The Democracy of Objects

1.5. Origins of Correlationism: Actualism and the Epistemic Fallacy

In 1.2 I raised the question of what philosophical premises render correlationism such an appealing and persuasive hypothesis. We are now in a position to answer this question. In A Realist Theory of Science, Bhaskar identifies “actualism” as the root premise that ultimately leads to correlationism. As articulated by Bhaskar,

Here it should be noted that actualism does not treat the actual as events that take place in the world regardless of whether or not anyone is about to witness them, but rather identifies the actual with what is given in sensations or impressions. Moreover, this hypothesis is not restricted to empiricists such as Hume, but is also carried over by Kant and his descendents. Consequently, it is necessary to distinguish between classical empiricists, such as Hume, and empiricist ontology. Classical empiricists hold that knowledge arises from sensation alone. Empiricist ontology holds that only the actual, construed as what is given in atomistic sensations, is real; or, at any rate, is all that we can speak of.

Kant does not question Hume's thesis that our knowledge is restricted to what is given in impressions or sensations, but rather embraces it wholesale. And because Kant carries over the actualist thesis of empiricist ontology, he is committed to the thesis that causal claims are claims about constant conjunctions of events given in sensation rather than about powers residing in objects or generative mechanisms that may go unactualized. Kant's innovation, therefore, does not reside in rejecting Hume's doctrine of impressions, but in recognizing that psychological operations of the mind such as the principles of association are insufficient to account for the necessity we attribute to causal relations. Sensation, Kant contends, requires supplementation by the mind, for relations are not themselves directly given in impressions. Consequently, Kant will argue that our judgments of necessity arise not from sensations or associations, but rather from the application of a priori categories of the understanding such as cause and effect to the manifold of sensations.

Yet Kant and his heirs are only led to the conclusion that sensation requires supplementation by categories of mind (or culture, language, norms, or power) as a result of presupposing the actualist hypothesis of empiricist ontology. For where knowledge is restricted to the actual, and the actual is equated with sensation or impressions, relations among objects become thoroughly mysterious as these relations are not directly given in the actual. As Harman has persuasively argued, what we get is a secularized form of occasionalism.[45] The occasionalist argues that all events are radically independent of one another. For the occasionalist there is no direct link between objects. In traditional occasionalisms, God is called upon to link objects to one another. Thus, when the paper burns it is not the flame that causes the paper to burn, but rather the intervention of God that brings the paper and the flame into relation with one another.

If, with Hume and Kant, we get a secularized form of occasionalism, then this is because the thesis that events, in the form of sense impressions, are absolutely independent of one another and without relation. As such, mind, rather than God, brings about the relation between events. For Kant, this linkage takes place through the a priori categories of the understanding and the a priori forms of intuition in the form of space, while for Hume this linkage is effected through the operations of association. The problem is that it is unclear how mind acquires this mysterious power to link that which is without linkage and why mind alone should have this privileged capacity. There is no more reason to think that mind should have this power than events themselves. However, this problem only emerges where the real is equated with the actual and the actual is treated as composed of atomistic sensations. Where claims about cause and effect relations are no longer treated as claims about constant conjunctions of events given in experience, but about generative mechanisms that may or may not produce certain events, the problem disappears. Causal claims are not claims about our experience of objects, but about objects themselves. And wherever we encounter arguments to the effect that sensations require supplementation by some other agency such as principles of association, categories of the understanding, language, signs, norms, and so on, we can be sure that actualism is lurking in the shadows and that the ontological conditions for the intelligibility of experimentation have been ignored.

Yet how comes it that we fall into this sort of actualism? Bhaskar contends that actualism originates in what he calls the “epistemic fallacy”. As Bhaskar articulates it,

Earlier Bhaskar remarks that, “[t]hese presumptions can [...] only be explained in terms of the need felt by philosophers for certain foundations of knowledge”.[47]

Here it is necessary to clarify what the epistemic fallacy is and is not about. A critique of the epistemic fallacy and how it operates in philosophy does not amount to the claim that epistemology or questions of the nature of inquiry and knowledge are a fallacy. What the epistemic fallacy identifies is the fallacy of reducing ontological questions to epistemological questions, or conflating questions of how we know with questions of what beings are. In short, the epistemic fallacy occurs wherever being is reduced to our access to being. Thus, for example, wherever beings are reduced to our impressions or sensations of being, wherever being is reduced to our talk about being, wherever being is reduced to discourses about being, wherever being is reduced to signs through which being is manifest, the epistemic fallacy has been committed.

We have seen why this is so, for our experimental practice is only intelligible based on a series of ontological premises and these ontological premises cannot be reduced to our access to being. They are ontological in the robust sense. These ontological premises refer not to what is present or actual to us. Indeed, they refer, as we will see, to beings that are radically withdrawn from any presence or actuality. And as such, they are genuinely ontological premises, not epistemological premises pertaining to what is given.

In recognizing that the epistemic fallacy emerges from foundationalist aspirations on the part of philosophers, Bhaskar hits the mark. It is the desire for a secure and certain foundation for knowledge that leads philosophy to adopt the actualist stance and fall into the epistemic fallacy. These decisions, in turn, ultimately lead to correlationism. In raising the question, “how do we know?” and seeking an argument that would thoroughly defeat the skeptic or sophist, the philosopher concludes that only what is present or given can defend against the incursions of the skeptic. But what is present or given turns out either to be mind or sensations. Therefore the philosopher finds himself in the position of restricting all being to what is given as actual in sensations. From here a whole cascade of problematic consequences follow that increasingly lead to the dissolution of the world as a genuine ontological category.

However, once these foundationalist aspirations are abandoned, the nature of the problem changes significantly and we no longer find ourselves tied to the actualist premise that generates all of these issues. And indeed, these aspirations should be abandoned, for foundationalism is premised on the possibility of absolute presence, absolute proximity, the absence of all absence, and we have now discovered that it is being itself that is split between generative mechanisms or objects and the actual. Difference, deferral, absence, and so on are not idiosyncracies of our being preventing us from ever reaching being, but are, rather, ontological characteristics of being as such. Moreover, this split at the heart of all beings is not simply characteristic of those objects that we would seek to know, but are also characteristics of the peculiar object that we are. We ourselves are split. If, then, this split is a general ontological feature of the world, then the dream of presence required for any form of foundationalism is a priori impossible. We are then left with two paths: to persist in the correlationist thesis that would reduce ontological questions to epistemological questions and which is itself implicitly premised on the ontotheological assumption of actualism, or to investigate the split in being in a post-humanist, realist fashion that is genuinely ontological. It is the second of these two paths that I here attempt.