26. Jean-Pierre Changeux and Alain Connes, Conversations on Mind, Matter, and Mathematics, trans. M. B. DeBevoise, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995, p. 104.
27. Changeux and Connes, Conversations on Mind, Matter, and Mathematics,p. 108.
28. Conversations on Mind, Matter, and Mathematics, p. 128.
29. Conversations on Mind, Matter, and Mathematics, p. 14.
30. Conversations on Mind, Matter, and Mathematics, p. 59. The biologization of the transcendental leads to “mental Darwinism,” cf. p. 80.
31. Conversations on Mind, Matter, and Mathematics, p. 128.
32. Conversations on Mind, Matter, and Mathematics, p. 35.
33. Conversations on Mind, Matter, and Mathematics, p. 40.
34. See, for instance, Gerald M. Edelman, Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of the Mind, New York: Basic Books, p. 119.
35. Bright Air, Brilliant Fire, p. 64.
36. See the example of the immune system.
37. Bright Air, Brilliant Fire, p. 119.
38. Bright Air, Brilliant Fire, p. 120.
39. Bright Air, Brilliant Fire, p. 161.
40. See http://www.epigenome.eu/en/1.1.0. See also C. David Allis, Marie-Laure Caparros, Thomas Jenuwein, and Danny Reinberg, eds, Epigenetics, second edition, New York: Cold Spring Harbor Press, 2015.
41. “The transmission of information through the genetic system is analogous to the transmission of music through a written score, whereas transmitting information through non-genetic systems, which transmit phenotypes, is analogous to recording and broadcasting, through which particular interpretations of the score are reproduced. [. . .] What we are interested in now is how the two ways of transmitting music interact. Biologists take it for granted that changes made in genes will affect future generations, just as changes introduced into a score will affect future performances of the music. Rather less attention is given to the alternative possibility, which is that epigenetic variants may affect the generation and selection of genetic variation.” Evolution in Four Dimensions, p. 245.
8
FROM CODE TO BOOK
Our question now turns back on itself. What if, in the end, with his phrase “system of the epigenesis of pure reason,” Kant was thinking less about the objective process of engendering the relation between categories and objects than about the way that the subject explains herself in this process? What if epigenesis referred precisely to the point of emergence of auto-affected, interpreting subjectivity, starting from the unfathomable source of its genetic program – the innate background of the a priori? And what if we came to see something like the constitution of a transcendental “phenotype” of the thinking subject at work in Kant?
The Problem of History
What does this other aspect of the first reading track offer? I began by analyzing the attempt to reduce the role of experience in transcendental epigenesis as much as possible. Now, on the same track but differently, it is a matter of exploring a certain formation of subjectivity, starting from the question of interpretation, while simultaneously introducing historical becoming into the a priori.
In his article, Zöller himself in fact, almost surreptitiously, opens a path other than that of “minimal preformationism.” He says that the epigenesis analogy also has a hermeneutic dimension in the transcendental deduction. What does he mean by this? The transcendental deduction is entrusted with a dual mission. It must explain and legitimize the objective reference of the categories by showing that the agreement proceeds from none other than itself and not from any decree or intrinsic property of the objects of knowledge. But it must also account for the position and reaction of the subject of cognition in regard to the spontaneity of its own thinking – a spontaneity which, in a sense, does not proceed from its own initiative.
Thus, the transcendental deduction necessarily includes a dimension of “figurative self-interpretation.”1 This relates first to the way in which transcendental philosophy, through recourse to biological analogies, explains itself to itself. We must not forget that in the Deduction Kant is justifying himself to his detractors. But this self-interpretation is also, of course, more generally, the act of any subject inasmuch as the subject appropriates the generating power of the understanding, takes ownership of it, and thus becomes its subject. The problem of the origin of the agreement between categories and objects is necessarily compounded by another problem: the question of the structure of auto-affection through which the subject receives its own spontaneity.
Epigenesis not only serves, therefore, to describe the a priori production of the agreement between the categories and objects through an analogy; it also allows the subject to figure themself.
This structure touches on that which distinguishes the critical position entirely from the skeptical position in the eyes of Kant’s readers, whose turn it is now to speak. The skeptical position, especially in its contemporary version, says absolutely nothing about the self-interpretative aspect of the constitution of rationality. The subject’s explanation and reception of the ability to self-determine, the arrangement whereby the subject appropriates spontaneity, which also corresponds to the process of a formation by epigenesis, are a set of operations that mental, or neuronal, evolutionism does not acknowledge.
Even though, as we have just seen, the metaphor of textual hermeneutics or musical interpretation is the figure that epigenetics explicitly foregrounds, no extensive study seeks to determine what it is in this figure that exceeds the strictly biological register to engage in a critical relation of the thinking individual to themself. Those who argue in favor of brain epigenesis by synaptic stabilization never ask, for instance, what type of representation the subject has of this structure, what type of “consciousness” the subject has of their brain, how they might in some way take possession of it.2 For them, this type of question is a purely egological refinement without a sensible or real correlate, one that simply harkens back to the old mind/brain distinction.
This lack of acknowledgment also results from apparently opposed dogmatic positions, such as Frege’s view, analyzed earlier, which associates the idea of an affection of the subject through their own spontaneity with a pure and simple mode of “holding-true” that is foreign to the intrinsic validity of truth.
And yet, if there is a posterity and specificity to the critical position, do they not derive from an affirmation of the absolutely necessary nature of the subjective appropriation of the a priori forms of cognition and thought for the constitution of truth?
To take transcendental idealism for psychologism, or for a pure and simple theory of the subject, to oppose it to an absolute objectivity of truth, is to ignore the immense question hidden in this appropriation. Likewise, for the skeptical argument regarding an evolution of truth; a gradual adaptation of the subject of cognition to objects; and a biological adjustment of agreement. There is no mention whatsoever of the epistemological status of the subjective dimension – mental, neuronal, or spiritual – of this agreement. Yet the transcendental is perhaps no more than the form of the question: how does the subject become the principle of their act, of the originally acquired spontaneous agreement between categories and objects of experience? The founding value of the transcendental, which salvages its necessity, would then derive from the validity and efficacy of the act by which the subject authorizes themself to be who they are.
Now, one might ask, how does this alter the meaning of epigenesis? Confronted with this new understanding, what does the biological meaning of this term become? And how does the supposed “minimal preformationism” that epigenesis is said to conceal deal with a hermeneutic of spontaneity?
Epigenesis and Teleology
To answer these questions, it is important to start by emphasizing that the expression “minimal preformationism” is not suitable or acceptable for any of the three Critiques. This is the case even within the framework of the third Critique, despite the fact that, as we have seen, it associates epigenes
is with “generic preformation.” As François Duchesneau demonstrates, from the mid-1770s, Kant developed a theory of “generic preformation that is compatible with the implications of epigenesis.”3 It is certainly true that Kant “links the organized development to germs (Keime) and predispositions (Anlagen) which are realized in the organic combination of male and female seeds.”4 It is also true that everything occurs “as if nature had included in its archetypes of living organizations a variety of arrangements for development preadapted to the external conditions of life in which individuals are called upon to reproduce,”5 in other words, limited varieties, which must respond to some preordination. We recall that Kant recognized this: “[W]hat is supposed to propagate itself must have laid previously in the generative power (Zeugungskraft) as antecedently determined to an occasional unfolding in accordance with the circumstances.”6
We must therefore acknowledge the existence of a preordination of epigenetic powers that restricts the variety of types of organization. However, preordination does not mean predetermination; rather it implies “organizing project.”7 “Generic preformation” does not mean traditional preformation; it is the other name of a structural schema capable of integrating varieties, that is, a system.
Zöller clearly accepts that germs and predispositions are irreducible to any causal mechanistic nature, but he never focuses on the specificity of the Kantian concept of teleology, which grounds the structural unity of the organism. It is important to recall the famous statement in §65 of the Critique of the Power of Judgment that says “its parts [of the organism] be combined into a whole by being reciprocally the cause and effect of their form.”8 This unity – the synthetic links between the parts – is the only mode in which we can conceptualize a totality.
Preordination, then, is structure, that is, self-organization. Of course, the archetype of this structure remains unknown to us. Kant emphasizes again the “inscrutable principle of an original organization.”9 But Blumenbach’s Bildungstrieb makes it possible to reconcile the outline of the whole of a structural unit and the gradual development of self-organization. Thus, “it is necessary to have recourse to a concept of a self-structuring formative force (sich bildende Kraft) that actualizes its own model in the realization, conservation, and reproduction of an integrated organic form.”10
The limiting of types of individuals capable of self-organizing thus does not represent an essential limit to the formative drive; rather it appears as its condition of possibility. It is the idea of a living being that would not self-organize that is excluded by the structure of “generic preformation.” Any type of vital unity other than the organic unit is inconceivable. The relation of mutuality and reciprocity between the parts forms the circularity that is “preordained.” Germs and predispositions are the necessary preliminaries for self-organization, not the outlines of preformed living beings.
By tracing back the line of thought that leads from Wolff’s vis essentialis to Blumenbach’s Bildungstrieb, it is possible to claim that what is at stake in the theory of epigenesis is the idea of a “force capable of prefiguring the structural and functional organization to be established, a force that incarnates a sort of immanent plan and that realizes it by adapting to external and internal circumstances that affect organic development.”11 Thus there is no hiatus between plan and epigenesis. Here again, the synthesis of the two is organization.
The question recurs: what then can we say, by analogy, about a possible transcendental Bildungstrieb? Is it the same distance from the originary focus of the constitution of the cognitive power to the spontaneity of the understanding as the distance Kant establishes between the unfathomable principle of an original organization and the organizing spontaneity of the living being? In other words, is it possible to retrospectively conceive of the categories as organized beings, and their agreement with the objects of experience as the essential form of this self-organization?
One might well think so. The linchpin of the analogy is the idea of system, which returns again in the “system of the epigenesis of pure reason.” Starting with the “determining spontaneity of the transcendental self, [the categories] produce an integrated forming, an ‘organization’ of the appearances apprehended under the general conditions of sensibility and thus they found the objective representation of things of nature.”12 This organizing production consequently coincides with the formation of the productive subject itself. Thus, bringing together transcendental epigenesis and self-organization not only opens up a perspective on the generation of the objective reference, it also makes it possible to describe the dimension of subjectivation referred to earlier and to outline the parallel between the self-structuring capacity of the formative force (sich bildende Kraft) and the epigenesis of the subject through the act of receiving its own spontaneity.
We are starting to understand transcendental epigenesis now as the adventure of subjectivity, an adventure that contemporary epigenetics glimpses, but does not think.
“Life and History Are Fields Not of Explanation, But Rather of Interpretation”13
Adventure. Long before the epigenetic revolution, this is the word Gérard Lebrun used when he interpreted the phrase “system of the epigenesis of pure reason” in Kant et la fin de la métaphysique. His reading tends towards a convergence of categorial epigenesis, biological epigenesis, and practical autonomy.
While it remains the original concern, the genetic concern changes direction here. If it is not possible to plumb the focus from whence epigenesis derives, if each time the inquiry runs up against the inaccessible nature of the root, then perhaps this very inaccessibility should be considered the root, perhaps this lack of origin is the origin, and perhaps it is here that one must start as from a focus. Lebrun writes: “[A] stem that is impenetrable for our reason is a limit that we establish rather than a natural beginning.”14 In other words, that which is not of our doing is also the starting point of a decision. We are the ones who “establish” the limit. But this “we” must begin itself, constitute itself, make itself. The inaccessibility of the source thus frees up a facticity that, far from being artificial – a pure fabrication or pure state of affairs – is confounded with the movement of a becoming: “Thanks to the Kantian ‘deduction’ of epigenesis, a new concept, becoming, starts to make its way.”15
This becoming is the meeting point between the epigenesis of the subject of cognition, the autonomy of the practical subject, and the creativity of life. This, then, is how “the meeting between Kant and Blumenbach supersedes the history of biological concepts”16 and how, contrary to what various reductionist positions claim, epigenesis is a concept that is situated precisely at the intersection of cognition, freedom, and life. This intersection marks the emergence of history. Indeed, the “inaccessible nature of the origin” appears as this “theoretical interruption” where, later on, “Cournot will make himself engender history.”17
Let’s return to biology for a moment. It is certainly true that in Kant living forms are dependent on an originary potential that restricts their unfolding. It is likewise also true that “the ‘plastic faculty’ [or formative drive] is not endowed with all the possibilities. [. . .] There would be no specificity of the living being without a limitation of its structures.”18 However, once again, in this view there is no borrowing from preformationism – not even minimally. Lebrun adds, “Certainly life does not invent any way, nor from any thing; but the fact that it respects the specific model does not prevent it from also being the invention of forms (as embryology, since F. G. Wolff, is beginning to demonstrate).”19 The life plan is “the very example of the plasticity of life,”20 which protects the formative force from both the chaos of equivocal generation and the programmatic rigidity of predestination. Epigenesis imposes its logic against all inexplicable animation (the magic of equivocal generation), as well as against all preformation. The inaccessible nature of original organization is the sign of a linking of life and thought not to the underground mystery of their
source, but rather to what frees them from it:
[T]he importance granted to history is the consequence of this infinite receding of the origin and of the recognized impossibility of ever determining the laws (or designs) intertwined in it. The fate of an embryo as a species is written nowhere: within the “generic preformation” (of the model that the organic creation no longer transgresses today), their becoming is an adventure.21
This is to say that between the unknowable nature of the principle of original organization (the source of self-organization = X) and self-organization itself lies a gap from which proceeds epigenesis with its specific temporality: “Kant restores the role of time against preformationism” by defining epigenesis as an “improvisation [. . .] that generates order.” A temporal order that is “oriented, but not determined.”22 This view prefigures contemporary epigenetics!
In On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy, Kant himself recognizes that he would willingly use the word “history” to describe such a becoming, if this word, “taken to mean the same as the Greek historia (narrative, description),” had not “been in use too much and too long for us easily to tolerate that it be granted another meaning which can designate the investigation of origin in nature.”23 Kant thus tries to avoid the risk of confusing “history” and “natural history.” In this admission, we nonetheless see that history is called upon negatively at this point of the analysis “in the wake of the vital force (Lebenskraft)” and epigenesis, to counter any preformationism, however minimal.24
By now widening the problem to the whole of transcendental philosophy, Lebrun argues that it is possible to introduce becoming into the a priori synthesis. And indeed, the three Critiques are structured by the same problem: the existence of a second source, which means that the source does not grasp itself at the source, but in what it produces, in what, starting from it, takes form and develops by differentiating itself. To explain §27 by holding on to the spontaneity of the understanding without taking its after-effects into account – the pure production of the subject through self-interpretation – amounts to amputating one of the essential dimensions from the motif of transcendental epigenesis, namely the appropriation of the origin as the subject’s self-formation.
Before Tomorrow- Epigenesis and Rationality Page 15