content.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">2) It is possible for any behavior-displaying agent to act in accordance to a rule without being thereby consciously aware of which rule they are acting in accordance to.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">3) Inferential-role semantics has it that for any case where one observes that "S acts in accordance to R1", then irrespective of how many different rules may be said to be equivalent to R1, it is certain that their behavior accords with R1 and not some stipulated equivalent rule R2, i.e. the underdetermination problem fails.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">C1) Therefore, IRS proponents argue inconsistently since they claim that the specific rules which define concept use are simultaneously underdetermined by overt intentional behavior, and that such behavior only accords to some (arbitrary) rules.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">C2) Therefore, IRS fails to account for the intentional content of mental states and concept use in terms in terms of overt behavior.<br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> The argument above conflates three crucial distinctions that Brandom disentangles in his account, namely: the capacity to <i>accord</i> to rules, the capacity to <i>grasp</i> rules, and the capacity to <i>follow</i> rules (Brandom, 1995, Chapter 1). The former is resolutely a case a non-intentional behavior which corresponds to what Sellars would have called <i>sentience</i>, but which also applies to non-organic capacity to register a semantic stimulus. The second and third terms pertain to beings who are already within the space of reasons and so qualify as <i>sapient</i>. Full-blown sapient creatures <i>follow</i> rules insofar as they undertake specific doxastic commitments, and can be challenged to justify and revise their beliefs by engaging in the game of 'giving and asking for reasons'. Machines, on the other hand, merely <i>accord</i> to rules, since they possess no intentional states, at least in principle. Once this is pointed out, it is easy to see why the argument offered by Fodor and Lepore falls apart without much trouble. Premise (3) can be rejected right off the bat; <i>accordance</i> admits un underdetermination of conceptual content, while <i>grasping </i>or <i>following</i> does not. Non-sapient creatures, at a loss for intentionality, might be said to accord to <i>norms</i>, and perhaps an indefinite number of them, i.e. the underdetermination problem obtain, but none the worse for it. Accordance is transparent to the substitution of equivalents. On the other hand, <i>sapient</i>, intentionality-endowed creatures can be said to grasp or follow <i>rules</i> if and only they can be <i>challenged</i> to give reasons and justify their commitments, and in this territory equivalence substitution becomes (progressively) opaque. Thus while <i>grasping</i> an implicit <i>norm</i> (say, by infants) merely requires the capacity to evaluate and correct the functional dispositions one and others exhibit, <i>following </i>an explicit <i>rule</i> requires that such a capacity be extended to the point where it becomes possible to formulate what one is acting in accordance to. This entails competence in deploying conditional vocabulary, among other things. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Observers might progressively learn, keeping track of their deontic scorekeeping, narrow down potential candidates until the intentional agent becomes capable of expressing his/her implicit following of norms in the form of an explicit rule. That being said, contrary to what Fodor and Lepore stipulate, although it is correct to say that salient behavior may <i>accord</i> to a variety of rule-candidates (both in intentional and non-intentional agents), social dialogic procedures for cross-examination allow one to specify and disambiguate which rules the agent is following, if they so happen to achieve this capacity. But this is a distinctively rational capacity proper to those subjects fully imbedded in the logical space of reasons, while mere accordance is weaker, exhibited by non-sentient beings as well as sentient and sapient beings, all in the same functional level of explanation. And although we certainly must model functional accordance in the same intentional terms that we in which we frame our normative vocabulary this is not to confuse the two levels by endowing it with an ontological status, i.e. it does not mean that we must attribute mental states intentional status to merely accordance-exhibiting behavior<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/In%20this%20paper%20I%20propose%20to%20assess%20Fodor%20and%20Lapore.docx#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; line-height: 115%;">[4]</span></span></span></a>. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> The final point I wish to stress in as brief a manner as possible concerns Fodor and Lepore's central attack against semantic holism in favor of semantic atomism. The core of the issue, they argue, is that semantic holism cannot explain how learning takes place, since by default it is not committed to semantic compositionality, i.e. in rejecting the latter is becomes impossible to account both for the <i>projectibility </i>and the <i>systematicity</i> of language, these being necessary features for any semantic theory that purports to explain how indefinitely many new compounds with determinate semantic values may be composed from semantic primitives. In other words, Fodor and Lepore contend that compositionality is necessary to account for how syntactic combinations with fixed semantics values can generate complex expressions which are also semantically determinate by being systematically related to those initial combinations. But the real stumbling block for IRS that results from this is in their estimation finally one about epistemic productivity. Compositionality is meant to explain how subjects can understand and compose indefinitely new expressions in a given language, by attaining mastery of the modes of formation and rules proper to the simple expressions in the language (what may perhaps be called 'lexical primitives'). Therefore, if such productivity cannot be accounted for, then it will not be clear how it is that subjects are ever in a position not just to learn new expressions in the language, but how they can learn <i>at all</i>. Since ""knowing-how" doesn't compose", the inferentialist owes us an account of how we can even begin to acquire and use new concepts if not on the basis of fundamental lexical primitives that ground the subject's capacity to respond to whatever circumstances might he/she happen to find themselves in. Fodor and Lepore argue that since IRS can't account for compositionality in using epistemological criteria to determine conceptual mastery, they will fail to explain the productivity required for learning: "You can know how to recognize good examples of pets (in favorable circumstances) and how to recognize good examples of fish (in favorable circumstances) without having a clue how to recognize good examples of pet fish in any circumstances (for example, because the conditions that are favorable for recognizing fish may screen the conditions that are favorable for recognizing pets; or vice versa). We think, and we have said loudly, frequently, but to little avail, that this line of argument generalizes to the conclusion that there can be no epistemic conditions on concept possession. If that’s right, the question how an Inferentialist can account for compositionality is seen to be the crux that he must resolve." (Fodor and Lepore, 2005, pp 189).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> <span style="line-height: 200%;">The argument above suggests the following reasoning: <br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><span style="line-height: 200%;"> The Argument for Compositionality </span></b><span style="line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">1) IRS construes conceptual mastery in terms of capacity to reliably respond in the appropriate circumstances (circumstances where we are 'warranted' to respond in such a determinate way).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">2) A given subject S can be reliable in responding to two different circumstances <i>p </i>and <i>q</i>, without for this reason being capable of reliably responding to a compound situation <i>p and q</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">C1) Therefore, it is possible for a subject S to have the concept <i>x</i> that corresponds to <i>p, </i>and concept <i>y</i> that corresponds to <i>q</i>, without for this reason having the concept <i>z</i> that corresponds to <i>p and q</i>, i.e. the semantic value of "<i>x and y"</i> is not computable from the semantic values of the constituent concept <i>x</i> and that of the constituent concept <i>y</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">C2) Therefore, reliable responsive dispositions are not compositionally generalizable. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">5) Any semantic account suited to give a theory of learning requires that one be able to explain how a subject S may come to acquire/learn composite concepts on the basis of simpler ones, i.e. it will need to explain the <i>projectibility</i> and <i>systematicity</i> of language. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">6) The capacity to explain projectibility and systematicity requires that we explain concept acquisition/learning compositionally. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">C3) Thus, any account that construes conceptual-possession in epistemic terms, and in particular restricting the latter to the capacity to issue reliable differential dispositions, will necessarily fail to give a theory of learning.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">C4) Therefore, IRS will not be able to account as a theory for concept learning. <br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="layout-grid-mode: char; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Notice that the argument above does not say anything about holism; it is left open that a behavioral account of concept possession as concept use might fail even if endorsing semantic atomism. The argument is thus to be supplemented by the claim, suggested strongly by (C2), that productivity demands compositionality, and the latter the priority of subsentential semantics to sentential semantics, i.e. it will require endorsing a 'bottom-up' approach to formal semantics. And although, as we saw above, Fodor and Lepore reserve judgment about whether semantic atomism obtains or not, they insist that either atomism or at least some qualified 'molecularism', as Dummett calls it, would help meet the demands of compositionality not met by an inferentialist account. Namely, they argue that "...if molecularism is true, then the content of a concept would not be sensitive to all the inferences it’s involved in, (or even to all the “correct” inferences it’s involved in) but only to the ones that belong to the same “molecule” that the concept does." (Ibid: pp. 190) Yet because they think that even molecularism requires a distinction between analytic/synthetic expressions, strict semantic holism won't do. This is clear if we keep in mind that the molecularist alternative would cash the compositionality requirement in terms of how 'molecular', rather than atomic primitives, determine the semantic values of complex expressions in the language. As a result, Fodor and Lepore seem to suggest that either IRS runs with something like the molecularist/atomist alternative, but thereby reactivate the analytic-synthetic distinction, or else they remain tethered to strict holism in which case they become incapable of accounting for compositionality, and thus fail to account for learning.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="layout-grid-mode: char; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> As it turns out, Brandom's (2005) response to Fodor and Lepore allows us to see where precisely the argument for compositionality goes wrong. In his more recent work on formal semantics, Brandom shows how one can account for systematicity and projectibility, and so for productivity, without semantic atomism/molecularism of the sort that Fodor and Lepore deem inescapable. In order to do so, he accounts for logical, modal, and non-logical expressions in terms of <i>incompatibility</i> <i>semantics</i>: for set of sentences <i>s</i> that content of <i>s</i> is the set <i>r</i> of all sentences that are materially incompatible with <i>s </i>(Brandom, 2005, pp 335-336). A given sentence <i>p</i> entails <i>q</i> if and only if the set of those sentences that are incompatible with <i>q</i> are incompatible with <i>p</i>. The negation of <i>p</i> is the set of sentences <i>s</i> that follow from the set <i>r</i> of all sentences incompatible with <i>p</i>. As a result, that which is incompatible with not-<i>p</i> can change, while the semantic value of <i>p</i> remains fixed. As Brandom accordingly develops: "One consequence is that one can alter the semantic interpretant of not-<i>p</i> (what is incompatible with it), while holding fixed the semantic interpretant of <i>p</i> (what is incompatible with it), by altering what is incompatible with something<i>, r</i>, that is incompatible with <i>p</i>. So the semantics does not have the semantic sub-formula property; one cannot compute the semantic value of a compound expression such as not-p as a function of the semantic value of its component, p. In this specific sense, it is a holistic semantics." (Ibid, pp. 336)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="layout-grid-mode: char; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Yet the semantic value of logically compound sentences are derived from the semantic values of less complex sentences, and in this sense it constitutes a form of 'molecularism'. However, it is the value of many (and in the limit case all) of the simpler sentences in order to compute this, and not just those which are subformulae of the compound sentence the semantic value of which is in the process of being computed. Brandom's retort in this regard is definitive and necessary to disassociate learning from compositionality, and deserves to be quoted in full here:<br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 1in; margin-right: 1.5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> "The semantics is <i>projectible </i>and <i>systematic</i>, in that semantic values are determined for all syntactically admissible compounds, of arbitrary degrees of complexity. It is <i>learnable</i> - at least in principle, putting issues of contingent psychology aside, in the ideal sense we have been working with. For the capacity to distinguish the incompatibility sets of primitive propositions is, in the context of the semantic definitions of the connectives in terms of incompatibilities I have offered, <i>sufficient by algorithmic elaboration for the capacity</i> to distinguish the incompatibilities of all their logical (including modal-logical) compounds - and hence for the practical capacity to distinguish what is a consequence of what.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 1in; margin-right: 1.5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> What semantic projectibility, systematicity and leanability-in-principle require then, is not semantic atomism and compositionality, but semantic <i>recursiveness</i> with respect to complexity. That is entirely compatible with the semantics being <i>holistic</i>, in the sense of <i>lacking</i> the <i>semantic sub-formula property</i>, which is the hallmark of atomism and compositionality. " (Ibid: pp 336-337)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 1in; margin-right: 1.5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="layout-grid-mode: char; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> This allows us to see precisely what is wrong in Fodor and Lepore's argument; namely premise (6) as tacitly supported in the jump from (C1) to (C2), i.e. the claim that if the semantic sub-formula property fails, and hence if compositionality fails, then projectibility and systematicity must also fail as well. What Brandom allows us to see is that one can agree in that the semantic value of complexes is <i>determined</i> from simpler constituents, without for this reason having the semantic value of such complex expressions be <i>computable</i> from its corresponding primitives, i.e. it explains projectibility and systematicity without the semantic sub-formula property. That a semantics modeled on incompatibility relations may explain productivity without compositionality entails that the requirement that learning require compositionality, and by extension semantic atomism, is a false one. Recursivity is weaker than compositionality, but none the worse for it, all it requires is the abandonment of an artificially constrictive property. At this juncture, one might wonder if there's any good reason to reserve the name compositionality for only those semantic models that strictly obey the semantic sub-formula property, although the stakes of the debate become mostly terminological at this juncture. For it is clear that while Fodor and Lepore's examples show that compositionality, in their terms, might in fact fail to obtain in certain cases, it certainly does not show that it cannot obtain in others. For it could be that a given concept behaves compositionally, without for this reason suggesting that one's semantics cash all concept-mastery out in terms of compositionality as a <i>necessary</i> condition. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="layout-grid-mode: char; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> On any account, what this entails is that while IRS has it that inferential role exhausts conceptual content, mastering inferential role requires <i>more</i> than the mere capacity to reliably respond to the relevant stimuli in cases of perceptual recognition. For while it is perfectly true to say that one might cannot compute the value of "<i>p and q</i>" from the semantic values of <i>p</i> and <i>q</i>, if even if one knows in which circumstances to respond to situations where <i>p</i> and <i>q</i> are warranted use by <i>recognition</i>, it doesn't follow that if one were to know the <i>inferential role</i> of <i>p </i>and <i>q</i> one wouldn't know the inferential role of <i>p and q</i>. As we have seen, inferential role, construed around an incompatibility semantics, requires that one be able to determine recursiveness "<i>between levels</i>", i.e. one needs to look at many or all of the lesser complex sentences inferentially related to a given sentence, and not just those in the sub-formulae of the compound (Ibid; pp. 336). Inferential competence exceeds strict compositionality requirements, while manages to meet productivity requirements Thus, the claim that because reliable responsive dispositions don't compose when <i>recognizing</i> ideal exemplars for concepts does not entail anything of importance. And with this in mind, one might insist that if one were to master the inferential role of <i>p</i> and <i>q</i> one would have thereby necessarily mastered the role for <i>'p and q</i>' without for this reason endorsing the semantic sub-formula property, or letting go off semantic holism.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="layout-grid-mode: char; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Finally, although inferential competence must be construed as a kind of differential disposition in any case, what the post-Sellarsian CRS enjoins us to do is precisely to articulate a multi-leveled semantics capable of distinguishing between different kinds of dispositional transitions. Brandom follows Sellars (1954) in distinguishing between: a) <i>perceptual/recognition</i> (from non-sentential to sentential; language-entry transitions), b) <i>intra-sentential</i> (sentence input to sentence output), and c) <i>action-producing </i>(sentential inputs to non-sentential outputs; language-exit transitions). Inferential role comprises the articulation between all three levels while Fodor and Lepore's argument shows only that compositionality fails on occasion at the first level<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/In%20this%20paper%20I%20propose%20to%20assess%20Fodor%20and%20Lapore.docx#_ftn5" name="_ftnref5" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; line-height: 115%;">[5]</span></span></span></a>. Once these three levels are in place, IRS is capable of laying a multifaceted account of the possible kinds of inferential connection between sentences: 1) commitment-preserving inferences that generalize deductive inferences to material occasions; 2) entitlement-preserving inferences that generalize inductive inferences to material occasions; and 3) incompatibility entailments that are modally robust (Ibid, pp. 354). This is not the place to attempt to unpack the fine-grained details of such a semantic account or its feasibility, but it goes without saying that Fodor and Lepore's construal of the relevant reliable responsive dispositions in terms of <i>recognition</i>, and so restricting itself to the first level of <i>perceptual</i> reliability, for their claims about compositionality. I hope to have showed to some extent that these claims fall short of their pretentions, and so that the case against IRS and semantic holism fails as well. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br clear="all" /> </span><br />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" /><div id="ftn1"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/In%20this%20paper%20I%20propose%20to%20assess%20Fodor%20and%20Lapore.docx#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[1]</span></span></span></a> Brandom, Robert, <i>Making it Explicit, </i>Harvard University Press, 1998.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div id="ftn2"><div class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/In%20this%20paper%20I%20propose%20to%20assess%20Fodor%20and%20Lapore.docx#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[2]</span></span></span></a> Quine, W.V, <i>Word and Object</i>, MIT Press, 1964.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div id="ftn3"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/In%20this%20paper%20I%20propose%20to%20assess%20Fodor%20and%20Lapore.docx#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[3]</span></span></span></a> These constitute, albeit not exclusively, iterations of what Sellars calls 'The Myth of the Given'. </span></div></div><div id="ftn4"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/In%20this%20paper%20I%20propose%20to%20assess%20Fodor%20and%20Lapore.docx#_ftnref4" name="_ftn4" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[4]</span></span></span></a> As Peter Wolfendale has put it elegantly, in the order of evolution we progress from accordance, to grasping, to following. In the order of explanation we go from following, to grasping, to accordance. </span></div></div><div id="ftn5"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/In%20this%20paper%20I%20propose%20to%20assess%20Fodor%20and%20Lapore.docx#_ftnref5" name="_ftn5" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[5]</span></span></span></a> This multi-layered account is crucial for the development of monotonic and non-monotonic inferences.</span> </div></div></div>Daniel Sacilottohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06107600124995445921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6580039155018603814.post-55202290013559177452012-01-09T01:26:00.000-08:002012-01-13T15:04:39.011-08:00Two Routes to Idealism? Sellars, Inferentialism and Mathematical Ontology<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDaCcTiI48ncboKdQDZkW8EU152l7YI4z39ix_qdYMGBNAlRGWrAUQ7Nfzf2jmIIhzynugUZUcyoiCi4MKhW4wiYwAtkofE1cxa-7UXx2RlDd631mn4Yr0kxqyWHhxvCe9NlMbekt0FBJr/s1600/382798_10100266755321995_423379_48328432_437956252_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="576" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDaCcTiI48ncboKdQDZkW8EU152l7YI4z39ix_qdYMGBNAlRGWrAUQ7Nfzf2jmIIhzynugUZUcyoiCi4MKhW4wiYwAtkofE1cxa-7UXx2RlDd631mn4Yr0kxqyWHhxvCe9NlMbekt0FBJr/s640/382798_10100266755321995_423379_48328432_437956252_n.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;"><b>TWO ROUTES TO IDEALISM?</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;"><b>- Sellars, Inferentialism and Mathematical Ontology -</b></span></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><span style="line-height: 150%;">_____________________________________________</span></b></span></span></div><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">I have been exchanging ideas for quite some time with Peter Wolfendale, on a relatively regular basis, and it has been nothing but a pleasure. I find his command of the analytic tradition, and in particular post-Quinean ‘inferentialism’ to be of inestimable worth, in particular in sight of the project of rehabilitating representation within Continental thought begun by Ray Brassier recently. Perhaps I should say that it is not so much a rehabilitation of representation which is at stake, but rather a necessary <i>re-consideration</i> of the problems set forth by it. At its most general, the question concerns the putative displacement of <i>epistemology</i><span style="font-size: small;"> in favor of ontology that has somewhat ubiquitously dominated post-Heideggerian Continental thought. Of course, this displacement occurs in various ways, and part of Ray’s polemics with the Continental tradition examines this junction. But also with the analytic deflationary accounts inspired by behaviorism and which solidified in a formal semantics that castigated the valence of the notion of reference, flattening knowledge to semantics. From phenomenology, to vitalism, to deconstruction, to a certain pragmatism complicit with instrumentalism, to inferentialism, to mathematical ontology, Brassier’s work finds in the dissolution of representation understood as how conceptual thought relates to its non-conceptual exteriority a useful lever to motivate what is precisely the impediment for any </span><i>realist</i><span style="font-size: small;"> or materialist philosophy in both analytic and continental circles, i.e. the elimination of epistemology inspired by the critique of metaphysics, and the elimination of ontology inspired by the post-Quinean inferentialist deflationary standards for existence, truth and reference. The former option takes representation to constitute one more iteration of the kind of ontotheological posits that require suspension (Husserl), </span><i>destruktion</i><span style="font-size: small;"> (Heidegger), deconstruction (Derrida), destratificaiton (Deleuze), or dissolution (Lyotard). For these thinkers the result is either a post-critical restitution of the ontological problematic, or else a progressive de-legitimization of the propriety of the philosophical task <i>tout court,</i> which casts even ontology under questions. The critique of critique ends up in exacerbated forms targetting not just the Heideggerean ban against </span><i>metaphysics</i><span style="font-size: small;"> of presence, but eventually all metaphysics, and with it philosophical ‘phallogocentrism’ (Derrida). For the vitalist post-Bergsonian inspired metaphysics, representation becomes the pivotal structure of thought which demands destitution, particularly in the work of Deleuze (inspired by Foucault) against the fourfold axis of conception: identity in the concept, contrariness in the predicate, resemblance in perception, and analogy in judgment. The 'return to Kant' which insists on the propriety of conceptual representation thus resists the displacement of the latter and of the primacy of conceptual knowing all being complicit in some form or other with a pre-Critical metaphysical reification, or an allegedly post-philosophical idealism or correlationism camouflaged under the banners of 'textuality', 'practice', 'thinking', or some other human-relative determinant.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;"> <br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">On any account, the radicalization of the critique of metaphysics devolves into an ever aggravating critique of critique which restores metaphysical primacy or else tries to shut philosophy down for good. One of Brassier’s most relevant contentions is to insist, with Badiou, that even in their presumed ‘anti-philosophical’ radicality these thinkers finally display a philosophical complicity to idealism or correlationism. There where philosophy is said to stop, usually an anti-philosophy begins, which is philosophy after all. However, Brassier thinks that what is necessary is not just a ‘forgetting of the forgetting of the forgetting’ of the restoration of the question on being is favor of a subtractive ontology, like Badiou claims against Heidegger. Rather, we also need a ‘critique of the critique of critique’ against the post-Kantian idealist conflation between thought and reality, the elimination of conceptual representation as relating mind and world, as well as the correlationist-idealist dissolution of the primacy of </span><i>knowing</i><span style="font-size: small;">. And of course this entails that we must ask again the Kantian question about possibility of preserving a relative autonomy between mind and world, without reifying this difference into a </span><i>metaphysical</i><span style="font-size: small;"> dualism that falls short of the critical injunction to make their congruence contingent. But he must reconcile the realist requirement of plausible separation between thought and reality, while insisting in that this can be done without invoking metaphysics surreptitiously, obviating the need to explain not just </span><i>what</i><span style="font-size: small;"> there is, but the critical question about how we </span><i>know </i><span style="font-size: small;">what there is. In this regard, he resists the Badiouan Parmenidean identification of being and thought, and allots the latter to the ubiquitous disavowal of representation of post-Kantian Continental thought. Representation turns out not to have only been illegitimately obviated, but that this obviation explains the correlationist and idealist incapacity to motivate a realist ontology, at a loss for an epistemological footing. For the question about the difference between concepts and objects, thought and reality, turns out to require the preservation of the scope of rational agency which ascribes normative valence to rational subjects. In this regard, the transcendental delimitation of thought retains </span><i>methodological</i><span style="font-size: small;"> autonomy vis a vis the ontological, without inflating thought with a metaphysical status. Having moved away from the ‘postural realism’ of Laruelle’s exacerbation of abstraction, Brassier’s current position motivates a Sellarsian revisionary naturalism. In it the necessary rationalist articulation of epistemology and metaphysics becomes necessary to dispel intuition (against all forms of self-legitimizing appeals to experience), but also to avoid the folding of being into thought in the inferentialist deflation of metaphysics, or thought into being in the ontological ‘flattening’ of ideality which devolves from the dissolution of epistemology. </span></span></span></div><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;"> <br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;"> There is of course substantial overlap between Peter’s Brandomian vision and Brassier’s Sellarsian position, and so the connection between a (non-metaphysical) Hegel-inspired inferentialism, and a revisionary Kantian naturalism. While Peter agrees with the inferentialist extirpation of the metaphysical core from the deontological account of thought, he aligns himself with Sellars and Brassier in rejecting the wholesale disavowal of the metaphysical task, by insisting that a naturalistic ontology is both possible and necessary. Of course, it is Sellars who has emphasized this by insisting in the relative autonomy of the ontological and the normative, metaphysics and epistemology. A non-metaphysical deontology describing the transcendental structure of thought is methodologically propadeutic to a naturalist metaphysics, set to describe the univocal structure of being, including the ontological conditioning for the instantiation of thought. This last part is precisely what strict inferentialism proscribes.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> One of the interesting things is that Peter seems to accept this Sellarsian corrective to the Brandomian position, advocating a kind of Spinozist and Deleuzian-inspired metaphysics. There is much to be said about Peter’s startlingly brilliant readings of Spinoza and Deleuze, but that is best reserved for another occasion. I would just remark that although I remain skeptical about the plausibility of Deleuzian metaphysics as appropriate for naturalist metaphysics continuous with today’s science<a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/CASA/Mis%20documentos/I%20have%20been%20exchanging%20ideas%20for%20quite%20some%20time%20with%20Peter%20Wolfendale.docx#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">[1]</span></span></span></a>, I think that there is a more primary issue at stake, which follows from the methodological priority of epistemology, for both Sellars and Brandom. Before we discern between the specific differences in the metaphysical alternatives themselves, or evaluate their internal conceptual coherency, we must explain the nature of objective knowledge in relation to deontological normative strictures which define the transcendental conditions for intelligibility, or thought as such. Much of Pete’s brilliant deontological project delineates a broadly Brandomian account of the use of conceptual norms, and his <i>Essay on Transcendental Realism</i> goes a long way in explaining how this works.<br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> For my part, the difficulty in coordinating the deflationary realism of strict Brandomian inferentialism with the Sellarsian alternative reveals interesting issues. To ask about whether inferentialism could support the rehabilitation of metaphysics cannot but provoke the further question about whether Sellars’ position could be described as endorsing a kind of <i>inferentialism</i> like Brandom thinks, and as McDowell, DeVries-Tripplet, among others, reject. Of course, one could say that inferentialism generally holds as a suitable account of thought, while insisting on the autonomy of metaphysics. And I think that this autonomy is surely of the capital features of Sellars’ philosophy. However, exactly how we should coordinate the separation between the metaphysics and the epistemology in Sellars’ case is quite controversial. <br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> In particular, much polemic has been generated concerning the precise evaluation of the role of perception. For example, John McDowell (2005) seems to take issue with Brandom’s reading of Sellars, insisting that the deflation of experience to judgment is excessively one-sided, and eliminates a crucial empiricist component in Sellars’ naturalism. But even if we don’t agree with McDowell’s alternative reading, I think we can rescue some of his objections to Brandom’s reading of Sellars as advocating strict deflationary standards for perception. Now, I think that Pete and Ray are prepared to agree in that Sellars’ own account of perception and his account of <i>picturing</i> are not obviously reconcilable with the minimalist account that Brandom provides. A discussion of these two positions merits a full scoped investigation which I intend to carry out in coming work. My impression is that the restriction of perceptual experience to judgments, with no intermediary states of the sort McDowell’s polemical reading argues for to play any part, creates problems for any claims to realism. Specifically, the flattening of perceptual judgments to the general capacity to have the appropriate RDRDs deflates sensible experience in the way that vitiates the way perception serves to anchor us in a causally autonomous world. For one of Sellars’ most important insights is that while perception is conceptual, the ontological constitution of <i>sensation</i>, while remaining epistemically mute, permits us to rehabilitate a notion of correspondence and a theory of picturing in which concepts and so perceptual judgments are causally knit to physical objects, thus exceeding a purely <i>semantic</i> account of truth. I quote Brassier in this regard:<br />
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<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"> “<span style="background-color: white;">It’s often assumed that Sellars’ critique of relational (or “matrimonial”) theories of meaning dispenses with the word/world relation altogether since conceptual role supplants reference. But this is not so: he supplements his semantic account of truth as ideal conceptual coherence with a correspondence relation between utterances as “natural linguistic objects” and physical events: one must be appropriately connected to one’s environment in order to be entitled to issue certain utterances. It gets more complicated of course, but the key is that while correspondence is never transparent—it’s too opaque to be called “reference”--- it is still there, although not as a semantic relation. This is the insight that Brandom expresses in his claim that sense dependence is not reference dependence: the conditions for the former ought not to be conflated with those for the latter. But unlike Brandom, Sellars has a positive alternative to reference as a semantic relation, which he calls “picturing”.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></span></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; line-height: 150%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; line-height: 150%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; line-height: 150%;">Now, it might seem premature to claim inferentialism conflates mind and world, but the primary issue becomes more evident upon considering some of the consequences, using Brandom’s own examples against McDowell. The one that comes to mind is the characterization of the scientist who learns to reliably report the presence and movement of ‘mu mesons’ by progressive refinement in his conceptual ability following the observation of a cloud chamber. For Brandom, the capacity to reliably report the fact that mu mesons </span><i style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; line-height: 150%;">are there</i><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; line-height: 150%;">, even at a loss for knowledge about what criteria one is using in the reliable use of the capacity, counts as a case of ‘</span><i style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; line-height: 150%;">seeing mu mesons’</i><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; line-height: 150%;"> just in case one knows that one is reliable in doing so.</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; line-height: 150%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; line-height: 150%;">I quote Brandom in this regard:<br />
</span></div><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; line-height: 150%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; line-height: 150%;">“Thus a properly trained physicist, who can respond systematically differently to differently shaped tracks in a cloud chamber will, if she responds by non-inferentially reporting the presence of mu mesons, count as genuinely </span><i style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; line-height: 150%;">observing </i><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; line-height: 150%;">those subatomic particles. She may start out by reporting the presence of hooked vapor trails and </span><i style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; line-height: 150%;">inferring </i><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; line-height: 150%;">the presence of mu mesons, but if she then learns to eliminate the intermediate response and respond directly to the trails by reporting mesons, she will be observing them. “Standard conditions” for observing mu mesons will include the presence of the cloud chamber, just as standard conditions for observing the colors of things includes the presence of adequate light of the right kind. And the community for whom ‘mu meson’ is an observation predicate will be much smaller and more highly specialized than the community for whom ‘red’ is one. But these are differences of degree, rather than kind.”<br />
</span></span></blockquote></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> I find this account largely consonant with a strict Sellarsian position in most respects, and particularly in insisting on the possibility of non-inferential knowledge which is not for this reason unmediated or unlearned, since all knowing requires participation within a complexly articulated linguistic community. But the account of observation predicates raises questions which are precisely of the kind that lead McDowell to read Sellars as one step, yet perhaps a decisive one, short of endorsing a full-blown inferentialism <i>ala</i> Brandom. <br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> To see why, we must just apply the same strictures set in the example of the physicist to a different situation, of the sort proposed by McDowell: a man learns to reliably report that their neighbor is home when he sees that his car is parked in the driveway. For Brandom, assuming the man knows that he is reliable, this counts as observational knowledge and he <i>sees </i>that the neighbor is home. However, the difference between the <i>direct knowledge</i> that is involved in seeing that the neighbor is home by having the neighbor before his eyes, and the knowledge that would be obtained in seeing the same fact when seeing the car, is obscured thereby. Both instances would count as cases of direct observational knowledge, having the same underlying fact as their reported, propositional content, i.e. both report that 'the neighbor is home'. And since they are both non-inferential states, one cannot appeal to the fact that the man ‘arrives’ at such knowledge by a prior consideration of the knowledge that the car is there, since then one must explain how this latter fact motivates the former <i>in situ</i>, which starts sounding a whole lot like inference again. Even if both cases could be construed as examples of non-inferential knowledge, it seems as if what Brassier describes above attests to a complicity between perception and sensible experience, i.e. natural linguistic objects are connected to physical events by the externalist requirement to be properly caused in relation to environmental conditions. Picturing describes a non-semantic relation between perceptual states and the world which, while enveloped conceptually, retains autonomy. And I believe that Sellars’ more acute observation consists not just in severing experience at large, but more precisely in refusing to construe it as the gulf for <i>unacquired </i>knowledge; that is, as cases of <i>independent</i> knowledge. And although he certainly endorses the inferentialist demand for the conceptual envelopment of perceptual experience and the form of judgment, this does not entail that the experience is reducible to the conceptual judgments or to semantic relation. For this is precisely the role that <i>sensation </i>plays, which allows one to level the ontological priority of experience, while preserving the relative autonomy of the sapient, conceptual envelopment of knowledge. Thus while Sellars is perfectly comfortable in accepting that non-inferential knowledge is possible, he denies that independent knowledge is possible, and furthermore insists that sensibility remains crucial for metaphysical reasons, and which illuminate how we ‘picture’ the world rather than simply merely relate to it in accordance to pragmatic norms. Thus the also emphatic interest in Sellarsian naturalism, and in particular in the neurophysiological ontological account of thought advanced by Metzinger and the Churchlands, while refusing tacit pragmatism through the inflation of ‘super-empirical virtues’ that are gratuitously prescribed rather than explained. Rather, while we must deem experience as being conceptually specific in nature, this does not mean that the ontological nature of experience is conceptual nor that understanding concepts means understanding the use of words; one cannot restrict experience to simply signify the capacity to reliably report a fact without completely obviating the naturalist side of Sellarsian philosophy. This is what has made other philosophers insist in the valence of <i>empiricism</i> in Sellars, which one might think is ultimately difficult to reconcile with inferentialism. Thus, for instance, McDowell thinks that perceptual experiences constitute a <i>kind</i> of belief states that are acquired non-inferentially once the subject comes to endorse the <i>content</i> of a perceptual experience. Yet the content of the experience is not by itself judgment, although it has propositional content. It is solely a ‘candidate’ for endorsement. This is still not sufficient to explain how one comes to acquire such content as mere ‘candidates’, propositionally specific and yet not simple behaviorally fixed dispositions or RDRDs, anchored causally in an environing world. But this is just to say that it is highly controversial whether McDowell does any greater justice to Sellars on this particular point than Brandom does. DeVries and Tripplet seem to side against Brandom, while O’Shea reiterates that the role perception plays in Sellars must be closely understood in relation to his naturalism. I reserve judgment in these matters.<br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> The discussion around perception becomes a useful key to understanding how conceptual structures that fix our knowing of being are <i>objective</i> with regards to a world, while subject to rational norms for <i>revision</i>. The non-reviseable logic of rational obligation articulates the necessary rationalist rejoinder to all instrumentalist prescriptions of scientism, as necessary to explain how we acquire knowledge<i>,</i> given the primitive methodological priority of the normative space of reasons. And Sellars’ supplementary account of picturing is not clearly reflected in Brandom, particularly since it is not clear that he would allow for the ontological role sensation plays within our understanding of perception. And it is certainly not clear to me that McDowell’s own alternative fares any better. For even if McDowell is right in that reducing perception to judgment to deflate experience into a semantic relation once again conflates empirical content with conceptual form, one might insist that to introduce intermediary states between judgments and candidates for endorsement falls to the trap of thinking that what occasions judgment is a ‘act of will’ which supplements categorical synthesis. And this is precisely what Brandom finds unpersuasive about McDowell’s alleged commitment to empiricism. <br />
<br />
<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> My own position on this matter is that Brandom’s strict inferentialism seems to reproduce the pragmatic conflation of thinking and being which already plagued Quine, and which ends up undermining materialism, not unlike Badiou, in lacking the sufficient resources to disambiguate between form and content. Content dissolves into propositional content, and what Pete calls a ‘thick’ sense of reality falls out the window. I think with Pete that a thick notion of reality is necessary, and that such a notion needs to be advanced without reintroducing the metaphysical dualism of thought and matter. Thus the key moment for Brassier remains the Kantian juncture between the non-metaphysical normative space of reasons and the ontological-natural-causal domain of natural scientific research, while for Pete’s more Brandomian, and by extension Hegelian, position (although I agree with Zizek in that Pittsburg Hegelianism is a misreading of Hegel) the primary task is to eviscerate the myth of phenomenological content in favor of the primacy of logical relation in a deflationary account of thought. <br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> I would suggest that inferentialism can be seen as a precedent of the problem that plagues structuralist-inspired contemporary French materialisms, like Badiou’s and Meillassoux’s, departing from Althusser and Lacan. And by this I would also mention thinkers like Gabriel Catren, or even the post-Landian neo-Deleuzians, like Reza Negarestani. While the last two have taken over the Continental liquidation of epistemological primacy and followed the formalist tendency in tethering ontology to mathematics, the inferentialist camp meanwhile insists on the autonomy of the normative while tethering the latter to logic and semantic analysis. Indeed, while the former have folded into deciding the appropriate mathematical paradigm for metaphysics and resolving the relation between the branches of mathematics (differential calculus, set theory, category theory, logic, topos theory…) as part of ontology itself, the latter have insisted on reducing representational content to propositional content, understood as the inferential structure of thought. For them this reduces semantic content to the pragmatic examination of the relations into which normatively charged propositional attitudes enter with respect to each other within a community of rational agents. It fulfills the promise of a transcendental philosophy that describes the structure of thought without relapsing into the metaphysical dualism of mind and world.<br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> What I find most striking is that both extreme poles, mathematical ontology and inferentialist epistemology, render their respective counterparts impossible, vitiating the possibility of distinguishing mind and world that realism requires, and that Sellars pursues. For Badiou, it becomes impossible to distinguish ontological from non-ontological situations without the surreptitious mediation of philosophical discourse, while for strict inferentialism of the Brandomian type, metaphysics falls out the window completely. The latter option basically eviscerates the metaphysical core of Hegelianism, while the former similarly extirpates the epistemological core of rational <i>agency</i> which annuls the possibility of thinking of a non-immediate congruence between thought and reality, having no choice but to endorse the Parmenidean identification of thinking and being. In both cases we get something like a cunning of reason against realism-materialism: the epistemological confine to the rational community which instrumentalizes the natural (like Habermas, but also possibly Brandom) into the social space of a rationalist <i>pragmatics</i> (which I take Badiou has sufficiently shown to be in complicit with a kind of idealism), and the ontological confine to a formal ideography with no account of the relation it holds to its denied exteriority. The critique of intuitional or experiential givenness is exacerbated to a deflation of all non semantic, empiricist notion of ‘content’ or reference, which has no option but to conflate being and thought. In this regard, the violent anti-phenomenological vocation that drives both mathematical ontology and inferentialism, in annulling experience, end up preemptively throwing the metaphysical baby with the epistemological bathwater (inferentialist dismissal of the necessity of metaphysics), or else throwing the epistemological baby with the metaphysical bathwater (post-Heideggerean strawmans against epistemology). <br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> What is also intriguing is that both alternatives remain surprisingly cogent with each other in that their respective formalisms entail a noocentric enclosure, which keeps philosophy from taking the empirical sciences sufficiently seriously, despite their protestations to the contrary. Thus neither Brandom nor Badiou seem to have much to say about what those sciences which describe human-independent phenomena are doing; where does physics fall for Badiou? Is it regional ontology, like Catren seems to be implying in his (brilliant) topology of the tasks for thought, the great ‘Outland Empire’? Perhaps it is no surprise that people like Rorty can simultaneously find appealing both anti-metaphysical inferentialism, and anti-epistemological ontology. To sum up, we can say that the strong anti-empiricism of rationalist ontology of the mathematical ends up resembling inferentialism in their mutual Hegelian trivialization of experiential content, which becomes ultimately complicit with the idealist indistinction of thought and being. <br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> Badiou in fact motivates this conflation from the start in castigating the unquestioned ‘third dogma’ of empiricism, in the dualism between empirical content and form, which has motivated the idea that formal axiomatic systems model reality. The restriction of ontological discursivity to the dialectics between mathematical forms and for which domains of interpretation model axiomatic systems, however, is given a crude quasi-Althusserian analysis of the intrication of philosophy, science and ideology, in the tripartite negotiation of concepts, functions, and notions. And the meta-ontological gloss of the later Badiou cannot but appear as yet another surreptitious normative injunction in favor of a subtractive ontology of the multiple, ultimately motivated by the need to introduce subjectivity in a gratuitous supplementation of the ontological by the evental, of the objective by the subjective, of the stasis of knowledge by truth, etc. But if this is not, like Zizek claims <i>apropos</i> the Pittsburg Hegelians, an ideological validation of liberalist capitalism, it is certainly an equally ideological political suture by Badiou’s own standards, assigning the subject the peculiar role to be the agent of all structural dynamism, of all change and for all truths. This is idealism with a vengeance, hybridizing the decisionistic fetishism of subjective freedom, while dislodging the requirement to argue for the distinction between ontology and non-ontology, the discursive intelligibility of being and the world, through the philosophical umbrella of ‘presentation’ mediating between the two. The emphasis on subjective creation, and of truth as production, also makes the dimension of <i>discovery</i> proper to science in particular difficult to understand. Other options, like Catren and Negarestani, seem to run into similar problems to Nick Land. Having destratified the empirical transcendental-distinction, and having underdetermined representation by the unconscious thanatropism of intensive matter, it is not clear that anything like a subject remains. So it is not clear that a plausible account can be given to discern how conceptual structure relates to this primary material process. This seems to fold once again on a surreptitious prescription for a given metaphysics, which is itself strictly incompatible with the strictures under which subjective agency, decision, or ‘theorization’ could take place. It’s not clear one could even ‘accelerate’ under this scheme, since in refusing to re-anthropomorphize philosophy with a supplementary ethics of ‘subjective intervention’ along the immanent ubiquity of ontologically primary matter, post-Landians cannot discern between the world and discourse about the world, i.e. they cannot distinguish concepts and objects in their metaphysics as such. Calling it non-metaphysical practicism is simply to obviate the issue that now is resolutely another version of the idealist serpent of absolute knowledge, swallowing itself; only this time cashed out in terms of primary production and a logic of ‘expression’. Shorn of its vitalist residue, this materialism ends up making it extremely difficult to understand the peculiar ‘stratification’ that is theory in relation to the primary process it allegedly it has ceased to described, since no longer experience mediates in it.<br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> The inferentialist option on its part seems to reproduce the instrumentalization which follows from the extirpation of reference from verificationist standards. Here either metaphysics is in principle proscribed, or else ontology becomes a quite foreign matter, subjected to ideological prescriptions and legitimated extraneously through <i>ad hoc</i> appeals to super-empirical virtues of varied assortments. These finally end up, like Ladyman and Ross, but also Quine, being incapable of reconciling the deflation of reality to existential quantification with a robust realism or physicalism. And here the Sellarsian option stands as a necessary interruption, I think, of this line, through a more intricate idea of how perception mediates the knowing of the real. It insists on the importance of perceptual judgment in epistemology and of giving an account of sensibility within ontology, insofar as we must understand the composite intrication of the conceptual and the objectual. And I agree with Brassier in that ultimately the moniker realism becomes suspect at this stage, since at no point concepts ‘reach out’ onto things. But their difference and relation must be one that is possibly clarified without being metaphysically reified, and this is what I am not convinced strict inferentialism is prepared to accomplish. I think Pete would probably agree at bottom, and thus accept that a necessary corrective to Brandom would require recuperating a thick notion of reality, albeit I don’t think that this has been satisfactorily reconciled with a preservation of inferentialism which deflates perception. <br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> Here recent questions about aesthetics raised by Peter and Brassier become peculiarly interesting, since I think they can allow us to see how perception continues to play a role in the story in a way that illuminates the peculiarity of Sellars’ position. As I take it, Brassier endorses the modern severance of the beautiful from the sensible, thereby advocating the former’s allotment to the conceptual. Here I agree with Pete in that the intrication between the Beautiful, the Good, and Value brings Plato to the context of a rationalist epistemology with an inferentialist bent. The basic idea is that we can distinguish Beauty as a <i>species</i> of Value, with varying scales of Universality. Thus Pete distinguishes a broad sense of Beauty akin to that of <i>Value-in-itself</i>, or its pure form, which is independent of all rational interests, and a narrower sense in which different aesthetic values are pitted against each other within the conceptual norms of the <i>sensus communis</i> and which make possible the negotiation of aesthetic judgments. <br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> Here the account of artistic beauty in particular becomes interesting, insofar as it is related to production and intentionality. The idea is that in art, as opposed to nature, we seek to produce affect, and while presupposing communication, art must also resist being communicable, lacking determinate semantic content. This is relevant because this lack of semantic determinacy is meant to capture the Sellarsian rejection of the epistemic valence of sensible transparency as a variant of the Myth of the Given, but can also become a way to address the kernel of truth in the abused <i>cliché</i> about how art is in a way not about ‘mere communication or reproduction’, but about disruption and creation. The point is how to account for this experimental and creative dimension in art without falling into a mindless celebration of the affirmative will, which Brandom castigates rightfully, or a reification of sublimity by interrupting the rational order of causes through a pure experience, or some ‘aura’ which ordains aesthetics to the mystical quality in the work (from Benjamin to Heidegger, to Laruelle perhaps). Here the absorption of the beautiful to the conceptual can allow us to be continuous to the ideal of non-communication in <i>both</i> senses, rejecting givenness while accepting art’s disruptive character, thus embracing a dialectical historicity of artistic production intricate in the conceptual. And this would be the role of the ‘narrow’ sense of beauty of ‘lower order’ universality, in which the production of art would be dialectically imbued within the conceptual seal in aesthetic <i>judgment</i>. This unites one of Badiou’s salient virtues with a proper Sellarsian embedding of productivity within the normative: the semantic indeterminacy of art is to be understood in the sense in which artistic production makes possible new judgments and relations which are strictly irreducible to previous ones, by causing semantic interference with the state of the situation as it is. <br />
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<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> One might think that such a ‘conceptualization’ of the aesthetic deprives it of its link to experience; but here is where I think a Sellarsian rejoinder is necessary. We can salvage the link between the conceptual and the perceptual, accepting that the latter is anchored in the sensible, while insisting that beauty concerns <i>only</i> the conceptual. This is a striking reversal of common sense, since now it is the natural which remains refractory from the conceptual, and which concerns the <i>sensible</i> proper. Ihis reversal can be done by amplifying the account of ‘looks talk’ in Sellars, in a way in which I Pete has again made some headway; although I don’t know how it would fit with Brandom. The basic idea is to disambiguate a sense of looks-talk which is not merely emphasizing the epistemic withdrawal of endorsement before a proposition about the world, i.e. in which the function of ‘x looks y to S’ is not reducible to ‘x withdraws endorsement from x is y’. This can be exemplified by using predicates such as ‘looking fuzzy’, where it is clear that the role of ‘looking’ therein is to make a <i>report</i> about a fact concerning the functioning of our perceptual mechanisms, and not the epistemic withdrawal of endorsement. This means that we can accept that there is a role to be played for experientially specific judgments about perception which provide the anchoring on sensibilia without rehabilitating the valence of sense datum transparency, and which would thus be continuous with the conceptual envelopment of the aesthetic. The idea would then be that the semantic indeterminacy introduced in artistic creation would be the (dialectical) interplay in the production of new perceptual judgments and relations, and which include (albeit not exclusively) statements about how things produce affect as states relative to the functioning of our sensory organs, i.e. perceiver-relative facts. These would constitute the specifiable content which relativizes aesthetic judgment to perceptual judgments, though not wholly, without losing grip on participation in the <i>generation</i> and negotiation of value. The trick here is to coordinate properly aesthetic judgments in art with perceptual judgments (whose content is determinate) to explain how the indeterminacy of artistic works themselves is to be understood relative to the articulation of conceptual norms within the <i>sensus communis</i>. The obvious question is whether this requires that we make aesthetic judgments in nature subject to the same sort of dialectics, and how the intentional stance ultimately weighs in. Again, this is a subject matter for a different occasion. <br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> As a provisory note, I would remark that the notion that value is ‘independent’ becomes quite difficult to cash out. On the one hand, I think that the distinction between the <i>projection</i> of value (which is our prerogative), and its <i>construction</i> (which we don’t make) is opaque for the moment. It also doesn’t seem clear to me what natural value consists in, beyond the trivial assertion that nature is not made <i>by</i> or <i>for</i> us. If by projection we simply mean that we need to deploy concepts to make aesthetic judgments, then it is not clear how these judgments are proper to art because of its intentional inflection. Clearly, some sort of projection in that sense would be necessary for natural judgment. This is ultimately a tangential matter. <br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> The main point is that the <span style="background-color: white;">insurrectional component in art resists the fetishizing of formless sublimity, and imbues the perceptual within a dialectical understanding, in the narrow sense, wherein experience becomes configured and modified productively in relation to the subjective universality of the <i>sensus communis</i>. For art, </span>there needs to be some non-reproductive element to realize the production of affect, by necessity, and it must not be in the trivial sense in which minimal difference at the level of perceptual content entails the production of wholly autonomous aesthetic value. The task lies in pinpointing the singularity of artistic works without relapsing into the theological frame of revelation still wed to givenness. It is not that the disruptive function of art is semantically indeterminate by being non-conceptual, but rather that it must be understood in relation to how it positions itself with respect to the community of rational agents. Art in this regard is what exorcises the Holy: it relativizes its local value to the rational negotiation of norms, underwritten only by the formal imperative of remaining true to value in-itself as its limit case and higher-order universality, and of rational purposefulness. Either one introduces beauty into the normative frame of reasons, or one pragmatically blocks the historical specificity and epistemic valence of art. We can't simply rejoice in claiming art is all about breaking the rules, and using the primacy of ‘pure’ intuition as the obverse of the affirmative will, against rationality. <span style="background-color: white;">The conceptual negotiation of the manifest image in which aesthetic judgments are made exemplifies the possibility to think of a logic of change, local and structural, which can explain experimental novelty and semantic interference, without surrendering to irrationalism. The idea is how to coordinate a notion of perception as conceptual and epistemically apt, without deflating the sensible-ontological core of experience. But this is all very rudimentary, since it is not clear how to coordinate the predicates that describe the working of our sensory organs ('fuzzy') with a Sellarsian account of picturing, or something of the sort. But anyhow once perception has been understood as a mediated process the dialectics of historicity proper to it replace the quasi-mystical purchase of 'givenness' in experience championed by phenomenological and vitalist alternatives.<br />
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<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white;"> In any case, here we can be Badioueans without the revolutionary rhetorical excess. Although </span><span lang="EN-US">the idea that truth diagonally subtracts itself from the situation in the construction of a generic subset does well to formalize a dialectics of change, rather than making it <i>ex nihil</i>o, we must insist with Sellars in that this cannot work within a realist register if one annihilates the autonomy of rational agency which guarantees the normative <i>Universality</i> as limit of value-in-itself. If one does, one inevitably ends up tacitly overruling the neutrality of subtractive ontology by regulating it with a higher order, undeclared, <i>ad hoc</i> normative meta-ontological discourse to explain the articulation between being and thought as that of revolutionary disruption in the creation of truth. Of course, the latter is what Badiou really is after: to motivate the political revolutionary agenda which rejoices in the ‘great chaos under the sky’. As a result, set theoretical frameworks that operate <i>without</i> the axiom of foundation and admit of self-belonging are conveniently obviated rather than rationally discarded, in order to preserve the dialectics of illegality and of the event. Thus while Badiou moves a long way towards eviscerating the phenomenological myths of presencing, he grants too much to the structuralist deflation of the empirical, and the psychoanalytic allotment of the rational individual to the 'imaginary', along with its ontology fantasy. If anything, I think it is necessary to show that this patronizingly dismissed 'imaginary' is not some secondary spook neatly absorbed as a linguistifying or logicist confusion, but a fundamental condition for any rationalism of the sort Badiou or Brandom pursue. <br />
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<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> On any account, this line of thought goes to show that, contra the predominant Continental doxa, representation need not be aligned to metaphysical skyhooks. All the variants of the critique of metaphysics in the 20<sup>th</sup> Century simplify fatally in their dismissal of knowledge and representation, in the castigation of the understanding, and the apportioning of philosophy to ontology. Sellars’ putative force, beyond inferentialism and formalism, is to think the nature of experience without the slothful betrayal toward immediacy and first-person familiarity, all too conveniently aligned to armchair reflection. Of course this is why Deleuze in particular keeps obsessing Brassier, since in a way he has been the more articulate critic of the logic of representation, and in favor of the metaphysical priority. <br />
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<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> <span style="background-color: white;">Two great limitations of continental thought are concentrated here: one, to think that thought ‘as such’ is rationally inaccessible because one must deflate transcendental metaphysical frames, and second that there is no suitably restricted notion of an object because the latter remains invariably secondary with respect to some linguistic/subjective/cultural constitution. </span>So the object invariably gets destroyed, deconstructed, or destratified for being a testament to metaphysics of presence, of pure <i>Vorhandenheit</i>, derived extensity, secondary process, etc. And thought itself gets shafted for being the stillborn cunning of the same metaphysical reification of substance which lingers in the form of transcendental agency. <br />
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<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> <span style="background-color: white;"> By the same token, the inferentialist thinks that metaphysics as such is impossible since it must hypostasize ‘reference’ in a way that betrays post-Quinean deflationary standards for truth and existence, while insisting in that there is no suitably adequate vindication of experience beyond the pragmatic constriction to RDRDs. Thought on its part gets shrunk to its inferentialist core, while objectivity becomes a function of knowing. But the point is that the object is not a function of thought, and that thought is itself objectifiable. Objectivity is precisely what allows us to understand the ontological priority of what is <i>not</i> thought, while the latter remains the condition for ascribing the rational responsibility to understand reality, to revise our beliefs in ways which are not merely <i>prescriptive</i>, or super-empirical whims by ideological-institutional agents, but rationally validated. <br />
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<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> The idea is finally to defend a sense of objectivity as part of metaphysics, without for this reason endorsing a neo-Scholastic metaphysics of objects, and a suitable notion of objective <i>knowledge</i> and so an epistemology, without for this reason endorsing a metaphysical divide between transcendence and transcendent. And all of this while describing the nature of experience as involving a conceptually circumscribed role for perception as that which anchors our relation to the external world. <br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> Here the question of representation and hylomorphism that Deleuze criticizes apropos representation, which is supposed to hold since Aristotle, becomes an important challenge and focal point. The alternative realist account which rehabilitates perceptual judgment must do two difficult things on this terrain. First, it must resist the idea of a hylomorphic stapling of universal form on singular matter, since it must insist in that the specificity of objective matter is not external to itself, and certainly not a projection of our thought. Form is intrinsic to matter, while not being a function of conception, even if the latter remains necessary to know of it and yet external to itself. At the same time, we must accept that the conceptual traction on being must always ‘leave something out’, or that that, as Deleuze puts it, concepts are too baggy (since concepts are not things, and can never ‘touch’ reality), while rejecting that this constitutes an <i>insufficiency </i>before which we can supplant epistemology and the valence of the normative with a metaphysical account of individuating difference, and through a logic of expressive being, like in Spinozist-Deleuzian alternatives. <br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white;"> Finally, in distinguishing between concepts and objects, thought and world, one must specificity the latter’ within a natural-causal order of explanation, in order to render it resolutely non-conceptual. This marks the ontological ubiquity of the scientific image, and its proper methodological autonomy. The way in which natural-causal <i>description</i> relates to its exteriority as developed in the account of picturing, however, remains obscure to me at present.</span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> </span></o:p></span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> </span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br />
</span></div><hr size="1" style="text-align: left;" width="33%" /><div id="ftn1"><div class="MsoFootnoteText" style="text-align: justify;"><a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/CASA/Mis%20documentos/I%20have%20been%20exchanging%20ideas%20for%20quite%20some%20time%20with%20Peter%20Wolfendale.docx#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[1]</span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> We could broadly understand the contemporeneity of science along Catren’s broad lines, by defining that philosophy would need to be simultaneously Galilean, Heisenbergean, Einsteinean, Newtonian, Freudian and Darwinean: “First, modern science is essentially Galilean, which means, in Husserl’s terminology, that mathematics is a formal ontology, i.e. a theory of the generic categories of being qua being, like for instance the categories of multiplicity (set theory), relation (category theory), quantity (number theory), localization (geometry), operativeness (algebra), symmetry (group theory), predication (logic), stability (dynamical systems theory), and so on6. In other words, modern science is essentially determined by the physical entanglement of mathematical logos and natural existence, an entanglement which implies both the Galilean mathematization of nature and the Husserlian (and Badiousian) ontologization of mathematics. Second, modern science is essentially Copernican, Darwinian, and Freudian, which means that the narcissistically wounded subject of science can no longer be considered a (self)-centred fundamental first or last instance. Third, modern science is essentially Newtonian, which means that nature is one, i.e. that the pre-modern (transcendental) bifurcation between the (unmoving) earth and the (noumenal) sky has been definitively removed. Fourth, modern science is essentially Einsteinian, which means that nature suspends itself in its (cor)relational immanence by absorbing (or physicalizing) any sort of transcendental or metaphysical (back)ground. And finally, modern science is essentially Heisenbergian, which means that the phenomenological objective consistency of nature depends upon a certain number of quantum categories, which define the general conditions of logical predicability, (in)deterministic predictability, physical individuation, temporal reidentification, experimental observability, and intersubjective objectivity.” </span><o:p></o:p></span></div></div></div>Daniel Sacilottohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06107600124995445921noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6580039155018603814.post-83998076127438133452011-12-19T12:09:00.000-08:002012-01-21T22:30:26.323-08:00Blackbox Realism: On Quine and the Indeterminacy of Translation<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW-0R4VySGpKsQixPCw5j8KyDmjG7ImBcw5Khnt4dLvJctXUbUDqD5IR-C2XzH4zKltu78ogl7b14YpmFOD8h3-crEQMp2hsJbC3sZVGoNVzuUkWTSeZlac7NTSJ7F4wBkX_zQnTPdNk__/s1600/phtto.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="604" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW-0R4VySGpKsQixPCw5j8KyDmjG7ImBcw5Khnt4dLvJctXUbUDqD5IR-C2XzH4zKltu78ogl7b14YpmFOD8h3-crEQMp2hsJbC3sZVGoNVzuUkWTSeZlac7NTSJ7F4wBkX_zQnTPdNk__/s640/phtto.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br />
</span></span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">- BLACKBOX REALISM -</span></span></span></b></span></b></div><b><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"></span></span></b><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">On Quine and the Indeterminacy of Translation</span></span></span></b></span></span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">________________________________________________________</span></span></span></b></span></span></b></div><b><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br />
</span></b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Introduction<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> In this paper I seek to develop some considerations surrounding Quine's thesis for the indeterminacy of translation. As presented in his canonical <i>Word and Object</i> (1964), the thesis states that, for any pair of languages, different incompatible theories of translation, all adequate to the relevant available empirical facts, may be proposed. Thus, Quine seeks to undermine the idea that translation between two languages implies achieving congruence of meaning between them, if the latter is understood as entailing synonymy <i>qua</i> sameness of reference. In doing so, he casts doubts upon the co-dependent traditional notions of meaning, reference, and synonymy. This is supported through what Quine calls the <i>underdetermination of translation by data</i>, which states that the set of empirical facts rendered available for a translator can accept of many possible, incompatible meanings, all of them being adequate to the observable data. There are many ways in which words or expressions fit the facts in spite of being ontologically or referentially ambiguous. Therefore, for a given theory of translation, that theory's conditions for success do not depend on mapping synonymous expressions between the two languages. The translator cannot infer synonymy from the congruence observed in identical behavioral responses to stimuli, when contrasting expressions between languages. Rather, the job of the translator is to preserve the standard relations between given linguistic expressions and behavioral conditions for assent or dissent, relative to observation instances. Quine frames these views in his theory of 'radical translation', supported in the underdetermination of translation by data.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> I shall follow Scott Soames' reconstruction of Quine's argument for the indeterminacy of translation (IOT) by clarifying the relationship between three central concepts: stimulus meaning, observation sentences, and occasion sentences<a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/CASA/Escritorio/Theories%20of%20Translation%20-%20BlackBox%20Realism.docx#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">[1]</span></span></span></a>. In the first section, I follow and expand on Soames' presentation of Quine in seeking a formal explanation of the abovementioned three interrelated concepts. I shall then propose that Quine's arguments for indeterminacy fail to account for non-observational criteria relevant for translation, which cannot be captured by the restriction of empirical data to stimulus meaning and observation sentences. In particular, I shall argue that it is possible to propose additional criteria for any two hypothetical alternative <i>compatible</i> theories of translation, which are supposed to share their stimulus meaning and so be equally adequate translations by Quine’s criteria. Although these considerations do not belie the argument for indeterminacy, they do set constraints to the scope of what the latter solicits us to conclude about what can be of empirical relevance for the task of translation. More specifically, it will allow us to consider the possibility that non-truth-functional linguistic expressions can be relevant for translation. I conclude that while Quine's theory of radical translation should be read as an argument for indeterminacy, it should not be read as a comprehensive theory of translation applicable outside of strict cases where the only relevant empirical data is limited to linguistic expressions that function as perceptual reports. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> I then briefly show some problems that arise for the thesis of indeterminacy, by considering it in conjunction with Quine's pragmatic endorsement of behaviorism and physicalism. I focus on the behaviorist disavowal of representational contents, the physicalist pragmatic endorsement of the truth of physics, and the thesis on ontological relativity according to which to be is to be the value of a variable. I suggest that the conjunction of these three theses create problems for Quine’s deflationary scientific realism, and also for the thesis of the indeterminacy of translation. In particular, I argue that his behaviorism can be read in two senses: an epistemological and an ontological one. In conjunction with his other two positions, both options leave the plausibility of the inscrutability of reference in demand of further justification for its claims. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">I - The Indeterminacy of Translation<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"> </span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;">Quine's focus on theories of translation is contingent upon his intention to advance a general point about language. His two main philosophical targets comprise at least two prevalent orientations in philosophy of mind and language from his time: <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">1) <i>The logical atomist theory of meaning</i> - which preserves Frege's idea that meaning is primarily a matter of a series of relations between sentential expressions and the items of reference correlative to those expressions. The main idea that the logical atomists adapted from the Fregean view was that, through propositional analysis, an eventual theory of language would yield an understanding of meaning that would allow the logician to neatly separate meaningful sentences from meaningless ones, by isolating those expressions that are apt for empirical verification from those which aren’t. In turn, discerning which sentences are verifiable and thus meaningful would rely on knowing which expressions succeeded at denoting an item of reference in the world. This is an empiricist and verificationist thesis. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">2) <i>The sense-datum theories of mind</i> - according to which sense-data, in some form, determines the basic content for all further propositional attitudes, i.e. experience and so knowledge originates in our registration of sensorial stimuli. This (roughly neo-Aristotelian) position entails that a fundamental layer of mental content underlies all propositional attitudes, and so that sensibilia anchors linguistic acts on an analytically available referential frame. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> In relation to the logical atomists and philosophy of language, Quine preserves the verificationist constraint according to which the meaning of a sentence is determined by its conditions for verification or refutation. He also advocates the thesis that sentences are the basic constituents of meaningful expressions: “I follow Frege in deeming sentences the primary vehicles of meaning.”<a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/CASA/Escritorio/Theories%20of%20Translation%20-%20BlackBox%20Realism.docx#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">[2]</span></span></span></a>At the same time, he rejects that an analysis of language can clarify meaning by explaining the congruity between expressions and referents, because it turns out that conditions for verification render items of reference ambiguous. Rather than to seek an elucidation of meaning in terms of word-world representational mappings, Quine proposes instead that language is mostly a matter of social convention, i.e. of dispositions to react to linguistic stimuli by responding in accordance to behaviorally conditioned responses within given socio-cultural contexts, or as cases of what Brandom (1998) calls <i>reliable differential responsive dispositions</i>. The opening line from <i>Word and Object </i>thus reads: "Language is a social act... in acquiring it we have to depend entirely on intersubjectively available cues as to what to say and when." Quine's argument constraining the available empirical data for translation theories to stimulus responses turns out to be the fundamental feature of his views on translation, and the inscrutability of reference that the latter evinces.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> In relation to the sense-datum theorists and the philosophy of mind, Quine endorses the idea that linguistic acts begin in experience, and that the meaning we assign to words is contingent on our capacities for perceptual discrimination. That is, again, part of what is at stake in Quine’s epistemic restriction of translation to observation sentences. However, he rejects the idea of a ubiquitous layer of sense-content which could serve to render linguistic reference unambiguous, i.e. sensibilia has no determinate content which unequivocally and transparently fixes an item of reference across a community of speakers<a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/CASA/Escritorio/Theories%20of%20Translation%20-%20BlackBox%20Realism.docx#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">[3]</span></span></span></a>. Alex Orenstein explains in that regard that “the conjecture of indeterminacy is that there is no reason to think, given the empiricism/behaviorism involved in translation and its ontological underpinnings, that translation is determinate [about reference].” (Orenstein, 2002, pp. 144) Rather, communication proceeds while leaving the item(s) of reference inscrutable through the available evidence. In this regard, Soames condenses the two central claims that Quine seeks to advance by using theories of translation: "i) that the class of all possible data for such a theory radically underdetermines the claims about meaning that it makes, and ii) that this indeterminacy could not be resolved even if we had access to all physical facts."<a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/CASA/Escritorio/Theories%20of%20Translation%20-%20BlackBox%20Realism.docx#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">[4]</span></span></span></a> (Soames, 2003: Pg. 226) The former follows given the ontological and referential indeterminacy left undecided after observing linguistic behavior. The latter follows from the fact that adequacy to the (natural) facts that constitute the world admit of semantically incompatible expressions, i.e. expressions with divergent meanings can be adequate to the facts. Quine thinks the inscrutability of reference sets epistemological constrains about which ontological commitments other linguistic subjects target in their use of language, since ambiguity of reference persists. However, this does not entail that every possible theory or set of statements are on equal footing before reality: Quine also endorses the physicalist thesis according to which physics describes the totality of facts that structures the world. I shall try to show why Quine’s physicalism becomes difficult to reconcile with behaviorism below. It is important to understand, however, that Quine’s argument for the underdetermination of translation by data in fact depends on the realist thesis that a) there exists an ontological structure composed of true facts which is the world, b) that those facts are specifically those advanced by current bona fide physics. Let us explain how exactly Quine argues for the underdetermination thesis in this context. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> Given the verificationist constraint, all scientific theories, including theories of translation, must be tested against plausible observational data. Quine's argument will consist in trying to delineate what the relevant data amounts to for theories of translation specifically. It will turn out that the set of data available for the translator underdetermines the choice for translation theory, i.e. more than one theory may fit the data equally as well. From this, it follows that a theory of translation must include in its conditions for success a severe and fundamental epistemic constraint. That is, the <i>underdetermination of translation by data</i> entails the <i>indeterminacy of translation</i>. Following Soames (2005), let us propose a definition of these two central ideas<a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/CASA/Escritorio/Theories%20of%20Translation%20-%20BlackBox%20Realism.docx#_ftn5" name="_ftnref5" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">[5]</span></span></span></a>:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">1)<i> </i>(The Underdetermination of Translation by Data)<i> </i>(UTD)<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> Let L1 and L2 be arbitrary languages, and let D be the set of all observational truths (known and unknown) relevant to translation from one to the other. For any theory of translation T for L1 and L1, compatible with D, there is a theory T', incompatible with T, that is compatible with, and equally well supported by, D. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">2)<i> </i>(The Indeterminacy of Translation) (IOT)<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> Translation is not determined by the set N of all empirical truths, known or unknown. For any pair of languages and a given theory of translation T for those languages, there are alternative theories of translation, incompatible with T, that accord equally well with N and so that are just as adequate to the facts. There is no objective matter of fact on which they disagree, and no objective sense in which one is true and the other is not.<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> The plausibility of the inference from IOT to UTD supervenes on whether Quine's argument for what constitutes relevant data is reasonable to uphold. We may provisionally anticipate that it is at least not intuitively obvious what a) observational truths amount to precisely in Quine's account, and b) why we should restrain ourselves to a consideration of such facts. The latter is motivated by the empiricist and verificationist constraint that theories should be tested against the backdrop of evidentially salient data. For translation theories, the task is to correlate expressions between different languages or dialects. The set of correlations that map expressions in one language to another is what constitutes a <i>translation manual</i> or <i>translation theory</i>. The basic constituents of such a theory will then yield statements of the form:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;">“Word or sentence s1 in L1 <u>means the same</u> as word or sentence s2 in L2.”</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> However, as we have anticipated, attempts to anchor translation on reference-synonymy are undermined by the data. To see why this is the case we must ask what ‘behavioral data’ amounts to in the production of a translation manual. The hypothesis advanced by Quine is that this data involves the observation of occasions where the foreigner uses specific expressions in his native language, where the translator compares them to situations where we use expressions in our language. As we surmised above apropos the endorsement of the Fregean thesis, Quine advocates the restriction of meaning to sentential expressions, but we should remark that the latter may include one-word interrogative utterances, and holophrastically construed sentences such as ‘<i>Here-is-a-rabbit</i>!’ or ‘<i>This-is-red!</i>’ The anchoring of such linguistic behavior in non-verbal, observational stimuli provides the observational data that Quine deems essential for translation, i.e. for what he calls <i>stimulus meaning</i>. Coming to know the relation between conditions for assent or dissent relative to expressions in given occasions constitutes the basis for a translation manual. As Orenstein puts it: “Quine’s linguist offers a hypothesis equating two such sentences (one the native’s and another the linguist’s) and checks it against a native speaker’s assenting or dissenting to the native sentence in the presence of some non-verbal stimuli.” (Orenstein 2002, pp. 134) Without further ado, let us introduce the three essential definitions at work in Quine’s account, following and expanding on Soames presentation (Soames, 2005, pp 254-255): <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;">(Stimulus Meaning - SM) <br />
</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"> The stimulus meaning of a sentence S (for a speaker at a given time <i>t</i>) is a pair of classes- the class of situations which would prompt the speaker to assent to S if queried (the affirmative stimulus meaning of S), and the class of situations which would prompt the speaker to dissent from S if queried (the negative stimulus meaning of S).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">(<b>Occasion Sentences - OCS)</b><br />
S is an occasion sentence for a speaker if and only if the speaker's assent to, or dissent from, S depends in part on what the speaker is observing.<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;">(Observation Sentences - OBS)<br />
</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"> S is an observation sentence in a language L if and only if i) S is an occasion sentence for speakers of L, and ii) the stimulus meaning of S varies trivially from one speaker of L to another.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"> The third criterion tries to render the interference of background assumptions ineffectual, to make variability in stimulus response minimal, i.e. it excludes judgments in which collateral-information affects stimulus responses. Quine’s central idea is then that the empirical constraint to observation sentences, as defined by stable stimulus meaning across occasion sentences, yield data that does not sufficiently support <i>reference-synonymy</i>. The latter is therefore not part of the experimental material or the goal of translation manuals. The translator can at best achieve <i>stimulus-synonymy</i>, while reference-synonymy would require that one may unambiguously assert sameness of meaning, which entails sameness of reference. This impossibility is precisely what Quine’s argument is designed to prove:</span><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"> “The recovery of a man’s current language from his currently observed responses is the task of the linguist [or translator] who, unaided by an interpreter, is out to penetrate and translate a language hitherto unknown. All the objective data he has to go on are the forces that he sees impinging on the natives’ surfaces and the observable behavior, vocal and otherwise, of the native. Such data evinces “meanings” only of the most objectively empirical or stimulus-linked variety.” (Quine, WO: pp. 28-9)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> As a result of the constraint to stimulus-synonymy, the empirical prediction for theories of translation will hold generally that:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;">(Empirical Prediction of Translation Theories)<br />
</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"> Translation of observation sentences must preserve stimulus meaning. If a translation theory states that an observation sentence S1 in L1 means the same as S2 in L2, then the theory predicts that S1 and S2 have the same stimulus meanings in their respective linguistic communities.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> With this in mind we might stipulate a revision of our earlier general formulation, for the theorematic statements advanced by translation theories, as follows:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;">“Word or sentence s1 is in L1 <u>is stimulus-synonymous</u> to word or sentence s2 in L2.”</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> At this juncture, we should reiterate that the relevant data described in Quine’s argument is of two kinds: the <i>observational data</i> gathered in stimulus responses, and <i>the totality of physical facts</i> which constitute the world, and relative to which the underdetermination by observational data occurs. Whereas the former is available, relevant and tractable for the translator, the latter constitutes the factual background that can be equally adequate to different and incompatible translation manuals, and so to different sets of stimulus responses. The idea is then that a) observational data is referentially ambiguous and so that different translations are equally supported by such data, and b) the facts of physics do not help resolve this ambiguity.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> Quine’s proposed thought-experiment for radical translation asks us to imagine the task of translating a hypothetical native language called Jungle, and which bears little in common to English. Having already stipulated that the translator is capable of discerning the appropriate gestures/expressions in Jungle for assent or dissent, to determine occasions for negative and positive stimulus meaning in the native’s language, Quine considers a specific example in a translator’s attempt to translate the native expression <i>Gavagai!</i> He stipulates that we could find out that the natives will assent and dissent to the one-word interrogative <i>Gavagai?</i> in the same situations that we are disposed to assent and dissent to the one-word interrogative sentence <i>Rabbit?</i> On this basis, the translator might be tempted to conclude that both <i>Gavagai </i>and <i>Rabbit</i> are referent-synonymous. Such a hypothetical translator argues as follows:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 200%; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;">1)<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;">For any pair of expressions S1 in L1, and S2 in L2, it is possible to empirically determine that both expressions are synonymous.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;">2)<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;">If two expressions are synonymous, then they have the same meaning.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;">3)<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;">If two expressions have the same meaning, then they must have the same referents. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;">4)<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;">Therefore, if two expressions are synonymous, then they have the same referents.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="line-height: 200%; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;">5)<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;">Therefore, it is possible to empirically determine for any pair of expressions in distinct languages, that they have the same referent. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> As we have suggested above, Quine’s contention against this argument is to disambiguate between stimulus-synonymy and reference-synonymy. Although Quine agrees in that the traditional notion of meaning advanced by the tradition is construed in terms of reference-synonymy and implies it, his point is that translation can at best warrant establishing stimulus-synonymy, and from the latter reference-synonymy doesn’t follow. It follows that premise (1) fails if not qualified to read ‘stimulus-synonymous’, given the empirical constraint set by stimulus meaning. Furthermore, premise (2) is also only sensible to uphold if one qualifies it to mean ‘referent-synonymy’, and so the inference to (3) requires such a qualification. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> At this point, it might seem as if Quine is oscillating between two possible ideas: is he trying to dispense of the notion of meaning altogether by showing that synonymy <i>simpliter</i> is evidentially undermined? Or is he trying to redefine meaning so that the coinage of stimulus-synonymy can be said to achieve a behavioral account of meaning? This question lies outside the scope of this paper, but it should just be remarked that in any case synonymy and meaning, as construed by the tradition’s focus on referential relations, remain the target of Quine’s argument.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> The second qualification that we must note at this point is that, given the constriction to stimulus meaning and observation sentences, the set of expressions that can be sorted out using the abovementioned procedure is limited. Since the sentential expressions which yield stimulus responses depend by definition on observation instances, they do not comprise sentences whose determination is intractable by such means. For example, expressions like <i>Rabbits share genetic material with Hares</i> or <i>Columbus discovered America</i> will not work under such circumstances (Soames 2005, pp. 229). This raises a question for Quine, as well as for translation <i>tout court</i>. First, in excluding such sentences, haven’t we obviated what is an obvious and crucial part of the task undertaken by real translators everywhere? Quine himself does not address why such sentences are not subject to semantic analysis at a loss for evidential support, which renders the hypothetical nature of radical translation seem less realistic in scope. However, Quine might insist that sentences in a language must be, in the last instance, tethered to plausible direct or indirect knowledge of stimulus responses relative to observation, or at the very least, perceptual instances. One cannot do without being able to correlate expressions to some sort of perceptual stimulus, since it is through the latter that all communication functions to anchor language on the world. That such information might occur indirectly (through third-party testimony, recordings of some sort, or otherwise) does little to change this fundamental constraint. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> To consider why such an argument is persuasive for Quine consider the following radical example: suppose that one finds what appears to be an Alien tabula with indecipherable inscriptions presumably coming from a community of Alien speakers, equipped with similar perceptual capacities to ours. We have no diagrammatic representation of these symbols anywhere, and we lack any contact or knowledge about how any of these expressions might relate to the situations that we might register through perception in specific occasions. It seems reasonable to suggest that it would then prove to be utterly impossible to translate or understand anything about this manual; the bare minimum required to understand a language is to know how certain experientially available situations trigger stimulus responses in the right instances, i.e. to understand how they relate to the world. Without any idea of which situations correspond to which expressions in the native language we couldn’t even be capable of proposing candidates from our language to serve for stimulus synonymy, let alone reference-synonymy. Thus, the paucity of criteria offered in radical translation is meant precisely to illustrate a minimal set of conditions for a translation theory, and not an exhaustive delineation of all possible cases. This response, however, still begs the question about what it is precisely about non-observational sentences that renders them evidentially trivial or empty; are there other forms of evidence besides those rendered in SM or OBS? If so, why are these secondary or trivial for translation? Could these serve to overcome the underdetermination of translation by data as restricted to stimulus responses?<a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/CASA/Escritorio/Theories%20of%20Translation%20-%20BlackBox%20Realism.docx#_ftn6" name="_ftnref6" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">[6]</span></span></span></a> We shall return to this issue below, but for now let us return to reference.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> So far we haven’t addressed how the underdetermination of data rests on the inscrutability of reference. Although Quine himself reminds us to keep these two theses separate, it is clear that the former is meant to be supported by the truth of the latter<a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/CASA/Escritorio/Theories%20of%20Translation%20-%20BlackBox%20Realism.docx#_ftn7" name="_ftnref7" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">[7]</span></span></span></a>. The question finally amounts to asking why stimulus-synonymy fails to entail reference-synonymy. Assume a pair of sentences in two different languages with identical SM: s1 in L1 and s2 in L2. Suppose that the two expressions in question are the English <i>Lo, a Rabbit!</i> and the Junglese <i>Gavagai!</i> If both expressions are stimulus-synonymous it follows, by definition of SM, that those circumstances on which a speaker of English would assent/dissent to the one-word interrogative <i>Rabbit?</i> are the same as those in which a speaker of Junglese would assent-dissent to the one-word interrogative <i>Gavagai?</i> From this it might be tempting for the translator to conclude that <i>Gavagai</i> refers to rabbits, and so that <i>Gavagai </i>and <i>Rabbit</i> are not just stimulus-synonymous, but referent-synonymous, i.e. that they have the same <i>meaning</i> where the latter entails sameness of reference. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> However, is this really established by the data? Quine remarks that the native <i>Gavagai</i> could just as easily refer to an undetached-rabbit-part, a temporal rabbit-stage, the form of Rabbithood, and who knows what else<i>. </i>Each of those possibilities remains adequate to the stimulus at hand. Thus, Quine argues that “Given that that a native sentence says that a so-and-so is present, and given that the sentence is true when and only when a rabbit is present, it by means follows that the so-and-so are rabbits.”<a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/CASA/Escritorio/Theories%20of%20Translation%20-%20BlackBox%20Realism.docx#_ftn8" name="_ftnref8" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">[8]</span></span></span></a> In other words, while it might be perfectly true that <i>Gavagai? </i>is assented to by the native speakers in the exact same situations that <i>Rabbit</i>? is assented to by English speakers, the former’s reference remains indeterminate. Since the referents of both expressions <i>could </i>be dissimilar, it follows that sameness of meaning is not deducible from the evidence. This thesis is also called the thesis for <i>relative neutrality</i>, i.e. the data is not partial to one possibility rather than the other. All of these states correspond to the physical world, in which rabbit, rabbit-stage, and rabbit-part stimulations all yield the same stimulus response in the same real situation. Thus, commitment to one hypothesis rather than another requires supplementary commitments called ‘analytical hypotheses’. For example, in order to ask ‘Is this rabbit the same as that?’ the translator must decide on how to translate articles, pronouns, identity predicates, among other things. Translating into Jungle requires us to reach beyond what SM renders available (Orenstein, 2005, pp. 135). The selection of a translation manual involves the choice of such divergent sets of possible translations, all of which are equally supported by the data. This allows us to understand how the notion of incompatibility between theories is cashed out in terms of the failure of reference-synonymy. The following reconstruction offers the basic position<a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/CASA/Escritorio/Theories%20of%20Translation%20-%20BlackBox%20Realism.docx#_ftn9" name="_ftnref9" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">[9]</span></span></span></a>:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b><span lang="EN-US">(Incompatibility Between Translation Theories) </span></b><span lang="EN-US"><br />
</span><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"> Let T1 be a translation theory containing statement (i), and let T2 be a translation theory containing statement (ii). The union of T1, T2, and a set which includes following premises is inconsistent:<br />
a) Rabbits are not undetached spatial rabbit parts, undetached spatial rabbit parts are not stages or rabbits, and rabbits are not temporal stages of rabbits.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">b) 'Rabbit' (as we use it now) refers to an object if and only if it is a rabbit, the same with every respective expression.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">c) If two words refer to different things then they don't mean the same thing. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">d) If a word of a phrase w means the same as a word of phrase x, and w means the same as a word or phrase y, then x means the same as y. (transitivity)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> This reconstruction obviously rests upon the reading, suggested above, that Quine would be first and foremost be looking to displace the notion of meaning altogether, rather than redefine it. An alternative reading, which sees Quine as relaxing the notion of meaning, could simply qualify premises (c) and (d) to read ‘reference-meaning’ or ‘reference-synonymy’, thereby leaving it open that two expressions with different referents could nevertheless be said to enjoy sameness of meaning in the sense of ‘stimulus-meaning’. In any case, the point outlined above is that given a translation theory T1 that contains a statement (i), and an alternative theory T2 containing a statement (ii), the union of T1, T2 and the set containing (a-d) is logically inconsistent. With this in place, we might offer a formal reconstruction of the argument for IOT, as follows:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;">(A Possible Reconstruction of the Argument)</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
1) For any instance of radical translation one must base oneself on observation sentences, and the stimulus meaning for the expressions proper to that community.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">2) The meaning of a sentence or word is only intelligible in relation to the entirety of the sentences-words which compose a language.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">3) For every theory of translation T1 which maps statements of the form s1 <> L1 = s2 <> L2 on the basis of observation sentences, there is a possible alternative theory T2 which has s3 <> L1 = s2 <> L2, and in which s1 and s3 refer to different objects.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">4) If two terms refer to different things they have different meanings; synonymy implies sameness of reference.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">5) Therefore, s1 and s3 are not synonymous.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">6) Therefore, T1 and T2 are semantically incompatible, even though they both correspond equally as well to the observation statements and so to the data available by stimulus meaning.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">7) Therefore, in theory, more than one possible translation, all equally adequate to the data rendered available by stimulus-meaning and to the totality of physical facts, and yet incompatible with regards to their reference-meaning, are possible.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">8) Therefore, the data gathered by stimulus-meaning underdetermines any claims to semantic synonymy, insofar as the latter entails sameness of reference, i.e. UDT entails relative neutrality.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"> At this point, one might wonder whether the thesis for the inscrutability of reference is over-hastily drawn. One could argue that what Quine takes to be an irremediable ambiguity resulting from the relative neutrality obtaining from surveying observation sentences might be nevertheless resolved upon further questioning. Specifically, if one could learn to ask the native more specific questions about the identity and determinate content of what he/she is speaking about, it is not clear why the ambiguity should persist. Quine in fact considers such a possibility, but thinks that nevertheless the inscrutability of reference persists:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-left: 70.9pt; margin-right: 127.8pt; margin-top: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> "It will perhaps be countered that there is no essential difficulty in spotting judgments of identity on the part of the jungle native, or even of a speechless animal. This is true enough for qualitative identity, better called resemblance. In an organism's susceptibility to the conditioning of responses we have plentiful criteria for his standards of resemblance of stimulations. But what is relevant to the preceding reflections is numerical identity. Two pointings may be pointings to a numerically identical rabbit, to numerically distinct rabbit parts, and to numerically distinct rabbit stages, the inscrutability lies not in resemblance, but in the anatomy of sentences. We could equate a native expression with any of the disparate English terms 'rabbit', 'rabbit stage', 'undetached rabbit part', etc, and still by compensatorily juggling the translation of numerical identity and associated particles preserve the conformity to stimulus meanings of occasion sentences." <br />
(Quine, <i>Word and Object</i>, pp. 52-54)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> What Quine attempts to argue for in this rather cryptic passage is the following: the question about whether the native refers to the same object(s) as us depends on what, if anything, the native understands that is equivalent to our understanding of identity notions such as: <i>is the very same thing as</i>, or <i>is identical with</i>. But behavioral evidence does not decide this question. Imagine that the word <i>squiggle</i> is hypothesized as a candidate for expressing the notion of identity. One could utter <i>Gavagai squiggle Gavagai?</i> with the belief that if the native assents to my utterance he must be referring to a Rabbit as opposed to an undetached spatial part of a rabbit, or a temporal rabbit stage, etc. This would seem to follow because whereas the rabbit is one thing that remains identical from a time t1 to t2, a rabbit stage isn't. The same might hold for spatial parts, unless the rabbit was immobile. Of course, other candidates for reference might still persist, but the point would be that nevertheless there are ways to narrow down the ambiguity, and so that inscrutability may be resolved with sufficient effort. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> And yet, as far as the evidence goes, <i>squiggle</i> could mean <i>identical with</i>, <i>is an undetached spatial part of the same extended whole as</i>, <i>is a temporal stage of the same enduring complex as</i>, and various other iterations. Thus, for all we know, while the native could be assenting to the underlying belief in unified Rabbithood, he could still be referring to stages or parts, and a variety of iterations like the ones above. With this in place one might begin to wonder about the empirical constraint to stimulus meaning, which Quine thinks sets minimal conditions for translation, as we surmised above.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> The question would be whether the scope of data captured by the Quinean examples of radical translation truly captures the breadth of data relevant and available to the translator. This amounts to asking about whether stimulus meaning exhausts the relevant data for translation. In order to see why this is problematic for Quine, imagine the following scenario. It is at least not <i>a priori</i> ruled out that two expressions in a given language might be stimulus-synonymous. For the argument’s sake let us hypothesize that the interrogatives in Spanish <i>Sombrilla? </i>and <i>Paraguas?</i> are taken to be stimulus-synonymous. Furthermore, assume that a native Spanish speaker, looking to find the appropriate translation for these cases, soon discovers that the stimulus meaning for the English <i>Umbrella?</i> is stimulus-synonymous to both <i>Sombrilla</i> and <i>Paraguas</i>. According to Quine’s criteria, <i>Umbrella</i> could be translated accordingly by both terms, and there are no further grounds to decide upon this issue. Yet it is plainly obvious that such concerns by far delimit the scope of Quine’s thought experiment in a way that obviates empirical considerations taken by translators everywhere. For example, consider that the translator is deliberating on the abovementioned example in the process of translating a piece of poetry. Although determination of stimulus-meaning is part of the labor at stake, the translator must also, in deciding whether to use <i>Sombrilla </i>or <i>Paraguas</i>, pay attention to other salient factors, i.e. for example, the phonetic structure of the poem. It might be that translating <i>Sombrilla</i> for <i>Umbrella</i> allows the translator to preserve the rhyme-structure of the work, which would be destroyed otherwise, or preserve in it a case of alliteration in conjunction with other choices, in the process of conveying a particular idea, etc. Analogous examples could be given to show that stylistic decisions, while based on salient data available for the translator, are irreducible to stimulus-meaning. Although these considerations are not arguments against Quine’s thesis of UTD or IOR, they do provide a reminder of the restricted scope of his experiments. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> However, it turns out that the issue of competing expressions with stimulus-synonymy has more substantial consequences. To see why, it suffices to consider non-referent-synonymous expressions in two distinct languages, which would be assented / dissented to in all possible circumstances. These kinds of expressions are labeled by Soames <i>stimulus-analytic</i> sentences (Soames 2005, pp 234). For example, consider the English expression <i>There have been dogs</i>. It seems plausible enough to suggest that this is a sentence whose assent to or dissent from would bear little to no variance between speakers of the language, and further that assent to it would be ubiquitous across all instances, i.e. it is stimulus-analytic. The problem then emerges when we consider what we would take to be an obvious falsehood in the native language that is also stimulus-analytic. For example, ubiquitous assent to the interrogative <i>Katamerai?</i> in Jungle might actually mean <i>This is the work of the omnipresent Sun-God</i>!<i> </i>The problem is that, restricting ourselves to stimulus-meaning, we could fail to distinguish universally believed English truths from universally believed native falsehoods, and vice versa. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-left: 2cm; margin-right: 127.8pt; margin-top: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">“This raises the possibility that two sentences might differ in meaning, even though utterances of them would generally convey the same information (and hence prompt the same assents or dissents) owing to the fact that utterances of one of the sentences generally would implicate a proposition that was part of the meaning of the other. In such cases, the difference in meaning between the two sentences would be all but invisible to Quine’s radical translator, and Quine’s constraints on the empirical adequacy of translation would allow the sentences to be assimilated to one another.” (Ibid, pp. 235) <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> At this juncture, the weight of Quine’s thought experiment turns on the constriction to stimulus-meaning and observation sentences. The problems raised by considering stimulus-analytic sentences show not only that such a restriction might miss some relevant data for the task of translation, but that it can often lead to indistinguishing between semantically incompatible notions. Now, one could argue that this, far from being a limitation in Quine’s account, is actually a result of it: that he is precisely revealing the impossibility of inferring semantic determinacy from available data. However, this again turns on the assumption that we agree in that the constriction of data to stimulus-meaning does not obviate other relevant forms of evidence. As we have suggested above, stylistic decisions in translation include such considerations. The question of stimulus-analytic sentences which prompt expressions that are semantically incompatible, but functionally equivalent, suggests that assent or dissent is motivated by factors which exceed the strict truth-functional conditions of the sentential contents. In particular, conventional and conversational implicatures, and other Gricean categories come to mind. These are precisely the kind of background factors Quine looks to set aside in his notion of observation sentences, but how much it leaves out raises questions. As Soames puts it: “At some point, one must recognize the severe limitations he has imposed on himself, as well as the tentative and approximate character of his adequacy conditions on translation.” (Ibid. pp. 235) Additional evidential factors that he takes could amplify the scope of observational evidence include: situational features like the introduction of a word into a language (verbal definitions vs. ostensive illustrations), situations where individuals acquire competency in the use of the word (explanations vs. examples), spontaneous use of words without prompt (English speakers find it natural to use rabbit rather than rabbit-stage). There are all plausible criteria which could affect the translator’s job, and which amplify the scope of evidence relevantly. Nevertheless, it is not obvious that such considerations would alter the basic conclusion about indeterminacy. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> II – Behaviorism, Physicalism, Ontological Relativity<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> At this stage, we might decide to call into question the reliance on observational evidence entailed in Quine’s endorsement of behaviorism. The latter allows him to proscribe from the relevant evidence considerations about beliefs, intentions, and all cognitive states; the contents of wishes and desires, and motivational states of the speakers; the contents of perceptual experiences and the relation of the latter to their environment, etc. All of these factors are not tractable through the salient behavioral evidence yielded by stimulus responses. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> Yet as several commentators have noted, behaviorism is problematic. It is clear that in other domains non-observational facts come into play for supporting our theories and hypotheses, and Quine’s restriction to observationally salient data in stimulus responses leaves such factors out of the picture. Among others, Burge (2010) and Soames (2005) have pointed out that, in order for the indeterminacy argument to be compelling, Quine would need to provide an independent argument for behaviorism, which he does not do. Yet it is not clear how departure from behaviorism would help overcome the indeterminacy argued for by Quine, say, by a hypothetical inclusion of any of the abovementioned items into the set of relevant data. Some commentators, like Soames (2005), argue that aggregating facts about the neurophysiology of individuals does not intuitively help refute the indeterminacy thesis. Specifically, he doubts that the IOR may be resolved through facts about the anatomy of the subject, or information about the content of mental states. Let us pause on this issue for a moment.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> Soames calls to question the exclusion of these factors, insofar as the restriction to stimulus responses and observational evidence is supported by an endorsement of behaviorism that is itself not argued for. I just add to Soames that without a proper explication and justification for his behaviorism, precisely what kind of conclusions we should draw about the abovementioned items of data is up in the air. One possible reading is that Quine endorses an <i>ontological behaviorism</i>, that seeks to destroy the notion of representational content altogether, and so to claim not only that reference is ambiguous because of an epistemic limitation in observers, but that there is no determinate relation between words, mental states, and things that could clarify the concept of reference in terms of representational content<a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/CASA/Escritorio/Theories%20of%20Translation%20-%20BlackBox%20Realism.docx#_ftn10" name="_ftnref10" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">[10]</span></span></span></a>. Sometimes Soames seems to read Quine in this direction, for example, when he claims that, for Quine, “[T]he ordinary notions of meaning and reference are rejected as illegitimate pre-scientific concepts that have no place in a scientifically respectable description of the world... The problem in Quine’s view is not that we are in danger of forever remaining ignorant of the facts about meaning and reference. The problem is that there are no genuine facts to be ignorant off” (Soames 2005, pp 226) How are we to position this thesis alongside Quine’s conjoint commitment to metaphysical physicalism and semantic holism?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> Recall that Quine (1969) endorses ontological relativity, understood as the position according to which existence is to be the value of a variable, i.e. an argument for an existentially quantified true statement<a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/CASA/Escritorio/Theories%20of%20Translation%20-%20BlackBox%20Realism.docx#_ftn11" name="_ftnref11" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">[11]</span></span></span></a>. This is part of Quine’s inferentialist commitment which follows from the claim that empirical content undeterdetermines the choice of theory. An ontological disavowal of representational contents under this reading would entail that there are no true facts about reference to fulfill this role, i.e. one doesn’t quantify over ‘referents’, if by the latter we mean something that is supposed to inhere outside our ‘referring’ expressions. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"> Another way to make the same point is to say that reference is nonsensical except by taking it relatively to a background theory, never ‘absolutely’ or with regard to anything ‘external’, i.e. Quine’s position is that of a <i>deflationary realism</i> in which the objectivity of the world is thinly construed in terms of the holistic network of inferential relations that hold between expressions in a given language, bereft of all transcendent skyhooks. In that regard, Quine seeks to exemplify through the indeterminacy of translation and the inscrutability of reference the extent into which ontology is relative to background theoretical assumptions which are socially convened upon and so holistic in nature. As F</span><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;">Ø</span><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;">llesdal (1995) claims, “Quine, more than any other philosopher, has made us see the far reaching implications of the public nature of language.”<a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/CASA/Escritorio/Theories%20of%20Translation%20-%20BlackBox%20Realism.docx#_ftn12" name="_ftnref12" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">[12]</span></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> This reading creates a problem when attempting to reconcile behaviorism with Quine’s simultaneous endorsement of physicalism. If the notions of representational content and of reference have no value; why and how are scientific statements any different than any other, if at all? What grants scientific description, and our understanding of it, a genuine prerogative in adequately describing the determinate structure of the world, without ambiguity? That is, how is it that physics and only physics yields ‘true facts’ about what it existential quantifies? McDowell (1996), similarly to Quine, has claimed that deflationary standards for truth and ontology show that there is nothing more to the reality of beings or properties besides there being true statements about them. However, he thinks that there are many statements which we take to be true, and which are not intuitively part of natural-scientific discourse. Notably for McDowell, value-statements can be also said to be true or false, and do not transparently follow from truths about physics, i.e. they are not <i>logical consequences</i> of physics. It is even less obvious that mundane truths formulated in common language can be shown to be <i>entailed</i> by physics. In this regard, Soames (2005) reasonably claims that to believe that statements such as <i>A car exists</i>, or <i>I own a blue car</i> could be shown to be logical consequences of physical truths is, for the moment, an utterly speculative thesis which exceeds any evidential support made available by current physics. He proposes thus to read the determination of all truths by physics as one of mere (metaphysical) <i>supervenience</i>, as opposed to strict <i>logical consequences</i>. Whereas to construe a given fact <i>q </i>as a logical consequence of a physical fact <i>p </i>requires that <i>q </i>be <i>deducible </i>from <i>p</i>, supervenience only implies the weaker claim that a given entity <i>q </i>could not <i>exist</i> without <i>p</i>. Yet even with a weakened sense of supervenience, it is not clear where from the authority of physics derives, nor the specific relation it bears to other (presumed) truth-functional sentences. These controversies show that even in denying the valence of the concept of reference, problems remain with respect to the endorsement of physicalism. If Quine wants to deny that the notion of reference plays any part in current bona fide physics, and so that the latter need not remain tethered to it, he still needs to explain how it is that scientific discourse describes a mind independent world. Such an explanation would need to be epistemologically explanatory in showing how one can disambiguate between our possible descriptions of the world and the world itself. But a deflationary account which constraints realism to existential quantification seems difficult to reconcile with such a demand since, like McDowell suggests, all kinds of statements appear to be truth-apt which do not seem to be about physics, and which are not construed as consequences of the latter. And it is not clear that in the weakened sense of metaphysical/material supervenience, statements existentially affirming the valence of cars and other middle sized items can be taken to be true on virtue of lower level facts about non-observables, 'real patterns' (Dennett; Ladyman and Ross), or anything else. An account of the relationship between the semantic content of conventional statements and those of physics would be in order, even if some have argued that a physicalism construed around supervenience is empirically supported by current science<a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/CASA/Escritorio/Theories%20of%20Translation%20-%20BlackBox%20Realism.docx#_ftn13" name="_ftnref13" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">[13]</span></span></span></a>. On any account, ontological relativity coupled to ontological behaviorism would then run into problems when explaining the relationship between mind and world, beyond the constraints of language and social convention, in order to assert the determinability of a mind-independent world required by any realist account. It is important to see that ontological behaviorism becomes of a piece with the inferentialist core, in entailing that there is nothing more to representational contents than propositional contents, while insisting that grasping the latter has nothing to do with finding out how concepts match some item in extra-experiential reality, and so nothing to do with reference. The representational ‘content’ of a proposition is taken to be nothing but the inferential relations into which it enters. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"> As we saw above, standards for truth and falsity are socially convened upon, rather than anchored on a non-conceptual world by necessity<a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/CASA/Escritorio/Theories%20of%20Translation%20-%20BlackBox%20Realism.docx#_ftn14" name="_ftnref14" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">[14]</span></span></span></a>. At the same time, philosophy endows science the prerogative before the real. Thus the ‘totality of true facts’ which make up the world and which physics describes are simultaneously taken to be a matter of a rational pragmatics subordinated to social convention, and a matter of grasping correctly a determinately structured mind-independent reality. These two aspirations in Quine’s realism are not so easy to reconcile. On the one hand, behaviorism entails that there is nothing more to grasping a concept than to grasp its conditions for <i>use</i>, and the latter is simply to understand the inferential relations the concept can enter into, including which counterfactuals it can support in specified contexts. But this severely restricts Quine’s capacity to explain how physics in particular can relate to a mind independent world, since the truths of physical statements are, like those proper to any other discursive register, subjected to pragmatic convention. As Quine himself claims, the distinction between physical objects and other objects ends up being one of degree rather than kind: “</span><span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: 1.15pt; line-height: 200%;">As an empiricist, I continue to think of the conceptual scheme of science as a tool, ulti</span><span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: 0.6pt; line-height: 200%;">mately, for predicting future experience in the </span><span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: 1.75pt; line-height: 200%;">light of past experience [.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"> . .<span style="letter-spacing: 2.3pt;">] The myth of </span>physical objects is epistemologically superior to most in that it has proved more efficacious than <span style="letter-spacing: 0.6pt;">other myths as a device for working a manage-able structure into the flux of experience.”As Brassier (2008) argues, this ultimately subordinates Quine’s realism to the pragmatic wager between assorted ideological operations and interests, in principle incapable of drawing a relation between competing discourses in terms of how they correctly relate to objects and facts in the world, independent of pragmatic strictures. </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;">At a loss for a delineation of the relation between concepts and objects, instrumentalism lurks to usurp Quine’s alleged commitment to scientific realism. Worse still, it might be argued that the failure to distinguish how thought describes being conflates the two, resulting in a kind of idealism. This is precisely what Badiou (2007) proposes, claiming that without explaining the distinction between fact and form, and so leaving the relation between the actual world and formal propositions obscure, one folds the two together. As a result, representation is conceived as a feedback loop, and epistemology becomes incapable of discerning its discursive register from <i>what</i> it purportedly describes. Brassier (2008) writes: “Thus in a surprising empiricist mimesis of the serpent of absolute knowledge swallowing its own tail, naturalized epistemology seeks to construct a virtuous circle wherein congruence between fact and form is explained through the loop whereby representation is grounded in fact and fact is accounted for by representation.<a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/CASA/Escritorio/Theories%20of%20Translation%20-%20BlackBox%20Realism.docx#_ftn15" name="_ftnref15" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">[15]</span></span></span></a>” Given that representational is itself accounted in terms of semantic content, the problem becomes clearer. Weakening representational contents to propositional inferential relations whose truths are convened upon socially finally amounts to disintegrating the link to the empirical world that the naturalist claims science is capable of describing. This is to deny that representational contents may bear any ontological status, and to accept that our scientific realism be reduced to the pragmatic prescription of physicalism. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> Furthermore, Quine would owe us an explanation of what the endeavors of those special sciences that make use of the notion of representational content in terms of referential relations are talking about, as part of those sciences in which the ‘intentional stance’ remains. Burge (2010) for example describes how perceptual psychology examines mechanisms for pre-linguistic objective individuation carried out by our sensory organs, so that representation is causally anchored in relation to environmental stimuli. Are we to simply render such talk derivative, unscientific in tenor, or its postulates epiphenomenal and thus with no proper ontological valence? We shall say more about Burge below, but we should underline that it is clear that Quine would need of an additional argument to disavow representational content simpliter. Since it is the eviction of the latter which confines objective individuation to linguistic <i>behavior</i>, it follows that without such an argument, the annihilation of the referential relation between words and things is not transparently supported by the demands of a realist physicalism. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> In response to this, Quine could claim that physicalism can be rendered compatible with the wholesale destitution of representational content, along the lines suggested above: for example, if one endorses a form of physicalist eliminativism, in which relations between mind and world may be reduced to phenomena proper to fundamental physics. Quine (1953) advocated this position, as conceived through the distinction between the scientific descriptions of basic physical structure (<i>illata</i>), and posterior theoretical re-descriptions of the former (<i>abstracta</i>). The basic idea then was that the former substructure supports the supervenience of higher-order structure back into basic physical relations between elementary particles. As Ladyman and Ross (2009) point out, however, this view rests on the ‘Democritean faith’, refuted by contemporary science, that eventually it will be possible to decompose everything into elementary particles and relations among them, through fundamental physics. They argue that current physics is ambivalent with regard to the ontological status of unobservables, and so that reductionism is not motivated by present science. In addition, this ‘faith’ wouldn’t be easily palliated even if science did motivate such a reduction, since, given Quine’s endorsement of ontological relativity, the endowment granted to physics is in principle a pragmatic matter, and so a position that is prescribed rather than explained. Thus, even if reductionism within science were sound, it would still be controversial whether only physical phenomena should be granted ontological status.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> On any account, it is not clear how physicalism and behaviorism are rendered compatible if Quine endorses an ontological behaviorism. A complete disavowal of representational contents and reference seems to entail the liquidation of the epistemological relation between mind and world, and so of knowledge understood (at least partly) as the objective representation of reality. Here it is not only translation and so knowledge of what <i>others</i> mean when they speak that leaves us in a blackbox with respect to other languages and cultures. More generally, the relationship between thought, language, and the world is rendered obscure. Without a clarification of how representation admits purchase on being, it is not even clear how <i>any</i> theoretical posits are capable of gaining traction on phenomena. We might conclude, therefore, that without an epistemological account of how thought represents the world it is difficult to find motivation for Quine’s endorsement of scientism.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> Alternatively, one may suggest that Quine advocates a form of <i>epistemological behaviorism</i>. Under such a reading, there may be facts about reference that, for contingent limitations, we are just incapable of knowing. Thus, even if there are genuine representational relations between mind and world, and if words and things stand in referential relations too, the problem is that salient evidence undermines our capacity to know of them. Representational contents would be said to exist, insofar as mental states and perceptual occasions are not merely linguistically individuated posits or conventionally accepted ‘true statements’, but determinate items in relation to the external world. The problem here would be fundamentally epistemological, inasmuch as we must accept ignorance on ontological commitments, mental states, and the representational contents that the latter bear, when confronted by the limitations of observational evidence. This is a more moderate reading of Quine’s position, but does it fare any better? Even on this reading, it remains unclear why enquiry into the representational contents of our mental states should prove fruitless, i.e. incapable of resolving the IOR. Soames (2005) seems amenable to Quine’s skepticism, and on this regard he comes closer to reading Quine as an epistemological behaviorist: “We can no more read off the contents of a person’s words from physiological claims about neurons than we can read off the contents of his words from statements about the noises he makes in certain environments.” (Ibid, pp, 246) But why should this follow? Why should we accept that an enquiry into the internal constitution of mental states and their contents should be incapable of informing us about the ontological commitments of others, and the items to which their expressions refer, seeing that at least some of them do refer, after all? On this account, Burge (2010) in particular has raised a fundamental point of contention against Quine’s behaviorist externalism by proposing an epistemological externalism of his own, where objective representational content begins in fundamental instances of perceptual individuation causally relating environmental stimuli to our sensory organs. Advocating study into the science of perceptual psychology, such a position could entail, Burge suggests, that primitive conditions for spatial individuation constrain higher-order linguistic reference. As a result, we would be capable of successfully resolving the IOR through the amplification of our admissible data, since the former now appears artificially restrictive by excluding precisely the kind of empirical insight that would allow the relevant disambiguation for the translator. Burge agues as follows:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-left: 70.9pt; margin-right: 127.8pt; margin-top: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> “[Quine] is right in that it does not <i>follow</i> from utterances that occur when and only when rabbits or rabbit <i>facsimiles </i>occur that the utterer mentions rabbits. But he just assumes that the only relevant evidential consideration is the history of black-box utterances in the presence of rabbits. He thinks that if this evidence does not warrant unique attribution of a referent or a meaning, such attribution is gratuitous… Quine does not confront the natural view that the semantics of language is initially determined by perception. He does not consider how perceptual representational content- hence perceptual singular reference and perceptual attribution- are established.” (Burge, 2010, pp. 214-215)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"> On this account, which we might deem ‘neo-Aristotelian’ in spirit, the relationship between words and things would be antedated by a more primitive relation between mental states and the world. Since the latter is rendered unambiguously determinate, relative to our perceptual faculties in relation to environmental stimuli, and tractable through scientific investigation, Burge thinks that Quine would have to admit that the supplementation of data by such information could restrict IOR, if not eliminate it. Although I am inclined to agree with Quine in that it is not clear that such an investigation could resolve the IOR, at least, he cannot dismiss the import of representational content by endorsing behaviorism without further argument. <br />
<br />
A second possibility once again brings us back to eliminativism, but this time one which would preserve the notion of knowledge of the external world while dispensing of representational contents. For example, an epistemological account tethered to neurophysiology could explain how the interaction between the environment and the brain does not make appeal to anything like representational contents, even if it describes a robust interaction between a sapient being and its exteriority. If Quine wants to take the eliminativist route in this regard, and claim that knowledge of the world is to be cashed out in terms other than representational contents, other questions are left pending<a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/CASA/Escritorio/Theories%20of%20Translation%20-%20BlackBox%20Realism.docx#_ftn16" name="_ftnref16" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">[16]</span></span></span></a>. As we saw above, </span><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;">Soames (2005) convincingly argues that physicalism in Quine must be understood in terms of metaphysical supervenience<a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/CASA/Escritorio/Theories%20of%20Translation%20-%20BlackBox%20Realism.docx#_ftn17" name="_ftnref17" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">[17]</span></span></span></a>. Yet Kim (2010) for instance argues that functionally individuated psychological properties which retain intentional content must be ‘functionalized’ redescriptions of those physical properties with which they are metaphysically identical, or else the local supervenience of the psychological on the physical fails. This failure entails dualism, epiphenomenalism about mental properties, or the view that a singular event can have two causes, a mental and a physical one<a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/CASA/Escritorio/Theories%20of%20Translation%20-%20BlackBox%20Realism.docx#_ftn18" name="_ftnref18" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">[18]</span></span></span></a>. Without reinforcing how precisely psychological-kinds which are said to have representational content supervene on non-representational physical terms, it becomes unclear how the former can be brushed off from having any epistemological import in favor of behaviorism. On any account, denying that representational content may disambiguate about ontological commitments, and so overcome the epistemic limitations yielded by observational data, leaves in the dark the relation between physics and the ‘special sciences’, and specifically perceptual psychology. Moreover, it would still not be clear how construing the epistemic relation between mind and world in non-representational</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> interactions between organism and environment couldn't help resolve the indeterminacy thesis.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; line-height: 200%;"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; line-height: 200%;">Nevertheless, we should always remember that Quine transfers the burden of proof by challenging his opponents to find a supplementary fact about the world which would render the inscrutability of reference ineffectual. Burge’s contention is that in particular the science of perceptual psychology can rise to this challenge. Other philosophers of mind advocate alternative candidates to fulfill this promise. Whether they do or don’t exceeds the scope of this paper.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> In addition, some of the problems that appeared by reading Quine as an ontological behaviorist, reemerge in reading him as an epistemological behaviorist. With regards to the endorsement of physicalism, it is unclear how scientific discourse <i>qua </i>communicational practice, subject to the behaviorist constraint to observational data, relates to other forms of communication and discourse. Is there no inscrutability with regards to the facts of physics, like when, for example, I think to understand what a scientist tells me when he describes the behavior of an electron or some other non-observable cause? Are theoretical posits intractable to behavioral evidence equally susceptible to the inscrutability of reference? The latter is a question which brings to mind Quine’s endorsement of the real ontological status of abstract objects, and so the obscure relation between the latter and observable, concrete physical particulars<a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/CASA/Escritorio/Theories%20of%20Translation%20-%20BlackBox%20Realism.docx#_ftn19" name="_ftnref19" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">[19]</span></span></span></a>. If the inscrutability of reference holds even at the sub-observational level, so that even the statements advanced by physics leave reference indeterminate, then Quine’s endorsement of physicalism would render the consensus in scientific community potentially <i>indifferent </i>to the true facts of the matter. But this seems problematic, since it is said that physics describes the world as it is, and given semantic incompatibility between theories, extending indeterminacy to physics would beg the question about <i>whose</i> physics adequately describes the world, and <i>how do we know this</i>? Postulating an ‘ideal physics’ doesn’t quite help, since the question repeats itself in having to clarify the relation between our <i>actual physics</i>, and the <i>ideal physics</i> in exception to the pitfalls of the former. If the UTD applies to physics, then subjecting the epistemic purchase of actual physics to stimulus meaning would seem make Quine’s behaviorism conducive to a kind of radical agnosticism about reference for all intersubjective communication, and not just cases of ‘radical translation’. However, then it becomes difficult to see how such a view could amount to a proper scientific realism, since all of a sudden ontological ambiguity affects even intra-linguistic or intra-theoretical communication. Quine on this reading seems one short step from endorsing full-blown ontological relativism about the world, and not just ontological relativity about discourse, as a result of the behaviorist restriction to stimulus meaning, and the epistemic gulf opened by the inscrutability of reference. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> If, on the other hand, IOR doesn’t hold at the sub-perceptual level, then it is not clear why the inscrutability yielded through communication in non-scientific description couldn´t be clarified through determinate, fundamental physical facts. Soames (2005), for example, seems to think that physicalism would entail the disambiguation of inscrutability if we understand by the former the thesis that everything that is true must supervene on physical truths.<br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-left: 70.9pt; margin-right: 127.8pt; margin-top: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span lang="EN-US"> </span><span lang="EN-US">“Whatever any of us means by <i>rabbit</i>, it is natural to suppose that our meaning what we do depends ultimately on physical facts. For example, we may ask whether a physically identical twin- someone (in a physically identical possible world-state) whose utterances, behavior, brain states, causal and historical relations to the environment, and interactions with other speakers…completely and exactly match mine- could mean by ‘rabbit’ what I actually mean by, say ‘undetached rabbit part’. It seems to me that the answer to this question must be ‘No’, for the very same reasons that physicalism itself seems acceptable on this interpretation.” (Soames, 2005, pp. 251)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> Although Soames separates Quine’s behaviorism from his physicalism and focuses on the latter, I think that, on the contrary, consideration of the former yields reasons to doubt the plausibility of endorsing the latter. This follows even if Soames is right in saying that it is not clear why the IOR persists under such a physicalism. If one additionally casts doubts upon the notion of representational contents, it seems on the other hand difficult to understand how physics stands in relation to the IOR. Since it is physics that provides knowledge of the facts underlying the possibility of there being equally adequate but incompatible theories of translation and so incompatible ontological commitments, Quine cannot obviate the task of describing how physics yields determinate knowledge of a mind-independent world, relative to which sentential utterances are rendered ontologically ambiguous or at the very least epistemologically foreclosed. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> Finally, if Quine does not completely eliminate the epistemic purchase of representational contents in tethering the latter to physics, he either needs to explain how such contents don’t resolve the inscrutability of reference, or else claim how they constitute an exception. That is, if physics relates to the world beyond the constraints of convention, and it yields knowledge of such a world, how does it escape the inscrutability of reference, if at all? The former option leads into the kinds of problems we suggested above, making it problematic to discern whose physics is to be championed. The latter option of claiming physics is in exception, renders scientific description and communication metaphysically determined and unambiguous, while leaving other descriptive registers irremediably affected by the IOR, and so subject to the UTD. Thus, Quine could claim that physicalism supports IOT and the UTD insofar as all non-physical linguistic utterances remain referentially ambiguous. At the same time, he can claim that physics, and only physics, gives communicable knowledge about the real, and is not subject to IOR. Finally, the ontological ambiguity presented by IOR would be said to be supported by the plurality of possible incompatible theories while admitting of determinate physical facts described unambiguously by science. As we have seen, given the endorsement of ontological relativity, this prerogative granted to science cannot but be prescriptive in nature. Whether this constitutes a sufficient ground for a full blown philosophical realism is an open question, although I remain skeptical for reasons I have been arguing. If Quine wants to restrict realism to knowledge of unobservables or abstract principles not registered through SM, and so not subject to the UTD, he would need to explain why a supplementation of data by fundamental physical facts couldn’t clarify the entirety of statements that supervene on physical facts. A successful resolution to the quandaries brought by Quine’s behaviorism, physicalism, and ontological relativity would entail showing show that the UTD and IOR hold, while not sacrificing the valence of physical knowledge. Even more, it would need to render the UTD relative to the data yielded by physics in particular. This would be to simultaneously endorse the following two conditions without tension:<br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;">(Physicalism)</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
All genuine truths (facts) are supervene on physical truths.<br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">(The underdetermination of translation by physics)<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> Translation is not determined by the set of all physical truths (facts), known and unknown. For any pair of languages and theories of translation, incompatible with T, that accord equally well with all physical truths.<br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> As we have seen, however, this is precisely what Quine’s simultaneous endorsement of behaviorism and physicalism renders problematic. Whether these can be reconciled or not lies outside the scope of the present study, and is reserved for another occasion. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Bibliography<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 150%; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;">·<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;">Badiou, Alain, <i>The Concept of Model, </i>translated by Z.L Fraser and Tzuchien Tho, re: press, 2007.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;">·<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;">Brassier, Ray. <i>Badiou’s Materialist Epistemology of Mathematics, </i>in <i>Angelaki 10</i>, 2005.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;">·<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;">Brandom, Robert, <i>Making it Explicit, </i>Harvard University Press, 1998. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;">·<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;">Burge, Tyler, <i>The Origins of Objectivity, </i>Oxford Press, 2010. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;">·<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;">Kim, Jaegwon, <i>Essays in the Metaphysics of Mind, </i>Oxford University Press, 2010. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;">·<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;">Ladyman, James & Ross, Don, <i>Everything Must Go</i>, Oxford University Press, 2009.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;">·<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;">McDowell, <i>Mind and World, </i>Harvard University Press, 1996.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;">·<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;">Orenstein, Alex, <i>W.V Quine, </i>Princeton University Press, 2002. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;">·<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;">Quine, W.V. <i>Whither Physical Objects?</i>, from R. S. Cohen, P. K. Feyarabend and M. W.<br />
Wartofsky (eds.) Essays in Memory of Imre Lakatos, Boston: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1976.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;">·<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;">Quine, W.V. <i>Theories and Things</i>, London: Belknap Press, 1981.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;">·<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;">Quine, W.V. <i>Naturalism; Or, Living Within One's Means</i>. Dialectica 49, 1995.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;">·<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;">Quine, W.V, <i>Word and Object</i>, MIT Press, 1964.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;">·<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;">Quine, W.V, <i>Ontological Relativity, </i>Columbia University Press, 1977.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;">·<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;">Soames, Scott, <i>Philosophical Analysis in the 20<sup>th</sup> Century: Volume 2</i>, Princeton University Press. 2005. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;">·<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;">Follesdal, Dagfinn, <i>In what Sense is Language Public?</i>, in <i>On Quine, </i>P. Lombardi and M.Santambogia (eds), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br clear="all" /> </span><br />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" /><div id="ftn1"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/CASA/Escritorio/Theories%20of%20Translation%20-%20BlackBox%20Realism.docx#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">[1]</span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"> These three terms will be defined technically below.</span></span></div></div><div id="ftn2"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/CASA/Escritorio/Theories%20of%20Translation%20-%20BlackBox%20Realism.docx#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">[2]</span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"> Quine, W.V, <i>Reply to Anthony, </i>in <i>Knowledge, Language, and Logic, </i>pp. 419.<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div></div><div id="ftn3"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/CASA/Escritorio/Theories%20of%20Translation%20-%20BlackBox%20Realism.docx#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">[3]</span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"> In this regard, it should become obvious that Quine’s position is continuous with Davidson, and more crucially Wilfrid Sellars, in claiming that perception is a conceptual achievement, insofar as it involves the exertion of judgment in order to yield determinate content. Perception is not self-evidential, and brute sensation is epistemically inert, i.e. sensibilia do not constitute a ubiquitous layer of pre-conceptual determinate content, available for analysis. This will turn out to be a crucial point of contention for thinkers such a Burge (2010). See Sellars <i>Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind </i>(1956)</span></span></div></div><div id="ftn4"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/CASA/Escritorio/Theories%20of%20Translation%20-%20BlackBox%20Realism.docx#_ftnref4" name="_ftn4" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">[4]</span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"> We shall not be concerned in this paper in assessing whether Soames' reading of Quine does the latter justice. We shall simply assume, for the moment, that his reconstructions are cogent and consistent with Quine's views. </span></span></div></div><div id="ftn5"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/CASA/Escritorio/Theories%20of%20Translation%20-%20BlackBox%20Realism.docx#_ftnref5" name="_ftn5" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">[5]</span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"> SOAMES, Scott, <i>Philosophical Analysis in the 20<sup>th</sup> Century: Volume 2</i>, Princeton University Press, pp. 227</span></span></div></div><div id="ftn6"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/CASA/Escritorio/Theories%20of%20Translation%20-%20BlackBox%20Realism.docx#_ftnref6" name="_ftn6" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">[6]</span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"> </span><span lang="EN-US">Another set of questions concerns the privilege accorded to observation in Quine’s account. Is the priority given to sight and observation merely arbitrary, so that similar example could in principle follow from experiments constrained to other sense-capacities? If not, then Quine would need a separate argument to show why only observation can yield the kind of data needed for translation.</span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div id="ftn7"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/CASA/Escritorio/Theories%20of%20Translation%20-%20BlackBox%20Realism.docx#_ftnref7" name="_ftn7" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">[7]</span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"> Quine, <i>In Pursuit of Truth,</i> Harvard University Press,<i> </i>pp 47-48</span></span></div></div><div id="ftn8"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/CASA/Escritorio/Theories%20of%20Translation%20-%20BlackBox%20Realism.docx#_ftnref8" name="_ftn8" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">[8]</span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"> QUINE, W.V, <i>Speaking of Objects, </i>in <i>Quintessence, </i>91-91.</span></span></div></div><div id="ftn9"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/CASA/Escritorio/Theories%20of%20Translation%20-%20BlackBox%20Realism.docx#_ftnref9" name="_ftn9" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">[9]</span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"> </span><span lang="EN-US">Soames, 2005, pp. 240.</span></span></div></div><div id="ftn10"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/CASA/Escritorio/Theories%20of%20Translation%20-%20BlackBox%20Realism.docx#_ftnref10" name="_ftn10" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">[10]</span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"> Of course, Quine could disavow reference without necessarily disavowing ‘representational contents’, i.e. if one somehow construes the latter as high-order iterations of physical facts for which the concept of reference would have no use. I consider this possibility below. We should just keep in mind that here we use representational contents, in the sense in which the latter are determined by a relation to the world, and thus that sentences are tethered to such contents. </span></span></div></div><div id="ftn11"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/CASA/Escritorio/Theories%20of%20Translation%20-%20BlackBox%20Realism.docx#_ftnref11" name="_ftn11" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">[11]</span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"> I owe this formulation to Peter Wolfendale, who in his excellent (unpublished) <i>Essay on Transcendental Realism</i> provides a brief but elegant account of Quine (and other’s) positions. </span></span></div></div><div id="ftn12"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/CASA/Escritorio/Theories%20of%20Translation%20-%20BlackBox%20Realism.docx#_ftnref12" name="_ftn12" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">[12]</span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"> FOLLESDAL, Dagfinn, “In what Sense is Language Public?”, in <i>On Quine, </i>P. Lombardi and M.Santambogia (eds), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.</span></span></div></div><div id="ftn13"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/CASA/Escritorio/Theories%20of%20Translation%20-%20BlackBox%20Realism.docx#_ftnref13" name="_ftn13" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">[13]</span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"> See Ladyman & Ross (2007), Chapter 4.</span></span></div></div><div id="ftn14"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/CASA/Escritorio/Theories%20of%20Translation%20-%20BlackBox%20Realism.docx#_ftnref14" name="_ftn14" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">[14]</span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"> In this regard, Quine famously advocates an <i>extensionalist </i>approach to ontology that reduces reference to being the extension of a concept. According to Quine, intensional determinants are what remains of Aristotelian essences, and are logically opaque instead. Reference in the sense of a relation to a mind independent reality would thus remain tethered to the latter notion, which exceeds the formal transparency of a purely extensional ontology. </span></span></div></div><div id="ftn15"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/CASA/Escritorio/Theories%20of%20Translation%20-%20BlackBox%20Realism.docx#_ftnref15" name="_ftn15" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">[15]</span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"> Brassier, 2008, pp. 139. </span></span></div></div><div id="ftn16"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/CASA/Escritorio/Theories%20of%20Translation%20-%20BlackBox%20Realism.docx#_ftnref16" name="_ftn16" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">[16]</span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"> This would not be strictly analogous to the earlier ontological behaviorism, since it could entail the position that internal mental states do relate to the world objectively, but do not require postulating anything like representational contents, or psychological kinds.</span></span></div></div><div id="ftn17"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/CASA/Escritorio/Theories%20of%20Translation%20-%20BlackBox%20Realism.docx#_ftnref17" name="_ftn17" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">[17]</span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"> Soames, 2005, pp. 256-257.</span></span></div></div><div id="ftn18"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/CASA/Escritorio/Theories%20of%20Translation%20-%20BlackBox%20Realism.docx#_ftnref18" name="_ftn18" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">[18]</span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"> </span><span lang="EN-US">Marras (2000) shows that this argument generalizes over the other special sciences as well.</span></span></div></div><div id="ftn19"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/CASA/Escritorio/Theories%20of%20Translation%20-%20BlackBox%20Realism.docx#_ftnref19" name="_ftn19" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">[19]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> Quine, W. 1964. Ontological Reduction and the World of Numbers, The Journal of Philosophy 61: 209-1</span><i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div></div></div>Daniel Sacilottohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06107600124995445921noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6580039155018603814.post-25527693067036349882011-11-13T19:36:00.000-08:002011-12-05T00:17:04.472-08:00Ontic Structural Realism and Scientific Realism: On Ladyman and Ross, Sellars and Brassier<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcrp0tzloWhIFyvKQEtlbgCJvzcUmv4YRa7g4stBsKH1vRwjBBWtYeNB9wAJXlQA2el_cClDqCuh7Kz17UGTiYQTXoIIY4BY5s5tv4wwr0ZvOLFZ3banX9iOWK-_XgTqKFim068eo6DpT_/s1600/another.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="576" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcrp0tzloWhIFyvKQEtlbgCJvzcUmv4YRa7g4stBsKH1vRwjBBWtYeNB9wAJXlQA2el_cClDqCuh7Kz17UGTiYQTXoIIY4BY5s5tv4wwr0ZvOLFZ3banX9iOWK-_XgTqKFim068eo6DpT_/s640/another.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> - ONTIC STRUCTURAL REALISM AND SCIENTIFIC REALISM -</span></b></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">On Ladyman and Ross, Sellars and Brassier</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> ___________________________________________</span></b></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br />
Ladyman and Ross go a long way in debasing Kuhn-inspired relativisms about science by showing how discontinuity in scientific theories at the level of content is underwritten by continuity at the level of structure. In doing so, they also build on the epistemological (rather than ontological) valence of the distinction between observables and unobservables as posited in theoretical physics. Their brand of ontic structural realism predates on the semantic approach to theory-modeling which situates the relationship between mathematical structures as primary as opposed to the partial-interpretation of theoretical terms on the basis of observables (the 'syntactic' approach advocated by Carnap). Similarly to Badiou's deflation of the empiricist notion of content (the 'third dogma of empiricism' he criticizes apropos Quine in <i>The Concept of Model</i>), L&R seek to undermine the ontological valence of the entities postulated within the manifest image ("Scholastic" and "neo-Scholastic" metaphysics included) and its reference to middle-sized objects and properties, the better to assert (again, like Badiou or Meillassoux) the reality of primary mathematical properties. These, however, do not demand commitment to the positive ontological status of imperceptible <i>particles</i>; the underdetermination of objects obtained in avowing the reality of processes remains ontologically agnostic about any entity in current science. In this regard, L&R seek to anchor their realism in scientific predictive success (the so-called 'no-miracles argument'), while at the same time having leverage to resist the underdetermination of realism by instrumentalism in consideration of theory-change (the so-called 'underdetermination problem'). The latter challenge applies even to positions such as Van Fraassen's constructive empiricism. Below I will explain what I find most problematic about this restriction of the realist commitment to structure, but provisionally we can gauge that <i>if</i> Meillassoux's metaphysical argument against the frequentialist implication is correct, then the predictive success of science is no <i>less</i> miraculous than its potential disruption by the sudden change of these laws ex nihilo. Intra-systemic predictability at the level of local laws provides no less a secure foundation for realism than unpredictable anomalies (in Kuhn's sense) force us into accepting pragmatic instrumentalism about science. <br />
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Of course, L&R's principled reluctance to make metaphysics refractory to empirical science would no doubt resist the very epistemological coordination between thought and reality in terms of a correlation between subject and object: ontic structural realism is precisely meant to revise the epistemological framework to dislodge traditional representational analogy in favor of structural isomorphy (or homomorphy). Yet what I find most unpersuasive so far about the book is the early defense in Chapter I of scientism, since in a certain sense it seems to me to rest, on similar grounds to the Churchlands, on an opaque sense of super-empirical virtue tethered to a rather thin pragmatism. Brassier above all has shown the deficiencies in appeals to the super-empirical in Churchland's neurocomputational idealism through pragmatism, much like Badiou criticizes Quine's naturalism for reifying science on alleged pragmatic grounds (again, this point is belabored in <i>The Concept of Model</i>). In L&R's account, the metaphysical subordination to science, and physics in particular, is entirely sketched on pragmatic grounds under what they programmatically label the "Primacy of Physics Constraint", or PPC in short. The following quote provides the basic position:<br />
<br />
"Special science hypotheses that conflict with fundamental physics, or such consensus as there is in fundamental physics, should be rejected for that reason alone. Fundamental physical hypotheses are not symmetrically hostage to the conclusions of the special sciences.<br />
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This, we claim, is a regulative principle in current science, and it should be respected by naturalistic metaphysicians. The first, descriptive, claim is reason for the second, normative, one." (Pg. 45) <br />
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This reinforces the earlier, more general "Principle of Naturalistic Closure", which states that:<br />
<br />
"Any new metaphysical claim that is to be taken seriously at time t should be motivated by, and only by, the service it would perform, if true, in showing how two or more specific scientific hypotheses, at least one of which is draw from fundamental physics, jointly explain more than the sum of what is explained by the two hypothesis taken separately, where this is interpreted by reference to the following terminological stipulations:<br />
<br />
Stipulation: 'scientific hypotheses' are understood as hypotheses that are taken seriously by institutionally bona fide science at t<br />
<br />
Stipulation: A specific scientific hypothesis is one that has been directly investigated and confirmed by institutionally bona fide scientific activity prior to t or is one that might be investigated at or after t, in the absense of constraints resulting from engineering, physiological, or economic restrictions, or a combination, as the primary object of attempted verification, falsification, or quantitative refinement, where this activity is a part of an objective research project fundable by a bona fide scientific research funding body<br />
<br />
Stipulation: An objective research project has the primary purpose of establishing objective facts about nature that would, if accepted, on the basis of such a project, be expected to continue to be accepted by inquirers aiming to maximize their stock of true beliefs, notwithstanding shifts in the inquirers practical, commercial, or ideological preferences" (Pg. 38)<br />
<br />
Notice the appeal to the communitarian 'consensus' evoked here, which is doubtlessly strange considering that L&R later go on to attack scientific realism (which they distinguish from their own OSR) on the grounds that it is dependent on subjective matters of consensus and pragmatic factors, e.g the disposition of specific scientists or the scientific communities. Their arguments against these accounts in grappling with the problem of the reference of theoretical terms are of great value. <br />
<br />
Yet the avowal of scientism is there transparently tethered to an explicitly pragmatic, normative subordination of metaphysics to science, without any further epistemological labor or explanation. Although I endorse the idea of making metaphysics continuous with science, as well as their arguments for structural realism in order to account for theory change, it seems to me that the early stages of the book do not advance a sufficiently robust account about the rational necessity for making science metaphysically authoritative, failing thus to clarify the position from which the ontological prerogative of science derives. Perhaps this is where a Sellarsian approach has something to contribute still, specifically insofar as it insists on the necessity of a methodological dualism keeping the normative-register of the manifest image as a necessary condition of possibility for the epistemic entitlement endowed to science, and for the logic of revision itself. In this regard, perhaps the question concerning the ontological status of unobservables in L&R's account <i>vis a vis</i> their discussion of Van Fraasen's constructive empiricism makes my concern particularly salient. I would quote the following passage from the book:<br />
<br />
"Opponents of scientific realism, such as Van Fraassen, deny that the local defenses of realism about specific unobservables are compelling, arguing that they can in each case be reinterpret in pragmatic terms as inferences to the empirical adequacy of the explanation in question, plus a commitment to continue theorizing with the resources of the theory... If unobservable entities merely happened to be around when certain phenomena were occurring then their presence would not be explanatory. Hence, Van Fraassen argues, scientific realism relies upon some kind of metaphysical theory of laws of nature, singular causation, or essential natures. For Van Fraassen, this means it ultimately rests on explanation by posit. Here we reach an impasse with the scientific realism insisting on the need for explanations where the antirealist is content without them." (Pg. 74)<br />
<br />
<br />
And yet, if I understand Van Fraassen correctly, his point is not that explanation is no good, but that explanation by posit appealing to the abovementioned metaphysical items (laws of nature, singular causation...) is what is left unexplained qua posited by the scientific realist, and as such they would require a justification not circularly defined terms which would simply presuppose the pragmatic requirement that we ought to continue using the theory in dispute. At that point Van Fraassen seems to think the 'realist' wager becomes fatally undermined by its tacit pragmatic instrumental appeals. Similar to Meillassoux's hijacking of the correlationist argument to unearth a tacit realism in the form of the factial, Van Fraassen hijacks the scientific realist to unearth a tacit instrumentalism in their argument. Yet as we have seen L&R do not, despite their claims to the contrary, escape from instrumentalism by witholding epistemic commitment about individuals, and circumscribing realism to structural properties. For whether the prescription to philosophize in continuity with contemporary physics is wed to a notion of individuated objects or to merely relational structural properties is strictly speaking irrelevant to Van Fraassen's point, which is that one obviates explanation by normative prescription/proscription, and as such cannot but be instrumental on those grounds. Even if OSR can explain theory change while remaining metaphysically agnostic about individuals, the same questions raised apropos the latter in classical scientific realism reappear in OSR with regard to the prescription to endorse the ontological valence of structural properties. And since this endorsement seems to be postulated in pragmatic terms, in <i>principle</i> rather than established by argument, it is not clear Van Fraasen's hijacking of the scientific realist argument to unearth its tacit circular appeals to authority is not reproduced in OSR. Pragmatism is idealist in tenor since it subordinates the reality or ontological valence of a given set of postulates, in this case scientific individuals and structure, to the normative injunction to 'do science'. <br />
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In this regard, it is important to notice that structure fares no better than individuals in L&R's account: both are finally undermined by the pragmatic claim that physics ought to be metaphysically endorsed since it cannot be rendered explanatorily virtuous and non-miraculous without assuming their reality in principle. If regularity provides grounds to motivate realism this cannot be surreptitiously postulated in order to avoid its instrumentalization, since in doing so one ends up doing just that, whether we tether our metaphysics to structure or individuals. Unyoking scientific modeling from observation and inference fares no better than mathematical structure if it must be assumed relative to the unexplained necessity to endorse realism on the basis of the scientific capacity to explain and predict phenomena, i.e. the latter remains just as susceptible to instrumentalization as the syntactic scientific realism about individuals was susceptible to deflation into empiricist constructivism. Now, ironically, L&R themselves attempt to return Van Fraassen the favor by claiming that constructive empiricism must commit to a minimum metaphysical endorsement of objective modal relations; i.e. it must ground its assertion of the probable-predictable adequacy of phenomena to theoretical posits in the reality of their possibility or actuality, even if it remains agnostic about their other properties. Thus L&R claim:<br />
<br />
"If science tells us about objective-modal relations among the phenomena (both possible and actual), the occasional novel predictive success is not miraculous but to be expected." (Pg 153)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br />
However, this misses the deflationary point raised by Van Fraassen, because to be a realist about modal objectivity is <i>not sufficient </i>to be a realist about the mind-independent reality, or about scientific phenomena in any orthodox sense. We know, at least since Kant, that it is perfectly possible to avow the causal efficacy of phenomena as constrained to our experiential field, just like in Hegel's objective idealism the ontological determinations that yield objectivity <i>do not for that reason </i>escape idealism. Thus irrespect6ive of whether pragmatism must be underwritten by some metaphysical commitment or other, the point, which Brassier stresses brilliantly apropos the Churchlands, is that they cannot but be complicit with an idealist miraculous congruence between thought and being. This follows transparently once we realize that just like Kant reactivates the valence of causal efficacy at the price of inflecting objectivity as a function of subjective synthesis, L&R operate under the frequentialist implication whose motivation is the 'no-miracles' argument. The latter is meant to justify the endorsement of naturalist metaphysics. This move, contrary to its pretension, relativizes the explanatory demand of scientific practice to the pragmatic concern to explain predictive success, rather than to legitimate the relation between our concepts and the objects presumably existing independently of the former. Both Van Fraassen and L&R may endorse modal objectivity, but since both finally accept a prescriptive rather than explanatory legitimation for the valence of science, it is the constructive empiricist idealization Van Fraassen openly accepts which seems to be tacitly presupposed by L&R's OSR, and not the latter's realism that is to be found in the former. At a loss for an epistemological account which distinguishes mathematical relations from properly physical structure, L&R simply assume a miraculous congruence between thought and the real through physics, supported by their two founding principles. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Now, consider L&R's appeals to recent developments in GR and QM which attempt to ground objectual relations in terms of diffeomorphic transformations, nested in an explanation of symmetry understood in group theory as inclusion to equivalence classes with the appropriate rules for preservation. This allows one to explain structural continuity in purely formal terms. It endows the OSR to ground objective modality in structural symmetry. But how does the latter mathematical structure relate to physical structure at all? What relation holds between the two, i.e. what epistemic grounds solicit the postulate of the mind independence of the phenomena described by structure, once we have disowned appeals to the noumenal or qualia? This, again, L&R fail to do, folding back on their convenient prescriptive principle PNC, at a loss for any justification. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Thus if OSR is indeed a realism in any way about science it is because the objective modal structure it ontologically asserts is in fact separate from the relational mathematical expression and yet indistinguishable from it all the same. This point is made by Van Fraassen (2006) and it dramatically entails that OSR cannot properly </span><i style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">explain </i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">what separates mathematics from physics, they can only </span><i style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">postulate it</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">. In fact, they have no shame in admitting this much:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> <br />
"When theories are empirically adequate they tell us about the structure of the phenomena and this structure is (at least in part) modal structure. However there is still a distinction between structure and non-structure. Merely listing relations among locators does not state anything with modal force. Therefore it doesn't specify structure in our sense and it isn't yet scientific theory as we've defended it. Physical structure exists, but what it it? If it is just a description of the properties and relations of some underlying entities this leads us back to epistemic structural realism. What makes the structure physical and not mathematical? This is a question that we refuse to answe. In our view, there is nothing more to be said about this that doesn't amount to empty words and venture beyond what the PNC allows. The 'world-structure' just is and exists independently of us and we represent it mathematico-physically via our theories." (Pg. 158)<br />
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The emergent result seems to be, quite predictably, either a kind of mathematical realism or neo-Pythagoreanism (Maddy, Rednik) purported by mathematicians themselves, or philosophers of science now insisting, like their repudiated Continental 'mystics', on an unobjectifiable excess to structure grounding the realist locus for naturalist metaphysics; which now starts sounding a whole lot more like Heidegger than Hegel, if not Scheller. Take the following passage which sums up the ordeal:<br />
<br />
"Of course, all the considerations from physics to which we have appealed do not logically compel us to abandon the idea of a world of distinct ontologically subsistent individuals with intrinsic properties. As we noted, the identity and individuality of quantum particles could be grounded in each having a primitive thisness, and the same could be true of spacetime points. What we can establish is that physics tells us that certain aspects of such a world would be unknowable... On our view, things in themselves and qualia are ideal wheels in metaphysics and the PPC imposes a moratorium on such purely speculative philosophical toys... we take it that such a gap between epistemology and metaphysics is unacceptable. Given that there is no a priori way of demonstrating that the world must be composed of individuals with intrinsic natures, and given that our best physics puts severe pressure on such a view, the PNC dictates that we reject the idea altogether." (Pg. 154)<br />
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If our considerations hold here the PNC and PPC both merely aggravate the gulf between epistemology and ontology rather than palliate it. At a loss for justification beyond the super-empirical call for theoretical 'unification' restricted to scientific practice and their instituional approval, both principles are laid to rest on the pragmatic grounds criticized above, and end up soliciting the much repudiated invocations of the 'noumenal' and 'qualia' that L&R associate with philosophical spooks; the specter that Hegel had long since warned against: the uncanny coincidence of all merely 'contingent' (pseudo) philosophical accounts which obviate dialectical necessity by subordinating themselves to the empirical, as well the reification of abstraction in the form of a pure non-conceptual externality, a pure 'thisness' or immediacy intractable by conceptual means. This is yet another dimension in which the kind of pragmatic idealism bolstered by so-called 'hardcore' philosophers who claim to be continuous with science, following Kant, end up enacting, like Meillassoux diagnoses, a Ptolemaic counter revolution of sorts. Although L&R seek to escape this mystical evacuation of realism into a kind of neo-Kantian endorsement of noumenal ineffability, they end up bolstering it through their pragmatism.<br />
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Perhaps this is where the dialectical interplay between the scientific and manifest images advanced in the classical Sellarsian account can be put to work in some sense, by securing the relation between the two relatively autonomous registers (the conceptual-normative, and the natural-causal), and so avoiding the gratuitous demand for scientism which renders it epistemologically, if not metaphysically, rest on dubious grounds. Here the question would be to track the dialectic of concept revision by describing the porous frontier between the observable and the unobservable, and thus between the reviseable manifest register, still tethered to the reality of objects, as well as the scientific register's description of both elementary imperceptibles and non-perceptual structural properties all the same. Below I will indicate why Brassier particularly underlines the Sellarsian endorsement of secondary-properties as ontological valences. <br />
<br />
The other point which seems of paramount interest is of course going back to the semantic-approach for theory modeling which reactivates the questions raised by Frege and Hilbert, and whether such an approach can be satisfactorily representational in a rigorous sense by means of structural isomorphy without having to invoke the privilege of intuition (in this regard Badiou seems to have taken the side of Hilbert in denouncing any notion of empirical 'content' as grounding structural isomorphy between domains and axiomatics, whereas the scientific realist- empiricist Sellarsian might want to salvage a role for sensibilia in some form or other). I take it that the revisionist naturalism endorsed by Brassier is an attempt to reconcile the rationalism from the Badiouean/Hilbertean deflation of self-grounding intuitions by underlining the relational autonomy of our conceptual economy, while insisting along Sellars' naturalism that an ontological role can be preserved for sensa as long as the latter are understood as pertaining to the autonomous domain of causal efficacy, and so as mediated processes themselves. This would simultaneously revoke the privilege of the manifest image to render scientific postulates of non-phenomenologizable content subordinate to perception (thus against instrumentalizations of science in terms of analogical modeling or pragmatic postulation), while at the same time explaining how sensibilia ontologically conditions conceptual mediation in resolutely non-conceptual terms; that is, in natural-causal terms, as neurophysiological processes. Furthermore, Brassier deems this as a crucial move in order to salvage the epistemic priority of science which, beyond purely mathematical structure, is capable of remaining anchored in the world. At this juncture the idea of 'real patterns' might be metaphysically useful, even if epistemologically still on dubious grounds. The problem with a blunt realism about ontic structure with a physicalist bent is that it adjudicates the privilege of science while remaining open to the kind of instrumentalist-pragmatic seizure of the kind Van Fraassen proposes, in which case we fare no better than Quine or Churchland in grounding the metaphysical labor. I take it this is why Brassier considers the unavoidable juncture of epistemology and metaphysics to remain the problematic moment for thought, and the one in which Sellars can help. <br />
<br />
<b>Correspondence From Ray Brassier on this Issue </b><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;"> </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #2a2a2a; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">I share your reservations about their attenuated conception of explanatory </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #2a2a2a; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">virtue and their pragmatic justification for scientism. </span>Ultimately, L&R are too willing to throw out the rationalist baby with the metaphysical bathwater. What is frustrating about the book is they nowhere address the obvious Sellarsian-rationalist rejoinders to van Fraasen's empiricism; which is frustrating given that there was a substantial debate between Sellars and Van Fraassen on this very issue back in the 1970s (and van Fraassen was Sellars' student). In fact, there is only one reference to Sellars in the whole book, at the very beginning of Chapter 1 when they cite approvingly from "Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man". But one can imagine a Sellarsian critique of OSR given Sellars' remarks in his 1966 critique of Feyerabend "Scientific Realism or Irenic Instrumentalism": The idea that the framework of common sense has a rock bottom does not require that this rock bottom consists of sense-impressions. The framework of common sense is a framework of (among other things) colored physical objects extended in space and enduring through time. And while objects which are red on the facing surface have the power to cause normal observers in the standard conditions to have sense impressions of red, this is incorrectly taken to mean that the physical property of being red on the facing side is to be analyzed in terms of this causal power. <br />
<br />
<br />
As Berkeley, Kant, and Whitehead, among others, have pointed out, physical objects cannot have primary qualities only for structural and mathematical properties presuppose what might be called content qualities. And unless one falls into the trap of thinking of the framework of physical objects as a common sense theory evolved with unconscious wisdom to explain the manner in which sense data occur, it will scarcely do to say that the content qualities of physical objects are conceived, by a common sense use of analogy, to be the physical counterparts of the qualities of sense data (i.e. to play in the realm of physical things the content-role played in sense data by sense qualities). For, if the conceptual space of common sense physical <br />
objects is underived, their content qualities must be directly rather than analogically conceived, for it is only in terms of perceived, and therefore conceptualized, qualitative difference that form and content can be distinguished.<br />
<br />
<br />
1. The abandonment by scientists of the conceptual framework of common sense physical objects would involve either the abandonment of the conceptual space of color tout court, or the retention of this conceptual space as it reappears in its analogical offshoot, the conceptual space of sense impressions. The latter would be cut off from its foundation and left to wither on the vine. In either case, the conceptual space of the qualities of sense (secondary qualities) in one use of this phrase) would disappear from the public observation base of science. It would enter science only in linguistics, in the <br />
study of the structure of the language of non-scientists and of scientists only to the extent that their sense impression talk <br />
continued to reflect the pre-revolutionary framework of common-sense physical objects. <br />
<br />
2. Only when the conceptual space of sense impressions has acquired a status which is not parasitical on the framework of common sense physical objects. In other words, only with the development of an adequate scientific theory of the sensory capacities of the central nervous system could the framework of common sense be abandoned without losing conceptual contact with a key dimension of the world. (Scientific Realism or Irenic Instrumentalism, pp. 175-178)<br />
<br />
The exceptional strength of Sellarsian rationalism lies in its reconciliation of realism and empiricism: neither manifest objects nor unobservable posits are merely "useful fictions": one severs the link between the sensible and the intelligible at one's peril. By the same token, the notion of "real patterns" seems to me too weak to bear the burden of adjudicating between appearance and reality, or to bridge the gap between epistemology and metaphysics.</span><br />
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So, to sum up:<br />
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<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;">The view that philosophers would benefit from learning actual science does not transparently entail philosophical sobriety, nor does it overcome by itself the critical injunction. Let us disambiguate:</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;">1) The relation between metaphysics and science is not only ontological, or of ontological choice, but fundamentally epistemological. And in this particular regard, it is the question about the relationship between the two levels: what there is cannot be disassociated from the question about how we know what there is, i.e. the question of normative standards for epistemology cannot be dislodged from the ontological question about the structure of reality lest we revert to a form of dogmatic metaphysics. The question about the relationship between philosophy or metaphysics and science is necessarily at the juncture of questions about what we can know about the world, the relation between concepts and objects.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;">2) Ladyman and Ross explicitly subscribe to the idea of making metaphysics continuous, and even subordinate, to science, and physics in particular. Theirs is a brand of scientism which undermines the ontological valence of objects qua individuated particulars by arguing that physics teaches us to remain ontologically agnostic about them, the better to avow the reality of structure and primary relations, tracked by mathematical structural patterns. In this regard, L&R are very much informed by work done not just in the philosophy of science, but in science itself; they perform a restricted 'bracketing' about ontological commitments about individuals the better to anchor realism on structure.</span><br />
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3) However, without a proper epistemological footing, naturalist metaphysics cannot be appropriately legitimated on realist grounds, and that in obviating this demand, L&R are forced to appeals on the principled authority of science which devolves in a tacit instrumentalization of science and scientific phenomena, as in Van Fraassen's constructive empiricism, despite their claims to the contrary. The ontological agnosticism about objects is not remedied by an ontological commitment to structure if the authority of the latter merely follows circularly from the 'avowal of science' in principled grounds. In this regard Brassier's remark apropos the Churchlands and Badiou's apropos Quine can be reiterated about L&R, and any variety of scientific realism which is taken to draw its legitimation from a super-empirical standpoint which authoritatively prescribes rather than explains. Pragmatism is complicit with idealism insofar as it adjudicates science <i>from </i>the unexplained principled prescription of the normative practice of science in its current canonical forms.<br />
</span></div></dd><dd class="comment-body" id="Blog1_cmt-8292802833211839536" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0.25em; text-align: left;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0.75em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">4) In that regard, L&R's attempts to reshuffle epistemological terms apart from the relation between subjects and objects vis a vis analytic "neo-scholastic" metaphysics is analogous to the criticism against Meillassoux advanced by Gabriel Catren's observation that contemporary physics does not make appeals to inference on the basis of induction from observational terms. This again reiterates the deflation of the terms of the manifest image, and secondary properties in particular, in favor of the mathematicity of structure. More importantly, this reflects L&R's adoption of the semantic approach to theory modeling which dislodges the role reserved for observables vis a vis partial-interpretation in the syntactic approach. We can also say thus that the scientific revision of epistemological norms by ontic structural realism would itself undermine the construal of the relation between science and the world in terms of subjective inference from observational instances. But, in doing the opposite move, that is, by simply modeling epistemology on a physicalist metaphysics, their philosophy already runs on an unjustified epistemological commitment which endows ontological valence to the postulates of science in pragmatic, principled terms. And this is, like we surmised above, subject to instrumentalist relativization, since the argument cannot be formulated in intra-theoretical terms which would simply insist on the importance of thinking in continuity with the theory in question lest we fall on circularity. <br />
<br />
In this regard, the authoritarian validation of science on pragmatic grounds fares no better philosophically than classical metaphysics in its dogmatic pretense to uncritically yield descriptively the nature of reality. Saying we must be continuous with science because science helps us predict the world with accuracy does not get us beyond constructive empiricism, and so it is insufficient for a robust metaphysical naturalism with a realist bent. Realism can not rest on the satisfaction of the no-miracles argument plus a commitment to structure. The autonomy of the real does not follow from predictive success, any more than predictive failure reinforces the dependence of the real on thought. Saying the structure can be metaphysically avowed because there is concensus in bona fide science is both a) motivated by subordinating subordinating metaphysical to the institutional legitimation arbitrarily posited in the PPC and PNC. But through the latter the priority of physics turns out to be prescribed rather than explained. This is made particularly salient in the refusal by L&R to explain the relation between theoretical mathematical posits and 'real' physics structure.<br />
<br />
5) Following Sellars, we must claim that the dialectic of concept revision must itself be the condition of possibility for the epistemic endowment of scientific claims. This is what Sellars describes as the methodological, non-ontological, independence of the normative-conceptual register of the manifest image with respect to the natural-causal register of the scientific image. Their relation is not one of plain subordination or undermining, but of a perpetual negotiation. Thus eliminativism does not follow from naturalism; the manifest image retains a methodological independence. The autonomy of the conceptual cannot be eliminated since it is the condition of possibility for the endowment of epistemic entitlement and concept revision itself: it alone tells us on what epistemic basis we should revise our theories and metaphysical commitments. </span></div></dd>Daniel Sacilottohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06107600124995445921noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6580039155018603814.post-30824929718181154232011-10-24T00:19:00.000-07:002013-08-20T13:48:21.500-07:00Gabriel Catren and the Correlationist Circle<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">- GABRIEL CATREN AND THE CORRELATIONIST CIRCLE -</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Speculative Physics, Speculative Realism?<br />
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Gabriel Catren's project, in short, is to advance a 'speculative physics', where the latter is to be understood as the a priori determination of the laws of nature, and more specifically those described by physics in quantum mechanics. Following Schelling and Hegel, and perhaps in a broader sense the work of Iain Grant, Catren thus seeks to rehabilitate the idea of a philosophy of nature, where the empirical scope of physics is ontologically grounded upon what he describes as a <i>non-transcendental</i>, a priori foundation. <br />
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It is within the scope of this project that Catren finds himself at odds with Meillassoux's own. Although he openly endorses Meillassoux's claim that the post-Enlightenment philosophical tradition initiated a Ptolemaic counter-revolution against its own pretences, he claims that Meillassoux's endorsement of the contingency of the laws of nature is in fact yet another iteration of the reaction motif which fails to remain true to the lessons of the Copernican revolution. In order to show this, Catren briefly takes issue with what he takes to be a gratuitous dismissal of the possibility of establishing that the laws of nature obtain by necessity. Thus, against Meillassoux, Catren holds that the principle of factiality, which claims that contingency is absolute and not correlational, runs on the unjustified assumption that the necessity of the laws of nature couldn't be established by speculative thought. <br />
<br />
First, Catren disputes Meillassoux's assimilation of scientific-natural knowledge to inferential knowledge. In doing so, Meillassoux ignores that 'inductive reasoning does not play any role in contemporary physics'. Although that remark is stated in passing, it should be said that Meillassoux's does not equate scientific knowledge to induction, but rather is targeting the epistemological constraint that the post-Humean correlationist (and idealist) philosophies claimed to condition scientific activity as such. Thus, while it may be perfectly true that physics today makes no explicit reference to induction or inference, this misses the point; since the question is whether physics can be epistemologically grounded without having its principles underdetermined by the pragmatic-formal constraints relative to the knower; the cognizant pole of the correlational circle which is articulated inferentially. The latter claims that the facticity proper to knowledge undermines any claim at necessity that science could strive to; thus Catren's target should be to dispute facticity itself as an epistemological constraint for knowledge as a whole, rather than to claim physics makes no appeals to inference. For Meillassoux's claim about the contingency of the laws of nature is supposed to follow from the general epistemological construal according to which metaphysical claims (and physical claims by extension) are rendered relative to the experience of the knowing agent, and thus to transcendental conditions for disclosure; this is precisely what the circle of correlation tells us. In this regard, Catren would need to explain why physics in particular is not susceptible to the circle, and this he does not do in the paper, albeit more is to be said about this issue below. <br />
<br />
On any account, Catren's weightier argument comes in later. This argument proceeds in different stages. I will address each of these in order, for clarity: <br />
<br />
1) First, Catren claims that Meillassoux conflates the<i> formal ontology of worlds</i> with the question about the <i>necessity or contingency of the laws of nature</i>. That is, he reasons that because the idea of grounding the laws of nature with necessity would require either a metaphysical first mover or an infinite regress, their contingency must follow. Since the actual necessity of the physical world could not be said to follow without the dogma of a metaphysical unexplained explainer, it must follow that there is no way to get from the a priori concept to the existence of actual physical reality, no 'ontological argument' as he puts it. Thus even if it was shown that many possible worlds correspond to reason, this has no saying as to whether laws are necessary or not, or whether an enquiry into the necessity of the laws of physics would be futile by necessity. In short, it does not suffice to establish contingency. According to Catren then, even if this were true it doesn't follow that physics could not consolidate an ontological argument it could still be true that 'a physical theory provides a provisional solution to a particular problem. For instance, quantum mechanics is the best solution that we have at the moment for explaining the objective consistency of nature.' (463) Finally, this leads Catren to Claim that '...it is difficult to understand why the supposed impossibility of providing a satisfactory rational global model for the 'topology' of absolute knowledge... would imply the futility of such a project.' (Ibid). <br />
<br />
The problem with this line of argument is that it leaves entirely undecided what this putative 'provisional' explanatory purchase endowed to physics is supposed to supervene on, once it is accepted that modally a plurality of possible worlds prevent an ontological streamlining of principled necessity to actual reality. The sense in which quantum physics or any other theory could be 'best' to describe the cohesion of the universe will necessarily be an attempt to describe reality from the purview of its present cohesion. But this does not seem to threaten Meillassoux, for his point is not that a description of locally operative principles could be produced by science or otherwise, but that their alleged necessity fails to obtain. In order to show that the contingency of the laws of nature fail, Catren would need to show not only that quantum mechanics provides the 'best' salient description for reality as we know it, but that the principles it describes can be established as necessary. For the gulf between the manifold possibilities or possible worlds rendered available to thought and presupposed a priori necessity of a set of laws only occurs in sight of the epistemic constraints set on the knower who theorizes. Claims to the 'partial' and 'fallible' nature of science seems on that account to subordinate Catren's putative claim for natural necessity to a kind of pragmatic instrumentalism: our most cohesive theory is taken to describe reality, but we know that it will eventually be displaced in favor of other theories given our epistemic limitations. But this seems to want to have your cake and eat it: either quantum mechanics is endowed with a priori necessity and thus its laws are not contingent to instrumental progress in science, but perhaps susceptible to specification, or they are subject to such variability in which case science must surrender its pretensions of a prioricity. Of course, Catren will claim that this merely states the inherent limitation of all epistemic traction before the real, and it doesn't solicit a wholesale negation of the necessity of the laws established by thought. But Catren surely thinks more: he thinks it is possible to show that the laws of nature are necessary. And yet since this is the <i>goal</i> of Catren's project rather than an accomplished <i>result</i>, it seems that it is he who is presupposing that such a necessity must exist, rather than Meillassoux assuming that they must not exist.<br />
<br />
For therein lies precisely Meillassoux's wager against Hume: against the skeptic who claims that even if we cannot establish the necessity of causal laws it doesn't follow that causality doesn't obtain, Meillassoux rather asks why should we assume <i>it does obtain</i> if reason indicates otherwise. Thus, Catren cannot simultaneously claim physical laws are endowed with a priori necessity and that at a loss for showing how the former the instrumental cohesiveness of physical description should suffice to justify belief in such a necessity. For the latter Catren would need to show, against Meillassoux, that something like the 'frequentialist' implication holds, such that the pragmatic success of physical description and the 'cohesiveness' it enjoys whilst framing nature in fact suggests that necessity must be rendered plausible. But at a loss for any such argument, Catren's tantalizing promise for a speculative physics seems to preemptively want to discount contingency as an unfounded assumption, while itself resting on dubious super-empirical virtue of physics, which are meant to indicate the 'provisional' state of the science. <br />
<br />
Now, Catren points out that the underlying motivation behind his disavowal of the necessity for such epistemological legitimating of the status of physics concerns the simultaneous endorsement of the <i>principle of reason</i> and the abandonment of the<i> principle of ground</i>. The latter is understood as the transcendental machinery of representation which enforces the circle of correlation in Meillassoux's case; and more generally any form of metaphysical 'grounding principle' which remains refractory to science's subtractive modus operandi. Thus, against Meillassoux's avowal of induction, Catren contends that contemporary physical science does not need to run the gaunlet of having to assume a metaphysical first-principle, or an infinite regress. Quite the contrary, to endorse the principle of sufficient reason adequate to science enforces the disavowal of any notion of ground: "Science does not progress by trying to found itself on a last self-posited metaphysical or transcendental reason, but by trying to absolve itself from any kind of presupposed background." (469). <br />
<br />
However, the ambiguity that we indicated above persists in Catren's account, since on the one hand this deposition of any notion of ground is supposed to account for the perpetual revisability of science, while Catren defends simultaneously the a priori necessity of its laws. Of course, the idea is that the lessons of physics force us to adapt to a post-humanist, de-anthropomorphized conception of the universe, where the valence of objective representation construed as a transcendental problematic is dismissed (on this account it is not surprising to see Catren's work overlap with the vocation of some contemporary post-Deleuzians/post-Landians, like Reza Negarestani, whose project seems at times very close to Catren's). But this seems to render the epistemological demand to explain how cognitive claims about reality, either advanced by science or philosophical speculative physics, is supposed to gain traction on an extra-experiential reality. Although Catren's observation that science's scope pushes us to "understand nature in non-correlational terms" is well taken, it is unclear what this prescribes for philosophy, and whether it suffices to circumvent the question of representational access and so of representation altogether. The putative authority endowed to science to not have to scale its descriptive methods through any transcendental machinery surely does not by itself provide an argument for philosophy about why the transcendental problematic is obsolete, any more than a marine biologist's focus on marine life is not a reason to think we have to stop asking questions about how we know the world. Thus it is not clear that 'the principle of ground' can be dispensed of in favor of a physics-friendly principle of reason without further argument. <br />
<br />
But in any case, Catren is right to insist in that the crucial problem assuaging Meillassoux is that his entire argument depends on hijacking the facticity that the correlationist claims inevitably places in the epistemological circle. This leads to the second point. <br />
<br />
2) Catren states that Meillassoux presupposes the impossibility of determining that the laws of nature obtain to argue for their contingency. This is inaccurate and conflates the generality of the argument, since Meillassoux hijacks in the correlationist argument the claim that it is impossible first to know that the conditions for knowledge are necessary, i.e. thought is factical. This is doubtlessly more general than claiming that the necessity of the laws of nature or physics is impossible to ground, since facticity is targeted at<i> epistemological</i> conditions for knowledge, which are at least not transparently tethered to physical laws. But this is a minor gripe, since the point surely also applies to physical principles, taken as epistemic conditions for objectivation. Still, even if we suppose in a naturalistic register that the conditions of knowledge are those specified by physics, the question concerns whether facticity obtains or not. However, Catren's argument focuses on what he deems to be a confusion of two dilemmas in Meillassoux's argument, which confuses a limitation for knowledge with an idealist determination by knowledge. The two dilemmas are:<br />
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1) If we cannot determine the necessity of rational laws is this because of a limitation of our capacities, or because or their contingency?<br />
2) If physical laws are contingent, is this contingency correlative to thought, or absolute in itself? <br />
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Accordingly, Catren claims that while Dilemma 1 is a perfectly good one, Meillassoux obscures it by focusing instead on the (fictitious) Dilemma 2. The difference in short is between epistemological criticism and ontological idealism, according to Catren. "To summarize, we can say that Meillassoux's proof... begins with an unquestioned (and probably) false) presupposition (namely, that physics cannot discover any rational necessity in physical laws), and proceeds by means of an illegitimate 'deductive' inference (namely, that of absolutizing a supposed limitation)." <br />
<br />
<br />
Again, we should remark that, strictly speaking, Meillassoux's construal of facticity cannot be circumscribed to 'physical laws', since the specific argument against the laws of nature follows rather after the principle of factiality has been argued for, as one of the three 'figures of factiality' (which follows from Meillassoux's argument against the frequentialist implication...) To ask whether facticity is relative to thought or not is not necessarily to ask whether physical laws are necessary or not, but more generally whether<i> any</i> knowable principle could be necessary. Thus the focus of the argument is the facticity of knowledge, rather than the contingency of natural laws; since the latter are in a sense subordinated to the former qua objects of knowledge. We have already seen why Catren's attempt to circumvent the transcendental problematic are insufficient for now, but let us leave this for the moment.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> As we know, Meillassoux's argument proceeds from absolutizing facticity and rejecting that it is a mere correlate of thought since, if it were, we would have accepted the idealist identification of all thinkable possibilities as necessary correlates of thought. In that regard, we should claim that Catren's 'real' epistemological criticism following from Dilemma 1 is part of what is included in Meillassoux's refutation against the correlationist 'possibility of ignorance'. Recall that in the process of absolutizing facticity the correlationist, as hehijacks the speculative philosopher, claims that Meillassoux has illegitimately confused a mere limitation of our knowledge for an absolute limitation on things themselves. Thus while the speculative philosopher thinks that contingency is necessary lest we become idealists, the correlationist insists that for all we know this contingency is still as conceived for us, while the possibility of necessity obtaining outside our knowledge remains. Thus it would seem that Dilemma 1, as Catren presents it, is actually considered by Meillassoux as a possible objection which arises precisely in the course of absolutizing facticity; and so from within Dilemma 2. <br />
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Against the correlationist rebuttal, as we indicated above, Meillassoux claims that the contingency under which reality appears before thought cannot itself be rendered relative to thought, lest we proceed to identify all thinkable reality as correlated to our knowledge, i.e. it wouldn't have occurred to us not to be idealists if we did not accept of the thinkability of an in-itself non-relative to thought. For the putative 'strong correlationist' stand before the idealist is to insist precisely in that it is possible to think of the correlation <i>not being</i> just as it could be, ; facticity threatens the correlation with a loss for reasons for itself to be, and so opens a possible gulf between the thinkable and that which is relative to thought. In this regard, Catren's argument fails again to realize the true pivotal point in Meillassoux's argument is to be found in his putative hijacking of facticity, rather than in the secondary attack on the laws of nature. <br />
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For how does Meillassoux proceed? First, we are told by the hypothesized correlationist that one can find no reasons to ground the necessity for the conditions for thought which organize the range of knowable phenomena, i.e. thought is factical. Meillassoux then goes to say that this shows that facticity must be an absolute principle of things themselves, unless we accept the infinity of thought inherent in the idealist. But at this point Meillassoux's argument takes a strange emphasis: the argument against the idealist, and the rejoinder to the correlationist 'possibility of ignorance', consists in insisting on the facticity of the agent of the correlation, that is, our knowledge that the very agent who embodies the conditions of thought necessary for the correlation could not be, and that this possibility cannot itself be rendered relative to thought lest we think it immortal. My capacity-to-be-other must be thought as absolute lest we claim, like the idealist, that even the thought of death is relative to thought. I quote Meillassoux in full here: <br />
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"She does so by maintaining that we can think ourselves as no longer being; in other words, by maintaining that our mortality, our annihilation, and our becoming-wholly-other in God, are all effectively thinkable. But how are these states conceivable as possibilities? On account of the fact that we are able to think - by dint of the absence of any reason for our being - a capacity-to-be-other capable of abolishing us, or of radically transforming us. But if so, then this capacity-to-be-other cannot be conceived as a correlate of our thinking, precisely because it harbors the possibility of our own non-being. In order to think myself as mortal, as the atheist does - and hence as capable of not being - I must think my capacity-not-to-be as an absolute possibility, for if I think this possibility as a correlate of my thinking, if I maintain that the possibility of my not-being only exists as a correlate of my act of thinking the possibility of my not-being, then / can no longer conceive the possibility of my not-being, which is precisely the thesis defended by the idealist.<br />
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For I think myself as mortal only if I think that my death has no need of my thought of death in order to be actual. If my ceasing to be depended upon my continuing to be so that I could keep thinking myself as not being, then I would continue to agonize indefinitely, without ever actually passing away. In other words, in order to refute subjective idealism, I must grant that my possible annihilation is thinkable as something that is not just the correlate of my thought of this annihilation. Thus, the correlationist's refutation of idealism proceeds by way of an absolutization (which is to say, a decorrelation) of the capacity-to-be-other presupposed in the thought of facticity - this latter is the absolute whose reality is thinkable as that of the in-itself as such in its indifference to thought; an indifference which confers upon it the power to destroy me." <br />
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However, we should note that at this stage of the argument Meillassoux seems to be claiming that the capacity of things-in-themselves to be other is established bythe factical knowledge of <i>one's own</i> capacity to be other. In other words, whereas Meillassoux originally claims that his argument does not depend on knowledge of anything actual, but merely considering that which is possible, in order to refute the idealist, facticity appears to be tethered to knowing that <i>one could-not-be</i>; that one cannot find any reasons for <i>thought</i> to exist. However, this by itself does not seem to solicit the thesis that every being will necessarily be contingent, but only that the <i>agent</i> of the correlation, that is one's thought itself, is contingent. This is not to repeat the argument in favor of the possibility of ignorance, since what we are claiming now is rather that while Meillassoux might have claims for the necessity of contingency on the basis of the knowledge of 'ourselves to be mortal' this is at best to know that <i>we </i>are necessarily contingent; that is, that the correlation is necessarily contingent, and perhaps that which appears within it as the realm of 'appearances'. But from this it seems totally illegitimate to conclude that being-in-itself construed as a mind independent reality is necessarily contingent, since there is no logical necessity from my capacity to acknowledge that <i>I am a finite mortal and therefore contingent in being</i>, as is my every thought and phenomenal correlate, to the necessity that <i>everything that is thinkable as being independent of my thought and phenomenal correlates is contingent</i>. The former is to assert that it must follow that facticity is absolute for the correlational agent; the latter is to say that facticity is a property of all things-in-themselves, and not just for the agent of the correlation. Meillassoux slides from one conclusion to the other through by attributing factical knowledge to the agent of a 'capacity-to-be-other', while within the scope of the circle of correlation the most facticity could show is the absolute contingency of appearances along with its conditions for objectivation. The difficulty creeps in the moment Meillassoux must conflate our knowledge of facticity to a knowledge of finitude, in his way to rebutting the idealist.<br />
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But if this is the case then it bears radical consequences for Meillassoux's subsequent 'figures of factiality', contingency of the laws of nature included. If the principle of factiality is to be restricted to the realm of the phenomenal and to the reality of the correlational agent qua condition for phenomenal objectivation, then the three figures of the factial appear likewise circumscribed to the agent and its phenomena. And it is here that Catren's argument might be given some speculative weight: the idea that Meillassoux conflates epistemological criticism with ontological idealism. For now it seems that the contingency of the laws of nature no longer applies to being-in-itself simpliter, but only to the peculiar being under which phenomena are given within the circle. And since now positive knowledge seems circumscribed to the circle of correlation, at a loss for a positive knowledge of the actual, this seems to reactivate the Kantian idea according to which the laws of Nature, as we know them, are relative to appearances, and the domain of phenomena. But unlike Kant's static categorical framework, Meillassoux's absolute seems to solicit the possibility of an absolutely contingent modification in the laws that articulate appearances, while nevertheless remaining silent about the necessity/contingency of being outside the correlation.<br />
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Indeed, it remains entirely open whether such beings even exist or not, and so the decision between realism and idealism seems suspended in favor of a kind of ontological agnosticism, paired with knowledge about the absolute certain of the contingency of the phenomenal. But this seems like transcendental idealism with a vengeance: we cannot know if being is outside thought, or if it would conform to any necessary laws, let alone whether these resemble our knowledge and appearances. At the same time, we are also unable to establish, a priori, that a given categorical framework for the stability of appearances obtains within the circle itself. Thus the laws of nature, taken in its restricted sense as the laws of appearance, are contingent in form as well as in their existence, i.e. that there is no reason for things to appear as they do entails that appearances could very well not appear, or that they could suddenly appear under radically different modalities than we have known thus far. <br />
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The startling conclusion is that Meillassoux's absolutization of subjective facticity rehabilitates the possibility of the necessity of the laws of nature, understood as the laws of a mind independent reality, like Catren stipulates, but for this very reason forecloses the possibility of there being any knowledge of such laws, let alone a priori knowledge, or of their necessity. The only thing about the in-itself that I'm allowed to solicit is a nightmarish hybrid of Descartes and Heidegger: the transparency of my thinking, and the certainty of my death. The status of speculative physics would thereby seem, on that account, merely constricted to a regional study for the transient stability of phenomena presented under given conditions, and to the extent that a metaphysically fragile cohesion allows to discern. Every knowledge of the relation between the in-itself and the for-us is foreclosed in principle, excepting the knowledge that subordinates my being to the possibility of death as the one entity who I know must exist of itself. Thus the conditions for objectivation which remain the sole 'realist' ground for thought remain irreducible to the phenomena yielded within the correlational circle, but for this reason envelops thought as the dream of an opaque shadowy subjectivity which, for all we know, might lay suspended in utter solitude, shrouded by nothing but void.</span></div>
Daniel Sacilottohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06107600124995445921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6580039155018603814.post-42853963900611287452011-09-26T22:53:00.000-07:002011-11-13T19:43:35.117-08:00Hegel and Heidegger on Representation: Objectivity, Truth, Science<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBzWo0_2iV8KfpThyphenhyphenuswEz_W-EAdP5Imc8C5dO7e6ez2U03S8bwxlRaBHg1CaKVvfnhgWI0FP2L0mXF1wRjnkXYV1azgpJWbtHQtQ-Qp3kRn34QBcGLRgbFRx08XhFVAwBcTWd0LM5-J9j/s1600/pseudo+art.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="548" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBzWo0_2iV8KfpThyphenhyphenuswEz_W-EAdP5Imc8C5dO7e6ez2U03S8bwxlRaBHg1CaKVvfnhgWI0FP2L0mXF1wRjnkXYV1azgpJWbtHQtQ-Qp3kRn34QBcGLRgbFRx08XhFVAwBcTWd0LM5-J9j/s640/pseudo+art.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> - HEGEL AND HEIDEGGER ON REPRESENTATION -</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: large;"><b>Objectivity, Truth, Science</b></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> __________________________________________________</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b>Introduction</b><br />
In his seminal essay The Origin of the Work of Art, Martin Heidegger advances a robust account of what is art, where the latter comes to acquire a distinctive privilege, along with poetry, as a locus for the disclosure of truth (wahrheit). In doing so, Heidegger seeks to oppose the tradition’s overburdened conceptions of art cashed out in terms of objectual representation and sensible aesthesis, where the being of the artwork is seen to come into bare presence through the act of an apprehending subject. Instead, Heidegger proposes that truth be conceived fundamentally as unconcealment (aletheia), evincing a structure of incompleteness and withdrawal as being co-constitutive of the ‘creative disclosing’ proper to the artwork. Only by unyoking truth from its objectual framing does one escape the totalizing ambition under which the merely ontic enterprise of modern science attempts a compulsive wresting of being and a thorough domination of Nature. These nefarious results which follow from our epoch’s ontological forgetfulness include the devaluation of artworks into mere objects for commerce and curatorial interest, as well as the technocratic compulsion which accounts for both concentration camps and the fumigation of fields in agriculture. Prefiguring thus the latter diagnosis from Was Ist Denken? that “science does not think”, Heidegger dislodges the ‘ontic violence’ of objectual representation from truth, and proceeds to argue that science does not reveal truths. The task of rehabilitating an originary conception of truth as unconcealment through an understanding of art becomes then of a piece with the overcoming of the technical dominance advanced by modern reason, which thrives in an ever aggravating forgetfulness of being. The movement from the earlier attempt at a fundamental ontology, still tethered to a vision of philosophy as (phenomenological) science, is thus progressively displaced in favor of the hermeneutic Destruktion of a post-metaphysical thought wherein science loses its prerogative along with the ontological valence of objectual representation. <br />
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Bearing a strong dissymmetry, Hegel's ambitious project as delineated in his Encyclopedia Logic is an attempt to enact the elevation of common knowledge (Wissen) from the explicit cognition (Erkennen) of representational objects into the comprehensive science (Wissenschaft) of the dialectically imbued Concept. Far from signaling the straightjacket of our epoch's waywardness before a rigidified and forgotten tradition or path of questioning, Hegel views philosophy's task as one of securing the necessary logical continuity between thought and the real, which renders a direct complicity between logic and metaphysics, or the discursive presentation on being (ontology) and the world itself. Thus, while Hegel would agree with Heidegger in that philosophy's task is first and foremost to prize philosophy free of the insufficiently developed conceptual baggage that comes with immediate representations and which remain ungrounded, it is not the ‘technical’ unbecoming of calculating reason and its objectual occlusion which is to be overcome. Rather, it is the incapacity of non-scientific reason to settle for merely contingent determinations on being which fall short of logical necessity, and thus of a properly scientific status. <br />
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For all their apparent divergences, however, we find at the heart of both theories a common sense of urgency towards conceiving truth as essentially untotalizable, and anchored on an unconquerable point of resistance. In Heidegger’s thinking, this kernel is the receding dimension of "The Earth", as the observe side of Dasein's positive projection of Worlds. In Hegel’s system, this kernel is constituted by the self-relating negativity of the infinite Concept which, always affected by opposite determinations, threatens to usurp the stable identitarian regime of epistemological representation in its rigid individuation of objects under schematic form. The 'truth' of the Concept is therefore nested, Hegel argues, in the primordial self-alienation which constitutes its spiraling movement into various moments. We shall examine below how for Hegel withholding truth from a total deliverance to the stasis of representation implies not just a philosophical rectification of the tradition, but a consummation of a philosophy which had always 'fallen short' of its name. <br />
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While Heidegger still sees poetry and the poetic word as possessing the distinctive privilege of placing us before truth, disassociating science from philosophical thought, Hegel's system of the Concept insists on their continuity. This verdict finally separates the two thinkers, in spite of their fundamental agreement in understanding the structure of truth as a dynamic movement, which remains incomplete and untotalizable, and wherein history unfolds itself. The Heideggerean movement of deconstructing (Destruktion) the Western tradition, removing itself from the objectification of conceptual abstraction, stands opposed to the Hegelian operation of sublation (Aufgehoben), where conceptual determination endows being its full actuality. Each of the two philosophers would take the other's attempt as a movement towards abstraction: for Hegel the phenomenological abstraction of the immediate, for Heidegger the abstraction of conceptual determinacy as a reification of the modality of presence-at-hand. Our discussion, in short, will modestly attempt to trace the continuity between the methodological strategies which affect the ontological registers in the work of these two philosophers, through an understanding of how thought attempts to dislodge itself from the shackles of a tradition which has driven it to a forgetfulness of its deeper questions, or failed to rise to the dignity of a science worthy of the name. <br />
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<b>I – Heidegger and the Artwork – Things, Thingliness, Truth </b><br />
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”In the midst of beings as a whole an open place occurs. There is a clearing, lighting. Thought of in reference to what is, to beings, this clearing is in a greater degree than are beings.” (Martin Heidegger -The Origin of the Work of Art)<br />
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At the outset of The Origin of the Work of Art, Heidegger subscribes to the task of unearthing the origin or ‘essence’ (Wesen) of art, prizing common conceptualizations of the latter free from the presuppositions handed down to us by the metaphysically invested tradition. This amounts to asking how art itself comes to acquire precedence in determining the relation between artist and artwork, or as Heidegger puts it: “In themselves and in their interrelations, artist and work are each of them by virtue of a third thing which is prior to both, namely that which also gives artist and work of art their names—art.” (OWA; Pg. 17) If the question about the origin of art as such comes to acquire methodological priority with respect to asking about the subject of art, or the object (Ob-jekt) of art, it is because an understanding proceeding from the dyad of subject-object relations already occludes a more fundamental determination which Heidegger deems as ‘essential’, i.e. which establishes “…that by which something is what it is and as it is” (Ibid; Pg. 17)<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftn1">[1]</a>. But since the investigation into the origin or ‘Nature’ of art must take the extant reality of artistic works as its beginning, we thereby enter a ‘hermeneutic circle’, where the essence of art is first inferred from the artwork, and yet the latter comes to be seen as determined by the former (Ibid; Pg. 18). This leads Heidegger into a propadeutic assessment of the traditional conceptions of art which obtain from the tradition. <br />
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Heidegger first raises the question about the ‘thingly’ character inherent in all works of art, understood as a “self-evident element” which is brought to last or endure in a presencing (Anwesen) which constitutes the work's artistic being and which endows it with a structure<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftn2">[2]</a>: “It seems almost as though the thingly element in the art work is like the substructure into and upon which the other, authentic element is built.” (Ibid; Pg. 20) By the same token, the artist himself is not taken to be a mere ‘subject’ of representation, who stands before the work, endowing it with its ‘thingly’ character. This disassociation of the agent of art from the subject follows since crucially “…a man is not a thing.” (Ibid; Pg. 21) And since the ‘thingly’ element of the work cannot thus be squarely identified with the merely objectual representations of artworks the tradition provides, Heidegger first seeks to point towards the limitations inherent in the three prevalent conceptions about the artwork’s essence, which circulate around these misconceptions in a dominant manner (Ibid; 23-26): <br />
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1) The work as a mere thing/object – Under this conception, the work comes to be understood as a mere object or thing; taken as an ‘assemble’ comprised of a bundle of properties. These become then expressed in propositional form, i.e. subject-predicate attributions. Against this view, Heidegger underlines that the visibility of the thing must already precede predicative determinations, whose origin propositions are unable to express. Thus the ‘thing-structure’ reflected in the subject-predicate propositional form is said to derive from ‘a common source’ (Ibid; Pg. 22). This common source remains, however, shrouded in mystery. <br />
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2) The work as an aesthetic datum – Under this conception, the work comes to be individuated as a transparent totality delivered over to our perception or sensibility, given as a distinctive unity, synthesizing a ‘manifold of intuition’<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftn3">[3]</a>. Against this view, which is paired to the former in producing a singular thing-concept of the work, Heidegger contests the putative transparency and completeness of the work as given in its presencing, claiming rather that “"In order to hear a bare sound we have to listen away from things, divert our ear from them, i.e. listen abstractly.”<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftn4">[4]</a> (Ibid; Pg. 26) This way, Heidegger invites us to hear in the originary Greek notion of the hupokeimenon a ‘ground’ which is not reducible either to the fully present object of representation, expressed by a conceptual propositional frame, or to the agency of a subject apprehending perceptual unities from subsisting matter. <br />
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3) The work as a dual determination of form and matter – Under this conception, the work is understood as a complex articulation between a primal material substratum (hyle) and form (morphe) set visible before an apprehending subject through aspects (eidos)<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftn5">[5]</a>. Against this conception, Heidegger underlines the irreducibility or the dubious subordination of the being of tools or equipment (Zeug) with which Dasein engages in purposive practice to a distribution of form by matter. It follows that the ‘usefulness’ of tools can never be an additional property surreptitiously aggregated to the object, understood as a form-matter compendium. Quite the opposite, the ‘usefulness’ of these tool-beings are said to be ontologically fundamental with respect to such merely ontic, objectual determinations: “Such usefulness is never assigned or added on afterward to a being of the type of a jug, ax, or pair of shoes. But neither is it something that floats somewhere above it as an end.” (Ibid; Pg. 28) <br />
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Significantly, these three conceptions tie in with three traditional conceptions of truth: 1) as correspondence between proposition and fact, 2) as subjective-conscious intentionality directing the ‘ego’ towards a unified object, or 3) as the Idea which gives form to the bare givenness of matter in producing the being of the object. The issue must be thus that there is in the ‘truth of the work’ something which resists objectification, and for this the usefulness of tools delivers the first clue (Ibid; Pg. 28). All of these conceptions must already presuppose, Heidegger argues, that beings have already made themselves available to us, taking part amidst in usefulness for Dasein's comportments, in doing so evincing a structure intractable through the modality of objective representation. <br />
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Heidegger paves the way thus to a discussion of tool-beings or equipment, extending on the famous ‘tool-analysis’ from Being and Time. What is crucial for us at this stage is simply to underline how for Heidegger the being of equipment challenges the objectual form of representation, construing the latter rather as a derivative function of the ‘breakdown’ or malfunctioning of the former<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftn6">[6]</a>. In other words, whereas the traditional conceptions would have the ‘usefulness’ or serviceability of an entity as one more property or attribute, or as a contingent integration of such serviceability outside its strict determinations (a distinctio rationis, in the Scholastic sense), Heidegger deems the usefulness of tool-beings to be the ‘condition of possibility’ (to use Kant’s language) for objectual representation. This more fundamental understanding pertaining to readiness-to-hand implies thus a kind of ‘mindlessness’ in act, where no 'subject' or 'object' occur in its structure. <br />
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We should note that although Heidegger’s frequent examples of equipment involve man made ‘tools’, such as hammers or nails, the propriety of equipment does not pertain to a class or species of entities, since this would surreptitiously reintegrate them within the axes of objectual representation described above. Neither does readiness-to-hand pertain to a modality of beings, such that the same hammer could be said to present-at-hand or ready-to-hand, according to whether it is being theoretically grasped or practically put to use. Both readiness-to-hand and presence-at-hand are modalities of being, and strictly speaking, entities qua particulars obtain only in the modality or presence-at-hand. The point is thus that present-at-hand (Vorhandenheit) objects of representation (Vorstellung) are individuated only as derived from the malfunction of ready-to-hand (Zuhandenheit) equipment (Zeug) in engaged practice. This separates the positive ontic-regional enterprise of the sciences or scientific rationality, from the global-ontological scope of philosophy. <br />
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Already a few years later, in The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, Heidegger will delineate more clearly the scope of this distinction. Philosophy, understood still as metaphysics, does not concern itself with a particular being (God, the animal, the human…), a stratified domain of beings like science does (biological, physical, social…), or even with all the different beings or domains of beings. Conceptual typologies are delegated to the secondary ontic enterprise expressed by scientific categories, while philosophy in turn unearths their ontological ‘ground’ or enabling conditions through comprehensive concepts (Heidegger: 1995, Pg 9)<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftn7">[7]</a>. Philosophy occupies itself with worldhood, which thinks of 'beings-as-a-whole', i.e. it thinks of the pre-theoretical, unified, and transcendental horizon wherein a "clearing" (Lichtung) of beings are made manifest, and being as such is 'given over' to Dasein: “The fundamental concepts of metaphysics and the concepts of philosophy, however, will evidently not be like this [scientific understanding] at all, if we recall that they themselves are anchored in our being gripped, in which we do not represent before us that which we conceptually comprehend, but maintain ourselves in a quite different comportment, one which is originarily and fundamentally difference from any scientific kind.” (Ibid) <br />
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As fundamental, metaphysical comprehension (Begreifen) becomes the condition of possibility for the rest of the sciences or merely ontic enquiries: “there are only sciences insofar as there is philosophy”, not the other way around", or even more dramatically “…all science is perhaps only a servant with respect to philosophy.” (Ibid; Pg. 5) The ontological status of scientific phenomena is thereby said to be derivative from the transcendental and unitary structure of worldhood adequate to Dasein's dwelling, and which it falls to philosophy to clarify. In this sense, if the being of equipment constitutes a subject for philosophical enquiry proper, this is because it cannot be adequate to an ontic, "regional science". That is, even if Heidegger earlier was more akin to associate the strict scientific method with the phenomenological enquiry in advancing a fundamental ontology<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftn8">[8]</a>. <br />
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The ‘readiness’ proper to the being of equipment is then not simply that of a set of man-made, useful entities. It rather shatters the individuating objectual frame of objects and properties described in propositional (apophantic) form altogether. Heidegger accordingly claims that “taken strictly, there ‘is’ no such thing as an equipment” but only an ‘equipmental-whole’ wherein subject and object are rendered indistinct (BT: Pg. 97). Dasein’s comportments (Verhalten) towards being as integrated and purposive practice thus trump Husserlian intentionality, since the latter remains tethered to the modality of subject-object relations, however reduced to its logical form through successive reductions (epoche)<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftn9">[9]</a>. Consequently, it makes sense to conceive of natural-kind beings within ready-to-hand comportments, as long as we do not formally distinguish them from Dasein. <br />
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Heidegger’s famous depiction of Dasein as the ‘shepherd of being’ may be useful here and unpacked as an example: the guiding shepherd follows in unison with the herd of sheep an aim-oriented trajectory, mindlessly integrated and indistinct. Only when a sheep ‘diverts’ from the herd and interrupts the trajectory’s fluid migration, only when the stable functioning of the act breaks down, does 'the animal' appear, as some-thing, as an object to be dealt with. The shepherd correspondingly appears thus as a subject, as an agent which quickly proceeds to reintegrate the sheep onto the undisturbed movement of the herd<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftn10">[10]</a>. <br />
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At this juncture, it becomes evident that Heidegger’s understanding of essence (Wesen) problematizes the traditional (Scholastic) conception of the same in terms of ‘whatness’, i.e. the essence of an object is not a matter of ‘defining’ what it is. The latter already pertains to the derivation which sets-before the being qua object, and already loses the availability under which the being’s equipmentality comes to work alongside Dasein, rather than against the subject. Crucial then becomes the disavowal of all merely ontic or objectual determinations of being, in favor of a properly ontological clarification of the same. It is clearly thus a question of the ontological difference between being and beings; between entities conceived as individuated particulars, and being as that which precedes and grounds the being of particulars. We obtain here a series of distinctions: art’s essence or truth, which derivatively determines the artist as subject and the artwork object, is: 1) not one distributed in the modality of that-being (Wasein); 2) equipment is not localizable as mere presence-at-hand (Vorhandenheit) but rather as the available, ready-to-hand (Zuhandenheit); 3) the agent is not a ‘subject’ but a who (Das-sein), existing there, dealing with beings in the world in ways which are fundamentally practical and productive more than reflexive or cognitively apprehensive. If the objectification proper to representation occludes the being of the work of art then it is because what withdraws from such a comprehension is not a being, or an ‘essential’ property which determines the content of the object propositionally. Rather, being qua thing simply dis-appears as a thing by the philosophical deconstructive operation, and becomes ontologically grounded. <br />
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The question becomes then how art as such comes to be understood within this complex distribution, having unyoked ‘essence’ and being from the shackles of representation, and using the clue of equipment. Heidegger takes as his lead example an anonymous painting by Van Gogh, which depicts a pair of peasant shoes. Beyond the explicit objectual content which merely gives us over to a pair of worn shoes, for Heidegger, the painting reveals the background of the peasant woman’s context in its holistic network of relations. Her dwelling above the rugged soil and her confrontation in the vast Openness of the fields, struck by the flagellating winds, are all part of the thick background that withdraws from the work’s explicitly objectual ‘content’. Heidegger’s description reveals the strife or tension between what he will distinguish as the Earth and the World: “This equipment belongs to the earth and it is protected in the world of the peasant woman. From out of this protected belonging the equipment itself rises to its resting within-itself.” (OWA: Pg, 33) In addition to usefulness-serviceability, the shoes in the painting reveal a dimension of reliability in equipment, a grounding in which the dwelling of the peasant woman and her horizon of meaning is firmly placed. Heidegger goes on to identify the World with the projective horizon of possibilities wherein Dasein dwells purposively as equipment becomes serviceable (Ibid). In Van Gogh’s painting, this would correspond to the holistic network of meaningful practices in which the shoes are integrated. The artwork correspondingly fulfills the function of ‘delivering us over’ into the peasant woman’s dwelling-space, transposing us into the 'there' wherein the woman inhabits, while revealing itself in connection to the usefulness or serviceability of beings for a people and an epoch. <br />
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Correspondingly, the Earth is structurally twofold: first, it designates the primordial dimension of reliability which simultaneously withholds or resists something from Dasein. In the painting, this can be found in the asymmetry between the depicted content of the shoes, and the receding background which illuminates it. Second, the Earth is the depth of being which withdraws or ‘self-encloses’ itself, the necessary back-ground upon which creative world-formation operates. The ‘self-enclosure’ of the Earth is thus not to be equated with the abstract persistence of beings or objective entities; it rather designates the ‘being of beings’ which resists objectification and which founds it, as well as that from which truth comes to happen for Dasein. The artwork discloses the being of equipment as the destitution of the subject-object dichotomy, evincing the dynamic twofold strife between the World and the Earth, which Heidegger now calls the truth of equipment as such: <br />
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“Van Gogh's painting is the disclosure of what the equipment, the pair of peasant shoes, is in truth. This entity emerges into the unconcealedness of its being. The Greeks called the unconcealedness of beings aletheia…” (Ibid; Pg. 35) <br />
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The artwork comes to be understood as a locus to disclose truth conceived as un-concealment (Unverborgenheit), from the tense relation of strife between the World and the Earth. Heidegger expounds his analysis expressly through the example of the Greek temple, as being paradigmatic of this non-representational quality in art, and wherein the artist himself disappears and becomes “…almost like a passageway that destroys itself in the creative process for the work to emerge” (Ibid; Pg. 39) Just like the shoes reveal the peasant woman’s holistically articulated world, the Greek temple comes to be a work insofar as it discloses and unfolds in its being a horizon of possibilities common to a people and an epoch. So that it plainly follows that “…to be a work means to set up a world." (Ibid; 43) In the temple, the Gods’ presencing can be felt, i.e. the opening of all ontic possibilities, and the recession of being’s excessive dimension. It is not a ‘full presence’ that comes before Dasein (Vor-handen / Vor-stellung), but an asymptotic deliverance onto being, which can never be fully disclosed. The receding Earth grounds Dasein’s worldly dwellings by providing thus an asymptotic horizon of undisclosed possibilities, which remain untotalizable and inexhaustible, only ever progressively wrested. The Gods are in the temple, before presencing, insofar as they index the recession of being as the Earth as the precondition for Dasein’s being-in-the-world. <br />
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At this point we should underline that it is not simply that objectual representation does not pertain to worldhood given its occluding nature, but rather that it is not its primary ontological dimension. It is merely the one which remains most alien to the ‘self-containment’ of being qua Earth, in un-concealment, since it thinks to possess full traction before being in its object by positing the object as something 'grasped' and enduring before a subsistent subject. It is merely the most reified conception of being as presence, which disjoins beings from their dynamic integration in worlds. But doing so of course renders invisible the receding background of immersion where serviceability, availability and reliability mark the dynamic strife of truth in the being of the entity, in equipment as well as 'works'. Dasein’s being is then broadly construed as its factical transcendence onto beings in a World<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftn11">[11]</a>: a) its factical thrownness (Geworfenheit) into the Open (Offen) encounter with beings as ‘being-in-the-world’ (In-der-Welt-Sein); second, b) its dwelling in the earth which is ‘self-enclosing’ and which grounds it; third, c) a projective (Entwurf) horizon which constitutes the World which ‘lights up’ a clearing of possibilities which it creatively wrests from the grounding, withdrawing Earth: "World is the ever-nonobjective to which we are subject as long as the paths of birth and death, blessing and curse keep us transported into Being"<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftn12">[12]</a> (Ibid; Pg. 43) Thus all ‘commercial’ or curatorial dislodging of creative works from their historical, worldly specificity, to exhibit them as objects for contemplation, cannot but destroy their essential capacity to disclose. This creative dimension which opens up a space for the presencing of truth as the World-Earth strife is the prerogative of Dasein’s activity, and is presupposed by all externalized objectifications of being where the latter is merely thought of as present, and not attuned to the integral phenomenon of presencing: "But it is not we who presuppose the unconcealedness of beings; rather, the unconcealedness of beings (Being) puts us into such a condition of being that in our representation we always remain installed within and in attendance upon unconcealedness." (Ibid; Pg. 50). <br />
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The role of the artist is then not just to create the work as an object, but to preserve in its coming-to-be the rift wherein truth comes into presencing, in the tension of un-concealment. The artistic work thereby serves as a sort of punctual concentration where on the one hand the creative projection of Dasein’s world-formation, and the grounding self-concealment of being as the Earth on the other, become palpable in their co-appropriateness. Thus to ‘set-to-work’ means to stand within the space of truth opened by the work, realizing that the latter is in such a strife, and that "…to create is to cause something to emerge as a thing that has been brought-forth." (Ibid; pg. 58) This dynamic movement of creation and concealment obviously relates back to the link between equipment as incorporated within a nexus of opened possibilities, discursive or practical, and non-objectual being which withdraws from theorizing. The work in this way produces a ‘framing’ (Ge-stell) for the disclosure of truth; and not merely a presented form (morphe) for objects. Therefore, if the thing’s ‘thingliness’ is to be found in its ‘earthly’ dimension (in its concealment) as much as in its ‘worldly’ dimension (as disclosed usability or serviceability), then it is because truth is precisely this unified tension between the two movements. And since the Earth’s recession does not index a set of invisible properties, essences or forms, that which conceals itself is the void of being as such, in its non-objectual depth: “The thing’s thingness does not lie at all in the material of which it consists, but in the void that holds.” (PLT; Pg. 167) For Heidegger it becomes the prerogative of art and the poetic word, to let unconcealment resonate in the work’s presencing, against scientific abstraction. <br />
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As we shall see in the next section of the paper, this will turn out to have a radical bearing on Heidegger’s conception of history, and by extension, of the tasks pending for thought in relation to science, cognition and action. We shall briefly recapitulate how the work of Hegel offers an alternative account of truth which both challenges and expounds the former’s key critical insights. <br />
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<b>II – Hegel and Representation: Cognition, Knowledge, Science. </b><br />
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"What is rational, is actual <br />
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What is actual, is rational" <br />
<br />
G.W.F. Hegel - Preface to the Philosophy of Right (p.ixi) <br />
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As we saw above, Heidegger's attempt to unyoke truth from the tradition required first and foremost to overcome the framework of representational rationality wherein being was equated to the object, the merely 'present-at-hand' correlate of thought for a subject. In similar spirit, Hegel's The Encyclopaedia Logic contends that although philosophy must indeed begin with a consideration of ob-jects (Gegenstand) as given to us in common-sense cognition (Erkennen), this is only propadeutic in the way of elevating knowledge (Wissen) into the 'comprehensive cognition' proper to scientific thinking (Wissenschaft)<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftn13">[13]</a>.While in immediate representation being remains contingently postulated, it falls to philosophy to produce the appropriate concepts to establish their actual logical necessity: "... in the order of time consciousness produces representational notions of ob-jects before it produces concepts of them; and that the thinking spirit only advances to thinking cognition and comprehension by going through representation and by converting oneself to it... that thoughtful consideration implies the requirement that the necessity of its content should be shown, and the very being, as well as the determinations of its ob-jects should be proved."(Hegel, EL, Pg. 24). <br />
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This 'conceptually comprehensive' cognition which exceeds representation must first dislodge itself from the various "forms of thought" in which knowledge is commonly yielded: feeling, intuition, representation, etc (Ibid. Pg. 25). The scientific valence of the philosophical concept is so uncompromising on this account that Hegel will even go as far as claiming that representational notions are 'mere metaphors' of these concepts. (Ibid). In this regard, we can already grasp a fundamental divergence with Heidegger's account, insofar as for the latter the valence of conceptual rationality must in the last instance see itself as performing an ontological occlusion in contrast to the disclosing function of the poetic word, prized free from representation. Although both Hegel and Heidegger agree in that philosophical production generates the discursive necessity of being as opposed to mere objectual representation, for Hegel nothing is lost by virtue of the transcription to the concept. Quite the contrary, it is only within the scope of thought and ideality that the abstractions of immediate being and representation attain full-fledged actuality, i.e. logico-metaphysical necessity. As Hegel himself puts it: "... the genuine content of our consciousness is preserved when it is translated into the form of thought and the concept...the content of philosophy is actuality. The first consciousness of this content is called experience. Within the broad realm of outer and inner thereness a judicious consideration of the world already distinguishes that which only appearance, transient and insignificant, from that which truly and in itself merits the name of actuality." (Pg. 28-29). Thus while Heidegger conceives that the coruscating abstraction of the concept and the object further removes one from the opening of being given over to immediate experience and against the mediation of subject-object relations, Hegel disavows experiential immediacy as a merely transient abstraction which falls short of determining the ontological valence of the datum of representation. Whereas thinking experience requires for Heidegger a deconstructive (Destruktion) restoration from conceptual abstraction, for Hegel all such appeals to experience just exacerbate conceptual abstraction itself, as the most barren thinking requiring sublation (Aufgehoben). The enigmatic formula 'the actual is rational' therefore means: nothing escapes logical necessity, there is no gulf of 'pre-conceptual' being or 'pre-ontological' understanding through which emanates the positive actuality of the wealth of the possible, no 'gift' of being cleared in the Open. The immediacy of that 'inner and outer thereness' is quickly deposed of as a trite banality for Hegel, in which the Concept (affected by self-relating negativity) comes to sublate itself from its height of abstraction. Because logic qua scientific reason establishes the actuality of being, it will follow that all contingent determinations falling back on our unmediated 'clearing onto' the world amidst beings, as conceived in Dasein's primordial 'thrownness', are shed off as gratuitously posited, empty thoughts. More dramatically, Hegel allots such an elevation of the abstraction of experience to being one of the 'passions of the understanding' and which, given over to contingency and facticity, disassociate being and the Idea to the point of exacerbating its emptiest moment: <br />
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"But even for our ordinary feeling, a contingent existence does not deserve to be called something-actual in the emphatic sense of the word; what contingently exists has no greater value than that which something-possible has; it is an existence which (although it is) can just as well not be. But when I speak of actuality...I distinguish it clearly and directly, not just from what is contingent... but also, more precisely, from being-there, from existence, and from other determinations. <br />
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The notion that ideas and ideals are nothing but chimeras and that philosophy is a system of pure phantasms, sets itself at once against the actuality of what is rational... However, the severing of actuality from the Idea is particularly dear to the understanding, which regards its dreams (i.e. its abstractions) as something genuine" (Ibid: Pg. 30) <br />
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What is interesting here is that while, for Heidegger, the dismantling of the object of representation is conceived precisely as such a removal from abstraction, delivered back from the present-at-hand to the holistic integration of worlds and of ready-to-hand equipment, Hegel sees the hermeneutic 'peddling backwards' to a point of originary disclosure as a literary embellishment of abstraction at its culprit. As such, those attempting to seize a 'pre-conceptual' or 'pre-ontological' domain from the understanding through conceptual means, that is, those who have too high a 'regard for their dreams', end up doing reifying the most barren of abstractions, disguising the inherent incoherence of their endeavor. Or, as Hegel puts it, "To want to have cognition before we have any is as absurd as the wise resolve of Scholasticus to learn to swim before he ventured into the water." (Ibid: Pg. 34) Only the Concept in the pure thinking carried by the scientific philosopher can establish by itself the necessity to legitimize the actual; everything else becomes mere moralistic prescription or metaphorical abstraction (Ibid). The 'beginnings' elevated by the phenomenological embrace of the lifeworld, along the purported restoration of an authentic attunement (Stimmen) by heeding to the call of the pre-conceptual, are rather always "immediate, found, presupposed"(Ibid: Pg. 33). Philosophy's job is not to recuperate or restore them, but to prize them free of their contingently established content by the means of 'speculative thought'. The relation between the universal genera of thought and the wealth of particular determinations as found in objective reality must then, through philosophy, follow intrinsically from the dialectical deployment of the Concept's self-relation, and not as a relation of an experiential pole contingently tethered to an externality (Ibid). Against the flattening of the subject-object dyad into the 'World' through an account of purposive practice, Hegel's that "...while each of these moments does also appear as distinct, neither of them can be wanting, and they are inseparably bound together" (Ibid; Pg. 36). <br />
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But this must mean that whatever appears as immediately given must in truth be always already, implicitly, affected by a mediation, by its exact opposite. The purely given must in truth already presuppose that to which it is given as given; the object of immediate reflection can only be implicitly given as datum for the factum of thinking. In order to capture the pregnancy of the concept which triggers its reversal, Hegel inscribes thus the general operation of the dialectic's logical movement, in which the identity of a being is all the same affected by its opposite determination, reverting into it before establishing the unity of its moments<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftn14">[14]</a>. And just like the immediacy of pure Being reverts into Nothing, only to see itself sublated as the unity of Becoming, logico-metaphysical knowledge supersedes the immediacy of all sensible content to unearth its tacit conceptual mediation<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftn15">[15]</a>: "In this way, our knowledge of God, like our knowledge of all that is supersensible in general, essentially involves an elevation (Aufgehoben) above sensible feeling or intuition; hence it involves a negative attitude toward the latter as first and in that sense it involves mediation.<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftn16">[16]</a>" (Pg; 82) <br />
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We should be clear to read the implicitly anti-Kantian gesture indicated here by the appeals to intuition and sensibility. The point Hegel seeks to underline, and which applies to Heidegger as well, is that the factical 'givenness' of the representational form of experience, tethered to sensuous receptivity, is irremediably external to thinking if merely posited as a given datum 'without reason'. Thus the facultative split in the Kantian edifice, which separates the understanding from intuition as the two 'species' of representation, cannot but reproduce the externality of the universal (categories) with regard to its particularizing sensible content, which then become contingently stapled one onto the other as a series of schematic instantiations of the objects of experience. Similarly, with Heidegger, although the horizonal, ecstatic transcendence of Dasein's projection is the condition of possibility for Worlds and the clearing of all beings, this enabling condition must be itself factically given or unconditioned, i.e. Dasein's facticity (Fakticitat) entails that it is thrown 'without reason' into the world, capable of the anxiety before being's non-latency in the Open. <br />
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The result is that while metaphysical concepts may clarify the necessary structure for the encounter with beings, it is no less true that the contingency of the transcendental with respect to its object remains as a purely contingent givenness. This is the unobjectivizable aspect of experiential givenness, the factical ecstatic transcendence which makes Dasein 'in each case mine' (Jemeinigkeit), irreducible to the still conceptually objectified subjective consciousness. This is a transcendental agency shorn of its substantialist residue, and which is tethered to the world not just as object, but as caretaker and producer<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftn17">[17]</a>. Dasein's ecstatic transcendence is the phenomenological analogue to the Kantian spontaneous synthetic transcendence of thinking which yielded the inseparability between the understanding and intuition, concept and object<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftn18">[18]</a>. However, there is a second transcendence at work here, which in Kant already marked the external kernel to the co-determination of the transcendental subject and the transcendental object<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftn19">[19]</a>. While the latter remains the 'empty form of the object' constituted only under the general category of substance within the understanding, the noumenon is rather the 'concept without an object' (ens rationis), which is not transcendental but transcendent to all subjective synthesis, negatively determined within it as its opaque Other<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftn20">[20]</a>. And it is this negative noumenon which, for Kant, grounds the transcendence of the subject in the externality of the world. It serves thus as a kind of index within experience of what is resolutely non-experiential, i.e. it is irreducible to the phenomenal order of appearances and its categorical form as given in thought. Similarly, in the Heideggerean account, we find a structural counterpart to the disclosing horizon of Dasein and beings, signaled through the opaque externality of the Earth. The latter targets a non-objectivizable excess to Dasein's world-disclosing capacity, not just to the objectual configurations of present-at-hand abstraction, but even to ready-to-hand practical engagement, and so to the pre-ontological understanding in the midst of beings<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftn21">[21]</a>. It is not so much an abstract concept as much as the concept of an absolute abstraction, shorn of even the pre-ontological disclosure of the ready-to-hand, let alone objectual presence-at-hand in substance. For Heidegger, however, this paradoxical experiential index of the non-experiential 'nothingness of being' is not the supplementary source of practical imperatives, as is the case with Kant's 'noumenal freedom'. It is rather distantly indexed under peculiar 'ontologically attuned' dispositions such as anxiety and profound boredom, where being-as-a-whole, in its non-latency and removal, levels the horizon of beings, showing their common grounding in the void of being<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftn22">[22]</a>. <br />
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That way, the ontological difference between being and beings, and the former's incommensurability to ontico-scientific rationality produces an iteration of the contingently posited relation between transcendental subject along with its phenomenal objects, and the purely negative, non-experiential noumenal 'concept without an object'<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftn23">[23]</a>. Only this time it is cashed out in terms of a) Dasein's world-disclosure as a clearing of beings, and b) the transcendence of the Earth's asymptotic and abyssal recession as the ground of being. The former co-appropriation of being and thought remains fully ideal since it locates the transcendence of being within the experiential horizon opened by Dasein's transcendence onto beings, while the latter remains the concept of an abslolute scission from the ideal. Thought's transcendence, just as Hegel remarks apropos Kant's 'spontaneity of thinking' and the noumenal as limit-concept, then simply presupposed as an a priori factum for thought, falling short of the necessity proper to philosophico-scientific cognition. In this regard, the disclosing transcendence of Dasein severed from its transcendent ground repeats the Kantian gesture of locating the 'noumenal' transcendence of the object as a formal distinction (distinctio formalis) within the objectivating transcendence of the subject and its intra-experiential content<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftn24">[24]</a>. Ray Brassier (2011) develops this line of thought in fuller detail. <br />
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" [T]he noumenal ground of appearances is not a substance considered in abstraction from its relation to the subject, but a concept considered in abstraction from its relation to the object. Thus the noumenon as “thought-entity” or intelligible nothing is not just an abstract concept, but rather the concept of an absolute abstraction, existing independently of its abstraction from experience. In this regard, and contrary to the familiar Hegelian rebuke according to which Kant abandons the in-itself to the domain of the inconceivable, the noumenon as intelligible nothing lays claim to the territory of the in-itself for conceptualization, without presumptively annexing it to the latter. From Kant, through Heidegger, to Laruelle, the postulate of the in-itself requires that we rethink the metaphysical hypostatization of being-in-itself, which is an abstraction relative to an empirically given reality, as the absolute reality of abstraction.<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftn25">[25]</a> " (Brassier, 2011, pgs. 9-10) <br />
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The Earth as the receding polar counterpart of the World as horizon localizes immanently within experiential possibilities an excessive dimension which establishes its actual 'grounding', by virtue of its unobjectivizable transcendence. This is what is indexed by Dasein's dwelling on an abyssal Earth, insofar as being qua being remains intractable by the objectivizing concept. Thus Heidegger can claim that in the passage from the possible to the actual "... this transition is to be understood, not in the sense that the possible relinquishes a way of being, but rather in the sense that it first of all receives a being." (Heidegger, 1988: Pg, 98) The ground of the Earth is the 'gift' of being upon which Dasein's horizonal disclosure of possibilities sets to work. And since this element of productivity is rendered entirely correlative to Dasein's projective disclosure of worlds, endowing a particular prerogative to the laborious production of the poetic word (poiseis) and of the artist, only existence can guarantee the full actualization of the givenness of being's abstract void. While the non-objectual Earth grounds Dasein's existential possibility for worlds, thrown into the world the latter becomes the 'shepherd of being'- its 'caretaker', insofar as existence endows it with the capacity of productivity needed to fully actualize being-as-ground over into the vast expanse of beings. <br />
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So in Heidegger's dislodging of essence from substance-determined 'whatness', annexing it rather to the pre-objectual, being as such ceases to be the correlate of an ideal act produced within transcendental disclosure, but becomes a reified conceptual abstraction negatively rendered as the polar counterpart of conceptual thought with positive content. Laruelle (1986) in this regard writes: "Essence is no longer a transcendent ideality, in the metaphysical sense. It is rather real or absolute transcending- not a particularly, i.e. objectivized being that is transcendent in the theological style, but rather the transcending of the real in-itself that no longer has any object-term and that is absolute scission [separating its radical immanence from transcendental horizonal disclosure]. Under the name of Finitude, Heidegger thinks the real, absolute opposite, the 'Other' of every relation of objectivation; the un-objectivizable real that is the essence of Being[...]" (Laruelle 2010; Pgs. 63-4) <br />
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Yet under strict Hegelian scrutiny these obdurate appeals to an unobjectivizable transcendence continue to ring hollow, in virtue of the gratuitous facticity endowed to Dasein's transcendental status, and the equally contingent externality endowed to the Earth's transcendent status. In this regard, Hegel's diagnosis against the critical autonomy of immediacy and experience in a way reiterates the criticism Kant had already leveled against classical metaphysics. Insofar as metaphysics remains incapable of deducing the categories which give way to the objects of experience, philosophy falls short of its name by failing to secure the necessity between the empirical and the transcendental: the universal genera which provide the determinations, and the manifold particular contents which actualize them. That is, if the determination of the empirical can only be legitimated a priori by an arbitrarily posited categorical framework for objective individuation, then critique has merely transposed the arbitrariness of dogmatic metaphysics into the agency of the transcendental subject. Thus while we find in Kant a transcendental deduction of the categories, their synthesis as the 'transcendental unity of apperception' is contingently posited, and presupposed as factically given. Indeed, this seems to be Hegel's own contention when claiming that for Kant experience is endowed with necessity, but that it is factically given as the necessity/universality of appearances within the 'spontaneity of thinking'. Hegel writes: "Critical philosophy holds on to the factum that universality and necessity, being also essential determinations, are found to be present in what is called experience. And, because this element does not stem from the empirical as such, it belongs to the spontaneity of thinking, or is a priori. The thought-determinations of concepts of the understanding make up the objectivity o the cognitions of experience...Bu the critical philosophy extends the antithesis in such a way that experience in its entirety falls within subjectivity, i.e. both of these elements together [subjectivity and objectivity] are subjective, and nothing remains in contrast with subjectivity except the thing-in-itself" (Ibid: Pg. 81).<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftn26">[26]</a> Kant thus finally subordinates necessity to a kind of contingency, that of the transcendental subject as the unified agent of synthesis. And insofar as it ventured to neatly separate the subject and the object, and to initiate a preliminary study into the faculty of knowledge ("pure reason") disentangling itself from its counterpart, critical philosophy attempted, like we indicated above, to not go into the water until it had learnt to swim (Ibid: Pg. 82). <br />
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The facticity of the transcendental and of the understanding which predates on the immediacy of intuited content as an external datum must therefore appear to Hegel as a gratuitous presupposition. If, as phenomenological wisdom would have it, immediate experience is the source of all philosophical meditation and of the content of representation, then this is only insofar as thinking has always already affected it with mediation, the stigma of contradiction and negativity. Negativity becomes the sufficient reason by which the Concept immanently unfolds itself into its concrete determinations with logical necessity; both object and subject must bear the mark of their respective polar opposites. However, this is not to say that it would be possible to think of an object without 'categories', prized free of individuating distinctions. Rather, what Hegel means is that "Although the categories... pertain to thinking as such, it does not at all follow from this that they must therefore be merely something ours, and not also determinations of objects themselves." (Ibid: Pg 86). This resists the Heideggerean and Kantian appeals to the transcendent object or to the Earth, as the 'thought entity', the 'intelligible nothingness', void even of minimal objectual determinations, glaring in their foreign and empty conceptuality. That Heidegger refuses to acknowledge the height of conceptual abstraction in his appeals to the Earth is on this account trivial, since Hegel insists on refusing to glorify barren abstraction and to endow it with non-conceptual reality. There is no index of non-experience within experience, or of 'the void of being' as external to thought. Thought determines Being as implied in the Concept's self-determination, or as thinking to itself. The Concept is not merely thought's abstracting agent; being-in-itself is not transcendent to thought<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftn27">[27]</a>. <br />
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It follows that no propadeutic enquiry into the faculty of the understanding or pure reason, inflecting reflection on the 'transcendental subject', could neatly disentangle itself from the object, just like the latter cannot be understood without implicit mediation by the subjective. By the same token, no deconstructive return to the pre-ontological understanding of worldhood can neatly disentangle itself from implicit conceptual determinacy. The putative immediacy of experience, bereft from all thought, constitutes thus the abstraction in critical philosophy we indicated above apropos Heidegger's avowal of a pre-ontological understanding in worldhood: <br />
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"We can say that philosophy owes its first beginning to experience (to what is a posteriori). But that is not saying very much, for thinking is in fact essentially the negation of something immediately given... thinking's own immediacy (that which is a priori) is inwardly reflected and hence inwardly mediated; it is universality, the overall being-at-home-with-itself of thinking." (EL: Pg 36) The purported formal emptiness of the categories, quilted in by the 'givenness' of the sensible manifold is utterly disavowed by Hegel, who insists on the contrary that the categories themselves must be taken, not as formal husks void of content, but as the determinate content of the objects themselves: "To assert that, by themselves the categories are empty is unfounded, because they have a content in any case, just by being determinate." (Ibid: Pg. 86) <br />
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In similar spirit, we could suggest that the so called 'occlusion' of the Vorhandenheit upon the realm of being, its 'merely derivative nature', and so also the allegedly abstract status of the scientific 'ontic' specification of beings, would all be for Hegel supervening on a gratuitous depreciation of conceptuality by appeals to the non-conceptual / non-latency of being's concealment. The latter is merely to repeat Kant's critical unilateral inflection of the object into the subject in phenomenological form. Even if the phenomenon is nested within Dasein's transcendental horizon, this is still only insofar as their synthesis remains tethered to the unobjectivizable Earth, which ultimately indexes the ontological remove of all scientific cognition-objectification. The inability of critical philosophy to dialectically deduce the possible content of the object from the Concept itself thus prevents it from realizing that immanent contradiction within thought renders it sufficient, with no needs for an ephemeral outside. Once contradiction and radical negativity is seen to infect thought from the start, it is shown to be the base ontological principle or sufficient reason of the dialectic. This marks the fundamental limitation in critical philosophy: in the transcendental idealist account, antinomies reduce contradictions to mere possible schemas of objects, within the specific domain of what Kant called 'cosmological objects'. These, however, remain relatively independent, and merely form distinct classes designating possible instantiations of contradictory objects. Against this, contradiction must be pervasive so that we can see that its “…true and positive significance is that everything actual contains opposed determinations within it, and in consequence the cognition and, more exactly, the comprehension of an object, amounts precisely to our becoming conscious of it as a concrete unity of opposed determinations.” (Ibid, Pg. 93). <br />
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We may summarize Hegel’s contention as saying that contradiction cannot merely be a set of possible, purely logical schemas on the basis of a presupposed categorical framework. The object is not merely contradictory insofar as it finds itself in possible "antinomic" individuation with respect to certain categories. Rather, the primacy of contradiction entails that the latter is not just logical but also constitutively metaphysical or ontological; the gap between the universal and the particular indexes that which is metaphysically real, the 'between the two' as self-relating negativity. Contradiction comes to install itself from the start and all-pervasively, so that it will not be a possibility of logical reason alone, but a real necessity, shown by the dialectic, as well. The Kantian impasse consists then in subordinating contradiction to the categories and so to the understanding. <br />
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”It may also be remarked that, as a result of his failure to study the antinomy in more depth, Kant brings forward only four antinomies. He arrives at them by presupposing the table of categories just as he did in the case of the so-called paralogisms. While doing this he followed the procedure, which became so popular afterwards-, of simply subsuming the determinations of an ob-ject under a ready-made schema, instead of deducing them from the Concept…[but] antinomy is found not only in the four particular ob-jects taken from cosmology, but rather in all objects of all kinds, in all representations, concepts, and ideas.” - (Ibid: Pg. 92) <br />
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We must be clear to differentiate the scope of the manifold concepts “within which” antinomies are found in pure reason, from the general claim according to which contradiction functions as a general principle of the Concept, i.e. the logico-metaphysical motor of the dialectic which leads from the immediacy of Being to the full historical movement of the Spirit. Thinking is then deserving of the name of an 'active universal' insofar as it enacts the process whereby actual necessity is established in all of the Concept's moments, and in which the externality of thought with respect to being is overcome: "The Logical is to be sought in a system of thought-determinations in which the antithesis between subjective and objective (in its usual meaning) disappears." (Ibid; Pg. 56) <br />
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In that regard, we should not understand Hegel's dissolution of the gap between subject and object to mean that they will be rendered trivially indistinct in a higher synthesis. Rather, they will be shown to be mutually implicating, as opposite determinations, and therefore presented as moments in the Concept's self-deployment. By the same token, every concept or universal determination will be affected by its opposite, and so it will contain within itself a moment of 'untruth' in not fully coinciding with its particularizations. Insofar as every positive determination is finitely given, "...all finite things, however, are affected with untruth; they have a concept but their existence is not adequate to it." (Ibid) This permanent gap between the universal and the particular is what allows us to see that the subject contains in itself the objective determination which was merely a contingent externality for critical philosophy, and a blinding derivation in Heidegger's account<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftn28">[28]</a>. Similarly, it allows us to see how the object in itself is not the mere synthesizing of the transcendental form endowed by the understanding, a factum operating upon the passivity of empirical intuition as a datum. This is accomplished by subverting the identitarian, static regime of ontic individuation in favor of nesting the dynamism of contradiction or 'absolute negativity' at the heart of every finite conceptual determination. This is why, strictly speaking, both Being and Nothingness as the first moment of the Concept remain 'empty abstractions', falling short of dynamic becoming. Only once their mutual implication is established in the oscillation of Becoming do we get a 'first concrete determination', albeit still a rather barren one: "Becoming is the first concrete thought and hence the first concept, whereas being and nothing, in contrast, are empty abstractions... Becoming is imply the positedness of what being is in its truth." (Ibid, Pg. 144). <br />
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However, the role of philosophy is not just to isolate the finite, nested antitheses proper to beings (which belong still to the faculty of the understanding). More importantly, the sublation of the nested antitheses at the 'higher level' of mediation, allows logic to specify further the objects of thought by the latter's speculative means (which belongs to Reason properly speaking, and so to infinite thought). Philosophy "...is in fact the very discipline that aims at liberating man from an infinite crowd of finite purposes and intentions and at making him indifferent with regard to them..." (Ibid; Pg 146). Philosophy must both begin by prizing itself free from the finitude of contingent determination, and must thus begin with a pure abstraction from those determinations. If being-in-itself is thus the starting point for the science it is also because it prizes thought free of subordinating being to its finite 'interests', as the abstract starting point for the logical movement of the Concept. In this regard, Hegel sees a putative advantage already in classical metaphysics over modern critique, since it ventured to think of the determinations of being-in-itself as inseparable from thought, thus resisting the severance occasioned by the transcendental "philosophies of access"<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftn29">[29]</a>. Nevertheless, its fault lied in thinking that objective determinations could simply yield the determinations of thought uncritically, and therefore it did not supersede the one-sided dimension of the subjective understanding, and thus of finite thought. Thought's infinity, unyoking itself from the understanding and ascending to Reason, therefore involves enacting the immanent (rather than transcendent) co-determination of thought on being, thinking and its object<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftn30">[30]</a>. Or rather, in philosophy, one cannot think anything but thinking itself, since thought becomes its own object: "Hence, the finite subsists in its relation to its other, which is its negation and presents itself as its limit. But thinking is at home with itself, it relates itself to itself, and is its own ob-ject. Insofar as my ob-ject is a thought, I am at home with myself. Thus the I, or thinking, is infinite because it is related in thinking to an ob-ject that is itself... If thinking thinks itself, then it has an ob-ject that is at the same time not an ob-ject, i.e. an ob-ject that is sublated, ideal." (Ibid: Pg. 67) <br />
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This infinitude must be immanently determined within the antithetical positivity of the finite, since if it were merely posited externally to it, then it would pose a limit to it, reactivating the spurious infinity of dogmatic metaphysics and of religious reifications of the 'highest being'. The dialectical movement of sublation as self-relation is finally what renders the speculative identity of the infinite Concept and the finite determinations of being, overcoming their antithetical positing. Or put in Hegel's own words: "Genuine cognition of an ob-ject, on the other hand, has to be such that the ob-ject determines itself from within itself, and does not acquire its predicates in this external way." (Ibid). John McCumber (1993) renders this point in the following passage: <br />
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"If finite being can be resolved into its properties, and if those properties are the same as the determinations brought forth in the self-development of the Concept, does it not seem plausible for Hegel to say that correspondence of finite being and infinite Concept is, ultimately, their identity? It is then unsurprising to find Hegel saying that nothing can exist "completely without identity of concept and reality."" (McCumber: 1993, Pg. 50) This is to reiterate the original thesis according to which logic coincides with metaphysics. The thesis 'the actual is rational' reinstates the unity of thought and being, the former endowing with logical necessity the finite determinations of the latter. <br />
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The infinite displacement of being's determinacy over and into opposite determinations, then achieving sublating antithesis, is therefore immanent to the Concept alone. And so all appeals to a world-disclosing function by non-conceptual means, in sight of reintegrating thought to its 'world', cannot but be seen from the Hegelian perspective as a desperate reification of immediate being or absolute abstraction as a finite externality of sorts<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftn31">[31]</a>. In its Heideggerean version, this would amount to the transcendent abstraction of the Earth set against the finite transcendence of Dasein's temporal-horizonal being-there. In this regard one might anticipate that, for Hegel, the Heideggerean gesture of localizing the 'realist' locus for metaphysics on the receding Earth, set-to-work in the poetic act and in the artwork, attempts a mystical evacuation of the pervasiveness of the Concept. For, after all, the worldly expanse, the 'there' reserved for the artistic and foreclosed for the artisan, is paired by Hegel to the dogmatic lure which remains unworthy of the Idea: "Being-there is in no way a merely positive determination, but one that is to lowly for the idea, and unworthy of God." and so that attributions of transcendence reified in such a manner offer "... a restricted content, and they show themselves to be inappropriate to the fullness of the representation (of God, nature, spirit) which they do not at all exhaust." (Ibid: Pg. 68). <br />
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Although Hegel shares the Heideggerean suspicion against the merely predicative form of propositional truth, he would nevertheless insist that the quasi-poetic ruminations on art and religious temples, in the process of seeking to index the Earth's receding ground, remains a surreptitious moment of predicative attribution obscuring through metaphoric bombast the arbitrariness of its external delimitation. The real means toward overcoming sedentary finite representation consists rather in locating within the Concept's immanence the capacity of opposite determinations, or contradiction as such, in order to dynamically set it in motion. Representational correctness is supplanted by dialectical truth only when the Concept sublates the antithetical placing of terms and shows their co-determination as a unity, or their mutual implication: "...these determinations are not valid when they are isolated from one another, but only when sublated...since the Concept is something-concrete and since it is itself every determinacy without exception, it is essentially, and within itself, a unity of distinct determinations" (Ibid: Pg. 70). Again, McCumber outlines the predicament: "Truth is not then for Hegel the simple identification, partial or full, of concept and thing; it is rather the complex movement from one to the other, in which both degrees of identity are equally necessary and which cannot be understood in terms of either alone: in his early formulation, it is the "identity of identity and non-identity."" (McCumber: 1993, Pg. 51) <br />
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Hegel thus allows us to crystallize the reasoning behind the Heideggerean drama against science and technology, and in favor of poetry and art. It also allows us to precipitate the later Heidegger's wholesale deposition of philosophy as complicit with metaphysics, now squarely allotted against 'thinking' as such<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftn32">[32]</a>. Already in OWA, the artwork, and not scientific speculation or metaphysics, is the site of preservation where being's tensional split is ‘set-to-work’ in its having come-into-being through the createdness of world-forming Dasein. Science, the handmaiden of poetry and philosophy, crucially "is not an original happening of truth, but always the cultivation of a domain of truth already opened, specifically by apprehending and confirming that which shows itself to be possibly and necessarily correct within that field. When and insofar as a science passes beyond correctness and goes on to a truth, which means that it arrives at the essential disclosure of what is as such, it is philosophy.”<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftn33">[33]</a> (Heidegger, OWA; Pg. 60) For both poetry and art, as we have seen, testify to the holistic framework of relations and possibilities which structures worlds and historical epochs. That worlds could only emerge apart from science’s coruscating forgetfulness, and only in the ‘thinking’ of truth under which art, poetry and philosophy are siblings, underlines Heidegger's antipathy to the object, to cognition and representation as complicit with the unthinking scientific method. For it is clear that Heidegger’s sustained attack on conceiving being from representation’s emptying occlusion articulates more generally what he deems to be the destiny of the Western historical development, leading down the spiral towards the technical domination of nature’s non-objective givenness. The occlusion of truth in favor of objectual presence cannot but render invisible the primordial strife between the Earth and the World in which art and philosophical meditation (Besinnung) stand to presencing. The compulsion to ‘wrest’ beings without limitation accounts for the modern derail of Man as ‘standing-reserve’ (Ge-Stell), that is, the technological obsession now destining Western thought to ‘frame’ nature, rendering it pragmatically available and fixed before man through the context-shattering cog of representation and science: <br />
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“That context is essential, because related to the destiny of Being. Framing, as the nature of modern technology, derives from the Greek way of experiencing letting-lie-forth, logos, from the Greek poiesis and thesis. In setting up the frame, the framework—which now means in commandeering everything into assured availability—there sounds the claim of the ratio redderpda, i.e., of the logon didonai, but in such a way that today this claim that is made in framing takes control of the absolute, and the process of representation—of Vor-stellen or putting forth—takes form, on the basis of the Greek perception, as making secure, fixing in place.” (Heidegger, QCT, Pg; 83) <br />
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The dialectic of the Absolute coming into its own thus finds a curious inversion in Heidegger’s thinking. Representation’s proliferation only exacerbates the movement of forgetfulness already implied in the derail of the first Greek beginning of metaphysics, where being was equated to the aspect of presence in the Idea. The calamitous aftermath of this forgetting of being devolves in the conversion of art into a commercial issue, of philosophy into mere science, and all ontology into ontics<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftn34">[34]</a>. Under the oblivious reign of technology, impervious to the call of being, man’s destiny seems apocalyptically sealed, so that in the end “only a God can save us!<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftn35">[35]</a>” For Heidegger thus, the hopeless recipe against the maledictions of technology and science imply a certain passivity, rather than cognitive activity, perhaps leading to "three hundred years of silence" and an attitude of ‘releasement’ (Gelassenheit), prescribed to undo the damage performed by the tradition. If we understand the presencing of the Gods as the ‘situatedness’ of Dasein before truth as unconcealment, making up a historical destiny, then we can understand that Heidegger’s call for the Gods' return in sight of their ‘flight’ signals the requirement to recuperate the truth-disclosing and world-inaugurating ambition of art and poiesis, away from science and mere techne. If poetry is wed essentially to art and truth, Heidegger argues, it is in the original Greek sense in which poiesis lets what is present come forth into unconcealment, and thereby articulates a historical world. <br />
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“For now the melting down of the self-consummating essence of the modern age into the self-evident is being accomplished. Only when this is assured through world views will the possibility arise of there being a fertile soil for Being to be in question in an original way – a questionableness of Being that will open ample space for the decision as to whether Being will once again become capable of a god, as to whether the essence of the truth of Being will lay claim more primally to the essence of man. Only there where the consummation of the modern age attains the heedlessness that is its peculiar greatness is future history being prepared.” (QCT; Pg. 153). <br />
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Against the fatalist drama against the perils of technological reason, Hegel's predicament stands as remarkably modern in turn: philosophy only exist as science, and it has yet to rise to become worthy of that name. The supposition of a non-latent reservoir of unobjectivizable and transcendent being is the truly occluding gesture, which veils the necessity to determine the Concept's self-relation and thinking's immanent pursuit with regards to itself: "But is it easy to see that, even if it is taken in its totally abstract sense, the Concept includes being within itself. For however, the Concept may be further determined it is itself minimally the immediate relation to itself that emerges through the sublation of its mediation, and being is nothing but that... for thought, nothing can have less import than "being". (Ibid: Pg. 94). Mediation does not trump immediacy, but explains it; conceptuality does not occlude the purity of being, it actualizes it and determines it (Ibid: Pg. 115)<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftn36">[36]</a>. This ultimately renders transparent the division between the two philosophers, and wherein they locate truth: either on the side of unobjectivizable being onto which only caring creation in the setting-to-work of art and poiesis harbors the hope of a non-conceptual thinking that restores a primordial innocence, or on the side of the Concept's self development, by its own, strictly immanent means. <br />
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<b>References/Cited Works/ Bibliography </b><br />
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1. Brassier, Ray. Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. <br />
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2. Brassier. Ray. The Reality of Abstraction, in Speculations, 2011. <br />
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3. Brassier, Ray. Alien Theory: The Decline of Materialism in the Name of Matter, doctoral thesis for Warwick, 2009. <br />
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4. Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time, translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, Harper & Row, Publishers, Incorporated, 1962. <br />
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5. Heidegger, Martin. The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, translated by Alfred Hofstadter, Indiana University Press, 1982. <br />
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6. Heidegger, Martin. The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, translated by William McNeil and Nicholas Walker, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. <br />
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7. Heidegger, Martin. What is Called Thinking?, translated by J. Glenn Gray, Harper and Row, 1968. <br />
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8. Heidegger, Marin. Poetry, Language, Thought, Harper and Row, 2001. <br />
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9. Heidegger, Martin. The Question Concerning Technology, translated by William Lovitt, Harper Torchbooks. <br />
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10. Hegel, G.W.F. The Encyclopaedia Logic, translated by Theodore Garaets, H.S Harris, W.A Suchting, Hackett Pub, 1991. <br />
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11. Kant. Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason, Cambridge University Press, 1998. <br />
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12. Laruelle, Francois, Philosophies of Difference, translated by Rocco Gangle, Continuum, 2010. <br />
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13. McCumber, John, The Company of Words, Northwestern University Press, 1993. <br />
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14. Sellars, W. Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1997. <br />
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15. Veto, M. De Kant a Schelling. Les deux voies de l'Idealisme allemand. Tome II, Grenoble: Jerome Millon, 1998. <br />
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<b> Index of Abbreviations </b><br />
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· EL : Enclyclopedia Logic, by G.W.F. Hegel <br />
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· OWA = Origin of the Work of Art, by Martin Heidegger <br />
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· PLT = Poetry Language, Thought, by Martin Heidegger <br />
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· BT: Being and Time by Martin Heidegger <br />
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· QCT: The Question Concerning Technology by Martin Heidegger <br />
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftnref1">[1]</a> The German word for 'object' generally has two possible translations: Objekt and Gegenstand. Although these two distinct terms differ little in meaning, both in common German and in Heidegger's account, it will turn out to be a weightier distinction for Hegel, as we shall see below. Provisionally, it should be remarked Objekt is usually paired with Subjekt so as to emphasize the former's relation of 'standing against' the latter, and thus of the correlation between the two terms. Heidegger's use of begegnen is often also used to illuminate how 'beings encounter us within the world (B&T: Pg. 44), which derives from gegen as "coming-up-against", to "en-counter", or confront (LXV, 269). For Heidegger Gegenstand will also tend to be used to underline the object's temporal dimension, as overdetermined by the presence, or the present. For a discussion on these usages see Inwood (1999). <br />
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftnref2">[2]</a> A possible definition of presencing is given on his essay Science and Reflection: “We think presencing as the enduring of that which, having arrived to un-concealment, remains there.” (QCT; Pg. 161) The connection between this term and Heidegger’s account of truth as unconcealment is developed below. <br />
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftnref3">[3]</a> Heidegger seems to have Kant implicitly in mind here. <br />
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftnref4">[4]</a> As we shall see below, this contestation against the unified ‘thing-concept' will turn out to be a crucial point of contention also for Hegel; who already prefigured Heidegger in denying the objectual totalization of truth in the way of affirming the latter’s fundamental incompleteness, that is to say, its excessive character with respect to mere objectivity of its specific moments or instances. <br />
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftnref5">[5]</a> The essential referent left implicit for these last two conceptions would be, of course, Aristotle, who in a certain way already indexes the first two iterations and serves as a pivotal moment in the tradition’s understanding of the artwork. <br />
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftnref6">[6]</a> For reasons of space, we cannot undertake a thorough review of how this process occurs in Heidegger’s account. Let us just note here that the breakdown of ready-at-hand equipment occurs in three successive stages, leading to bare reflexive abstraction from a primary dimension of engaged practice. Usefulness and serviceability withdraw thus, and equipment is reduced to the form of an extant, present-at-hand object (Vorhandenheit). The three stages are correspondingly: conspicuousness, obtrusiveness, and obstinacy. It is this latter ‘objectual’ form which roughly corresponds in Heidegger’s account to the object or representation indexed earlier in three varieties. It is thus, for Heidegger only the most derivative, or abstract stage wherein the indistinction in act between Dasein and tool-beings qua an equipmental-whole is severed. For details, see Being and Time: Part I; Chapter I. <br />
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<br />
<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftnref7">[7]</a> The 'comprehensive concepts' here will thus seem closely knit to Hegel's own determination of philosophy as comprehensive cognition. The 'comprehensiveness' at stake here concerns in both thinkers the establishing of the necessity of these concepts, i.e. their proper philosophical deduction, which elevates them from arbitrary/contingent determinations. <br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftnref8">[8]</a> For Heidegger's more confident association of philosophy and in particular phenomenology with the scientific method, see in particular his lecture course The Basic Problems of Phenomenology (1927). <br />
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<br />
<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftnref9">[9]</a> The polemic with Husserl is implicit in Being and Time, much like the polemic with Kant seems implicit in Hegel's EL. <br />
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<br />
<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftnref10">[10]</a> This complicates certain accounts of Heidegger’s tool-analysis from a pragmatic framework; and specifically some readings which purport to find in the realm of readiness-to-hand a second kind of intentionality, supplementing the traditional vector of consciousness intending its objects. For an example of this approach see Dreyfus (1990). <br />
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<br />
<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftnref11">[11]</a> Heidegger crucially appropriates the concept of facticity from Kant (Faktizität), where the latter is to be understood as the 'lack of reason' for the being of transcendental conditions of disclosure. Thus while for Kant the categories are the necessary conditions of possibility for all ontic transcendence, these categories are themselves 'without reason', i.e. we cannot know why there are only twelve rather than thirteen categories, why thinking is ‘spontaneously’ given, etc. Similarly, for Heidegger, while Dasein's ecstatic transcendence allowing the clearing of the world is the condition for the encounter with beings, this ecstatic transcendence is properly factical, and as such simply designates the situatedness onto which Dasein is 'given over'. This is what is meant by saying that Dasein is ‘thrown into the world’. Thus we can gauge the complicity of the critical philosophy with terms such as 'thrownness' (Geworfenheit), which index this horizon of unobjectivizing transcendence that remains itself unobjectivizable. <br />
<br />
It is my wager that one of Hegel's most remarkable challenges to Kant, and by extension to Heidegger, lies precisely in his rejection of facticity as a kernel 'without reason' that resists conceptual appropriation, either to open the space for practical reason to glorify noumenal freedom, or the space for the 'morning of the world' of the poetic word. For Hegel, contradiction establishes itself as the 'sufficient reason' which from the very start guarantees and secures the full-fledged deployment of the dialectic with logical necessity, so that immediacy can by itself unfold itself into its other by including opposite determinations within it. This happens just like Being as a first figure of thought becomes indiscernible from Nothing and so reverts to it, both already implying the unity of Becoming, etc. See Malpas (2003), Pg. 110; Heidegger B&T: Pg. 82, Meillassoux (2006), Pg. 35-46. <br />
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<br />
<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftnref12">[12]</a> Significantly, since the horizon for the disclosure of beings is a feature of worldhood, and since the latter is properly the transcendence proper to Dasein’s being (its being-in-the-world as ecstatic-horizonal transcendence) it follows that animals and plants have no world (OWA; Pg. 43). In this Heidegger retracts from his more ambiguous formulation from 1930 given in his lecture course The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics in which it was expressed rather that the animal was “poor in the world”, and which remained, as Ray Brassier (2007) has indicated, a ‘desperate sophism’ since at a loss for horizonal transcendence for which beings are no worldhood can obtain either. <br />
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<br />
<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftnref13">[13]</a> As should be apparent, here it is Gegenstand which is translated as 'ob-ject', while Objekt remains translated as simply object. Although for Heidegger this distinction had limited philosophical interest, for Hegel it plays a more substantive role. For the latter, Objekt pertains to a logical category, proper to the pure thinking advanced by philosophy, while Gegenstand comes to stand for the ordinary objects of experience. Thus when Hegel wages against the 'ob-ject' it should be understood that he sets against the 'common object of experience' which comprises the bulk of representational determinations of the object given to us by common sense and the tradition. These knowledges (wissen) obviously fall of the scientific cognition (Wissenschaft) which gives over the pure form of the object as a component within the dialectic. See the translator's pertinent notes in EL: Pgs. xxii, xxiii. <br />
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<br />
<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftnref14">[14]</a> This is what is generally meant when tracing the passage of the in-itself to the for-itself, and then in the in-and-for-itself as the synthesized alternation of being. From the immediacy of being in-itself we move into the self-alienation of being into its other, which implies already mediation and relation; only to show the mutual implication of one concept into the other as a self-supporting unity. Let us simply recall in passing the initial moment of the Logic which reproduces this movement: Being passes over onto Nothing, and their in-distinction becomes then sublated in the unity of Becoming: B ®N ® B... .«. BC. The same movement repeats itself to determine the entire wealth of determinations from this initial moment of abstraction. See McCumber (1993), and Badiou (2009). <br />
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<br />
<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftnref15">[15]</a> In this regard, the Hegelian logical usage of negation clearly resists the classical Aristotelian principle of non-contradiction and the excluded middle; and consequentially the principle of double negation. The negation of the negation is not equivalent to immediate affirmation, but determines its reflexive existence, its sublation at the next level of determination. <br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftnref16">[16]</a> Although the translators use elevation for Aufgehoben I have chosen to stick to the more standard (by now) sublation. <br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftnref17">[17]</a> This point is stressed by Dan Zahavi's (2005) trenchant critique of Thomas Metzinger. See his Being Someone, published in Psyche, University of Copenhagen, June 2005. <br />
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<br />
<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftnref18">[18]</a> The formal spontaneity of thinking is of course rendered in the fully impersonal synthetic unity proper to what Kant calls "the spontaneous unity of apperception". This unity is formal and objective since it never coincides with the empirical subject of experience (Kant 1998, B139, Pg. 157). More crucially, it is the unity of apperception which generates the bridge between a priori empty logical necessity and the empirical contingency of the a posteriori, guaranteeing an isomorphy of theory and experience. It is thus the condition of possibility for the combinatorial activity of the transcendental imagination, and so for the bridge between the transcendental analytic and the aesthetic, between the transcendent subject and transcendent object. See Brassier (2001), Pg. 168. <br />
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<br />
<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftnref19">[19]</a> Crucially, for Kant, the reciprocity between the transcendental subject and the pure form of the transcendental object which maps subjective representation to its represented objects. Thus "the conditions of the possibility of experience in general are likewise conditions of the possibility of the objects of experience."" (Kant. 1998, A158/B 197, . p194). <br />
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<br />
<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftnref20">[20]</a> Kant 1998: A290-2/B347-9 <br />
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<br />
<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftnref21">[21]</a> In this regard, one of the most salient divergences from critical philosophy concerns how Heidegger dislodges Kant's residual rationalism found in the correlate of subjective synthesis: the 'transcendental object' as the degree zero of presence-at-hand. For Heidegger, it is not just the Earth's properly non-experiential character that designates a non-conceptual reality, but also the pre-conceptual understanding in which Dasein finds itself amidst the World, that is, amidst beings-as-a-whole. The horizon of oppenness which constitutes Dasein's relation to Being is thus not myopically tethered to form of the object, any more than to that of the subject. To do so, Heidegger finds 'the pure category of substance' still tethered to a conception of essence (ousia) as presence-at-hand. In this regard, Heidegger radicalizes what was already prefigured in the Scholastic distinction between essentia and existentia, 'whatness' and 'thatness', and the latter's actuality as irreducible to the determinacy of the former. See Heidegger (1982), particularly Part I. <br />
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However, by indexing a pre-conceptual reality and rendering it as co-determined by our meaning-endowed dealings (the co-appropriation of Man and Being, or Sein and Dasein), worldhood remains an ideal configuration, only relative within human 'activity' and thought. The Earth, for its part, remains the non-objectivizable residue which renders, even within Worlds, the dimension of the void of Being, intractable to even pre-ontological thought. In that regard it resembles the 'thought entity' of the Kantian noumenon, the 'empty concept without an object'. Our wager is that, for Hegel, to postulate a pre-conceptual, non-objectual, and indeterminate relation to Being is undermined by the surreptitious conceptual configuration that describes it from the perspective of 'factical givenness'. Facticity becomes a way to obviate the inescapability of rational necessity; it does overcome this requirement . To determine the entire structure of the holistic network of pre-ontological practice through conceptual, descriptive means renders entirely obscure the relation between such a conceptual endeavor and the structure of being itself, rendering the relation contingent and gratuitous. This point will be insisted upon for the rest of the paper in different manners. <br />
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<br />
<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftnref22">[22]</a> Since being is not a being, there is a sense, in which Heidegger avows the Hegelian equation between Being qua Being and Nothingness. However, whereas for Hegel this Nothingness is not a latent reservoir in recession, for Heidegger this being's 'nothingness' can be experienced, not as an object, but precisely as the impossibility of the object, of the radical split between being and beings. It is of outmost interest that if the noumenon is for Kant the 'intelligible nothing', for Heidegger this Nothingness is also intelligible, as a purely empty abstraction, void of specifiable positive content (lacking even, as with Kant, the form of 'substance' as the minimal characterization of the experiential object). This is why the leveling refusal of being-as-a-whole, which reveals the asymptotic dimension of Being as such, is reserved not for cognition or the 'violence' of the understanding, but for the dispositional disquietude which deflates the understanding's occlusion. For Heidegger's account on anxiety as a peculiarly ontologically elucidating disposition, division II of Being and Time is prerequisite. For an account on 'profound boredom' see The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995. <br />
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<br />
<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftnref23">[23]</a> Kant 1998: A290-2/B347-9 <br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftnref24">[24]</a> For a discussion on the three kinds of Scholastic distinction, and their pertinence apropos the essence-existence dyad, its effect on the Kantian edifice, and the prefiguring of the ontological difference, see Heidegger's Basic Problems of Phenomenology, Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1988, pgs. 88-99. <br />
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<br />
<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftnref25">[25]</a> Brassier follows Francois Laruelle's (2010) reading of Heidegger, in which Being is read as objectivating transcendence, and the transcendent reality of being is tethered as the non-objectivizable residue in the entity. I believe this conflates Being with Worldhood, or Sein to Dasein, since for Heidegger the non-objectual dimension is finally on the side not of the entity, but of Being itself, which is indexed in the resistant ground of the Earth as concealment. To say being is identical with horizonal disclosure is to render it indistinguishable from Dasein's ecstatic transcendence, which renders the strife between World and Earth unintelligible. Both Brassier and Laruelle are right, however, in mapping out a strong parallel between the noumenon in Kant and the non-objectual in Heidegger, and rendering the former's abstract ens rationis as continuous with the latter's attribution of Being as the void of withdrawal. For Laruelle the Heideggerean distinction between being and the entity-in-itself is analogous to the Kantian distinction between transcendental object and the noumenon. For us the proposed analogy is rather between the Heideggerean World as the unity of Dasein's transcendence onto beings along the Earth as receding index of being, and the Kantian transcendental subject-object unity (the unity of apperception) along the noumenon as the 'thought entity'. See Laruelle (2010), Chapters 2 and 3; Brassier (2011). <br />
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<br />
<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftnref26">[26]</a> It has been shown that in this regard Kant's project remains undermined by its one-sidedness. Transcendental philosophy presupposes the empirical immanence of scientific theory and a scientific delineation of the synthetic a priori through the assumption of a system of apodictic mathematico-scientific principles-truths. Thus, it is transcendental philosophy that assumes empirical science in order to constitute a categorical framework for subjective-objective synthesis, rather than transcendental philosophy which 'grounds' empirical science. As Veto (1998) shows this criticism had been already leveled against Kant by his immediate successors; including Haaman, Fichte, Schelling, and of course Hegel. In short, the criticism is that "...by simply tracing the transcendental conditions from the empirically conditioned, and superimposing the presumed unity of pure apperception onto the synthetic combinations of the empirical manifold, Kant merely construct a redundant, second order abstraction which, far from explaining them, simply reproduces the formal features of empirical generality at a higher level. Consequentially, the supposed transcendental reciprocity between critical philosophy and the scientific mapping of experience is only operative from the perspective of the former." (Brassier, 2001, Pg. 171). As our discussion shows, this renders the putative 'analytic' deduction of the categories and so their putative logical necessity subordinate to a contingent, factical act of transcendental synthesis modeled arbitrarily from empirical sciences. In this regard, Hegel's criticism to Kant and critical philosophy is that it presupposes science rather than grounds it with actual necessity. <br />
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftnref27">[27]</a> This is why for Hegel is makes sense to drive philosophy from the abstract to the concrete through sublation, rather than to seek the fundamental or originary, as in the deconstruction Heideggerean 'history of being' (Seinsgeschick) and its attempt to wrest the primal happening (Ur-etwas) whilst poring over old Greek words. See Brassier (2007). <br />
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftnref28">[28]</a> This point is also elaborated by McCumber (1993): "The finite thing is in truth nothing other than its role in this process- but part of that role is to stand in untruth: to take a stand against the whole process, isolate itself, and assert itself as a moment against the whole Only thus can truth be the process of its own development." (McCumber 1993: Pg. 52). <br />
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Externality, or being-other, is thus for Hegel simply a moment in the Concept 'coming-out-of-itself', where reflexivity renders it as an antagonistic pole of opposition, which is then sublated in showing itself as in-and-for-itself; the truth is precisely rendered in the dynamic self-alienation of the Concept as it develops itself through the powers of the negative, i.e. as it shows itself to be nested by opposite determinations, and set to determine itself as united to that which appears at one point as alien to itself. Thinking thus does not close the gap between thought and reality as much as preserves it in its unfolding. The identity of Concept and finite being is therefore established as they both partake as moments of thinking's (scientific) cognition, and self-determination. <br />
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftnref29">[29]</a> The expression is Graham Harman's. See his Tool Being: Heidegger and the Carpentry of Things, Open Court, 2004. <br />
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftnref30">[30]</a> In this regard, while Hegel credits Kant for having delineated the distinction between the Understanding and Reason, he resists that the latter should be indeterminate. He claims "But we ought not to stop at this negative result, or to reduce the unconditioned character of reason to the merely abstract identity that excludes distinction... the genuine-infinite is not merely a realm beyond the finite: on the contrary, it contains the finite sublated within itself." (Ibid; Pg. 88). <br />
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftnref31">[31]</a> Being-there, which already involves the factical specificity of a determination of being by thought, is for Hegel not the first moment or figure of the Concept, but rather follows after becoming has be shown to be the truth of Being and Nothingness, determining their co-determinacy. Thus, being-there is already a figure which is nested within Conceptual determination and which proceeds from abstract Being, rather than beginning 'along with it': "In becoming, being, as one with nothing, and nothing as one with being, are only vanishing; because of its contradiction becoming collapses inwardly, into the unity within which both are sublation; in this way its result is being-there.. as reflected into itself in its determinacy, being-there is that which is there, something." (EL: Pg. 145-146). <br />
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It follows that the 'qualitative' dimension of being-there, the something it's involved with, already renders it objectual in the sense in which Heidegger would already see too much of a reification of presence-at-hand, subject-object representation, presupposed into the alleged purity of the determination (Ibid). However, Hegel resists that there is a dimension of pre-Conceptual being which is conceptually made available in abstraction, which devolves thought into the receptive gift of being and renders thetic productivity primary. Such a stipulation would be nothing but a pragmatic-performative contradiction from the Hegel's view, again trying to 'swim before venturing into the water.' <br />
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<br />
<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftnref32">[32]</a> This is most clearly articulated in his late seminar What is Called Thinking?, translated by J. Glenn Gray, Harper and Row, 1968. <br />
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<br />
<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftnref33"></a> <br />
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftnref34">[34]</a> And for Heidegger it is specifically this forgetfulness of being through ‘technical reason’ that accounts for the political disasters of National Socialism where, as in his infamous statements from 1949, concentration camps were equated ‘essentially’ to fumigation fields: “Agriculture is now a motorized food industry, the same thing in its essence as the production of corpses in the gas chambers and the extermination camps, the same thing as blockades and the reduction of countries to famine, the same thing as the manufacture of hydrogen bombs." (Heidegger 1949; Pg 64) <br />
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftnref35">[35]</a> See Heidegger, Martin, Der Spiegel Interview, 1966, <a href="http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~other1/Heidegger%20Der%20Spiegel.pdf">http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~other1/Heidegger%20Der%20Spiegel.pdf</a> <br />
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<br />
<a href="file:///C:/Users/daniel%20sacilotto/Documents/UCLA/Heidegger%20-%20Hegel/Hegel%20and%20Heidegger%20on%20Representation%20PDF.doc#_ftnref36">[36]</a> In that regard, it should become apparent that Hegel's project anticipates the Sellarsian rejection of the 'Myth of the Given'. See Sellars Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, in Science, Perception, and Reality, Ridgeview, 1991, p. 127. I quote Sellars: ‘Many things have been said to be ‘given’: sense contents, material objects, universals, propositions, real connections, first principles, even givenness itself.’ (My emphasis). Also, see Brassier (forthcoming, 2012): <br />
<br />
"Self-knowledge certainly comprises a dimension of non-inferential immediacy that endows us with a privileged epistemic access to our own internal states, but only within certain limits, since the immediacy of self-knowledge is itself the result of conceptual mediation and cannot be evoked to ratify the appeal to an allegedly intuitive, pre-conceptual self-acquaintance. The prejudice that immediacy is not the result of a mediating self-relation seduces us into absolutizing phenomenal experience. Phenomenology’s absolutizing of givenness as such is the most extreme variant of the myth dismantled by Sellars." </span><br />
<div><div id="ftn22"></div></div>Daniel Sacilottohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06107600124995445921noreply@blogger.com59tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6580039155018603814.post-84069627987620648272011-09-07T14:02:00.000-07:002011-11-13T19:43:58.501-08:00Sellars, McDowell, Burge -Perception as Non-inferential Knowledge<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; line-height: 17px;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQnCpKbOCMASzZx86-39DAIYN8klM9NxWeo8CumcQQxUP-NpETIx7yHiFNDtjOt04DLvsTFEp-OA3uKCInOZMJf1RS3NfvVSWQkrn75LTgTCzzly2nyjAldHDcn6eKP03Zn3YcWOqIWzOU/s1600/blueeee.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="519" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQnCpKbOCMASzZx86-39DAIYN8klM9NxWeo8CumcQQxUP-NpETIx7yHiFNDtjOt04DLvsTFEp-OA3uKCInOZMJf1RS3NfvVSWQkrn75LTgTCzzly2nyjAldHDcn6eKP03Zn3YcWOqIWzOU/s640/blueeee.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; line-height: 17px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
SELLARS, MCDOWELL, BURGE:<br />
- Perception as Non-Inferential Knowledge -</span></b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-size: x-large;"><b>__________________________________________</b></span></div><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 12.75pt;"><br />
</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">I have been following my reading of Sellars in tandem with some pertinent secondary literature, including: deVries and Triplett's reader's guide, Brandom, McDowell, O'Shea's excellent study, and some criticisms following particularly from Tyler Burge in his 'The Origins of Objectivity'. This has a resulted in a cluster of preoccupations, centered around the Sellarsian account of perception as a form of non-inferential knowledge which includes a conceptual (normative) component, and a non-conceptual sensorial (natural) residue, which remains epistemically inert.</span><br />
<div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"></div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Segoe UI', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt;">1) The first thing that struck me upon reading Tyler Burge's criticism of what he takes to be an over-intellectualizing tendency in Sellars' account, is the claim that perception must involve a form of conceptual/linguistic response as the only possible way to explain the attributions of sense content by cognizing subjects. I quote Burge apropos Sellars' position as expressed in 'Phenomenalism':</span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Segoe UI', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 13px;">"No serious science of perception agrees with Sellars in taking seeing something to be red as the 'culmination' of the sophisticated linguistic practices that he describes. Sellars leaves no room between (a) 'S has a sensation of x', in the sense of 'S is in that state brought about in normal circumstances by the influence of x on the relevant sense organs', and (b) 'S has a [linguistically informed] thought of x'. That is he allows for no perception of entities as having physical properties that is not backed by<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>linguistically informed thought</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>that attributed such properties to such entities. He moves quickly from a non-representational notion of sensing to a propositional sensing-that- again backed by linguistically informed thought- with no room for any type of perception in-between... Sellars assumes that propositional, linguistically informed thought is the only source of objective representation. Objective representation is epistemic representation. Epistemic representation requires a linguistically grounded propositional ability to represent conditions under which objectivity and knowledge are realized." (OB: Pg 137n).</span></blockquote><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt;"> <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Burge's entire point is that perception involves a non-linguistic form of individuation for its contents, which is explained without recourse to conceptual training or the capacity to perform linguistic inferences. This is for Burge a property that is to be found not just in sapient humans, but also in other animals. What is interesting about Burge's response at this juncture is that it seems to obviate completely the relationship which Ray Brassier stresses thoroughly in Sellars' account between sentience and sapience. For Sellars does seem to acknowledge that sentient organisms do respond accordingly to sensible stimuli, without this necessitating conception. It is true, however, that as far as perception is concerned, for Sellars there must always be a conceptual counterpart proper to linguistically trained subjects, to individuate sense-contents in judgment. It would thus seem that what Burge likes to call 'perception' is a form of <i>sentient</i> response that ought to be called positively epistemic while being non-conceptual all the same. This leads into my second observation, which takes us to McDowell's recent polemics with Burge himself. This reveals the core issue as I see it with regard to the status of perception, non-inferential knowledge, and the role of conceptuality in Sellars' scientific realism.</span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Segoe UI', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt;"> <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>2) Elsewhere in his text, Burge objects that Sellars' intellectualist position commits him to the view that perceptual knowledge in rational subjects is arrived at always by taking an 'inferential step'. Here McDowell rightfully takes issue with Burge, since it is clear that for Sellars perception in fact can operate as a non-inferential faculty in producing knowledge. This is after all the first premise of the famous inconsistent triad which Sellars endorses: "S senses red-sense-content x if and only if S knows non inferentially that x is red."</span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Segoe UI', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt;">Now, this is a point of terminological confusion since 'senses' and 'perceives' seem to be here interchangeable. This is confusing because we have established that Sellars wants to claim that sensation is epistemically inert (i.e. requires conceptual judgment to form knowledge), and yet that there can be a<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>non-inferential</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>form of knowledge described in <i>perception</i>, which<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><b><u>is not</u></b><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>to say that perception is<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>non-conceptual</i>. Indeed, it is perception's conceptual counterpart to the inertia of sensation that provides its positive epistemic status. So I take it that proposition A of the inconsistent triad, if endorsed by Sellars, refers to the non-inferential knowledge acquired in perceptual episodes, which involves necessarily its conceptual component, and not just in 'mere sensation'. In any case, McDowell goes on to defend Sellars' from Burge's attack. I quote the relevant passage, from his 'Perception as a Capacity for Knowledge':</span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Segoe UI', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><blockquote style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt;">"One of the formulations of what he finds implausibly intellectualistic about the Sellarsian picture is that it “<i>implies that the formation of a perceptual belief is a piece of reasoning — a transition from a reason to what it is a reason for</i>”.</span></blockquote><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt;"> But a believer can be self-consciously justified in a belief without having formed the belief by a transition to it from whatever she would cite in giving her justification for it. That is so even if the grounds on which the belief counts as knowledgeable are inferential. When I know that my neighbor is at home on the basis that, as I can see, his car is in his driveway, I do not need to have taken an inferential step to the belief that he is at home. It might be perfectly natural co say I can just see, straight off, that he is at home. Even so, my belief that he is at home counts as knowledgeable, if it does, because there is a good enough inference from the fact that his car is in his driveway to the conclusion that he is at home, And my knowledge that he is at home includes self-consciousness about its warrant, so that I can produce a justification, in Burge’s technical sense, for my belief that he is at home. I know not just that my neighbor is at home but that my warrant for believing that he is consists in the goodness of that inference, even if I did not arrive at the belief by inferring it from the knowledge that grounds it for me." (McDowell, PC, Section 5)</span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Segoe UI', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt;">Against Burge, then, it seems as if Sellars would be perfectly at ease in accepting a non-inferential form of knowledge, which involves conceptuality in order to provide judgment all the same. Burge would here insist that such a position deviates from what science teaches, insofar as our perceptual capacities remain non-propositional, and are legitimated thus by the externalist requirement that they cause the proper dispositional/behavioral responses in their cognizing subjects. There is much more to be said about Burge's intricate account of perception, but I shall leave that for the moment.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt;"> The notion of non-inferential knowledge in Sellars, however, is a tricky one to disentangle, seeing that it must not fold us back into some form of the Myth of the Given. The crucial qualification in McDowell's account concerns the relationship between Sellars' endorsement of non-inferential or <i>direct</i> <i>knowledge</i>, and at the same time the his rejection of <i>epistemic independence</i>, i.e. that a proposition p could be known independently of knowing other proposition(s) q, y, etc. Directness requires that the subject not infer a proposition from any other, independence requires the stronger claim that in order to know a proposition p the subject need not know any other proposition(s). This is where O'Shea and deVries bring up some interesting remarks.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt;">To begin, the fundamental difference between the two kinds of knowledge seems to be accounted for as follows:</span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Segoe UI', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt;">1)<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><b><i>Inferential knowledge</i></b><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>- S knows p iff S knows q, S knows that q justifies inferring that p, and S infers p from q.</span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Segoe UI', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt;">2<i>)<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><b>Non-inferential/direct knowledge</b></i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>- S knows p iff S knows that p without inferring p from whatever proposition(s) q justify it,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>and</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>S knows whatever q justifies inferring that p.</span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Segoe UI', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt;"> It is crucial to note that<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>in any case,</i> and against Burge,<span class="apple-converted-space"><i> </i></span>for Sellars knowledge demands the <i>internalist</i> requirement that the knower be in possession of the justification for whatever he knows, but that<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>this needn't mean in every circumstance the subject will deduce knowledge by inferring it from whatever propositions justify it</i>. This seems to ground the possibility of non-inferential knowledge being<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>direct</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>yet epistemically<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>dependent</i>, where we understand epistemic independence as entailing:</span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Segoe UI', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><b><i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt;">Epistemic Independence</span></i></b><span class="apple-converted-space"><i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></i></span><i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt;">-</span></i><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt;">A proposition<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>p</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>can have positive epistemic status for S independently of any other proposition q, i.e. S can know p without knowing anything else.</span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Segoe UI', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt;"> Thus every occasion where knowledge obtains, whether inferential or non inferential, will be a case of epistemically <i>dependent</i> knowledge, according to Sellars. While Sellars wants to endorse the idea that no proposition is ever self-justifying or justification-free and so that epistemic independence fails, he wants to do this while accepting that non-inferential knowledge is possible. This is a crucial distinction, since it grounds Sellars' rejection of those 'basic' propositions that would bolster a foundationalist account, while keeping a restricted sense of directness operative. This supplements his rejection of Russellian inspired accounts of non-propositional knowledge by acquaintance, as a second iteration of the Myth of the Given that ought to be rejected. </span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Segoe UI', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt;"> Non-inferential knowledge is not foundational since it does not constitute justificatory self-sufficient instances of given knowledge, obtained transparently through the intuition of sensory data. Sensation by itself is epistemically inert, and the capacity to sense sense-contents is acquired in that it requires that one knows a cluster of additional<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>propositions</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>resulting from being imbedded in a linguistic community. This is the anti-foundationalist prescription in Sellars that McDowell underlines, against Burge. This results in the strange idea stated above that knowing p non-inferentially requires knowing q, but that one does not arrive at p by inferring it from q, and so not epistemically independently. Furthermore, the strong internalist demand which McDowell seems to be ascribing to Sellars here is the additional requirement that S not only must know q in order to know p, but<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>he must also know that q justifies p</i>.</span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Segoe UI', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt;">This follows from the standard tripartite demands for knowledge which Triplett and deVries argue Sellars endorses:</span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Segoe UI', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><i><u><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt;">For S to know that p entails</span></u></i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt;">:</span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Segoe UI', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt;">1) S believes that p.</span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Segoe UI', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt;">2) p is true.</span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Segoe UI', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt;">3) S must have the appropriate justification for p.</span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Segoe UI', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt;">Sellars must thus insist that for any proposition p, p is epistemically dependent on another proposition(s) q for S, i.e. to posses knowledge of p is justified by / counts as knowledge, on condition that one also possesses knowledge of q. Triplett and deVries write on this account, summarizing Sellars' rejection of epistemically independent propositions:</span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Segoe UI', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><blockquote style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt;">"Suppose [a proposition assumed as basic] is non-inferentially acquired. Any such proposition can have positive epistemic status for a person only if there are other propositions in the person's epistemic system that support it. For example, a person cannot know the truth of the observation report "this is red" if she is merely capable of reliably producing such reports in appropriate <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>circumstances [anti-externalism / anti-Burge]... In order to have knowledge the person must know that her reports are reliable. But then her knowledge of her reliability epistemically supports her observational knowledge which therefore cannot be epistemically independent."</span></blockquote><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt;"> This is what, according to McDowell, would entail that even if one knows non-inferentially that the neighbor is in the house by observing the car, one must nevertheless 'be prepared to justify' their belief if examined. It is not sufficient that one believes what one does; one must know that his belief<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>is</i> justified by appeals to other bits of knowledge, i.e. one must know that seeing the car could serve to inferentially justify that the neighbor is in this house. This is the coherentist demand which Burge finds excessively intellectual in Sellars. And it also constitutes what deVries and Triplett call 'a strong internalist requirement' against externalist accounts. We may thus reformulate requirement (3) above in its 'internalist' enhanced version, endorsed by Sellars:</span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Segoe UI', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt;">3*) S must have the appropriate justification q for p,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>and</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>S must know that q justifies p, i.e. S must be capable of explaining the inference of p from q.</span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Segoe UI', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt;">This raises a particular elucidation to O'Shea's description of Sellars' "<b>principle of perceptual reliability</b>" [PR]:</span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Segoe UI', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt;">[PR]</span></b><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt;"> - S's perceptual judgment [P] that<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>x, over there, is red,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></i>constitutes a case of perceptual knowledge if and only if there is a generally reliable connection between cases of S's judging that [P] and its being in fact true that there is a red physical object over there [T&D, Pg. 126)</span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Segoe UI', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt;">Thus, under standard conditions, S has reliable (yet not infallible) warrant for x iff one can "infer the presence of a green object from the fact that someone makes this report." This is where O'Shea, however, diagnoses quite menacing problem with regards to the possibility of a vicious regress. If S needs to know q in order to know that p,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>but also that he must know that q justifies p,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></i> then S needs to have knowledge of the meta-principle [PR] which provides S with the capacity to discern reliable occasions of perception from unreliable ones. But since in general [PR] must follow from empirical observation of instances [P], it is not clear whence from it derives its justification, since it is simultaneously meant to serve as the condition for knowledge of [P]. The impending circularity looms transparently here. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt;"> T&D state: "...it seems reasonable to accept epistemic principle [PR] only because it is in some way supported by particular observations [P]; but it is reasonable to accept observation [P] only in virtue of their being known to fall under the perceptual reliability principle [PR]" [Pg. 132]. And Sellars' response will be to disambiguate between a) the <i>naturalistic</i> account which tracks down the <i>causal</i> process of acquisition of the conditions for our epistemic sapient capacities, and b) the <i>transcendental</i> non-empirical register according to which principles such as [PR] (or the principle of causality) must be taken as <i>normative </i>conditions of possibility for any knowledge whatsoever, i.e. they seem to function as <i>epistemic</i> norms. Apparently, the reason why this is not another instance of the Myth of the Given is because these normative principles<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>can</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>be given a resolute empirical causal explanation in naturalistic terms, while preserving their transcendental status methodologically autonomous for the structure of knowledge. Thus there is no ontological gulf between the normative and the natural causal; the dualism is not metaphysical but methodological. And as I see it, this is where Sellars' provides a subtle corrective to the post-Kantian subordination of the empirical to the transcendental; the<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span> methodological autonomy of the logical space of reasons is nevertheless anchored ontologically and generatively on the causal conditions open to empirical natural-causal description.</span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Segoe UI', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"></div><div style="line-height: 12.75pt; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 13px;"> This raises an interesting possibility of re-awakening Meillassoux's challenge to the correlationist defense according to which the separation of transcendental and empirical registers remain insurmountable. The corrective Sellars introduces is to say that there is no explanatory gap in the genetic account that science provides between inorganic matter, sentience and sapience; science is fully capable of causally explaining the genesis of thought, and also how the latter comes to be a condition for the very knowledge of itself <u>and the world</u>, i.e. neurobiological-evolutionary accounts expose how the organism comes to acquire those physical capacities to produce knowledge. This causal account is by no means restricted to self-knowledge; and so does not have to run the gauntlet of the circle of correlation. The empirical-transcendental register is thereby reworked by Sellars so that while the physical is<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>causally</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>responsible for the normative, the latter is<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>epistemically</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>responsible for our knowledge <i>of</i> the causal. So while there is an epistemic correlation between the normative, sapient-endowed critters capable of wielding the transcendental apparatus for rational deliberation, this <i>does not</i> solicit any form of<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>bilateral</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>ontological correlation between thought and matter, but it does solicit nevertheless a<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>unilateral</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>ontological correlation <i>of thought on matter</i>.</span></div><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;"><br />
</span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 12.75pt;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 12.75pt;">All of this is obviating difficult issues raises elsewhere about the precise nature of the physical for Sellars (the two senses distinguished by O'Shea), the subtle distinctions between levels of sense content (sensing-that or propositional epistemic content, and sensing-of non-propositional responses), the dialectical interplay between the manifest and scientific image leading to the incorporation of sensa into the latter, and also the question of fallibilism with regard to perception (raised particularly by McDowell's brilliant remark against Burge that even if our perceptual faculties are fallible it doesn't follow that we can never posses sufficient grounds for infallible occasions of knowledge, i.e. as Sebastian Rod claims: "from the fact that, when I am fooled, I do not know that I am, it does not follow that, when I am not fooled, I do not know that I am not. When I know that p as I perceive it to be the case, then I know that I perceive that p."</span></span><br />
<div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Segoe UI', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSMzS8Kb4enc4AbI6oeuzhI27hDUuExw-ELh5fnFGvvyywbMap4qt6cTiwPY9NB8EMjgXDM9njNqf2qcivG_s126rGut7kATT43wq-DbngETSjCpWtbzeR2cSV5eZ0ywhKxdLq4FesPj2u/s1600/astonish.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="382" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSMzS8Kb4enc4AbI6oeuzhI27hDUuExw-ELh5fnFGvvyywbMap4qt6cTiwPY9NB8EMjgXDM9njNqf2qcivG_s126rGut7kATT43wq-DbngETSjCpWtbzeR2cSV5eZ0ywhKxdLq4FesPj2u/s640/astonish.jpg" width="640" /></a></div></div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt;">3) However, there is one issue pending which I find extremely confusing in Sellars' account, with regard to the distinction between epistemic independence and non-inferential knowledge. My problem is that I simply do not know what it means for a subject to 'know directly and non-inferentially' <i>with</i> epistemic dependence. Let us return to McDowell's example:</span></div><blockquote style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt;">"When I know that my neighbor is at home on the basis that, as I can see, his car is in his driveway, I do not need to have taken an inferential step to the belief that he is at home. It might be perfectly natural co say I can just see, straight off, that he is at home."</span></blockquote><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt;"> Here the expression "seeing straight off" must be a shorthand for: knowing non inferentially that p, where S also knows that q justifies p,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>even if at that moment one doesn't make the inference</i>.</span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Segoe UI', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt;"> I don't know if this convinces me, for how does one 'simply' observe the car and know that the neighbor is there without making an inference, even if<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>unconsciously</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>or<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>very rapidly</i>? How could one make the connection between the observation of the car and the neighbor being at home without inference taking place? Something like a non-inferential immediate connection between one bit of knowledge and the other would have to be at place here; but what this amounts to remains to me utterly mysterious. Notice that this would seem to hold even in cases where perceptual knowledge was established without mediation/non-inferential derivation, i.e. if the subject in question had seen the neighbor directly sitting in his couch (under standard conditions) it would have been a case of 'seeing that' the neighbor is there, but this would require still the appropriate additional knowledge which would allow one to infer this, i.e. the lighting conditions are standard, knowledge about what constitutes the relationship of interiority, what is a couch, and what it means to-be-sitting, etc. A different connection than inference must be at work here for S to be lead from his observation of the car to the belief that the neighbor is there. For S must<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>already know<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></i>that a parked car <i>justifies</i> the inference to the presence of the neighbor; he must know that q provides inferential warrant for p, even if he does not infer p from q. Furthermore he must know or believe that q ("the car is parked") is the case, as we surmised above in (3*) as Sellars' strong internalist requirement.</span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Segoe UI', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="ecxmsoplaintext" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #2a2a2a;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New';">But then since he does not explicitly consider the causal connection between p and q at the moment of gaining this non-inferential warrant, what are we to make between this connection of two instances of (propositional) knowledge? Are we to say that a</span><u style="font-family: 'Courier New';">) S non-inferentially knows that q by seeing the car, and<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>simultaneously<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></i>non-inferentially knows that p</u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New';">? This seems remarkably awkward; and gratuitous without further explanation. But if Sellars wants to say that b) </span><u style="font-family: 'Courier New';">S knows non-inferentially that q <i>first,</i> and<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>then</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>knows than p</u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New';">, then he needs to explain how one passes from one to the other belief without any inference taking place. How does the non-reflexive, memory-stored knowledge</span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-family: 'Courier New';"> </span><i style="font-family: 'Courier New';">that q justifies inferring p</i><span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-family: 'Courier New';"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New';">operate so that S may come to know that</span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-family: 'Courier New';"> </span><i style="font-family: 'Courier New';">p</i><span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-family: 'Courier New';"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New';">on the basis of his seeing that</span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-family: 'Courier New';"> </span><i style="font-family: 'Courier New';">q</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New';">? Perhaps this has to do with the relation between sentience and sapience, where the acquisition of q upon observation could be defined as a kind of sentient response which nevertheless requires that the subject be in possession of certain propositional knowledge as well; but this is utterly speculative. I haven't found anything in the literature, including Sellars, addressing this particular concern.</span><br />
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</span></div>Daniel Sacilottohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06107600124995445921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6580039155018603814.post-60054982018234808472011-07-14T02:20:00.000-07:002011-11-13T19:44:26.017-08:00Dogmatismo y Crítica: En Diálogo con Vacío<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2EwkadjopRXh5Xwz0KaYzd29pwXZ3Nv_h9JA1SQloxsirapx0aUZX3TFloA27YTpSxQ328LUefocwJ0yDxccy0_Fu5Urdw3zoSI543iTX87hHH0Nldynhml_btZdXzXSi5agXrPuM4ddQ/s1600/Lunacy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="501" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2EwkadjopRXh5Xwz0KaYzd29pwXZ3Nv_h9JA1SQloxsirapx0aUZX3TFloA27YTpSxQ328LUefocwJ0yDxccy0_Fu5Urdw3zoSI543iTX87hHH0Nldynhml_btZdXzXSi5agXrPuM4ddQ/s640/Lunacy.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="ES-PE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><b>Dogmatismo y Crítica:</b></span></span></div><span lang="ES-PE"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span lang="ES-PE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><b>- En Diálogo con Vacío -<br />
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________________________________________________</b></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="ES-PE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', Verdana, Arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 21px;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><span lang="ES-PE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">En </span><a href="http://erichluna.wordpress.com/2011/07/10/suenos-dogmaticos/" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Vacío</a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">, Daniel Luna castiga lo naif en el antagonismo 'anti-academicista' propio de aquellos rebeldes estudiantes de filosofía, en su modo más característico. Las dos cualidades que Daniel rescata de este grupo son transparentes y fértiles para la crítica:</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; line-height: 21px;"></span></span><br />
<blockquote><span lang="ES-PE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; line-height: 21px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">"(1) los profesores antes eran más académicos y ahora son más burócratas y esto porque se han dedicado (por ponerlo de alguna manera) a “gobernar” la universidad en lugar de “pensar” filosóficamente (de académicos a burócratas)</span></span></span></blockquote><br />
<blockquote><span lang="ES-PE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; line-height: 21px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">(2) los profesores son “argolleros” porque no aprecian o reconocen el talento de nuestro novel estudiante, ya sea porque “se llevan mal con él”, ya sea porque son “discriminadores” (racial, étnica o socioeconómicamente), ya sea porque sus temas de interés son diferentes."</span></span></span></blockquote><span lang="ES-PE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br />
Aquellos desafortunados vituperantes ignoran, Daniel insiste, la dimensión política implicada en la composición estructural de la institución académica universitaria, a través de la cual los intereses de sus funcionarios se articulan. Daniel busca enfatizar sobre todo como aquellos estudiantes pecan de una simplificación a la hora acusar a los profesores e instituciones, a la Universidad y sus "Ordinarios", de haber vendido su integridad filosófica-intelectual en favor de una servidumbre burocrática. Y la segunda característica parece aclarar que lo que motiva, al menos superficialmente, al estudiante, es exigir mayor reconocimiento y legitimación por parte del aparato Universitario y sus docentes. Ante esto, Daniel responde con un recordatorio, y dice que: "Toda institución quiere preservarse y adaptarse y, de hecho, las élites que gobiernan quieren mantenerse gobernando. Hasta aquí, esto es política 101."<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="ES-PE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Ciertamente coincido con Daniel en denunciar lo naif en la vituperación ciega del estudiante de filosofía, en tanto este sea en su mayoría compuesto por las dos facetas mencionadas. Al mismo tiempo, es importante recordar que el estudiante, en tanto ocupa la voz del renegado, es parte de una dimensión política-estructural también y que, como en el caso del organismo académico, obedece a lo que uno podría esperar del estudiante. Este último es, como el hijo que desea medirse detrás del amparo y autoridad "paterna", el rebelde que resiente al Estado familiar, al Gran Otro del Discurso Universitario que reemplaza la autoridad directa del Maestro, el "proletario" cuya carencia de poder lo enerva e inspira a confabular el coup contra aquello que lo sostiene pero que también lo disciplina y limita. <br />
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El desconocimiento de cómo opera la institución académica es, para el estudiante ejemplificado en la descripción de Daniel, una dimensión más de rebeldía juvenil que opera en su relativa modestia con cierta inocencia, pero que también en manos de algunos 'brillantes' pocos termina siendo el motor de reformas y revoluciones, en lo académico-político, y también en lo filosófico-intelectual. En este sentido, si bien es importante que el filosofo-estudiante nunca caiga en una vituperación cínica e impotente en contra las instituciones y sus dirigentes, así también como de la organización 'escolástica' de su disciplina y las tendencias conservadoras de sus monaguillos docentes, aquella rebeldía no debe ser descontextualizada de sus efectos emancipadores. Daniel tiene mucha razón en hacer notar la limitación de una visión crítica que ignora la dimensión política en las instituciones, y a esto agregaría: no hay que olvidar que <i>la mayoría</i> de estudiantes, falto de ideas y guiándose por recelo y sed más que por propuestas o sentido de justicia, también busca lo que Daniel describe propiamente como el eje conservador del aparato universitario:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="ES-PE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">"No se trata de algo tan burdo como “argollería”, se trata de lineamientos políticos. Y acá no quiero ser reduccionista y sigo a Bourdieu: se trata de muchas más variables. No solamente lineamientos políticos, sean éstos intra o extra universitarios, sino también lineamientos de temas de interés, de relaciones sociales, etc, etc. Desde esta perspectiva vemos pues, que el sistema mismo promueve dicha asimilación de lo similar para formar parte de lo similar."<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="ES-PE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br />
De la misma manera, uno podría decir que lo propio del 'proletario' estudiantil, sin ningún poder académico más allá de sus aullidos y pocas obras, siempre implica el de renegar contra el Estado académico, y el último es expuesto en alianza con alguna 'ortodoxia' filosófica a ser destituida. Esta faceta es generalmente compartida verticalmente en toda gran 'traición' filosófica que va con una subversión política-académica: Heidegger contra la organización temática universitaria iba de la mano con sus acusaciones contra la prevalencia filosófica de ciertas corrientes que él consideraba sintomáticas de un conservadurismo intelectual. La "traición" contra Husserl y la subversión contra la universidad; quizás es de los ejemplos más dramáticos. Quizás uno de los ejemplos más interesantes en tiempos recientes es el de <a href="http://www.urbanomic.com/pub_fangednoumena.php">Nick Land</a>, cuya extraordinaria obra, cada vez más alienada de "Lo Mismo" protegido por la academia, finalmente hubo de buscar una suerte de exilio filosófico. De la misma manera, hoy en día, Badiou vitupera contra el neo-escolasticismo anglosajón, propio de la filosofía analítica, y de la institucionalización del sistema educativo Europeo propio de la Reforma de Boloña, así como de la hegemonía pragmatista que sirve al Estado (en el sentido técnico en que el Estado no es sólo la institución política). <br />
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Parecerá un tanto injusto meter a los grandes antagonismos filosóficos de aquellas figuras junto con los pobres estudiantes que menciona Daniel. P</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">ero más allá de la carencia de imaginación, amargura y cinicismo al que puede y frecuentemente deviene la desobediencia estudiantil, insistiría que la excepcional dimensión política del estudiante también motiva un ideal revolucionario y subversivo. El hecho de que la universidad pueda estar atravesada por relaciones políticas no puede asimismo aislar la relación política que guarda la universidad con el cuerpo estudiantil. Este último ciertamente no es menos <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">político</i> por no pertenecer al orden de los Ordinarios, y no por no ser <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">elitista</i> en el sentido en que guarda intereses institucionales es menos <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">interesado</i>. Y ciertamente no sigue de que porque siempre habrán intereses de por medio mediando los enunciados y acciones en aquella relacion, esto implique que no debería haber crítica, antagonismo o incluso oposición por miedo a ser 'naif': es importante no sólo que los temas filosóficos se mantengan abiertos a la discusión y que se promueva el pensamiento progresivo, sino también es crucial que las instituciones, la estructura académica, y los funcionarios, sirvan a la producción imparcial y efectiva de aquel pensamiento y su organización. <br />
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Aquí reside el punto de mayor importancia. La dialéctica entre el contenido filosófico y la estructura política es necesaria. Como Daniel menciona, la corrupción atribuida al docente es tanto de <i>materia</i> como de<i> cargo</i>. Y la relación entre el antagonismo o fuerza estudiantil y el "Estado" académico tiene que ser vista singularmente en relación a las propuestas, desacuerdos, críticas y demandas en cuestión. Es crucial que al decir que el estudiante peca de ser naif no se diga que la problemática, de materia o institucional, no requiere de señalar lo conservador-opresivo de ciertas posturas y agentes, que siendo realistas tendríamos que aceptar que lo conservador de la estructura académica los absuelve o vuelve inmunes al antagonismo o crítica. Y en este punto, quisiera simplemente agregar a lo que dice Daniel:<br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="ES-PE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">"No solamente lineamientos políticos [han de ser considerados], sean éstos intra o extra universitarios, sino también lineamientos de temas de interés, de relaciones sociales, etc, etc. Desde esta perspectiva vemos pues, que el sistema mismo promueve dicha asimilación de lo similar para formar parte de lo similar."<br />
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<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="ES-PE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> Es vital que no reduzcamos la situación a fricciones entre 'intereses' subjetivos-institucionales indiferentemente, como si por el hecho de ser intereses los que se ven en juego <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">no fuesen más que eso</i>. Lo que busco recalcar al señalar esto último, que parece un tanto trivial, es lo siguiente: no se debe relativizar la complejidad de factores y actantes de su obligación normativa, reduciendo la última al ámbito jurídico o privado de "interés", donde se negocian relaciones de poder, interpelaciones ideológicas, o voluntades humanas. El problema es que esta última relativización que pretende homogenizar el campo de enunciados <i>ya de por sí asume una posición filosófica</i>, y es la que finalmente implica que no hay criterios epistémicos que nos permitirían determinar la validez, coherencia o virtud de enunciados filosóficos u organismos de Estado sobre otros. Y creo que si uno acepta esto último entonces de ante mano se erradica la función revolucionaria de la filosofía en general, y del estudiante en particular, de siempre estar a la guardia del Estado, no para rendirse a una fácil vituperación, pero por la cual también, dada la exigencia política, uno llega a poner minas en los campos tras haber puesto chinches en los asientos en un principio. <br />
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No hay que restarle el coraje antagónico al estudiante, ya que en ello radica también toda posibilidad de un destino para el pensamiento digno de ser llamado filosófico. Pero también creo que reducido al reniego vituperante o a la complaciencia relativista, se asimila al estudiante a una fácil avalación del conflicto, no del todo disimilar al triste espectáculo anti-Estatal que pretende ser política por parte de los civiles en relación al Gobierno o presidente de la Nación y sus funcionarios, a través de lamentos, bullicio y desprecio por todo orden. Y en esto es claro que con Daniel coincido en que una verdadera relación progresiva con el aparato universitario, así como con el pensamiento filosófico, no puede ser nunca meramente destructiva: el cambio es irreducible a una negación de los predicados que conforma el Estado, los rangos académicos, los cánones de pensamiento, la distribución de disciplinas, etc. Esto implica rechazar también el <i>'realismo sedativo'</i> de <i>aceptar las cosas como son, porque 'son como son', </i>el realismo pragmático y flojo que asimila todo enunciado a la consideración de que, finalmente, habrían meros humanos e instituciones, con sus intereses respectivos, detrás. Es importante que la filosofía, como la política, no sea un simple espacio para la tranquila Gala de vecinos y la complacencia apática que constituye el vehículo de la indiferencia. El pensamiento filosófico y la acción política siempre operan en función reconocer el lugar donde se decide algo fundamental, algo urgente. Y estas últimas cuestiones pueden darse en contra o pese a los intereses de los interesados, de las estructuras y los instructores, de los instructores y de los estudiantes. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="ES-PE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br />
Esto tampoco quiere decir que el estudiante no tenga una función 'conservadora' que cumplir, si por la última se entiende, a modo amplio, 'el deseo de preservar algo'. Claramente el ideal de transmisión de conocimiento, de tener una relación con la historia, de respetar a los intructores y las instituciones, van de la mano con el ideal de la ruptura con las restricciones enciclopédicas, la posibilidad de algo sin precedentes, de sobrepasar el pensamiento del pasado y de mejorar nuestras instituciones. En esto me opongo categóricamente a la falsa modestia correlacionista-idealista que reduce la función académica a servir intereses pragmáticos. La substracción que implica un proceso creativo nunca es sui generis ciertamente, y no basta de una simple voluntad destructiva, como señalé arriba. En cambio, el ideal substractivo del que se componen verdades genéricas, como describe Badiou por ejemplo, es una modalidad que explica la relación inseparable entre la prescripción y orden institucional (el Estado de la Situación), y la multitud de agentes que compone el campo de acción. De igual manera, por poner otro ejemplo filosófico, la crítica naturalista de Sellars en contra del Mito de lo Dado constituye un eje que nos pone en ruta de colisión contra el conservadurismo empiricista, fenomenológico, o vitalista, en tanto las últimas postulan una auto-legitimación estructural en el discurso de orden dogmático (sea linguístico, intencional, de inmediatez factual empírica, intuitivo, transcendental-religioso, cultural, semiótico, u otro tipo). <br />
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Uno podrá decir que finalmente hay quienes se suscriben firmemente a estas y otras posiciones que este estudiante podrá considerar 'enemigas', pero de esto no debe seguir que la suscripción basta para la legitimación filosófica, ni para su desmerecimiento. Y mucho menos implica que el interés político al que cierta posición filosófica responda tenga que ser 'tolerado' o considerado 'equivalente' a todo otro por estar al servicio de tales intereses. Decir que toda opinión es equivalente a toda otra en tanto opinión es una banalidad; decir que no existe diferencia entre opiniones de parte de interesados y verdades, es probablemente sofismo. Es importante no desmerecer entonces la conexión o relación entre la responsabilidad filosófica y la política; y esta última si bien no puede reducirse al Estado, no puede tampoco valerse de reniegos ilusos, o berrinches infantiles. De lo contrario, es decir, de reducir la tensión entre Estado y situación, universidad y estudiantes, a cuestiones de interés humano, uno arriesga reproducir aquel pseudo-Nietzscheanismo voluntarista en donde la academia y la filosofía no es más que la tiranía del deseo sobre la universalidad de las verdades. La voluntad del estudiante no tendría mayor aspiración que la de aquel yugo humanista que siempre espera el amparo del Padre Estatal junto con una fantasía ingenua en función a intereses propios, como el organismo Freudiano que busca su propio regreso a la libertad inorgánica que goza su externalidad traumática, por sus propios medios conservativos. Por esto, lo que expresa Daniel es capital, con lo que concluyo esta intervención:<br />
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<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="ES-PE" style="line-height: 115%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">Mi interés va por una reflexión crítica (en sentido constructivo) hacia la institucionalidad universitaria. Siento mucho interés por el problema de la educación en nuestro país y abordar el tema de las instituciones de la universidad y de la lógica que opera es muy importante para comprender problemas o cuestiones sintomáticas desde una perspectiva mucho más compleja. Ello permitirá mejorar la universidad y la educación, así como hacernos conscientes de las múltiples variables que operan y atraviesan nuestras relaciones e instituciones.</span><br />
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La siguiente pregunta será, entonces, sobre el imperativo de lucha: en donde reside lo conservador en el campo académico y filosófico hoy en día? Hacia dónde tiene que dirigirse la energía y vigilancia estudiantil, en fidelidad al ideal de aprendizaje y de crecimiento? Estos últimos permanecen, y son solo materia de descarte para el ideal reaccionario que niega el potencial creativo de la negatividad, que protege la integridad del Estado, y que mantiene al pensamiento servil ante el pilar de un humanismo pueril, hilado de intereses banales, y alza altares ante los cuales la crítica es inseparable de la blasfemia.</span></span></span></div>Daniel Sacilottohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06107600124995445921noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6580039155018603814.post-33700303027059683642011-07-06T20:50:00.000-07:002011-11-13T19:44:45.093-08:00Correspondence With Ray Brassier: On Sellars, Sensation and Conception<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKxvJCEqQbF0WhCWEkrEhy15JWIqOI39lRb0ywTNpTUT68hzgG2jVr2z1MiE_O6YVqUdYTfJ8NMOF2z-i0NYW0GJLn-ZaMC-kORIKv8pkeA9F4x3qtSg4kwp2nTTm7IvNTz8o2W_LHVy2p/s1600/Pathway+to+greater+forms.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="503" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKxvJCEqQbF0WhCWEkrEhy15JWIqOI39lRb0ywTNpTUT68hzgG2jVr2z1MiE_O6YVqUdYTfJ8NMOF2z-i0NYW0GJLn-ZaMC-kORIKv8pkeA9F4x3qtSg4kwp2nTTm7IvNTz8o2W_LHVy2p/s640/Pathway+to+greater+forms.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
CORRESPONDENCE WITH RAY BRASSIER</span></b></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b> - On Sellars, Sensation and Conception - </b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b><br />
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Here I attach a series of correspondences between me and Ray Brassier in which he clarifies his move toward a Sellarsian account. I enclose also a summary of Sellar's account below, which can serve as a crude walkthrough to his recent presentation at Zagreb.<br />
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August 14th, 2010</span></b><span style="color: #2a2a2a;"> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">- On</b> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Sellars, Realism and the Individuation of Sense</b><br />
Dear Daniel<br />
You raise a very interesting query below in response to my earlier remarks about Sellars and intuition:<br />
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You write: <br />
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<blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span style="color: #2a2a2a;">"I’m just not sure how to understand at this juncture the intuition of ‘sensible particulars’ apart from conceptual subsumption. On what basis is that distinction sketched, since it seems like it is only judgment and thus in conceptual subsumption that we attain intelligibility for empirical perception. How do we establish ‘sensible particulars’ have any individuation prior to and irrespective of conceptual subsumption, given perceptual experience is discursively structured all throughout? Of course, we wouldn’t want to merely reiterate the Kantian distinction of intuition/understanding, to readily pave the way for the Hegelian idealist appropriation. You say Sellars avoids relinquishing the independence of sensation; but I’m wondering how exactly he does this so as to avoid a) the anonymous and noumenal without unity, b) the idealist congruence of concept and object.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span style="color: #2a2a2a;"><br />
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</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span style="color: #2a2a2a;"> My hunch, on the basis of what you express, is that he thinks a resolutely non-idealist congruence of concept and object is possible, where sensation provides the material basis for conception, while the latter nevertheless does provide intelligible grounds for the former’s independence. And in the end this material basis solicits that what can be claimed as independent should not be simply an anonymous material lump we then chop into bits and pieces through language/concepts, but something like the gradual and progressive infiltration of the noumenal to the phenomenal, which anticipates revision of scientific conception while retains realism about the concrete phenomena it describes (and not just of the infamous material mass). It seems the kind of problem Badiou tried to tackle by proposing the purely extensional determination of ontology as pure multiplicity, so reality can remain structured and yet subject to continual revision at the hand of subjective intervention. Your position, I take it, is to extend this basic insight to allow for truth to smear not only through subjective intervention, but also through natural occasion."</span></span></blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span style="color: #2a2a2a;"> <br />
This is indeed precisely the objective and I've discovered in Sellars some valuable resources to help attain it. I've written something that I hope responds your query:<br />
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The status of intuition in Sellars’ reconstruction of Kantianism is far from clear and while it clearly leaves no room for “pure forms of intuition”, it is not obvious (at least to me) that Sellars simply eliminates intuition, understood as non-conceptual presentation, altogether—even if he thinks we must relinquish Kant’s idea that intuitions constitute one of the two basic species of representation. Here I think one must take into consideration the significance of Sellars’ account of sensation, and try to grasp why he consistently refuses to assimilate it to conception. As is usual with Sellars, this account is pretty tortuous and often obscure, but some basic features can be extracted from it. Unlike perception, sensation cannot play any justificatory epistemic role; yet all empirical perception involves sensation. Thus perception involves a non-conceptual or sensory component as well as a conceptual component. The distinction between the two can be clarified by examining a perceptual episode involving a sensory modality like seeing. There is a difference between seeing something as something or seeing that something is the case, and seeing something of something. All seeing as or seeing that can be accounted for in terms of conceptual content: there is in principle no limit to what we can see things as or what we can see to be the case. But there is in principle a limit to what we can see of things. This limit is fixed by the structure of our sensory modalities; that of sight, in this instance. For example: I can see that this pink cube is made of ice, just as I can see it as a pink ice cube, or see that this ice cube is pink. But I do not see the iciness of the pink cube because iciness is not a visual property of this pink cube. Neither is it a tactile, auditory, olfactory, or gustatory property—ice has certain sensible properties—coldness, smoothness, transparency, etc—but iciness itself is not a sensible property: it is an abstract, dispositional property, and as such it is never fully present in any single perceptual taking. Thus what I can sense of something is limited to its occurrent properties. Sensible qualities are actual or occurrent properties, rather than potential or dispositional ones.<br />
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The question then is of course: what are they properties of? Sellars proposes a fable about human cognitive evolution according to which our ancestors moved from a (pre-pre-Socratic) stage in which sensations were taken to constitute the very stuff of reality (a stage prior not only to the development of Socratic thing-attribute metaphysics but prior even to the elemental monism of pre-Socratic metaphysics), to one in which they are understood as dispositional properties of physical objects. Then genius Jones comes along and proposes a new, improved theory according to which sensations are no longer conceived as dispositional properties of physical objects but as non-physical entities with occurrent properties analogous to the perceptible properties of physical objects. But according to the Jonesean theory of mind, although sensings are like thoughts in being immaterial internal episodes, they cannot plausibly be integrated into psychology as mere properties of psychological states, for while thoughts are modeled on overt speech, sensations are modeled on occurrent physical properties. There is a categorial difference between thoughts and sensations concomitant with the categorial difference between the entities that serve as their theoretical models. Nevertheless, Jones’ postulation of inner episodes of sensation is a corollary of his postulation of inner episodes of thinking, and one specifically designed to account for otherwise baffling anomalies in perception and reasoning. The postulate of sensation explains discrepancies in the order of thought: perceptual illusion, irrational motivations, and other specifically psychological anomalies. Moreover, sensations are states of the perceiver that cause the conceptual episodes called perceptions: so unlike the latter, they operate within the natural-causal as opposed to normative-rational order.<br />
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Note that this entails a distinction between presentational and representational content, which means we cannot simply dissolve the former into the latter. What I see of the ice cube is ‘present’ to me in a way that differs from the way in which I represent this as a pink ice cube. The presentation of sensible content is not exhausted by the representation of conceptual content in perception; what I sense is ‘present’ for me in a way that differs from its conceptual representation. What is required says Sellars is:"an analysis of the sense in which we see of the pink ice cube its very pinkness. Here I believe sheer phenomenology or conceptual analysis takes us part of the way but finally lets us down. How far does it take us? Only to the point of assuring us that Something, somehow a cube of pink in physical space is present in the perception other than as merely believed in."('Sensa or Sensings: Reflections on the Ontology of Perception’ in Philosophical Studies 41, 83-111. The quote is from §26: 89)To say that my sensing of a pink ice cube is present in perception other than as believed in is to say that perception qua mental episode also harbours a non-conceptual residue. To acknowledge this is not to relapse back into the phenomenological myth of conscious experience as absolute, self-legitimating presentation. Rather, it is to acknowledge the reality of appearance while refusing to allow its metaphysical investiture as guide to reality. One can acknowledge the reality of phenomenal experience while refusing phenomenology’s postulated equivalence between the reality of experience and the experience of reality. This is for me among Sellars’ most profound insights and the reason why his work does not fall onto either side of the divide between conceptual idealists, who insist that experience is wholly conceptual and proclaim the unboundedness of the conceptual order, and phenomenological realists, who claim that experience’s non-conceptual reality provides the privileged medium wherein reality discloses itself. Like Kant, the challenge and difficulty of Sellars’ work lies in the way it tries to attain a point of equilibrium between the insights of rationalist idealism and those of empirical realism while resisting the tendency of each to overextend the solution fitting for one problem domain into that of another: the solution to the problem of sapience is not also the solution to the problem of sentience; the solution to the problem of sentience is not also the solution to the problem of sapience. Thus Sellars suggests that while the inferential structure of conception is necessarily immune to scientific revision (since it is the condition of revisability), the non-particulate character or essential homogeneity of sensation, which is its constitutive characteristic within the manifest image (according to the so-called ‘grain argument’) is something not yet adequately accounted for within the terms of the manifest image. Bearing in mind the essential link between sensing and phenomenal appearing, it becomes clear that the manifest understanding of sensation is also the manifest understanding of appearance. But Sellars’ account of sensation suggests that this understanding is inadequate to the phenomenon at hand and needs to be supplemented by conceptual resources proper to understanding the in-apparent: in other words, there is more to appearance than can be grasped in and through appearances.<br />
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Note the irony: while all that is required for the philosophy of mind is to render explicit what is implicit in the manifest image of thought, i.e. to develop the inferential substructure of the Jonesean theory of mind to the point where it attains full, explicit self-awareness, the philosophy of sensation cannot be satisfactorily completed within the terms of the manifest image because the Jonesean theory of sensations as inner episodes with properties analogous to those of physical objects is inadequate and invites revision at the hands of a scientific theory that will re-categorize sensations as intrinsic qualities of absolute processes. Interestingly, once this re-categorization has been carried out, the actuality or sheer ‘occurrentness’ of sensations follows from their being aspects of absolute processes. For Sellars, this re-categorization involves no concessions to vitalism or panpsychism: absolute processes are in Sellars’ terminology physical1, i.e. part of the causal nexus of space-time, while both sentient and non-sentient entities are physical2, i.e. patterns of absolute processes. But sentient organisms include absolute processes that occur only in exceptionally complex patterns of physical2 objects. Sensations or ‘sensa’ are intrinsic characteristics of this sub-species of absolute process; yet our sensory awareness of these intrinsic qualities of absolute processes is not awareness of them as these intrinsic characteristics. In other words, it is not knowledge. Sensation remains epistemically inert. Only the full development of sapience can tell us what sentience truly is.<br />
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So contrary to a prevalent impression, the critique of the Given does not license the peremptory dismissal of presentation per se (I’m not suggesting you are among those propagating this impression—it’s I who have been guilty of this in the past). It does however rule out any appeal to the supposed epistemic authority of presentation even as it grants its metaphysical status. Nor does Sellars reduce the phenomenological domain of appearance to a mere phantom of representation; his account of the phenomenon of appearance—which is necessary to account for perceptual illusion or error more generally—comprises his account of the logic of ‘looks talk’ as withdrawing endorsements of perceptual assertion in tandem with his theory of the metaphysical status of sensation. Ultimately, Sellars is concerned with developing a metaphysical vision in which not only are secondary qualities integrated and their relationship to primary qualities explained, but the articulation between the sensation of the former and the conception of the latter is also accounted for. Here I think the scope of his achievement can be gauged by comparing his account with Meillassoux’s (commendable) attempt to rehabilitate the significance of the distinction between primary and secondary qualities in After Finitude. Sellars not only deals directly these and other issues largely occluded by the post-Heideggerian continental tradition, he proposes astonishingly sophisticated solutions to them.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-line-height-alt: 9.15pt; tab-stops: 45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt;"><span style="color: #2a2a2a;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs5dV5MsI95hwDc2NJUylCpXT_EcA-f4g0JKSA5JvoQTpJT8AebuRS6dY5Z1uRibXq7pHXWaL5FogPtgmlROFi6wZlGTUjMhffgg-spsN4fiYNrDxsZpsQ55kMv9g-TI6QPUgx2KwymLM0/s1600/andora.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="395" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs5dV5MsI95hwDc2NJUylCpXT_EcA-f4g0JKSA5JvoQTpJT8AebuRS6dY5Z1uRibXq7pHXWaL5FogPtgmlROFi6wZlGTUjMhffgg-spsN4fiYNrDxsZpsQ55kMv9g-TI6QPUgx2KwymLM0/s640/andora.jpg" width="640" /></a></span><br />
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<b>July 4th, 2011 - Reply to Brassier</b><br />
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</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-line-height-alt: 9.15pt; tab-stops: 45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span style="line-height: normal;">Dear Ray,</span></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span style="line-height: normal;">This is all excellent; thank you for your attention and help. </span></span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span style="line-height: normal;"><br style="line-height: 17px;" /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span style="line-height: normal;"> I have been revising EPM and listening carefully to your recent presentation at Zagreb, and I was initially struck by what seemed to me to be in blatant contradiction to the idea of sensation as being "epistemically inert"; namely proposition that "x senses red content x entails x non-inferentially knows that s is red'. The key to deciphering sensing qua cognitive capacity, I take it, lies in distinguishing two explanatory levels: natural-causal and normative-inferential. The tricky thing is to understand how the distinction between the real and the logical is intra-dialectical and an acquired process, which is resolutely non-metaphysically all the same. This is basically the Sellarsian endorsement of A and C from the 'inconsistent triad', as I see it. Now, to abuse your courtesy, allow me to attempt to briefly and schematically restate the fundamentals:</span></span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br style="line-height: 17px;" /></span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">1) Sensation is a cognitive faculty.</span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">2) However, sensation is not immediately picturing the real by some pre-given or miraculous relation of adequation or congruence, i.e. it is <i style="font-style: italic; line-height: 17px;">non-inferential</i>,<i style="font-style: italic; line-height: 17px;"> thoroughly particular</i>, and for this reason unrepeatable, but it is nevertheless acquired (proposition C of the inconsistent triad). [See appendix] </span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">3) Sense qua cognitive faculty nevertheless produces non-inferential knowledge which is explained in terms of natural-causal neurophysiological instantiations of the organism indexing environmental stimuli.</span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">4) Given (2), these mechanisms are not transparently available to introspection, or accessible through an armchair <i style="font-style: italic; line-height: 17px;">a priori</i>speculation, but rather modeled after the sub-conscious process of <i style="font-style: italic; line-height: 17px;">sentient </i>acquisition described in (3), which gives rise to the<i style="font-style: italic; line-height: 17px;">sapient </i>capacity for <i style="font-style: italic; line-height: 17px;">conceptual</i> discrimination proper to homo sapiens. </span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">5) The distinction between sapience and sentience, cognition and sensibility, is however a methodological one, genetically explained in terms of the univocal field of physical processes indexed by natural-causal sentience.</span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">6) So, while methodologically the non-conceptual character of sentient conditioning remains intractable by the explanatory means of conceptual sapience (i.e. the conceptual-real distinction is a conceptual distinction), the genetic conditions for sapience are subordinated to conditions for sentient indexing.</span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span style="line-height: normal;">7) The question this opens up is that of the process of modelling, which leads from a) the acculturation/conditioning of the organism's non-conceptual sensing, to the Jonesian theoretical positing of sensa as distinct from concepts.</span></span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br style="line-height: 17px;" /></span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Although this process must lead to the eventual complication of sense in accordance to the scientific image which digs beneath perceptual qualities accessible, the process must begin by the explicit modelling of sense on perceptual qualities of the manifest register. Only latter is the process untethered from the categories of actual appearance and tethered to inapparent processes. And the modelling process, as far as I can discern, runs roughly as follows:</span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br style="line-height: 17px;" /></span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">a) Standard conditions of conditioning allow the organism to discriminate between perceptible properties of physical objects in the manifest image which presuppose conceptual judgment.</span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">b) The first step toward a theory of sensation is to model, by analogy, the structure of sense to that of manifest physical objects and their actual properties.</span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">c) This modeling, however, also grounds the<i style="font-style: italic; line-height: 17px;"> conceptual</i> separation between the physical and sensation, i.e. it gauges the conceptual asymmetry between the two without thereby postulating a qualitative, ontological gap between them. This is accomplished insofar as sapience distinguishes conceptually between the particulate content of sensa and the dispositional content of natural processes, placing limits to their analogical resemblance: sensa are non-spatially extended particular occasional properties, while physical properties qua determinate universals are abstract processes which track absolute dispositional properties in objects. While the former is limited by the sensory faculties, the latter is in principle unlimited, open to the infinity of what we can postulate. [<i style="font-style: italic; line-height: 17px;">Incidentally, this entails a rehabilitation of the representationalist process of analogy in judgment castigated by Bergson, Foucault and Deleuze; but none the worse for that.]</i></span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span style="line-height: normal;">d) However, this does not entail that physical processes are mere heuristic conceptual postulates, with no connection to the real. Rather, they are postulates analog to the third-person, inter-subjective sphere of things and persons in the manifest image, which are acquired and yet necessary for discrimination. </span></span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span style="line-height: normal;">e) This entails that concepts are both: i) </span><i style="font-style: italic; line-height: 17px;">necessary</i><span style="line-height: normal;"> - insofar as predicates are </span><i style="font-style: italic; line-height: 17px;">not</i><span style="line-height: normal;"> in perception unless judgment is there also, which requires conceptual deployment, ii)</span><i style="font-style: italic; line-height: 17px;"> acquired</i><span style="line-height: normal;"> - insofar as they do not exhaust the character of experience, but can actually serve to discern between the conceptual (normative domain) and the infra-conceptual (content of sensa), iii) </span><span style="line-height: normal;"><i style="font-style: italic; line-height: 17px;">leveling</i></span><span style="line-height: normal;"> - since this discernment is one of degree and not kind, methodological rather than metaphysical. </span></span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br style="line-height: 17px;" /></span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">That sensation later can be construed as non-conceptual episodes which produce non-inferential knowledge means that while we need concepts to first model sensa on physical objects, the modelling does not produce a metaphysical dualism, but a thesis of ontological univocity grounded on a conceptual dualism, i.e. methodological dualism grounds ontological univocity. At this juncture one may ask how exactly the modelling of sensa 'amends' the original picture of perceptual physical properties in things, i.e. how is the original modelling on perceptual properties qua determinate universals to determinate particulars constituting an 'amendment'? And I think the answer, following what's laid above, is that:</span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br style="line-height: 17px;" /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">f) It constitutes an amendment insofar as it refuses to conflate the particularity of sentient non-inferential natural-causal registering with conceptuality or normative deliberation in the logical space of reasons, i.e. sense amends the theory of perception by distinguishing a non-conceptual residue which, being cognitive and yet non-inferential, is subject to the domain of natural causality as opposed to that of normative rationality. So Sellars methodologically separates the epistemological framework of conceptual understanding which preconditions sapience with the sentient domain of the natural sciences, while acknowledging that the former ontologically presupposes the latter, and is in fact only derived from it after a process of complex evolution and local conditioning. <br />
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This means: thoughts are real just like objects, and arise amidst them, but are qua thoughts justified within a different explanatory framework: sensa are modelled on the actual properties of physical objects, while concepts are modelled on overt speech. The former track natural-causal dispositional processes of physical objects on the basis of determinable perceptual episodes, while the latter track the conceptual, linguistic uses within normative contexts, and constitute the logical space of reasons. This gap obtains from the different conceptual modelling between things and thoughts: the former model determinate universal physical laws which remain repeatable, within the determinate particularity of sensa. The latter model words with other sets of words within linguistic use. <br />
<br />
Strangely enough, this seems to pair physical-perceptual properties with 'abstract', conceptual postulates wrested from the categories of the manifest image. The real composes both thoughts and things, while they differ in their explanatory models; a distinction that ontologically only pertains to degrees and not kind. This is where, however, the Jonesian modelling process, being still tethered to the perceptual concepts of the manifest image must be expanded; sentience can be amplified to incorporate the processes of sensa by tracking the latter's non-inferential status not in analogy to the apparent processes of perceptible physical objects, but in unapparent complex processes of the latter..</span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span style="line-height: normal;"><br style="line-height: 17px;" /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span style="line-height: normal;">The obvious question, at this juncture, becomes then how we exactly arrive after Jones' theory of sense as non-physical particulars, to model the sub-perceptual domain of physical processes which underlie the perceptible properties of the manifest image.</span><br style="line-height: 17px;" /><br style="line-height: 17px;" /><span style="line-height: normal;">This is where Jones and Sellars part way, insofar as the latter thinks we must supplement the manifest analysis of appearance to account for the non-apparent processes which are left implicit in the manifest order of sense: that is, the theory of sensation is to be modified to model not perceptible properties of the manifest register, but sub-representational mechanisms which, while made available to us through sense, are in no way reducible to the phenomenal order of the manifest image. This requires sapience to unveil the physical sub-representational mechanisms through which sentience makes itself possible the genesis of sapience. This implies a negotiation with the categories of the manifest image which is not straightforwardly reductive or eliminative, and at least non-subordinate to it anymore. So while the modeling of sensa of the manifest image is a first step, the breach between the conceptual and the causal, sapience and sentience, also allow us to use the resources of the former to allow the latter to explain itself. And all this, on condition that the normative provides the conditions for scientific revision of concepts, a framework that is itself non-revisable since it provides the conditions of reviseability. </span><span style="line-height: normal;"><br style="line-height: 17px;" /></span><span style="line-height: normal;"><br style="line-height: 17px;" />In any case, I think that might be closer to the spirit of Sellars' argument. Thank you for your time Ray.</span></span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span style="line-height: normal;"><br style="line-height: 17px;" /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span style="line-height: normal;">All the best,</span></span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span style="line-height: normal;">Dan</span></span></div><span style="color: #2a2a2a;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br />
______<br />
</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #2a2a2a;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> <b>The Inconsistent Triad</b></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #2a2a2a;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">A. x senses red sense content s entails x non-inferentially knows</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #2a2a2a;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">that s is red.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #2a2a2a;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">B. The ability to sense sense contents is unacquired.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #2a2a2a;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">C. The ability to know facts of the form x is ø is acquired.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #2a2a2a;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">A and B together entail not-C; B and C entail not-A; A and C</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #2a2a2a;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">entail not-B.<br />
</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #2a2a2a;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Sellars will accept A and C but reject B.</span></span><br />
<div><span style="color: #2a2a2a;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br />
</span></span></div><span style="color: #2a2a2a;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> <br />
____________________</span><br />
I want to thank Ray Brassier for his willingness to respond to my questions and observations.<br />
</span>Daniel Sacilottohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06107600124995445921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6580039155018603814.post-13907354878349056912011-07-06T20:34:00.000-07:002011-09-07T17:47:04.511-07:00Negation, Affirmation, Death<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic3LCn2oFxrf35nn61STGanIozxTZkLxF4Lr65QDdZI-UqSfFO1t8BK2-Gaiiuk1Edr3vK01O2zRIwolfbKRw2yAB2jsJHKsaWDmqSKcuEGnmtD0SSJh-VAfuVmKmjrrT4dh-7LBb-JHzb/s1600/prometheus2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic3LCn2oFxrf35nn61STGanIozxTZkLxF4Lr65QDdZI-UqSfFO1t8BK2-Gaiiuk1Edr3vK01O2zRIwolfbKRw2yAB2jsJHKsaWDmqSKcuEGnmtD0SSJh-VAfuVmKmjrrT4dh-7LBb-JHzb/s640/prometheus2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> NEGATION, AFFIRMATION, DEATH</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
- Deleuze, Badiou, Brassier -<br />
___________________________________________________</span></b></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
<br />
The philosophical discourses of the 19th and 20th Century modified radically the status of negation. It was in fact the work of Hegel that first elevated the negative act from its circumscription to a mere formalism proper to the logical exertion of the faculty of reason, to an ontological, structuring principle. In the case of Kant, this was provided by the schematic instantiation of contradiction in the famous antinomies of pure reason, with respect to sensible shattering caused by the sublimity of objects Kant called 'cosmological' (God, the Infinity of the Universe, the Soul...) Hegel contended instead that contradiction, and therefore negation, was not a merely regional <i>possibility</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> which obtained on the basis of an schematic individuation of objects. Rather, absolute negativity was to be found at the very heart of the dialectic's deductive </span><i>necessity</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. Contradiction became thus not just </span><i>formal</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, but essentially </span><i>metaphysical</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> or taken as the basic ontological structure.</span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">So, Hegel was able to claim, against Kant,</span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">that "</span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 200%;">antinomy is found not only in the four particular ob-jects taken from cosmology, but rather in</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 200%;"> </span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><i><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 200%;">all</span></i></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 200%;"> </span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 200%;">objects of all kinds, in</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 200%;"> </span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><i><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 200%;">all</span></i></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><i><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 200%;"> </span></i></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 200%;">representations, concepts, and ideas.” (Hegel E L, Pg. 92)<br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 200%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> The philosopher who challenged the primacy of negation in its logico-metaphysical hypostatization with greatest fervor during the 19th Century was perhaps Nietzsche. Nietzsche allots dialectics and its pretentions towards truth to the uniformity of a philosophical discourse that thwarts the affirmative purchase of the Will, and founds in doing so a culture guided by resentment and weakness, finally the common denominator of Platonic philosophy and Christian religion. The philosophical chimera of truth, mobilized through the amputating agency of the negative, is nothing but the obverse of the thwarted will which denies existence through moral-categorical imperatives. This dissolution of the philosophical valence of truth, and therefore also of the epistemological force of representation, becomes also proper to the deconstructive pretensions of the post-phenomenological critique of consciousness initiated by Heidegger, but also of the historicist-hermeneutic line of Gadamer, the destitution of phallogocentism by Derrida, the pragmatism of Rorty, among others. Above all these notable descendants, the most salient inheritor of the Nietzschean avowal of affirmation, along its castigation of the negative, is maybe opened by the work of Gilles Deleuze in his astonishing crossbreeding of Bergson, Simondon, Spinoza and Nietzsche.<br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 200%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> In fact, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Difference and Repetition</i>, Deleuze's celebrated magnum opus, is crucially an attack on the philosophical primacy of negation, which following Foucault, he identifies as one of the four axes of representation which must be overcome. More specifically, Deleuze reduces negation to the relation of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">contrariness</i> in the predicative form (A is not-B), so that even in Hegelian dialectics, the oscillation of dynamic becoming is finally subordinated to the identitarian regime of the Concept (Being remains conceptually indistinguishable from Nothing and thus passes over into it, this is the basic unity of becoming which develops into existence, etc). The apparent dynamism of the Concept in fact veils what can only be for Deleuze the spurious monotonous vacuity of hypostasized intellection. For Deleuze, radicalizing the Bergsonist critique, the philosophical task is precisely to destroy the identitarian regime of the Concept in favor of a thinking of pure Difference; to think of a pure becoming which may attest to the immanent morphogenesis of matter without the transcendental constraints of representational thought. Yet this means, at the same time, to overthrow the metaphysical primacy of contradiction, which still operates under the aegis of the Concept. Instead of the purely <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">extensive</i> regime of well partitioned qualitative-quantitative determinations and magnitudes, Deleuze attempts to think of an ontological order of pure multiplicity governed by the principle of what he calls <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">intensive </i>individuation; unequalizable differences of differences, of which the specificity of the actual is merely derived and secondary. This will involve tracking the specification of matter from the virtual to the actual, as opposed to the merely <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">extensive </i>individuation of discrete parts and beings in actual representation. <br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 200%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> The theory of intensive individuation is thereby distributed across the three syntheses of time for Deleuze: the passive synthesis of habit in the present, the synthesis of the pure past or memory, and finally the third active synthesis of psychic individuation. And it is only in the latter that the cohort of the representational subject is finally split, and the 'larval selves' of the intensive field are prized free from subjectivist representation. Deleuze associates this third moment, the definitive moment of individuation, with the purely affirmative act of thought whereby the tidy distinctions of the Concept are shattered, and pure difference <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">qua</i> affirmation asserts its primacy. There is a 'mystification' occasioned by the negative, counteracted by the immanentist theory of the intensive. Crucially, this also marks the point at which the bare organic death of the individual, the death of the organism deprived of life, is disavowed in favor of the properly intensive death of the subject; its splitting and dissemination across the virtual field of multiplicities. I quote Deleuze: "it is in quality and extensity that intensity is inverted and appears upside down, and its power of affirming difference is betrayed by the figures of quantitative and qualitative limitation, qualitative and quantitative opposition... The origin of the illusion which subjects difference to the false power of the negative must therefore be sought, not in the sensible world itself, but in that which acts in depth and is incarnated in the sensible world". This depth is constituted by, as we have surmised, the field of positive differential multiplicities, i.e. the Ideal domain which seals Deleuze's vitalist, but also panpsychist urge to escape the cohort of the transcendental philosophies of access. It does so folding thought back into the immanent field of material production, as its psychic medium of individuation. The primacy of contradiction is thus given up in favor of the primacy of the differential, whose formal model is that provided by the differential calculus.<br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 200%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> The work of Alain Badiou attempts to wrest Deleuze's materialist ontology of pure multiplicities from its last vestiges of empiricist-phenomenological content. Founded only by the void of being, Badiou's set-theoretical ontology thinks the inconsistent multiple which is constructed on the basis of a transparent axiomatics; that of Zermelo-Fraenkel to be specific. Under this approach, the great fault of the Deleuzean project appears not in its dismantling of representation or in its destitution of the negative straightjacket. Its weakness lies in the incapacity to account for the indifferent genericity of the order of multiple being, as well as the radical disruption brought about by affirmative acts called Events. Change, along thought, is everywhere and nowhere for Deleuze; the pure differentials in becoming only actualize the virtual continuum <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">locally</i>, but the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">global</i> virtual imbedding space wherein change happens belongs to the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">singular</i> event, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">eventum tantrum</i>, which generates novelty from base repetition. This constituted the famous "body without organs" for Deleuze and Guattari, which, Badiou contends, surrenders the thought of the multiple to the aegis of the One. For Badiou, then, against the paradigm of multiplicity modeled on Riemannian manifolds and differential calculus, the Post-Cantorian set-theoretical paradigm of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">extensional multiplicities</i> is to be favored. Through the extirpation of all semblance of intensional content, ontology is prized free of its last vestige of empirical transcendence, while the plurality of radical ruptures, of events, is accounted for in a theory of subjectivation and creative production. Set-theoretical ontology subtracts the multiple from any qualitative determination, and so from any vestige of positive content that would surreptitiously Idealize the material field, as is the case for Deleuze through the agency of a 'larval self' infusing matter with thought's distinctive purchase. Rather, Ideality now comes to be in the side of the truth-event, where the subject subtracts itself from the stasis of the ontological regime and the rule of the State's representational count. It signals where affirmation breaks the negative ontological dialectic, dividing "the history of the world in Two", and inaugurating a new Time. <br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 200%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> So, in a way, Badiou preserves the affirmationist vocation of Deleuze's thought. But rather than dispersing the affirmative act of thought within the continuity of the field of differential multiplicities in becoming, it tethers becoming to the evental act which disrupts the ontological order. Events are plural, and times are many. The status of the negative in Badiou's discourse is therefore twofold: on the one hand, the extensional regime of ontology and the objectual differentiation proper to phenomenology remains, within the materialist <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">dialectic</i>, subordinated to the power of the negative. A set will be identical to another if and only if there does not exist an element of one which is not an element of another (axiom of extensionality). And any object whose intensity is equal to another in a particular situation is, for all 'intensive' purposes, identical to that object (the function of identity). Negation once again seems to pervade the metaphysical realm, while affirmation seems delegated to the immanent exception of the Evental act, which awakening the militant urgency of the subject, destroys the stable regime of differentiation which articulates the Laws of the World. Death, for its part, remains trivialized, a mere nullification of the intensity of a multiple in a given world reduced to its minimum intensity, meriting no reification to the status of ontological principle of individuation (as in Heidegger's account of being-towards-death, but also Deleuze's account of the intensive death of the self dispersed into the field of intensities). I quote Badiou: <br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 200%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> "When thinking of the event as the intensified and continuous result of becoming, Deleuze is an empiricist. And that, when he reabsorbs the event into the One of the unlimited <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Aion</i>, of the Infinitive in which it subsists and insists, in the always there of the Virtual, he has a tendency to dogmatism. To break with empiricism is to think the event as the advent of what subtracts itself from all experience: the ontologically un-founded and the transcendentally discontinuous. To break with dogmatism is to remove the event from the ascendancy of the One. It is to subtract it from Life, in order to deliver it to the stars." (LOW, pg. 387)<br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 200%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> However, subtracting thought from the stability of the multiple and reserving it for the Truth Event, Badiou's thought in a sense is more 'exceptionalist' than Deleuze, it requires an even greater form of exception which this time resembles Kant more than Hegel. For Deleuze, thought is everywhere, and the larval subjects which split the self virally infect the material realm all throughout. Deleuze Idealizes the material directly by wresting thought from the priority of the human to disseminate it across the material. Badiou's bare extensional multiple is, on the other hand, qualitatively empty, without any criterion for transcendental constitution, but also because of this irremediably <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">static</i>. The problem for him therefore becomes that of change; how to account for the disruption of the indifferent field of multiplicities, up to the generic form of truth which must be possible in order to differentiate novelties from reactionary simulacra. And it is there that he must reintroduce, not unlike Kant, the supplementary ethics of the evental act and of the intervention, of a kind of noumenal exception to the Laws of becoming. <br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 200%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> So, either affirmation takes purchase, local change is to be found everywhere and we transpose thought into the world, effectively idealizing it; or we subtract thought from the material to the point where its structure is indistinguishable from thought, and negativity asserts its rights to set the regime for ontological determinacy. But in the latter case, the event becomes the prerogative of the subjective act which 'ascends from the 'bare animality' of the world to the Eternity of the Idea; that is, to the productive domain of truths. Without the surreptitious dialectics of the event, the order of being glares forth in its apathy, and its monotony sheds along thought all becoming. <br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 200%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> It is at this juncture that the work of the Scottish philosopher Ray Brassier has attempted to radicalize the materialist urgency for disenchantment, while at the same time seeking to render the exceptionality of human thought inoperative. Both Deleuze and Badiou cannot but finally reintroduce the prerogative of the Ideal; either in the panpsychist process of being as becoming (Deleuze), or in the dialectics of change (Badiou). But although Brassier will celebrate the subtractive regime of extensional multiplicities advocated by Badiou, which prized being free of its transcendental burden and expulses any semblance of qualitative sense, he will have no truck with the dialectics of the event. No exception to the meaningless domain of the material limits or interrupts miraculously the disenchantment evinced by formal indifference of scientific factuality. It is through the latter that humanity comes to appear within the cosmological scope, as utterly trivialized. Brassier seeks to unearth a form of non-dialectical negativity, an unilateral index for the Real which is not occasioned by thought and so is not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">of</i> thought, even if thought is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">of</i> it. This means that the putative privilege of the temporal over the spatial so characteristic of empiricism, phenomenology and vitalism, must be overcome. And along with them both Deleuze's castigation of the actual, as well as Badiou's evental discontinuities triggered by the subjective, become ripe for evisceration. In their place, Brassier favors the diachronicity of an ontologically univocal space-time where thought's dialectical structure shows its belonging to the Real, while the latter remains completely indifferent to thought. This is the roots of Brassier's 'speculative realist' option which, opposes the dominance of post-Kantian <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">correlationism</i>: the thesis that the world and thought, materiality and ideality, stand in a relation of mutual determination, and so that it is unthinkable to set them apart. Against the correlationist taint which always reifies the subjective, the sapient and the organic, Brassier unilateralizes the determination of thought by the material. In doing so, he argues that: "...speculative realism must uphold the autonomy of a space-time that is independent of the correlation of thinking and being, a space time whose incommensurability with the spans of human or even biological duration is no longer a function of chronological discrepancy but of a diachronicity rooted in the voiding of being-nothing." This entails, for Brassier, following the thought of Wilfrid Sellars', that although the real comprises univocally thoughts and things alike, being is never reducible to thought. Rather, while matter provides the conditional ontological support for the ontogenesis of thought, the latter is construed methodologically as belonging to the normative domain of the logical space of reasons. Matter, in its turn, is impervious to the inferential domain of rational normativity; even if it is only within the conceptual that the methodological separation of concept and object is enacted.<br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 200%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> As Badiou determined, the thought of being is dialectical and untethered from any kind of subjective conditions of access; but here we get not the dialectical Nothingness which, like in Hegel's objective Idealism, renders the dialectic of thought indistinct from the Real. The latter's non-dialectical being persists in its indifference to thought's normative purchase. And this way Brassier finds in the inscription of the human within the diachronicity of space-time already an index of its inevitable demise: not in the merely organic death of the individual, or the intensive splitting-of-self which destroys the representational subject. Rather, he finds it in the imminent knowledge of the truth of solar extinction inscribed in the natural-causal material domain which remains intractable to the temporal logic of organic sapience. The index of a death which will eradicate not just the local stupor of life, but the entirety of material existence itself down to its atomic substructure (one trillion, trillion, trillion years from now): <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">assymptotia</i> leaves us with a cemetery of stellar corpses survived only by 'dark energy'. This darkened index for the Real death, which in Brassier's nihilist position, takes the Enlightenment to its ultimate consequences, is notably radically anti-phenomenological, since it can never be of the order of the chronological temporalization of first-person experience. But it is also radically anti-vitalist and anti-panpsychist, deflating thought's negative and affirmative power down to banal transience of those 'clever beasts', which Nietzsche had already announced, would soon perish without having "made a real difference". Solar extinction is precisely a knowledge which flattens thought into the material, and destroys the reification of meaning in its negative or affirmative capacity. It is the knowledge of a death that can never be experienced and which, being-irreducible to the possibility of apprehension within the continuum of temporal duration concomitant with thought, has in a sense happened already: "It is precisely the extinction of meaning that clears the way for the intelligibility of extinction. Senselessness and purposelessness are not merely privative, they represent a gain in intelligibility... "<br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 200%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> Bearing the trace of the in-itself which has already destroyed it, the will to know becomes equal to the Real without thereby reinstating the duality of thought and matter and of their co-relation. Global extinction proceeds from an order of necessity utterly foreign to the free affirmation in the event; its Real conditions the thought that thinks it, not the other way around. Surrendering the torment of the death whose trace it bears, thought reveals also that its interests finally do not coincide with those of the living; and the vector of disenchantment opened by the Enlightenment should sedate the passion for subjective exceptionalism which peel off materialism by the lure of the discursive, the organic, the conceptual. Interestingly, this entails, for Brassier, a rehabilitation of the cog of representation against its post-Bergsonist and post-Heideggerean castigation, if only to espouse a revisionary naturalism where a methodological dualism grounds ontological univocity. <br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 200%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> I conclude with the following quote, from Brassier again, which announces what is perhaps the crucial philosophical predicament in these three thinkers: that is, to overcome a thought which, still encumbered in the Romantic desire to find itself at ease in the Universe, escapes the Real's vacuous, non-dialectical negativity, which, intractable to the vocabulary of the manifest image celebrating its clever beastliness, cares little for our moribund existence:<br />
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<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 200%;"> </span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: #404040; line-height: 200%;">"</span></span></span><span style="color: #404040; line-height: 200%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">The problem consists in articulating the relation between the dialectical structure of conceptual discourse and the non-dialectical status of the real in such a way as to explain how real negativity fuels dialectics even as it prevents dialectics from incorporating its own negativity. Real negativity splits the logos from within, while from without it splits signification from reality. The goal is to understand how non-conceptual negativity determines dialectical negation while preventing negation in the concept from fusing with real negativity."</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Adobe Garamond Pro', serif; font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>Daniel Sacilottohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06107600124995445921noreply@blogger.com1