For Jason Hills
by Adam Robbert
Over at Immanent Transcendence, Jason Hills has been exploring (and pushing) the relationships between nominalism, universals, and realism, particularly as they are thought in the context of OOO. I find myself with a brief moment to contemplate some of the issues Jason is raising, so I’m taking the opportunity to write a quick response. Jason writes:
What’s the point? Without a realism of universals, of which the phenomenal qualities are a case, then any experience becomes arbitrary. We run into all the problems of empiricism that Hume and Berkeley exposed. Should we then seek shelter in Kant and psychologism? Qualities are law-like by-products of human experience that have no basis in external reality? No.What is at stake? Without a reality of universals, then phenomenology really is every bit of trash that most analytics think it is. This is in part why they almost universally denigrate it–because they are NOT REALISTS about universals, and thus they think that mere experience is hokum. And thus they retreat into a neo-Cartesian position of thinking that what is really real is the rational and intellectual, err … “scientific.” This was part of Husserl’s ferocious critique in the Crisis; they mathematized being and did not even realize it.
These comments arise in the context of a discussion some of us have been having over at Matt Segall’s always industrious and creative blog Footnotes To Plato. At stake seems to be the status of universals in Whitehead’s process metaphysics, and, similarly, how such notions might transfer over into OOO-land. I’m certainly open to further exploration on these topics (I don’t think any one should feel ashamed about struggling to think the status of universals in one’s philosophy, it is certainly contested and important territory), however, I do have some thoughts in response to Jason’s comments. And, for further disclosure, when I think “OOO” I do not think it apart from the important alliances it has with process philosophy, ANT, science studies, situated knowledge practices, and cosmopolitics — they all merge and depart from one another in important ways that only strengthen their role as a speculative ecosystem of thought. That said, here are some comments.
First, I’m not convinced that realism requires universals, save for perhaps one. That universal would be contingency as in Meillasoux’s “hyperchaos” (within which even the laws of physics are contingently unfolding) and/or Whitehead’s “ontological principle” (within which no actual occasion can enter into the universe from nowhere, and must rather emerge from a constitutive set of historically occurring patterns or relations). Here I have always been confused by why Whitehead would call his “eternal objects” “eternal” given that the premise of his ontological principle seems to preclude both the eternality of either entities or patterns in the universe, and the fact that his metaphysics denies any entity the ability to be outside or external to the universe (and thus not really transcendent or eternal).
I see two options here 1) re-work Whitehead’s metaphysics so that “eternal objects” actually deserve the name through a ontological justification of such entities or 2) drop the name all together and come up with a new one that better describes the formative, participatory patterns Whitehead seems to be referring to (Matt Segall seems to think that participation, in Whitehead, goes both ways from creatures to forms and vice-versa, if thats the case I again think the term “eternal” should be dropped). Here Whitehead is among the most generous of philosophers and always caveats his philosophy with an appeal to the limited nature of abstractions, Whitehead encourages a rethinking of his premises whenever necessary.
In the context of the ontological principle I don’t think contingency amounts to the same thing as arbitrary (as Jason indicates in his post). Rather, as Isabelle Stengers notes in a memorable phrase, we are not affirming the relativity of truth through the ontological principle but, rather, the truth of relativity. A difference that makes a difference if there ever was one. This also connects to Jason’s charge that, without universals, a philosophy cannot be considered properly realist. I disagree as this seems to unnecessarily equate realism with both secular and religious versions of ontotheology, which I don’t think necessarily follows from considering oneself a “realist.”
The final question lurking around these parts of discussion has to do with the ontology of numbers and mathematics. In the recent essays I have been preparing, I feel that I have made a pretty solid case for (or at least am approaching a solid case) for the ecological ontology of knowledge but, and I admit full ignorance here, have a great deal of difficulty thinking the ontology of mathematics. Here the question of universals still looms. If my very limited understanding of Badiou is correct, than he seems to be arguing that ontology is rooted in mathematics, my own line of thinking here would like take this in a more Whiteheadian direction as Badiou’s ontology — please correct me someone if I’m wrong — seems to create a new materialism that suffers from many of the same bifurcations that old dualistic materialisms suffer from (i.e., making an ontological distinction between apparent and causal nature, where for Whitehead these are integrally united in the philosophy of organism).
OK. That was more than I had planned to write and I apologize for any details I have glossed over. These are important, open-ended questions and this response hopefully can be approached as a learning moment for myself and everyone else whom might find these questions interesting.
Adam,
A few points of clarfication. I appreciate the kind response. As you see, most of your points come from, perhaps, some lack of full clarity on my part and not from disagreement (yet) between us.
First, I’m not arguing for Whitehead so much as a Peircean part of Whitehead. I primarily work in the areas of his predecessors, and do metaphysics only to support a phenomenology and not for its own sake.
Second, I never wrote “OOO,” because I do not think this is a problem for all of OOO. I do think it is a potential problem for onticology, because it acknowleges a lot of process elements. That said, I much prefer onticology to Harman’s OOO because it has process elements. Please do not infer that I am speaking directly to a tradition, as I am not, and would be wrong.
Third, I never said that “realism requires universals.” Rather, I wrote of Peircean realism about universals, and explicitly said they (realism about the external world [poor wording] and realism about universals) were separable, although they are combined in my own pragmatism position as they are in many classical views.
Fourth, contingency is not a universal. It’s an ontological primitive. This is a definitional matter.
Fifth, eternity can be had by those things that do not exist, such as mathematics, as they are unaffected by time. They are a-temporal rather than non-temporal (neutrality rather than negation). Only things that exist are affected by time. I explain this in my blog post.
Sixth, I never said that contingency is arbitrary. Most if not all cases of the coming to be of a concretion of a universal is contingent.
Thanks for these clarifications, Jason. It seems that I might be encountering the limit of my own ability to adequately separate your own points from Matt’s recent points about Whitehead and Leon’s recent post about object-oriented theology. I’ll try and do a better job of noting the distinctions in the future. I’m excited to hear more about how you see the difference between a universal and an ontological primitive.
Adam,
I missed the last sentence in my haste. Universals in the sense that I am discussing them–not a small caveat–are that which can be predicated of a subject. I use the old language to describe this, though it sounds odd to say that “green” is predicated of “leaves,” etc. The point is whether we can univocally describe a certain class of the properties of things or not. This also includes multi-predication, e.g., two-place predicates such as relations, etc.
Contingency is not a predicate per se. It is a form of predication, e.g., is it an accident or necessity that leaves are green? Accident. Now, suppose we talk about deciduous trees that give us beautiful fall colors. We could talk about the contingencies under which the leaves change color, which has a determinate probable structure.
If we are nominalists about naming (about universals), then we admit that our naming is an arbitrary artifact of how we talk about things and is not representative (poor word choice, but work with me) of things. A nominalist will say that naming cannot be representative. A realist will say that it can, and that the problem is epistemic and not metaphysical. The problem sits on the intersection of the two, btw.
I hold that there’s contingency all the way down, but that the structure of contingency (cf e.g., mathematical probability functions) is not arbitrary. Peirce used this view to argue for an evolutionary metaphysics.
Apologies–I’m running out of free time as classes loom.
Adam,
Thanks.
Part of my intent is to step in and help Matt, WWF tag-team style, as I have more experience under my belt.
I’ve said it a number of times because I think it gets lost, but I’m actually not coming from the background that most of my interlocutors have, e.g., continental & process, but pragmatism & process, which means that I’m drawing on a lot of originary and other resources that are probably not shared with my audience (except for Leon). This goes both ways. E.g., I don’t have much to say about correlationism as it was never a pragmatist problem, since our tradition never went the way of analytic or continental … and hence our ultra-minority status. The point: I might be coming from somewhere different that one anticipates unless one has my shared background, and that’s why these misunderstandings happen.
Adam,
These conversations are helping me to understand Whitehead’s eternal objects better, and for that I thank you and everyone else involved. I think part of the confusion here is that you’re trying to think eternal objects in reference to the category of existence (the ontological principle) instead of in reference to to category of explanation. Eternal objects do not exist, are not actual. They are potentials and are prehended only conceptually. Eternity, in Whitehead, participates with time in the ongoing creation of the world by providing the settled past of an occasion (or society) with its future possibilities. Eternity is not “outside” time or the universe, just as the conceptual phase of concrescence is not separate from the physical phase. They are internally related to each other, but they can still be abstractly differentiated for the sake of explanatory clarity. Perhaps it will be helpful to think of actuality and eternality/potentiality in relation to the process of concrescence bringing past and future together into a unified experiential present: the past is the feeling of settled actuality, the future is the feeling of creative potentiality. Without the prehension of eternal objects, there would be no creative advance; there’d be only repetition, blind inheritance.
Every philosopher uses words in strange ways. I think the meaning of “eternal” in Whitehead’s lexicon is clear in the context of his metaphysics. It only becomes problematic when we forget the need for translation when trying to apply his thought piecemeal to other fields where “eternity” is a bad word with oppressive connotations. Within Whitehead’s system, eternity is precisely what liberates actual occasions (or societies/organisms) from the oppression of their past.
Thanks for coming on over, Matt.
To avoid confusion, I’m using “feeling” in a non-Whiteheadian way.
Matt,
I don’t see how something can be non-existent (eternal objects) yet still have real effects (enabling creative advance). Also, the claim that without eternal objects there would only be blind repetition strikes me as extremely tendentious. Why is that so? This might seem to follow if we adopt an 18th century model of matter along the lines of Laplace, but that model of matter has been abandoned for centuries. I personally see the positing of things like eternal objects as a way of degrading the world. It says the world is not enough, that it needs supplementation by something else to be redeemed. It thereby repeats Christian narratives about the fallenness of world, justifying all sorts of attitudes towards the world and body. This is not to say, of course, that these kinds of ethical considerations should trump metaphysics, only that they are there. I haven’t yet seen a non-circular or authority based argument for the necessity of the eternal objects.
Jason,
I have a pretty extensive background in both Peirce and Dewey. My masters thesis, paradoxically written after my dissertation, was on Peirce, Derrida, and Husserl. Dewey is a constant reference point for me (and I tend to prefer him over Peirce). I am aware others have used the term phenomenology (Peirce), but it is unusual to see it evoked in this way without qualifying that you’re referring to Peirce’s concept. I disagree with your thesis that pragmatism is a minority position. I’d argue that it’s the dominant position and Anglo-American thought (Sellars, Quine, Rorty, Davidson, Brandom? Not exactly marginal figures). Given that pragmatism focuses on the human-world relationship it very much remains a correlationism. This isn’t a surprise or even a negative thing as it’s primarily focused on epistemological questions and those are questions of a particular kind of relation. In my epistemology I’m more or less a pragmatist or an instrumentalist vis a vis Dewey.
Levi,
Something can be real but non-existent per being a structure of possibility, such as mathematics. The possibilities of the cosmos are not chaotic, e.g., the laws of nature are not radically changing every second, and we pragmatists say that there are stable structures of possibility, although any concrete structure must exist. Whence the structures of possibility? We can be epistemic nominalists about this, which in an anti-realist way is defensible, but then we have to give up metaphysics. If we do not give up metaphysics, then we must address these issues. Talking about such structures is making a scholastic formal distinction for reasons of ontology, per the logic of being.
Per pragmatism as a minority position, you do not name a single classical or neoclassical pragmatist. That’s telling, because we are known almost entirely through our appropriators, the neopragmatists, rather than our actual scholarship. That is why we so often seem to come out of the blue or conflict with what people think they know about pragmatism—our history has been rewritten by our conquerors. Moreover, since you insist on the human-world relationship, you seem to have forgotten the Peirce (and Whitehead) that you just invoked, for who that would be incorrect. To be clear, calling them pragmatists is like calling Hubert Dreyfus’ Heidegger the hardcore continentalists’ Heidegger, which is absurdly false. I like Dreyfus, but not as a historian.
Finally, to presume that talking about a human-world relationship necessitates correlationism is false and totalizing. Paint with a brush that wide and you tar yourself.
Jason,
Just for the sake of clarification, within the framework of SR, correlationism is any position that holds that we cannot talk about the beings of the world independent of humans. That’s what all the SR people reject. Whitehead does not fall into this because he grants humans no privileged place within his metaphysics. Whitehead is thoroughly posthumanist in this regard, as Harman argues in much of his work and as I argue in the article I’m currently writing for The New Whitehead collection coming out with University of Minnesota Press next year. Humans are one kind of experiencer among others. With Peirce and other pragmatists it’s more difficult to say as their focus seems to be entirely upon the human-world relationship in inquiry. The point is not that we shouldn’t talk about the human-world relation, but rather that we shouldn’t treat it as a privileged relation or any different than any other type of relation. If you only ever find yourself talking about the human-world relations and find nothing significant to say about how mantis shrimps relate to moray eels or how rocks relate to the earth, then chances are you’re a correlationist. Deleuze and Whitehead are really the only two thinkers since Kant that have been outside the correlationist frame of thought. This is why there’s been such a rich and ongoing discuss between the object-oriented ontologists and the Whiteheadians. It’s not that we’re ignorant of Whitehead– most of us are deeply influenced by him, we just don’t share all aspects of his ontology –but rather that both forms of thought are working in a post-correlationist, anthrodecentric, posthumanist framework and are therefore debating ontology within this framework.
I would argue against the claim that to be focused on the human-world interaction is correlationist. To me, that’s more a political choice that a metaphysical commitment. A Peircean metaphysic need offer no special place to humans.
Jason,
That’s the question and the reason I said it’s harder to decide in the case of Peirce (and the other early American pragmatists). There are two ways of going about this. One way of going about it would be to say that Peirce et al are just focused on the human-world relation and aren’t opposed to talking about beings apart from any relation to the human at all. Here you would argue something like “given that the early American pragmatists are focused on questions of inquiry, they are necessarily focused on the human relation because this is a question of a human-world relation.” I find nothing objectionable in this. As I’ve said, my epistemology/theory of inquiry is largely pragmatist in character, drawing heavily on Dewey, and then later pragmatist thinkers such as Ian Hacking and Pickering.
Another position would be that for a thinker like Peirce it’s impossible to say anything about what the world would be like apart from humans in a way that’s metaphysically meaningful. At that point Peirce would have to be classified as a correlationist. Now, there are some good textual reasons to reject this reading of Peirce. First, there’s Peirce’s claim that man himself is a sign. This suggests that for Peirce humans do not have a metaphysically privileged place, but rather signs have a metaphysically privileged place. Signs here would exist and semiosis would take place here regardless of whether or not humans or any other living things existed. This is what I argued in my thesis. There I defended the claim that objects have a sign-structure and that semiosis is independent of humans. Peirce seems to point in the direction of a semiotic realism– in the sense that I use the term, not your scholastic usage –treating signs not a representations in human minds but as real mind-independent entities in their own right.
Levi,
It would be hard to charge correlationism to Peirce, especially given what we know of the semiotics. It’s doable to James, but still arguable. It’s hard to defend Dewey from it, if not impossible.
Everyone,
My whole stake in this conversation is simply to root out and explore any god tricks that might be lurking underneath eternal objects as a concept. I see this as an extension of Whitehead’s own project where he, rather awkwardly I think, talks about “secularizing” the concept of God. In this sense I am much more favorable to the faceless domain he calls “creativity” — which he puts before any notion of God — than I am towards some of his musings about theology.
Jason — as for the minority position sidebar, I have had similar experiences recently but with Whitehead. Not once, but twice I was having discussions with scholars at the AAR who asked, almost in identical fashion, “Wait, did Whitehead do anything after Principia Mathematica?” It was a bit of a head slapper for someone, such as myself, who roots so much of their work in Whitehead. I was commenting to Levi earlier that sometimes I feel like I live in the alternative history Shaviro uses as a construct to think about Whitehead in Without Criteria.
Adam,
Sadly, you will have to get used to that. If your experience is anything like mine, you’ll have the same problem that I have being identified as a neopragmatist despite my protestations. The neopragmatists are cousins many times removed from the historic and living tradition of pragmatism.
In that case, none of your interlocutors will know the secondary literature, or will misidentify what the secondary literature is. It’s like constantly being mistaken for your much younger brother with who you are estranged.
I do think that James, Dewey, and Peirce have a pretty venerable place in the American academy, but perhaps this is just an outsiders impression. With that said, of these three Peirce gets the shortest shrift. I think a lot of this has to do with how he published (and didn’t publish). I’m fortunate to own his collected works, but Peirce studies is difficult because so much of his stuff is in the form of sketches and revisions, and much of that stuff is not cheaply available in book form. The case is very different with Dewey and James.
Levi,
It’s an outsider’s impression. It’s nearly impossible to get a job as an Americanist except for a small number of American-friendly schools, and we have the same problem that continental does. Our categories of study just don’t map to the analytic categories that the JFP uses. The people that do get such jobs are analytics trained in classical pragmatism.
Peirce does get the short end both from analytics and–this is a flash point–from Americanists. Sadly, he’s respectable in analytic circles, but they ignore his more interesting and more pragmatic writings and thus tend to misinterpret his entire corpus. As if abduction was the only thing he did…. The following is essential:
The Commens Diction of Peircean Terms
http://www.helsinki.fi/science/commens/dictionary.html
Adam, see Leon’s post, wherein he clearly distinguishes ontological from epistemic realism, whereas I did not clearly distinguish between the two as they are so tightly knit in the Peircean legacy to pragmatism and Whitehead.
http://afterxnature.blogspot.com/2011/11/realism-and-nominalism.html
Adam, Jason:
I have a bad habit of saving my work online rather than in a preview mode – and so I tend to write drafts and publish them online momentarily (for a little while at least) as I work on them. Reading this conversation and watching it unfold I see some clear mistakes and did consider for a day or two to address the issue, however nothing that I have been working on is something that I take to be in a satisfactory enough condition to post and leave posted. It is just a bad habit of mine to post unfinished work as I type it and then delete later (easier to click ‘publish’ than to click ‘save’.)
One thought: I don’t see how you can be a radical nominalist and immanentist gone wild (“fight all forms of transcendence!) yet also be a *speculative* realist. In one of the versions of a post that I was working on I did state that now that now that the nominalists are out of the closet, that this is a HUGE problem for OOO, that is, to maintain itself as a thoroughly realist (epistemological and metaphysical) position. It may have to build a new circus tent for itself for sure – something just for their little club alone, but if the claims here represent OOO as a whole, then in addition to the problem of internal and external relations, the problem of substantialism given processurality, the problem of signification and simultaneous rejection of all transcendence, then this probably takes the cake (nominalism). (The criticism of “human-hating” or nihilism never stuck, but the others seem to have caught on.) Not that I am making these criticisms, but they are well known (shorthand versions are that OOO is Newtonian, hopelessly Parmenidean, a poor man’s version of Leibniz, and nothing more than process-philosophy lite, and so on).
Finally, Peirce is not a correlationist and neither is Whitehead. Peirce (before Whitehead) was doing these sorts of tricks long, long ago. The real problem, for me at least, is the immanentism gone wild (and thus no traction to go on other than the show of the present moment) and then the nominalism (not even a general ontological primitive to go on) asserted *with* ethics, politics, and so on. I am beginning to have my doubts about the whole formulation. I’ll keep my thoughts at bay from this point forward because I actually the situation for OOO is much worse than that – but in the world of blogs no criticism is ever taken lightly.
And note: I ask that no excerpt of this post be repeated on anyone’s website other than in comments section. It was intended as a comment, not as an address.
I think the points you are making here are coming too fast and thick to be responded to thoroughly, Leon. As is most often the case when I end up being a spokesperson for OOO theorists (which I don’t mind doing, I love thinking about this stuff!) I find myself having to ask: can we get some actual textual backing re: specific authors and their claims as cited in their published books? (Particularly in Harman’s case this seems a necessity since he already has numerous books on the topic published). For example, I don’t think the nihilism and human-hating charges “stuck” because they are not justifiable claims based on anything I have read in the published material.
Also, I hear you’re concern about nominalism and the role of speculative thinking, and they are ones I share (particularly in light of Whitehead’s critiques of subject-predicate thinking). However, I think Harman opens up a wonderful world of speculative thinking right here and now, and I hope to read more books like Circus Philosophicus in the future! However, I apparently don’t see the practice of philosophy in the same way you do. I for instance can’t see OOO as simply “process philosophy lite” or a “poor man’s Leibniz” because I see all three in a tradition of speculative philosophy that merges, departs, and reinforces itself through discussions such as these. I also do not see these traditions as competitors for the crown of metaphysics (feel free to count me out if thats what we’re trying to do…)
Pragmatically, OOO has opened the doors for me to make important connections between Whitehead’s speculative philosophy, Levinasian ethics, and ecology (Whitehead, for example, is enormously poor in conceptualizing alterity in a way OOO isn’t, which is enormously helpful). I couldn’t have done this without Harman’s work (and Latour’s, Haraway’s, and Stengers’s whom I view as his contemporaries). In short, I think we’re out for different things in our philosophizing, and I think its a bit radical to claim that OOO is in any big trouble. The fun is just getting started…
Leon,
I do think that some of your words are too hasty and over-the-top. I am guessing as I am not an OOO scholar, but I bet I am right. I agree with Adam that you would need to be specific for any charges to stick. I had to write a whole dissertation and several articles to get my charges against pragmatism to stick–only afterward did anyone believe me. But I did have to do it, and perhaps this is future (current?) work for you.
My method–see above–has been to present the basic skeleton of a position, e.g., nominalism, and argue against that as a bridge to specific positions of particular thinkers, e.g., Whitehead and Peirce.
Side note. My post about moral nominalism was written completely independently of this discussion, which I now note in a comment.
Adam, Jason:
I completely agree that my comment *is* hasty and over-the-top (which is why I would like for it to remain that, just a comment). Typing without qualifications, no doubt. Part of my response – which I deleted (!!!) – was that I don’t blog to philosophize in detail – as in a mini-treatise, but rather just to discuss philosophy with the motive being that that discussion will motivate me to do philosophy (which it does). Most of my heavy philosophy backpacking, so to speak, happens when I write to publish. So if the comment comes off as, hmmm, dismissive without qualification, or hasty, or too thick to address … I would agree.
So, again, blogging is just a discussion (for me, at least). But then I agree with you, Adam, that thinking about this stuff is fun, and the fun gets even more exciting once we take these ideas and run with them in our own projects, bouncing ideas off each other.
I have to reiterate: I didn’t create the charges of nihilism or “poor man’s Leibniz” (I actually think it was a “warmed over Leibniz” – but Adam, you would have to check Graham’s blog for that). Of course nihilism didn’t stick because it wasn’t justifiable, but it was also one of the more far-out there claims being made against OOO. Nominalism wouldn’t upon face seem like such a huge problem, but it actually is – and I think that in your post you agreed vis-a-vis what a speculative position entails.
Is OOO in “trouble?” Not really, but I do think that there are some huge problems with it as I see it drawn up so far. I capitalized “huge” not to be dramatic but just to indicate that what I take to be some of its starting and fundamental theses haven’t been adequately unpacked or defended *in the literature*. A sustained discussion would pull each “charge” and take a look.
Thick meant to generalize (but not without the opportunity for qualification). I spent two days (!!!) typing up a post on realism and nominalism, and I think Jason was the only one who got to reading it – the only one in our little group of blogs, that is. I then thought, gosh, I could be putting this into the form of an article and felt incredibly guilty. And so thickness and hasty generalizations ensue – five minutes to give my thoughts on a subject, of course it could be toned down and qualified. But rest assured, how we do philosophy is probably similar – I just tend to rush what should perhaps be taken more slowly; yet, in blogs I find myself just not being able to do that and not feeling guilty at the same time. If that makes sense let me know.
I’ll post this and try to make a razor point in my next comment.
Leon,
I agree with your general assessment of the “lightness” of blogging, although I tend to be much more technical and detailed, but in free and open way that I am not allowed to do in print, because they’ll want a zillion citations and discussions of *all* the relevant literature just to say *anything*. Only recognized scholars, who are invited to submit, get away with trimming this aspect of discourse while publishing in dead-tree-carcass.
Side comment. Thinking “flat ontology” and “ethics” really worries me, because I’ve seen soooo much emphasis on the non-human, that I fear that the ethical problems of humans falls into the background. When I am assured that this is not the case, I find a hard time believing it, because I don’t believe that from ANY philosophical position, but especially those that do not bring it in focus. That said, I think it’s really an issue of over-emphasis to counter-act the current dominant anthropo-centric milieu and not something intrinsic … but it still makes me uneasy.
Razor comment in as few sentences as possible: OOO claims to be part of the speculative realist camp; there are OOO radical immanentists who are nominalists as well. Nominalism denies universality as it does transcendental principles. There is nothing “more than” or “beyond” immanence (“fight all forms of transcendence!”) Even if contingency is added to the immanent, without a transcendental principle for that to hold (as necessary) then the very traction required for ethics, the possibility of ethics, fails. One is caught in the “show of the present moment “- whether epistemologically (universals apart from the mind that hold statistically or which happen to “flare” contingently or concresce) or metaphysically (absolute contingency yielding to a transcendental principle that is not itself contingent: namely, the necessity of contingency). Even Santayana’s skeptical moments were grounded in a naturalism whose ethics took Platonic (aesthetic) harmony as its ideal. But that is precisely the point: in a nominalism with a flat ontology the ideal is synonymous (identical) with what is present-at-hand. There is no “world beyond” – laterally speaking, as in an ideal geared toward a meaningful future; there is no “more” to experience. In fact, this sort of nominalism is a perfect set-up for the lapse back into correlationism as the link between the agent’s ethical will and other agents (objects) is absolutized in a correlation not only immanentized, but “immediatized” – as in, brought near temporally in a chain of immanents that knows no short term telic goal, just the influx of an immediate next moment.
But Harman’s ontology is not synonymous with what is present-at-hand, this is precisely his point. For Harman (and for Alphonso Lingis before him) objects are not just withdrawing in the Heideggerian sense of being concealed from view or from use, they are also issuing imperatives. Each entity, from an OOO point of view, is caught in negotiations with every other entity it comes into contact with in the realm of what we might call, using Whitehead’s language, “presentational immediacy.” But what is in fact underlying this fireworks display of relationality, according to Harman, (and pulling these entities together) is their withdrawn nature which, a la Levinas, are issuing ethical imperatives that draw our attention (physical or intentional) toward them (Harman calls this “allure” in Guerrilla Metaphysics). It is in this encounter — marked by the irreducible alterity between entities — within which the imperative forms itself as a sense of care-for other beings i.e., an ethics of attentiveness to the imperatives issued. In this context there is a concept of infinity in Harman’s OOO, which may satisfy some of the concerns you have (though this infinity is present in the finitude of the here and now, not transcendentally — sounds like some good speculative realism to me!)
An aside: does Whitehead’s God really solve any of these problems? I recognize that as a structural solution what Whitehead calls “God” is necessary in his metaphysics, but I’m not sure that what Whitehead refers to when he is speaking of God is anything like what most people understand the word God to mean (same goes for eternal objects, which apparently are not subject to the ontological principle…)
I’m educated guessing as this is beyond my expertise.
1. Much of what you describe in Harman, of which I have limited knowledge, appears to assume a conceptual framework that I would reject. This means little if it weren’t for the second point.
2. If I reject this framework, and these are not even on Whitehead’s radar, should I expect either Whitehead or myself to address what I consider to be pseudo-problems?
Now for the guessing part: I presume there’s a lot to what you say to which I am unfamiliar. Feel free to be the first to educate me, but what I’ve read of Harman is untenable for me.
The point: This doesn’t work as an external critique as stated; please show me how it has hooks.
I’m running out the door, but have questions that would help me respond. 1) I’m not sure what part of the conceptual framework you are rejecting, nor do I know what your understanding of Harman is. 2) Shouldn’t we all be re-evaluating, in a more-or-less continuous way, what we consider “pseudo-problems,” or are you comfortable saying you have it all figured out? Till later…
Response.
1) Substance and Withdrawal. Why? I think I should do more personal reading before you waste your time answering for me, but the primers and primary/secondary articles I’ve read have been unconvincing.
2) If we’re re-evaluating all the time, mentioning that is redundant. Rather, you have to figure out in any given case whether your interlocutor is earnest when they say that, because it’s soooo easy to say.
Adam,
To bounce back to your explanation of Harman. I, too, have problems with his conceptual scheme (like Jason mentions in his post). Your post pointed to mine actually addresses what I find most valuable in OOO (but I want to reiterate that as I *start* from these theses I radically *depart* from them, if not *oppose what follows after them* given the fact that I now have come to understand that OOO endorses a full-blown nominalism and cannot be compatible with *speculative* realism, being locked in the immanent and rejecting “all forms of transcendence” – not a good move at all, as I see it).
#1. deanthropocentrism
#2. the withdrawal of objects that
#3. calls attention to each object’s own infinite worth
#4. (an inference on my part) the infinite given from within the finite
#5. my own point about the univocity of value given #1 and in object-oriented theology the prescision of the divine-function and “God-Object” by #1-#4 through a reading of Meillassoux, Deleuze, Whitehead, and Peirce
But, if you add nominalism and an immanentism with no restrictions to any of the above, you not only lose the claim to be a realist, you lose the possibility for ethics – you can never get beyond just one presentation nor get traction for anything “beyond” a particular. You are going to need at least one universal to do ethics; whether that be in semiotic or ecological terms, whether it be the principle of non-contradiction or principle of sufficient reason, you’ll need one translation device to move the whole thing as you go from particular to particular. Without such a device the range of ethics is arbitrary.
This part: ok, talking about “thick.” Too thick to get into here, but the razor answer: Yes, Whitehead’s God does solve alot of these problems, I think. And his God means nothing like the common conception of God. That is why, being influenced by Whitehead, at least, that I find myself using language like “deity,” “divine-function,” and “God-Object.”
“An aside: does Whitehead’s God really solve any of these problems? I recognize that as a structural solution what Whitehead calls “God” is necessary in his metaphysics, but I’m not sure that what Whitehead refers to when he is speaking of God is anything like what most people understand the word God to mean (same goes for eternal objects, which apparently are not subject to the ontological principle…)”
This will be my last post but I may check in tomorrow to see what has transpired toward Jason’s questions. These exchanges are actually helpful. If I can limit myself to the essentials only then I am good. As soon as I try to include more than time permits I make broad sweeps and the angle of vision opens up too wide, and thus you get “thick.” Adam, I am thinking that there has to be a way to take blogging and interacting with comments and molding that into an article. I have that empathy and animals post that would be a nice small article and was looking to work with that. It fits with a course that I am teaching next semester which will involve aesthetics, presentational immediacy, empathy, and so on.
I think Whitehead gives you withdrawal without returning to an ontology of substances. Adam and I have been trying to figure this out for months, and I will admit that Whitehead does sometimes seem to reduce occasions to their relations, since in time (and his is a process metaphysics after all), no occasion or society of occasions ever remains identical to itself. There are no enduring substances, only enduring societies.
However, withdrawal can be saved due to the technical features of Whitehead’s system. Whitehead risks a set of abstractions by analyzing an indivisible moment of concrescence into its component parts. An occasion can be said to be withdrawn from its relations at a certain point in the process: just before it passes over from a subject to a superject, precisely when its relations are self-characterized or decided upon as the complex character of eternal objects to be included in its experience, there and then it is withdrawn from every other occasion. At this slice of time in the process of concrescence, abstractly analyzed, the occasion is dipping below the surface into eternity while still riding upon the wave of time. The “who” experiencing the world in this or that way at the molten core of an occasion is God; and though allured by the world, and the world by it, God is withdrawn from immediate contact with it. Granted, God isn’t making a totally free decision in any given occasion. Only Creativity is totally free. God, unlike Creativity, must deal with the emotional consequences of prior actions.
We should not forget Harman’s fascination with occasionalism.
We all want some kind of withdrawal… the question for me is whether we want to bring back substance ontology or theology in order to get it. I’d rather do theology, maybe only because I’m more of a Platonist than an Aristotelian.
Here’s a Platonist for you:
“…every visible and invisible creature can be called a theophany, that is, a divine apparition. For…the more secretly it is understood, the closer it is seen to approach the divine brilliance. Hence the inaccessible brilliance of the celestial powers is often called by theology ‘Darkness.’”
– John Scotus Eriugena from Periphyseon
[...] important discussion continues to unfold in the comment section of this post over at Knowledge-Ecology. We are trying to figure out what metaphysical work Whitehead’s [...]
Matt,
Matt: I, too, would rather choose (process) theology over a (modified) substance ontology. This decision is, for the moment, led by intuition but also by the elegance of the theory – in substantialism (without process theology behind it) there are just too many pitfalls, more pitfalls with OOO doing the substantialism. Either one chooses to go with it or not, and I have opted to go with it. But there is also my point of departure from OOO. In the rear-view mirror I just wonder how, given so many pitfalls (especially now with the whole nominalism thing), that OOO can hold itself together. Sorry, things are getting thick here! To answer Jason earlier: no, OOO as such isn’t a topic of research for me, but speculative naturalism and object-oriented theology is. No one (to my knowledge) has published in electronic or print the criticisms that have bee floating around for about the past year or so, regarding OOO. In any case, I appreciate both Plato and Aristotle and perhaps we could choose both, having our cake and eating it, too. I think you can – if you (like Euregena) take infinitude to be available within the finite.
That was a brilliant quote – I would like to steal that for my blog.
Per your quote, somewhere in ‘Difference and Repetition’ Deleuze speaks of the “celestial vault” and the “bright abyss.” Some won’t go near Deleuze and theology/religion but Mary Bryden’s edited volume is great. Rather than going on Whitehead alone I use precisely these points in Deleuze (and to a lesser degree Meillassoux and Peirce, although those two are pretty close on the issue of virtuality).
There needs to be a definitive print or electronic statement regarding how and in what ways Whitehead’s God solves these problems; or at least an attempt. Matt, it sounds like you and Adam are doing that.
To close: Adam, Matt, Robert: I am thinking about creating a space on my blog (on the side bar, perhaps) where I can post rough drafts or beginnings of papers that were based off of blog posts or blog exchanges. My realism and nominalism idea could be a small paper on its own already, as the other thing I wrote about animals grieving, empathy, univocity of value.
Perhaps one last comment before I regroup to think through everything we have discussed here more clearly (thanks for the discussion everyone). It bears upon the point about “the range of ethics being arbitrary” without some universal principle. Now, I’ve stated previously (perhaps too cryptically) that I think the ontological principle is actually a move to ecologize the cosmos and in that sense, as far as I am concerned, the contingency of the universe is grounded in an ecological principle.
Where does this leave us vis-a-vis ethics? We can return to Harman and Levinas for a moment. What I didn’t explicitly include about the imperatives issued amongst entities is that the infinity within finitude (which Levinas finds in the “face to face”) comes prior to the formation of any particular subject. For Levinas, it is this infinite which in fact calls forth and constitutes the subject-as-subject (i.e., the imperative calls forth a being which can be drawn towards it). These relations have the character of being religious, but not theological (here I am less happy with Levinas). At least this is my reading of Totality and Infinity.
Harman’s tweak to this is that there is no reason we should limit this line of thinking to human-human contact, and instead generalizes it to object-object interactions in general. So, it seems to me, that this Levinasian infinite which exists between all things, drawing them forth, and constituting them as subjects, bears some significant semblance to Whitehead’s notion of creativity (the infinite lure drawing things towards one another). In this sense, we actually have a concrete basis for a non-arbitrary OOO ethics, that is grounded in ontology, respects alterity, and doesn’t appeal to an ontotheological argument, at least not in any traditional sense.
I’m with Adam on “ecological principle.”
Can we have unity without universals? The former implies integration, integrity, wholeness, while the latter demands sameness.
However, I do not see how Adam’s last point follows. What is the origin of good and bad, of both normative and descriptive value, in this OOO space? I do not see such arising from creativity, which does contain a neo-teleological principle btw, but this gets us power or purpose and not good or bad. To put it another way, how do we go from a Nietzschean will-to-power (one way I can interpret object-object interactions or bare creativity), to something more recognizable as an ethic … or is Nietzsche all we have?
I am not meaning to say that the mentioned thinkers cannot handle this—just that I do not see how they do which may be lack of knowledge on my part. I also do not see how what you propose solves this problem, because as described we fall into the Nietaschean problem. Aside, Leon has a God principle that I suspect gets him out of that problem. (Apologies for the name “God principle” as that sounds a bit disrespectful, but I’m short on time.)
Adam,
I think the arbitrariness of an ethics without a universal (or transcendental principle) behind it just means that one cannot have consistency (required for valuation involving “rightness” and “wrongness”) without a general to unite particular and particular in rightness or wrongness. Without such a principle, what I would refer to as “ground,” the arbitrariness issues from a nominalistic viewpoint that cannot escape its own immediate present being *unrelated* to anything else, a relativism (not realism) relegated to its own viewpoint as a particular. In other words, there is simply no ground from which to judge the rightness or wrongness of actions other than the object looking out from its own viewpoint. If you introduce another object at that moment, encountering sensations from another object, then in that immediate present you have introduced a third: the relation between two objects. The problem is that some form of generality is required to group two particulars at that point – *as* two objects in an ethical transaction of sensa, intensities, value, or whatever terms you choose to describe rightness and wrongness. Otherwise an ethical relation between them is impossible – thus “transcendental” because object and object are superseded in a relation. With this stated I don’t understand how transcendental principle equal “an ontotheological argument”? I can only imagine that with a banner of “fight all forms of transcendence!” that nothing other than moral nominalism (ethical relativism) can result.
To assert that a general principle or transcendental ground is required for the possibility of ethics is not “foundationalism” (i.e. “modern”) because that principle can itself either be statistically generated and held through the interaction of particulars (and thus looks absolutely nothing like a Kantian would hold); it can be a priori given as a measure of harmony or disharmony (beauty of ugliness) given a value of contrasting intensities (an ethics arising from a general aesthetic principle of contrasts – e.g., Hartshorne or some of the German Romantics) or it take the shape of an a posteriori matrix of intensities created by particulars and their contributive values (an ecological ethics of value-intensities – e.g. Hartshorne, Whitehead). It seems that you were suggesting this third option, if I understood you correctly. But, in the end, without that principle or ground your whole system goes; moral nominalism and skepticism is the result.
To Jason’s point: “God principle” … no offense taken. I refer to it as the “divine-function.” A problem with Meillassoux, and where the conversation here is headed is that one assumes metaphysics and transcendental principles must imply “onto-theology” – which simply means ultimate substantial ground and first Being; i.e. Thomistic substance ontology of God. While Whitehead fits with Thomistic metaphysics, Whitehead’s God is certainly different, non-onto-theological at least in one respect. What I am developing in speculative naturalism/object-oriented theology starts with that union and advocates a hyper-realism that goes beyond OOO’s nominalism; and a hyper-empirical metaphysics that exhibits a “divine-function” as the ground of nature, conducive to a virtual object whose integrity demands the name “God” (hence a “God-Object.”)
Leon — I don’t have much time here, but I still would like to problematize the universal by pointing to the fact that universals have historically acted mostly as methods of subordination. To be sure this is not all they do (the point is not to think in terms of simple causality), which is why I situate the idea of universals ecologically rather than transcendentally.
Universals cause just as much (if not more) problems for ethics than they solve, particularly in the context inter/post/decolonial, international, intercultural, and religious contexts (Roland Farber’s anthology is I think one of the first attempts to think Whitehead in these areas). In that sense Latour’s notion of composition seems more apt as this requires recognizing that universals operate within networks, and not outside of them.
In this sense universals are what Whitehead calls abstractions, and to think of them as something else would, I think, violate both his ontological principle and his reading of Creativity (not to mention qualify as an act of misplaced concreteness). In this I perhaps disagree with much Whitehead scholarship, but I think I stand closer to Whitehead’s spirit. Thus “composing” ethics is something that will always happen within the context of contingent, complex, and incommensurable positions.
From an ecological perspective, then, nominalism nor universals are, a priori (i.e. before a specific collective is composed), good nor bad vis-a-vis ethics, but are situated within the contexts where they act and effect relations, even has neither is limited to its relations. This places human actions before the universal, even if the “universal” can play its part as an actor. This is the basis of cosmopolitics, and I think it generates quite a powerful ethic.
p.s.
The ecological principle need not be a proper ground. It can just be a context, a quasi-ground. That works or does not depending upon how we articulate it.
As for what Adam says of universals, we can address most of those concerns just by specifying a better definition of what we mean by “universal,” which the post-modern sensibility often understands only to be “violent force perpetrated on others.” That’s a political concern that is separable.
Concerning the ecological perspective and universals, again, he’s politicized “universal” in a non-necessary manner here. “Universal” as a logical term does not necessitate all the things that he’s worried about. In fact, fear of universals can cause problems. Before we get into any of that, we should ask, universal what?
Leon,
Let us finally distinguish metaphysical and epistemic nominalism, which I will also do through comparing historic positions. If one is the former, then I cannot see how one will achieve a universal or transcendent principle for morality. However, morality is still possible if we are willing to define it differently, e.g., Nietzschean will to power. Perhaps “morality” is the system of subjugation by which the monad of force. The problem here is that the valuation of good and evil appears arbitrary, and even if not, the distinction is perhaps trivial. Let us step down from metaphysical to epistemic nominalism. Hume and Mill give us a non-arbitrary morality from epistemic nominalism, so we know that’s possible. There is still a unifying principle, e.g., the biology of the moral sentiments, in Hume’s case that might be called transcendent, although that case is harder to make in Mill. Note that I refer to “biology” as a principle. Concerning achieving generality from nominalism, note that both Hume and Mill achieve generality. They do not, however, succeed in convincing anyone (if it could be said they tried) that they were not relativists. Hume at least gives us good reasons for why the standards of morality might converge, since the moral sentiments naturally tend towards their proper object and are universal. Since Mill argues that for the most part the moral sentiments are educated, not innate, he cannot so easily claim that. This is one reason why he moves to talk of pleasure.
I give these as historic examples of what Leon talks about in his second paragraph, about a general or transcendent(al) ground not needing to be foundationalism.
Post scriptum:
What I mean by “ground” or “transcendental principle” sounds like what Jason (and Adam) mean by “ecological principle.” But we’d have to discuss that.
It seems to be a balancing act between the many and a one – particulars and their ever-increasing totality that we take to be a real general but not a thing “per se” (nature is not a thing, the one not a thing, and so on).
“The many become one and are increased by one,” as put by Whitehead?
Short on time to, but let me address as quickly as I can:
“universals have historically acted mostly as methods of subordination. To be sure this is not all they do (the point is not to think in terms of simple causality), which is why I situate the idea of universals ecologically rather than transcendentally.”
>>Absolutely, but as I pointed out, there is something as an ecological principle, no? Why can’t it serve as the “non-subordinational” universal – as in Meillassoux’s “the one transcendental principle which itself is necessary (not contingent) is this: everything is contingent.”
“Latour’s notion of composition seems more apt as this requires recognizing that universals operate within networks, and not outside of them.”
>>Again, I agree. Of those three transcendentals I mentioned none are “outside of the network,” so to speak (that is, absolutely beyond the world, or in terms utterly supernatural; if anything “supernatural” it is the supreme ground operating from within the world, the “world beyond”). Even an a priori principle of transcendence need not necessarily be “supernatural” or “out of network.” (I do not endorse the a priori principle, see below.)
“Thus “composing” ethics is something that will always happen within the context of contingent, complex, and incommensurable positions.”
>> True, but the “what” of the composed is ontologically equal to the “how” of the composing, otherwise the fallacy of misplaced concreteness and nominalism is the result: thus the principle of ontological parity. Neither generals created or particulars creating are more “real” than the other, neither holds priority whether in causal, temporal or ontological terms.
From an ecological perspective, then, nominalism nor universals are, a priori (i.e. before a specific collective is composed), good nor bad vis-a-vis ethics, but are situated within the contexts where they act and effect relations, even has neither is limited to its relations. This places human actions before the universal, even if the “universal” can play its part as an actor.
>> In attempting to say that actions must precede the universal the very meaning and possibility of action(s) is called into question. One cannot say that particulars are the “really real” elements of experience and the general the after-effect.
To place human action *before* this “groundless” ground eliminates the very possibility of meaning (ethics, politics, valuation) and is to fall back into the correlationist circle (i,e, nominalism). I am not saying that neither ground nor particular reference the other, and I am not saying that one is ontologically more real than the other – but I cannot say that without particulars there would be no ground; again, this is correlationism. Particulars (objects) require an object-less in order to make distinctions relevant (particularly for ethics), as again, without the real distinction between two objects formulated by a third then the range of ethics (consistency, the meaning of rightness and wrongness, good, and evil) becomes arbitrary.
I would agree that good and evil do not apply to the transcendental itself – it is the very possibility for good or for evil.
Please don’t take these pithy responses as a bad or condescending attitude – I am just short on time here and have to grade this afternoon. I’ll check back in as frequently as I can, however. Please feel free to address other’s posts as well (Jason had some good questions too I thought).
I’m still in appreciation of the dialogue here guys, and am still (unfortunately) responding in between other tasks! If we were doing this in person I would have demanded that we grab a beer and talk it out in a nicely lit pub by now. Here’s a response anyway…
Jason — universals are sociopolitical on ontological grounds in my estimation (and in Latour’s). The cosmos is a social space long before the arrival of humans. In that sense its not an “uh oh, here comes all that postmodernism” moment but a cosmopolitical moment (I should also point out again that I stressed the ecological character of universals specifically to anticipate, and hopefully nullify, the comments you made anyway — I guess I was not successful!). Jason, I think we have a more basic disagreement: you keep calling for more attention to epistemic vs metaphysical nominalism which is curious given that we are all to some extent Whiteheadians and in that sense should have a more integrated view of the epistemic/metaphysical split. Perhaps its a helpful analytical distinction though. Anyway, I’m not advocating for a politics that overrides logic, nor am I interested in the rather archaic notion of an apolitical logic or ontology either — these distinctions, to me, smack of modernism/postmodernism. We are always already political in an ontological sense (the cosmos is a social space!), which leads me to my response to Leon…
Leon — You’re qualification is absolutely correct. Humans do not arrive before the universal as though we are a blank slate. We bring, in a Whiteheadian sense, all of history with us to any situation. This includes sociopolitical history thought within the ontological parity of cosmological history (the two don’t actually constitute two domains, but its maybe a helpful analytic distinction similar to what Jason has been saying). In this sense your right to question the value of any action that purports to precede a universal, and I should have clarified this point further. However, at this point I am confused (again!). What you are arguing for above is more or less in line with what I believe, and also seems to be an argument for immanence, but I also feel that a big part of what you feel passionate about in this discussion is a taming of immanence. If the universal or transcendental (however construed) is mixed in, participates with, is contingent upon, and unfolds dynamically with then this makes it, so far as I can see, immanent (save for the withdrawal, which is not occurring “elsewhere” and is not particular to universals). Finally, you wrote: “Particulars (objects) require an object-less in order to make distinctions relevant (particularly for ethics), as again, without the real distinction between two objects formulated by a third then the range of ethics (consistency, the meaning of rightness and wrongness, good, and evil) becomes arbitrary.” I’m totally fine with that third object being something like “the Earth Community.” If you want to call that transcendental then we are in good shape.
Maybe a year or two ago Matt and I mused that ecology would be the mediating factor that transformed the immanence/transcendence debate. I think continues to become more true every day…
Adam,
I saw that coming before you wrote it. The political is inescapable for various reasons, including ontological ones, but we are then equivocating on “ontology” without further forthcoming qualifications. Rather, the issue is what role the political should play in various methodologies. I say that when doing speculative metaphysics, the political should recede to the background unless we have a reason to bring it to the foreground. I do not think that an ecological move qua ecological solves those problems; I think it depends on the concrete details.
Our abductive critera for adequate hypotheses always involve politics. However, once chosen, we should let the political dimension fade into the background. Else, we are politicizing ontology as a battleground.
Aside, there is a difference between epistemic and ontological nominalism, although the difference is wide or moot depending upon one’s respective position. When I’m doing process epistemology, my starting point is human conscious experience. That is not the case for ontology, because I make a speculative leap beyond that through abductive logic.
Short on time…..
Short on time as well but wanted to leave a nice reply: good and *productive* conversation that really engendered some interesting ideas.
It seems Adam has gone for the ecological, Jason for the pragmatic and phenomenological, and myself and Matt the theological. It all seems to work in a web of sorts, with productive overlap if certain terms are modified to a slight degree.
Pragmatic= ultimate aim human amelioration.