An Introduction to Introduction to New Realism

[Philosophy Now]

Fintan Neylan explains the realism Maurizio Ferraris introduces in his Introduction.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/113/An ... ew_Realism

[spike]

I read this introduction slowly and carefully and I don't get it.

Where is the New Realism? Has it got something to do with the new realities the world is facing today? Perhaps it has to do with the narratives we construct to explain those new realities.

[Dalek Prime]

I read this introduction slowly and carefully and I don't get it.

Where is the New Realism? Has it got something to do with the new realities the world is facing today? Perhaps it has to do with the narratives we construct to explain those new realities.

It's probably newspeak bullshit, spike.

[spike]

It's probably newspeak bullshit, spike.

This New Realism does have the whiff of bullshit. But even bullshit has its morsels of substance, founded on existing stuff. This bullshit has familiar human noises, that of integration, emergence and social constructs.

Overall I thinks this philosophy is a luxurious indulgence, coming from a pampered existence.

[spike]

I notice that New Realism, a European based philosophy, doesn't include the extraordinary amount of refuges coming into the continent. Shouldn't that be part of it?

[Hobbes' Choice]

I read this introduction slowly and carefully and I don't get it.

Where is the New Realism? Has it got something to do with the new realities the world is facing today? Perhaps it has to do with the narratives we construct to explain those new realities.

It's probably newspeak bullshit, spike.

I think you might have to read the article.

[spike]

I think you might have to read the article.

Hobbes', Obviously you have read the article. Please tell his more.

[d63]

Note: I apologize for the preamble. But this post was written for the purpose of cross-pollination among the many boards I work on:

Rhizome 4/24/16 in which I do some initial fumbling around with the New Realism introduced to me by issue 113 of Philosophy Now and exploit the opportunity to activate my Friends who like Philosophy Now string on FaceBook (https://www.facebook.com/groups/187142524965822/:

(First of all, a journalistic note (or what an old nemesis referred to in response to one of my posts (and which was witty enough to evoke a chuckle out of me (as a “dear diary” moment: as I come to the end of the audiobook for David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest (55 hours of listening pleasure, I have to say that the book, despite its length, stands up throughout. It is a long journey and your mind will naturally wander. But it always brings you back with some really compelling scenarios and excellent writing. But by that same token, it has been excruciatingly humbling in comparing the writing (especially as concerns his eye for detail and the vast reserve of terminology he uses to do so (to my own.)

Anyway:

While I find the model presented by The New Realism compelling (and acceptable in many instances, I find myself coming into it with my own baggage –especially as concerns my up-til-now resistance of realism. One of the main models behind Realism is that of the object somehow injecting itself into the perceiving thing looking at it. I have always had a problem with the notion that reality is just “out there” and that we are somehow passively perceiving it without the mediating effect of how it registers. I argue this point from the perspective of one who has done some really good psychedelics in the 70’s and think it goes to Ferraris’ point (in a limited way (concerning Unamendabilty .

If this linear process from the object to the subject was accurate, this form of realism was true, then the psychedelic experience would be one of seeing reality as it actually is while the brain superimposes images on top of it. But that’s not how it works. The psychedelic experience is one of reality itself being transformed into something cartoonish or like the TV programs we watched as children. In other words, reality becomes conditioned by the psychological baggage the individual carries with them.

This, of course, is an exceptional situation. And The New Realism (as described by both Gabriel and Ferraris: who have been added to my reading bucket list (do make concessions I will have to fumble through. Still, I think it applies.

[d63]

Rhizome 4/25/16 which I, yet again, fumble around with the New Realism described in PN issue 113 (https://philosophynow.org/:

“if the realist is the one who claims that there are parts of the world that are not dependent on the subjects, the new realist asserts something more challenging. Not only are there large parts of the world independent of the cogito [the thinking subject], but those parts are inherently structured, and thus orientate the behaviour and thought of humans as well as animals” (p.37). from Ferraris’ Introduction to the New Realism

“Ferraris’s move here is twofold. He first agrees with Foukant and Deskant that knowledge is a human construction, but rejects their identification of knowledge of the world with the world itself. He claims knowledge may still point to an independent reality which is inherently structured. There is not only the structure of the knowledge we have of the world (i.e. the conceptual schemes we have developed, which he calls “epistemological reality”) but also the actual structures of the world, whether perceived or not (“ontological reality”) (p.41). Thus his account presents the reader with two strands of reality, or, as he puts it “two layers of reality that fade into each other” (p.41).” –from Fintan Neylan’s Introduction to Introduction to New Realism: https://philosophynow.org/issues/113/An ... ew_Realism

This, of course, only complicates my situation. Having been an anti-realist throughout much of my philosophical process, I’m starting to see a lot of overlap between my own models and that of the New Realism. And it is making it increasingly difficult to plan out my letter to the editor.

I would first note this particular article’s point concerning the critical stance towards constructivism. Poststructuralism and Postmodernism clearly went to an unnecessary extreme when it claimed that reality was merely language based. There is clearly an “out there” that is out there enough for us to be able to talk about it coherently. At the same time we cannot dismiss Foucault’s point (as well as Layotard’s (that, too often, discourses tend to fall into power discourses based on (as Layotard points out (controlling the rules of the language game for the sake of propping up the content of a given move in the language game.

And I still stand by the postmodern feedback loop between the subjectively objective (since no matter what is actually “out there” it still happens for us “in here” –as I attempted to establish with my point about psychedelics (and the objectively subjective since nothing could be more real to us than what consciousness experiences.

All I can say at this point is that this letter to the editor is going to be a tough one to write. It’s giving me a headache and cutting down my word count for this rhizome considerably.

I guess my main concern here is that it doesn’t land us right back at the problem with realism that resulted in the anti-realism (via anti-representation (of postmodernism and Rorty’s pragmatism: the classicist notion that we can truly know reality if we have the right tools. If meaning is inherent in the object, this can only lead to a hierarchal approach to knowledge based on some criterion established by the power that can claim to have to the tools to access that meaning.

I’m just not sure the New Realism (for all its concessions (gets around that.

[d63]

Rhizome 4/27/16 which will likely run out my window with a kind of collage of found objects (a really good discourse in response to rhizome 4/25/16 on the issue of the New Realism (and a few comments of my own to string it all together:

Okay guys: just note that I am navigating my way round a lot of good stuff as well as fumbling around with the New Realism. So if I muck this up, please show a little understanding and mercy. It is, after all, a roll of the die:

“MG: I draw a distinction here between three overall stances: old realism, constructivism and new realism. Old realism claims that realism is a commitment to ‘the world without spectators’. To be real is to be mind-independent, to be out there, ready to be discovered from the standpoint of uninterested science. Constructivism overreacts to this by arguing that there really only ever is ‘the world of the spectators’. The very idea of an unobserved world is indeed a construction hinging on a number of posits, telling you which elements from your actual experience can be mapped onto any alleged world without you. This is what constructivism gets right, but heavily overextends into a world-view. New Realism consists in the claim that there are objects and fields of sense, which have a full-blown realist shape and others, for which this does not hold without either of those enjoying any kind of metaphysical or overall explanatory primacy. “ –Raan Joseph​

Yes, this does seem to capture it in more ways than one. The one point I do want to focus on, Raan, is:

“To be real is to be mind-independent, to be out there, ready to be discovered from the standpoint of uninterested science. Constructivism overreacts to this by arguing that there really only ever is ‘the world of the spectators’.”

We have to admit that postmodern constructivism did go to a bit of an extreme when it argued that reality is purely a result of the language we use to define it. And we can attribute this to postmodernism’s reaction to the representationalism that was propped up as a kind of intellectual hierarchy in which the right to have anything of value to say was a matter of having the right tools or language game to be able to do so. Hence: the power-based description of FouKant. We can also admit that there is a stable enough “out there” out there in order for us to be able to talk about it coherently.

My problem, however, with the New Realism is that I’m not sure it actually escapes the classicist hierarchy rooted in, as David McDivitt​ explains, a religious belief that objects are the language of God and that by clearing out the subjective interference, we can know the language of God. Especially problematic here is the New Realism’s assertion that meaning is inherent in the objects of reality. So while I’m impressed with the concessions made by the New Realism, I still have to stand by the postmodern model (as described to me by Zizek (of the subjectively objective (that no matter what is actually “out there”, it still happens for us in the mind and brain (and the objectively subjective in that nothing could be more objective to us than what we experience subjectively.

“And then we have the Lacanian dimension of the "real" ( inchoate, unknowable) set against the symbolic order of language, which i take to be a postmodern reading of this same old, old, old division...” –Chris Doveton​

This, Chris, was actually covered in Finton Neylan’s An Introduction to Introduction to New Realism (https://philosophynow.org/issues/113/An ... ew_Realism:

“In the rest of ‘Positivity’ we get Ferraris’s picture of the world; and in the section called ‘Normativity’ he explains the essential elements of this ontology of perception. At its core is a feature called ‘unamendability’, which Ferraris describes as that aspect of reality which serves as “a stumbling block to set against our constructivist expectations” (p.39). Unamendability is an aspect of reality that manifests itself in terms of nature’s resistance to the theories we concoct about it – as what Ferraris refers to as “refusals” to the scaffolding of beliefs we have constructed. The function of refusals is that they always make it clear that reality is not quite what we think it is. That is, reality is self-constructive because howsoever we attempt to pin it down in formulated phrases, unamendability means that reality always possesses the capacity to eventually shatter the theoretical cast we have crafted for it.”

Once again, the New Realism is a tough row to hoe for me in that it satisfies the agenda of many aspects of my intellectual constructs while departing from them. And the only way out is through: which is why I have put both Ferraris and Gabriel on my shortlist –even looked them up on Amazon. But I would finish with a point made by Raan that seems legit to me:

“I'd say it's basically pragmatism but in the context of post modernism so labeled according to that rubric.”

[spike]

I am happy to know that at the core of New Realism is pragmatism.

[spike]

The New Realism includes LGBTs. Now that's pragmatic.

[d63]

I agree. Can only agree.