Ontological Primacy Research Articles

HELENSKI KORENI ANTROPOCENTRIZMA

Zapadna civilizacija, čija je vizura kosmosa i dalje prevalentno antropocentrička, ishodišnu tačku vlastitih stanovišta pronalazi u judeo-hrišćanskoj tradiciji i u stavovima antičkih filozofa. U traženju antecedenata vizije čoveka kao posebnog bića među drugim prirodnim bićima, fokus istraživanja u ovom radu biće na Aristotelovom <em>corpus</em>-u odnosno na sačuvanim fragmentima presokratovaca. Postoji, najpre, visok stepen saglasnosti među istoričarima filozofije da je Stagiranin, svojim imperativomzajasnim razlikovanjem između razboritosti odnosno mišljenjai opažanja, dominantno doprineo utemeljenju moderne građanske epohe na logocentrizmu i antropocentrizmu. Autori su, zatim, utvrdili da nagoveštaji antropocentričkih pristupa, i pored strukturalnih prepreka u njihovim koncepcijama, mogu da se pronađu kod pitagorejaca, Parmenida, Empedokla, Anaksagore i Demokrita. Presokratovac koji je, ipak, najjasnije anticipirao potonja antropocentrička stanovišta bio je Alkmeon iz Krotona. Njegov stav da se čovek razlikuje od drugih živih bića po tome što on jedini razume dok druga živa bića primaju osete ali ne razumeju, predstavlja, zaključak je autora, nagoveštaj Aristotelove i tvrdnji mnogih kasnijih mislilaca da se <em>logoske </em>sposobnosti mogu pripisivati isključivo ljudima i da čovek ima ontološki primat u odnosu na druga živa bića.

Living Cognitive Society: A ‘digital’ World of Views

The current social reality is characterized by all-encompassing change, which disrupts existing social structures at all levels. Yet the approach based on the ontological primacy of stable and often hierarchical structures is still prevalent in theoretical and, most importantly, practical thinking about social systems.We propose a conceptual framework for thinking about a dynamically changing social system: the Living Cognitive Society. Importantly, we show how it follows from a much broader philosophical framework, guided by the theory of individuation, which emphasizes the importance of relationships and interactive processes in the evolution of a system.The framework addresses society as a living cognitive system – an ecology of interacting social subsystems – each of which is also a living cognitive system. We argue that this approach can help us to conceive sustainable social systems that will thrive in the circumstances of accelerating change. The Living Cognitive Society is explained in terms of its fluid structure, dynamics and the mechanisms at work. We then discuss the disruptive effects of Information and Communication Technologies on the mechanisms at work.We conclude by delineating a major topic for future research – distributed social governance – which focuses on processes of coordination rather than on stable structures within global society.

The refugee’s flight: homelessness, hospitality, and care of the self

ABSTRACTThis paper argues that the contemporary international refugee regime is grounded in a paradigm of ‘homesickness’, which puts the refugee in an inferior position of the supplicant, whose subjectivity is framed by the regime of fixed belonging. In order to address this situation, we need to challenge the ontological primacy of homesickness and embrace ‘homelessness’, which offers the possibility of rethinking the positions of both refugees and non-refugees in ethical terms. While the responsibility of the non-refugees lies in cultivating an ethos of hospitality, the refugee can take hold of her subjectivity through the practice of care of the self. This paper first examines Nietzsche’s thought on homelessness and compares it with Foucault’s reading of the role of anakhōrēsis in the Hellenistic practice of care of the self. It then suggests how, by building on the project of universal hospitality, we can interpret the figure of the refugee through the prism of an ethic of freedom, anchored in a positive break with the city. From this perspective, the refugee regains her ethico-political agency by cultivating the relationship with her own living self, which offers new avenues for resistance against the dominant paradigm of ‘homesickness’ that governs her subjectivity today.

Category theory and physical structuralism

As a metaphysical theory, radical ontic structural realism (ROSR) is characterised mainly in terms of the ontological primacy it places on relations and structures, as opposed to the individual relata and objects that inhabit these relations/structures. The most popular criticism of ROSR is that its central thesis (that there can exist ‘relations without relata’) is incoherent. Bain (Synthese, 190, 1621–1635, 2013) attempts to address this criticism by arguing that the mathematical language of category theory allows for a coherent articulation of ROSR’s key thesis. Subsequently, Wuthrich and Lam (2014) and Lal and Teh (2015) have criticised Bain’s arguments and claimed that category theory fares no better than set theory in coherently articulating the main ideas of ROSR. In this paper, we defend Bain’s main arguments against these critiques, and attempt to elaborate on the sense in which category theory can be seen as providing a coherent articulation of ROSR. We also consider the relationship between ROSR and Categorical Quantum Mechanics.

The question of time: concerning the ontological primacy of present over the past and the future

The question of time: concerning the ontological primacy of present over the past and the future

Technologies of the Other: Renewing ‘empathy’ between Foucault and psychoanalysis.

This article expands Michel Foucault’s schema of the human ‘technologies’—those of production, signification, power and technologies of the self (Foucault, 1983)—to posit the existence of a fifth technological modality described here as technologies of the other. This refers to techniques and practices that facilitate the autonomy, not of the self, but of another person or persons. The specificity of these techniques of (other) care, I argue, is obscured in Foucault’s work in so far as they are subsumed as a ‘position’ within the technologies of the self, rather than afforded the status of a separate mode of technological practice in their own right. This not only misrecognizes their qualitative difference—the special kind of human ‘making’ they entail—but also allows for the dubious claim of an ‘ontological primacy’ of self-care when this is actually (at least ‘ontogenetically’) preceded by, and dependent upon, prior other-care. As one potential candidate or fragment of this alternative technological lineage, the paper revisits the writings on the psychoanalytic technique of empathy elaborated in the British Independent tradition of Donald Winnicott. It explores how these empathetic techniques engage in an ethics of ‘other-fashioning’—a necessary prelude to the emergence of capacities of autonomous ‘self-fashioning’—and suggests that such empathy can neither be encapsulated fully under the rubric of technologies of the self, nor read as isomorphic with the technologies of power.

Phenomenology Without Correlationism: Husserl's Hyletic Material

The thrust of the argument presented in this paper is that phenomenological ontology survives the criticism of “correlationism” as advanced by speculative realism, a movement that has evolved in continental philosophy over the past decade. Correlationism is the position, allegedly occupied by phenomenology, that presupposes the ontological primacy of the human subject. Phenomenology survives this criticism not because the criticism misses its mark, but because phenomenology occupies a position that is broader than that of correlationism. With its critique of correlationism, speculative realism rightly identifies a battle that no longer needs to be fought: the battle against 19th century brands of mechanical realism. Free from the impatient and defensive posturing against the mechanization of the human, phenomenology is also free to explore the world beyond its emphasis on human experience. Doing so requires a return to Husserl's discussion of hylé and the “twofold bed” of phenomenology. Phenomenology may emphasize hylé – that is, material; or it may emphasize nous – the world as it appears to or is transformed by consciousness. By returning to Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception, a case is made for hyletic phenomenology. Hyletic phenomenology allows for ontological reversibility and recognizes the “unhuman” elements in things. It is hyletic phenomenology that grounds phenomenological ontology after the critique of correlationism has been assessed.

Insistence of the Material: Literature in the Age of Biopolitics, by Christopher Breu

Insistence of Material: Literature in Age of Biopolitics, by Christopher Breu. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014. 264 pages. The material world has been garnering a lot of critical attention recently, and for good reason. In waning decades of twentieth century, all that was solid seemed to melt into air as scholars emphasized linguistic play, discursive construction, and/or ideological encoding of texts both literary and cultural. But as thinkers such as Lawrence Buell, Bill Brown, Eve Sedgwick, Bruno Latour, Wai Chee Dimock, Cary Wolfe, Franco Moretti, Elisabeth Grosz, and Graham Harman have all observed over past two decades, those critical moves left a lot of stuff out: ecology, things, affect, science, animals, bodies, technology, geology, and so on. Of course, one corner of humanities, occupied by committed Marxists like Fredric Jameson and David Harvey whose work reliably attended to contemporary political economy, never lost sight of material at all. And yet, materialism in today's new veers away from that long-standing tradition of dialectical materialism, emphasizing instead excesses of matter that surpass human subjectivity. (1) That's what makes these materialisms new. (2) Clearly committed to both kinds of materialism, Christopher Breu's Insistence of Material: Literature in Age of Biopolitics stages a provocative encounter between two. He celebrates vibrancy of matter, volatility of bodies, and primacy of ontology while at same time seeking out the material underpinnings of contemporary capitalism's avatar fetishism--that is, our fetishization of immaterial transcendence (21, 22). To do so, Breu turns to a corpus of twentieth-century that he describes as the late-capitalist of materiality--William Burroughs's Naked Lunch (1959), Thomas Pynchon's V. (1963), J. G. Ballard's Crash (1973), Dodie Bellamy's The Letters of Mina Marker (1998), and Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of Dead (1991)--that he reads as a counterpractice of writing in postmodern era (23). Insistence thus makes two interconnected claims: first, we should not be seduced by immateriality of a capitalism gone virtual but must instead appreciate how contemporary commodity culture relies on biopolitical management of material bodies, offshoring of material production, and real-life immiseration of marginalized populations across global north and south; second, we should not reduce later twentieth-century to postmodern metafictions linguistic turn and must instead appreciate counter-tradition of authors who foreground materiality of contemporary existence. Connecting these two claims, Breu hopes that his investigation into materialist of mid- to late twentieth century will make us more clear-eyed and political in our thinking about status of material world here in twenty-first. After deftly clarifying and constellating his key terms--new materialism, biopolitics, political economy, and postmodernism--in book's introduction, Breu turns in his opening chapter to Burroughs's Naked Lunch as the founding text in tradition of materialist literature that Insistence chronicles (38). One is not surprised to find Burroughs here, championing graphic muck and physical intractability of human condition. But even as Burroughs affords Breu an initial fleshy foray into irreducible materiality of self, writing in Naked Lunch also introduces a complication that Breu will be at pains to parse throughout Insistence: difference--in terms of political utility--between materiality of language and materiality of physical world. Because Breu juxtaposes insistent materiality that he valorizes to what he tends to caricature as the primarily linguistic concerns of much metafiction, texts that highlight materiality of language (e. …

Contemporary Quantum Physics Metaphysical Challenge: Looking for a Relational Metaphysics

Traditionally, Physics has been dominated by the image of objects, that is, by the atomistic metaphysics of absolutely intrinsic (monadic) properties of qualitatively unchangeable individual entities. The first major challenge to this metaphysics inside physics comes with quantum mechanics, specifically with the well-known phenomenon known as ‘quantum entanglement’. From quantum entanglement it seems that we can conclude that: (1) quantum objects are not independent entities; (2) wholes (systems) have an ontological priority over their parts (subsystems). However, it is arguable that is too risky to infer such conclusions directly from quantum mechanics. If epistemological consequences of quantum mechanics are inescapable, is seems unwise to take any direct ontological consequences from it. After all, quantum mechanics does not refer to the states of physical entities before measurements, but it is just a theory that allows us to calculate the possible outcomes from any given measurement. Still, this does not mean that, indirectly, quantum mechanics does not give some account of quantum reality that deeply challenges traditional objects metaphysics, namely, (1) through the simple existence of the measurement problem; and (2) through the experimental violations of Bell inequality. Even challenged, the object picture in physics can thus prevail. But we must also not forget that on the last decades, Quantum Physics has being evolved beyond the direct scope of quantum mechanics. I will try to argue that in at least some contemporary approaches in Quantum Physics we can see that there is a movement pointing towards a relational ontological view, according to which the ontological primacy is not to be given to individual entities, as self-sufficient elements with their own intrinsic and immutable identities—as in traditional object’s metaphysics—but to some sort of relational structures. I argue that although this relational metaphysics is still to be developed, it will have to be able to account for both the relational and object natures of quantum entities.

Functional reality of the quasi-real: Gegenstandstheorie and cultural psychology today

Cultural psychology is in need for a general theory that includes coverage of both the real actual and the possible realms of psychological phenomena, and of the relationship between the two. The tradition of Gegenstandstheorie developed in Graz in the beginning of the 20th century by Alexius Meinong has direct relevance for theory construction and methodological advancement in this direction. The contrast of existing subsisting and non-existing objects makes it possible to address issues of the study of cultural complexities. The unity of higher and lower order objects in the human psyche makes Meinong’s thinking compatible with the needs of our contemporary cultural psychology in its various versions. The limits of Meinong’s theory—the ontological primacy of objects and his focus on their classification—can be overcome by introduction of an explicitly developmental focus that his contemporary James Mark Baldwin attempted to formulate in his “genetic logic.” Implications of both of these traditions for our contemporary cultural psychologies are outlined, with a focus on the study of patriotism and art.

An ontological exploration of change and constancy

The history of philosophy presents a variety of viewpoints regarding the ontological primacy of either change or constancy. Some views regard change as foundational, to the point where constancy is denied (e.g. Heraclitus). Other views regard constancy as so important, that change becomes unthinkable (e.g. Parmenides). The apparent dialectical tension between the different conceptions demands an ontological clarification of these issues. This study illustrates and evaluates the relationship between change and constancy in the viewpoints of various philosophers and scientists throughout history. This is done by appropriating a reformational insight that change and constancy exist in cohesion. The study finds that the relationship between change and constancy is not dialectical, but rather one of integration, seated in irreducible primitive domains (modalities). The purpose of the article is twofold (1) to show that change and constancy cannot be reduced to one another but can only exist in a relationship of coherence and (2) to contribute a systematic clarification of framework change in terms of the relationship between change and onstancy on the ontological level.

Saintly visions: Other histories and history’s others in the medieval ruins of Delhi

This article is centrally concerned with understanding the perceived presence of Muslim saintly figures at various medieval ruins in contemporary Delhi. I explore how popular relationships with these ruins, centred on the presence of the saint-figures, are not ‘historical’, but still indicate meaningful connections to the medieval past. To understand these connections, this article explores the epistemological and ontological privileging of the imaginal (manifesting as dreams and visions) in Islamicate thought and everyday life, arising from the influence of Ibn ‘Arabi, by looking at both contemporary popular practices and beliefs around these ruins, as well as the significance of these ruins in Urdu antiquarian and literary texts from the early twentieth century. I argue that the ontological primacy of the imaginal is also inextricably connected to an ethics of diversity and non-sectarian ideals of justice. The imaginal becomes increasingly important for connecting to the past in the aftermath of colonial and post-colonial state violence, not only because of the destruction of the usual (discursive) modes of historical memory, but also because it poses a moral vision of the pre-modern past against the violence of the modern (state). This article ends by suggesting that the rituals around these ruins create a sensory and affective ‘archive’ of the city’s history that needs to be explored further.

« La musique... L’expérience même de l’appropiation impossible ». Quelques variations sur un thème de Jacques Derrida

From its beginnings, the relationship between philosophy and music has always been problematic. What is Derrida’s legacy to us on this subject? Although he did not develop a thesis about music “as such”, he opened up a path –another path– to music, and its listening. Against the optical-haptical primacy of ontology and its logo-phono-centrism, Derrida leads us, through this process of listening, to experience as impossible appropriation of the différance which entails the modulated variation of sonorous matter, and, beyond all presence, to the inaccessible experience of light of an original mourning which, at the infinite speed of a present with no past and yet to come, life and death, memory and wait, intertwine. The ending cadence of the first movement of J. S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No 5 in D major, and the Finale of Schubert’s Sonata in C minor are two fine examples of this undecidible experience.

I and Thou

This essay attempts to outline a philosophical anthropology with dialogicality as its key concept. It argues that it is impossible to explicate this concept with any bias toward the ontological primacy of either the subject or the knowable object. The essay develops from the philosophy of Martin Buber who vindicated the need for subject-object binarism to be superseded by a relational ontology of human existence, that is, a space between the dialoguing I and Thou. From this point of view, different sectors of human studies – including those involving politics or socio-political crafting of human states of affairs – must be approached according to their unique dimension. The essay’s envisioning of knowledge of humans by human being beyond any subject-object dichotomy implies a new perspective of self-other relationship whereby the phenomenological notion of intentionality is apprehended in its dialogical mode.

An Argument for Reversing the Bases of Science Education - A Phenomenological Alternative to Cognitionism

This paper is a phenomenological critique of some of the basic notions informing much of the researchin and practice of science education (SE) today. It is suggested that the philosophical grounds of S Eare in need of three “reversals of primacy”: the ontological primacy of the perceptual lifeworld must replace that of abstract scientific models; the epistemological primacy of attentive practice must replace that of conceptual cognition; and the pedagogical primacy of cultivating competencies must replace that of imparting ready-made knowledge. Four arguments for a phenomenological approach to SE are presented and some consequences for the training of science teachers are discussed; some of which are already being implemented at the science teacher education of the Norwegian University of Life Sciences.

The troubles with ontological primacy

The troubles with ontological primacy

Consciousness in Indian Philosophy: The Advaita Doctrine of 'Awareness Only' (review)

Reviewed by: Consciousness in Indian Philosophy: The Advaita Doctrine of 'Awareness Only' Alan Preti Consciousness in Indian Philosophy: The Advaita Doctrine of 'Awareness Only'. By Sthaneshwar Timalsina. New York: Routledge, 2008. Pp. 179. In the Indian tradition, the identification of pure consciousness as an independent monistic principle identical with Being can be traced, as is well known, to the earliest Upaniṣadic speculations. The general picture to emerge from these reflections on the nature of subjective experience and external reality, although far from systematic, described consciousness as the ultimate subject of all mental states, itself ever precluded from becoming an object; as a universal type, it transcends the psychophysical complex constituting the empirical individual and the three associated levels of waking, dream, and deep-sleep consciousness common to all. Ubiquitous, pure consciousness is the foundation for the knowledge relation between subject and object: the field, if you will, upon which the relation between mind and world plays itself out. The mind (and the world revealed to it), while not entirely fictitious, is nevertheless an obstacle to the realization that at bottom the individualized consciousness (ātman) is nothing but the universal consciousness (Brahman). The realization of the ātman-Brahman identity is the summum bonum of existence, signifying final emancipation from the mundane world and the beginningless cycle of death and rebirth. This characterization served as the point of departure for the developed accounts of the nature and function of consciousness found in classical Advaita and its sub-schools, as well as in competing systems of thought. The developed accounts themselves resulted from debate, both internal and with other schools, on a constellation of related epistemological issues. The disputations arose as philosophers sought to [End Page 730] defend their particular interpretation of the Upaniṣadic pronouncements; in so doing, the accounts of mind and world grew in detail and sophistication. Answers to questions concerning the sources of knowledge (e.g., what are the causes of veridical cognition?), perception (what is directly perceived in an act of cognition?), truth and error (how are veridical and non-veridical cognitions distinguished?), consciousness in general (is consciousness intentional or non-intentional; is consciousness a substance, quality, or an act?), et cetera, ultimately led to the crystallization of a remarkable variety of views on the nature of consciousness among Indian philosophers. Sthaneshwar Timalsina's Consciousness in Indian Philosophy: The Advaita Doctrine of 'Awareness Only' is one of the more recent contributions to a growing body of specialized scholarship addressing themes in classical Indian thought as divorced from their soteriological context. The book is the latest in Routledge's Hindu Studies Series, whose aim, in collaboration with the Oxford Center for Hindu Studies, is to foster research that focuses on "Hindu theological, philosophical and ethical projects aimed at bringing Hindu traditions into dialogue with contemporary trends in scholarship and contemporary society" (—from the front matter). Specifically, Timalsina's interest is in providing an account of the central Advaitic doctrine of cinmātra, or 'awareness only'—the view that identifies pure consciousness or awareness, free of any kind of modality or qualification, with ultimate reality. The account is not a philosophical reconstruction, nor does Timalsina seek to defend the awareness-only thesis of consciousness against opposing views; the work is essentially an analytical-philological exploration of the development of the doctrine at the hands of its many proponents from classical through later Advaita. While the thesis that accords ontological primacy to pure consciousness can be approached from a variety of angles—careful exegesis of important Upaniṣadic passages, reflection on Advaita as a method for realizing Brahman, or epistemological analysis—Timalsina's efforts are directed toward the latter, the study consisting of an examination of the broad array of arguments advanced by exponents of classical Advaitic thought regarding the nature, function, and scope of knowledge, and their bearing on nondualism. One of Timalsina's aims is to call attention to the diversity of the approaches adopted by the various thinkers in the tradition; Advaita, he reminds us, is not a homogeneous system, but is best understood as "multiple threads that all coexist within the overarching philosophy of nonduality" (Introduction, p. xv). The extent to which Advaitins differed, either in...

The Mind as Skills and Dispositions: On Normativity and Mediation

On the occasion of the critique of Alfredo Gaete and Carlos Cornejo, this article explains and extends the hybrid theory of the mind that I recently presented in this journal. Taking inspiration from Rom Harré's program for a hybrid psychology, the theory is supposed to be integrative and aims to broaden Harré's hybrid psychology by including not just the brain, but also the body, social practices, and technological artifacts as mediators of the mind. The mind is understood not as a substance of any kind, but as a set of skills and dispositions to act, think, and feel. This implies a normative view of the mind, according to which psychological phenomena do not simply happen, but are done, and can consequently be done more or less well. I provide arguments in favor of grounding psychology in normativity rather than conscious experience, and I explain why the emphasis on mediators does not represent a threat to the ontological primacy of the person in psychology.

Psychology is About Persons: On Brinkmann’s Expansion of Harré’s Hybrid Psychology

Brinkmann has recently put forward an integrative theory of the mind by expanding Harré's hybrid psychology. The theory is integrative because it establishes that in order for one to gain a full understanding of the mind-which is represented as a set of dispositions-one has to take into account theories about the brain, the body, social practices, and technological artifacts. All of these are said to be 'mediators' upon which the mind depends. An important claim underlying the theory is that in psychology the basic ontological unit is the person. We agree with Brinkmann both on this and on the dispositional nature of the mind. Still, he does not make a strong case for the latter. Furthermore, we believe the concept of mediation is by no means helpful to produce an integrative view in psychology, not only because the theoretical job of such a concept is unclear but also because qua unifying concept it may end up undermining the ontological primacy of the person (in psychology). In this paper we refer to these issues and suggest some ideas that may help improve Brinkmann's (and Harré's) proposal.

Leibniz’s Metaphysics and Metametaphysics: Idealism, Realism, and the Nature of Substance

According to the standard view of his metaphysics, Leibniz endorses idealism: the thesis that the world is made up solely of minds or monads and their perceptual and appetitive states. Recently, this view has been challenged by some scholars, who argue that Leibniz can be seen as admitting corporeal substances, that is, animals or embodied souls, into his ontology, and that, therefore, it is false to attribute a strict idealism to him. Subtler accounts suggest that Leibniz begins his philosophical career as an advocate of (some form of) the modern ‘mechanical’ philosophy and ends his career as an idealist, raising the issue when and why Leibniz adopts his monadological metaphysics. This article argues that, given a constellation of metaphysical, logical, and theological views, Leibniz is committed to the ontological primacy of mind or form even in his ‘middle years’.