"The naturalistic challenge is to explain intentionality without viciously presuming intentionality. A similar moral holds for ontology, in my view. Because ontological categories are in part intentionally constituted, attempting to explain representation while dining out on ontology is, for analogous reasons, fatally circular."
- Brian Cantwell Smith
An interesting quote from Brian Cantwell Smith, author of a powerful book on ontology, On the Origin of Objects. His work shows how a commitment to epistemological naturalism is still a part of the correlationist program, yet his ideas on irreductionism are to me viable and empowering. Below he comes to the conclusion that scientific laws reduce things to their features as part of "epistemic apparatus involved in the conduct of science as an intellectual activity (on a par with mathematical models); they are not ontological commitments of the theory as a whole." It's obvious then that as long as science reduces things just to their features (qualities) observable from the outside through an epistemological approach that it will leave out those aspects of objects that elude the nets of the reasoning mind; yet, as heuristic devices in the pursuit of Science such distortions if seen for what they are do contain value as long as they do not pretend to displace ontology:
"As a way to muster support for simply availing ourselves of 'common-sense ontology', Dennett says 'Look, why not just assume sub-atomic particles and tables and mountains and galaxies, in the way that science does?' This leads me to mention a radical thesis that I hold, although I can't give it much defence here: namely, that science may not be committed to objects at all. Consider: an amoeba splits. Biology doesn't care about the individuals in the situation: whether one amoeba died and two new ones were born; or whether we now have a spatial distribution of unitary amoeba-ness; or whether one of the two emerging amoebae is the original one, and the other one is new; or any other possibility. Another example: in California I own an ancient redwood tree that has clumps of very substantial shoots (some as much as 50 feet high) sprouting around its base. How many redwood trees are there? Science doesn't know, and science doesn't care. Similar conclusions hold for fog, for the units of selection, for a myriad other examples. What this leads me to believe is that scientific laws (like animals) may in fact deal only in features; and that the objects we think of as constitutive of science may merely be simplifying epistemic devices that allow humans to calculate. Objects in science, that is, are in my view properly understood as part of the epistemic apparatus involved in the conduct of science as an intellectual activity (on a par with mathematical models); they are not ontological commitments of the theory as a whole."
- From: Brian Cantwell Smith - Reply to Dennett - in: Hugh Clapin (ed.) - Philosophy of mental representation - Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2002, pp. 241-242 (notes omitted).
- Brian Cantwell Smith
An interesting quote from Brian Cantwell Smith, author of a powerful book on ontology, On the Origin of Objects. His work shows how a commitment to epistemological naturalism is still a part of the correlationist program, yet his ideas on irreductionism are to me viable and empowering. Below he comes to the conclusion that scientific laws reduce things to their features as part of "epistemic apparatus involved in the conduct of science as an intellectual activity (on a par with mathematical models); they are not ontological commitments of the theory as a whole." It's obvious then that as long as science reduces things just to their features (qualities) observable from the outside through an epistemological approach that it will leave out those aspects of objects that elude the nets of the reasoning mind; yet, as heuristic devices in the pursuit of Science such distortions if seen for what they are do contain value as long as they do not pretend to displace ontology:"As a way to muster support for simply availing ourselves of 'common-sense ontology', Dennett says 'Look, why not just assume sub-atomic particles and tables and mountains and galaxies, in the way that science does?' This leads me to mention a radical thesis that I hold, although I can't give it much defence here: namely, that science may not be committed to objects at all. Consider: an amoeba splits. Biology doesn't care about the individuals in the situation: whether one amoeba died and two new ones were born; or whether we now have a spatial distribution of unitary amoeba-ness; or whether one of the two emerging amoebae is the original one, and the other one is new; or any other possibility. Another example: in California I own an ancient redwood tree that has clumps of very substantial shoots (some as much as 50 feet high) sprouting around its base. How many redwood trees are there? Science doesn't know, and science doesn't care. Similar conclusions hold for fog, for the units of selection, for a myriad other examples. What this leads me to believe is that scientific laws (like animals) may in fact deal only in features; and that the objects we think of as constitutive of science may merely be simplifying epistemic devices that allow humans to calculate. Objects in science, that is, are in my view properly understood as part of the epistemic apparatus involved in the conduct of science as an intellectual activity (on a par with mathematical models); they are not ontological commitments of the theory as a whole."
- From: Brian Cantwell Smith - Reply to Dennett - in: Hugh Clapin (ed.) - Philosophy of mental representation - Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2002, pp. 241-242 (notes omitted).
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If not, you are indeed suggesting that analysis of these processes doesn't overlap, largely and for the most part, with ontology, correct? Or, you're suggesting that ontology is the analysis of the emergence of objects as discovered in everyday language, but with the caveat that they do not *belong* to language (or else: correlationism)?
I'm interested in your replies.
Overall, Smith's project was to develop in his book what he called a successor metaphysics, one that would honor the following pretheoretic requirements:
1. Do justice to what is right about:
a. Constructivism: a form of humility, or so at least I characterized it, requiring that we acknowledge our presence in, and influence on, the world around us; and
b. Realism: the view that adds to constructivism's claim that "we are here" an equally profound recognition that we are not all that is here, and that as a result not all of our stories are equally good.
2. Make sense of pluralism: the fact that knowledge is partial, perspectival, and never wholly extricable from its (infinite) embedding historical, cultural, social, material, economic and every other kind of context. The account of pluralism must:
a. Avoid devolving into nihilism or other forms of vacuous relativism, and in particular not be purchased at the price of (successors notions of) excellence, standards, virtue, truth, or significance; and
b. Not license radical incommensurability, provide an excuse to build walls, or in any other way stand in the way of interchange, communion, and struggle for common ends.
Two additional criteria were applied to how these intuitions are met:
3. Be irreductionist -- ideologically, scientifically, and in every other way. No category, from sociality to electron, from political power to brain, from origin myth to rationality to mathematics, including the category "human," may be given a priori pride of place, and thereby be allowed to elude contingency, struggle, and price.
4. Be nevertheless foundational, in such a way as to satisfy our undiminished yearning for metaphysical grounding. That is, or so at least I put it, the account must show how and what it is to be grounded simpliciter - without being grounded in α, for any category α.
Along the way, the account should:
5. Reclaim tenable, lived, work-a-day successor versions of many mainstay notions of the modernist tradition: object, objective, true, formal, mathematical, logical, physical, etc."
True. For every non-trivial system there are hidden states relative to a particular observer but a useful epistemology tells us if they are hidden in principle ( hidden variables problem ) or unknown due to technical/practical reasons. In case of the latter a sophisticated approach could estimate the loss of information relative to a particular approach to observation. I guess this is not possible in the former case: how can elision be bound? If elision was fundamental, not just an artifact of our limited methods, shouldn't there be consequences also for the observer and if not, is this concept even meaningful?
On the one side we have Analytic/Pragmatist aspect, on the other side with a different view of the real the phenomenologists: in the one camp the epistemological naturalists emerge from Frege, Russell, Quine, Sellars, Churchland; and, on the other we have OOO from Brentano, Husserl, Heidegger, etc...
As I piece this history together it seems a battle over terminology as well as ways of confronting objects: do we need to deal with our knowledge (representations) of objects and concepts, or can we dispense with such problems? The epistemological naturalist in Brassier's mode tells us that "the metaphysical exploration of the structure of being can only be carried out in tandem with an epistemological investigation into the nature of conception. For we cannot understand what is real unless we understand what ‘what’ means, and we cannot understand what ‘what’ means without understanding what ‘means’ is, but we cannot hope to understand what ‘means’ is without understanding what ‘is’ means" (ST, 47). While those within Object-Oriented Ontology would argue that epistemological concerns can be done away with as false problems. Yet, Brassier arguing against the hermeneutical circle that he sees within OOO argues otherwise, stating, "a non-hermeneutical understanding of metaphysical investigation imposes an epistemological constraint on the latter, necessitating an account that explains how sapient creatures gain cognitive access to reality through conception" (ST, 48).
The battle between a hermeneutical and non-hermeneutical view of objects seems to be what divides the opposing camps of OOO and epistemological naturalism. Is this a problem of terminology? Or, more succinctly are these two traditions and modes of ontological speculation vying for the heart of philosophy and science? What is important to me is that we need to question both sides of the issue: to discover the currents that inform them both, the cross-overs if any that can bridge the divide between them, and understand why there are so many conflictual relations and contentious arguements for/against both sides of the issue. Is this truly a battle between two strains of ontological enquiry? Or is there more involved, some fundamental way of approaching what we term the 'real'?
Edited at 2011-03-13 09:39 pm (UTC)