On Discontinuity and Its Discontents

Deleuze and Guattari Studies, Edinburgh University Press, 2023

indebted to Deleuze. One of the essential aspects of Brassier's work is his discovery of a nihilistic extinction, an idea developed as a direct polemic against the affirmationist and vitalist Nietzscheanism of Deleuze (Brassier 2007: 220, 239). Harman is known for his defence of the autonomy of objects, a commonly disparaged concept throughout the history of philosophy, and a concept that he poses against the primacy of a pre-individual intensive space or 'virtual realm' with which Deleuze's philosophy is frequently identified (Harman 2009: 101). Finally, Deleuze falls within the scope of the 'correlationism' that Meillassoux famously attacks, representing one of the 'strong' and higher forms of a long tradition of reducing being and thinking to one another, hence leaving no room for an independent conception of reality (Meillassoux 2008: 37). With these positions in mind, Kleinherenbrink's untimely juxtaposition could not be more forceful in its portrayal of Deleuze as both the 'forerunner' and the 'high point' of speculative realism, and particularly of object-oriented philosophy (p. 9). Thus, one of the aims of Against Continuity is not merely to shed speculative realist light on Deleuze's

Contemporary Materialism: Its Ontology and Epistemology (Springer Synthese Library), 2022

This chapter has two main complementary goals. First, it analyzes the main ontological ideas of Gustavo Bueno's discontinuous materialism in contrast with other philosophical systems. Second, it explores some of the main ontological questions and issues still open in this system of thought, while advancing some possible paths of resolution. In order to do this, I follow a double general denition of philosophical materialism. Positively, materialism, in general, names the branch of philosophical worldviews that identify being (i.e. the "ὅντος" of ontology) with matter, understood in its broadest sense as changeability and plurality (partes extra partes). Negatively, materialism denies the existence of disembodied living beings and hypostatized ideas. Within this general framework, I then locate the specic ontological characteristic of discontinuous materialism in the rejection of any attempt to hypostatize any element, property, state or relation of reality. Like the Medusa's gaze, hypostasizing metaphysics turns parts of the complex interplay of continuities and discontinuities that constitutes reality into stone. I then conduct a comparison between discontinuous materialism and other philosophies, in particular Mario Bunge's systemic materialism, physicalism, ontotheology, and speculative realism(s). This approach aims at opening new avenues for philosophical research for both metaphysics in general and materialist philosophy in particular. 3.1 Introduction: Discontinuous Materialism in the Big Market of Materialisms Throughout the following pages, I will present Gustavo Bueno's "discontinuous materialism", a variety of materialism barely known beyond Spanish and Latin American readers. When talking about presenting a "new" form of philosophical

2014

generations, who themselves begin their own agendas that are equally overcome, and so on. This suggestion is helpful only if we are able to individuate some unifying features of the starting agenda and then also identify some principles that allow us to trace the proper trails philosophy, there are trails that lead out of it. For example, there is a trail that leads from Frege to Husserl and there is a trail that leads from Austin to Derrida (Derrida 1988, 38 and 130-1). If we are trying to determine the historical identity of analytic philosophy, we need to understand why some trails keep us in and others take us out of the analytic tradition. a history of reception and succession in terms of tutors, teachers, students, departments, institutes, journals, books, textbooks, and so forth. The latter would be a naturalized, emin Twentieth-century Analytic Philosophy offers several brief but fascinating and enlight-Hacker, however, is an exception. Analytic philosophers typically are not interested in such naturalistic histories of their own philosophy. Accordingly, my strategy will be intensional, that is, I aim to identify, in Soames' words, the "underlying themes or tendencies that characterize" analytic philosophy (Soames 2003, 1:xiii). Even if there are no unifying doctrines, there may be a set of concepts and attitudes that characterize analytic philosophy and distinguish it from other kinds of philosophy. I hope to characterize this content my characterization instructive. Accordingly, I aim to avoid tendentious or 'churchy' charrigor, and argumentation" and that it aims at "truth and knowledge, as opposed to moral or spiritual improvement" (Soames 2003, 1:xiv). 3. Ryle's Thesis My point of departure is Ryle's characterization of analytic philosophy in 1956 in his introduction to the publication of a series of eight lectures from BBC's Third Programme with the title The Revolution in Philosophy. An aim of this collection, Ryle writes, is to "trace our proximate origins" and to let the essays in this collection be like "memoirs" that "supply the future historian with those considered and marshalled reminiscences which they will need" (Ryle 1956, 1). This is exactly how I want to use this collection. In this introduction Ryle distinguishes between "the vehicle and what it conveys," where vehicles are meaningful psychological or linguistic entities, and what they convey is their sense or meaning. It is in virtue of their meaning that the vehicles are "capable of being true or false...and capable of implying and being incompatible with other judgments." Ryle 6

Metanexus, 2006

Metanexus Institute Conference June 3-6, 2006, Philadelphia “Continuity and Change: Perspective on Science and Religion” “Continuum, Discontinuum and the Middle Way” Summary and Comments 15 years later. The 2006 essay argues that there are two opposite scientific metaphysical frameworks that are irreducibly involved in all approaches to understanding the nature of the universe. In the science of the pre-Socratics the opposition was between the Parmenidean and Heraclitan frameworks. In modern physics the opposition is between the Newtonian particle mechanics and the Maxwellian field mechanics. Per hypothesis, a version of the same opposition arises in all scientific disciplines. Each of the scientific metaphysics, taken by itself, is unable to account for all phenomena. They are both false (inherently incomplete) is their claim to universality. Yet each is clearly essential in account for its own paradigmatic type of phenomena. For instance, in modern terms the Newtonian accounts for particle phenomena and the Maxwellian accounts for wave/field phenomena. But there are no particles (in the Newtonian sense) in the Maxwellian fields. And with the exception of gravity (as a continuing separate issue) there are no fields in Newtonian mechanics (viz. only the three laws). I argue that the opposition of the two types of scientific metaphysics is unresolvable within any possible scientific (mechanical) framework. Because these opposites, per hypothesis, are complementary neither can be reducible to the other. One way to express this is to say that reality is more ample than can be captured by any one scientific conception. The unresolvable, yet unavoidable opposition, poses for us, what I call, a Dialectical Dilemma. The overall theme of the essay is that we are forced to a Third Metaphysics that is more general and can subsume the complementary scientific metaphysics as limited idealizing special cases. The Third must also supersede the scientific metaphysics, meaning that it understands them, their successes and limitations, in a new way. The Third metaphysics involves a conceptually more comprehensive understanding of reality – a reality where we, as observers and inquirers, are essential components. The explication of the Third is only cursory. I argue, following Bartlett, that the ancient response to the Dialectical Dilemma, was the Socratic Turn. And I suggest that this is quite analogous to the modern Pragmatic Turn. There is a fundamental shift, a meta-paradigm shift, involved wherein the question, and the nature of inquiry changes. In the scientific representation of inquiry, the question is about ‘how the (objective) universe – out there – works’, independent of our presence or actions. With the turn to the more general Third, the question has to do with ‘how to work in the world’. Dewey characterizes these as the Spectator and Participant representations of inquiry. The key point is that the questions and the nature of questioning is more general, more comprehensive in the Participant Third. Following Kant, our actions, as characterized in his Critique of Practical Reason, are concern with developing ‘how we live and work in the world’. In the Critique of Judgment Kant notes that the indeterminate nature of the question ‘how we should live’, thus requiring judgment. He further notes that the question ‘how should we live’ is the fundamental, defining question of morality. Socrates similarly maintains that the question ‘how should we live’ is the most important question. In the Third, the question ‘how should we live’ defines the framework of inquiry and action. The scientific questions are important but idealizing and subsidiary.

Konturen

Point of Departure This Special Issue of Konturen explores above all two relationships, which may also be nonrelationships: those between nature and culture (qua human artifice) and between the continental and (Viennese-Anglo-American) analytic traditions in philosophy. The broad problem of the wavering limit between what is natural and what artificial, especially as concerns the definition and organization of the human, is one that interests and troubles our times in manifold and manifest ways, in the domains of political and cultural-identity ideology, technology, ecology, ethics, aesthetics, and on and on. In the context of Konturen, the thematization of this limit functions, on the one hand, as a displaced extension of the reflection on the border between religion and politics (or Church and State) that comprised our opening volume. For-either surreptitiously or candidly-nature constitutes often enough (and always ideologically) our stand-in for religion or God (as a kind of literal absolute, whether as endowed with spirit or posited as objective foundation), while artifice frequently carries the sense of a "mere" politics or human disposition of power (qua figural, derivative, relative). This power is understood implicitly as inauthenticity, except when the constellation is reversed, such that nature as reality signifies the play of power while artifice or culture functions as a kind of religion (in a positive or negative sense). In the contributions below, on the other hand, we pursue the limits of the nature/culture opposition in its relative independence from this religio-political problematic, which we leave here in the background. More particularly, the individual essays examine the nature/culture opposition critically in the guises of nature versus arbitrary convention, lived experience in tension with theory, essentialism in competition with constructivism, actuality in relation to possibility, reality as complemented by fiction, humanity in view of its robotic Konturen ll (2009)

This is an penultimate draft (with some minor typos) for our forthcoming anthology, containing invited papers presented at the International Wittgenstein Symposion in 2014.

The Philosophical Forum, 2010

International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 2019