I know Levi disagrees with how I read Derrida but if we can discount the question of how accurate is to Derrida the person and take it up merely as a philosophical conception I think it’s pretty useful.  I particularly love this take on four dimensionalism. (A topic I’ve taken up frequently here over the years)

First, insofar as substances have both temporal and spatial parts, no object will ever be fully present, because every object will contain parts that are elapsed or gone. This is a good candidate for articulating one of the meanings of withdrawal, and is one of the reasons I have claimed that the essence of objects consists in what Derrida called differance (I have an article forthcoming on this entitled “The Time of the Object: Derrida, Luhmann and the Ontological Grounds of Withdrawal”). Here differanceshould not be understood as the claim that beings take on their being in and through their difference from everything else (e.g., the thesis of Saussurean diacritics), but rather as the claim that 1) beings differ in-themselves in that they change (regardless of whether any other objects exist), and 2) that the presence of an object or substance is perpetually deferred by virtue of the fact that the past of a substance has always already disappeared and the future is necessarily open. Second, it follows that objects or substances can develop. Clearly, while my childhood is a temporal part of my being, I am physically, psychologically, and intellectually very different than I was at the age of three. Now I grow hairs in odd places. Finally, third, insofar as substances are temporal, they are open. To say that an object is open is to say that it’s internal structure is not fixed but that it can develop in unexpected ways in the future. If four-dimensionalism is true, I see no opposition between the processualists and onticology or object-oriented materialism (OOM).

It seems to me, at least from reading several of his posts of late, that many of the places I struggled with Harman are places where Levi adopts a position I find much more acceptable (or at least understandable).

I also really like that he refers to his own position as an object oriented materialism. Now materialism often is taken as an other term for physicalism or the idea that all reality is reducible to third person physics-like descriptions. Yet that’s hardly the only use of materialism. I consider myself a materialist yet I think the first person perspective is irreducible to a third person perspective the way many contemporary materialists do. (I’m a Peircean in that sense) Levi wants to say that a materialist is one who thinks “all entities are materially embodied, not that all entities are reducible to elementary parts.” This allows one to embrace various theories of emergence.

The one place I suspect I might differ from Levi (I’m not sure) is over my realism towards non-material entities. I make a distinction, following Peirce, between entities that are real versus entities that are actual. Thus to be actual is to be embodied as a material entity in space-time. However I am a realist towards various types of generals such as numbers, mathematical and so forth. As such I suspect I am, like Peirce, somewhat of a scholastic realist. My sense is that this might put me closer to Harman than Levi. But I may just not fully grasp the details of Levi’s position. I think some of the debate about withdrawn objects may relate to the notion of formal distinction in Duns Scotus which in turn pops up in Peirce (and perhaps Derrida).  (See this excellent blog post from Beyond Necessity on why haecceity is not repeatable for a way to think about this — I’ll leave undiscussed whether this relates to OOO)

I know Graham Harman got a bit upset when I suggested from my limited understanding that a lot of what I saw in OOO seemed presaged by Peirce. Unfortunately I fully confess to getting some things wrong about OOO when I first engaged it those years ago. Still while I don’t know OOO well enough to dare say Peirce said it all first (and I doubt that’s the case) it does seem like there is at least some similarity between the two types of thinking.

Related posts:

1. Peirce on Reference
2. The Derrida Debate
3. Peirce & OOP

Bill Vallicella coincidentally had up a post mentioning Mormon conceptions of God this week.  His main argument is fairly simple.

Briefly, God cannot be a physical being because no physical being is a necessary being, and God is a necessary being.  By definition, God is the ultimate ground of the existence of everything contingent. Briefly, God cannot be a physical being because no physical being is a necessary being, and God is a necessary being.  By definition, God is the ultimate ground of the existence of everything contingent.  (He is more, of course, but at least that.)  As such, he cannot himself be contingent, and so cannot be physical.

Now in one sense that’s fine. However it merely pushes the question back a step. Why is God defined as the ground of all things? This isn’t a scriptural definition. People try and draw this as a definition from inferences out of scripture. (Such as God is creator) It demands the crucial step of unifying the questions about God from Athens (the ontological ones) with the questions about God out of Jerusalem (the interventionist ones).

From a Mormon perspective I think we see much of the great error of traditional Christianity as precisely that move. (I don’t want to say this is how Mormons conceive of apostasy because we typically see it in terms of priesthood authority – but I think for many Mormon thinkers it is precisely this redefining of God that is the theological problem)  I believe that the older Jewish view is actually much closer to the Mormon conception of God. (Which isn’t to deny some differences – but on the major ontological issues they adopt the same stance) A great discussion of this older view of God can be found in Jon Levenson’s Creation and the Persistence of Evil.

I think that ultimately to put the debate in the terms traditional Christians use Mormons think we ought distinguish the deistic questions from Greek philosophy (the question of Athens) from the theistic questions from early Hebrew thought (the questions of Jerusalem). To us the fundamental problem during the rise of Christianity was to see those questions as being about the same thing. It’s not that Mormons think the questions of Athens are inappropriate. We just don’t see them as questions about God as a person.

To add, I think denying the physicality of God is difficult for a Christian given basic Christology. That is Jesus is considered fully God and is physical. I think the only difference for a Mormon is to see many questions of Christology as applying not only to Jesus but to the Father as well. But from a Mormon perspective to criticize the Mormon position philosophically is really to run headlong into a denial of Christology which seems fairly problematic for a Christian to do.

With regard to the question of whether God is a necessary being I actually think Mormons can embrace that position although they need not. (Put an other way Mormonism doesn’t deny God as a necessary being) One possibility within Mormon thought is to simply say everything uncreated involves necessary beings. I think the more popular position is simply to deny there are necessary beings in terms of individuals although some do see the Father as a necessary being.

Related posts:

1. Yet More Anomalous Monism
2. Mormons and Atheists Most Knowledgeable About Religion
3. Davidson: The Myth of the Subjective 2

My first big resolution is to get caught up on my reading of Object Oriented Philosophy. Primarily reading Adam Miller’s book (which is probably closest to my own views judging by past discussions) and then Levi Bryant’s recent book Democracy of Objects. I’d read the past year or so several of Graham Harman’s books but was so swamped with other tasks I don’t think I’d read them with the rigor they deserve. However I also found that the key issues I saw weren’t addressed that well so I think going with Adam’s and Levi’s might be better. Which isn’t to disparage Harman’s – just that I suspect the other variety gets at the issues I see important a little better.

Now I just have to find where I put the e-book of Adam’s work.

The next  resolution is to work on this blog more. I find writing here is a good way to work through the stuff I’m studying. Way back in college I found that one of the best ways to study was to have others you engaged in – especially people struggling in class. A large part of that was because if you could explain things to someone having a hard time understanding it forced you to really understand things yourself. My biggest danger was thinking I understood well when really I didn’t. This blog in many ways is my attempt to do that. Not that readers are akin to struggling students. (Most of you are far smarter than I am) But it does force me to think through my ideas in a way taking notes just doesn’t achieve. If I get comments taking me to task for mistakes that’s even better.

My final resolution is to be a little less “combative” in my argument style. A few people have told me I come off intimidating while others just think it’s annoying. It’s not my intention and I honestly thought I was being careful <i>not</i> to do that in my argumentation style. I fully admit that I learn by having people challenge my ideas and it’s honestly not personal. I hope people respond in a respectful but challenging form to me. That’s partially why I prefer discussing religion with atheists as I know they’ll challenge me the most from many angles. I’m still thinking the best way to do this.

Related posts:

1. Russell Fox on Mormons and Wealth
2. Blogs more accurate?
3. Terms I Hate

If I know that h is true, I know that any evidence against h is evidence against something that is true: so I know that such evidence is misleading. But I should disregard evidence that I know is misleading. So, once I know that h is true, I am in a position to disregard any future evidence that seems to tell against h. (Gill Harman, Thought 148)

Richard goes on to give some good rejoinders against the paradox. The usual one is to say that evidence has to be considered in terms of time. So at the time of new evidence the total evidence has to be considered when determining if someone knows something.

As Richard says,

You’re only justified in believing that “any evidence against h is misleading” insofar as you’re justified in believing that there isn’t any such (sufficiently weighty) evidence against h.

It’s important to realize that this sort of approach to epistemology really is looking at evidence in terms of evidence potentially considerable by a subject and seeing what the best possible justification would be in terms of this evidence. Epistemology thus concerns a kind of ideal knower rather than the way people actually go about considering evidence.

Needless to say this “ideal” situation is viewed as problematic by some. However I think it is useful for certain kinds of consideration even if I think it tends to get a bit too much attention at times within philosophy.

Allow me to add a different way of dismantling the paradox. This is more a Peircean approach. For Peirce the prime issue in belief and knowledge is that (1) our beliefs are not volitional and (2) we have a duty to inquire. Thus at any time we have an ethical duty to inquire into new evidence.

To say one “should” disregard evidence then becomes pointless because we have no choice on the matter. Either the evidence will be persuasive or not. Perhaps by some ideal epistemological judgment the evidence ought not be persuasive. But we are still bound to investigate and inquire. If we continue to inquire then eventually evidence for the truth will become persuasive.

It’s fair to ask why evidence might not be persuasive. For Peirce this is because there is a big difference between mere intellectual acknowledgement of justification and real belief. Real belief leads to behaviors entailed by that belief whereas mere acknowledgement doesn’t. The classic example along these lines would be scientists who intellectually knows some disease he’s experimenting with is dangerous but doesn’t act as if their samples were dangerous. Belief becomes a matter of degree.

In this scheme justification for a belief ends up being ideal ethical laws of behavior given some knowledge. However those laws must themselves become subject to belief in order to be justification for a person. Translated back into a more traditional epistemology what counts aren’t merely the pieces of evidence but the “logic” of how one puts those pieces of evidence together. Each piece of evidence must first be believed in order to be evidence and effectively this entails that the reasoning entailed by what most call evidence is itself evidence.

Now I don’t think Peirce objects to epistemological reasoning simply because it is a form of reasoning about reasoning. That is it is a type of inquiry into how we ought reason about evidence. As such it can be persuasive and significantly change how we consider evidence. The problem of epistemology is that it neglects the nature of belief considering an “ideal” human without competing wants, desires, projections, moods, or emotions. All of those come into play when considering both belief and justification as actually conducted.

I’d say that for a Peircean one could say evidence is misleading only in the sense that it is evidence that rationally ought be neglected when considering the evidence in toto. Which is really Richard’s approach.

Related posts:

1. Knowledge: Why Do You Draw the Line?
2. Evidence
3. What is a Trump?

I’ve been reading Graham Harman’s Guerrilla Metaphysics. It’s a good book.  I actually like it much better than his Latour book, Prince of Networks. Some of you might recall I’d written on that prior to getting so busy. It put me in some hot water since there were two key issues that I simply read poorly and Harman (correctly) took me to task on the issue.  (That said I still think the key points weren’t presented too clearly) The issue of time in Harman is still something I’m confused on so I’ll try to avoid writing on that. I do wish I’d read Guerrilla Metaphysics prior to taking on Prince of Networks though. I think I’d have found Prince much more understandable had I done that.

In addition to Harman’s books, Adam Miller kindly gave me a copy of the proofs for his forthcoming book Speculative Grace: An Experiment with Bruno Latour in Object-Oriented Theology. In some ways it’s taking on OOO via the same route Harman does – via Latour. However on some key issues Adam goes a different direction. Adam presented a few early versions of some chapters last year to LDS-Herm that I quite enjoyed. My sense is that Adam and I tend to approach things in a pretty similar fashion so I’m eager to read his book. I want to finish Harman’s stuff first. (Which I’m sure will provide an interesting contrast with Adam’s stuff)

Finally Levi’s book, Being and Difference: An Essay on Realist Ontology, is supposed to be out soon as well. I love Levi’s blog, Larval Subjects (although I’ve not had time to read much of late) There are a few key points where I think Levi differs from Harman. However Levi really is fantastic at presenting ideas in a very clear fashion. We do differ on a lot of issues (I tend to read Derida as a realist whereas he doesn’t) but I really look forward to picking up Levi’s book. If it presents the ideas as well as his blog does this will be a great source for propagating the ideas.

Long time readers know that I’ve long thought that one flaw in the typical presentation of Continental Philosophy is object – object interactions. (i.e. physics — my own love and joy) I end up agreeing with a lot broadly presented in Continental thought (even if not the flowery and frequently unnecessarily oblique fashion it presents the ideas). My broad critique of OOO until now (perhaps highly unfair given that I just haven’t read the movement broadly) is a lack of argument for particular positions. I don’t mind the speculative part of speculative realism. (The predecessor of OOO) But at a certain point you have to leave speculation and start providing arguments for ones positions.

With that in mind a lot of my reading will be not just to come to actually understand the positions in OOO. (Which I just can’t claim I do yet) Rather it is to engage with the “why” of why I should believe such a thing. One of my favorite contemporary metaphysicians is Theodor Sider provides a pretty compelling take on why one should do speculative metaphysics prior to engaging in the epistemological foundations. (Which I think is basically what OOO is doing within the Continental tradition)

I have no good epistemology of metaphysics to offer. It should not be thought, though, that this uncertainty makes metaphysics a worthless enterprise. It would be foolish to require generally that epistemological foundations be established before substantive inquiry can begin. Mathematics did not proceed foundations-first. Nor did physics. Nor has ethics, traditionally. …Skeptics often ask too much of metaphysical arguments. A priori metaphysical arguments should not be faulted for not being decisive. …

Metaphysical inquiry can survive if we are willing to live with highly tentative conclusions. Let’s not kid ourselves: metaphysics is highly speculative! It does not follow that it is entirely without rational grounds. (Sider, Four Dimensionalism, xv)

I think this is right. (See here for prior discussion of Sider)

Related posts:

1. Science and Metaphysics
2. Is Metaphysics a Sham?
3. Constraining Metaphysics

I’m not convinced natural law of the Catholic variety really is that big a part of Mormon thought although it’s definitely possible to read Mormon thought in those ways. Certainly various Mormons have done so. I think Beckwith does get at the real divide at the end — most Mormons don’t see the universe ultimately as ontologically created from nothing by God but rather something co-existing with God. So God as lawgiver is much more an organizer of pre-existent matter and a persuader of co-eternal intelligences. That is the real divide between Mormon thought and the rest of Christianity is the rejection of creation ex nihilo.

To me the most interesting bit of Beckwith’s article though is this little snippet.

For, as we have seen, the LDS universe is shot through with teleology, moral and otherwise. The Mormon God is bound by an unchanging moral law outside himself that is part of the infrastructure of an eternally existing cosmos.

I just wonder about this. What would be an unarguable example of teleology in Mormon thought? I can’t think of one and I’ve been racking my brain. I think on most things Mormons thinks that either God brings about a particular end through his power or else the laws of the universe are more a limit on God’s power rather than a teleology.

Of course this is where things get tricky since within more traditional Christianity God’s intents and moral law are the same. While many bring up the famous Euthyphro problem on this point it seems undeniable it is part and parcel of most mainstream Christian theology.

Mormonism does say there is a Good. That is there are moral laws. But the ontology of the moral laws are more interesting. While I’ve not seen anything resembling a poll I suspect most Mormon thinkers tend more towards a consequentialist meta-ethic. i.e. some variation of Utilitarianism. However many recent thinkers clearly have been moving much more towards Continental thought. Especially the positions of people like Levinas. The problem with Levinas and related thinkers is that while you get an ethical demand you don’t get anything akin to a moral law of the sort Beckwith presents. Indeed I’d argue that Continental thinkers end up critiquing moral law. (Think Derrida in “Force of Law.”)

As I’ve noted here before I’m probably fairly skeptical of meta-ethics. If I had to adopt an ethical view it would definitely be more the Levinas or a similar deconstructed Aristotelian virtue ethical view.

All that said there definitely are Kantians among Mormons as well a natural law theorists. So I don’t want to give the picture that Mormons are opposed to such positions. I’m just not sure it’s that significant a position within contemporary Mormonism.

Maybe I’m wrong though. Still, Nate Oman (one of my favorite bloggers – albeit one who blogs rarely now) wrote a critique of Mormonism and Natural Law back about 10 years ago. “A Very Short Essay on Mormonism and Natural Law”.  An other interesting discussion was a debate between Richard Bushman and Damon Linker over at The New Republic in 2007 when Romney first was running for President.  I’ll quote an excerpt.

From your reply, I would judge that you are most concerned about loyalty to prophetic authority. Would Mitt Romney as president give way to immoral and illegal directives from Salt Lake? You make the subtle and interesting point that Mormons have no natural law tradition to constrain a Mormon president–either a president of the Church or the country. Since revelation trumps everything, where are the limits?

Your concern might be alleviated by considering how revelation actually works–in Mormonism and in biblical history. The scriptures themselves place heavy restraints on prophets. It makes a big difference that the moral law is enunciated endlessly in Mormon scriptures. The Ten Commandments were rehearsed in an early revelation, reinstalling them as fundamentals of the Church. Later, the Saints were told “no power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood, only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned.” Could all this be overthrown by a new revelation? You think that revelation wipes the slate clean, negating everything that went before. But that is not the way prophetic revelation works, now or ever.

The proper analogy is to the courts and the Constitution. The law is what the courts say it is, we assert hyperbolically. Theoretically nine justices can overturn any previous interpretation of the Constitution on a whim. But, in fact, they don’t–and we know they can’t. Their authority depends on reasoning outward from the Constitution and all previous decisions.

Related posts:

1. Heidegger and Mormonism: A Possible Literary Aesthetic
2. Mormonism, Grace and Works
3. Mormonism and Supernaturalism

I really liked this bit in the interview:

Chris: [i] suggested that ‘scientism’ hasn’t caught on because it can only be interpreted as an insult – no-one willing refers to themselves under this label, which anyway doesn’t conjugate into a noun very easily! She broadly endorsed my suggestion that perhaps the term ‘positivism’ could be rescued for those that are committed to science as their source of ultimate truth.

John: I suppose what I object to more than anything else is the literalist spirit of interpretation shared by both sides. As I develop in Deeper Than Darwin, this is the source of most of the mischief in the so-called Darwin wars.

I think there’s a lot of truth in that. I especially like his critique that there is a lot of metaphysics going on presented as if it were something other than metaphysics. Not that there’s anything wrong with doing metaphysics. But I do admittedly get a little uncomfortable with those who demand adherence to a particular metaphysics without realizing that multiple metaphysics explain the empirical state equally well. It reminds me of having to teach freshmen how Berkley wasn’t going nearly against the science of his day so much as providing a different way of thinking about it. (Of course one can think Berkley a tad difficult to accept – just that one has to do it on a different level than most do.)

Related posts:

1. Richard on Scientism
2. Is Metaphysics a Sham?
3. Naturalist Metaphysics

Badiou’s ethics is not designed to formulate a set of rules that would tell us how to respond to situation x (hence the “one size fits all” critique is a bit of a red herring or straw man). What Badiou is interested in is what might keep us committed to a certain project despite all the things that stand in our way.

Sounds very Kierkegaardian.  In case it’s not obvious – I don’t know Badiou well.  I have a couple of his books I started just before life became a busy hell that I need to get back to.  (Along with Harman’s books)

…the political realist or pragmatic realist would argue that we have to recognize the social constraints on change and limit ourselves to doing what is possible in the reigning social framework, rather than pursuing the significant change called for. For Badiou the ethical political subject is the one that rejects this logic and remains committed to this cause hell or high water regardless of whether it appears impossible from the standpoint of reigning common sense.

It’s interesting how well this describes the tea party within the last six months or so.  However it’s interesting that it’s precisely here that I find myself most opposed to the tea party.  I actually favor a lot of the general principles of small government they at least give lip service to. I find myself aghast at how they are bringing this about. For example holding those opposed to their views hostage to fear of the debt ceiling. I also find that many tea party people have odd beliefs about what is actually going on in the world. (Here speaking of those I’ve actually conversed with rather than any particular leader or blogger)

The call of “hell or high water” to me goes against the very democratic impulse I think we ought have. I understand the anti-democratic sentiment of many people. Why should the ignorant have so much power to decide elections? However it seems clear to me that our nation is based upon a system of governemnt in which consensus building is pre-eminent. What activists on both the left and the right really seem to desire is a more parlimentary system in which you never have divided government and winners more or less get to do what they want.

Last year I was constantly rolling my eyes at Matthew Yglesias’ constant pining after a parlimentary system to replace the flaws he saw in the Senate. I’m not at all unfamiliar with parlimentary systems. (I’m originally from Canada after all) Personally I do prefer our system, when it is working. However the problem is that right now both sides seem to be thinking in terms of a parlimentary system wheras they are acting in terms of our more consensus building system. In particular I think this will come back and bite the tea party in the butt.  (Much as Obama and liberals faced a backlash over Obamacare because there wasn’t sufficient consensus on the issue)

Getting back to Levi’s post, what I think happens is that this “impossibility” is thought in terms of capturing (via political means) sufficient political office independent of popular opinion. With the tea party this was possible due to backlash against Obamacare as well as working in the lightly attended to primaries within the Republican party.

They don’t begin with an answer of what is to be done, but rather invent that answer in their practice. This is precisely what politics and ethics is (cf. my article in Deleuze and Ethics). Politics and ethics begins at that precise point where the normative sphere fails, where there isn’t a pre-delineated answer in terms of an existing norm. This is why ethical philosophies that propose a pre-delineated norm or rule from which applications in particular situations miss the boat.

I agree completely with Levi here and I think it is precisely at the point of institutional breakdown that these sorts of events transpire.  Had you talked to any Republican prior to the recession no one took seriously the idea of not raising the debt ceiling. As has been frequently quoted Reagan has this to say about the matter:

The full consequences of a default – or even the serious prospect of default – by the United States are impossible to predict and awesome to contemplate. Denigration of the full faith and credit of the United States would have substantial effects on the domestic financial markets and the value of the dollar.  (Ronald Reagan in 1983 to Senate Majority leader Howard Baker)

What’s happened though is a breakdown in trust of economists due to first the massive failures of prediction with regards to the beginning of the recession and then a doubling down on the weakly argued Keynesian view of a solution. Whether one agrees with the Keynesians or not, I think one has to agree the empirical evidence is pretty weak relative to stronger economic theories — thus the wide disagreement by even Nobel Prize winning economists. It’s instructive to compare the nature of economic disagreement with say the nature of scientific debate over global warming.

It’s at this moment of breakdown (and not just on this economic issue but on a slew of issues aggrevated by the economy) that people start questioning everything. In this view the tea party is a symptom of this breakdown. It doesn’t mean the tea party is right (or that Krugman is right). However I think it explains the ethical event that this moment of time highlights.

Related posts:

1. Disparity and Party Politics
2. Elections
3. Party Line Continentals