scholarly journals On Correlationism and the Philosophy of (Human) Access: Meillassoux and Harman

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niki Young

AbstractSpeculative Realism (SR) has often been characterised as a heterogeneous group of thinkers, united almost exclusively in their commitment to the critique of what Quentin Meillassoux terms ‘correlationism’ or what Graham Harman calls the ‘philosophy of (human) access.’ The terms ‘correlationism’ and ‘philosophy of access’ are in turn often treated – at times even by Meillassoux and Harman themselves – as synonymous. In this paper, I seek to analyse these terms to evaluate their similarities, but also possible differences. I shall argue that the difference between the two terms ought to be retained and emphasised, since it hints at important differences between the positions of Harman and Meillassoux.

Author(s):  
Brian Willems

A human-centred approach to the environment is leading to ecological collapse. One of the ways that speculative realism challenges anthropomorphism is by taking non-human things to be as valid objects of investivation as humans, allowing a more responsible and truthful view of the world to take place. Brian Willems uses a range of science fiction literature that questions anthropomorphism both to develop and challenge this philosophical position. He looks at how nonsense and sense exist together in science fiction, the way in which language is not a guarantee of personhood, the role of vision in relation to identity formation, the difference between metamorphosis and modulation, representations of non-human deaths and the function of plasticity within the Anthropocene. Willems considers the works of Cormac McCarthy, Paolo Bacigalupi, Neil Gaiman, China Miéville, Doris Lessing and Kim Stanley Robinson are considered alongside some of the main figures of speculative materialism including Graham Harman, Quentin Meillassoux and Jane Bennett.


2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-44
Author(s):  
Rafael Lazzarotto Simioni

Resumo: Nesta pesquisa objetivou-se estabelecer uma reflexão crítica sobre o problema do compromisso da interpretação constitucional do STF com os referentes tradicionais do direito. Partindo de uma releitura do problema kelseniano da indeterminação da linguagem, queremos apresentar à discussão o problema do referente, isto é, o problema da escolha discricionária não apenas da relação semiológica entre significado e significante, que é o problema do decisionismo judicial, mas o problema da escolha arbitrária do sistema simbólico que constitui o referente interpretativo da decisão jurídica em cada caso. Nossa hipótese é a de que a prática da interpretação constitucional do STF se caracteriza por um externalismo semântico típico do paradigma da Différence. Para serem alcançados esses resultados, utiliza-se como metodologia os aportes teóricos do novo realismo especulativo de Quentin Meillassoux, de modo a explicitar o correlacionismo presente na hermenêutica constitucional brasileira e apresentar uma nova perspectiva de discussão sobre o problema do referente jurídico. Como resultado, conclui-se que o problema da hermenêutica constitucional pode ser compreendido não apenas como um problema de indeterminação da linguagem “aberta” dos princípios constitucionais, tampouco como um problema de interpretação subjetivista do juiz, mas também como um problema inscrito nas relações de poder entre as instituições jurídicas (judiciário, advocacia pública, advocacia privada e academia) pela ocupação dos espaços de produção de sentido do direito.Palavras-chave: Hermenêutica constitucional. Interpretação jurídica. Correlacionismo. Pluralismo jurídico. Différence. Abstract: This research aimed to establish a critical reflection about the problem of the commitment of the constitutional interpretation by the STF (Brazilian Supreme Court) with the traditional referents of the Law. Starting from a rereading of the Kelsenian problem of the indeterminacy of language, we want to present the problem of the referent to the discussion, that is, the problem of the discretionary choice not only of the semiological relation between meaning and significant, which is the problem of judicial decisionism, but the problem of the arbitrary choice of the symbolic system that constitutes the interpretative reference of the judicial decision in each case. Our hypothesis is that the manner of constitutional interpretation by STF is characterized by a semantic externalism typical of the Différence paradigm. In order to achieve these results, will be used as methodology the theoretical contributions of the new speculative realism by Quentin Meillassoux, in order to make explicit the co-relationism present in the Brazilian constitutional hermeneutics and present a new perspective of discussion on the problem of the legal referent. As a result, we find that the problem of constitutional hermeneutics can be understood not only as a problem of indetermination by "open" language of constitutional principles, either as a problem of subjectivist interpretation by judges, but also as a problem inscribed in the power relations between legal institutions (judiciary, public defender, private advocacy and academy) for the occupation of the spaces of production of law meaning.Keywords: Constitutional hermeneutics. Constitutional Court. Co-relationism. Juridical pluralism. Différence.


2015 ◽  
Vol 33 (3_suppl) ◽  
pp. 92-92
Author(s):  
Takeru Wakatsuki ◽  
Noriko Yamamoto ◽  
Keisho Chin ◽  
Mariko Ogura ◽  
Eiji Shinozaki ◽  
...  

92 Background: ToGA study showed superiority of adding T-mab to standard chemotherapy and a positive correlation between HER2 expression levels and the T-mab efficacy. In gastric cancer IHH is frequently recognized but its clinical impact on T-mab efficacy is unclear. Methods: Patients who were treated with T-mab and had surgical specimens available for IHC test were retrospectively examined. When all tumor cells overexpressed HER2 protein by IHC, the tumor was defined as non-HER2-heterogeneous. The others were defined as HER2-heterogeneous. Progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) were estimated using by Kaplan-Meier methods and compared by the log-rank test. The level of significance was set to p<0.05 and all statistical tests were two-sided. Results: 23 patients were enrolled. Their median age was 68 years and 83% were male. PS 0, GEJ cancer, intestinal type histology, visceral metastasis (lung or liver), and previous chemotherapy were found in 57%, 35%, 83%, 57%, and 57% of them, respectively. After a median follow-up of 11.3 months, the median OS, PFS, and overall response rate were 14.4 months, 10.8 months, and 62.5%, respectively. All tumors were IHC3+, and 13 were non-HER2-heterogeneous and 10 were HER2-heterogeneous. There was no significant difference in clinicopathological features between the two groups. Median PFS in non-HER2-heterogeneous group (21.9 months) was significantly longer than that in HER2-heterogeneous group (8.6 months), (HR: 0.24 [0.06-0.91], P=0.024). Median OS in non-HER2-heterogeneous group was not reached while that in HER2-heterogeneous group was 12.9 months (HR: 0.29 [0.06-1.42], P=0.102). A higher rate of response to T-mab was seen in non-HER2-heterogeneous group than in HER2-heterogeneous group, though the difference was not statistically significant (75% vs. 50%, p=0.608). Conclusions: IHH might have robust clinical impact on T-mab efficacy for HER2 positive GC. These findings should be validated by independent large cohorts and further molecular correlative analyses are warranted.


Konturen ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 99
Author(s):  
Tracy McNulty

Quentin Meillassoux, like his mentor Alain Badiou, is sometimes accused by his critics of “fetishizing mathematics.” Without embracing the negative judgment implied in such a charge, this essay asks: what might be gained by taking seriously the link between fetishism and speculative philosophy? The claim that Meillassoux “fetishizes” mathematics potentially reveals something fundamental not only about the formalism at the heart of his speculative realism (whose “glaciality,” inanimacy, or inhuman character might sustain a certain disavowal, namely of “finitude” or castration) but about fetishism itself, whose philosophical character is attested not only by its ideality or relation to the absolute, but by its concern with thought or construction. The aim of this essay is thus not to dwell at length on the work of Meillassoux, but rather to think about the “speculative realism” specific to fetishism itself, and its unique contribution to speculative philosophy.


2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (5) ◽  
pp. 725-744 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norah Campbell ◽  
Gerard McHugh ◽  
PJ Ennis

In this paper, we trace the compounding and escalation of frames to try and encompass the reality of climate change. These frames capture significant aspects, revealing new contours and extreme organizational challenges. However, what if climate change is unframeable? We locate three ontological dimensions of climate change – its unboundedness, incalculability and unthinkability – that make this case. This means that climate change is not a problem that organizations can encompass, divide or draw lines around – some ‘thing’ that can be recuperated into existing institutional, infrastructural and interpersonal frameworks. Instead, it is calling forth forms of organization without any precedent. We argue that the philosophy of speculative realism, specifically the work of Quentin Meillassoux, reveals climate change as a new World for which we do not have categories. We deploy Meillassoux’s concepts which are non-human and rational to think through what climate change is ontologically. Meillassoux’s work is characterized as the reintroduction of the old philosophical idea of the absolute, and we use it as a possible way to overcome the equivocal status of climate change without succumbing to despondency and passivity. Rather than a negative, overwhelming threat, climate change gives us what we call a bleak optimism: the realization that climate change has already happened, and that human civilization must learn how to die in a way that is a creative and just foreclosure of the Earth’s organizational forms.


Problemos ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 85 ◽  
pp. 153-166
Author(s):  
Kristupas Sabolius

Šiame straipsnyje nagrinėjamas spekuliatyviojo realizmo ir meno santykis. Teigiama, kad nors naujasis judėjimas išpopuliarėjo kuratorių ir menininkų kontekstuose, vieno jo pradininkų Quentino Meillassoux knygoje „Po baigtinybės“ siūloma pozicija nepalieka galimybių paties meno legitimavimui. Spekuliatyvieji realistai stengiasi įveikti koreliacionizmo prieigą, pagal kurią tarp mąstymo ir būties egzistuoja būtinas ryšys. Kartu tokia pozicija nenumato galimybės meninėms praktikoms pasiekti realybės sferą – sukurdamas ką nors nauja, menininkas nuolatos pažeidžia absoliutaus pasaulio autonomiją. Tačiau atmetus spekuliatyvųjį realizmą grindžiantį reduktyvų racionalizmą, Meillassoux postuluojamas „kontingencijos būtinybės“ principas gali tapti meninės prieigos orientyru. Kūrybinėse praktikose įgyvendinamas kontingencijų radikalizavimas gali pasiūlyti nespekuliatyvią akistatą su Hiper-Chaosu, virtualybės plotmėje aktualizuodamas „virsmo kitu“ perspektyvą.Pagrindiniai žodžiai: spekuliatyvusis realizmas, menas, kontingencija, virtualumas. Quentin Meillassoux and Radical (Im)possibility of ArtKristupas Sabolius AbstractThis paper addresses the problematic relationship between Speculative Realism and art. Although the newly-born movement became popular among curators and artists, one finds no space left for legitimization of creative practices in Quentin Meillassoux’s “After Finitude”. By criticizing the so-called correlationism which privileges the necessary binding between being and thinking, Speculative Realism would not grant art a possibility of the access to the reality of things-in-themselves. By creating something new, artistic practices constantly violate the absolute autonomy of the world. On the other hand, if rejected the reductive rationalism of speculation, the principle of “the necessity of contingency”, as postulated by Meillassoux, could provide some guidelines for artistic take on the issue of reality. Through the radicalization of contingency in creative practices and the restitution of the value of the virtual, one could perform the transformation into Otherness and not-speculative confrontation with the realm of Hyper-Chaos.Keywords: speculative realism, art, contingency, virtuality.


PhaenEx ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-122
Author(s):  
Dustin Zielke

This paper takes up the problem of correlationism from a phenomenological perspective. Speculative realists, such as Quentin Meillassoux and Graham Harman, seek to establish new forms of Continental realism largely because, in their view, phenomenology cannot adequately account for the real. To counter these claims, I will use what I call a “critical phenomenological approach”, which critically delimits the real from the intentional relation, and thus makes possible a phenomenological theory of the real. This approach to realism establishes not only that the real is independent from the intentional relation but also that the intentional relation itself is contingent with regard to the real. Furthermore, it also shows that the human being is exposed to the real in an originary way that calls into question the adequacy of Meillassoux’s and Harman’s forms of realism.  


2021 ◽  
pp. 166-200
Author(s):  
Luke Martin

In this paper, I argue for an alternative reading of Michel Foucault as an anti-correlationist thinker. Specifically, I position him as aligned with what philosopher Quentin Meillassoux calls speculative materialism (an offshoot of speculative realism). Given the resurgent and exciting prioritization of speculative ontology over concrete politics among these thinkers, coupled with the need for a revolutionary anti-capitalist political movement, my approach aims to take speculative materialists’ claims regarding access to the in-itself seriously while also devoting attention to their (underdeveloped) political dimension. It is in this latter realm Foucault proves particularly helpful to think alongside. Though Foucault has often and convincingly been portrayed as an anti-universalist, postmodern, and epistemologically-oriented figure, I present him as concerned with the subject’s access to the Outside (the great outdoors, things-in-themselves) as well as the politics of such access. I do so through a study of a wide selection of his works (books, essays, interviews, articles), a comparison between his philosophical position and that of Meillassoux’s, and an expansion upon Foucault’s analysis of Diego Velázquez’s “Las Meninas” in The Order of Things, positing the artwork as a speculative object. I suggest, in short, that Foucault’s concepts of thought, force, and the subject have surprisingly striking similarities to Meillassoux’s absolute contingency and his political subject (the ‘vectoral militant’). We can, then, begin to see a revolutionary politics arising out of what I understand as Foucault’s speculative stance—hopefully providing an opportunity to both (re)consider Foucault and highlight the politics incipient in contemporary explorations into the Outside.


Author(s):  
Arne De Boever

Chapter Four draws from the work of financial journalists Scott Patterson, Michael Lewis (a former “big swinging dick” at Salomon Brothers), and scholar Frank Pasquale to think the reality of today’s economy, which is frequently characterized as a “universe”, with phenomena analogous to black holes or also the Big Bang. Not directly observable, such phenomena are known only through the study of their effects; we know those phenomena are real because their effects are real. Our knowledge of market crashes today operates in the same way, thus giving new meaning to the phrase coined by Michael Lewis and popularized by Tom Wolfe in his description of the fabled bondsman Sherman McCoy: “master of the universe” (emphasis added). The chapter brings this thought of the financial universe in dialogue with the philosophical work of Quentin Meillassoux, who proposed a speculative realism to think the kind of reality that scientists can access when they think, for example, the Big Bang.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document