Radical Empiricism and the Drama of Experience: The Impossibility of Absolute Singularity and Ontological Isolation

The very fact that things occur and thus create novel "experience" where none was before - linking experiences to one another, self-sufficiently in their own "concatenation" as James puts it - defeats the pretensions of nominalism outright.  True, reality may be of particulars and thoroughly plural, but particulars relate by their very nature (none are absolutely isolated) and they develop in their form, whether temporally and prehensively to their own singular futures (or prior pasts), or to others so as to be the "singular" particulars that they are.  This concatenated relational metaphysics is found in the ontological pluralism of James and is found in the pluriformalism of Aristotle as well.

Following this thought, the particular, a "one," only gets to be "a one" by a count, a process.  Otherwise, singulars would be frozen ones, particulars waiting for a count to establish their identity from eternity.  Nothing would begin to move or come into being.  And this contradicts facts given that singulars change in their form and evolve over time according to a non-determined future that involves the freedom and spontaneity of change.  Whether the forms themselves are of an eternal nature, as Whitehead suggested with his theory of eternal objects, may be true, though the theory still demands a temporal nature for the forms to lure active singulars into their full being over the course of a developmental trajectory.  This necessarily would involve the free responsive and creativity activity of the singular understood as an agent (indeed one that is capable of failing to achieve its nature as much as it is of realizing it).



Empiricism is best expressed when it is radical.  It is a perspective which extends how "deep" particulars are able to be perceived in their essential nature, and how "broadly" one is able to extend and relate the nature of a particular to other natures.  The depth and broadness of experience determines how and in which ways the forms of the particulars are able to stretch or bend before being forced to take on a new form over time.  Are the forms in experience, or not?  Perhaps the question should be better stated as, "In what ways do the forms enter into experience?"  Even for Plato, in the Timaeus, the Forms were said to enter through and into the world - the cosmic body - from time to time.  Whitehead stated that these Forms were changeless and eternal, though capable of relating to change; while Hartshorne suggested that there were no eternal objects at all, and that the forms are part of experience and grow and change over time.  Along Hartshorne's line of thought I remember Tom Alexander saying in a Dewey seminar once, "Once we forget that the Forms grow and change, and also die over time, we forget God."

The "drama" of experience is precisely this entrance of novelty into experience; that things happen with these particulars, and that in a subsumption of particulars within new forms of experience new identities of particulars are created where there was only a germ before.

This is the essence of flourishing, I think.  Flourishing requires the challenge of change and the gift of process.  Flourishing is dramatically undergone, rather than something that merely "happens to" an agent as a completely passive and stale phenomenon.  In fact, flourishing is often suffered, indeed dramatically, but also interactively.  We make things happen, and things happen to us.  Such is the career of any active agent in the world.  That is to say, the experience of any agent is always undergone and suffered, as well as overcome with growth in a dramatic interplay, or interchange, with other agents, as much as it is a personal experience or journey.



The above two videos feature my former mentor from Ph.D. graduate school days, Doug Anderson.  He's a marvel to watch and provides rich insight into some of the debates mentioned in this blog post.

"Terrence Malick's Metaphysical Journey into Nature" (The New Yorker article)

Fairly interesting. Link HERE.

Introduction to Ecstatic Naturalism (mp3 and video)

A plenary address delivered by Professor Robert S. Corrington which might serve as an introduction to "ecstatic naturalism" for those who are curious about it. Per yesterday's post of Marilynn Lawrence's paper.

Download this talk as an MP3 (108MB)

"Deep Pantheism and Phusis" Marilynn Lawrence (Academia.edu paper)

Link HERE.

Plato's Aesthetics

A fascinating entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia. See HERE. (Especially relevant as I am teaching Plato's aesthetics right now in my Philosophies of Art & Beauty class.)

For those interested in Plato's aesthetics as taken up by Schelling - through the Timaeus - please see "Schellings Reading of the the Timaeus: On Plato's Invisible Matter" After Nature post HERE.

Half Hour Hegel (YouTube playlist)

This is unspeakably impressive.

Each video is about a half hour and proceeds paragraph by paragraph through Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit.

I can only imagine how much work must go into this having myself read the Phenomenology several times over - perhaps at least three of which were intense studies, each time taking about a year.

In any case, if you can support the project please do. Otherwise these videos could be a resource for those working though the book for the first time (or otherwise).

As it stands there are 132 videos...yes, one hundred and thirty two. What an accomplishment so far.

For those interested yet still and who may require some print resources to complement these videos, please see my post " Would Hegel Be a Hegelian Today?" featuring resources by H.S. Harris, HERE.

It should be said that Harris' Hegel's Ladder (two volumes) is the gold standard, and while available in .pdf, investing in the print hard-copies is advised if only for scholarship's sake. Harris on hand in hard-copy while reading the Phenomenology with a pencil is invaluable as an experience. Otherwise I would recommend the dated by trustworthy and clear Hegel: A Re-examination by J.N. Findlay (an excellent philosopher in his own right, see the website HERE); and also Charles Taylor's Hegel is very, very good: certainly clear and a handy tool to get through the Phenomenology without major issue. Finally, Stern's Hegelian Metaphysics is useful as an overview alongside Findlay's commentary. You can read about Stern's book HERE in addition to other recent commentaries.

Some After Nature readers may be interested  to know that in the spring I'll be running a Science of Logic reading group (the "greater" Logic) with some of my students. There has been suggestion to record those work groups, but we shall see. As it stand I have been thinking about recording and posting my current course in Philosophies of Art & Beauty.

The Nonhuman: Aesthetics and Politics of Personhood (post by Alexander R. Galloway)

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The Nonhuman: Aesthetics and Politics of Personhood
// Alexander R. Galloway

Announcing my fall graduate seminar. Download syllabus as PDF.

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Harvard University
Department of Visual and Environmental Studies
The Nonhuman: Aesthetics and Politics of Personhood (VES 232)

FALL 2016

Professor Alexander R. Galloway
agalloway@fas.harvard.edu
Office Hours: Thu 4-5pm & Fri 10-11am
Time: Thursdays, 2 - 4pm
Location: Carpenter Center 401

From climate change and infrastructure to objects and animality, the nonhuman realm exerts a growing influence on contemporary life. In this seminar we consider persons as things and things as persons, but also peer beyond the human into a world devoid of humanity. What does personhood mean in the age of the posthuman? Themes include proletarianization, animality, new materialism, posthumanism, pessimism, and the commons.

Books & Readings

The syllabus contains articles and books. Articles will be distributed electronically. The following books are available at the Coop:

• Sara Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006).
• Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010).
• Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution (New York: Zone, 2015).
• Gilles Châtelet, To Live and Think Like Pigs, trans. Robin Mackay (New York: Sequence/Urbanomic, 2014).
• Elizabeth Grosz, Chaos, Territory, Art: Deleuze and the Framing of the Earth (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008).
• Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study (New York: Autonomedia, 2013).
• Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do With Our Brain?, trans. Sebastian Rand (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008).
• Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work (London: Verso, 2015).
• Eugene Thacker, In the Dust of this Planet: Horror of Philosophy, Vol. 1 (Alresford, UK: Zero Books, 2011).
• Alexander G. Weheliye, Habeas Viscus: Racializing Assemblages, Biopolitics, and Black Feminist Theories of the Human(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014).

Part I -- For Us

Sept 1 -- Course Introduction.

Sept 8 -- Where Are We Now?

Châtelet, To Live and Think Like Pigs.

Razmig Keucheyan, “The Defeat of Critical Thinking (1977-93)” (PDF).

Sept 15 -- Neoliberalism and Postfordism

Brown, Undoing the Demos.

Sept 22 -- Orientations

Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology.

Sept 29 -- The Human

Weheliye, Habeas Viscus.

Part II -- In Itself

Oct 6 -- Animality

Donna Haraway, “Companion Species Manifesto” (PDF).

Giorgio Agamben, The Open: Man and Animal, 39-62 (PDF).

Thomas Nagel, “What Is It Like To Be a Bat?" (PDF).

Oct 13 -- New Materialism I

Grosz, Chaos, Territory, Art.

Oct 20 -- New Materialism II

Bennett, Vibrant Matter.

Oct 27 -- Life Resistance

Malabou, What Should We Do With Our Brain?

Catherine Malabou, “One Life Only: Biological Resistance, Political Resistance” (PDF).

Karen Barad, “Nature's Queer Performativity” (PDF).

Part III -- Without Us

Nov 3 -- Cosmic Pessimism

H.P. Lovecraft, "From Beyond" (PDF).

Thacker, In the Dust of this Planet.

Nov 10 -- Pessimism and Futurity

Saidiya V. Hartman and Frank B. Wilderson, III, “The Position of the Unthought” (PDF).

Fred Moten, “The Case of Blackness” (PDF).

Lee Edelman, “The Future Is Kid Stuff” (PDF).

Lauren Berlant, “Cruel Optimism” (PDF).

Nov 17 -- Accelerationism, Prometheanism, Speculation

Srnicek and Williams, Inventing the Future.

Laboria Cuboniks, “Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation” (PDF).

Nov 24 -- Thanksgiving Recess

Dec 1 -- The Commons

Harney and Moten, The Undercommons.

Lauren Berlant, “The Commons: Infrastructures for Troubling Times” (PDF).

Friday Dec 9, 5pm

All papers due.

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Evaluation & Grade Formula

All course work should demonstrate a close reading of the required materials and exhibit a method of critical analysis. You are required to write 20 pages total for the semester, preferably split between a midterm paper and a final paper, although the combination is up to you. Papers should adhere to standard format (12 point font, double spaced, one inch margins, no spaces between paragraphs, etc.) and follow the Chicago Manual of Style.

Papers 80%

Class participation 20%

Attendance Policy

You are required to attend class and participate. Assigned readings are mandatory. Your final grade will be lowered for unexcused absences. Absences are excused with a note from Harvard University Student Health Services.

Laptop Policy

I discourage the use of laptops, tablets, and phones in class and consider them to be detrimental to the social and pedagogical climate of the classroom. Exceptions can be made for readings that have been distributed in electronic form, and for students with special learning needs.

The Harvard College Honor Code

Members of the Harvard College community commit themselves to producing academic work of integrity – that is, work that adheres to the scholarly and intellectual standards of accurate attribution of sources, appropriate collection and use of data, and transparent acknowledgement of the contribution of others to their ideas, discoveries, interpretations, and conclusions. Cheating on exams or problem sets, plagiarizing or misrepresenting the ideas or language of someone else as one’s own, falsifying data, or any other instance of academic dishonesty violates the standards of our community, as well as the standards of the wider world of learning and affairs.

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Might all infinities be the same size? (Post by Alexander Pruss's blog)

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Might all infinities be the same size?
// Alexander Pruss's Blog

A lot of people find Cantor's discovery that there are different infinities paradoxical. To be honest, there are many counterintuitive things involving infinities, but this one doesn't strike me as particularly counterintuitive. Nonetheless, I want to explore the possibility that while Cantor's Theorem is of course true, it doesn't actually show that infinity comes in different sizes. Cantor's Theorem says that if A is a set, then there is no pairing (i.e., bijection) between the members of A and those of the power set PA. It follows that there are different (cardinal, but in an intuitive rather than mathematical sense) sizes of infinity given this Pairing Principle:

1. PP: Two sets A and B have the same size if and only if there is a pairing between them.

Given PP and Cantor's Theorem, if A is an infinite set, then A is a different size from PA. But of course PA is infinite if A is, so there are infinite sets of different size.
A number of people have disputed the sufficiency part of PP, since it gives rise to the counterintuitive consequence that the set of primes and the set of integers have the same size as you can pair them up. But you really shouldn't both complain that there are different infinities and that PP makes the primes and the integers have the same infinite size. I am going to leave the sufficiency of PP untouched, but suggest that the pairing condition might not be necessary for sameness of size, and I will offer an alternative. That alternative seems to leave open the possibility that all infinities are the same.
To think about this, start with this thought experiment. Imagine that there is a possible world w that has some but not all of the actual world's sets, but that it still has enough sets to satisfy the ZFC axioms just as (I shall suppose) the sets of the actual world do. The set membership relation in w will be the same as in the actual world in this sense if A is a set that exists both w and the actual world, then A has exactly the same members in both worlds (and in particular, all the actual world members of A exist in w). Then here is something that might well happen. We have two sets A and B that exist both in the actual world and in w. In the actual world, there is a pairing f between A and B. A pairing is just a set of ordered pairs satisfying some additional constraints (the first element is always from A and the second is always from B, and each element of A occurs as the first element of exactly one pair, and each element of B occurs as the second element of exactly one pair). It might, then, be the case that although A and B exist in w, f does not--it exists in the actual world but not in the impoverished world w. It might even be the case that no pairing between A and B exists in the impoverished world. In that case, we have something very interesting: A and B satisfy the pairing condition in PP in the actual world but fail to satisfy it in w. If we are to satisfy the ZFC in w, this can only happen if both A and B are infinite.
Things might go even further. We might suppose that w only contains sets that are countable in the actual world. The mathematical (much less metaphysical!) possibility of such a scenario cannot be proved from ZFC if ZFC is consistent, but it follows from the Standard Model Hypothesis which a lot of set theorists find plausible. If w only contains sets that are actually countable, then any infinite sets in w will have a pairing in the actual world. There is, thus, an important sense in which from the broader point of view of the actual world, all infinite sets in w have the same size. But w is impoverished. There are pairings that exist in the actual world but don't exist in w, and so applying PP inside w will yield the conclusion that the infinite sets in w come in different sizes. However, intuitively, it still seems true to say that these sets in w are all the same size, but w just doesn't have enough pairings to see this.
Here's one way to argue for this interpretation of the hypothesis. Plausibly:

2. Pairing-Sufficiency: If there is a pairing between sets A and B, they are the same size.
3. Absolute-Size: If two sets are the same size in one possible world, they are the same size in any world in which they both exist.

Pairing-Sufficiency is one half of PP. Given Pairing-Sufficiency and Absolute-Size, if two sets have a pairing in any possible world, including the actual one, they have the same size in every world, including w. Thus, in w all the infinite sets in fact have the size, but you wouldn't know that if your tools were restricted to the pairings in w.
Thinking about the above scenario suggests a modification of PP to a Possible Pairing Principle:

4. PPP: Two sets A and B have the same size if and only if possibly there is a pairing between them.

Given that the members of a set cannot vary between possible worlds, I think PPP is at least as plausible as PP. Moreover, I think that if there are any cases (like my hypothesis that a world like w is possible) where PPP and PP come apart, we should side with PPP. Here's why. I think we go for PP as an abstraction from our general method of comparing the sizes of pluralities by pairing. (One imagines a pre-numerate people trading goats and spears in 1:1 ratio by lining up each goat with a spear.) But the natural abstraction from our general method is that if one could pair up the two sets, then and only then they are the same size. So PPP is the natural hypothesis. The only reason to go for PP is, I think, acceptance of PPP plus an additional hypothesis such as that what pairings there are doesn't vary between possible worlds.
If PPP (or just (2) and (3)) is true and my w hypothesis is a genuine metaphysical possibility, then it is metaphysically possible that all infinite sets are the same size--i.e., it could be that the actual world is relevantly like w. Furthermore, we clearly don't have relevant empirical evidence to the contrary. So, if all this works, it is epistemically possible that all infinite sets are of the same size. (Of course, the most controversial part of all this is the idea that what sets there are might differ--even in the case of pure sets--between worlds.)
But perhaps this won't satisfy the people who find size differences between infinities paradoxical. For they might find it paradoxical enough that there could be infinities of different sizes, something that was definitely a part of my story (remember that I started with two worlds, one in which there were differently sized infinities and an impoverished w with all infinities of the same size according to PPP).
I think I might be able to do something to satisfy them, while at the same avoiding the biggest problem with the above story, namely the assumption that what pure sets there are differs between worlds. Here's my trick. In the above, I assumed that pairings were all sets. But in line with the Platonism suffusing all of the above arguments, let's try something. Let's allow that there are pairings that aren't sets. Those pairings would be binary relations satisfying the right formal axioms. But here I mean "relations" in the Platonic philosopher's sense, not in the mathematician's sense where a relation is a set of ordered pairs. Let's suppose, further, that corresponding to any set of ordered pairs, there is a relation which relates all and only those pairs which are found in the set. In my earlier story, I made sense of the idea that two sets in w might not have a pairing in w and yet might be the same size by adverting to pairings that exist in another world (the actual one--and then at the end I flipped things around so that w was actual). But now we do the same thing by distinguishing between mathematical pairings--namely, sets of ordered pairs satisfying the right axioms--and metaphysical pairings--namely, Platonic binary relations satisfying analogous axioms. If my earlier story is coherent (I mean that to be a weaker condition than "metaphysically possible"), then so is this one: In w, there are infinite sets that do not have a mathematical pairing, but every pair of infinite sets possibly has a metaphysical pairing. But now this story doesn't rely on varying what pure sets exist between worlds. The story appears compatible with the idea that pure sets are the same in every world. But there are, nonetheless, metaphysical pairings that do not correspond to mathematical pairings, and PPP should be interpreted with respect to the metaphysical pairings, not just the mathematical ones. Note, too, that what metaphysical pairings hold between sets might differ between possible worlds, without any variation in sets. For some of the pairings may correspond to extrinsic relations. Here is an extrinsic relation that could turn out to be a metaphysical pairing, depending on what I actually was thinking yesterday: x is related to y if and only if x and y came up in one of my thoughts yesterday in this order.
We can now suppose that this story works in every possible world. Thus, assuming the coherence of the Standard Model Hypothesis, we have a mathematically coherent story--whether the metaphysics works is another question (the story is too Platonic for my taste, and I don't share the motivation anyway)--on which (a) all infinite sets are really of the same size (and hence of the same size as the natural numbers), (b) what pure sets there are does not differ between worlds, and (c) Cantor's Theorem and all the axioms of ZF or ZFC are true. If we were to go for such a view, we would want to distinguish between sets being of the size metaphysically speaking and their having the same mathematical cardinality. The latter relationship would be defined by a version of the PP with "pairings" restricted to the mathematical ones. And then mathematics can go on as usual.

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'Strong signal' stirs interest in hunt for alien life

Following upon yesterday's post, THIS article seems intriguing.

Inhuman Rationality and Cosmos as the Space of Reasons

The below had me thinking about how the space of reasons in any form of true universality must be cosmos itself, that is nature understood in the most just, capacious sense as possible. This includes the possible admission of intelligences other than that of human intelligence whether terrestrial or extra-terrestrial. In what sense might we say that rationality - i.e. "reason" - is something inhuman in the sense that not just humans are capable of it in a larger cosmic space of reason's practice?

From the blog Three Pound Brain in THIS post, called "Alien Philosophy":

Are there alien philosophers orbiting some faraway star, opining in bursts of symbolically articulated smells, or parsing distinctions-without-differences via the clasp of neural genitalia? What would an alien philosophy look like? Do we have any reason to think we might find some of them recognizable? Do the Greys have their own version of Plato? Is there a little green Nietzsche describing little green armies of little green metaphors?

The post then continues to quote Kant, as follows:

The highest species concept may be that of a terrestrial rational being; however, we shall not be able to name its character because we have no knowledge of non-terrestrial rational beings that would enable us to indicate their characteristic property and so to characterize this terrestrial being among rational beings in general. It seems, therefore, that the problem of indicating the character of the human species is absolutely insoluble, because the solution would have to be made through experience by means of the comparison of two species of rational being, but experience does not offer us this. (Kant: Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, 225)

I am intrigued by Kant's query, which is a query in the 18th century mind you, into the starry heavens above so as to think, how might we garner a characteristic property of rational beings in general.  That's amazing because, really, he is considering nonhuman forms of life whose rational being could divulge truly universal principles of knowledge that transcend our own terrestriality.  In short, he recognizes the inhuman nature, or "extra-human" nature of reason.

Further on, this piece from the post:

Of course, the plausibility of humanoid aliens possessing any kind of philosophy requires the plausibility of humanoid aliens. In popular media, aliens are almost always exotic versions of ourselves, possessing their own exotic versions of the capacities and institutions we happen to have. This is no accident. Science fiction is always about the here and now—about recontextualizations of what we know. As a result, the aliens you tend to meet tend to seem suspiciously humanoid, psychologically if not physically. Spock always has some ‘mind’ with which to ‘meld’. To ask the question of alien philosophy, one might complain, is to buy into this conceit, which although flattering, is almost certainly not true. 

And yet the environmental filtration of mutations on earth has produced innumerable examples of convergent evolution, different species evolving similar morphologies and functions, the same solutions to the same problems, using entirely different DNA. As you might imagine, however, the notion of interstellar convergence is a controversial one. [2] Supposing the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence is one thing—cognition is almost certainly integral to complex life elsewhere in the universe—but we know nothing about the kinds of possible biological intelligences nature permits. Short of actual contact with intelligent aliens, we have no way of gauging how far we can extrapolate from our case. [3] All too often, ignorance of alternatives dupes us into making ‘only game in town assumptions,’ so confusing mere possibility with necessity. But this debate need not worry us here. Perhaps the cluster of characteristics we identify with ‘humanoid’ expresses a high-probability recipe for evolving intelligence—perhaps not. Either way, our existence proves that our particular recipe is on file, that aliens we might describe as ‘humanoid’ are entirely possible.

And:

Evolution assures that cognitive expenditures, the ability to intuit this or that, will always be bound in some manner to some set of ancestral environments. Evolution means that information that makes no reproductive difference makes no biological difference. 

An ecological view, in other words, allows us to naturalistically motivate something we might have been tempted to assume outright: original naivete. The possession of sensory and cognitive apparatuses comparable to our own means Thespians will possess a humanoid neglect structure, a pattern of ignorances they cannot even begin to question, that is, pending the development of philosophy. The Thespians would not simply be ignorant of the microscopic and macroscopic constituents and machinations explaining their environments, they would be oblivious to them. Like our own ancestors, they wouldn’t even know they didn’t know.

Here are some excerpts from posts from After Nature where I've picked up on some of this before.

From "Thoughts on a 'NeoPresocratic Manifesto'"

The other side of the coin is to divulge the rational conceptual space that is extra-human by identifying the interplay between emotive, subjective, or felt intensive-qualitative experience and the conceptual apparatus that assists in propelling the life of qualitative intensive experience. In a sense, this larger intensive but conceptual space is even non-human in its "naturalness"; so it includes human beings but transcends human beings (thus it is "non-human"). 

By recognizing the larger-than-human space of rationality we see that a.) aesthetic contrasts of value create normative dimensions of experience that humans are subject to, and b.) these dimensions of experience transcend human-to-human ecologies of knowledge and therefore guarantee a truly rational but also normative aspect to reality itself. Indeed, reality or nature is rife with "experience" that is both conceptual and of an aesthetic value yet which is, also, not human.

From a quote of the day:

Reason liberates its own spaces and its own demands, and in the process fundamentally revises not only what we understand as thinking, but also what we recognize as “us.”    

- Reza Negarestani

And on "Octopus Intelligence," where essentially the point is that intelligence is ubiquitous.

My next question would be, "How ingrained within the world - cosmos - nature - is intelligence but also information in terms of conceptuality (e,g, a "natural semiotic")?  I find myself continually going back to the likes of Hegel, Fichte, and Schelling to sort out the question of mind within nature.  From there biosemiotics builds upon the notion of ubiquitous intelligence that the German idealists had in the 18th and 19th centuries.

From "The Pain of Rocks"

I don't think that it is anthropomorphic to speculatively explore non-human consciousness supposing that non-human worlds of experience overlap or may be like our experience in some respects, as much as they may be unlike our experience in other respects.  

In the tradition of Jakob von Uexkull or even to some degree William James and Alfred North Whitehead, it isn't about multiplying different world pictures nor even rendering them common to ours, even though the diversity of world pictures has its place. I think it is about speculatively and phenomenologically allowing non-human worlds to exhibitively self-display their experiential features where these features are attended to for what they are. 

Removing human beings from nature and stating, "Ok, the experience of others may not be like our subjective experience" doesn't mean that others aren't capable of experiencing emotion, pain, etc. etc. The fact is, it isn't our experience to begin with. If human beings didn't exist, elephants would still grieve the loss of a matriarch, dolphins would still express joy, crabs would still feel pain, and so on. Further still, all things - taking a panexperiential viewpoint - would struggle to persist and would undergo self-relations. We do not need to appeal to analogies involving human-centered experience to make that case. No one is saying the world is like us. I (for one) am simply saying that we are part of the world, naturally, like everything else.

After having watched Pete Wolfendale's talk from the "Inhuman Symposium" I am inclined to think that rationality is *not* merely an invention or category created by the moderns.  Actually, rationality in the fact that it encompasses the human - any human regardless of specific socio-political contexts (what Braidotti was grilling him about, prompting his response that he grew up in an environment that critiques postmodernism) - is something which is a universal horror, at first.

The security of what humans thought gave them the "one up" over everything else turns out to be precisely what motivates forms of life to project critically noumenal realities outside of it.  And so, what is reason then in these universal instantiations, or more specifically and precisely, what can we say of its activity?

Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Robert Paul Wolff Lecture 1 - YouTube

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Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Robert Paul Wolff Lecture 1 - YouTube
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d__In2PQS60
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