This course explores various attempts to reconstitute the possibilities for a materialist philosophy through structuralist methodologies. While the term “structural realism” was introduced by John Worrall in 1989 when providing an account of scientific progress across theory changes, the core tenets of structural realism/materialism can be traced to the birth of philosophy, and to the view according to which it is mathematics or mathematized languages that allows thought to pierce beyond the realm of appearances and access the reality of being/becoming.
Different versions of the structural realist or materialist thesis have been explored throughout philosophical history, acquiring exceptional vigor since the twentieth century. In particular, we propose to focus on two major traditions of twentieth-century philosophical thought, where the ideal of mathematical formalization was seen as the key to avoid different forms of metaphysical idealism and epistemological anti-realism. First, the continental post-War French structuralist materialist tradition in their attempts to recode empiricist and rationalist epistemological concerns in an ontological or metaphysical register. Within this constellation, we first discern how a group of “Heraclitean empiricists” think of a vitalist materialism where the structure of pure becoming or difference as virtual multiplicity is given by a formal ontology of the differential calculus, capturing the dynamics of life (Bergson, Deleuze). In contrast, we then discern those “Parmenidean rationalists” who rekindle the possibilities of dialectical materialism by conceiving of the structure of pure being as an order of inconsistent multiplicity accessible to pure thought, by a formal set-theoretical ontology and pure semiotics, withdrawn from conceptual sense and intuitive sensation (Althusser, Badiou, Meillassoux.) As we shall see, both of these trajectories aimed to overcome the limitations associated with phenomenological and existentialist approaches, the better to open new paths for speculative and revolutionary thought.
The second tradition we follow is the analytic structural realist epistemology and metaphysics of science, which sought to overcome the perceived theoretical nihilism following from Wittgenstein’s assault against the classical project of semantic analysis associated with logical positivism, as well as the epistemological relativism-historicism associated with Kuhn’s account of scientific revolutions. In turn, the thinkers we associate with structural realism proposed to conceive of new possibilities for a scientific realist epistemology and ontology that would salvage philosophy from anti-realism and linguistic relativism. In this context, we also discern two subsidiary trajectories of thought. First, the post-Sellarsian attempts to naturalize Kant through the resources of a historicized understanding of the transcendental, and a structural-formal dialectics of scientific change, elaborated above all by Jay F. Rosenberg. Second, the ontic structural realist tradition following downstream from the work of John Worrall and elaborated above all by James Ladyman and Don Ross, who attempt to describe the conditions for a metaphysics of pure patterns formalized by information-theoretic conceptions of thermodynamics and computer science. As we shall see, both of these trajectories also attempt to resist a perceived anti- realist danger incubated in the philosophy of language and semantic programs of early analytic philosophy.
Finally, we shall explore different attempts today to bring together insights from both traditions, in a revival of structuralist- formal approaches to ontology and epistemology. We shall do so by surveying the contours of two major contemporary philosophical projects: Gabriel Catren’s proposed merger of Spinoza and Kant in his recently published Pleromatica: On Elsinore’s Trance; and Lorenz Puntel’s structural systematics in his largely underappreciated treatise Structure and Being. Above all, the seminar will attempt to trace an integrative line of convergence between themes that bind both the continental and analytic traditions, in their common pursuit for materialist and realist strategies in epistemology and ontology.
Syllabus and Weekly Breakdown:
Week I – Introduction: A Brief History of Structuralism in Philosophy
This week we propose a protracted rehearsal of the evolution of the structuralist thesis, from antiquity and until the present. We begin by a brief excursion on the ancient origins of the structuralist thesis in its Democritean, Pythagorean, and Platonist iterations, and its subsequent modern developments.
- Plato – Phaedo
- Democritus - Fragments
- Verity Harte – excerpts from Plato on Parts and Wholes: The Metaphysics of Structure
- Descartes – excerpts from Discourse on Method
Week II – The French Post-War Structural Materialist School I: The Heraclitean Empiricists
This week we follow the attempts by the French post-War to appropriate structuralist methods in the social sciences and psychoanalysis to reconstitute the valences of materialism in an empiricist and rationalist register. We begin by focusing on the empiricist tradition concentrated in the works of Henri Bergson and Gilles Deleuze, in which a new formal ontology of pure difference virtual multiplicity becomes part of a metaphysics of Life.
- Henri Bergson – excerpts from Creative Evolution and Matter and Memory
- Gilles Deleuze – How Do we Recognize Structuralism?, excerpts from Difference and Repetition
Week III – The French Post-War Structural Materialist School II: The Parmenidean Rationalists
This week we follow the second, rationalist orientation of the structuralist materialist French tradition, looking at attempts by the followers of the Althusserian school to reconstitute the valences of dialectical materialism through a formal ontology of pure multiplicity. We focus on the works of Alain Badiou and Quentin Meillassoux, in which a mathematical ontology and speculative materialism become aligned to a conception of structure that subtracts thought from the deliverances of sensibility and language.
- Alain Badiou – excerpts from Being and Event (Meditation II); Platonism and Mathematical Ontology
- Quentin Meillassoux - Iteration, Reiteration, Repetition: A Speculative Analysis of the Sign Devoid of Meaning
Week IV – The Structural Realist Analytic Philosophy of Science
This week we focus on two trajectories of the analytic philosophy of science which sought to overcome the limitations associated with Wittgensteinean pragmatism, and Kuhnian relativism. We focus on examples by the Sellarsian school, and in particular by Jay F. Rosenberg, to pursue a broadly Peircean strategy or “convergent realist” conception of theoretical change, in which scientific and ontological theories are seen as approximating the ideal of absolute knowledge. In turn, we follow the ontic structural realist tradition, looking at the information-theoretic ontology of pure patterns proposed by James Ladyman and Don Ross.”
- Jay Rosenberg – Another Look at Convergent Realism
- James Ladyman and Don Ross – “Rainforest Realism,” in Everything Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized
Week V – Contemporary Approaches to Structural Realism and Materialism
This week we survey some notable attempts to draw from the various traditions we have surveyed in his course, to forge new materialist programs that traverse the methodological gulf between analytic and continental approaches. We focus on two such attempts, where the prospects of a formal ontology become also part of a systematic reimagining of the scope of philosophy in the contemporary world: Lorenz Puntel’s global structural systematics in the attempt to formalize the general integrative ambitions of German Idealism, and Gabriel Catren’s neo-vitalist materialism through a synthesis of Spinoza and Kant.
- Lorenz Puntel – excerpts from Structure and Being
- Gabriel Catren – excerpts from Pleromatica: On Elsinore’s Trance.