Wolfendale and Object Oriented Philosophy: Some Remarks and Questions

Wolfendale and Object Oriented Philosophy:
- Some Remarks and Questions -
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Following up on some of Pete’s excellent commentary on OOP over at deontologistics, some further issues may be raised about the status of withdrawal in both Graham and Levi’s respective accounts. Pete raises doubts about whether OOP has provided justification for the thesis that ordinary knowledge is finite and inadequate, i.e. in order to advance the thesis that real objects are always in excess of our knowledge of them (which Pete calls the excess principle of withdrawal; the other one being independence: that things exist independent of their relations). The worry arises for Harman’s account in particular, since it is supposed to be the phenomenological ground for the purchase of intentionality extended to all objects. If phenomenologically grounded withdrawal cannot be established, then it becomes less clear how Harman can make good of the epistemological claim that access to things themselves is impossible.

Pete argues that at this juncture Harman brings in unjustified ontological assumptions, which can ultimately vitiate his own position. Interestingly enough, Pete centers his argument in a single assumption, an assumption which he claims may also be used to undermine Meillassoux’s own 'hijacking' of the correlationist argument. For this, Pete claims that what is common to both speculative realism and Harman's OOP is a certain way of understanding what it is for something to be in-itself, and in order to map this common understanding he distinguishes between two possible senses of what in-itselfness could be taken to mean:

Mind Independence: Something is in-itself is if can exist independently of the existence of ‘minds’.

Attitude Independence: Something is in-itself if the way it is is independent of the way we take it to be.

Pete writes:

“I’d suggest that Meillassoux and Graham adopt the former, more traditional way of understanding in-itselfness, although in Graham’s case it modifies to the claim that something is in-itself if it can exist independently of its relations to other entities (insofar as all entities effectively play the role of ‘minds’). The important point is that the former is an ontological way of conceiving in-itselfness, whereas the latter is purely epistemological (insofar as it says nothing about existence).”

The central claim here is that adopting Mind Independence leads both into an ontological grounding of epistemology, and to correlationism finally. But he has certainly not established that both theses are necessarily incompatible with each other, nor shown where Meillassoux or Harman would clearly stand with respect to both theses: he merely asserts they both endorse mind independence.

Now, Meillassoux certainly adopts Mind Independence, insofar as not only the in-itself can exist in the radical contingency of all beings, but since a contingent entity must exist. Pete then claims that in establishing the general contingency of all there is Meillassoux must deny that any knowledge of particular entities is possible. He writes:

"In each case, the fact that we cannot know anything about particular entities functions as an important premise in an argument that establishes something about entities in general. What thus unites speculative realism and OOP is that they hold that all knowledge about particular entities is relative/uncertain/impossible, but that we can thus know something absolutely about the structure of entities as such, namely, the ontological fact which underlies this relativity/uncertainty/impossibility."

But this seems a bit baffling, although I could be wrong in my reading here: Meillassoux does not think it is the absence of any knowledge about particulars which entails knowledge about them in general, it is the knowledge that every particular could not exist that grounds the absoluteness of facticity and solicits its extension to all beings. This he does by saying that any attempt to relativize the absoluteness of contingency invariably results in its re-absolutization at a higher level. Certainly, this entails no entity or quality can be said to be necessary, and therefore such knowledge is disavowed. But it by no means entails that nothing can be known of particular entities; on the contrary, it simply annihilates the gap between the thinkability of an absolute and thought so as to facilitate the purchase of being by thought. Once absolute contingency is deemed thinkable and necessary, nothing prevents from deriving knowledge which would shed light about particular entities or their qualities, so long as they don’t imply their necessity, i.e. the violation of absolute contingency.

In other words, Meillassoux would most certainly reject the Attitude Independence thesis, insofar as there is no necessary epistemological gap between how we take entities to be and the way they are; i.e. we can take the in-itself to be as radically contingent, but immanently thinkable. The problem for Meillassoux becomes rather to elucidate the structure of this coincidence of world and word, being and thought, since it is left provisionally as an unexplained legibility based on the congruence between the formal inferential rules of logic and mathematics, and the structure of thought itself. This congruence between thought and thing, objective structure and conditions of thought, follows from what appears to be underwritten by the Badiouan endorsement of the Parmenidean thesis that being and thought are the same. The problem for Meillassoux thus pertains to the essential obscurity of the relation between inferential logico-mathematical discourse and thought, a clearly ontological relation which is apparently anchored in Badiou’s own mathematical Platonism, which is itself articulated around the dissolution of the form/content distinction (See The Concept of Model) and the thesis that mathematics is ontology.

Although Meillassoux admittedly restricts the ontological scope of mathematical discursivity, it should be noted nevertheless that, like Pete surmises, this remains unexplained in his preliminary account of correlationism in After Finitude. (Pg. 103). Whatever else Meillassoux specifically anchors on set-theoretical strictures (and in particular the Zermelo-Fraenkel axiomatic Badiou draws upon), it is clear these underlying ontological commitments also underlie his epistemological positions: for example, in appealing to Cantor’s theorem to advance the non-thinkability (and impossibility) of totalizable being. Since the latter is critical for Meillassoux’s arguments against the possibility of applying probabilistic reasoning to the universe as a whole, in his way to assert the ontological contingence of the laws of nature, Pete does well to take notice on these shortcomings.

On the other hand, Graham would apparently endorse both positions. Like Pete states, it is clear he defends the Mind Independent existence of the in-itself from thought, insofar as the object withdraws from all relations, and so the real object/qualities remain forever withdrawn from their sensual doubles. But he would also, I take it, defend the Attitude Independence thesis, since the way any object appears to me, or to any other object, is in sensual (intentional) form, and these phenomena are absolutely separated from real objects and qualities.

On Levi and Withdrawal

Here I’d like to fast forward to Pete’s series of posts answering Levi and presenting his many qualms with the latter's version of OOP. One of the main targets of Pete’s critique pertains to the status of how ‘translation’ operates in Levi’s account, in order to advance the excess thesis; which as we stated above, claims that objects exceed knowledge of them. In Levi’s particular account, this comes down to the claim that communication between distinct systems is necessarily destined to fail, since every actual manifestation or 'perturbation' which occasions a change in another system involves a process of translation which necessarily depends on system-specific features (its ‘virtual structure’ in Levi’s own Deleuzean words).

Although Levi’s precise adoption of the Deleuzean frame has not been made excessively clear (indeed, I am hoping Democracy of Objects will deliver on this account), we can stipulate that this entails that a) every object has a unique virtual structure or ‘proper being’, and b) translation invariably ‘involves’ the whole of the object’s virtual structure, The reason why both (a) and (b) are necessary is that if two identical systems exist then direct communication appears possible, insofar as the information transmitted between two systems could result in identical information, and nothing prevents us from saying transmission has taken place without loss or excess. But if direct communication is possible on occasion, withdrawal is threatened wholesale.

On the other hand, Levi would also need to say two systems cannot achieve direct communication on the basis of some common features which can be the only ones involved in a particular relation or transmission. Levi must either require additional metaphysical criteria for why failure would obtain in such cases (since dissimilar features of the system would presumably not take part of the relation), or else stipulate that the entire being of the system is implied in every relation. This last point is needed to make local manifestation invariably system-specific insofar as the total set of features involved in a translation process will be unique to the system performing the translation, even if common features in their virtual structure are shared, and so the actual manifestation will also be always unique. But of course this seems to entail that no two systems can ever share a common quality, nor that common qualities could ever be shared among two different systems. The problem is that since we have not yet been given an account of the general architecture of an object’s being or virtual structure, it seems entirely obscure whether we can gauge similarity is possible at all between systems and their qualities. It also becomes incredibly hard to measure where exactly translation in their causal interaction entails information loss, i.e. that the excess thesis holds. In order to gain greater clarity on this juncture let’s review what Pete writes:

“Translation is the manner in which substances transform the perturbations of other substances according to the substance’s own endo-structure or internal organization, producing new qualities as a consequence.

In essence, Levi holds that causal interactions between objects involves some form of communication between the proper being of each object, but that this communication is indirect, or subject to translation, insofar as the information involved is dependent upon the specific virtual structure (i.e., proper being) of the affected (or receiving) object. The withdrawal of each object’s proper being in relation to the other thus consists in the system specificity of information.”

Here we can raise innocently our questions again. First, we should ask straightforwardly: can there be two identical systems? If so, why would the information imply withdrawal at all, given that the virtual structure of the two systems would by hypothesis be identical and therefore the translation of an actual manifestation into another system would result in the same manifestation, or output? Perhaps an account of temporal separation between endogenously identical objects could do the trick, but it’s far from clear Levi’s account is equipped to take such a move. If Levi wants to deny that translation between identical systems results in identical outputs, and therefore that there is still something like an ‘excess’ involved, he obviously needs an account of how the processing of information based on a system’s actual state may produce different states or actualizations once translated into another identical system. Nothing of that sort seems available at this point, so this thesis seems resolutely implausible.

Alternatively, if Levi wants to deny that two systems are ever identical, and that this accounts for the inevitable withdrawal of all entities, he needs an account of how non-identity in virtual structure entails excess upon translation, i.e. why it is not possible for two non-identical systems to at least sometimes translate information identically or, put differently, for the translation process to result in identical manifest system states in two non-identical (virtually specified) systems.

Finally, if Levi wants to deny that a manifestation or actual system-state is identical to the translated information of a system, he needs an account of the difference not only between virtual structure and actual manifestation, essence and accident, but between the manifest accidents and the manifest information manifested upon contacting perturbations in the environment. Since this position runs against the idea that information produces new system states, Levi would presumably simply say information is identical to a manifest system-state. But then he needs the account to show how information exactly entails loss in its translation from system to system, which of course, as Pete notes, presupposes a standard for direct communication which fails every time. Since it is out of the question that two systems could be completely identical, the question rises whether at least they could share some features. If so, we might stipulate translation involves the actualization of the virtual being of the system, and that every system has a distinct virtual structure, while claiming that direct access would be possible in the way of a communication which only involves shared features between systems in their being, which would entail identical local manifestations. In order to deny this, not only must the virtual structure of every system be unique, but every manifestation must be native to the system.

The problem is that if all systems are distinct, and all manifestations are not only system specific but unique to the system, then for Levi there would be no shared qualities or manifestations between objects. Each and every object entails its own set of manifestations, and it becomes increasingly hard to see what a description of an object or its qualities would be like given any descriptive recourse would undoubtly have to be utterly specific to the system. Whether objects are absolutely dissimilar in their being or admit of similarities at the virtual level, Levi must at least claim every act of translation between two entities will involve dissimilar features in order to save the withdrawal thesis.

An alternative would be to say that there are common qualities insofar as they can be separated in accordance with general features, while it nevertheless remains the case that every instantiation is unique and specific to the system. Thus two systems might exhibit similar abstract features, while nevertheless preserving an inexhaustible void of difference in its depth differing every manifestation from all others. This indeed would be a more predictable Deleuzean line.

But in order to avoid the virulent proliferation of qualities and their non-transmutability, Levi must then produce an account of how not only objects have virtual structure and accidental manifestations, but how manifestations themselves have essential and accidental features as such. This means that for Levi the distinction between the accidental features of an object and its differential strata cannot be said to be a mere function of representation, since presumably the pure being has particularity and is endowed with definite qualities, i.e. is not just a virtual differentiating field without objective specificity. Presumably, then, it would be the difference in these accidental elements which always differ form system to system, which would be left to ground the possibility of generic qualities to be expressed between different systems, thus saving the withdrawal thesis, i.e. translation always involves loss insofar as no two systems and system states are ever identical; even if they might be sufficiently similar so that the essential aspects of a quality are actualized from system to system. So the gap is not so much between the object and its manifestations, as much as how these manifestations produce information in other objects.

Following with his analysis, Pete writes:

“Levi initially described withdrawal as being a split between proper being and local manifestation, much as Graham describes it as a split between real objects and sensuous objects. However, the way it is described here suggests that it is a split between the local manifestation (or perturbation) and the information it produces. This is reinforced by Levi’s suggestion that information plays the same role in his system that sensuous objects play in Graham’s.“

Levi must say that information is just a manifestation understood as caused by a perturbation; but that there is no categorical difference between the two. A good question arises as to whether all manifestations are then caused by perturbations or whether there are system-intrinsic induced manifestations possible. This of course pertains to the core of questions of causality in Levi’s version of OOP: are all relations and causal chains between systems, or are there also relations and chains within systems, i.e. between their virtual proper being and actual manifestations as system-states? How would these latter occur, seeing they would seem to be relations that would not be indirect insofar as they wouldn’t require translation between different systems, and therefore no information in Levi’s sense? Seeing Levi would probably choose to say all system-states or manifestations correspond to complex exchanges with the environment (and thus causal relations upon perturbations) there seems to be a chicken-egg problem insofar as all manifestations presuppose their actualization as information, and therefore that all system states which serve as perturbations for other systems to translate themselves presuppose a perturbation which actualized them, etc. To quote Pete again, at length:

“The difference is that substance must have something like properties that are distinct from the qualities it manifests, because there must be particular features of objects’ virtual structure that distinguish them from one another, which are nonetheless distinct from their actualised qualities. Whatever is analogous to sensuous qualities for Levi must be part of the information communicated in causal interaction… the key issue is whether Levi can account for this idea of directness and indirectness in informational terms. Levi seems to have done this by appealing to the idea that information is system specific. However, Levi has actually used the metaphor of translation, and the corresponding talk of directness in order to cash out the idea of system specificity”

While I agree mostly with Pete here, I find the claim in bold to be a bit baffling. System specificity is cashed out in terms of an objects endo-structure or virtual features; while a standard for directedness has simply not been described, unless one draws the intuitive idea that a direct communication would be the manifestation of identical qualities between two systems, which we have seen entails a host of problems. Pete does well to ask then what would non-system specific information be? Here we might surmise a few things.

Presumably, essential properties of manifestations which can be identified across objects/systems, even if every manifestation has accidental manifestations which are necessarily system-specific. This would mean information is always system specific, but still exhibits general features. If not, as we considered before, every manifestation or quality would be system-specific and there would be no ground for common properties between objects. As we have seen Levi has no grounds to say these general features are any only representational on pains of avoiding de-specifying the object wholesale, which would make of systems nothing but the Deleuzian virtual diced up into a plethora of objects, and where what an actual object or quality would be must be necessarily meaningless. But this seems to deliver Levi’s account to the same kind of problems I described about Harman previously on individuation, insofar it seems to make of reality nothing but an anonymous multiplication of possible entities on the basis of infinitely conceivable actualizations brought about by conception. In any case, it seems Levy must elucidate his relation to Deleuze more expressly to make sense of all these claims. In any case, Pete seems to arrive at somewhat similar conclusions on this point:

“One could claim that although the qualities produced are similar to those that brought them about, they are not for that matter identical However, in order to do this, one either has to claim that all qualities are haecceities (i.e., purely unique), which would be metaphysically disastrous, or one has to claim that it is the fact that they are qualities of a different object (and thus part of a different set of qualities) which makes the cause and effect non-identical. This amounts to saying that for their to be direct contact between entities, one entity would have to become identical to the other.”

Lets fast forward again and dive into Pete’s discussion of Levi’s account of meaning and its structure. The latter argues that knowledge should be understood primarily as production and not mere reporting; knowledge involves grasping information so as to produce a new actual state rather than the transmission of an already existing one. Pete disagrees violently with this reading, but I think his objection doesn’t quite cut it here:

“This [claim that knowledge involves primarily production and capacity of using knowledge to produce new states of affairs] could be interpreted as the claim that although knowledge can be communicated in linguistic form, you only grasp this knowledge if you can actually put it to use. However, this would need to be reconciled with the claim that much newly produced knowledge has no immediate use at all, at least by ordinary standards. Theorems discovered at the forefront of mathematics are understood prior to the discovery of any application they may have, and this means that understanding them cannot be a matter of understanding their application. Similarly, at the forefront of physics their are often different theories that have no difference in real world practical applications (to the extent that we can’t even experimentally choose between them), but we can nonetheless understand how they differ in content.

The important point here is that if one is going to try and reduce knowing-that to knowing-how, you need to actually specify precisely what kind of knowing-how the former consists in. If you don’t do this, then you’ve simply abandoned the distinction rather than explaining it.”

This objection doesn't work, insofar as it rests on an excessively narrow sense of production and use. Since Levi’s distinction between reporting and producing is primarily anchored in the distinction between repetition and innovation, the procedures which produce local manifestations apply to newly developed theories in experimental sciences just as revolutionary political movements. Doing theory is a form of production, and as long as it can be distinguished from merely repetitive activity, it necessarily concerns actualizing local manifestations. The key question is, then, whether Levi is actually equipped to advance the distinction between repetitive and non-productive reporting and innovative productive inventing. Since even ordinary knowledge transmission, in non-experimental science for instance, must involve translation, Levi is thereby forced to distinguish between translations which produce new manifestations from merely repeated ones. But given the withdrawal thesis, it seems his account of information-system is ill equipped to make this distinction. As we have seen, for Levi systems are unique and specific, and every communication is miscommunication insofar as they produce unique information. To this extent, every local manifestation is decidedly a new system-state, produced by a perturbation.

Here, however, we must look into Levi’s account of particular systems which involve meaning: since in these cases Levi seems to allow for common meaning between different systems. It would then be a matter of distinguishing which meanings are simply reported in the sense of translating them in such a way they are preserved as the same meanings after the translation process, and those translation processes which produce new meanings. This seems coherent enough, although I’m not aware if Levi actually endorses this possibility. In any case, this does seem to retain the anthropocentric dimension of human-knowledge which allows meanings to be communicated between systems, and non-human communication in which qualities are never transmitted, but information inevitably indirectly produces new-states. The problem is that this seems to awfully hypostasize human knowledge into the sole case in which something like a direct relation is possible, insofar as meanings can be transmitted between systems as such.

Now, Levi might want to say the dimension of withdrawal nevertheless remains in much the same way as quality transmission remains in non-human relations between objects. For example, we can admit that different systems have similar qualities, while preserving their uniqueness to their native systems, by distinguishing essential from accidental features of qualities themselves: systems might share features in their virtual structure or actual manifestations with other systems, while each might nevertheless has distinctive features which affect the process of translation and thus the account for the distinctiveness of local manifestations. In the same way, meanings might be translated from system to system in such a way they are qualitatively preserved (report), while we may easily imagine a process of production which involves previously unspecified local manifestations and meanings. This scenario seems to collapse the presumably unique character of meaning which is human into relations between all objects.

But since in Levi's account only humans produce meanings insofar as only humans engage in reflexive consideration of alternate possibilities, to claim knowledge is produced in the same way new system states occur seems to either radically collapse the distinction between the human domain of meaning and the more broadly non-human domain of translation. Indeed, the 'subjective form' of meaning production which constitutes knowledge seems no longer separable from natural processes, or general relations between different entities. This seems a thesis Levi would be happy to endorse, insofar as it places objects and humans in the same metaphysical footing and preserves both the possibility of novel production, repetitive transmission, and withdrawal. However, Levi has no real account of how the 'productions' put to use in novel-meaning events are distinguished from reports in the more basic strata of proper being of the object (virtual), local manifestation (actual) and in the translation of information between the two. How are reports categorically distinct from 'productions' (or novel actualizations)? Even if Levi claims the crucial distinction lies in how meaning-producing systems are endogenously specified to discern information in the projection of alternative possibilities, how this projection allows the proper distinction between report and production remains obscure. We have stipulated how Levi could reply, but this is all sheer speculation at this point, since the account of novelty is missing.

It is no surprise then that Levi’s account faulters precisely at the point of specifying what specific know-how reduces knowing-that. This is where the distinction between human and non-human systems becomes unsustainable, insofar as at this juncture either can only be described as know-how in the sense of information processing systems, which as we have seen, share the same structural features in communicating meaning as non-meaningful events.

Harman on Individuation: Some Further Questions on Objects and Relations

Harman on Individuation:

- Some Further Questions on Objects and Relations -
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Following up on the question of individuation in OOP, here I write a schematized reply to Harman’s own reply to my original inquiry, since Prof. Harman is unfortunately too busy at this point. I'll just lay them out for whoever might be able to give an answer.

The question of individuation is anchored in how objective essences can be specified beyond the anthropocentric intentional domain; specifically as one advances a theory of objective quiddity and intentional relations beyond the anthropomorphic circumscription to eidetic constitution in human consciousness. The issue seems to surround the distinction between sensual/intentional and real objects; how we are supposed to gain epistemic warrant to speak of 'real' subsistent objects independent of all relations, and at the same time gain a resolutely non-anthropocentric theory of intentional relations for sensual objects. The proponents of scientific realism (the ‘science oriented’ guild of SR) are concerned with a similar question I asked before, concerning individuation: if objects as we encounter them are configured within intentional consciousness, and yet we want to posit intentionality is not limited to meaning-giving human-conscious acts, then these would presumably have to be described as being something different than the objects sensed by us, scientific or otherwise (for these remain circumscribed to our intentional sphere). To quote something Harman wrote to Pete:
"All I mean is this: experience exists. Simple. Why is such a banal statement so important to me? Because my sense of reality is of a realm so withdrawn from all access and all contact, that if real objects were the whole story then there would be no experience at all. And yet there is experience. We do not hover in a void of darkness, encountering nothing, as all entities slip away into vacuous concealment. There is in fact an intentional realm. Within this realm we find rocks and mountains, and we also find Popeye and HAL."
Everything turns on whether this intentional domain warrants occasion by real essences, and how it would do so outside anthropomorphic conditions where description corresponds to real essences. If I understand correctly, then all experience of objects and relations provides sensual objects/qualities, but these don't exhaust the real object or qualities targeted under them by ostentation (which is why imagined objects are void of reality). Ostentation through perception is thus tacitly an anchor on the Real populated by objects, even if in our-sense endowing relations to them we inevitably are destined to distort them. The point is that ostentation allows us to gain traction on real beings which purely sensual objects don't obtain. 

The obvious question here leads back to Shaviro's indictment that this kind of metaphysics delivers us back to a form of Kantian agnosticism about the Real: if all we know are sensual objects, then what epistemic warrant solicits the assumption of real objects at all, or even intentional encounters between objects which are cognitively accessible and yet not supervenient on our very peculiar human intentional constitution? Since 'real qualities [or objects] never appear'; how do we know they are there as such, independent of their sensual eidetic presentations in human consciousness? And if real qualities can never be conflated with sensual ones; what provides warrant for us to say there are such things as tables and tigers, rather than table-part independent objects and tiger-parts? Harman responded to my earlier question on individuation, which roughly tracks the same issue, as follows:


"I would have to be God to know what the real object is that lies beneath Incan religious beliefs. You seem to think that the up-to-date science of the year 2010 should be allowed to serve as the privileged judge of that question. I don’t see why. Our science of today will perhaps look as antiquated in a thousand years as Incan beliefs do today.
Your worry seems to be: if no direct access with objects is possible, then anything goes. I can claim that my worship of fairies is just as good as quantum theory. But why does this follow? Who says that there can’t be standards of better and worse even in a world where direct access to the things is impossible?

But this dodges the real issue. We can certainly think of standards to differentiate for 'better or worse' in conformity with current scientific principles, pragmatic interests, and a variety of other things. But the question is how any of these standards is adequate to discern real objects/qualities from purely sensual ones. It is certainly not sufficient to say we can come up with standards for 'better or worse', since in all fairness it's far from clear what relation could any such standards within the human intentional domain solicit us to derive about real objects. Since we cannot be sure, at this point, of their existence, we seem to fare no better through the appeal to our 'standards' to judge.

Next, the 'anything-goes' worry seems a bit closer to what Ray Brassier has expressed in terms of the equivalence between saying "the claim that nothing is metaphorical is ultimately indistinguishable from the claim that everything is metaphorical." But the question here would be for OOO: what specific standards allow us to stipulate that the restricted eidetic unity of our intentional domain (which gives us on occasion, say, tigers) solicits there are such things as tiger-essences, independently of such restricted access? Similarly, what solicits that the restricted intentional objectivation which gives us relations between tigers and pray-rabbits can occur independent of such human constrictions, without recourse to a descriptive register which would surreptitiously configure them in unexplained coincidence to the intentional human sensual domain? How can we ever transpose our descriptions onto the Real, and on what basis, once we have renounced all forms of reductionism in favor of a 'democracy of objects'? At this stage, the argument I am presenting is starting to sound a lot like reinforcing a 'strong correlationist' position, whereby the in-itself seems radically inaccessible, and I cautiously suppose that Harman might simply deny such epistemic constriction exists. Harman writes:
"In the sensual realm it is we ourselves who decide that the stickman is one sensual object. It is simply a matter of descriptive phenomenology to decide whether I’m encountering one stick figure or many isolated parts (I doubt that an “infinity” is possible for perception; that’s an exaggeration). In the realm of real objects, the stickman is one if the stickman is a unified reality that has properties not found in its pieces taken in isolation. But I don’t believe in real stickmen, of course."
But this conditional clause which states that 'any object X is X if it is a unified reality that has properties not found in isolation' is obviously circular: X is a Real unified object just it is a Real unified object. Having said that, Harman still doesn't tell us on what basis we know individuated entities exist as such, beyond a mysteriously specified baptism by ostentation. It also doesn't tell us how exactly real entities are unified as individuated realities with properties (rather than, say, the infamous flux of becoming prior to individuation), since Harman cannot hypostasize any one descriptive domain given his irreductionist position. How then does real objective unity obtain so we don't merely make of them annonymous objects, thinkable only as a (potentially infinite) plurality of noumenal phantoms veiled from our (sensual) phenomenological sphere?
A similar concern arises when I consider the case of a non-relational state of an object, such as the 'sleeping person' Harman frequently proposes. Notwithstanding the status of dreams and whatever is presented in them; we can wonder in what sense there is a withdrawal from relations. Isn't my body, for one, engaged in several relations with its environment (pillows, air molecules, and so on...) in spite of my non-awareness during sleeping? We certainly want to say these things are happening whether I’m aware of them or not, or else we revert right back into idealism. So when particles collide against my body, and in lack of an eidetic presentation of myself or the particles as unified objects in my conscious intentional domain, what allows me to locate myself as a real unity, withdrawn from the intentional relation between subatomic particles (since real objects must withdraw, the relation must constitute an intentional object)? In other words, how can I stipulate that I subsist as a real object when I am not reflectively presenting myself to myself in thought, i.e. as an intentional object. What allows me to say I am free from relation, and not just a bundle of Daniel-parts, like Quine's famous rabbit? And if I can stipulate all it takes for there to be a 'real object' is a concept individuating on the basis of an perceptually anchored act of ostentation, there's seemingly no limit to how many real entities I can hypothetically posit this way. I can divide or patch by body in indefinately many ways, corresponding to an indistinguishable act of ostentation. A subatomic scientist might deny there are such middle sized objects as bodies, just like a pantheist or Spinozist might deny there are any real differences between the floor on which I stand and my body standing over it. Which of these 'unities' are real? All of them? Some of them? Harman's suggestion that we could host standards for individuation remains opaque, since any such standard would have to be borrowed from one or many descriptive registers available to us. But to hypostasize human sense-endowing intentional acts into real objects surely vitiates the irreductionist position, and delivers us right back to Husserl.

Harman's metaphysical substances, in order to advance his 'irreductionist' position, must entail that the eidetic unity of the middle sized objects such as sleeping bodies target real essences, in the same way science's thought of microphysical particles do - through acts of ostentation. Granted, this can happen in a variety of ways: either of perceptual middle sized objects, or through laboratory conditions of 'microscope' observation and assigned indexes, or perhaps formal abstract conditions identified with imperceivables in complex relation to perceptually accessible objects, as Sellars develops. But then of course the realm of essences seems inhabitted with a multiplicity of objects which virulently follow from any description which I happen to have rendered operative by ostentation's 'baptism', and there's seemingly no limit to the amount of real entities I can produce in such a manner, using standard Quine-like examples. Yet this presupposes our concepts and terms are somehow sufficient to constitute reality, i.e. essence follows from eidetic conception through ostentation. In short, it's not simply that Harman cannot say there's a single real referent underlying all the cases of intentional ostentation; but that there's no resources to distinguish on what basis these real objects consist independently of descriptive criteria which immediatly fold us back to the intentional domain of humans.

Ostentation's baptism, direct or indirect, is pressumably set to provide some sort of restraint limiting the multiplication of possible entities through pure conception. This is why ostentation is set to remain an anchor between the real and the sensual for Harman. And he would claim this holds true even for scientific discourse and practice, insofar as formal descrpitions targetting a field of imperceivable entities merely specify real objects as expressed in formally intuitable descriptions/formulas, in turn tethered to perceptually accessible objects. Thus even imperceptible entities may remain tested against intuitable realities. For as Sellars advances, and Brassier admitts, the natural sciences pressupose complex connections between perception and the unintuitable domain described formally. And this is precisely why scientific realism must go hand in hand, for the naturalist, with perceptual realism; where the relation between object and intuition (or essence and eidos)is still anchored in ostentation.

This is a mere stipulation of how Harman would try to advance the argument against the desappearance of non-intuitable scientific phenomena, by insisting on ostentation's capacity of discernment. Even if science is counter-intuitive in its challenge to the manifest image, it is still, the OOPhilosopher will claim, thus tethered on the intuition which constitutes formal symbols and perceptual realities, while they will claim against the naturalist that the strata of formally specified entities is not to be priviliged metaphysically from other essences. This is the twofold axis of phenomenology and irreductionism. Harman considers that scientific realism leads to an unavoidable reductionism operating over its specific choice of scientism: reducing everything to the operational formality of the natural sciences, even as it links to perceptual reality in order to describe it (and not something different, as an irreductionist, democratic ontology of objects should).

At this juncture, however, the scientific realist may ask: so if the phenomena described by the formal apparatus of the natural sciences is negatively defined as resolutely non-manifest, and yet real in virtue of acts of ostentation and sensible reality: couldn't the same hold for all formal systems relating intuitable realities to non-intuitable ones? Doesn't the possibility of indirect ostentation through all formal symbols open up a potentially infinite domain of possible realities? Here the problem is no longer just the endless proliferation of middled-sized entities through direct ostentation, but also the proliferation of non-intuitable realities corresponding indexes in a formal system which relates in complex ways to perceptual conditions, and so grounded on such indirect ostentation. But this clearly is not limited to contemporary scientific formal discursivity, but to negative theologies, and all sorts of metaphysical postulates about transcendent realities. While ostentation was supposed to restrict the limit for the proliferation of entities, it all of a sudden seems to allow for an even more violent proliferation, extending as far as the formal domain, unless we want to deny any such postulates of reality tout court; which would quickly devolve into anti-scientism just as easily as it would sever theories with transcendent metaphysical postulates. The 'negative' domain opened by the scientfic realist must force Harman to accept the reality of non-intuitable realities behind any formal description related to an act of ostentation, which aims to target non-intuitable domain of entities: and this seems to once again make description sufficient to produce a virulent multiplication of essences, ad infinitum. Description is thus not just virulent when eidetic intuition is supposed to grasp middle sized objects directly through perceptual ostentation, but also when it formally assigns non-intuitive realities in relation to perceptually anchored acts of ostentation. Essences are thus multiplied both downstream (potentially infinite non-intuitable realities formally described or otherwise) and upstream (middled sized objects identified in perceptual direct ostentation). Beyond intuition, and because of its irreductionist democracy, ideation becomes sufficient to limn reality in any way we want it; but thus ends up finally anthropomorphizing the world, or what turns to be the same, idealising it. This leads me to the last point of clarification on something I said earlier:
"Next: “But since you have renounced naturalism, then surely you must say that the imagined or conceived stickman is not really physical anymore than it is really eidetic. For to deny its physical reality in order to assert its purely eidetic existence (as imagined stickman) would seem to run with the imposition of a matter independent ideality.”
I’ve only “renounced naturalism” in the sense that I don’t think physical explanations and entities should be privileged over other kinds. You seem to think I am taking a kind of Platonic position and saying that eidos is more real than physical. That’s not true at all."

My concern was simply the following one: when I imagine X, the physicalist neurobiologist tells me X is reducible to a specific neurological state. Harman claims the stickman is purely sensual. This is underwritten by the irreductionist thesis: which implies that what the physicalist describes as a multitude of entities does not exhaust the entity to which I grant eidetic unity. But of course when I am imagining X, something happens in my brain, irrespective of my imagining being different. Consider the case of the imagined stickman read from a neural-activity sensor at a doctor's dispatch. The stickman isn't real, but the brain-state presumably is. But why? Since OOO has renounced reductionism, and accepted science is reviseable, how can it claim that it follows from the doctor's reading, which is surely given as  intentional objects, is more real than the unified stickman in my thought? If the answer is that my thinking is not anchored on perceptual ostentation, then we are still don't know why the doctor's attribution of unity to the neurons corresponds to a real object, and not just to an imagined one. For there could be real stickmen shaped objects behind my intentional apprehension in my thought. Since the reviseability of science puts no limit to how reality might appear under the lights, we cannot shut off the possibility all intentional objects target real doubles behind thought, since no discursive register is better equipped to tell the real from not, and ostentation here makes no difference since it doesn't specify how the real object is individuation, but only entails there must be a real object. It seems that if realities potentially lurk behind my conscious apprehension, I would have to accept all sorts of possible descriptions of what is going on are also tethered to all intentional objects-relations, and we seem to obtain an infinity of possible real objects. The real seems so elastic in this view that to say 'everything goes' is hardly an understatement. Harman implies this must be accepted, as a consequence of science being reviseable, and our current concepts being potentially updated.

Intentional objects are also not relative to human cognition, since they constitute non-human relationality between objects. The next question is how we know which intentional objects obtain, not just real ones. The relations between neurons for example, don't exhaust the real being behind them. But what can we determine of intentional relations between nonhuman objects if they are always apprehended as an intentional relation for us?  Can one say that the intentional object in which neurons relate/meet happen independently of how these objects appear to me in my own intentional relating? How can we determine this? If, on the other hand, one wishes to say that as long as I’m not conceiving the relation as, say, that between brain-states these do not occur just as the stickman doesn't, then it seems that  relations obtain only as consciously apprehended by us, which starts sounding an awful lot like a Husserl inspired idealism.

To sum up, on the one hand we get every description potentially targeting a real essence; in the latter nothing ever targets even a non-human intentional object. Having lost all power for thought to gain traction on reality or being, Harman's position delivers us right back to Brassier's indictment: that nothing is metaphorical is indistinguishable from that claim that everything is metaphorical.

That the proliferation of entities also easily follows from these considerations can be seen without much trouble: Harman could claim neural states do embody real entities, since the neural-sets qua objects baptized by ostentation which make up my intentional object in relation to my thought do have real referents in the world[1]. However, this possibility would either force Harman to claim that any description which targets objects/relations defined by ostentation (even is supposed extended to the formal) are on equal footing, and are all thus real, or else claim there are criteria for discerning between non-intuitable real objects and non-intuitable merely sensual objects. But Harman has not yet produced such a distinction, or a basis on which it could be developed.

We are thus led back once again to individuation: if my description of the sun as a heat emitting astral body, as a collection of subatomic states, or as a light-weaving God, succeeds at being real by virtue of ostentation identifying withdrawing realities, then there do not seem to be one set of real/objects and relations underlying my potentially infinite sensual configurations, but an infinity of real objects and relations corresponding to each and every possible intentional configuration in human minds. For how else are we supposed to say the sun really is a thing which has not just eidetic unity but objective essence, and that therefore transcends its non-unified subatomic configuration, or any other descriptive division of the object into a multitude? Harman must preserve this sort of independent objective reality, if he doesn't want to destroy middle sized objects like physicalist reductionists do, or relativize subatomic realities in idealist form. Just as the reality of the subatomic is 'ostended' through the specification of the formal, the intuition of middle sized objects is granted only in eidetic specification in thought and propositional/nominal description or attributions. Without the constitution of consciousness attached to the phenomenological domain, either any category will do (which idealizes the world through descriptive virulence) or none will do (reinscribing a field of anonnymous objects to which we have no epistemic access, and yet remain thinkable). For which epistemic criteria would allow us to safely allot the unity of the sun to the domain of the real without thereby specifying the continuity between the intentional human-relative phenomenon as consciously presented in its eidetic unity, and the real object that it corresponds to?

In pains of avoiding reductionism, Harman seems forced into accepting the former option: that the eidetic unity of sensual objects follows from ostentation directly from real objects. But this comes at the cost of rendering impossible the discernment between descriptive registers founded in ostentation vis their adequacy to the real objects, and those which are merely ideal. Trying to place all objects on the same footing, the acceptance of entities through ostentation ends up soliciting a virulent idealism where real objects occassion their sensual doubles, while ostentation identifies essence with any descriptive register, irrespective of its ontological commitments. Without further criteria for dictinction, description seems sufficiently exhaustive, precisely because it is insufficient to exhaust the object: there is always more than what we intuit, and yet what we intuit reveals potentially infinite realities on the basis of description. Just like the reality of the glass cannot be reduced to a multiplicity of glass-parts, so the latter guarantee under the irreductionist light that the eidetic unity nominally attributed to an object via ostentation can always be made to correspond to an essence, object or part. Non-anthropomorphic essence would have to be thinkable apart from its specific eidetic constitution, to avoid all descriptions from sufficiently constituting reality. But what would such a reality be, then, if Harman's irreductionism forbids us to privilige one descriptive register over another? How are we to distinguish between what some registers tells us is real, from what others do? Either real objects/relations remain anonymous and become thereby noumenal phantoms, or their reality seems to directly follow from the particular intentional configurations for humans, delivering us right back to Husserl.

This obscure coincidence between sense and reality is what Ray Brassier has described as ‘a miraculous congruence between metaphysical individuals and the meanings of our singular terms’[2]. Outside of the strictly anthropomorphic domain for description, metaphysical essence remains opaque. In any case, we obtain both an endless proliferation of possible intentional entities and relations, as well as an endless proliferation of withdrawing real objects/qualities[3].

---

[1] Of course, in order to follow this route, given real objects in themselves withdraw, one must also stipulate the corresponding series of non-anthropomorphic intentional objects for the relations, say, between neural sets, to remain a function of the objects and not of mere human mediation. So it seems Harman really can’t escape from positing the sensual object(s) apprehended as neural sets correspond to another sensual object which is not strictly that presented to my consciousness, i.e. real objects (neurons) by themselves cannot form relations (neural sets) by virtue of their non-relationality.

[2] Personal correspondence.

[3] See footnote above.

Alien Theory - Chapter IV: Laruelle's Pantheism and Badiou's Noological Idealism

- ALIEN THEORY: CHAPTER IV -

LARUELLE'S PANTHEISM AND BADIOU'S NOOLOGICAL IDEALISM
____________________________________________________________

How can we guarantee that the transcendental realist appeal to a ‘matter itself’ won’t end up reinscribing matter within the concept by simply evoking it in discourse? How can we move towards making matter independent of all idealization and co-determination if we cannot help but evoke it in and through discourse? How do we avoid the materiological trap? Here we see how Laruelle lays the conditions for non-materialism, and a non-philosophical 'realism'. We should keep in mind however, that Brassier has later sought to qualify Laruelle’s ‘non philosophical’ step outside Decision and will instead call it a ‘non-correlationist’ philosophy. Instead of circumscribing matter inside Decision as objectifying transcendence, non-philosophy is a ‘performative’ set of operations which enact a characterization of matter itself as immanently foreclosed to Decision (Pg: 96). This immanence does not presuppose transcendent Decision distinguishing between materialism and idealism, i.e. to the distinction between material immanence and ideal transcendence. Immanence is foreclosed to all Decisional dyads, even if it ultimately determines them through their occasion.

Materialism / Idealism

The distinction between ‘materialism’ and ‘idealism’ is not pre-given or obvious. We should enquire transcendentally into the conditions in which these categories are produced, i.e. deducing the ‘genetic a priori’ which conditions all their productions independently of the particular contents given to them. The idea is to make materialism and idealism autonomous to particular politico-scientific investments by making of them immanent transcendental criteria which condition philosophy tout court. In other words, instead of investing them with specific contents through philosophical explication, which invariably ends up in ideological investments, materialism and idealism should be immediately determining a split between materialism or matter and the concept; distinguishing the former’s autonomy from the philosophical reinscription into the latter. As we will see, this will entail turning philosophical Decision / objectifying transcendence into an empirical instance which occasions its Real determination in-the-last-instance.

Laruelle points out that the specificity of materialism comes in how it not only gives metatheoretical conditions for its own production, but also its a priori conditions for distinction from idealism; whereas the latter does not necessarily distinguish itself from the former. A genetic difference a priori separates the materialist from the idealist utterance: “Against the empiricist mistake, which consists in injecting into these categories an ‘immediate’ content which is in reality already mediated, it is a question of thinking them at once in themselves and in terms of what is more important than them, their relation, and more important than their relation: their absolute difference” (Laruelle, 1981, p.104.). The absolute difference between idealism and materialism must be, however, pertaining to neither, and so it must remain a-signifying or non-conceptual. This baffled me a bit, since it was first said that the difference between the two is proper to materialism and then that their absolute difference is non-conceptual and proper to neither. However, the idea that is explained behind this seems to rest on a distinction between the materialist distinction between itself and idealism, and the absolute difference which pertains to neither; the non-conceptual condition which enact their transcendental distinction. So there’s at once a theoretical distinction or relation which materialism theoretically lays out (relation of relation and non-relation), and is also transcendentally determined as already given, where the non-theoretical indifference already gives itself on the basis of the Real (enacting the non-relation of relation and non-relation). We will see this later in more substantive detail, but the idea is to separate thought’s theoretical determination or relational differentiation from the performative separation which transcendentally generates the condition for a non-theoretical separation of real and ideal which gives itself without the need for conceptual mediation or as we will say ‘without givenness’ – i.e. independent of all signification and discourse. We will see how Laruelle effects this separation gradually, since it is very subtle and unfortunately convoluted, even in Brassier’s exposition.

A PRELIMINARY CONFRONTATION: NON-PHILOSOPHY AS PANTHEISM

Yet we should provisionally ask why exactly must materialism distinguish itself from idealism as part of its ‘generic a priori’- why can’t it simply construct itself independently of all idealism, that is to say, for Laruelle, philosophy? This will prove to be a particularly striking feature of Laruelle and Brassier’s endorsement of non-philosophy here. This necessity to distinguish itself from idealism, we will see, rests on materialism’s non-philosophical presupposition of the necessity for Decision to be given as occasional cause to enact its Real determination. Thinking presupposes a minimum of objectifying transcendence, which serves as occasional cause to effect the radical and unilateral separation of the immanent Real foreclosed to thought and the object as given through objectifying transcendence given the latter’s non synthetic identity-in-the-last instance the being-foreclosed of the Real which has always already determined it. The real needs objectifying transcendence in order distinguish itself absolutely from it, identifying the transcendental foreclosure of the object in thought to the foreclosure of the immanent real.

But the question is of course why should we presuppose that materialism needs a minimum of objectifying transcendence? This seems to rest on the presupposition not only that all philosophy is idealist, but that realism must necessarily establish itself by distinguishing itself from idealism gratuitously. It is not clear whatsoever why this is inherently a condition for materialism; and why idealism is on the other hand allowed to operate independently. Perhaps we can stipulate that there is a necessity in any materialism to distinguish the reality of the utterance from the real which determines it; but this seems a reproduction of the all-too obvious theoretical representationalist dyadic split between real-concept.

It is precisely this distinction which appears as necessary and possibly rigorous enough to avoid bilateral co-determination. It is necessary since, as we saw, the incapacity to distinguish between Concept and Matter, or the Parmenidean fate, ends up enacting such an idealist co-constitution. We saw this in particular through the purported transvaluation of the transcendental in the machinic constructivism proper to Deleuze and Guattari, and in Henry’s ultimate negative co-determination of enstatic immanence through ekstatic transcendence. Therefore, the indistinction of matter and idea cannot but become idealist, according to Laruelle, since it must render the Real as co-determined by its philosophical positing or Concept; as in Deleuze’s dynamic heterogenetic production of intensivity as the machinic phylum, which was also the transcendence of immanence-to-itself through the circuitous self-sublation of the virtual/actual through ‘And’ as tensor of inclusive disjunction. In turn, materialism must guarantee matter’s transcendental separation from the Idea/Concept without being co-determined by the latter. This is what non-philosophy promises for thinking in its performative determination-in-the-last-instance by the Real through the occasion of objectifying transcendence / Decision. So Laruelle surely needs philosophy to remain the empirical instance from which the Real is freed: something which seems especially urgent if one thinks all philosophy is victim of transcendence, or more strongly still, that thought presupposes a minimum of objectifying transcendence (as Brassier notes in NU). This should lead is into questioning where exactly the empirical sciences stand in this conundrum: are they also occasions of objectifying transcendence which are used by non-philosophy? Or is transcendental realism finally a non-philosophical thesis, which does not exclude a potential non-scientific realism of some sort?

It is already unclear, as Brassier notes in Nihil Unbound, that all philosophy can be amalgamated uniformly through the filter of Decision. It is even less clear, however, that Laruelle can also corner scientific discourse as occasions of objectifying transcendence which can be therefore used as occasions for their non-philosophical determination. And if not, then it is also radically unclear how the purported liberation of a transcendental realism by non-philosophy can somehow vindicate those disastrous results for the ‘empirical domain’ which we saw earlier. Clearly, Laruelle must think that the empirical domain targeted by the natural scientist is somehow coextensive to the presupposition of the empirical as given in the correlation to the operation of givenness in Decisional thought. But this seems atrociously speculative. Instead, we get a Real simultaneously identical-in-the-last-instance to the transcendentally given object insofar as it is foreclosed to Decision as unilateralized identity, and the Real’s radical indifference from the objective being of the given as absolutely differentiated from unobjectifiable immanence as unilateralized difference. But this sheds no light as to how scientifically objectivated claims could somehow not be merely Ideal configurations on the same level as all other philosophical variants. If the occasional cause envelops both Decisional philosophy and science, then scientific discursivity remains idealizing in-itself; and the only thing that is capable of making it autonomous is non-philosophical determination-in-the-last instance of the occasion.

However, as we saw, it remains entirely unclear how science indeed falls within the ambit of objectifying transcendence, or that indeed thought requires to presuppose its givenness for its determination as an empirical given through the Real. This ultimately renders the non-philosophical Real to be something of an ineffable first mover-without-movement (to risk ridiculity); an immanent radical pantheism where the 'Son’s' occasional manifestation as given is supported by its ultimate transcendent identity to an immanent sphere of indivisible Oneness, lading to the point of unilaterality (for it is the occasion of the Son as Man or empirical occasion which is given for its determination-in-the-last-instance as God, while the latter is radically indifferent to Man’s empirical givenness and thus foreclosed to all objectivation it allows itself to be unilateral and not determined by Man (or any kind of ideality) in return- i.e. as radical immanence given-without-givenness). This makes the entire non-philosophical attempt a little too close to a pantheistic theodicy. On the other hand, if scientific discourse remains indeed independent from Decision or objectifying transcendence, then it remains totally unclear how scientific realism can be supported by the performative non-philosophical non-materialistic determination of Decision. Either way, things don’t look all better for the empirical than they did with the machinic constructivism, as in the case of Deleuze and Guattari.

Materialism/Idealism – Continued

In any case let’s continue with Brassier’s exposition so we can flesh out the specifics in more substantive detail. Laruelle distinguishes between three categorical ascriptions of materialism and idealism which fail to give an account of the a priori generic difference sought for. Matter and Idea are not to be taken as [AT Pg: 100]:

1) Given objectivities – Say, in techno-economic production or ideology.

2) Supposedly given significations – “[W]hereby, on the one hand, the concept of ‘Matter’ combines general features of ‘materiality’ abstracted from nature with empirical characteristics drawn from sense-perception; while, on the other, that of the ‘Idea’ combines general features of ‘ideality’ abstracted” from culture with empirical characteristics drawn from ‘inner sense’ or self consciousness.

3) Produced discursive categories (rather than given) – This is what Laruelle calls ‘structural Marxism’ where materialism and idealism have no specific conceptual signification but are given contingent configurations through the various politico-scientific discourses which constantly transform the differentiations. So the statement relates to differential elements which are given from particular politico-scientific configurations, they have no meaning in themselves and become a-signifying. Here we find the name of Althusser, according to Laruelle, and it seems as if Laclau’s position would be most appropriate here as well.

However, this third account, although seductively persuasive. Laruelle objects to it that it finds it impossible to make it a-signifying and non-conceptual while being differential and relational at the same time: that is to say, dependent on an empirically presupposed structure of irreducible given elements in signifying coordination. And since these objectivities are subject to socio-economic articulation or conditions they are already mediated in forms of conceptual presupposition (hegemonic struggle must be ultimately based on popular demands to the Master…). The distinction between materialism remains produced rather than determining or giving.

“The real, a priori, transcendental separation between ‘materialism’ and ‘idealism’ as intrinsically distinct modalities of theoretical utterance cannot be confused with the ideal, a posteriori and ultimately empirical differentiation between ‘materialism’ and ‘idealism’ as distinct discursive modalities produced through relations of reciprocal determination.” [Pg. 100]

Here we have once again foresee Laruelle’s split between the bilateral reciprocity inherent to all intra-theoretical Decisional-dyads where materialism/idealism are invested in peculiar configurations, and the metatheoretical non-Decisional determination of the Decisional giving of the object as the empirical occasional cause for non-philosophy to determine as already given unilateral duality which comprises:

a) The unilateralized identity (without unity) between the Real as being-nothing as identical-in-the-last-instance with the object’s being-foreclosed to knowledge. (instantiated by determination-in-the-last instance).

b) The unilateralized difference (without distinction) between objective being and the object’s unobjectifiable as being-nothing. (instantiated by objectifying transcendence as occasional cause)

Thought thereby distinguishes the already given a priori split between a radically immanent real (materialism) which determines its own objective foreclosure as being-nothing, and its transcendental objectification (idealism) where specific investments of the empirical materialist/idealist dyad are distinguished unilaterally from the Real. This is accomplished through the use of Decision as an empirical occasion for thought to enact its determination-in-the-last-instance with the Real; so that former distinguishes itself from the latter while the latter remains utterly indifferent to the former. Determination-in-the-last-instance finally allows thought to enact the generic a priori which is the unobjectifiable duality of matter and concept, real and ideal, by using the objectifying transcendence as an empirical occasion for its determination. In this way the bilateral reciprocity is severed through unilateralization; the object becomes subjective agency and patient of its own determination. Since the Real cannot distinguish itself from being, it can only be performatively thought as already-given-without givenness, foreclosed to reflection and thereby to bilateral appropriation.

Unlike the produced difference of particular versions of the materialist/idealist dyad in their empirical differentiations (which structural Marxism presumes as produced rather than producing), non-materialist theory is truly performative insofar as it transcendentally separates both. The unilateral duality enacted by non philosophy must therefore be sharply distinguished from the structural differentiation of Decision. The latter constructs the difference between the two terms from the reflective position which overseas the two and reciprocally constitutes them; whereas the former enacts performatively the unilateral duality where the Real is strictly foreclosed as already given, and absolutely separated, or utterly indifferently, to Ideal objectivation. We substitute the circularity proper to the reflexive Ideal differentiation of relation and non-relation, with the unilateral, immanently transcendent non-relation of relation and non-relation. In structural Marxism, relation remains the hypostasized Idea, as in machinic constructivism’s relational continuum: “In the primacy of ‘relations’ (of production, of force, of texts, of power) which we took for materialism, and which is one in effect, that is to say, an offshoot of idealism, there is only a transfer of difference in and as the Idea,[...] an ultimate primacy of ideality over the real, of Being over the entity” (Ibid., p.106). Materialism-idealism, like the actual-virtual doublet enters into a reversible circuit between continuum-cut, as the Ideal transcendence of materiality, as in the hyletic continuum’s ceaseless heterogenetic co-production of plane and Concept. Laruelle attacks at once all systems of differential structuring as circularly auto-positional, self-producing Ideality:

“Generally, in the systems of Difference, materialism is merely idealism in the nth degree, in the ‘andth ’ degree, infinitely intensified. In raising ideality to the level of auto-production in this circular fashion, which is to say, to the status of causa sui (‘will to power’), they [the systems of Difference-RB] confirm ideality through itself, rendering the genesis of ideality and of its forms impossible” (Ibid., p.106-107).

This genesis must be impossible, since it is indistinguishable, and co-determining. The difference in structural Marxism and machinic constructivism suspends the empirical dogmatic split of materialism/idealism at the cost of making them contingent products of the auto-producing Idea of Repetition- as ‘matter’s’ shuffling differential continuum of socio-economic relations, in perpetual circuitous transcendent determination as immanence to self. This is what ultimately compromises structural systems of difference into the same fate as Deleuzean hyletic idealism, rendering materialism ultimately formally indistinguishable from absolute idealism.

The Materiological Amphiboly of Utterance and Statement

Idealisms embody the noological syntax which establishes the primacy of Relation, the infinite self-positing relation of the All (the plane, the continuum, the Idea, matter, Being…). It is a thinking that “proceeds through the absolute” (AT: Pg 101). Because of this it cannot explain the origin of Relation as self-reproducing Ideality, it is causa sui. Theory and the matter presupposed for and in the theory is co-dependent on the theory: immanent material utterance and ontological saying are reversible. The utterance gives material immanence while the saying the transcendence necessary for its determination and inseparable repetition, both becoming entangled in a circuitous and reversible exchange.

“More precisely, just as it posits its own presupposition, materiology deliberately reinscribes its own conditions of enunciation within the enunciated theory162. Like a serpent swallowing its own tail, it absorbs the real conditions of utterance for materialism within the ideal realm of materialist theory.” (AT: Pg: 102)

So while material constructivism servers the duality between signifier-signified, and the endless post-phenomenological hermeneutical/deconstructive aporias by making ideality the very circuitous and reversible exchange between its positing and presupposition. It thereby establishes the equivalence between utterance and statement in the Ideal sublation (of Repetition of the plane, of the material flux in perpetual socio-economic differentiation, etc…). How then, to avoid the transcendental separation of thought/thing, subject/substance, in which the real becomes ontologized and phenomenalized, and where idealism is indistinguishable from idealism? The non-philosophical alternative will thus not be strictly materialistic, insofar as it doesn’t insert itself in its Decisional forms. Non-decisional immanence must be foreclosed to the transcendent division of materialism and idealism, while establishing matter as first name or non-conceptual symbol for unobjectifiable immanence (Pg; 104).

The Decline of Materialism / One or Multiple? Laruelle and Badiou

Matter must remain foreclosed to materialism; the utterance must be separated from its Decisional hybrid envelopment by the Ideal saying. Matter must be shorn of all semantic intelligibility, of all ‘consistency’ and Ideal sufficiency, to become radically indifferent to this ideal self-positioning, rather than correlative to it. Transcendental determination must absolutely separate the Real from the Ideal, without thereby allowing this separation to be semantically explicit as a relation of difference between two reified terms: matter and idea, difference/indifference. Rather, immanent matter must enact its foreclosure to self-positing transcendence by making the latter the occasion for its ultimate determination-in-the-last instance as separating objective being from its being-nothing, while the nothing remains utterly foreclosed to any differentiation, even the one between difference and indifference. The latter, the pure zero-level void, is by virtue of unilateralizing identity effected as radically indifferent to any kind of ontological investment; a radically insufficient, yet necessary positing of matter itself as first symbol, using objectifying transcendence as the already given empirical instance to enact a rigorous condition for its absolute separation from it, but only in the last instance.

“The ‘Decline’ of materialism is thus the sacrifice of materialism in order to rescue matter from all Ideal envelopment, the better to uncover: a more secret knowing of matter, one which would no longer tread the luminous paths of the logos..., nor the amphiboly, the limitless fusion of ideality and the real in the hyle” (Laruelle., p.107)

“Whereas in materiological theorizing the ideality of statement invariably became co-constitutive of the reality of the utterance through which it was produced, the statements of non-materiological theory now allow themselves to be axiomatically determined by the unobjectifiable reality of utterance -via the intervention of ‘matter itself’ as non- conceptual symbol- without presuming to co-constitute the reality of utterance in return… a thinking that is no longer ‘of’ matter in the sense of attempting its Decisional objectivation, but ‘of’ matter in the sense of being adequate to matter’s foreclosure to materiological determination.” (AT: Pg. 106)

This last instance’ should provisionally start to appeal to us as somewhat mysterious, as it points to a sort of “proper-name of the void”, with the difference that here it is not the subtractive instance of ontological presentation which then is problematically discursive form for all the infinite multiplicity of non-discursive presentational situations (as we’ve seen in Brassier’s trenchant critique of Badiou in Nihil Unbound, Chapter IV). Rather, matter as first name or non conceptual symbol indexes a Real Nothingness exempt from all ontological form, even that of attained in the consistent theory of the inconsistent pure multiple. The Real is foreclosed and indifferent to discourse, as the latter distinguishes itself unilaterally from it. The Real as the figure of the One, as proper name, then is the presupposed Name-of-God as the ineffable, the first-mover enacting its insurmountable gap and the determination of the objective instance it thinks as its immanent Real cause: "The non-materialist axiomatic engenders modalities of theorematic description for 'matter itself' qua radical hyle which are each incommesurable at the phenomenological level but phenomenally equivalent insofar as all are determined as adequate-in-the-last-instance to the radical hyle as phenomenon-without-logos... Remember that matter itself is no longer some ineffable, transcendent philosophical thing for us, and that the radical hyle is no longer an attempt to conceptualize the ineffable but merely a non-conceptual symbol for matter's foreclosure to Decision, a foreclosure now effectuated in non-materialist thinking through the Alien-subject's positing of the non-conceptual symbol enacting that foreclosure...the radical Hyle is the non-Determinable as the already-determined which determines the onto-logical amphiboly of description" (AT: Pg. 138)


But because it requires Decision as occasion for its determination, it is also a Real that is entirely impervious to processes which not for being non-philosophical or non-Decisional presuppose an empirical occasion of objectifying transcendence. For once again we must ask Laruelle whether all science is also victim of Decision, in which case the effectuation of the Real’s autonomous immanence can never become sensitive to intra-theoretical changes in scientific discursive domain(since change must then be, at most, a mere ‘reshuffling’ of the empirico-transcendental doublet proper to every Decision- phenomenally equivalent insofar as they ar are adequate to the real in the last instance). In such a case, the function of this ‘last instance of the Real’ would be to simply render all discursivity as materiality indifferent; and all difference between philosophical theories (or even scientific ones) formally equivalent. But the simplified generalization with which ‘Decision’ purports to swallow the entire history of speculative thought, coupled with its ultimate resilient insistence to identify the Real as the integral undifferentiated oneness; is simply to favor the severing of the bond between transcendent thought and the Real in non-speculative unity instead of the possible discursive contact with it in the transcendental forcing of the indiscernible generic Real as pure multiplicity, for which speculative thought is formally articulated in set theory and in which subjectivity intersects with this intervention. In this latter case, we can say that the discursive materialism which opens the way for transcendent intervention once again requires transcendence (which exists in every world imposing a Logic of appearing) to determine the Real multiple; but thereby also effecting a communicational bond between discursivity in general and truth; albeit its production must remain functionally a subjective operation (of fidelity).

In any case, if Laruelle seeks to make matter autonomous and thereby save the veritable field of the empirical (which machinic constructivism threatened to undermine), then is seems once again painfully difficult to see how this radical Real resembles matter in the natural-scientific sense in any distinctive way. For if all thought is presupposes its occasion of objectifying transcendence which sufficiently serves for its Real determination-in-the-last instance, then it seems the last-instance is perfectly insensitive to whether the objective occasion is constructed around schizophrenics or victims of demonic possession. Each and every time the Real is capable of determining the occasion as identical to it in the last instance; it ceases to be a transcendent positive being with a particular instantiation in order to become a void of nothingness uniformly disseminating itself in every empirical occassion. Determination-in-the-last instance seems to make every empirical occassion an instance of the Real, a Christo-generator which substitutes the ineffability of the transcendent substance in favor of the all-disseminating occasion indexing the ineffability of nothingness' foreclosure to Decisional hybridization (this is in fact how Zizek encourages us to read Christ's crucifiction: Christ dies not as man, but as God himself; which is to say he is the occasion which indexes the foreclosure of the One as substantial transcendence).

"The expression ‘One-in-One’ or ‘vision-in-One’ indicates the absence of any operation that would define the latter; the fact that it is not inscribed within an operational space or more powerful structure; its immanence in itself rather than to anything else; its naked simplicity as never either exceeding or lacking, because it is the only measure required, but one that is never a self-measurement, one that measures nothing so long as there is nothing to measure. (Laruelle 2003: 175–6)

If, on the other hand, Badiou’s generic subjective truth seems impervious to the actual unfolding of the truth-procedures it formally describes, it is because philosophy does not produce truths of its own. Yet in that case, philosophy’s putatively meta-ontological status generates the transferability of the concept of presentation to non-ontological situations under the presupposition of an 'ordinary consistency' (or of their transcendental organization regulating the laws of the multiple's appearing in a world). The Real qua pure multiple contains its condition for differential objectivation, and not just the foreclosure to all objectivation in the last instance.

It thus seems as if Laruelle’s purported rescuing of the empirical domain is only alleviating if we take the ultimate Real causality to 'validate' every single empirical instance as determinable by the ultimate Real cause, since they are all indifferently cases of objectifying transcendence qua occasional causes for DLI. But if so, then the axiomatic ultimation carried forth by the Stranger-subject through 'matter' as first non-conceptual symbol is little more than a hyperbolized substitute for God as first name for a ineffable immanence; a paradoxical transcendent pantheism which is nothing but which ultimately determines univocally all Decision in being already given-without-givenness. And yet if this determination is uniformly determining for all occassions of thought, then it remains utterly unclear how any difference can be of the order of the Real. It appears all distinctions, except the non-philosophical unilateralized difference, are merely occasions for an indifferent Real in which the primacy of non-relation stubbornly lingers. If not transcendence’s ultimate immanence to itself which is self-positing, the non-philosophical subtlety lies in the utter sterility of its ‘Real’ and the contingency of the occasion through which objectifying thought becomes determined by it.

“Radical immanence is non-problematic: it does not call for thinking, it does not petition Decision, it simply has no need for thought. But since there is thinking, or since philosophical Decision is the immediate, empirically given form within which thinking is already operating164, non-materialist theory will use the Decisional hybridization of thought and matter the materiological amphiboly of unobjectifiable reality and objectivating ideality, as its occasional but non-determining cause… That is to say, non-Decisional materialism will use thought’s transcendence, its pretension to absolute, self-positing sufficiency (exemplified by the hyletic continuum’s absolute auto-position) as the contingently given empirical occasion for thought’s determination by the necessary but non-sufficient immanence of material utterance. The unobjectifiable immanence of utterance as necessary condition for theory does not need discursive objectivation, but since the form of philosophical thinking has, in a sense, ‘always already’ articulated itself within that amphibological mixture of utterance and statement, the latter can be used as the occasional cause, the empirical support, for a thinking-in accordance- with the unobjectifiability of utterance taking that objectivating amphiboly, that Decisional hybridisation itself, as its object.

The key difference is this: whereas materiological thought mistakes its own hybridization of unobjectifiable immanence and objectivating transcendence for the Real (i.e. matter as Idea) because it believes that Decision is sufficient unto the Real, non-materiological thinking unilaterally determines the Decisional mixture of objectivating transcendence and unobjectifiable immanence on the basis of unobjectifiable immanence alone. It uses materiological Decision as the occasion for a non-materiological theory which lets the unobjectifiable immanence of material utterance determine or dualyse the materiological confusion of ‘matter itself’ and ‘matter as such’ via the non- Decisional positing of ‘matter itself’ as first name for the unobjectifiable immanence which determines all Decision in-the-last-instance.” (Pg. 106-107)

As we have seen, it’s far from clear how the empirical is salvaged this way, save in the disappointingly empty sense in which thought is always occasion for its real determination as identical-in-the-last-instance. However, seeing how radically this notion of the Real opposes ontologization, all we have in return is the lock of that first name which indexes an indivisible nothingness, the pure presupposition of a non-substantial, ultimately subtractive ineffable unity. This seems a dangerously crossbreeding of theological pantheism with transcendent realism through the disseminating effect of determination-in-the-last-instance enacting the non-synthetic unilateralized identity of the Real and the being foreclosed of the object. Matter as ‘non-conceptual symbol’ becomes therefore something of a sacred court for speculative thought to attain its honorary claim to realism, one which must obtain already outside the logical space of reasons and its contingently given occasions, and which transcendentally posits itself in non-philosophy as already posited-without-position, allotting thought to the objectifying transcendence / Decision determined by the Stranger-subject.

If, however, as Brassier has suggested, the extrapolation of Decision to philosophy tout court is untenable, then it seems extremely hard to see how the contingent determination of the objective by the Real can be carried outside strictly correlationist philosophical contexts. In that case, it seems 'matter' as radical hyle is ultimately only adequate as thinking unilateralizes philosophical correlation though the object’s determination-in-the-last-instance, rendering it identical to the nothingness of the Real as being-foreclosed. But then scientific discursivity and the exact theoretical status of non-correlationist thought is left entirely in the dark; for example, mathematics can no longer enjoy any putatively privileged status to be ‘ontology’ since philosophy must enter to make change in the real a subjective function, and never autonomously the form of generic forcing which it names. By the same token, for non-philosophy the relation between ‘Real change’ must remain incommensurable to any philosophical theory of discursive dynamism (as in Deleuze's machinic heterogenesis) in order to ‘avoid’ idealization. But this non-ontological Real as given-without-givenness rests, again, on an all too pious surrender to the unity of the Real as indivisible, in rendering it not only autonomous and determining in the last instance, but utterly indifferent and insensitive to relationality of any sort.

If Deleuze's machinic constructivism falls into a re-ontologising idealisation in immanence-to-itself as transcendent Repetition within the circuit of plane/fold - virtual/actual, then Laruelle's Real can be said to function as something like undeterminable determinant which, in the bare a-signifying utterance of the name, it allows itself to stand for the name of the void; one which preserves only in it the mark of its radical foreclosure and separation from all discursive objectification, its absolute difference from all positing and conditioning conceptuality or objectivating transcendence. The apparent infinite plasticity Brassier applauds in Laruelle cannot then but strike us in its glaring monotony: the operation of non-philosophical thinking on the basis of Decision as the structural filter to process the entire philosophical tradition seems 'infinately flexible' precisely because it's so radically indifferent to the peculiarities of the system upon which it operates. For now the problem is not that the empirical can never be adequate to the Real, but that it cannot help but be adequate to it in the foreclosure of a last instance brought about only through non-philosophical thought. Notably, Brassier will accept this monotony constitutive of Laruelle's 'Decisional' mould and will attempt to restrict its scope to correlationism (Nihil Unbound: Chapter 5). But as we've seen this makes the relation (or lack thereof) between the Real and scientific discursivity (as well as all non-correlational discursive spheres) utterly mysterious, and seems to rather confine realism to the vision-in-One which obtains when determination-in-the-last-instance enacts the Real's utter foreclosure as identical to the essence of the object X. This is the ultimate reach and scope of Laruelle's purported non-materialism; rather than to rehabilitate the logical space of reasons for a realist relation between scientific discourse and the Real, a purported metatheoretical enacting of a Real as foreclosed to all discursivity through the empiricity of correlational thinking/philosophy: "Materialism subjectivates matter philosophically by repressing subjectivity; non-philosophy materializes subjectivity by rendering philosophical subjectivation empirical." (AT: Pg 149)

One should be quick to point out that Laruelle enacts the non-materialist determination of 'matter itself' on the basis of phenomenological Decision by making the latter the occassion for unilateralizing their duality, through thought's determination-in-the-last-instance of radical hyle as foreclosed to the Decisional envelopment of the hyletic continuum. However, since it is ultimately thought that contingently effectuates this axiomatic ultimation, it requires of a radically subjective agency which, just like Badiou's, intervenes as radically foreclosed to Decision. So although the Stranger-subject determines Decision as already-given empirical occasion, this is an empiricity void of givenness. By enacting its own foreclosure to its Decisional occasion, the Stranger enacts the non synthetic identity-in-the-last instance between the Real and the radical hyle, and the unilateral duality separating this identity from its Decisional investment. But if this is the case, then it is thought which finally determines transcendentally the foreclosure of the Real to objectification, not the object itself. The latter remains as necessary and ultimately last-cause-in-the-last distance only against the background of the radical subjective agency of the Stranger determining the occasion's determination-in-the-last-instance as adequate to the real.

But then what guarantees that this 'transcendental effectuation' or axiomatic ultimation of the Real is actually based on the Real's foreclosure? That is to say, what can guarantee that thought's determination is adequate to the Real and not simply to non-Decisional (that is to say, non-correlational) ideality. For if radical hyle's foreclosure to Decision can only operate on the background of the determination of the Alien-subject, nothing guarantees that outside all instances of occasion the Real is actually a causality of any sort; not even that of the last-instance effectuated by non-philosophical thinking. If so, then the determination of non-synthetic identity as adequate to the Real remains undecideably split between a non-correlational idealizing instance, and a realist determination by the Real as real cause. For Laruelle cannot claim that the Real is only Real cause for thought or in thought's enacting of determination-in-the-last-instance on the basis of Decisional occasion, without vitiating the identity between this Real as nothingness and the object as foreclosed (for what would guarantee this non-synthetic foreclosure of the object?). Doing so immediatly reinscribes the reciprocal co-dependence of thought-real proper to materiology. At the same time, the Real understood as necessary but non-sufficient cause implies thought's non-philosophical determination of the object as adequate/identical to the Real must be independent of all subjectivity, even the radical agency of the Alien-subject which enacts the identity-in-the-last-instance between matter itself as the radical hyle of the Real. But if this is so then the contingent determination given through Decisional occasions is supervenient on the necessarily subjective effectuation of an identity between the Real as being-foreclosed and the object's foreclosure. Because of it, Laruelle seems caught inbetween a correlational and thus materiological reinscription of the Real into the Ideal on one end, and a non-correlationist / non-philosophical transcendental mediation of the Real through the subjective agency of the Stranger-subject enacting in every case the identity-in-the-last instance between the Real foreclosure on the basis of a contingent occasion for thought determined in turn as foreclosed. The 'first non-conceptual symbol' of matter-itself or radical hyle thus serves for non-philosophy to mediate over and above all discursive occasions, effecting the identity of the presupposed Real and the posited foreclosed essence of every object. Since this Real is only foreclosed for thought through an empirical instance, Laruelle's non-philosophical performative enacting of matter's radical autonomy comes at the price of making the nothing-ness of the Real a function for the uniform foreclosure of matter from any empirical determination, save in the-last-instance as identical to radical hyle as first name for matter or the Real:

"[T]he For in fact, rather than simply separating ‘matter itself’ from ‘matter as such’, the structure of the Alien-subject enacts the non-Decisional separation between the radical hyle as non-conceptual Identity of ‘matter itself’, and the materiological mixture or hybridisation of ‘matter itself’ and ‘matter as such’ –which is to say,the hyletic continuum... ; a hybridisation now reconfigured as a strictly unilateral Duality between the hyletic continuum asempirically determinable occasion, and the Alien-subject as transcendental determinant for that occasion." (AT: Pg 148)

Given this operation merely guarantees the monotonous repetition of determination-in-the-last-instance to render every objectivation relative to the void of the Real, the self-explaining performativity carried by that Stranger-subject required for realism ends up assuming all philosophical variants (from mysticism to Churchland) are finally adequate in the last instance to the Real insofar as they are identical to as being foreclosed enacted through non-philosophical theory. This makes the Real bereft even of the minimal transivity between the Real and Discourse found in Badiou through the generic nomination proper to a truth process ultimately dependent on the inconsistent presentation of the multiple forced into a given world. The name-of-the-void serves in Badiou's meta-ontology to support the ontological mark for the presentation of the inconsistent multiple as identified with the Real as philosophy transcendentally guarantees its pertinence for all other (non-ontological) situations, determined by the transcendental of the world. In Laruelle's case, radical hyle as first non-conceptual symbol serves for non-philosophical vision-in-One, enacting the identity-in-the-last-instance between the Real as foreclosed nothingness and that of the Alien-subject's foreclosure through the from phenomenally invested Decision. But this already given transcendental-realist determination only works through the non-philosophical positing of the a-signifying symbol of the Real as the One-of-nothingness which separates itself from Decisional (objectivating) thinking through the agency of the Stranger-subject. Just like non-chaotic presentation is guaranteed as adequate to the form of the multiple as ontologically expressed by mathematical set theory via philosophical discourse's determining transcendental objetivation / appearing of worlds, the Decisional in Laruelle's view is guaranteed as adequate to the Real in-the-last-instance, as non-philosophy mediates by determination-in-the-last-instance's enacting of unilateral duality. Just as Badiou needs of transcendental objectivation to render the ontological discourse of set-theory proper to the Real qua pure multiple, Laruelle needs Decisional correlation as the occasion for thought to enact the non-philosophical autonomy of the radical hyle as vision-in-One and of the empirical's adequation in the last instance to it:

"With the suspension of the Principle of Sufficient Determination - the belief that Decision is sufficient to determine the Real- the bi-lateral correspondence between thought and the Real is replaced by an Identity-of-the-last-instance only, and transcendental truth becomes adequation-without-correspondence." (AT: Pg. 151; Laruelle, 2000a, Pg.239-241; 2000b, Pgs. 89-92)

The radical difference is that in Laruelle's case the radical subjectivity of the Stranger-subject is located in the indifferent and monotonous enacting of empirical Decision through determination-in-the-last-instance; Badiou places subjectivity, on the other hand, on the evental subjective intervention which disrupts the ontological order and effectuates the generic through the operation of forcing. The former's non-philosophical schema determines all its empirical occasions as adequate to the Real, while latter places subjectivity in the transformative intervention in sight of singular exceptions to the empirical order of objectivity. Perhaps this is ultimately the split between nihilistic voiding and heroic subtraction.