a blog summary of Dundee

Here’s a SUMMARY OF THE DUNDEE CONFERENCE. I assume the author is Austin Smidt, since the mock reference to “that sh*t Sartre paper” sounds like self-deprecating humor. (Someone let me know if it’s not Austin.)

But I completely agree with this:

“The conference was initially set up as a duel between two competing fields of thought: OOP v. Materialism. And while there were some very thoughtful papers that clearly drew dividing lines between opposing positions, it was done in a way that didn’t leave either side isolated and destitute as the punching bag of the weekend. Instead, it came across that both sides have much to learn from one another, and that through reasonable disputation each side would find itself challenged to continue to reexamine its own position.”

As Mike Burns half-jokingly observed at the end, the nucleus of the conference was supposed to be a big fight between me and Adrian Johnston. However, I simply liked Adrian too much for that (I’d never met him before) and I can hardly imagine having a big fight with him about anything. Our positions are indeed very different, of course, and the divergence may only become even more pronounced.

Conference attendees gave me a very fair hearing, though I think it’s pretty obvious that the majority of the younger generation in continental philosophy circles would at present prefer “material subjects” to “real objects.” I have no problem with that. We’re just getting started, folks…

Incidentally, my Dundee paper may appear in one particular journal that I’ve wanted to have one of my pieces for a long time now. If they end up not taking it, I think I will roll it into a larger project that I was drafting on the flight home.

For those who weren’t in Dundee, the thesis of my talk further developed my talk from Zagreb of last June. The theme there was that all philosophies that reject objects must either undermine them (objects are surface-effects, folk manifest images, mere aggregates, etc.) or overmine them (objects are a useless hypotheses, since there are only object-for-us, bundles of qualities, events, relations, etc.).

Already in Zagreb, I noted that materialism is remarkable for combining both strategies, in my opinion giving it the worst of both worlds rather than the best.

In Dundee, my claim was that scientific materialism (undermining) is beginning to converge with dialectical materialism (overmining). Both place mathematical or scientific access to the world at the center of philosophy, while adding an alibi/supplement of a vaguely realist flavor merely to prevent themselves from sliding into the world of Berkeley. Both thereby skip over the “mezzanine” floor of the world: objects, which in my view is where all the action is.

I would have done it with Metzinger, but didn’t have time to study thoroughly that mammoth book pre-Dundee the way I did Ladyman/Ross. Their book is fun at times, but for all its cocky claims to crushing rigor, it ends up with an ontology plagued with the same issues that face Simondon or even Nancy. Plus, they end up conceding the need for pragmatism and saying that truth is determined by scientific institutions, which even Collapse saw might border on a reactionary model of scientific praxis.

What always bothers me about books like this is that they usually have just as many logical lacunae as any other philosophy book (you all know I don’t think that’s the biggest problem in philosophy). But they always assume airs of remorseless champions of the truth who, if they insult other people grievously, must be forgiven since it is due only to their selfless devotion to the truth and their inability to stand the confusions foisted by others upon their beautiful Mistress Philosophy.

Above all, these sorts of books have a certain tone, and they always draw others who seem to like that specific tone. There is a certain libidinal investment in aggression and destruction there that I’ve simply never understood. Much analytic philosophy still suffers from this syndrome, but it’s always especially pronounced in the scientistic wings of philosophy.

And this, I think, is why the anti-Latour reaction is often so visceral in those circles. Note that Ladyman and Ross end up agreeing with Latour about a number of crucial points: the role of social practice in truth-formation, the thoroughly relational structure of ontology, the idea of truths as a network, and the deep sympathy for pragmatism. The main difference between Latour and Ladyman/Ross, however, is that he’s simply not on a quest to take people’s toys away, whereas they are. And that factor alone is enough to make many hate the former and love the latter, whereas for me the effect is somewhat the opposite.

Also, I do think that scientific realism (and not just positivism) has the tendency to collapse into correlationism. I don’t see how you can make realism and verificationism go together, and Ladyman/Ross admit it’s a pretty tough job. I happen to think it’s not only Mission Impossible, but they very Mission Impossible that motivates both the science-centered and subject-centered trends that are beginning to dominate continental thought.