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“Confronted with the arche-fossil, every variety of idealism converges and becomes equally extraordinary – every variety of correlationism is exposed as extreme idealism, one that is incapable of admitting that [which] science tells us about these occurrences…And our correlationist then finds himself dangerously close to contemporary creationists: those quaint believers who assert today, in accordance with a ‘literal’ reading of the Bible, that the earth is no more than 6000 years old, and who, when confronted with the much older dates arrived at by science, reply…[that these radioactive compounds were placed there by God]…in order to test the physicist’s faith. Similarly, might not the meaning of the arche-fossil be to test the philosopher’s faith in correlation, even when confronted with data which seems to point to an abyssal divide between what exists and what appears?”
- Meillassoux, After Finitude, pp.16-17
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10 comments:
maybe it's b/c I haven't been invested in academic politics for a long time but I can't relate to all of this venom over the cardinal sin of correlationalism, who/what exactly was it holding back? of all the things to be confronting in the world...
To some extent I agree D, it may all be a bit trivial - but what is at stake, i believe, is realism itself; or at least the anchoring of realist doxa in the academy. But even outside the academy there is a widespread and confused sense that reality is our human interpretation of it, and/or we are incapable of knowing anything definitive about the nature of reality (in-itself). This assumed incapability is a justification for all sorts of unreason and faith-based perspectivism that destabilizes any sort of reference to concrete justifications. We are told, “climate change is not a really problem because how can we actually know what’s going on”, or “capitalism shouldn’t be abandoned because we can’t really know if natural resources are finite”, and so on.
A deep, consequential realism, on the other hand, is not reliant on anthropocentric foundations and attempts to honor and characterize the Real in it-self.
It’s certainly true that uncertainty and perspective are basic features of the human condition, but there are moments and “facts” – such as arche-fossils – that ‘demand’ to be reckoned in a more significant way.
"there is a widespread and confused sense that reality is our human interpretation of it, and/or we are incapable of knowing anything definitive about the nature of reality (in-itself)"
I think that this doesn't add up in terms of how people actually act/make-choices in their daily lives (I'm not talking about after the fact justifications made by people esp. those with post 90's BA's), and for me that's where the differences that make a difference are to be found.
the other (and to my mind different)points you make about peoples' tragic inabilites to manage/understand complexity, not-knowing, and abstraction is a very important problem, related to the problem of the role of experts in democracies, but not one that seems directly related to metaphysics.
I think I know what you mean. People's everyday actions 'speak' to a folk-realism (if I may be permitted to be that arrogant) where they assume certain realities while seeking out pleasure and avoiding pain, or making goals and working towards ends – but for the most part these default realisms are subconscious and habitual; and can be perverted or hijacked by dominating discourses and social conventions.
A good example is in what Fisher calls ‘capitalist realism’ – where everyday interpretations are structured and guided by principles and assumptions attached to a master cultural-economic narrative determining all sorts of valuations and ontological beliefs (e.g., atomic human natures, the intrinsic character of freedom, etc.). And I think there are a variety of other ‘realisms’ or cognitive orientations in the mix as well: Christian realisms, Muslim realisms, communist realisms, and basically any other cultural schemas that engender conformity in thought or action, or result in local logical entailments and assumptions about the world. And people often attempt to negotiate multple schemas and realisms at the same time. These multiple ‘realisms’ are often mutually incoherent (although rationalization or willful blindness can make them seem less so) frameworks that operate and resonate as attractors generating behaviors and social assemblages with varying degrees of reflexivity and resilience.
The problem I find with all of that, however, is that at the same time there are decision-makers and people in positions of power who use the operant incoherence of their ad hoc ‘realisms’ - and the accompanying (and legitimate) doubt and uncertainty - along with a certain type of relativism - to argue, that their worldviews cannot be fundamentally challenged or impinged upon. Such subconscious correlationists often argue that a) we don’t know enough about the world to make definitive judgments (e.g., about climate change), or b) because world and thought are correlates everyone is the purveyor of those own private worlds and therefore entitled to their own opinion/worldview, and it is inappropriate for us to suggest otherwise. So, in this sense, it is argued that everyone must be allowed their own “realisms” without ever having to confront the Real.
The correlationist attitude (whether folk or academic) is thus a roadblock on our way to a more practical confrontation with the Real, whereas the arche-fossil or primordial trace (presence) prompts us in another direction. So what I’m talking about is going after a a realism, or better still, a realist attitude and discourse/practice that seeks to think through the correlationist dilemma towards a basic understanding of the structure of Being. The anti-correlationist stance radicalizes epistemology in order to force us to consider (speculate) realities that may fall outside of perspectivist and relativist thinking, and thus might possibly situate all of us squarely on the same plane of actions and consequence. And sophisticated ontographic investigations into the Real (‘the wilderness of being’) can offer a way towards a needed realistic ontology of the possible and has powerful consequences for praxis.
do you really encounter such attitudes in your work meetings? I usually run into people who vastly overestimate their grip on reality (even if they pay lipservice to a kind of thin pomoish relativism). I'm sympathetic to the desire to bring people to common attitudes/practices but can't think of an example of a philosophy/theory/Reality that has ever produced such an effect,in my experience this seems to be more a matter of tuning/culivating practices/attitudes which will always be local/contextualized, variable/negotiated and to some degree improvised/experimental. http://pubpages.unh.edu/~jds/js.ak.SOCPOENTS.htm
http://doctorzamalek2.wordpress.com/2011/06/23/steven-galt-crowell-interview/
I was saying to T.Morton that for some distinct minority of us "intellectual deliberation" is a vital part of our process but by and large this quote from Victor Krebs on seeing-aspects seems timely:
“pictures that placed besides one another invite the mind to intuitively establish new relationships and connections-new forms of meaning. In the same way that I ‘come to see’ that ‘this man can be terrible’ from noticing his ‘tone of voice and facial expressions’, his general gestures, I come to discern the significance of a ritual practice or of an ethical utterance, not by means of definitions, but in the impressions that these ‘pictures’-their tone, their expression, their synonymous affinity, etc-make on my imagination. The impression (Eindruck) that I receive here is so ‘deep and extraordinarily serious’ that it transforms the significance of what I see…to vicariously experience them…not from any form of intellectual deliberation-but, as Wittgenstein puts it, ‘from inner experience’. immediately and imaginatively. ”
I hope that our friend from Un-Canny Ontology will find the time/desire to return to the conversation some day as I think that rhetoric is vital here, how to make something vivid/compelling/inspiring?
http://un-cannyontology.blogspot.com/
http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=987
http://christopherkullenberg.se/?p=2225
Infrastructure complicity of the body’s ancient elements with anonymous materials.
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