A Quick Response to Graham Harman

I’m glad to know that Graham thinks my criticisms are thoughtful. He put up a few quick responses to my last post yesterday (here and here). I understand he has a busy schedule, and thus can’t always respond in detail (I still would really like to hear his response to this post), but I think it might be helpful to briefly clarify some of my remarks in the last post in response to him.

His first point is that I’m overdetermining his use of ‘scientific’ and ‘metaphysical’, and that this produces some misunderstandings on my part. This is thoroughly possible, and I understand that he put them in scare quotes for a reason. However, his response reinforces one of my problems, namely, that he is confusing specific issues to do with the metaphysics of consciousness with issues about the role of philosophy as such. To explain further, Graham says in his response that the distinction was mainly meant to distinguish between himself and Whitehead on the one hand, who take it that there is some metaphysics of consciousness that escapes scientific description, and those who take consciousness to be fully described by the sciences. However, his major criticism of those in the latter position was that they try “to turn philosophy into something it is not”, by making philosophy a slave to science. This strikes me as too bold a conclusion to draw solely on the basis of their attitude to consciousness. I’ll admit up front that I’ve got my own (very deflationary) opinions on the philosophy of consciousness, but I don’t think the standard for what counts as proper philosophy should be determined by this particular area.

Continue reading A Quick Response to Graham Harman

Scientific Vs. Metaphysical Realism?

This is a brief post to take issue with something Graham recently said on his blog (here). Graham has said similar things before, but I think this is one of the clearest examples of his opinion about the relation between science and realism. Graham first notes that the increasing fashionability of the term ‘realism’ in continental circles means that it can be misleadingly appropriated by those who aren’t genuine realists. He repeats the idea, stated elsewhere, that it is not enough to consider the real as something which constrains consciousness/thought, but that one must be able to allow it some structure independently of a relation to consciousness/thought. One must be able to say something about the interaction of fire and cotton in order to count as a genuine realist. Now, I agree with this, for the most part. My problem comes when he draws a dichotomy between two ways in which one can be genuinely realist:-

Continue reading Scientific Vs. Metaphysical Realism?

Brandom and Ethics

Jon Cogburn has just put up a post about the ethical implications of Brandom’s thought (here). As much as I respect Jon, I’m afraid I almost entirely disagree with the post. I think he’s being really unfair to Brandom. I mean no offence to him, but his claim that some of Brandom’s remarks (to the effect that pain has no intrinsic moral significance) are evil strikes me as hyperbole. I haven’t yet fully gone through Reason in Philosophy, but I’ve been thinking about the ethical implications of Brandom’s work (see my speculative heresy piece on ethics) and have come to very much the same position expressed in these remarks, yet without any of the more horrific implications Jon seems to see in them. To warn you, this is another fairly long post (coming up 7,000 words).

Continue reading Brandom and Ethics

Meillassoux on Signs and Contingency

Fabio over at Hypertiling has put up a translation of part of one Meillassoux’s papers (here), and it is most interesting. The aim of the section Fabio has translated is to sketch out a strategy for demonstrating that mathematical thought can grasp absolute contingency, which for Meillassoux is the Real itself. The way he goes about this is fascinating, but, I think, potentially flawed. I won’t go over the piece in too much detail, but explain just enough to show where I think it goes wrong.

Meillassoux’s basic idea is that the condition under which anything like mathematical thought functions is the ability to grasp and deploy empty signs (such as the letters (P, Q, R, etc.) traditionally used to denote propositions in propositional calculus, or the letters (a, b, c, etc.)  traditionally used to denote sets in set theory), and that our grasp of such empty signs consists in nothing but our grasp of them qua sign, as opposed to our grasp of ordinary signs, in which our grasp of what the sign stands for obscures this pure signifying character. Now, he thinks that he can show that mathematical thought grasps absolute contingency insofar as this grasp of a sign qua sign upon which it is founded itself consists in a grasp of pure contingency. This is an interesting argument, and I can certainly see where he is going.

Continue reading Meillassoux on Signs and Contingency

Laruelle (non-)Event

This is being advertised a bit later than intended, but the philosophy society at Warwick (a top notch student run organisation) has organised a visit by Francois Laruelle, who will be presenting a paper (in French, accompanied by a written English translation courtesy of Anthony Paul Smith of An Und Fur Sich) on his more recent thinking. This will take place on the 3rd of March (less than a month away!), on Warwick Campus (further details in the announcement below).

For all of you budding non-philosophers out there, I here that the paper reworks a number of the core ideas of his earlier work. And for everyone familiar with our little section of the blogosphere, Laruelle’s talk will be preceded by a series of presentation on non-philosophy by none other than Nick Srnicek (Speculative Heresy / Accursed Share), Anthony Paul Smith, and Reid Kotlas (Planomenology). It promises to be lots of fun all round.

There is also another event that we’re organising at Warwick, a small workshop on Transcendental Realism, headlined by Ray Brassier. I will post more about this when all the details have been worked out. Anyway, here is the announcement about the Laruelle event that just went out on Philos-L, which provides more of the logistical details.

Continue reading Laruelle (non-)Event

Heidegger, Realism, and all that jazz…

Paul Ennis (here), Jon Cogburn (here) and Gary Williams (here), have been having a conversation about whether Heidegger is a realist or not on their respective blogs. Since I’ve been trying to come up with a coherent interpretation of Heidegger for the past 2 years, causing much woe and confusion, I thought I’d chip in. What appears below was meant to be a comment on Jon’s blog, but turned out to be too big (surprise surprise). Some of what I say here might differ from my previous posts on Heidegger, as my interpretation has evolve a bit. Hopefully I’ll post a synthesis of all this stuff at some point which gives an updated version of my position, but for now, you’ll have to make do with this. Anyway, enjoy…

Continue reading Heidegger, Realism, and all that jazz…

Once More with Content

Greetings to everyone. My hit total passed 10,000 a few days ago, and I’d just like to thank everyone who has been reading this blog since I started it up in August last year. I’m still working my way through writers block, but this was going around in my head, so I’ve put it on paper (so to speak).

Graham recently posted a two part response (here and here) to my last post (here) in our ongoing discussion over the viability of his object-oriented philosophical position. There’s a lot there to respond to, and I suspect that he’s misunderstood some of what I said, and sidestepped some objections I don’t think he’s entitled to sidestep. However, its also clear that I’ve misunderstood him in a few places (and that I still don’t get other bits of what he’s doing, alas more reading required…), so I’ll try to be as even handed as I can.

Continue reading Once More with Content

Phenomenology, Discourse and their Objects

Graham Harman recently responded (here) to my musings on his argument for his fourfold structure (here). That post was quite brief, but it suggested that the way to reject his approach is to reject the phenomenological standpoint that its based upon, loosely summed up in the idea that ontology must begin with experience. Given that Graham has picked up on the points I made, I feel that I should probably go into a bit more detail, although this will unfortunately fall short of presenting my alternative to phenomenology (fundamental deontology) in full. First though, I think it’s important to say a little bit more about what the core features of phenomenology are, before we try to provide possible reasons for rejecting them. I am of course no expert on Husserl, so my analysis will be faily crude, but hopefully fair nonetheless.

1. The Basic Problems with Phenomenology

Skipping over the methodological details of phenomenology (which are certainly most interesting), I think the two most important features to pick out are the theory of intentionality, and the correlative theory of meaning or content. The first encapsulates the real advance of phenomenology (via Brentano) over both the empiricist and Kantian accounts of experience. The advance over empiricism is threefold. First, phenomenology surpasses the empiricists’ indirect realism, holding that we do not experience ideas or representations of things, but that our experiences are directed at the things themselves. Secondly, experience is the encountering of objects as objects, not the encountering of bundles of sense data that must be actively united into objects. Thirdly, phenomenology takes the objects that our experiences are directed at to transcend our experiences of them. As Graham is fond of pointing out, this has the effect of opening up a distinction between the objects of experience and the qualities that they present to us.

Continue reading Phenomenology, Discourse and their Objects

On Throwing Stones

For those of you unaware, there’s been another slight fracas recently over Graham Harman’s reference to a certain wing of contemporary continental philosophy as the “neurology death cult” (here).  Reid over at Planomenology took a certain amount of umbrage at this remark (here), and used it as an excuse to try and correct what he sees as a bunch of misunderstandings of Ray Brassier that have come out of Levi and Graham’s corner (to differing extents). Graham then indirectly responded to this (here), and Levi posted some comments in response to it, but has since deleted them (so I won’t address them directly). It seems to me that there a few important things to be said in relation to the points raised here, so I’ll try and do so without stepping on any toes (which is a difficult matter these days).

Continue reading On Throwing Stones