http://onticwind.com/?p=176

Latest installment.

Thanks, Chris

Japan's Nuclear Crisis

Together, with some theorist friends of mine (including Katerina Kolozova, Catherine Malabou, Slavoj Zizek, Christopher Haley, Mario D’Amato, Vidhu Aggarwal, Alain Badiou, Michael Hardt, Marcus Pound, Toni Negri, Clayton Crockett, Ward Blanton, Noelle Vahanian, and Jeff Robbins) I have been thinking through a new hypothesis for the history of philosophy especially in light of the acute energy/climate crisis that our planet Earth confronts today.

The question that gives birth to a new hypothesis for 21^st century thought is very simple:  How can we re-think the history of thought and action that opens up new ways of future thinking and being that will harmonize our relationship to planet Earth (the very precondition for our survival)?  Asked slightly differently:  How can thought (the action of thinking)/being (action/practices), open up the future possibility of existence for us as a human species?  These questions must be raised because the future of life on planet Earth is unsustainable given our current practices on all levels of existence (thinking, action, energy, food, water, and so forth).

But you will immediately notice that with the raising of these questions the fundamental destiny of philosophy/theology dramatically changes.  Heretofore, the basic destiny of philosophy has been predicated on the question of wonderment, curiosity, wisdom and knowledge.  But my question moves philosophy from trying to satisfy a curious itch, to trying to think the very future of our existence in practical terms such that the verb “to be” can continue unfolding in time and space on our planet.

One can immediately tell from the collection of my theorist friends, that a range of different theoretical positions have converged, which taken together have produced insights about the very basic make-up of our existence and future.  Some of these theoretical positions include Feminism, Quantum Physics, Marxism, Heidegger, Aristotle, Hegel, Freud/Lacan, Deleuze, Irigaray, just to name a few.

My hypothesis (thought in relation to Clayton and Kevin) is that the history of philosophy (and its future) must be framed in terms of energy. 

There have been many different commentaries on the history of thinking (philosophy, theology, science, politics, economics etc.), which has produced a suffocating hegemony of secondary literature, which in turn as Peter Sloterdijk has argued in his forthcoming book, Philosophical Temperaments, only serves to undermine “original thoughts [which] are everywhere disappearing behind impenetrable veils of commentaries….”[1]  One of the first histories of philosophy is recorded in Aristotle’s Metaphysics book I when he’s trying to synthesize the different philosophical positions articulated in the pre-Socratic world.  In the end, Aristotle does this by employing his methodological structure of analogy and teleology, which in the final instance, only undermines philosophy’s energetic infinite relationality.[2]

There are many other examples of histories of philosophy from Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit to Deleuze & Guattari A Thousand Plateaus.  The former gives us a way of finally overcoming the traditional Christian dualism of the body/soul split by merging the subject with the material universe (substance). In his Preface, Hegel says, “The living substance is being which is in truth subject.”[3]   But what took place between Hegel and Deleuze & Guattari’s account of the unfolding of thought made strange in material actualization, is both Charles Darwin evolutionary theory as well as Sigmund Freud’s discovery of the Unconscious, that is, the founding of Psychoanalysis.

Here the human experience and cognition are somewhat determined by innate and irrational drives, which are sometimes unknown to us.  In other words, despite all efforts there is something that escapes our own self-understanding in history and in existence, which we cannot fully account for in scientific terms.  This opens up an a universe that’s not centered on anything that secures its meaning in some transcendent manner (e.g., there is no God that can ensure that all this will finally make sense, or not absolute principle that lays bare all truth).  Deleuze & Guattari read the history of philosophy from a monist, Spinozan perspective in which all things are related to everything else not through a God (or a master-signifier) but through multiplicity and difference (as pure difference unrelated to anything the existence of which is not entailed by its own existence).  The world is not so much a world as it is a rhizome of immanence productions of desires.

Thus far, in a very brutal manner, I have highlighted a few seminal histories of the history of philosophy.  Now I want to briefly return to my hypothesis (thought in relation to other thinkers especially Clayton and Kevin).

My hypothesis is that the history of philosophy (and its future) must be framed in terms of energy.

Now that my basic and admittedly vague hypothesis is on the table, I want to turn now to defining what we mean by energy (and by “we” I mean Clayton, Kevin and I).  I would like to thank Jay McDaniel for granting me permission to re-publish Kevin’s work on my blog.  This was originally published on professor McDaniel’s blog http://www.jesusjazzbuddhism.org/.

What’s up with magnetism?

A Reflection on Time, Energy, and Hope—Part II

By Kevin Mequet

Posted September 9^th, 2011

Scientists, therefore, are used to dealing with doubt and uncertainty.

All scientific knowledge is uncertain.

This experience with doubt and uncertainty is important.

I believe that it is of very great value, and one that extends beyond the sciences.

I believe that to solve any problem that has never been solved before,

you have to leave the door to the unknown ajar.

You have to permit the possibility that you do not have it exactly right.

Otherwise, if you have made up your mind already, you might not solve it.

—Richard Feynman

How can we generate more electricity than with hydrocarbons?

Petroleum refinery operations

OR a better question might be how can we generate electricity WITHOUT using hydrocarbons at all? I don’t want to start off with a fight here but I guess I’m going to use some fightin’ words. Global chaotic climate change is happening right now. Not maybe it’ll happen much later. Or maybe it’ll happen soon. Not even it might be happening. It’s happening and it’s happening right now. And we, all of us, globally, are responsible for it. Right now. I repeat: all of us are responsible for it.

Though—the relatively smaller number of vastly greater-consuming citizens is not expiated from seeking real alternatives to the pervasive combustion of hydrocarbons.

So, let’s do something about it. Let’s imagine together an approach to generate electricity without using hydrocarbons at all. What if we generated far more electricity by magnetoelectric induction from nuclear elements directly—without all the hoopla of 19th century thermal/hydro dynamos and such?

Where could we look for an example that models this approach?

Heliomagnet & geomagnet interaction

WELL, we could look at the sun. But it’s so hot and so radically different from our Earth that it might not point us in the direction we need to go; even though its magnetic field is by far the strongest in the solar system: 100 times stronger than ours at our orbit. The Inverse Square Law says that its magnetic field is more than 36,000 times greater in low solar orbit—if we had the technology to do that—or 3.6 million times greater than Earth’s. [This will become important in the final essay.]

We could look at the outer solar system gas giants. Again, so different in physical, chemical, gaseous and fluidic makeup than our Earth, they wouldn’t help us in our quest, even though all of them have far more sizeable magnetic fields than ours. Jupiter has the strongest at 20,000 times Earth’s. Uranus and Neptune’s are nearly identical at nearly 50 times Earth’s.

We could look at Mercury. Until 2011 we have never been able to park a long-term satellite mission—called MESSENGER—in orbit around Mercury to really study it. It’s rocky like our Earth. It shows some magnetism. But is its magnetism coming from inside or is it imparted by the sun? Since it is a little less than half the distance to the surface of the sun than Earth, it experiences around 5 times the strength of the interplanetary magnetic field or IMF—or around 500 times the strength of Earth’s magnetic field at Mercury’s orbit. Regardless of the answer, its magnetic field is 40,000 times weaker than our magnetic field. Not much help there.

We could look at Venus. We’ve successfully flown several missions, both flyby and orbital, to study our nearest planetary neighbor in-depth. No magnetic field. We could look at Mars but the same results have come back as for Venus.

We could look at our terrestrial moon. No magnetism to speak of except remnants of far past magnetism and crustal magnetic effects, the result of its nearly monthly passage through our Earth’s geomagnetotail—the vastly elongated, stretched-out magnetic field of our Earth created by interaction with the sun’s interplanetary magnetic field, or IMF.

What about the outer gas giant moons? Well, most are devoid of intrinsic magnetic fields except for two curious cases. Ganymede around Jupiter has a magnetic field 22 times stronger than Mercury’s but 1,800 times weaker than Earth’s. Io around Jupiter may have a magnetic field, too. A small portion of NASA’s just-launched Juno mission profile will be to survey this when it arrives in Jupiter space around July 4^th, 2016.

That’s it. That’s all we have to go on. Wait. What I’m I leaving out? What about Earth?

How does Earth generate its magnetic field?

Glatzmaier–Roberts geomagnet model

MAYBE this is a silly question? Maybe not. Of the rocky or “solid” planets and moons, Earth has by far the strongest viable magnetic field. Why? The truth is right now that there is no good explanation. Or I should say was. We used to think it was a geoelectromagnetic dynamo [‘geo’ means ‘Earth’]. Until Pierre Curie prove it wrong more than a century ago. We’ve been searching for a reasonable explanation since. I’m going to make an unreasonable proposal. And George Bernard Shaw has given me good cause in doing it:

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world;
the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.
Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable.

So, here goes. The Earth is generating its magnetic field by a combined process of which we’ve had only 2 of 3 puzzle pieces until 1957. Up until then we thought the whole of the universe was shaped by electricity, magnetism, gravity and nuclear forces. We could conceive of the binaries electromagnetism and magnetoelectricity but we had been unsuccessful in linking the other 2 with these. That is until Richard Feynman and Murray Gell-Mann put forth an idea worth taking very seriously: that radioactive decay chain interactions are linked with electromagnetism and magnetoelectricity in radioelectromagnetism and radiomagnetoelectricity—trinaries we’ve hitherto not recognized. The term ‘radio’ merely signifies that those decay chain interactions are somehow linked with electricity and magnetism.

The current working theory of the Earth’s interior processes to produce the geomagnetic field is a long word I’ll explain: magnetohydrodynamics. Really this is placeholder name. It means the heated mantle/core materials comprising mostly iron, silicates and trace heavy elements is a liquefied thermal and density gradient matrix in complex dynamic motion, convective, torsional and angular, and it’s somehow magnetized.

Did you understand any of that? Doesn’t really matter. What’s important is that a different kind of magnetism is going on that was not well understood. I offer a suggestion.

Gravity is not a factor

NASA: Gravity Probe B frame-dragging-effect

FIRST, a word about gravity. Consider the possibility that Dick Feynman is right in the opening quotation with respect to this situation. There is no such ‘THING’ as gravity. Just like there is no such ‘THING’ as time. What we call gravity—and time for that matter—is really an effect of the spacetime continuum, which is also not a ‘THING.’ So suffice it to say, that gravity as such is not a factor in the radioelectromagnetic or radiomagnetoelectric effects.

Kip Thorne explains the intricacies of Einsteinian orbital path geometry, spacetime warpage, frame-dragging-effect and traveling wave phenomena much better than I. But let’s review some of the fascinating basics of Einsteinian General Relativity Gravity Theory:

1. ORBITAL PATH GEOMETRY: for more than 40 years we have been using laser inter-ferometry tracking of special reflector stations on the moon place by the Apollo missions to confirm spacetime warp lunar orbital pathway geometry—well over 500 circuits—in the local Earth spacetime.
2. SPACETIME WARPAGE: for more than 40 years US and Russian unmanned interplanet-ary space missions have confirmed as part of their mission objectives the so-called ‘lost-inch conic’ geometry of local spacetime warpage about the sun. Mass warps the spacetime.
3. FRAME-DRAGGING-EFFECT: Collation and analysis of the Gravity Probe B mission data has recently confirmed the frame-dragging-effect phenomenon in near-Earth orbital spacetime. Rotating mass drags the warped spacetime into an angular vortex.
4. TRAVELING WAVE PHENOMENA: data is being collected right now. The original plan was to launch 3 equidistant solar orbital satellites at Earth-distance radii from the sun to deploy a mutually linked Laser Interferometer Space Antenna or LISA which is designed to detect and survey intergalactic spacetime traveling wave phenomena. That mission hasn’t launched yet. But NASA’s STEREO mission has reached its nominal objectives in achieving final positioning for stereoscopic solar observations and is doing double-duty in linked LISA observations. Unfortunately, all it can do is register and survey the events. It can’t triangulate to determine possible origin point—which is why you need 3 satellites. That incoming data is pending collation and analysis now. Rotating black holes drag the warped spacetime so severely that their vortices propagate warped traveling waves in the spacetime. It is yet to be proved.

Let’s not worry if we do not fully understand all of this.  We can’t all be physicists.  But the point is that spacetime is vast.  Far more vast than human consciousness can fathom. Our local spacetime is for all intents and purposes uniformly and reliably warped, exhibiting a dependable and resilient gravity effect. Now let’s move on.

[To see an explanation of the previous go to these YouTube video links: Kip Thorne Gravity Probe B Pre-Launch Press Conference Part I, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=at_UDvq0UyM, GO; Kip Thorne Gravity Probe B Pre-Launch Press Conference Part II, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVQC8nKzuZA, GO; Laser Interferometer Space Antenna [LISA] Mission, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVQC8nKzuZA, GO.]

Ferromagnetism & Paramagnetism

Magnetic bubbles of the imagination

HOW did Pierre Curie disprove the 19^th century geoelectromagnetic dynamo? Because the hypo-thesis was dependent upon flowing electric currents in the mantle/core materials to drive the global magnetic effect. But Curie proved this impossible. Why? Because all materials that have an ability to carry an electric current—piezoelectricity—or remain magnetized—ferromagnetism—lose that ability when they are heated. Beyond the Curie Temperatures they cannot carry an electric current or remain conventionally magnetized. When we discovered through geoseismology that the majority of the interior of the Earth was hot, very hot, in fact way above the Curie Temperatures for piezo-electricity and ferromagnetism, the geoelectromagnetic dynamo went into the dust bin. Before geoseismology it was thought that volcanism was a deep core phenomenon—Jules Verne’s 1864 ‘Journey to the Center of the Earth’ will attest to this commonly-held misconception.

So what’s going on? The Earth has a viable magnetic field that has been maintained for 4.5 billion years, give or take a few hundred million years, and will continue to do so for the next 5 or so billion. It’s impossible for the iron materials to be ferromagnetized or for them to be piezo-electrofied—bracketing for a moment the fact that iron is one of the worst piezoelectric elements. It is interesting to note that ductility of an element goes hand in hand with its thermal conductance and piezoelectrical properties, and is inversely proportional to its ferromagnetic capability. Highly ferromagnetic elements concurrently possess low ductility, thermal conductance and piezoelectrical properties. Highly piezoelectric elements are also highly ductile and efficient thermal conductors, but exhibit extremely poor to nonexistent ferromagnetic properties. Elements that have neither capability are called insulators. [This will be useful to us in the final essay.]

There is another way normally ferromagnetic elements well below the Curie Temperature can be magnetized well above that threshold. It’s called paramagnetism, but it has some drawbacks. First, while the ferromagnetic elements can become magnetized well above the Curie Temperature, they must be continually—though not continuously—magnetically driven. That is to say they need to remain in the presence of a magnetic driver or they give up their magnetism. Second, in conditions of elements well above the Curie Temperature this is also the temperature at that element’s melting point. That is to say that well after they have lost their ferromagnetism they are also in a thermally fluidic state. This is important to understand. This means that in a thoroughly mixed hot matrix the atoms and molecules are in frenetic randomized motion, jumbling the alignments of the individual magnetic bits in such a way as to make a coherent dipole global magnetic effect impossible. Since the tiny discrete dipoles cancel each other out the whole doesn’t appear to be magnetized.

Confusing? I apologize, but I promise we will get someplace useful.

The Earth has a viable dipole magnetic field. Why?

Mantle/Core interior morphology

WHILE paramagnetism in the laboratory setting renders a null magnetic effect; the magnetism is still there. And though in the laboratory the conditions of the thoroughly mixed thermally fluidic matrix are also thoroughly random; this is not the case in the interior of the Earth. This provides us with our answer.

Have you ever played around with a storm—or tornado—in a bottle? I did when I was young but it was a novelty from which I had no context to make wider connections. In the previous essay Jay and I played off Emily Dickenson: ‘How wide are out brains?’ Well, this is an important question. When I was young even though I was filled with imagination—still am—my brain wasn’t yet wide enough to connect a tornado in a bottle to more universal applications.

The Principles of Least Action and Nature Abhors a Gradient are at work in a tornado in a bottle that helps us understand how the interior of the Earth is operating. If you invert the connected water bottles and hold them still, most likely you’ll hear a loud gurgling sound and it will take a long time for the water in the upper bottle to fall into the lower. But if you invert them and give a little rotation at a right angle to the vertical axis you’ll impart an angular momentum throughout the liquid that tips the normally random water molecules into a spontaneously self-organized torsional siphon vortex that efficiently degrades the gradients which is nearly silent and quickly allows the water to fall from the upper bottle to the lower.

How do the molecules ‘know’ to do this? Alfred North Whitehead would undoubtedly have said it is the suffused capacity for prehension – for one entity feeling the presence of others and being affected by them, consciously or unconsciously.   For him things influence one another vis-à-vis their acts of prehending and thus ‘knowing,’ one another.  Some may beg to differ, speaking instead of a more global consciousness of which all things are manifestations, and through the mediation of which they influence one another, without themselves ‘knowing’ things.   For my part, I prefer to take William of Occam’s view. All things being equal the simpler explanation tends to be the correct one.  This accords nicely with the Principle of Least Action: that nature tends to take the path of least resistance in maximizing efficient gradient reduction. So I would say that the molecules don’t ‘know’ anything but exhibit a global consciousness in their proclivity to self-organization, finding the most efficient way to degrade the gradient—which means spontaneously self-organizing a structure to most efficiently accomplish this. This doesn’t violate the 2^nd Law of Thermodynamics; it’s a consequence of it. I’m not focused on the why of this; I’m concentrating on the fact.

The mantle/core materials are in highly self-organized, most efficient thermal and density gradient-reducing structured motions. This is how normally randomized paramagnetism becomes a highly self-organized global dipole magnetic effect that appears to be a 19^th century geoelectromagnetic dynamo but isn’t. Now we are getting someplace useful.

But what’s driving the paramagnetism?

It’s the nuclear elements.

THIS is the complicated part. Recall what we said about Richard Feynman and Murray Gell-Mann at the beginning?  The great radical idea Feynman and Gell-Mann elucidated in 1957 is the production of single magnetic field packet per interaction. It’s been called the ‘strange magnetism’ result. It forms the basis upon which the original claims of this essay are made.

There’s one naturally-occurring spontaneously fissionable isotope. That means that it’s so unstable it will split on its own. That isotope is Uranium 235. In its splitting on its own the fissile production of at least one neutron sometimes more, one antineutrino also known as a geoneutrino in the interior of the Earth, at least two sometimes three lighter nucleons—Potassium 40, Strontium 90, Tin 127, Iodine 131 and Cesium 137 to name a few and all radioactive—and one spontaneous magnetic field packet interact with the surrounding lighter elements and heavy fertile nuclear isotopes. Fertile means that it is almost able to fission but can’t on its own. The fissile isotope accounts for 0.7% of the uranium elements—or 1/140^th of the total. The most abundant fertile uranium isotope is U 238 at 99.2% of the total. This is why enrichment is necessary: to concentrate and separate the fissile isotope. Plutonium 239 is a product of the fission conversion of Uranium 238 by Uranium 235 and is highly fissile, more so than Uranium 235. The thorium isotopes are all fertile and occur in quantities 3 times greater than uranium. Conversion of fertile Th 232, U 234 and U 238 into fissile U 233, U 235 and Pu 239 happens when the far more plentiful fertile isotopes interact with the fissile starter isotope U 235.  It is very like yeast leavening bread and U 235 could be rightly thought of as a sourdough starter that converts the entire loaf. [NOTE: this is a highly abbreviated and simplified description. It is intended for non-physicists, only. Physicists would be most unhappy with its brevity.]

These decay chain interactions do many things at once in the interior of Earth. They drive more the half the heating of the far more abundant iron–silicates mantle/core matrix.  They convert the nearly 560 times more abundant heavy fertile elements to fissile entrained in the mantle/core matrix. They also make decay chain lighter elements such as non-radioactive potassium. The nuclear decay chain cycle has been well understood for more than 50 years. And most importantly, they paramagnetize the iron–silicates matrix. It is the siphon, torsional, angular convection motions of the mantle/core materials that self-organize the paramagnetism into a global dipole magnetic field. Imagine dozens of tornados in a bottle mapped across the globe. But what sets or maintains the siphons’ motions? Well, remember what happened when we gave a little rotation at a right angle to the vertical axis of the tornado in a bottle? Earth’s rotation does the same to its interior gradient-reducing siphons.

A. Chulliat et al: geomagnet related to inner mantle/core motions

In 2010 Arnaud Chulliat and his colleagues published in Journal of Geophysical Research a paper that stated Earth’s magnetic field is indeed linked to the mantle/core siphon, torsional, angular motions; specifically, that the north magnetic pole’s migration over the last two-hundred years which has accelerated in the last couple of decades is associated with the evolution of motions of the mantle siphon plume underneath it. This directly corroborates the claims of this essay; although, I am taking a far more global view of the phenomenon than Chulliat et al.

Earth is an egg.

Geomagnet protects us from IMF.

THIS is not a metaphorical claim. It’s a factual statement of reality. All life on this planet is radically interdependent and interrelated—and it is the progeny of our mother/father Earth. Earth is our egg. I am indebted to Gilles Deleuze for this observation. I find it as true as it is beautiful.

All of us on Spaceship Earth wouldn’t—no, couldn’t—be here without our geomagnetosphere sheath that protects and nurtures us. The geomagnetosphere is our eggshell protecting us from the IMF and hostile interplanetary solar wind.  Mars exemplifies this. When its viable intrinsic geomagnetosphere dissipated with the exhaustion of its nuclear isotopes a billion or more years ago its atmosphere began to dissolve into interplanetary space by interaction with the IMF. It continues today. Mars’ remaining tenuous atmosphere is continually pinched off into interplanetary space by the eddy currents in the IMF created by its orbital passage.

A case could also be rightly made that the relatively thin lithosphere is an eggshell within an eggshell or the durable eggmembrane. It provides us with a ‘solid’ surface on which to live while protecting us from the heat and radiation of the interior. It is a protective insulative barrier to preserve the interior heat and attenuate the nuclear decay chain interactions. The mantle/upper core could be rightly thought of as the eggwhite. The deep solid iron core could be rightly thought of as the eggyolk, spinning to provide for our home’s angular momentum. I’m using poetic language to illustrate a picture. This isn’t literal in any sense. It’s more than literal. It’s a poetics of physics, mathematics, philosophy, theology, music and art.

Roger Penrose, Freeman Dyson, Manuel DeLanda, David Goodstein, John Wheeler and Richard Feynman never discounted or dismissed the value of aesthetics in physics or mathematics. In fact, Feynman summed it up rather nicely. He said he knew he was on the right track if the math or physical visualization looked beautiful. It should look this way if it is right, but if it turned ugly, he knew he had gone off the rails some ways back. He then needed to backtrack to find his error and then proceed. By this standard I think we’re on the right track. Now we need to proceed.

This geoembryonic view of Earth provides the way for us to surmount the next step in our ascent of the energy grand staircase begun more than 350 years ago from the age of oil to the age of athermal fission. Only our successful transition off oil to magnetoelectric fission exploitation will get us to fusion. Dr. Goodstein has repeatedly said: ‘it is our only long-term hope.’ I agree. It is.

Transformation by means of mimetic geomagnetoelectricity.

A new dynamic core that mimics Earth’s …

WELL, that’s it, really.

Now that we understand sufficiently how the Earth is generating its magnetic field we have only to model it competently to harvest vast amounts of electricity for the next phase of our development out of the age of oil and into the age of athermal fission—on our way to inexhaustible athermal fusion. Stay tuned for installment III where I will explain the mechanics of accomplishing this and Jay and I will postulate some possible beneficial outcomes for our world and humanity.

Beyond Quarterly Consciousness: A Reflection on Time, Energy & Hope—Part I. GO.

http://www.jesusjazzbuddhism.org/beyond-quarterly-consciousness.html

What’s up with magnetism? A Reflection on Time, Energy & Hope—Part II. GO.

http://www.jesusjazzbuddhism.org/whats-up-with-magnetism-ii.html

[NOTE: The original physical theorizations presented herein are copyrighted. Copyright © 2011 Kevin Mequet. All rights reserved. These materials have previously been formulated into written electronic form, printed onto hardcopy form, packaged into sealed governmentally certified documents by USPS and placed into archival storage with those seals intact. This meets the US and international requirements for copyright protection. Please download only one [1] electronic and print one [1] hardcopy version for your strictly personal use. Always give full source attribution. Please do not abuse the privilege of its convenient online availability. The complete citations for the materials used in this essay are available upon request. Where a source is cited the following exposition is that source’s original work and not mine. I am deeply indebted to the cited sources. I wish to thank Jay McDaniel for his contribution of Alfred North Whitehead’s prehension ideas included in this essay.]

San Francisco, California

THE SYMPTOM OF HISTORY’S DEADLOCK; OR, THE FEMINO-PSYCHOANALYTIC BREAKOUT!

A Seminar by Katerina Kolozova & Creston Davis

The Symptom:

There’s an old joke, “How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb?”  The answer, “Only one, but the light bulb has to really want to change!”  As my friend, Bruce Fink nicely glosses this joke, the problem here is that it supposes the patient actually wants to change.  Yet Freudian/Lacanian psychoanalysis maintains the opposite stance, namely that the patient may say they want to be relieved of his or her symptoms, but in fact, the patient not only doesn’t want to change, they more precisely enjoy their symptoms because as Bruce Fink says, “they provide satisfaction of one kind or another, even though it may not be obvious to outside observers or even to the individual saddled with the symptoms.”[1]  Of course there are many different kinds of symptoms: obsessive-compulsive behavior, gambling, alcohol, drug, sex addiction, and so forth.

But this seminar will begin with a symptom organized by the general state of things in our time and from which we are all suffering and, yes, even enjoying.  The symptom could be called something like, a universal loss of desire.  The symptom is Zombie, a living death! Moreover this “Zombie” state is a symptom that maintains that most of us have lost our desire to live (even if we don’t recognize this loss).

History has arrived at an uncanny deadlock in which all areas of life, from social and economic exchange (capitalism), to the overly rationalized work and play spaces, to mass pharmaceutical addiction, to political pretense, to global energy and climate crisis, education and religious regimes, to a suffocating  “traditional family” Christian idealization, and even the food we eat.  On every level our lives have hit a deadlock that neutralizes desire to live a healthy, fulfilled life.  This seminar will take as its starting point this Zombie symptom of desire’s death that plagues our existence.  There are many ways that a symptom can be exposed, so our seminar will focus on the core-psychoanalytical concept of “The Real” that is, the state of nature from which we have been forever severed by our entrance into language.  The “Real” always already was birthed in the primordial pre-consciousness state and so it remains in a state of loss and yet its presence elusively persists and haunts language, our identity, the core truth of life as such.  In particular, we will focus our attention on the work of Feminist, philosopher, and psychoanalyst, Katerina Kolozova’s work on how the “Real” functions as she takes her cues from Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, Francois Laruelle, and Judith Butler.

This seminar will have two sessions:

1-    “The Real: Freud, Lacan, Zizek, & Laruelle” [Saturday, January 14]

2-    “The Real: A Feminist and a Non-Philosophical Take” [Sunday, January 15]

Seminar Leaders:

Dr. Katerina Kolozova Professor of philosophy, gender studies, and psychoanalytic theory at the University American College-Skopje. She holds a Ph.D. in philosophy and besides in her home institution, she also teaches at several universities in Former Yugoslavia and Bulgaria (Universities of Skopje, Sarajevo, Belgrade and Sofia). During 2008-2009, Katerina Kolozova was a visiting scholar at the Department of Rhetoric-Program of Critical Theory at the University of California-Berkeley. She is the author of The Lived Revolution: Solidarity with the Body in Pain as the New Political Universal (2010; in English),  The Real and ‘I’: On the Limit and the Self (2006; in English), Conversations with Judith Butler: The Crisis of the Subject” with Judith Butler and Zarko Trajanovski (2002 in English and in Macedonian), The Death and the Greeks: On Tragic Concepts of Death from Antiquity to Modernity (2000 in Macedonian), and editor of a number of books from the fields of gender studies and feminist theory, among which the latest co-edited together with Svetlana Slapshak and Jelisaveta Blagojevic Gender and Identity: Theories from/on Southeastern Europe, Belgrade: Belgrade Women’s Studies and Gender Research Center and Athena Network, 2006 (in English). She is also Editor in Chief of the Journal in Politics, Gender and Culture Identities, member of the Non-Philosophical Society (ONPHI), of AOIFE and the European Network for Gender and Women’s Studies -ATHENA (now AtGender).  She is working on two publications including a monograph entitle The Cut of the Real (forthcoming with Columbia University Press with an Introduction by Creston Davis), and an edited volume on Feminist and Queer theory with Creston Davis & Margaret McLaren.

Dr. Creston Davis is based in the Department of Philosophy and Religion, Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida.  He is the author of Truth After the Death of Meaning and The Contradictions of America: A Mediation on Jefferson’s Monticello.  He has co-authored, Paul’s New Moment (with Slavoj Zizek & John Milbank) and The Monstrosity of Christ and edited Hegel and the Infinite (with Clayton Crockett and Slavoj Zizek), and ­Theology and the Political­ (with Zizek and Milbank).  He is on faculty at the Lutecium Psychoanalytic Group (San Francisco) and is working on a book with Katerinia Kolozova and Margaret McLaren on Feminist and Queer theory along with his book on Hegel forthcoming with Columbia University Press.

The Meaning of Christ and the Meaning of Hegel: Slavoj Žižek and John Milbank’s (A)symmetrical Response to Capitalist Nihilism

by MITCHELL M. HARRIS

2.2 | November 1, 2011

In The Monstrosity of Christ, Creston Davis, the book’s relatively unnoticed editor, brings together an unconventional pair of contemporary thinkers: the Hegelian, Lacanian, Marxist materialist philosopher Slavoj Žižek and his orthodox, Western Catholic theologian counterpart, John Milbank. Davis writes an admirable introduction to the book, reminding its readers why the “unlikely debate” between a strict atheist-materialist and Christian-metaphysician is not only necessary but also the only proper response to today’s capitalist nihilism, by which thought itself is reduced to operate along the coordinates of “a false dichotomy between reason and faith” (4). The “need for a theology of resistance is necessarily dependent on the Žižek/Milbank debate,” Davis suggests, “ because it helps to open a passage beyond the deadlock of the twin ideological structures of capitalist Empire, namely postmodernism (philosophy) and Protestant and Catholic liberalism (theology)” (5). The point is fair enough. Given that the postmodern, and even the current post-secular, epoch seemingly demonstrates that “reason’s stance against myth, superstition and the theological in order to access reason, pure and autonomous reason, has proved at least wanting, if not downright irrational” (5). Though not explicitly acknowledged, Davis’s claim is a Kantian one, evoking the antinomical confusion of pure reason: “If the Middle Ages failed to employ enough reason . . . then secular modernity has employed too much of it (even to the point of contradiction!)” (5).

So how is it possible for Žižek and Milbank to move beyond the inability of faith to interact with reason (and vice versa), when the two thinkers seem to epitomize the dualistic counterpoints of rationalism (Žižek) and fideism (Milbank)? Davis answers this very question by pointing out that both Žižek and Milbank are committed to interrogating “the very foundation of reason as such,” thus helping stage “a theology that resists global capitalism” (10). His fundamental assertion is that this critique of reason is Hegelian at its core. By confronting reason, the Žižek/Milbank debate encounters reason’s “terrifying hidden supplement, that is, reason’s otherness that does not show its truth so long as we naively accept its face value (what Hegel called the ‘Ruse of Reason’)” (10). As such a response implies, the meaning of Christ (and Christianity) in relation to the postmodern and post-secular crux, for both Žižek and Milbank, is necessarily determined by how one reads Hegel—that is, the meaning and legacy of Hegel.

Fact, Fiction, and the Beautiful Risk of A/theism

By Creston Davis

Fiction, whether composed or digested, is always a foray into the unknown.  It seems blatantly obvious from the nature of the word itself, which, like many words in English, comes from Latin.  In this case the word fiction is distilled as fictionem (fictio) meaning “a fashioning or feigning.”  The verb to feign means to represent falsely.  More interesting this word is historically related to the idea of kneading as in shaping dough or to form something out of a chaotic indefinable blob.

Fiction is like making up a story or myth, a legend, a fairytale.  One of the curious virtues of our overly rationalized society is that we assume that truth functions like a mathematical or scientifically verifiable fact, like the Pythagorean theorem (i.e., a2+b2=c2).  Facts are what save us all from hopelessly sliding down into the immoral pit of despair.  Facts are like condoms that protect us from the dis-ease of fiction, fantasy, and moral decrepitude.  Thus there exists for us a very simple binary:  Facts/Fictions and neither the twain shall meet.

But it only takes a moment of reflection to reveal that we human beings don’t function within the matrix of this binary at all; indeed in many respects the binary is something of a feigned incantation conjured up from the mysterious bowels of hyper-rationalists, like accountants, bankers, and other bureaucrats that have suffocated our planet with red-tape and secret dealings.   For example, speaking logically, if this binary is a fact than we must ask not only whence it comes, but also, how do we verify the binary of Fact/Fiction itself?  But notice here too that suddenly the fact of this binary itself contains the necessity of fiction (otherwise the binary wouldn’t be a fact).

Don’t mistake what I’m saying here:  I’m not arguing that facts are bad things.  On the contrary facts are helpful and important, but they too have something of a deceptive nature for which we should be vigilant.  Rather what I am gesturing to here is that just because there is a “fact” does not relieve us from our own nature as human beings (and by extension our collective interaction called history).

A fact then corresponds to something that is true because it can be verified.  So what makes a statement true is that it corresponds to a fact.  But this can led us into a surprising conclusion that many of us might not like because if this is true than facts are read to be interchangeable with true statements.  Ineluctably, we are forced into the strange conclusion that there is only one fact, which is “the truth.”  Donald Davidson presents this argument (sometimes called the “Sling-shot argument”) in his Truth and Meaning book.   Perhaps the most convincing thinker of this argument is Kurt Gödel.  And just like that, on logical grounds, facts become far more complicated than they first appear.

Facts are contingent too.  At one time in history it’s a fact that the earth is flat, but this fact is overturned for a world that is round like a circle.  Facts can and often times change over time and are contingent on language and cultural influences.   Thus to assume that fact is always and simply opposed to fiction poses some logical and historical (not to mentioned linguistic) difficulties.  Indeed, we could even say that to hold to this fact/fiction binary is itself a foray into insanity insofar as insanity is a suspension of reality.

Apart from the historical, logical, and linguistic problems that “facts” pose there is another subject of inquiry that casts some doubts on facts namely, psychoanalysis.  The Austrian thinker, Sigmund Freud, developed psycho-analysis and most basically attempts to scientifically analyze the human psyche, which gives rise to how we behave, experience and think about our world.  The only problem here is that the psyche side of the human is not empirically visible, at least not directly.  So to analyze what you don’t directly perceive (i.e., the psyche) one must, as Freud did, work backwards, as it were.  That is to say, Freud tried to understand how the unseen aspects of our humanness (what he called the unconscious), relates to what can be empirically observable.  So, for example, if a husband mistakenly refers to his spouse as “Mom,” this action can reveal some deeper, unseen truth about the husband’s desires, drives, and so forth.

From this cursory definition of psychoanalysis we can see that human beings can sometimes do strange things.  It doesn’t take long to recall a few examples: all we have to do is think of your neighbor’s habits and interactions with you.  Knowing this can conclude that human beings don’t fit into the category of “fact”; indeed we can sometimes be considered contradictory as the great American poet, Walt Whitman nicely testifies in his “Song of Myself” poem:

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

So facts, though significant and important, cannot account for our human behavior.  This leaves us with the need to understand ourselves, our history, and our desires (e.g., love, vengeance, hatred etc.) in ways that are different from an anemic reduction to facts and impersonal disembodied rationalized “truths.”  For human beings are not purely rational machines; we are rather unique, different and often times inspiring if not confusing and strange.  If we weren’t made strange we certainly act odd, uncanny, and strange.

In this fashion, we can see why purely scientific ways of accounting for being human fall short giving way to more creative modes that attempt to figure us out.  And this is why a strictly fact based reality must make room for a different mode for engaging the mystery or our existence.  And we have a name for this, it’s called: Story—the art of fiction.  It may be, that our uncanny existence on this tiny plant, Earth located in an inconceivably large cosmos, requires us to appeal to the authority of feigned fiction-making in order to grasp the indefinable even nebulous borders that mysteriously comprise what we vaguely call “our reality.”  For it is in re-presenting our reality falsely that we paradoxically gain access to an insight, a hope, and a truth that ebbs and flows in a hidden, tucked away pattern of being that is somehow asymmetrically related to the very limits of our reflexive abilities in word and deed to account for this pattern.   In other words, the very tools that we use to access our truth are put forward as conscious half-truths and even lies.  But the beauty of these lies are magically redeemed in the very act of risking the words (lies) we use to describe our own incompleteness.  In this light, telling tales and conjuring up stories and myths often reveal deeper truths about us than vulgar prosaic facts could ever tell; indeed the problem of facts, in the last instance, never risk anything at all and that is why they are stripped of beauty and lack mystery.  That is why facts are so impoverish and fiction so rich that the latter cannot help but to touch us, draw us into the “rabbit-hole”, and even trick us into feeling the true depths of our void.

In my novel, The Devil’s Demure there is a scene in which a college student comes to terms with this paradox of fiction when she experiences the wave of power that strikes her off balance—a wave that can only be described in terms of what Jacques Lacan called the “order of the Real” the gap in the symbolic order (language).

“What am I?” Patricia asks.  Her voice breaks silence.  The sound of her voice strikes her oddly, strangely.  Thrown off, she clears her throat, “eHEMM.”

“What am… I?” Repeating her question, this time stressing the verb as she leaps out of her chair and moves over her room like a disembodied ghost.  Dashing across her dorm room, stumbling over the Bio-Chem book wrapped in her dirty clothes.  Reaching for her mirror, she begins frantically searching it as if it was a window into a black hole.  Finding her eyes she peers into them—the windows of her soul.

“Ahhhh”, Patricia screams as she realizes her soul has fled, and the cracks begin to show.

….

Later in the chapter, Patricia converses with her Christian boyfriend on the steps of St James’ Episcopal Church on Madison Avenue, Midtown-Manhatten.

….

“But, Patricia, you must believe in a higher-power.”  Arthur’s tone is forced and slightly annoying.  Patricia looks up at him; he is silhouetted, the sun gleaming off the edge of the church roof.  Her eyes meet his as her shoulders shrug her palms turning skyward.  The noise of the city suspended.

Arthur’s words quicken: “What will your parents think if you were to go home for Christmas and tell them that Christianity, … hell, religion, is all just one big act, a farce?”

“I don’t know?  I just don’t have it in me.”  She says.

“It’s like I’m blanking on a simple math problem.  ‘What is two plus two?’”  Again her shoulders meet her chin.  Arthur is blushing.

“I don’t have the memory bank for belief anymore.  It’s just gone, poof… like a thief stole it in the night.”  Patricia reaches for his hand as he sits down next to her on the cold, concrete steps.  His ass is instantly numbed.

“But, Arthur, I think you’re looking at this all the wrong way.  I don’t see this as a lose, maybe.  But, maybe, it’s a good thing.  THE God, THE powerful one ensuring my meaning, my meaning is now gone.  And this makes me desire my own meaning, to find myself, to know what I love and how to love.  I, guess, I don’t know, I guess I just have to risk life.”

“But that’s crazy! Crazy.”  Arthur interrupts.

“You’re just letting the liberal professors get into your head.”

“No, I’m just facing reality for what it is without sugar-coating it in religious beliefs that helps us all keep functioning without going mad.  But this is not madness; atheism is not insanity.  Arthur, it’s less mad and insane than it is risky and truthful.”  She pauses, Arthur is speechless.

“You see without God and the promise of everything working out just perfectly, like a cosmic Disney fantasy story, I am able to live.  I can be free.  But the risk comes when you realize that all this is just one big mistake.  Yet the beauty of this chaos is that we can make sense of it, not by science—science invents its own God called ‘reason’ that makes sure it all comes out right like the scientific method or something.  Science is for those who cannot or don’t want to confront reality too.”

“How do you makes sense of chaos? That’s just stupid and, honestly, impossible.” Arthur indignantly says as his body shifts, his shoe tapping the step.  He is impatient.

“I don’t know, but perhaps we make sense of this by trying to make sense of this.  There’s no final answer, no pre-coordinated framework of ‘truth’ that measures one’s success or failures.  We just have to take what we have and try it out.  We know we’re gonna fail, hell just look at the 20^th century!  But maybe in a freak-twist of fate, in our failure we are already successful.”

….

Raphael, Prime Mover 1509-11

intrinsic to agency. This power, what we are terming human agency,¹ forms the basis of the philosophical anthropology we are attempting to build. To be successful, we need to show this power is intrinsic to the agent-subject, or, in other words, is an ontological feature of human being. The response to this challenge we find most satisfying has been developed by Margaret Archer, whose account centers on a model of reflexivity she calls the “interior conversation.” Reflexivity, in Archer’s estimation, is a mechanism through which the qualities of a robust human agency include autonomy, self-awareness and intentionality.

Before we address what we mean by human agency in more detail, let us first locate the concept of agency in relation to the larger thrust of this essay, namely that of coming to terms with the agent-structure problem and how it addresses the question of social ontology. The problem of agents and structures concerns the foundational ontological commitment of all conceptual inquiry into the nature of human beings and societies in which they exist. It concerns what powers and capabilities are intrinsic to human kind and how extrinsic circumstances come to influence their behavior. It seeks to understand if and how components of the “external world” are internally related to the formation of mature, socially inscribed individual agents. Consequently, any answer to the agent structure problem and concomitant social ontological axioms will operate as a metatheory concerning the relationship between agents and structures and what causal powers can be assigned to them. It is important to note however, while we are developing a critical realist framework to understand the agent structure problem, simultaneously, this project critiques various social theoretical orientations: liberal, empiricist, postmodernist and structurationist, that either implicitly or explicitly hold answers to the agent structure problematic.

The critical realist answer rejects the three dominant theories of agents and structures and their relationship: ontological individualism (that society and culture are only epiphenomena of individual monadic behavior as the aggregate effect of this behavior and forms discernible patterns), ontological structuralism (that individual subjectivity is constituted fully by its internal relations to language, socio-cultural and/ or geo-historical location) and praxis ontology (also known as structuration theory, propounded by Anthony Giddens and Pierre Bourdieu, whereby agency and structure are mutually constitutive, what Archer calls theories of “elisionism” in that agents and structures are analytically distinct, but not ontologically).

Countering these three, Critical Realism conceives both agents and structures as ontologically real and argues that each holds causal powers. Two questions follow from this conception: 1) what powers do agents hold to act independently and sometimes creatively in relation to the objective structures they reside within (social and cultural formations)? 2) How do social and cultural powers, the objective conditions of a given geo-historical milieu affect agents? In the following sections on agency, we will answer these questions.

The third principle of philosophical materialism is that of practical materialism. This principle provides the staging ground for the main thrust of this essay, namely that of elucidating the independent causal power, and hence ontological status, of agents, structures and culture. The first two principles—ontological and epistemological materialism—have required discussions of the natural world. As people and the social world they create ultimately supervenes on the biological and physical strati of reality, such a foundational approach is warranted as a means to understand the intransitive target-domain of transitive knowledge. This distinction informs critical realism’s insistence on untangling epistemological frameworks of knowledge production from ontological features of reality, a reality constituted by entities and emergent powers (generative mechanisms and structures). Within the social world, philosophical materialism thus paves the way for social analysis that recognizes the ontological reality (causal power) of agents and structures. Nonetheless, we will for the most part leave the strati of the intransitive “natural” world behind and focus on the social life-world.

Practical materialism postulates a constitutive role of human beings in the production and transformation of social and cultural formations. The key element is practice, which is, in its most basic sense, human thinking, saying and doing, and whether of extraordinary practices such as ritualized events or everyday practices of “getting through the day.”¹ Practice theory suggests it is at the site of practice that both agency

Everyday Practice Has Its Dark Side

and structure interlock in the reproduction and transformation of social and cultural formations. As such, agents are neither reducible as interpellated effects of structure—the error of reification, nor are structures epiphenomenal of agental behavior—the error of volunteerism. It is true that agency is logically prior to structure; it is unthinkable to have existent social structures or cultural systems without people. However, a theory of agency without culture and social structure is unintelligible because many of the powers and liabilities we associate with agency stem from “real world” positioning within social structures. As we will show, agents move through various sociocultural and occupational positions in the span of life. The powers and liabilities associated with such positions derive from the configuration of social relations that positions are enmeshed within.² Consequently, the formation of our subjectivity as an embodied agent is developed through our positioning within a social milieu, and this process largely accounts for the meanings, beliefs, roles, values and interests we hold. Practical materialism, however, is not a determinative or mechanistic materialism.³Agents have intrinsic causal powers that grant them

Nobody tells me what the fuck to do.

transformative powers—which may or may not be actualized—to effect changes in existing social structures and cultural formations through their intra- and intersubjective negotiations and actions.

In general, the constitutive role of human being in the production of social life contains two assumptions or “double freedoms” that separate human beings from other animals. Namely, human beings are largely if not entirely free from instinctual determination, and in principle, free to premeditate goals and strategies. The process of articulating goals and following desires takes place in a specific socio-cultural milieu, requiring a mechanism that explains the fundamental process whereby agency comes into “contact” (a mediation point that is constant and recurring) with structural and cultural conditions of agents’ temporal and spatial location. It should be reiterated at this point, nonetheless, that in profound and fundamental ways, such conditions are thoroughly preconditional for many specific forms of agency, but not all and hence, society and culture (discourse, language, text, etc.) are not determinative in the last instance. In the analytical model we are developing, agency is pulled apart into a tripartite conception, which is composed of human agency, socio-cultural agency and occupational agency.⁴ Foundational to practical materialism, is the first aspect of the tripartite conception of agency, that of human agency. The philosophical anthropology we are attempting to build finds the ontological foundation of human agency to rest in our emergent self-consciousness of a self (the “I”) who exists over time (the temporal dimension of the self). This level of consciousness has three essential qualities: 1) It exists prior to our sociality, characterized as the ontological stratum residing “beneath” the emergent level of personhood.⁵ 2) It is a capability and practice intrinsic to human kind,⁶that while requiring a language learned from birth, is not epiphenomenal as an effect of language (as Judith Butler would argue). 3) Most significant, self-consciousness is the primary site where agents and structures interlock. The relationship between agents and structures requires a point of mediation that accounts for their interplay, where each in every instance

Margaret Archer, Professor of Sociology, University of Warwick, "Down with Elisionism"

effects the other. The point of mediation, as a concept and practice, will be drawn from Margaret Archer and her work on interiority, especially the reflexive process she terms the “interior conversation”⁷ to which we will turn in the next section.

Parakuhn Shift

epistemological relativism neither entails ontological relativism (the epistemic fallacy) nor judgmental relativism. Contra the slide towards the epistemological nihilism of postmodern skepticism (the excesses taken from Nietzschean perspectivism, T. Kuhn’s incommensurability thesis (the unwatered down version) and various constructionist perspectives usually derived from Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations and so forth), critical realism espouses judgmental rationalism¹, the position that in principle, we can arbitrate among competing theories.

A primary supposition of critical realism is that beneath the flux and indeterminacy of the phenomenal world, causal powers operate independently of human experience. Critical realism explicitly attempts to reinvigorate ontological speculation, countering the epistemological turn in modern philosophy (and its positivist offshoots) and the linguistic turn in postmodernity. As we have seen, the ontological turn taken by critical realism, necessitates investing in the intransitive domain, characterized by its stratification into supervening levels: social, biological, chemical and so on. The stratification of reality and the multiplicity of generative mechanisms, each with specific emergent causal powers, constitutes the emergent potentialities, operating at each stratum. Emergent powers legitimate the plurality of scientific disciplines, as these powers are non reducible to more basic levels. Consequently, ontological being in the world is approached and understood as a depth ontology, entailing that we distinguish between three levels of reality: the empirical, the actual and the real. At each stratum, ontological features qua generative mechanisms hold real, actual and empirical characteristics, and are susceptible to scientific investigation in accordance with critical realism’s philosophical materialist framework.

The empirical level is the human-centered world of phenomenal experience and sensory impressions. The level of the actual is composed of the events, processes and objects of which we have sensory experience. The level of the real is composed of the generative mechanisms and structures that form the condition of possibility of the actual, and consequently, of the empirical. Experiences, events and

watch that downfall, dude

mechanisms therefore constitute the three interlocking domains of reality. For instance, when an apple falls from the tree, the event is the specific instance of an apple falling due to wind, the shaken branch, the weakened stem, and possibly the ripe weight of the apple. The causal power of gravity is the generative mechanism pulling the apple down toward earth. The empirical fact of this event is necessarily anthropocentric, requiring transitive knowledge in service to a human perceiver for the intelligibility of the event. Nonetheless, several conditionals follow. Generative mechanisms and structures operating at the level of the real may or may not manifest into events. As the natural and social worlds are open systems with multiple co-determinations and countervailing powers always in potentia, the actuality of an event is conditioned by its relations (and hence is dialectical) with other causal powers. In addition, the three levels of reality are distinct from one another and consequently, are often out of phase with one another. Events occur frequently without a human perceiver to experience. Generative mechanisms, especially in the social world, may not produce events they govern due to countervailing mechanisms. Structural conditions for revolutionary political upheaval may be present for years until a minute tipping point unleashes hitherto latent political dissatisfaction.²

Ptolemaic Geocentric System: Mistakes Happen

adaptation and so on.² Likewise, there exists intransitive objects of knowledge in the social world, which founts the possibility for critical realist social inquiry and critique. The likely candidates in the social sphere qualifying as having ontological “reality” include the powers intrinsic to human agents, the enduring relations that constitute social structures, and the symbolic frameworks, ideologies and meanings existent in the cultural sphere. Objects of natural and socio-cultural intransitive knowledge preexist human subjectivity and practice, which establishes such objects as holding temporal priority, relative autonomy and causal powers vis-à-vis the human subject-agent, and consequently, form the condition of possibility for natural and social science. The claim of an intransitive domain of knowledge is a meta-theoretical argument, whose foundational a priori claim is that causal mechanisms are ontologically real and responsible for the phenomena of events. As a meta-theory, it does not make any substantive claims as to which causal mechanisms do and do not exist. The task of identifying causal mechanisms is under the purview of specific scientific approaches (physics, biology, psychology, sociology, interdisciplinary study and so forth). In other words, the claim of an intransitive domain of generative mechanisms and structures is a “philosophical ontology,” which should be distinguished from any substantive scientific ontological claims.

While intransitive objects of knowledge, and the mechanisms sought, are the ontological gold of human inquiry into the world, nonetheless, mechanisms are apperceived always through or mediated by transitive objects of knowledge. Transitive objects of knowledge are the antecedent collection of theories, facts, beliefs, symbolic frameworks, models, paradigms, methods and etc. that form the material base for further knowledge production. Human beings produce scientific knowledge for techno-scientific mastery and understanding of the world, and as such, valuations are inherent³, and must be considered a social process. In formal contexts, scientific practice is preconditioned by study, training, and institutional and financial resources. As an entrenched process, connecting the interests and values of the state, universities, corporations, private foundations and individual scientists, transitive knowledge is conditional on the political, economic and cultural base of its production.

While the contour of scientific practice is shaped by the social coordinates of its practice—that knowledge is relative—this fact does not entail that intransitive objects are human constructs imposed upon phenomena. The gap between the intransitive and transitive domains ensures that epistemological (and methodological) concerns do not dominate scientific inquiry, deciding a priori what can be known, thought, or investigated.For critical realists, the relativity of knowledge production necessitates understanding the scientific process as an inherently “fallibilist enterprise,” performing a continual reassessment of the facticity of any ontological claims about the intransitive domain. The history of science abounds with generative mechanisms considered no more: phlogiston, phrenology, scientific racism, cold fusion and etc. On the contrary, by recognizing the distinction between the intransitive and transitive domains of knowledge, critical realism overturns the two dominant approaches to knowledge production in western philosophy, both which attempt to eliminate the relativity of knowledge by either 1) collapsing the world into the mind such as by positing Kantian-like transcendental categories of the mind—the error of idealism, or 2) collapsing the mind into the world such that knowledge is only of atomistic entities sometimes linked by constant conjunctions at the human experiential level of phenomena —the error of empiricism. A third approach, loosely clustering around the notion of postmodernism, is characterized as an immanent version of Kant’s transcendental idealism. Instead, however, of universal transcendental categories, the mind’s grid of intelligibility is formed by categories embedded in time and place, which subjects the mind to the contingencies of experience. Immanent idealists posit various mediating “conceptual formations” (for lack of a better word) between mind and world that are a “given” representational modality of the world that cannot but be displaced, deformed

The Bright Side of Unintelligibility

and angled constructions (of reality), and whose veracity to the world is irrelevant according to the logic of the modality. If not “world veracity,” the logic tends towards instituting, on the bright side, cultural particularity, and on the dark side, domination, exploitation and marginalization. Examples of conceptual formations include “collective representations” for Durkheim, “language” for Wittgenstein, “discourse” for Foucault, “text” for Derrida, and “signifier” for Baudrillard. Critical realism rejects all three approaches because they privilege epistemology over ontology, commit the epistemic fallacy, and consequently disavow knowledge of the causal powers of generative mechanisms operating in the intransitive object domain of knowledge.