who's afraid of realism? (part 3): realism and nominalism

John Duns Scotus (1265-1308)

The realist-nominalist conversation has forced me to go back and look at some of the work on John Duns Scotus that I did within our Medieval philosophy seminars, during graduate school at SIUC.  Scotesian realism seems to defeat nominalism, but only by accommodating it.  Scotus was a nominalist (for some) only by "a hair."  In Mayorga's book on Peirce she has a chapter or two about this.   While current speculative appropriations of Scotus are not thoroughly "classical," the conversation is fitting as Scotus can be a resource for clarifying what nominalism means philosophically. 

This is from Peter King's article on Scotus that Jed gave us: 

In his Oxford writings, Scotus typically asserts that within one and the same thing (res) there are formally distinct realities (realitates), entities (entitates) or formalities ( formalitates), as he variously terms them, corresponding to our discrete concepts of it.3 Scotus calls this distinction between such entities ‘real’ in the sense that it does not arise solely from the mind but exists in the thing (ex parte rei ) prior to the action of any intellect whatever, human or divine. At the same time, he says that these formally distinct entities are really identical, since they can never actually exist apart but only as united within the same individual. Scotus argues that genera and their differences, species and their individual differences, and certain kinds of relations and their foundations, are in each case formally distinct. 

I think the point in question is whether there is an essence in the thing distinct from the thing.  If I remember correctly Scotus states that generality is not even a distinct thing, but is found in the particulars that instantiate it.  Still, there is a difference between the particular and the instantiated general.  So, there is no form "white" but "whiteness" is the general instantiated by objects with that power.  "Whiteness" is not the *product* of the object, the object does not trump the general even though the general depends on it for instantiation.  It is a matter of contracting the general that is dormant within the object.  I would add that it is impossible for eternal objects (per the reference to Whitehead) to be created products of any finite particular.

Jason's response is as follows: 

I am continuing the discussion of realism and nominalism.  Here I make the distinction between genera (genus-species relationships), generals (e.g., Lockean abstractive processes), and universals.  I also explain the importance difference between a realist and nominalist on several key points of metaphysics and phenomenology.

Leon and I were discussing the basics of Duns Scotus, etc., and my own appropriations of the terms that adds some Aquinas.  Below is an edited portion of our discussion.

The terms are “real distinction,” “formal distinction,” and a third term I do not know off the top of my head.  We often just say a “mere distinction" or "merely formal."

Universals and genera are of the second kind.  I forgot what the perfections are, which are special cases of this ontological problem.  Note that genera and generals are distinct, whereas the latter refer to principles arrived at via an inductive process, e.g., Locke’s “abstraction” or logical induction.  The former refer to genus-species relationships, e.g., categorical logic.

Correct, generality (generals) is neither a real nor formal distinction.  Hence, a nominalist often thinks that generality is all we have—not universality or genera of being.

As for essence vs. thing, you are right.  If we are Hobbes-style nominalists and think that all things are (corpuscular) particularities, then we deny essences.  Recall that essences are a kind of universal, while quality is another kind of universal.  Also, "essentiality" is not the category of uniquity (uniqueness); the latter is "quiddity."  As I wrote in my post, nominalism gives up on substantial or essential identity—identity is a best a function of something.  It does not necessarily give up on absolute particularity.

As for whiteness, it is a universal and a general, but not in the same way for both.  Insomuch as whiteness has reality, it is a universal.  Insomuch as we experience or know whiteness, it is a general; we infer from experience that this encounter is of the category of whiteness.  Now, if we are not realists about universals, then we know merely the generality “whiteness.”  The problem here is that we no longer experience the real thing, but merely a generated appearance.  If one is a nominalist, one does not think that there is anything “under” this generation.

In my Peirce-Deweyan position, for instance, we add to the idea that whiteness is a universal and general.  We talk about the generation of the phenomenal quality, so we are talking about a generated quality.  However, since we think that generation is a real process, then the generated quality maintains a real, non-arbitrary relation to the thing experienced.  (Note that the “thing experienced” is not an entity or object, but I’m keeping it simple for now.)  A nominalist, on the other hand, can merely say that the phenomenal quality was generated, full stop.

Meillassoux's re-installation of Bergsonian intellectual intuition

Per the realist-nominalist discussion, Brassier's article on the "enigma" of realism.  I don't think that Bergson is mentioned in the article but nevertheless the concept of intellectual intuition seems relevant.  

From Brassier's talk below:  "We must penetrate to the non-particular foundation of the particular and recognize that the qualities of sense are dynamics of a process which occurs only in connection with individual terms, which, when cut up [by the organism according to practical habit] become complex particulars [generals, universals] which register the complete nervous system."  This is not to say that universals, born of repetition in habit, are somehow not *real*, nor is it to say that they do not often take a predominate influence in the governance of life.

It is the fact that practical habit must adjust both to the extensities and intensities of the real, as well as nature's orders conceived of in their universality (equally *real*), which renders generality good.  This is both epistemic and metaphysical realism.  It is a controversial thesis to state that generality does not exist, and that metaphysics is *simply* a science of particulars.  That just begs the question:  science of x here really equals the speculation of physics, as in developing a generic but also genetic account from within the real - not somehow opposed and outside of it, taking its properties to be constructions of the mind, constructions of particulars, and so on.  In a surprising way, the analysis of lived experience is the bearing witness of the genesis and birth (and possible death) of (statistical) universality.  Thus the sort of generality, that for a time, transcends its own particularity, but then is subject to an ontological death.

who's afraid of realism? (part 1): realism and nominalism

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) Jason / immanent transcendence has THIS to say concerning realism and nominalism.  The broader point, as I see it and as Jason articulates in his post, is that a speculative realist metaphysics is especially difficult if one endorses an immanentism gone so wild that it is impossible for there to be transcendence of the particular terms which comprise the immanent plane.  The result, epistemologically speaking, is nominalism.  Metaphysically speaking, immanence ultimately refers to one form of transcendence or another.  The question becomes: is there such a thing as "pure" immanence?  And, more basically, immanent to what? A view of transcendence acceptable within an intelligent immanentist viewpoint might be something like taking transcendence to involve the recognition of an "ultimate governance" of immanent terms, where that governance states "there shall be no ultimate governance among the particulars."  It seems that the non-contingent (transcendental) principle that "all is contingent" applies to particulars as well as universals, true, but  it is the one reality to which contingency itself applies as a "functional" ground or transcendental "hyperground" which is determinative of all other grounds - that is, as a transcendental reality whose basis admits contingency within itself and yet still holds non-contingently (we may say "groundless" ground). Transcendence, ontologically, simply references recognition of these conditions, the possibility of any x - there can be more, so let there be more.  There is no universal principle "locking in" the continuous metaphysical addition of particulars to an immanent plane.  Epistemologically speaking transcendence is simply the ascension of thought through into being by speculating such conditions of novelty (and temporality) for any and all particulars and creative addition to them. Metaphysically, transcendence involves something altogether different than what is traditionally understood (the invocation of a supernatural realm of universals): instead of concrete ground and universal, here metaphysics involves relations, function, and composition with respect to particulars.  Speculation necessarily extends beyond the reality of singular terms, and realism admits both the reality of terms, relations between those terms, and then the generic functions applying to both terms and relations. Nominalism on the other hand is confined to "the show of the present moment."  For the nominalist, there is no transcendence of even the singular self-term "itself," and thus terms are immanently "flattened" in a correlationist circle which begs all to be referred *back* to the present self, what is present for *it* without regard for any in-coming future experience (and so there is no way to proceed beyond the self to the "great outdoors" for the correlationist, even in a temporal sense).  There is no identity other than the immediate first term of experience, there is no other particular to affect the first particular, there is no reality of relation between the two.  One just has the circle of correlation: what exists exists *for* the first term of experience.  Stated differently, nominalism admits no room for the metaphysical relations between things, the compositional connections in any given instant.  (And yet stated another way: There is no room for the sort of compositional particular that "behaves" as a universal in its own transcendental function.  This is the worst kind of correlationism, as the transcendental function is what permits there to be real non-contradiction, real identity, measure and principle without specifically human measurement or reason.)   Transcendence, given the above, is available from within and between the particulars; yet it is in some sense what renders particularity as such as a process.  It is recognition of ground (as transcendence), but as "grounding activity" (transcendental condition) - from each particular and to each particular in a nexus of relation, function, and composition (relatively transcendent).   In the below lecture, using process philosophy and cosmology we find out why any speculative metaphysics must be grounded in the empirical and in the particular, and being so cannot be nominalistic.  However we also learn that to deny what is most generic about nature, what is in effect transcendental, leads to an unfounded skepticism relegated to that "show of the present moment" without regard for an other.  Using Whitehead, we find out that any metaphysical description of nature takes us "beyond" the particular and toward the generic, the universal, the transcendent, even if in the future temporal creation of a self. Relations and transcendence are as real as the particular facts. If the radical nominalist (and immanentist) admits no such generic description, i.e., universal whether in principle or name, then they are no realist that can inhabit any camp of speculative metaphysics or ontological and epistemological realism. More boldly: speculation necessarily involves transcendence - but transcendence with reference always to the particulars which help to establish the actuation of that transcendence.

An Introduction to Process Cosmology by David Ray Griffin This lecture provides an introduction to the relationship between process thought and cosmology, and the potential role or influence that the former should have in the latter. Date Recorded: October 5, 2006 Location: Claremont School of Theology Lecture: 66 min Download Lecture : (MP3 - 21Mb)

metaphysics of the infinite (part 2)

Zizek's edited Hegel volume (published in 2011),
Hegel and the Infinite.   

When it comes to German idealism and the infinite, you always have Schelling who is the underdog and my personal favorite.  

For an outright comparison of Schelling and Hegel I would suggest, Schelling versus Hegel: From German Idealism to Christian Metaphysics.

Catherine Malabou on Epigenesis and the Plasticity of Life

From the "To Have Done with Life" conference in Zagreb of 2011.  I knew that the audio was out there for awhile but not the video. 

Part Two |  Part Three  |  Part Four

Ray Brassier on Bergson

I have to say that while I disagree with Brassier simply because we are different kinds of naturalists, I share his respect for the sheer complexity and novelty of Bergson's ideas as found in books like Matter and Memory.   

(Mp3 audio download  +  .pdf handout)

Part Two |  Part Three  |  Part Four  | Part Five

Meillassoux and process theism

To create and destroy even becoming ...

Over the past few days I have been re-reading some texts in metaphysical theology by Quentin Meillassoux, especially his essay "Immanence of the World Beyond" and his dissertation The Divine Inexistence. I have come to the conclusion that Meillassoux's God has process -relational features as much as it does, ontologically and epistemologically, features similar to the God presented by both Caputo and Kearney. Similarly, these features are also found in German idealism, especially in Schelling and Hegel.  In this post I just want to jot down what I take to be the process-relational features of Meillassoux's God.  I can approach Caputo's and Kearney's process thought at another time.

In terms of the radical contingency behind Meillassoux's God, I am first struck by how it reminds me in some very qualified but important respects of Whitehead's and Hartshorne's process God.  I say this because while Meillassoux's God in total does not exist but someday *may*, it is his Hyperchaotic ground which seems to encompass many of the aspects of the di-polar process God's contingent or virtual pole as a sort of transcendental condition or "ground."  And while there certainly is a difference in how power is conceived (Meillassoux's version is an unbridled power and utterly absolute, independent; the process philosopher's power is relative and non-coercive), it is the ontological scheme of how that power forms a sort of transcendental creative condition  which makes me think of process thought.  This transcendental ground (the Hyper-chaos, and also the virtual) is also quite similar to what some of the German idealists were doing, especially Schelling with the "unruly ground" and the divine "Potenzen" (this even despite Meillassoux posing being and becoming against each other in correlationism: Schelling and Hegel are important influences for him as he has already admitted in interviews).  Add emphasis on the process by which the virtual real spontaneously creates, and again, thinking about Meillassoux's God in process terms seems to make more sense.  The concepts of creativity and novelty both arise from the pole of Meillassouxian contingency. And so Meillassoux and process thought seem to fit together, but so far only on one hobbling leg of contingency.

One must keep in mind the places in Meillassoux's philosophy where the actual pole seems to take on a crucial function, most particularly the arche-fossil, for example.  Here one may consider the arche-fossil, ancestrality, as the "objective immortality of the past" and the other side of Whiteheadian or process di-polarity.  This is readily provided by the actuality of the "great outdoors" and the individuated reals which communicate their mathematizable properties.  These artifacts do not require the human, but nevertheless propel inquirers along into future worlds (whether of matter, life, thought or justice).  Further, science and empirical thought are the guiding lights to consider these "preserved" actual occasions in their immortal temporal tomb.  Reason and mathematics, prized lights of Whitehead as well, offer their own services in discerning the material real as empirical condition.  And so here we have the other leg of di-polarity: the actual. 

What reinforces these two pieces of Meillassouxian "process" thought?  Answer: the virtual God.  Meillassoux is thus close enough to a process theologian who seems to be emphasizing the virtual or contingent pole and its power for ethical, and religious, redemption, alebit more than likely unbeknownst to him.  Why?  

Although a specific deity does not "exist" (yet) in Meillassoux's ontology, the divine inexistence nevertheless possesses a role of truly divine power warranting the name "God" (that non-deity whose power is involved with the creation of time itself). This virtual force whose function is divine and God-like - something whose appearance is to be hoped for so that s Fourth World of Justice may be come to pass - arises from within a necessary contingency and is thus is entirely "possible" even though it is beyond ontological possibility itself (it is virtual).  Give that, such a power truly must be a divine inexistence.

This virtual entity is able to embrace both poles of the divine life found in process theisms of whatever variety (Whitehead or Hartshorne).  

To conclude: the nature and importance of a necessary contingent ground (which equals a sort of divine or ultimate freedom), the place of empirical thought vis-a-vis the divine and speculation about it (pace Whitehead), and the hope for justice through the coming to be of a virtual God (pace Caputo, Kearney), one seems to find a being "to be" freed from its virtual prison as a sort of ontological being in process of adventing itself before the world. This being seems to have a distinct ontological integrity all of its own.  

If the Meillassouxian Hyper-chaos can destroy even becoming, in *its* own power, then I ask how why not regard such a ground as divine, as Godhead birthing a process or coming to be God? Regarding the real possible as ground for creative addition, an addition and power that is even "beyond" becoming is still included within the divine life as an aspect of the di-polar God (Whitehead himself speaks this way by making creativity the ultimate category of nature) ...  [I have Peircean Firstness, the "can-be" possible, in mind here as well].

This hyper-chaotic time is able to create and destroy even becoming, producing without reason fixity or movement, repetition or creation. That’s why I think that ultimately the matter of philosophy is not being or becoming, representation or reality, but a very special possibility, which is not a formal possible, but a real and dense possible, which I call the “peut-être”- the ‘may-be’.   

- Q. Meillassoux (Time without Becoming)

an appraisal of Whiteheadian nontheism (and why it is insufficient)

Article HERE: Lewis S. Ford, "An Appraisal of Whiteheadian nontheism". 

Alfred North Whitehead’s analysis of present immediacy in terms of a succession of acts of becoming, called “actual occasions,” focuses attention on the problem of subjectivity, particularly upon the way it originates anew in every moment.  In part this is understood in terms of creativity, the ceaseless activity whereby many past occasions are unified to form one actuality, itself in turn becoming one actuality among many for the superseding occasions.  But creativity by itself is simply blind activity, supplying the drive but not the focus for such convergence.  Without an ideal possibility for the process to aim at, there is no reason why creativity would not be just as divergent as convergent, achieving unity only accidentally if at all.  Subjectivity is not merely sheer activity, for the activity must be capable of unifying itself, and for this it must be purposive to some degree.  Whitehead therefore suggests that subjectivity is this purposive process of unification guided by that ideal possibility at which it aims.  This subjective aim must be derived from somewhere, from an actuality which is not anyone of the occasions of the past.  Since it is the ultimate source of all values, and hence properly worthy of worship, Whitehead calls this nontemporal actuality “God.”

in defense of relations

"No doubt as long as man and all other animals are viewed as independent creations, an effectual stop is put to our natural desire to investigate as far as possible the causes of Expression ..." -Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872)

While at a conference recently I brought up the ethical value of prehending specifically animal expressions of interior life, but also of all life and possibly the inorganic as well.  Expression, aesthetic expression I should say, is the semiotic key of access to the infinite value and worth of all things, of the interior life of objects, or better put, what I would call dynamic singular agents.  

At the conference my goal was to introduce the panpsychist idea of extending "perspective" or "agency" (in place of something like "subjective" interior experience) to all things organic and non-organic.  My point was that there is something forever inaccessible about the withdrawing nature of a thing's interior life, its infinite value and worth, that nevertheless is aesthetically communicated through feeling and sensation; perhaps even through the emotions - in other words, a trace of the vanishing intensity which crystallized as a material emotional expression.  

Aesthetic feeling directed is a "sensate message" in its value-intensity: it is an aesthetic and semiotic communication to be prehended (and thus also a power).  This is all to say that the "perspective" of things may be felt not only in the persistence of a thing's own powering, but also as an expression communicated semiotically in a message that is to be felt.

Objects?

Darwin's quote is meant to indicate that when we see these expressions of interior life as being unrelated to others (entirely "independent" creations) we tend to mute rather than respect the very power and capacity of a living perspective to communicate its own experience of meaning to another. 

It is that power and capacity of a perspective to communicate its own interior life, to speak for itself to another, that is to be honored and cherished, along with its value and worth as a perspective persisting in its own right.  This is not to say that relatedness must always mean something for someone but only that there is a power whose own interior emanates a trace of the interior: perspective and agency signified and made known, only if partially so.  There is a value in "making known," expression is always two sided: at a minimum between agent and an agent's own self-making as a form of expression which individuates it.

To conclude: Communication, the making-known-of-meaning, seems to be a cosmic act, indicative of an interior intention that may have no other receiver than the universe itself.

God and the logic of worlds

 


I. Introduction to Modality and Possibility  

A. Modal Logic Introduced (download .pdf file) 

B. Introduction to Modality and Possibility (G. W. F. Leibniz and David Lewis)



II. How Modal Logic Enhances Theology 

A. In the second clip below, around 1:20, we find out how a logic of possible worlds can enhance theology.

III. Plantinga on Leibniz's best of all possible worlds argument




IV. Is God a necessary being (in all worlds)?  Or is God an absolutely contingent being that may be (now), but once is, must be?

V. Why this World?  Modal Realism and God

A. Would Multiple Universes Undermine God? Closer to Truth Program PBS (link to videos)

B. Why this World?  (Skeptic Magazine article)

C. Cosmology and Theology (Stanford Entry)

D. Are there Multiple Universes?

E. How Vast is the Cosmos?

VI. Charles Hartshorne: The Logic of Perfection 

A. Charles Hartshorne (Stanford entry)

B. Charles Hartshorne (Harvard Square)

C. Ontological Arguments (Stanford entry)

D. "Charles Hartshorne and the Ontological Argument" (Process Studies, Vol. 14, Number 1, Spring, 1984): 11-20.

E. Hartshorne's Modal Argument 

we have never been material (part 2)

This goes way, way beyond Cartesian dualism and the "how do you know that this isn't a dream" gimmick.  Contemporary science has some insights into something very strange indeed ...   

Closer to Truth - "Is this Universe a Simulation?" (Kurzweil)

Closer to Truth - "Is this Universe a Simulation?" (Minsky, Lanier, Rees, and others)