Quick Comments on The Speculative Turn
The recent publication of the hyped The Speculative Turn is most probably well known to everyone in the blogosphere (and to many out of it), as evidenced by the impressive number of downloads of the book from the re.press website.
I think that the final product was well worth the wait, as it includes some really excellent chapters (it has been already observed that the volume suffers from gender bias — perhaps in the volume itself? Without diminishing the quality of the publication, let this be a reminder of how the discussion can still be enlarged and improved, or potentially overturned, by the addition of new voices).
There is a lot of material in it, including–from my personal perspective–a number of chapters that really stand out (probably because I am less interested in others). I would like just to signal three of them: Brassier’s, Johnston’s and Catren’s, and to make some very quick remarks about them.
Brassier’s chapter is extremely sharp, and you have to love how he never pulls any punches when it comes to attacking positions which he considers less than consistent. I also found excellent his arguments about how rejecting correlationism does not imply being oblivious to history and politics. His description of the ‘scientific stance’ and of the questions which ‘science friendly philosophers’ should ask are also exceptionally clear-minded (possibly dispelling the impression some seem to have that to concede epistemic authority to science means sacrificing everything on the altar of Science):
the scientific posture is one in which there is an immanent yet transcendental hiatus between the reality of the object and its being as conceptually circumscribed: the posture of scientific representation is one in which it is the former that determines the latter and forces its perpetual revision. Scientific representation operates on the basis of a stance in which something in the object itself determines the discrepancy between its material reality—the fact that it is, its existence—and its being, construed as quiddity, or what it is. The scientific stance is one in which the reality of the object determines the meaning of its conception, and allows the discrepancy between that reality and the way in which it is conceptually circumscribed to be measured (55).
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For those of us who take scientific representation to be the most reliable form of cognitive access to reality, the problem is one of granting maximal (but not, please note, incorrigible) authority to the scientific representation of the world while acknowledging that science changes its mind about what it says there is. Accordingly, the key question becomes: How can we acknowledge that scientific conception tracks the in-itself without resorting to the problematic metaphysical assumption that to do so is to conceptually circumscribe the ‘essence’ (or formal reality) of the latter? (64).
Johnston’s chapter is quite simply the best critique of Meillassoux that you can find (followed by Hagglund’s). Johnston voices precisely the main concerns which I (even, and especially, considering my sympathy for Meillassoux’s project) have had for a while now: his less-than-informed and somewhat instrumental employment of ‘science’, his lack of a consistent philosophy of science and — mainly — his puzzling, disappointing (if not dangerous) lapses (wrong to call them so, of course, given that his doctoral thesis was already dealing with it) into ‘divinology’. These are the crucial issues that any exegesis of Meillassoux’s work must face. These two passages identify a crucial problem that whoever intends to build a philosophy of science consistent with necessary contingency (as I would) cannot avoid:
In terms of scientific practice, Meillassoux’s speculative materialism, centered on the omnipotent sovereign capriciousness of an absolute time of ultimate contingency, either makes no difference whatsoever (i.e., self-respecting scientists ignore it for a number of very good theoretical and practical reasons) or licenses past scientific mistakes and/or present bad science being sophistically conjured away by cheap-and-easy appeals to hyper-Chaos.
…
Insofar as Meillassoux’s claims allow for (to the extent that they don’t rule out) such highly dubious interpretive maneuvers, these maneuvers threaten speculative materialism with a reductio ad absurdum rebuttal. Moreover, they are an awkward embarrassment to a philosophy that proudly presents itself, especially by contrast with idealist correlationism (as both anti-materialist and antirealist) from Kant to Husserl and company, as rigorously in line with the actual, factual physical sciences.
When Johnston writes that
Meillassoux cherry-picks from the empirical realms of the experiential (seizing upon Hume’s problem of induction) and the experimental (extracting the arche-fossil from certain physical sciences and also dabbling in speculations superimposed upon biology). Debates presently emerging around After Finitude seem to indicate that Meillassouxians, if they can be said to exist, believe it legitimate, after the fact of this cherry-picking, to seal off speculative materialism as an incontestable rationalism of the metaphysical-pure-logical-ontological when confronted with reasonable reservations grounded in the physical-applied-empirical-ontic. But, this belief is mistaken and this move intellectually dishonest: Meillassoux’s arbitrary borrowings from and engagements with things empirical block such a path of all-too-convenient retreat. Advocates of a Meillassouxian rationalism want to pluck select bits from the experimental physical sciences without these same sciences’ reasonable empirical and experiential criteria and considerations clinging to the bits thus grabbed.
I most emphatically agree with him. But, unlike Johnston, I do believe that there can be a way to correct Meillassoux’s bad habits without relinquishing the validity of his general point regarding the necessity of contingency. How? I am still thinking about it, but I would start by recognizing that if indeed one cannot too freely jump from the ontological level of pure mathematics to the ontic level of physical reality — and that indeed even to preserve this distinction is a ‘Heideggerian hangover’ — one way to fix the issue is to more thoroughly ‘go Pythagorean’ while keeping mathematics as the language of contingency. Only by grounding contingency into mathematics (and thinking mathematics as all that there is) one can avoid reading absolute contingency as ‘the God undergraduates invoke against Leibniz’s divinity metaphysically constrained by his perfect moral and rational nature’ (109). Since — and once again I agree with Johnston — ‘while not a pre-Kantian metaphysical God, Meillassoux’s speculative hyper-Chaos, with its Dieu à venir, nonetheless is disturbingly similar to this God of (post-)modern non/not-yet-philosophers’ (109). That said, I believe one can salvage hyperchaos (or a form of it) from Meillassoux’s theological slippages.
[And about his 'divinology'. Considering that the 'future God' was already present in Meillassoux's doctoral thesis, one could legitimately ask: why is it that there is no overt trace of 'divinology' in After Finitude? Why not even a footnote on the future God? The only mention of his thesis is in note 29: 'We can only allude here to the predominant role played by fideism in the constitution of modern thought. This issue will be treated in greater depth in a forthcoming work in which we hope to develop the theoretical positions that we are merely sketching here, as well as their ethical consequences: L'inexistence divine, Essai sur le dieux virtuel [Divine Inexistence: An Essay on the Virtual God].’ After Finitude insists on a Hyperchaos ‘capable of destroying every determinate entity, even a god, even God’ but never mentions it as being able to give rise to a God to come.
Of course the arguments for the future God are based upon those in After Finitude (so you could say that the argument is already there, in potentia), but still, isn’t this silence somewhat puzzling? Maybe he knew that such arguments might raise some eyebrows? Maybe he knew that it would give his philosophy something of a ‘messianic’ overtone, something which he wanted to avoid for his first publication?]
Catren’s chapter deserves another kind of reflection (general remarks rather than specific comments, as I’ve still got to finish the chapter). After reading both his essay in Collapse V and this chapter, I can claim that (small disagreements-to-be-worked-out notwithstanding) he’s definitely a philosopher of my own heart, apart from — more objectively — being someone which is to be praised for his ease in writing papers dealing with both subtleties of philosophy of particle physics and German idealism. So I can’t help but wonder: why is it that, apart from one old blogpost from the (now deceased?) Stellar Cartographies, discussing his critique of Meillassoux in Collapse, Catren is almost never mentioned in speculative circles? I would go as far as claiming that, had he published a brief but powerful book like Meillassoux did (as opposed to a number of papers) he would have probably somewhat eclipsed Meillassoux own ascent (thanks to the visibility given by a book). Why? Sorry if I beat the usual drum, but simply because Catren knows his physics and his philosophy of physics, unlike Meillassoux’s somewhat haphazard employment of them (actually, unlike Meillassoux complete avoidance of dealing with the literature in the philosophy of science in general and regarding the ontological status of laws of nature in particular). But, paradoxically, it seems to me that this is actually one of the reasons which explains his marginality. My suspicion is that the “science is not everything” contingent instinctively dislikes Catren’s speculative (at times, very speculative) but nonetheless informed employment of quantum mechanics in his discussion of realism. If the game is speculative-realism, Catren is one hell of a player.
Personally, I will consider myself a ‘well-equipped realist’ only when I have (if ever!) reached something of Catren’s level of familiarity with both theoretical physics and the history of philosophy. Incidentally, last month I applied for a place at the first Spring School for the Philosophy of Particle Physics, which will take place in Germany in March. There are lots of very good speakers/teachers there, and I’d love to go, but I’m afraid that my odds are pretty low, given my lack of any formal training in physics on the one hand and my overwhelmingly ‘continental’ background on the other. We’ll see.
Fabio Cunctator
Interesting. I found myself a little disappointed with Brassier’s article; to be honest, the polemical aspect had me feeling sympathetic for its intended target (surprising since I don’t particularly find that intended targets work convincing). I was also really annoyed by Johnston’s article. I guess at the end of the day it comes down to what you want philosophy to do and if you really are terrified of theology. I like your questions regarding divinology though and agree about Catren.
Well, as you say, it really boils down to what you want your philosophy to do and what kind of puzzles puzzle you. I’ll be the last person to deny that there is an important amount of temperamental preferences involved in these decisions. As for theology, I don’t think you can do any valuable work as an intellectual historian (and as an historian of philosophy) if you ignore theology but I also like to keep mathematical science unbound from theological warrants…
One question: were you annoyed with Johnston just regarding theology? Or you also think that his points regarding Meillassoux’s ‘idiosyncratic’ employment of science are wrong?
I’m sure that something interesting could be done with theology and mathematics, I mean, just considering the personal life of Cantor, but of course I don’t think that mathematics or science should be subordinated to theology or religion. I think our positions on this are pretty close if I’ve read your work correctly.
I think that every philosopher idiosyncratically employs science, which is sort of the problem in so far as that employment is done with an underlying metaphilosophy that is usually largely unacknowledged and under theorized. Johnston is guilty of this too and it goes to the heart of the polemical words he has for Brassier’s own idiosyncratic employment. After all, they both use neuroscience, but can’t agree on what it says.
Incidentally, you may be interested in Laruelle’s newest book <a href=http://www.philosophie-non-standard.comPhilosophie non-standard. He tries to unite physics and philosophy, including questions relating to messianism and language, in what is really a kind of summa of non-philosophy. If you do end up looking at it I’d be curious to hear what you think. Something that has largely gone unacknowledged is Laruelle’s attempt to radicalize Badiou’s equation of ontology with mathematics, which happens a bit in Principes and returns in the latest book. It is my understanding that he sat on Catren’s committee, but I don’t know that with any certainty.
You are right, I should not preach about under-acknowledged philosophers while I myself still have to catch up with Laruelle… I’ll try to get hold of the book.
As for neuroscience: the reason why I am very wary of mentioning or employing it in my own work is precisely the fact that – like it or not – it is a young science, young enough for philosophy of science to examine its methodology but still too young to be employed as a ‘speculative tool’ (as opposed to cosmology, QM, molecular biology…) in constructing a philosophical position.
as for your sentence: ‘I think that every philosopher idiosyncratically employs science, which is sort of the problem in so far as that employment is done with an underlying metaphilosophy that is usually largely unacknowledged and under theorized.’
I agree, and indeed this is one of the crucial issues that interest me: the bridge between empirical science and the ‘metaphilosopy’ which lies behind it (and often informs some of the concepts employed). It’s not only a matter of theory-ladenness of observation, but the more radical problem that empirical verification is not enough to keep our scientific concepts ‘scientific’. We need some sort of metaphysical ‘policing’ capable of not recursively create new arbitrary concepts.
Well, Laruelle isn’t easy, though this book is quite fantastic. It’s sort of like his summa or encylopeida. He seems to be quite concerned to present a unified non-philosophy bringing together all the varied interests of his career into one text. So, I think you may actually enjoy it, since it deals with science, religion, and philosophy.
That said why do we need metaphysical policing? And why are we beholden to the sexy Big Science sciences? For instance, my dissertation develops a kind of ecological philosophy, but I treat it as a very local form of thought.
I am not sure I can give a satisfactory answer. If we compare your point with Deleuze’s opposition between royal and minor science (and hence with the associated opposition between axiomatics and problematics) I must confess to be on the ‘side’ of axiomatics. Why? Well the easy way out would be to ‘copy’ Badiou’s critique of Deleuzian politics and his insistence for the necessity of some purely formal Universals. But that is only partially true. I have what Badiou claimed Derrida had: ‘a passion for the inexistant’, and the obvious place to look for it is in large scale mathematical structures rather than in localized and specified phenomena. This of course does not mean that ‘stuff’ must be ignored or that phenomenology is passe, but only that we shouldn’t carry empirically-inherited baggage when dealing with empty formalisms. And to do mathematicsl physics is to deal with the structural tensions of this formalism.
Yes I know, I should read Laruelle
Who also, incidentally, is on the side of axiomatics.
Fine. I just ordered Philosophies of Difference and will soon look for the other on Amazon.fr.
Haha. Great.
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I’m a slow reader so I have only gotten as far as Grant’s own article, but I also found Brassier’s article strong although the tone a little too sharp for my tastes (and wondering why he did not just name his intended target so it was so obvious?). I’ll have to do a write up on Brassier’s article at some stage, but it is a strange mix in that he hits all the general thematic notes I advocate – his warnings about the importance of epistemological constraints and his strict demarcation between metaphysics/science and fideism appealing the most – but the ‘positive’ direction is so relentlessly negative that it is hard to take his points. Of course he is attempting to wrest us back from the brink of this ‘explanation’ rather than demonstration desire, but I have spent enough time around the Anglophone Sellars crowd (the Sellars scholar he mentions O’Shea is in my department) to know that it is a kind of neo-Kantianism in its formal attitude. This is just not my cup of tea these days.
That being said I am certain that Brassier would be less likely to slip into the divinology which is something I don’t think I’ll ever recognize or understand as anything other than a revised speculatively tinged form of fideism. I am quite happy that it is absent from AF as it may very well have turned the book into something with a lot less impact. But I agree with your reasons – I suspect it was omitted in order to avoid comparisons with the work of the later Derrida or perhaps even to establish some distance between his work and Badiou’s own.
As for Catren well I also quite like his Collapse article with the important caveat – as far as I can understand it! I made sure to give him a mention in my thesis alongside other critiques of Meillassoux, but there is a point in his work where most of us plain get left behind. But you are right Catren is probably the real deal but I can’t be sure and the same holds for many I suspect and hence the silence because it is impossible to know without knowing the physics (incidentally as one of the few people so well placed in this regard you could do a lot of good work in shedding light on Catren’s work). I also feel I’d need to have a grounding in all this too to be a fully-equipped realist, but I have no idea where I’d even begin.
Well, I am still working towards that… Should I manage to get into that Spring School I’d dedicate a month or so to prepare myself for it and hopefully that would help me catch up with the actual physicists that will be there. My hope is that the admission people will offer me a place for some sort of ‘equal opportunity’ criterion: ‘let’s have also one of those continental types…’.
I guess my worry with this dislike and subsequent rejection of divinology, for it smells too much like fideism (which is unfair since, as someone interested in German Idealism, positivists may accuse you of fideism, it’s a term that allows for quite a lot of ideological slippage) is a kind of failure of the “extensity test” that Grant talks about in his Schelling book and that Daniel Whistler writes about in the After the Postsecular and the Postmodern volume. I hope this doesn’t appear to be self-promotion, but I really do think that the essays in that volume should be part of this debate.
Very true. People, read After the Postsecular and the Postmodern!
[...] So, after browsing through the Speculative Turn (pdf here), and the comments on it by Hypertiling here, I thought that I might post the following article. Actually, it’s a few years old now, but [...]
Contingency and the Limits of Science | Transcissions said this on January 18, 2011 at 3:11 pm |