Correlationism and Non-Philosophy

Two absolutely amazing posts that deserve a lot of attention:

Tom, at Grundlegung, gives the best examination of Meillassoux’s argument from ancestrality I’ve seen. My contention (and something I really need to flesh out at some point) is that the argument from ancestrality is only one of Meillassoux’s arguments against correlationism. The second is what I call the last-man standing argument – which involves a number of different philosophical interlocutors facing off against each other (skepticism, weak correlationism, strong correlationism, dogmatism, etc.), with Meillassoux’s non-correlationist result emerging as the victor. The importance of this argument, I believe, can be seen in the fact that it is only in the 3rd chapter that Meillassoux makes his argument for us having knowledge of the absolute. That is to say, it is not the 1st chapter on ancestrality that secures the argument against correlationism. (Although I’m open to the idea that the argument from ancestrality does provide another piece of evidence against correlationism.)

And secondly, Reid, at Planomenology, provides the clearest and most comprehensive exposition of non-philosophy I’ve seen to date. The only thing I have to add to Reid’s stellar post is the question of where does non-philosophy leave us? It appears as though non-philosophy relativizes all philosophies as equally separate from the Real, thereby making any philosophy as good as another. My sense is that in some way, this is right, but it also needs to be tied into something like Deleuze’s perspectivism – where “It is not a variation of truth according to the subject, but the condition in which the truth of a variation appears to the subject.” (The Fold, 20) Alternatively, we might think of the proliferation of methods within Latour, where the product of experiments in various artificial conditions is still nevertheless a fact. There is a truth (not the Truth) produced in each experiment, yet it is possible only within the specific conditions of the experiment. A perspectivism of experiments. In these senses, we can see that each philosophy would provide a different methodology – a different decision – that produces a true but necessarily partial and non-summative picture of the Real.

And finally, most readers likely already know about this event – but Perverse Egalitarianism and Jon Cogburn are hosting a reading group of Lee Braver’s A Thing of This World: A History of Continental Anti-Realism. For those who haven’t read it, Braver’s work is an exceptional piece of both analysis and synthesis. Taking the main figures from continental philosophy and analyzing them in terms of their complex relations to realism, Braver provides not only an eminently readable history of continental philosophy, but also a provocative and important argument about continental philosophy’s path and future. Read in conjunction with After Finitude, these two books should provoke anxiety and self-reflection within all the dominant continental philosophies.

21st Century Materialism (Updated)

(Click for larger PDF image.)

[UPDATE:] Audio files of the lectures are now available on the website, including the roundtable discussions afterwards.

21st Century Materialism – June 20-21, 2009 – Zagreb, Croatia

http://materialism.mi2.hr/

Featured Speakers: Miran Božovič, Martin Hägglund, Peter Hallward, and Graham Harman

Coordinator: Nathan Brown

Organizer: Petar Milat, Multimedia Institute Zagreb

Brain-Based Devices

From an interview with Gerald Edelman (h/t: Cosmic Variance):

How are you pursuing the creation of conscious artifacts in your work at the Neurosciences Institute?

We construct what we call brain-based devices, or BBDs, which will be increasingly useful in understanding how the brain works and modeling the brain. They may also be the beginning of the design of truly intelligent machines.

What exactly is a brain-based device?

It looks like maybe a robot, R2-D2 almost. But it isn’t a robot, because it’s not run by an artificial intelligence [AI] program of logic. It’s run by an artificial brain modeled on the vertebrate or mammalian brain. Where it differs from a real brain, aside from being simulated in a computer, is in the number of neurons. Compared with, let’s say, 30 billion neurons and a million billion connections in the human cortex alone, the most complex brain-based devices presently have less than a million neurons and maybe up to 10 million or so synapses, the space across which nerve impulses pass from one neuron to another.

What is interesting about BBDs is that they are embedded in and sample the real world. They have something that is equivalent to an eye: a camera. We give them microphones for the equivalent of ears. We have something that matches conductance for taste. These devices send inputs into the brain as if they were your tongue, your eyes, your ears. Our BBD called Darwin 7 can actually undergo conditioning. It can learn to pick up and “taste” blocks, which have patterns that can be identified as good-tasting or bad-tasting. It will stay away from the bad-tasting blocks, which have images of blobs instead of stripes on them —rather than pick them up and taste them. It learns to do that all on its own.

Varia

• A recent study shows that electrical stimulation in the posterior parietal cortex can produce feelings of free will, despite an action never being carried out. (You can find the original article here.)

• A fantastic review of Zizek’s Parallax View and In Defence of Lost Causes over at I Cite. It also includes a concise and dense examination of what ‘materialism’ means for Zizek.

• A new article (’Janicaud on Phenomena and Infinity‘) from Graham Harman, posted in our Resources section.

• And finally, a highly illuminating response by Harman to claims I’ve made myself about the links between object-oriented philosophy and folk psychology. It seems to me, however, that while Harman is right about the contradictory nature of ‘eliminative materialism’, it’s also the case that Brassier’s particular version of eliminativism escapes this problem. Specifically, while the Churchlands and other eliminativists hold onto some fundamental material level, Brassier’s use of Laruelle allows him to argue against any known materialism. More precisely, materialism is itself a concept imposed upon the real by philosophy – while the real itself remains indifferent to any such gestures. (See Laruelle’s ‘The Decline of Materialism in the Name of Matter‘ for more on this.) As Brassier ultimately argues in Nihil Unbound, the real itself is a being-nothing that escapes any sort of physicalist or materialist system. In other words, a sort of radical eliminative nihilism.

Speculative Realism 2.0

Below are my notes from the speculative realist conference in Bristol.  This is not a transcript but what I could manage while still trying to pay attention and enjoy the talks.  The titles are invented and were not given.  My notes on Toscano’s talk are pretty sketchy so if any one wants to submit some I will gladly put them up.

Ontic Structural Realism

In the midst of all the debates about realism lately, one thing the critics seem to often misunderstand is the relation between science and realism. Most significant is the suggestion of dogmatism with regards to science – as though realists blindly took current scientific theories to be comprehensive and definitive. As though realists weren’t aware, along with everyone else, that science’s history is filled with theories being posed and discarded. In addition, as anyone with a passing familiarity with science is aware, there are absolutely massive gaps in our knowledge of the world. As of right now there are two competing theories about the fundamental nature of physical reality – quantum mechanics and general relativity – yet these theories are incompatible. Moreover, it is estimated that 90% of the universe is comprised of a mysterious thing called dark matter – yet we know virtually nothing about it (nor its cousin, dark energy). These gaping holes are situated in the most scientific discipline we currently have – fundamental physics – yet they clearly point to the fact that current scientific theories are in desperate need of massive revision. (And for more examples of major holes in scientific knowledge, see this article: ‘13 Things That Do Not Make Sense’)

In the literature on philosophy of science, these problems are all well recognized. Referred to as the ‘pessimistic meta-induction’, the main argument proposed by anti-realists is that history shows that every scientific theory previously taken to be a true representation of reality has ultimately been tossed aside. Using history as our basis, the argument suggests that we should be very pessimistic about the possibility of current theories maintaining their status as truth.

Dictionary of Non-Philosophy – Updated

Just a quick post – to the hundreds of readers who have downloaded the original ‘Dictionary of Non-Philosophy’, we’ve updated the version with an entirely new (and absolutely stunning) cover.

Many thanks to Tammy Lu for conceptualizing, creating and designing the new cover! Be sure to check out more of her work on her website.

You can find the updated version here: Dictionary of Non-Philosophy

Philosophical Rockstars

There’s only a handful of journals pushing the cutting-edge of philosophy, and as IT notes, one of them could use your help right now. Pli has consistently been one of the most exciting and innovative philosophy journals around, more than willing to ignore arbitrary disciplinary boundaries in the search for truth. At the very least, ask your institution to subscribe to Pli!

From IT:

It’s hard to keep a non-arms-dealer-funded journal going, and Pli, a seriously important publication for Continental Philosophy of all kinds, has been going for 19 volumes. It’s having a hard time at the moment, however, so if anyone could spare some money for back issues and/or get their institution to order Pli for the library, you’ll be remembered forever in some kind of glorious materialist non-heaven.

Topics for currently available back issues:

5: The Divine Sade
6: Responsibilities of Deconstruction
14: Spinoza: Desire and Power
15: Lives of the Real: Bergsonian Perspectives
16: Diagrams of Sensation: Deleuze and Aesthetics
17: Ultrapolitics
18: Superior Empiricism
19: Sense and Nonsense

Many of the issues that are out of print are available online, and amount to a significant resource, featuring work by/translations of: Laruelle, Nancy, Brassier, Toscano, Sallis, Andrew Benjamin, Nietzsche, Stengers, Keith Ansell Pearson, Ian Hamilton Grant, Lacoue-Labarthe, Dastur, Badiou, Elie During, Eric Alliez, Zizek, Deleuze, Virno, Bruno Bosteels, Foucault, Lorenzo Chiesa, Maurizio Lazzarato, Warren Montag, Pier Aldo Rovatti and a whole host of smart (yet humble) lesser stars…You can email Pli here [plijournal[at]googlemail.com]. One thing to note about Pli is its splendid design – sleek, dark and genuinely exciting. If it is unlike most academic journals, it is so in the best possible way.

And courtesy of Logical Regression – if you haven’t heard of the latest philosophical rockstars, check them out here.

Translation of Laruelle’s “Transvaluation of the Transcendental Method”

The following is an early attempt at a succinct elaboration of what could be considered the early roots of non-philosophy. Almost epigrammatic in its economy, this account at least has the benefit of formulating its approach in the form of rules which are not simply prescriptive but productive and indicative of a transformation of the method itself (despite or even due to its use of “destruction” and “reduction”). For a very detailed and informative account of the relation of the quid juris and quid facti, check out the essay “The Foundations of Value” by Kelley L. Ross.

Laruelle, Francois. “La Transvaluation de la methode transcendentale.” Bulletin de la societe francaise de philosophie 73 (1979): 77-78.

I. Program

A transvaluation of the transcendental method is proposed to relieve the latter of its epistemological, logical, and moral hypotheses and to overcome the classical objections to its encounter (of defect and sterility). It thinks the method according to its essence (or the immanent rules of its becoming-transcendental) and no longer according to its objects. It attempts to deliver the eidos of the transcendental from its empiricist and formalist limitations by assigning it “reality” as instance.

II. Systematic of the Rules of the Transcendental Method or Its Transvaluation

1. First rule: Constitute a “faktum” under already transcendental conditions; destroy the question quid facti? on the side of the question (it is a continual process of reduction rather than a description) and on the side of the fact (it is a transcendental and synthetic residue rather than a “fact”); in turn, treat the residual faktum as capable of being reduced (dissociate ideality and the a priori).

2. Second rule: Proceed to the continuous given in two breaks (ontic or realizing, ontological or idealizing); define the “transcendental reduction” as “unilateral” break and synthesis, and its objects as “residual transcendental objects” (destruction of the “analytic”).

3. Third rule: Define a break or supplementary reduction which extracts a supreme synthetic Principle or Essence responsible for unifying the diversity of “residual objects”; assign this factor a non-logical and non-ideal type of reality according to which the technique of breaks receives a “transcendental” value.

4. Fourth rule: Define a “transcendental genesis,” i.e. the particular modes of synthesis of residual objects or reality and ideality under the conditions of the immanence of Essence (destruction of the question quid juris?).

New Post on Gabriel Catren’s Critique of Meillassoux via Speculative Physics

Over at Stellar Cartographies there is a new post (called: Speculative realism, stamp collecting, and the question of Science) that goes into great detail about Gabriel Catren’s critique of Meillassoux on the basis of theoretical physics and quantum mechanics (lovingly dubbed by the former as “speculative physics”). The majority of the post (in reality almost already essay-length) focuses on Catren’s extensive essay that appeared in Collapse vol. 5 just recently. There are also at least 5 or 6 essays by Catren that can be found online, some more mathematical than others, but all on theoretical physics and the question of objectivity. I even have the chance and honor to translate one of Gabriel Catren’s essays for the upcoming anthology The Speculative Turn, which will feature many of the big names in the “field” of speculative realism (or transcendental realism, as Laruelle has dubbed his approach, thus reviving an older nomination that could, for example, at one time have labeled Spinoza’s approach…although he was usually considered just a dogmatist by Fichte et al.). Definitely go check this out if you have an interest in the current debates about speculative realism.

For Catren’s online essays, check out “On Classical and Quantum Objectivity” and “Can Classical Descriptions of Reality Be Considered Complete?” and “Geometric Foundations of Classical Yangs-Mill Theory” and “Notes on Dilaton Quantum Cosmology” with Claudio Simeone, and “Time asymmetries in quantum cosmology and the searching for boundary conditions to the Wheeler-DeWitt equation” with Mario Castagnino and Rafael Ferraro, and finally “Quantization of the Taub cosmological model with extrinsic time” with Rafael Ferraro.