Wednesday, 31 August 2011
[contingency – an introduction]
Meillassoux’s task after elaborating a sort of “scientific materialism” based on his concept of ancestrality is to find another grounding for the absolute in the “principle of factiality”. He moves on from this materialist critique of correlationism to focus on establishing another rebuff to the correlationist refusal of the absolute.
Meillassoux calls factiality “the absence of reason for any reality; in other words, the impossibility of providing an ultimate ground for the existence of any being.” (Meillassoux, Time Without Becoming, 2008c, p. 8) Meillassoux claims factiality to be the “very principle that allows correlationism to disqualify absolutizing thought”, as absolute.(Meillassoux, The Immanence of the World Beyond, 2008b, p. 52)
He does this by developing the subjectivists’ charge of the correlationist circle as absolute in-itself (nothing can be thought external to the relationship to the world exactly because it is thought). The subjectivists propose an idealist absolute which consist in the absolutisation of the correlation itself. The subjectivist claims, “these relations… are determinations not only of humans or of the living, but of Being itself.” (Meillassoux, Time Without Becoming, 2008c, p. 7) The argument the correlationist will produce to defend itself is that of factiality, which Meillassoux claims is the “weak-spot in the circle-fortress.” (Meillassoux, Time Without Becoming, 2008c, p. 7)
In maintaining factiality, that which we can conceive as the contingency of the correlation, i.e. its possible disappearance (the destruction of mankind), Meillassoux claims that “the correlationist must admit that we can positively think of a possibility which is essentially independent of the correlation, since this is precisely the possibility of the non-being of the correlation.” (Meillassoux, Time Without Becoming, 2008c, pp. 8-9) He then expands on this using the analogy of death: “to think of myself as a mortal, I must admit that death doesn’t depend on my own thinking about death. Otherwise, I would be able to disappear only on one condition: that I remain alive to think of my disappearance, and turn this event into a correlate of my access to it.”
Meillassoux argues that it is not the correlation that is absolute but the factiality of the correlation that constitutes the absolute. Facticity “will be revealed to be a knowledge of the absolute because we are going to put back into the thought itself what we mistakenly took to be an incapacity in thought.”(Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, 2008a) In other words the:
“absence of reason inherent in everything as a limit that thought encounters in its search for the ultimate reason, we must understand that this absence of reason is, and can only be the ultimate property of the entity. We must convert facticity into the real property whereby everything and every world is without reason, and is thereby capable of actually becoming otherwise without reason. We must grasp how the ultimate absence of reason, which we will refer to as 'unreason', is an absolute ontological property, and not the mark of the finitude of our knowledge.” (Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, 2008a, p. 54)
It is through this that Meillassoux claims to have revealed the condition for thinking the great outdoors of the correlation. Meillassoux has discovered a “performative contradiction” in the correlationist’s claim, in order words the epistemic position of the correlation can’t be claimed without having its conclusions undermine the assumptions they require for their articulation. The Principle of factuality reveals the irredeemable ontological truth hidden in modern philosophy “to be is not to be a correlate, but to be a fact: to be is to be factual – and this is not a fact” (Meillassoux, Time Without Becoming, 2008c, p. 10)
Meillassoux now has the issue of dealing with factiality as absolute and not as limit. His answer is to propose it as time - “very special time.” (Meillassoux, 2008c, p. 10) This very special time is called “hyper-chaos”. This time is not a physical time and not an ordinary chaos. Chaos usually denotes randomness and disorder, hyper-chaos or surchaoses “contingency is so radical that even becoming, disorder, or randomness can be destroyed by it, and replaced by order, determinism, and fixity.” (Meillassoux, 2008c, p. 11)
Hyperchaos simply denotes that everything either could or could not change without reason; it could remain in perpetual flux or could remain in the same state for an indefinite duration. It is totally conceivable that in Hyperchaos a world could end up completely made up of fixed objects, without any becoming whatsoever.
Hyperchaos denotes a time whereby everything could be abolished just as readily as everything could persist in an eternal becoming. From the vantage of hyperchaos, everything is contingent – even disorder and becoming themselves.
Here the charge to the philosopher is to think the ‘may-being’ of this hyperchaos rather than the being, the correlation or the becoming being of past schools of thought.
Now we are ready to start to re-approach the concepts of the laws of nature. We have stated that all laws are contingent, because all laws are just facts, you can’t prove their necessity so there is no reason why they endure as they do. They do not govern time but are themselves governed by a “mad time” and the principle of sufficient reason has been completely abandoned. (Meillassoux, 2008c, p. 11)
When faced with the question why is it that we don’t experience these laws changing at every instant, that on the contrary they remain remarkably stable. Meillassoux’s response is that one cannot propose probabilistic logic to laws themselves, but only to the physical objects already subject to those laws.
**Hume's Problem
Meillassoux’s task after elaborating a sort of “scientific materialism” based on his concept of ancestrality is to find another grounding for the absolute in the “principle of factiality”. He moves on from this materialist critique of correlationism to focus on establishing another rebuff to the correlationist refusal of the absolute.
Meillassoux calls factiality “the absence of reason for any reality; in other words, the impossibility of providing an ultimate ground for the existence of any being.” (Meillassoux, Time Without Becoming, 2008c, p. 8) Meillassoux claims factiality to be the “very principle that allows correlationism to disqualify absolutizing thought”, as absolute.(Meillassoux, The Immanence of the World Beyond, 2008b, p. 52)
He does this by developing the subjectivists’ charge of the correlationist circle as absolute in-itself (nothing can be thought external to the relationship to the world exactly because it is thought). The subjectivists propose an idealist absolute which consist in the absolutisation of the correlation itself. The subjectivist claims, “these relations… are determinations not only of humans or of the living, but of Being itself.” (Meillassoux, Time Without Becoming, 2008c, p. 7) The argument the correlationist will produce to defend itself is that of factiality, which Meillassoux claims is the “weak-spot in the circle-fortress.” (Meillassoux, Time Without Becoming, 2008c, p. 7)
In maintaining factiality, that which we can conceive as the contingency of the correlation, i.e. its possible disappearance (the destruction of mankind), Meillassoux claims that “the correlationist must admit that we can positively think of a possibility which is essentially independent of the correlation, since this is precisely the possibility of the non-being of the correlation.” (Meillassoux, Time Without Becoming, 2008c, pp. 8-9) He then expands on this using the analogy of death: “to think of myself as a mortal, I must admit that death doesn’t depend on my own thinking about death. Otherwise, I would be able to disappear only on one condition: that I remain alive to think of my disappearance, and turn this event into a correlate of my access to it.”
Meillassoux argues that it is not the correlation that is absolute but the factiality of the correlation that constitutes the absolute. Facticity “will be revealed to be a knowledge of the absolute because we are going to put back into the thought itself what we mistakenly took to be an incapacity in thought.”(Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, 2008a) In other words the:
“absence of reason inherent in everything as a limit that thought encounters in its search for the ultimate reason, we must understand that this absence of reason is, and can only be the ultimate property of the entity. We must convert facticity into the real property whereby everything and every world is without reason, and is thereby capable of actually becoming otherwise without reason. We must grasp how the ultimate absence of reason, which we will refer to as 'unreason', is an absolute ontological property, and not the mark of the finitude of our knowledge.” (Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, 2008a, p. 54)
It is through this that Meillassoux claims to have revealed the condition for thinking the great outdoors of the correlation. Meillassoux has discovered a “performative contradiction” in the correlationist’s claim, in order words the epistemic position of the correlation can’t be claimed without having its conclusions undermine the assumptions they require for their articulation. The Principle of factuality reveals the irredeemable ontological truth hidden in modern philosophy “to be is not to be a correlate, but to be a fact: to be is to be factual – and this is not a fact” (Meillassoux, Time Without Becoming, 2008c, p. 10)
Meillassoux now has the issue of dealing with factiality as absolute and not as limit. His answer is to propose it as time - “very special time.” (Meillassoux, 2008c, p. 10) This very special time is called “hyper-chaos”. This time is not a physical time and not an ordinary chaos. Chaos usually denotes randomness and disorder, hyper-chaos or surchaoses “contingency is so radical that even becoming, disorder, or randomness can be destroyed by it, and replaced by order, determinism, and fixity.” (Meillassoux, 2008c, p. 11)
Hyperchaos simply denotes that everything either could or could not change without reason; it could remain in perpetual flux or could remain in the same state for an indefinite duration. It is totally conceivable that in Hyperchaos a world could end up completely made up of fixed objects, without any becoming whatsoever.
Hyperchaos denotes a time whereby everything could be abolished just as readily as everything could persist in an eternal becoming. From the vantage of hyperchaos, everything is contingent – even disorder and becoming themselves.
Here the charge to the philosopher is to think the ‘may-being’ of this hyperchaos rather than the being, the correlation or the becoming being of past schools of thought.
Now we are ready to start to re-approach the concepts of the laws of nature. We have stated that all laws are contingent, because all laws are just facts, you can’t prove their necessity so there is no reason why they endure as they do. They do not govern time but are themselves governed by a “mad time” and the principle of sufficient reason has been completely abandoned. (Meillassoux, 2008c, p. 11)
When faced with the question why is it that we don’t experience these laws changing at every instant, that on the contrary they remain remarkably stable. Meillassoux’s response is that one cannot propose probabilistic logic to laws themselves, but only to the physical objects already subject to those laws.
**Hume's Problem
? distinction between the infinity and the pool.
immersive rather than extensive. the bather in the infinity pool is not looking for an extensive openness. there exists an evocation of the vast - excessive - infinity but the cut between the orders of extension and experience is crucial. Not so that one order may become preference but so that in exchange we can find harmony.
The haptic immersion in the waters and visuals of the infinity pool plays at the lush. and later a discussion of beauty and sublime but for now we don't talk about beauty and we can't talk about the sublime.
In an infinity pool.
There is an excellent architecture playing on a very many notions, both practicle and theoretical, for understanding our experiences.
immersive rather than extensive. the bather in the infinity pool is not looking for an extensive openness. there exists an evocation of the vast - excessive - infinity but the cut between the orders of extension and experience is crucial. Not so that one order may become preference but so that in exchange we can find harmony.
The haptic immersion in the waters and visuals of the infinity pool plays at the lush. and later a discussion of beauty and sublime but for now we don't talk about beauty and we can't talk about the sublime.
In an infinity pool.
There is an excellent architecture playing on a very many notions, both practicle and theoretical, for understanding our experiences.
Richard Long ()
Longs work makes obvious breaks with traditional concepts of the artwork. Longs walking practise in particular occupies an ambiguous site between, event, idea, and documentation.
We will start our discussion of the ‘artwork’ of his walking practise with a discussion of Idea. The walking practises often contain a clear idea; an a priori, often near mathematically/ideological cut of the landscape through which Long will walk, for example, a 10-mile walk in a straight line. The role of such a cut can seem to have some function as a tool to some postmodern paradox - creating a gap between the representational idea and the organic everything of the ‘nature’ through which he will be travelling. Some gesture towards a break between thought and experience.
My experience of this aspect of his work is, however, far from characterised by this kind of mechanism - the introduction of a second order -- that of an extensive ‘nature’ -- to undermine the first -- thought. This is no ironic sublime. Long’s work while potentially encompassing aspects that insinuate the feeling that something is unpresentable does not lose itself to only this mechanism of excess and disproportion.
The ‘Idea’ as discussed by Spinoza and Deleuze, functions as both, a mode of representational thought, its objective reality and as the idea of an idea, “the reality of the idea insofar as it is itself something” – Its formal reality (Deleuze n.d.). This formal reality is undoubtedly connected to the object the idea represents - but, as Deleuze points out,
“it is not to be confused with the object: that is, the formal reality of the idea, the thing the idea is or the degree of reality or perfection it possesses in itself, is its intrinsic character.” (Deleuze n.d.)
Here we are in the territory of a post-structuralist difference. We deal with the idea in the performance of an utterance or the event of Long’s walking practise.
We establish the idea and add a something else - a man, the artist, walking the 10 miles in a straight line – with all of the possibility of his subjecthood. The aspect of his subjectivity made by the walk and those acting on the walk and its environment.
The Idea performed enters a process of variation, the space of its performance shifting into that of a smooth affective space - the objective reality of the idea is continually given as other in the event of its performance than it was a priori as idea, though in this process its formal reality will remain in its relative perfection unaffected by any process of actualisation.
Within the performance we talk of we find the 'affect' in relation to the idea. If we are to oppose idea and affect as Deleuze has we, on an initial level discover that as an opposition to our first understanding of idea – being representational modes of thought we can consider affect to be all non-representational modes of thought. At our second level of understanding - where we also consider the formal reality of the idea we have to take our understanding further.
We will refer to Deleuze's discussion of the subject in his lectures on Spinoza and affect and idea. He introduces an aspect of time to the discussion and the succession of ideas,
"our ideas succeed each other constantly: one idea chases another, one idea replaces another idea for example, in an instant." (Deleuze, 1978) He claims that in the succession of ideas is not the only thing that is happening.
Here he refers to Spinoza's notion of humans as spiritual automata. This spiritual automata is less one who has the ideas than a subject within which ideas are confirmed. There is another realm that functions as well as that of the change or the succession between ideas; "there is a regime of variation which is not the same thing as the succession of ideas themselves". (Deleuze 1978)
Variation is a concept primary to much of Deleuze’s philiosophical project. Deleuze champions a philosophy and a world full of flow, movement and flux. He gives various examples for the concept of variation, music for example is traditionally based on the idea of scales and counts – fixed orders of pitch and meter. Though for Deleuze these structure are considered secondary in relationship to the flow, the variation of sound itself which for Deleuze is fundamental – a pure movement of difference without identity. Another example of variation from Deleuze’s thought that could serve us well in our discussion of long is that of Smooth Space. **what is Smooth Space
In Long’s work it is the manifestations of both an abstract formal reality continually given as such and the regime of variation and non-representation that interests me. As I have mentioned my experience of the doubling of realm in longs work is not that of the post modern sublime where one order trumps and undermines the other and itself. This post-modern mechanism only function in one direction, it needs the logic to function in one order for it to be able to cut itself away from it. For Lyotard, the sublime “would be that which in the modern invokes the unpresentable in presentation itself, that which refuses the consolation of correct forms, refuses the consensus of taste permitting a common experience of nostalgia in for the impossible, and inquires into new presentations – not to take pleasure in, but to better produce, the feeling that there is something unpresentable.”
**a little on Lyotard and the sublime.
It is the harmony of the co-existance of these two realms which I am moved by in Long’s work. The gap between the eternal re-capitulated of the abstract and formal reality of idea and the perpetual differentiation of the performance. This exchange, this accord can been seen given our already opposition to the notion of the sublime in term of the beautiful.
**some on beauty
Longs work makes obvious breaks with traditional concepts of the artwork. Longs walking practise in particular occupies an ambiguous site between, event, idea, and documentation.
We will start our discussion of the ‘artwork’ of his walking practise with a discussion of Idea. The walking practises often contain a clear idea; an a priori, often near mathematically/ideological cut of the landscape through which Long will walk, for example, a 10-mile walk in a straight line. The role of such a cut can seem to have some function as a tool to some postmodern paradox - creating a gap between the representational idea and the organic everything of the ‘nature’ through which he will be travelling. Some gesture towards a break between thought and experience.
My experience of this aspect of his work is, however, far from characterised by this kind of mechanism - the introduction of a second order -- that of an extensive ‘nature’ -- to undermine the first -- thought. This is no ironic sublime. Long’s work while potentially encompassing aspects that insinuate the feeling that something is unpresentable does not lose itself to only this mechanism of excess and disproportion.
The ‘Idea’ as discussed by Spinoza and Deleuze, functions as both, a mode of representational thought, its objective reality and as the idea of an idea, “the reality of the idea insofar as it is itself something” – Its formal reality (Deleuze n.d.). This formal reality is undoubtedly connected to the object the idea represents - but, as Deleuze points out,
“it is not to be confused with the object: that is, the formal reality of the idea, the thing the idea is or the degree of reality or perfection it possesses in itself, is its intrinsic character.” (Deleuze n.d.)
Here we are in the territory of a post-structuralist difference. We deal with the idea in the performance of an utterance or the event of Long’s walking practise.
We establish the idea and add a something else - a man, the artist, walking the 10 miles in a straight line – with all of the possibility of his subjecthood. The aspect of his subjectivity made by the walk and those acting on the walk and its environment.
The Idea performed enters a process of variation, the space of its performance shifting into that of a smooth affective space - the objective reality of the idea is continually given as other in the event of its performance than it was a priori as idea, though in this process its formal reality will remain in its relative perfection unaffected by any process of actualisation.
Within the performance we talk of we find the 'affect' in relation to the idea. If we are to oppose idea and affect as Deleuze has we, on an initial level discover that as an opposition to our first understanding of idea – being representational modes of thought we can consider affect to be all non-representational modes of thought. At our second level of understanding - where we also consider the formal reality of the idea we have to take our understanding further.
We will refer to Deleuze's discussion of the subject in his lectures on Spinoza and affect and idea. He introduces an aspect of time to the discussion and the succession of ideas,
"our ideas succeed each other constantly: one idea chases another, one idea replaces another idea for example, in an instant." (Deleuze, 1978) He claims that in the succession of ideas is not the only thing that is happening.
Here he refers to Spinoza's notion of humans as spiritual automata. This spiritual automata is less one who has the ideas than a subject within which ideas are confirmed. There is another realm that functions as well as that of the change or the succession between ideas; "there is a regime of variation which is not the same thing as the succession of ideas themselves". (Deleuze 1978)
Variation is a concept primary to much of Deleuze’s philiosophical project. Deleuze champions a philosophy and a world full of flow, movement and flux. He gives various examples for the concept of variation, music for example is traditionally based on the idea of scales and counts – fixed orders of pitch and meter. Though for Deleuze these structure are considered secondary in relationship to the flow, the variation of sound itself which for Deleuze is fundamental – a pure movement of difference without identity. Another example of variation from Deleuze’s thought that could serve us well in our discussion of long is that of Smooth Space. **what is Smooth Space
In Long’s work it is the manifestations of both an abstract formal reality continually given as such and the regime of variation and non-representation that interests me. As I have mentioned my experience of the doubling of realm in longs work is not that of the post modern sublime where one order trumps and undermines the other and itself. This post-modern mechanism only function in one direction, it needs the logic to function in one order for it to be able to cut itself away from it. For Lyotard, the sublime “would be that which in the modern invokes the unpresentable in presentation itself, that which refuses the consolation of correct forms, refuses the consensus of taste permitting a common experience of nostalgia in for the impossible, and inquires into new presentations – not to take pleasure in, but to better produce, the feeling that there is something unpresentable.”
**a little on Lyotard and the sublime.
It is the harmony of the co-existance of these two realms which I am moved by in Long’s work. The gap between the eternal re-capitulated of the abstract and formal reality of idea and the perpetual differentiation of the performance. This exchange, this accord can been seen given our already opposition to the notion of the sublime in term of the beautiful.
**some on beauty
Meillassoux's Absolute
Meillassoux on Ancestrality, Qualities and Correlationism
[The Absolute – Introduction]
One of the key theses of Meillassoux’s work focuses on a return to thinking the Absolute. Meillassoux’s goal is as simple as it is complicated, he attempts to “refute every form of correlationism” (Meillassoux, Time Without Becoming, 2008c, p. 2) In After Finitude he sets this project of rethinking the thing ‘in-itself’ against what he sees as a philosophical culture that has become dominated by ‘Correlationism’. Meillassoux traces the philosophical turn to this correlationist tendency back to Kant’s Transcendentalism. As Meillassoux says,
“Prior to the advent of transcendentalism, one of the questions that divided rival philosophers most decisively was 'Who grasps the true nature of substance? He who thinks the Idea, the individual, the atom, God? Which God?' But ever since Kant, to discover what divides rival philosophers is no longer to ask who has grasped the true nature of substantiality, but rather to ask who has grasped the more originary correlation: is it the thinker of the subject-object correlation, the noetico-noematic correlation, or the language-referent correlation?”(Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, 2008a)
Meillassoux’s use of term correlationism refers to the philosophical charge to think the relationship between things rather than the substance in-itself and he see’s this to be “the contemporary opponent of any realism” (Meillassoux, Time Without Becoming, 2008c).
Correlationism is built on the refutation of the divide between the concepts of primary and secondary qualities. These concepts of qualities create a distinction between the properties of my encountering an object and those that are maintained when the object is considered ‘in itself’. If I burn my hand on a flame I do not sense the burning to be a property of the flame ‘in itself’ but located in my finger. The same must be said of sensations – the flavour of food does not exist in the food itself prior to its ingestion. These are considered secondary qualities. Nothing sensible – whether it be an affective or perceptual quality – can exist in the way it is given to me in the thing by itself when it is not related to me or to any other living creature. When one thinks about this thing ‘in itself’ i.e. independently of its relation to me it seems that none of these qualities can subsist.“ (Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, 2008a, p. 1)
The correlationist argument does not dispute the idea that things may posses qualities that bring about sensation. If there were nothing giving rise to the sensation of the colour red, then there would be no perception of a red thing.
“One cannot maintain that the sensible is injected by me into things like some sort of perpetual and arbitrary hallucination…The sensible is neither simply ‘in me’ in the manner of a dream, nor simply ‘in the thing’ in the manner of an intrinsic property: it is the very relation between the thing and I” (Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, 2008a)
The correlationist’s issue is with the distinction itself and here Kant’s Transcendentalism breaks with the preceding schools of thought. The issue for Kantian thought is with the assumption that the ‘subjectivation’ of sensible properties could be restricted to the object’s sensible properties, rather than extended to all conceivable properties of an object.
Meillassoux looks to return to this point in the development of modern philosophy and the Correlationist commitment, in order to readdress issues of the absolute, he looks to do so with a re-evaluation and defence of primary qualities through his concept of ‘Ancestrality’. The thesis he is proposing is as follows:
“On the one hand, we acknowledge that the sensible only exists as a subjects relation to the world; but on the other hand we maintain that the mathematizable properties of the object are exempt from the constraint of such a relation, and that they are effectively in the object in the way in which I conceive them, whether I am in relation with this object or not.” (Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, 2008a, p. 3)
He does this by presenting correlationism with a problem of ‘ancestrality’. Ancestrality, as he defines it, is the issue rising from statements made by certain branches of natural science with regard to a world prior to consciousness. Meillassoux presents us with techniques used in determining the age of materials. These measurements were once considered relative but with the perfection of the techniques they are now considered to be complete. The substances, radioactive isotopes in dating techniques, that give rise to the statements are termed arche-fossils. The techniques of measuring arche-fossils are capable of supplying the scientist with statements about a thing or event prior to the existence of terrestrial life and it is this issue upon which Meillassoux bases his concept of Ancestrality. Meillassoux asks:
“How are we to grasp the meaning of scientific statements bearing explicitly upon a manifestation of the world that is posited as anterior to the emergence of thought and even of life -posited, that is, as anterior to every form of human relation to the world?” (Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, 2008a, p. 21)
An important aspect of this statement is that Meillassoux asks how are we to think it’s meaning rather than how are we to think the truth. This is an important distinction which allows him to both maintain correlationism as a discreet possibility in his later arguments while continuing his attempt to think outside of the relation.
The Correlationist has no initial problem with such a statement only the charge to add an appendage of ‘for-humans’ to the scientists statement in order that both the realist (science) and the antirealist (philosophy) statements may co-exist without refuting each other; proposing that there are at least two regimes of meaning which are able to address these statements. Meillassoux however proposes that with a literal interpretation of these ancestral statements, the scientific statement must be its ultimate meaning and that the “philosopher’s is irrelevant when it comes to analyzing the signification of the statement.” (Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, 2008a, p. 14)
He states that for both the scientific statement to be true as well as the philosophers statement then the correlationist would have to maintain a “tissue of absurdities”. Most importantly to his discussion that the fossil-matter is “the givenness in the present of a being that is anterior to givenness; that is to say, that an arche-fossil manifests an entity’s anteriority vis-à-vis manifestation,”(Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, 2008a) How is it possible for the object to give givenness anterior to the existence of givenness?
When faced with this proposition the Correlationist proposes the arche-fossil as a thing that creates knowledge from the standpoint of the present and is then read back into the past, but as Meillassoux points out “This means that we have to carry out a retrojection of the past on the basis of the present” (Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, 2008a, p. 16).
This issue here is givenness. Givenness is the condition for the universalizing potentiality of any given statement. Meillassoux tells us that since Kant “objectivity is no longer defined with reference to the object in itself (in terms of the statement’s adequation or resemblance to what it designates), but rather with reference to the possible universality of an objective statement.”(Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, 2008a, p. 15) This intersubjectivity of the scientific ancestral statement is what guarantees its objectivity to the correlationist.
However what is given to us is not something that is anterior to givenness but merely something that is given in the present but gives itself as anterior to givenness. In order to give meaning to the scientific statement about the arche-fossil one has to follow the chronological succession from past to present, rather than following a logical succession from present to past. The correlationist has still failed to give any meaning to this chronological succession.
Meillassoux asks one more question of the correlationist to prove that this interpretation of ancestrality is insupportable. “ What is it that happened 4.56 billion years ago? Did the accretion of the earth happen, yes or no?” (Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, 2008a, p. 16) The correlationist will answer, yes sciences proves it is intersubjectively verifiable, but in another sense, no, the referent of the statement cannot have existed as it is described as non-correlated with a consciousness.
“the ancestral statement is a true statement in that it is objective, but one whose referent cannot possibly have actually existed in the way this truth describes it. It is a true statement, but it has no conceivable object. Or to put it another way it is a non-sense.” (Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, 2008a)
The problem of Ancestrality concludes with this - If we are able to consider the scientific ancestral statement to have any meaning, as the correlationist will propose we can, we must view the referent of its statement to be meaningful or else it can only be considered as ‘non-sense’.
[The Absolute – Introduction]
One of the key theses of Meillassoux’s work focuses on a return to thinking the Absolute. Meillassoux’s goal is as simple as it is complicated, he attempts to “refute every form of correlationism” (Meillassoux, Time Without Becoming, 2008c, p. 2) In After Finitude he sets this project of rethinking the thing ‘in-itself’ against what he sees as a philosophical culture that has become dominated by ‘Correlationism’. Meillassoux traces the philosophical turn to this correlationist tendency back to Kant’s Transcendentalism. As Meillassoux says,
“Prior to the advent of transcendentalism, one of the questions that divided rival philosophers most decisively was 'Who grasps the true nature of substance? He who thinks the Idea, the individual, the atom, God? Which God?' But ever since Kant, to discover what divides rival philosophers is no longer to ask who has grasped the true nature of substantiality, but rather to ask who has grasped the more originary correlation: is it the thinker of the subject-object correlation, the noetico-noematic correlation, or the language-referent correlation?”(Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, 2008a)
Meillassoux’s use of term correlationism refers to the philosophical charge to think the relationship between things rather than the substance in-itself and he see’s this to be “the contemporary opponent of any realism” (Meillassoux, Time Without Becoming, 2008c).
Correlationism is built on the refutation of the divide between the concepts of primary and secondary qualities. These concepts of qualities create a distinction between the properties of my encountering an object and those that are maintained when the object is considered ‘in itself’. If I burn my hand on a flame I do not sense the burning to be a property of the flame ‘in itself’ but located in my finger. The same must be said of sensations – the flavour of food does not exist in the food itself prior to its ingestion. These are considered secondary qualities. Nothing sensible – whether it be an affective or perceptual quality – can exist in the way it is given to me in the thing by itself when it is not related to me or to any other living creature. When one thinks about this thing ‘in itself’ i.e. independently of its relation to me it seems that none of these qualities can subsist.“ (Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, 2008a, p. 1)
The correlationist argument does not dispute the idea that things may posses qualities that bring about sensation. If there were nothing giving rise to the sensation of the colour red, then there would be no perception of a red thing.
“One cannot maintain that the sensible is injected by me into things like some sort of perpetual and arbitrary hallucination…The sensible is neither simply ‘in me’ in the manner of a dream, nor simply ‘in the thing’ in the manner of an intrinsic property: it is the very relation between the thing and I” (Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, 2008a)
The correlationist’s issue is with the distinction itself and here Kant’s Transcendentalism breaks with the preceding schools of thought. The issue for Kantian thought is with the assumption that the ‘subjectivation’ of sensible properties could be restricted to the object’s sensible properties, rather than extended to all conceivable properties of an object.
Meillassoux looks to return to this point in the development of modern philosophy and the Correlationist commitment, in order to readdress issues of the absolute, he looks to do so with a re-evaluation and defence of primary qualities through his concept of ‘Ancestrality’. The thesis he is proposing is as follows:
“On the one hand, we acknowledge that the sensible only exists as a subjects relation to the world; but on the other hand we maintain that the mathematizable properties of the object are exempt from the constraint of such a relation, and that they are effectively in the object in the way in which I conceive them, whether I am in relation with this object or not.” (Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, 2008a, p. 3)
He does this by presenting correlationism with a problem of ‘ancestrality’. Ancestrality, as he defines it, is the issue rising from statements made by certain branches of natural science with regard to a world prior to consciousness. Meillassoux presents us with techniques used in determining the age of materials. These measurements were once considered relative but with the perfection of the techniques they are now considered to be complete. The substances, radioactive isotopes in dating techniques, that give rise to the statements are termed arche-fossils. The techniques of measuring arche-fossils are capable of supplying the scientist with statements about a thing or event prior to the existence of terrestrial life and it is this issue upon which Meillassoux bases his concept of Ancestrality. Meillassoux asks:
“How are we to grasp the meaning of scientific statements bearing explicitly upon a manifestation of the world that is posited as anterior to the emergence of thought and even of life -posited, that is, as anterior to every form of human relation to the world?” (Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, 2008a, p. 21)
An important aspect of this statement is that Meillassoux asks how are we to think it’s meaning rather than how are we to think the truth. This is an important distinction which allows him to both maintain correlationism as a discreet possibility in his later arguments while continuing his attempt to think outside of the relation.
The Correlationist has no initial problem with such a statement only the charge to add an appendage of ‘for-humans’ to the scientists statement in order that both the realist (science) and the antirealist (philosophy) statements may co-exist without refuting each other; proposing that there are at least two regimes of meaning which are able to address these statements. Meillassoux however proposes that with a literal interpretation of these ancestral statements, the scientific statement must be its ultimate meaning and that the “philosopher’s is irrelevant when it comes to analyzing the signification of the statement.” (Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, 2008a, p. 14)
He states that for both the scientific statement to be true as well as the philosophers statement then the correlationist would have to maintain a “tissue of absurdities”. Most importantly to his discussion that the fossil-matter is “the givenness in the present of a being that is anterior to givenness; that is to say, that an arche-fossil manifests an entity’s anteriority vis-à-vis manifestation,”(Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, 2008a) How is it possible for the object to give givenness anterior to the existence of givenness?
When faced with this proposition the Correlationist proposes the arche-fossil as a thing that creates knowledge from the standpoint of the present and is then read back into the past, but as Meillassoux points out “This means that we have to carry out a retrojection of the past on the basis of the present” (Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, 2008a, p. 16).
This issue here is givenness. Givenness is the condition for the universalizing potentiality of any given statement. Meillassoux tells us that since Kant “objectivity is no longer defined with reference to the object in itself (in terms of the statement’s adequation or resemblance to what it designates), but rather with reference to the possible universality of an objective statement.”(Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, 2008a, p. 15) This intersubjectivity of the scientific ancestral statement is what guarantees its objectivity to the correlationist.
However what is given to us is not something that is anterior to givenness but merely something that is given in the present but gives itself as anterior to givenness. In order to give meaning to the scientific statement about the arche-fossil one has to follow the chronological succession from past to present, rather than following a logical succession from present to past. The correlationist has still failed to give any meaning to this chronological succession.
Meillassoux asks one more question of the correlationist to prove that this interpretation of ancestrality is insupportable. “ What is it that happened 4.56 billion years ago? Did the accretion of the earth happen, yes or no?” (Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, 2008a, p. 16) The correlationist will answer, yes sciences proves it is intersubjectively verifiable, but in another sense, no, the referent of the statement cannot have existed as it is described as non-correlated with a consciousness.
“the ancestral statement is a true statement in that it is objective, but one whose referent cannot possibly have actually existed in the way this truth describes it. It is a true statement, but it has no conceivable object. Or to put it another way it is a non-sense.” (Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, 2008a)
The problem of Ancestrality concludes with this - If we are able to consider the scientific ancestral statement to have any meaning, as the correlationist will propose we can, we must view the referent of its statement to be meaningful or else it can only be considered as ‘non-sense’.
FOR THE KIDS
For the Kids
For the bored kids. For the kids who don’t want to go home. For the kids not interested. For the lonely kids. For the kid that’s being bullied. For the kids dirty. For my empty nephew. For the kids who think you’re a fuckwit. For kids who want body kits. For the kids who can’t pretend. For the kids who don’t understand. For your kids you’re bound to fuck up.
Where are these kids.
The ones that make mess? The ones that die. The ones who don’t do their homework.
For the[lot] so well Behaved
Boredom, distracted by subtle touch ups.
Participant; whose story is about their ever further availability, their acceptance into, and humongous un-understood hard-on for, circle jerks with those guys.
So ingratiating. For the lot so ingratiated. IS THIS LOVE? Tender passion for a mutual identity? {plz comment below}
Except that kid who got touched up by his uncle
[do you remember Hijikata Tatsumi]
The kid well confused by it all. Victim to the full force of holistic schizophrenia.
Its all like totally political anywayz, right? U knowz it. fuck off with freedoms
FOR THE KIDS AT THE END OF THE WORLD HANGING AROUND WITH KEVIN KOSNER ALL WET IN THE WATER. Stand and be counted children.
Live the life of yours
For the bored kids. For the kids who don’t want to go home. For the kids not interested. For the lonely kids. For the kid that’s being bullied. For the kids dirty. For my empty nephew. For the kids who think you’re a fuckwit. For kids who want body kits. For the kids who can’t pretend. For the kids who don’t understand. For your kids you’re bound to fuck up.
Where are these kids.
The ones that make mess? The ones that die. The ones who don’t do their homework.
For the[lot] so well Behaved
Boredom, distracted by subtle touch ups.
Participant; whose story is about their ever further availability, their acceptance into, and humongous un-understood hard-on for, circle jerks with those guys.
So ingratiating. For the lot so ingratiated. IS THIS LOVE? Tender passion for a mutual identity? {plz comment below}
Except that kid who got touched up by his uncle
[do you remember Hijikata Tatsumi]
The kid well confused by it all. Victim to the full force of holistic schizophrenia.
Its all like totally political anywayz, right? U knowz it. fuck off with freedoms
FOR THE KIDS AT THE END OF THE WORLD HANGING AROUND WITH KEVIN KOSNER ALL WET IN THE WATER. Stand and be counted children.
Live the life of yours
Tuesday, 30 August 2011
Monday, 29 August 2011
Haptic visuality and optical visuality are not completely opposed, but exist on opposite ends of the same spectrum. For Marks, as for Deleuze and Guattari these forms slide into each other, occupying a range of relations depending on the media object. Marks further describes haptic images (those which invite a haptic look) are often grainy, distorted and highlight our inability to see. Because we cannot identify an Other space and Other figures, our haptic look rests on the surface of the image rather than penetrating into it. We sense it with our bodies, treating this other surface as another skin. Optical images, on the other hand, portray a figures for a viewer to identify with, a space to exist in. Few media works are ever completely haptic, but rather depend on the oscillation between haptic and optical visuality. This oscillation is one between visual mastery and loss of reference and control; for Marks this is what makes haptic media erotic.
http://transliteracies.english.ucsb.edu/post/research-project/research-clearinghouse-individual/research-reports/haptic-visuality-2
http://transliteracies.english.ucsb.edu/post/research-project/research-clearinghouse-individual/research-reports/haptic-visuality-2
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