A gorgeous statement from
Quentin Meillassoux in
After Finitude (p.48) - which I mostly agree with:
"…we must understand that what distinguishes the philosopher from the non-philosopher in this matter is that only the former is capable of being astonished (in the strong sense) by the straightforwardly literal meaning of the ancestral statement. The virtue of transcendentalism does not lie in rendering realism illusory, but in rendering it astonishing, i.e. apparently unthinkable, yet true, and hence eminently problematic. ... The arche-fossil enjoins us to track thought by inviting us to discover the 'hidden passage' trodden by the latter in order to achieve what modern philosophy has been telling us for the past two centuries is impossibility itself: to get out of ourselves, to grasp the in-itself, to know what is whether we are or not".
One caveat: the “grasping” is ultimately not going to happen within “thought”, but through the collapse of thinking upon the foundations set by our visceral intimacy with the world. “Thought” is not the royal road - but a refraction of what comes before it. The way out of the ‘correlationist’ dilemma, then, is attenuation to that which is prior to the correlation itself; namely, the Flesh.
“There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra; Part I, Chapter 4, "On the despisers of the body"(1885).
One caveat: the “grasping” is ultimately not going to happen within “thought”, but through the collapse of thinking upon the foundations set by our visceral intimacy with the world. “Thought” is not the royal road - but a refraction of what comes before it. The way out of the ‘correlationist’ dilemma, then, is attenuation to that which is prior to the correlation itself; namely, the Flesh.
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14 comments:
I am in complete agreement with you -- wonderfully adduced! "Visceral" is a great buzzword. Nietzsche's statement is a portal to the visceral.
I recently made a study of an interesting philosopher named Prashant Parikh in the U.S., who has attempted to bring the analytic and continental traditions a bit closer together, while emphasizing the necessity of synthesizing the notions of reference and use from the former under the rubric "equilibrium semantics". Parikh, however, begins by separating pre-symbolic consciousness from symbolic consciousness, without focusing much attention on the nexus of interactions integrating the distance of pre- and post- parsed consciousness.
There is actually a similar problem for the continental side. The deepest philosophy just doesn't seem capable of clearly organizing its wisdom when it comes to the body!
Today I am going to do us all a favor, first by finding Antonio Damasio's new book, and then reading it in toto. We need a profusion of perspectives on this continuum of the visceral texture of the apparently symbolic.
For what it's worth, I also like some developments in quantum biology, especially from Hameroff and Bandyopadhyay, two names the analytic and continental thinkers all will hopefully be witness to some day soon.
peace // cameron
Interesting; I'll have to look into Parikh.
I make a similar (formal) distinction between "pre-symbolic consciousness" and "symbolic consciousness", but I refer to them in the difference between "experience" (which is visceral, direct) and "knowledge" (which is conceptual, translative). Knowledge is supplemental and secondary to raw experience.
Of course, in actuality, our embodied cognitive capacities are more integrated than such a formal distinction suggests, but the point, i think, is that no matter what language game we want to play we are never too far away from the visceral reality of being-in-the-world.
I think most philosophers have a hard time remembering they are primates before they are PhDs. They work with ideas and concepts so much that they can lose track of the fact that they are first and foremost situated beings in direct contact with the flesh and flow of a world that is anterior to everything they want to assume.
all the best,
m-
Beneath the diversity of subjectivities there is a plane of organic and material interfaces.
michael~~
"the “grasping” is ultimately not going to happen within “thought”, but through the collapse of thinking upon the foundations set by our visceral intimacy with the world."
You know I am mostly in agreement with you about the primacy of praxis, so I hope you won't take this as combative; but I am not sure Meillassoux will agree with your amendment, because what you so aptly call our "visceral intimacy w/ the world" is contingent in a way that the extremity of thought is not. This extremity is (following Meillassoux following Badiou), mathematics, and this is why he thinks that only the "mathematizable" can be the "in-itself". (If I am mis-reading Q.M. here, I would love to be corrected). This is why he (M.) says we grasp via thought. Ultimately, I think our engagement with the world is contingent in every respect, and this is probably what makes me an unregenerate correlationist, though I am perfectly happy to radicalize the correlation.
@skholiast:
You never have to worry about me getting offended B. I love debate (even some fair combat). Just say it like you see it! And, besides, I know your M.O (to a certain extent) and you probably couldn't help being a good guy if your tried.
As for Meillassoux, I agree with you that he wouldn't want to frame the "grasping" the way I do. But, i think, Meillassoux and many other metaphysicians miss the significance of appeals (like mine) to embodiment in matters of episteme and ontology. I think it is precisely the nature of flesh’s radical contingency that it brings us closest to the real. Without the presence of flesh (in both its most immediate forms and its ‘ancestral’ traces) I don’t think it’s possible to get beyond Kant. That is to say, the reality and experience of pre-conceptual embodiment affords us a direct (but partial) continuity with the material-energetic world – and grounds all extremities of thought a priori.
And even if we accept Meillassoux’s (Badiou’s) claim that mathematics is the only symbolic (thought-based) method to approximate reality, we still have the ever-present visceral plane linking us (darkly) to Being as such.
If we suspend our thought-mythologies (our ridiculous models of human knowledge) and attend to the world as is it doesn’t take long to realize just how much we are at home in the world. Every subsequent language game, for me, must flow from a ‘radical’ pre-conceptual intimacy in the world.
The only way out of correlationism is through.
"The only way out of correlationism is through."
Damn! You said it, but I'm stealing it! (It's at least half true, and that's the half I'm stealing).
@skholiast
Sure, perhaps the only good thought i ever had and your are stealing it! Now i'll have to go back to blogging about keg parties and Lady Gaga... thanks.
Even if you grant the criterion of mathematizability, it seems to me that whatever the actual superphysics of the world turns out to be it is already true right now, and thus, the flesh is already mathematized in a crucial sense.
That human knowledge hasn't hacked the universe is contingency.
The waterbug suspended on the surface of the pond is mathematized.
I don't see a problem thus in fitting radical pre-conceptual contingency with an ontology of the mathematics of irreducible multiplicity and epistemes rooted in decisions as events.
Cameron: ...the flesh is already mathematized in a crucial sense..
michael: in what sense is that? I grant that mathematical thinking and methods can tell us things about 'flesh', as evidenced in quantitative biology and such, but Flesh is prior to all conceptuality and is never enveloped by it. You can't mathematize a punch in the face. It is what it is outside of our interpretation of it.
cameron: The waterbug suspended on the surface of the pond is mathematized.
michael: again, in what sense? i agree we can superimpose math on non-mathematic contingencies, but there is much about the waterbug and pond that exceeds all our superimpositions. the waterbug has what i call an 'onto-specificity' about it, inherent as its embodied actuality that is richer than what hominid symbolics can compute.
cameron: I don't see a problem thus in fitting...
michael: it's not the "fitting" i worry about, but the explaining away and confusing for that gives me nightmares.
Math is a great 'tool', agreed, but it can only ever tell a partial story about the world...
but maybe i'm missing your point? If you restate maybe I can understand better?
thanks for your thoughts...
This will have to be in Two Parts:
Consider the argument from Michio Kaku about the possible existence of organisms one million years more mathematically advanced than ourselves. Kaku delineates a progression of civilization, from type zero to type four. A type zero civilization is struggling to gain the mathematical knowledge to build a planetary communication system. Type one corresponds to controlling the occurrence of natural disasters (earthquakes and hurricanes etc) and channeling the raw energy of the sun to human uses. Kaku's claim is that we are on the verge of becoming a type one civilization during this century. We are capable of systemic bioengineering, for example, but do not understand completely temporal patterns and effects. As we focus on biology, we mathematize physiology to eventually counteract ageing and chronic disease, incrementally. These are hallmarks of a type zero civilization beginning to transform itself.
For Kaku, mathematics is the fulcrum of this transformation. The temporal scope of this view lends itself to extensive transformational perspectives. One can begin to imagine, then, a civilization, say, one million years further along the transformational course than we are presently. The mathematization of physiology has transformed contingencies of embodiment. Hacking the universe has produced new education systems, enculturation patterns, linguistic systems, and means of production.
In such a scenario, imagine these advanced beings-in-the-world looking back on the waterbug standing on pond water. The waterbug was already mathematized, even back then. The universe itself is the mathematizable plane.
Now, I grant your objection that there is much about the waterbug and pond that exceed our superimpositions. Our mathematics as a linguistic system is in its infancy. We think there is some mathematical interpretation of pre-conceptual contingency, but this is a pipedream and perhaps an elimitivist threat.
For some of the Platonist theoreticians, of course, we ourselves and the universe are mathematical. On this view our interpretive schema are embedded within mathematical structures whose potency yields non-conceptual contingencies. There is a psychological separation from the mathematical that itself is mathematical. Basically, though, the 'Platonist' view is that organisms are acquiring an imperfect understanding of what their non-conceptual experience is, and what we experience as the non-conceptual is a truly mathematical domain, albeit non-symbolic.
When I say "That human knowledge hasn't hacked the universe is contingency," what I mean to indicate is the transformative potency of mathematization over the eons. This is a view that, in keeping with the verve of mathematical thinking, acknowledges the future as an input to the present.
I too experience pre-symbolic consciousness, situated, embodied. I even go so far personally to acknowledge that my psychological function exists on a continuum of more, or less, direct perception or naked awareness. I experience the granularity, modularity, intensity, and in general the quality of my pre-symbolic consciousness to be a cultural process. I delve deep into Buddhist teachings, for example, (I spent some months at a monastery) in which the Nyingma school separates ordinary consciousness from "rigpa" or natural clear-light consciousness. For me, the cultivation of pre-symbolic consciousness ought to be a priority for education, enculturation, and social organization. I believe in the super-normal functionality of the pre-symbolic -- including its impact on symbolic realizations of the structure of the universe.
At any rate, when I speak of the waterbug as mathematized, I suppose I am phantasizing about an organism of the future who directly perceives the waterbug and the pond as they are.
I think that my own experience of the non-conceptual can be placed on a continuum of functionality.
I don't want to confine myself to Buddhist psychology when I say that the ordinary experience of the non-conceptual is filtered through the residue of conceptuality. It's just that some Buddhist texts are quite clear about this. The impact of convention on the process of perception somehow distorts non-conceptual experience. The correct view is that, although the direct perception of the world as it is remains a feature of the natural function of the organism, a path of traning is required to directly introduce the organism to the non-conceptual experience of 'ultimate' reality. This is a consequence of habituation, feedback loops, et cetera.
Consider, then, if you would please, for lack of better terminology, a future Buddha. This being-in-the-world lives in a civilization one million years more mathematically advanced than ours. S/he is raised differently, communicates differently, perhaps even experiences a modified embodiment. In this scenario, let it be known that the waterbug is mathematized. Now, I would suggest, the view of this being is relevant to our own day.
As I say, "That human knowledge hasn't hacked the universe is contingency." I am not saying this future-present perspective is more true than the one you are playing with. I am saying I don't see a problem "fitting" these disparate views together. I don't think there are totalitarian implications to the view I have adduced. I don't think there is an onto-theology to the view I adduce. Perhaps there is a hope that this view demonstrates an "anticipatory consonance with nature."
I guess I'm trying to be flexible. I don't want to harbor too many illusions about my pre-conceptual experience. As a philosopher I want the good life to get better.
Anyway, Cheers@!
You write:
“For some of the Platonist theoreticians, of course, we ourselves and the universe are mathematical. On this view our interpretive schema are embedded within mathematical structures whose potency yields non-conceptual contingencies. There is a psychological separation from the mathematical that itself is mathematical.”
And they’d be wrong. I don’t accept that characterization at because math is a human heuristic and cannot be projected onto the world of-itself.
If you want to say that reality is chalk full of multiplicities and structural contingencies that are quantifiable, then sure, math is a great systems of reference for probing the field of actual entities, flows and assemblages. But the raw ‘difference’ generated within the cosmos is not identical to math. Representation, which is ultimately what lies at the core of mathematics, is not the same as that which it represents; namely, the material-energetic flows in-themselves.
But, again, as systems or representation and heuristic applicability go, I would agree that mathematics is exemplar for ‘grasping’ the structure of the Real.
You write:
“For me, the cultivation of pre-symbolic consciousness ought to be a priority for education, enculturation, and social organization. I believe in the super-normal functionality of the pre-symbolic -- including its impact on symbolic realizations of the structure of the universe.”
I totally agree. Mindfullness and witnessing is about trying to suspend or loosen up symbolic consciousness in an effort to directly “feel” (or let be) the pre-symbolic awareness at the root of embodied sentience. In fact, I would go so far to say that the Buddha’s most authentic teaching has always been about how to go about integrating raw experiences of being (in the flesh) that deconstruct the symbolic/ego fictions of thought. I have been doing vipassana for 10 years and there is no better way to do phenomenology in my opinion.
You: “the non-conceptual is filtered through the residue of conceptuality”
I think the mechanisms that underpin this are a bit tricky, and perhaps ‘filtering’ is not the metaphor I would choose, but I agree with what you seem to intend. I call the everyday mix of visceral awareness and conceptual thought ‘refracted cognition’.
You: “Perhaps there is a hope that this view demonstrates an ‘anticipatory consonance with nature’.”
I would like to hear/read more about what you mean by this. It seems to me that our worldviews are actually quite compatible. I have truly enjoyed our exchanges.
You write:
“For some of the Platonist theoreticians, of course, we ourselves and the universe are mathematical. On this view our interpretive schema are embedded within mathematical structures whose potency yields non-conceptual contingencies. There is a psychological separation from the mathematical that itself is mathematical.”
And they’d be wrong. I don’t accept that characterization at because math is a human heuristic and cannot be projected onto the world of-itself.
If you want to say that reality is chalk full of multiplicities and structural contingencies that are quantifiable, then sure, math is a great systems of reference for probing the field of actual entities, flows and assemblages. But the raw ‘difference’ generated within the cosmos is not identical to math. Representation, which is ultimately what lies at the core of mathematics, is not the same as that which it represents; namely, the material-energetic flows in-themselves.
But, again, as systems or representation and heuristic applicability go, I would agree that mathematics is exemplar for ‘grasping’ the structure of the Real.
You write:
“For me, the cultivation of pre-symbolic consciousness ought to be a priority for education, enculturation, and social organization. I believe in the super-normal functionality of the pre-symbolic -- including its impact on symbolic realizations of the structure of the universe.”
I totally agree. Mindfullness and witnessing is about trying to suspend or loosen up symbolic consciousness in an effort to directly “feel” (or let be) the pre-symbolic awareness at the root of embodied sentience. In fact, I would go so far to say that the Buddha’s most authentic teaching has always been about how to go about integrating raw experiences of being (in the flesh) that deconstruct the symbolic/ego fictions of thought. I have been doing vipassana for 10 years and there is no better way to do phenomenology in my opinion.
You: “the non-conceptual is filtered through the residue of conceptuality”
I think the mechanisms that underpin this are a bit tricky, and perhaps ‘filtering’ is not the metaphor I would choose, but I agree with what you seem to intend. I call the everyday mix of visceral awareness and conceptual thought ‘refracted cognition’.
You: “Perhaps there is a hope that this view demonstrates an ‘anticipatory consonance with nature’.”
I would like to hear/read more about what you mean by this. It seems to me that our worldviews are actually quite compatible. I have truly enjoyed our exchanges.
You write:
“For some of the Platonist theoreticians, of course, we ourselves and the universe are mathematical. On this view our interpretive schema are embedded within mathematical structures whose potency yields non-conceptual contingencies. There is a psychological separation from the mathematical that itself is mathematical.”
And they’d be wrong. I don’t accept that characterization at all because math is a human heuristic and cannot be projected onto the world of-itself.
If you want to say that reality is chalk full of multiplicities and structural contingencies that are quantifiable, then sure, math is a great systems of reference for probing the field of actual entities, flows and assemblages. But the raw ‘difference’ generated within the cosmos is not identical to math. Representation, which is ultimately what lies at the core of mathematics, is not the same as that which it represents; namely, the material-energetic flows in-themselves.
But, again, as systems or representation and heuristic applicability go, I would agree that mathematics is exemplar for ‘grasping’ the structure of the Real.
You write:
“For me, the cultivation of pre-symbolic consciousness ought to be a priority for education, enculturation, and social organization. I believe in the super-normal functionality of the pre-symbolic -- including its impact on symbolic realizations of the structure of the universe.”
I totally agree. Mindfullness and witnessing is about trying to suspend or loosen up symbolic consciousness in an effort to directly “feel” (or let be) the pre-symbolic awareness at the root of embodied sentience. In fact, I would go so far to say that the Buddha’s most authentic teaching has always been about how to go about integrating raw experiences of being (in the flesh) that deconstruct the symbolic/ego fictions of thought. I have been doing vipassana for 10 years and there is no better way to do phenomenology in my opinion.
You: “the non-conceptual is filtered through the residue of conceptuality”
I think the mechanisms that underpin this are a bit tricky, and perhaps ‘filtering’ is not the metaphor I would choose, but I agree with what you seem to intend. I call the everyday mix of visceral awareness and conceptual thought ‘refracted cognition’.
You: “Perhaps there is a hope that this view demonstrates an ‘anticipatory consonance with nature’.”
I would like to hear/read more about what you mean by this. It seems to me that our worldviews are actually quite compatible. I have truly enjoyed our exchanges.
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