I grant that “contingency is such that anything might happen, even nothing at all, so that what is, remains as it is.”63 I also accept the argument that the logic of the transfinite (and the impossibility of totalizing the possibilities that come of it) is but one axiom among others, not the only, absolute one. But what I cannot accept is the critique of the anything whatsoever. If indeed anything is “capable of actually becoming otherwise without reason,”64 then why couldn’t it become anything whatsoever? Abnormal or banal, absurd or ultra-logical?
It appears that this refusal of the anything whatsoever leads precisely to the division between the authentic (rational authenticity of unreason) and the inauthentic (the vulgarity of anything whatsoever). A division that ultimately saves the order and the proper of the world, reduces radical contingency to being only “thinkable” or “mathematically possible,” and in no way shakes up that which is. I reject as a sophism the “solution” claiming that “it is necessary that there be something rather than nothing because it is necessarily contingent that there is something rather than something else.”65
In the end, Meillassoux’s highly idiosyncratic approach fails to open up any prospect of real alterity. We were expecting an explosion. We were expecting a revolution – the revolution of the Copernican Revolution. But nothing changes. Nothing happens. Where’s the surprise? Where’s the metamorphosis? Above all, what’s this “after” of finitude that leaves everything untouched? An “after” Kant? But the vocabulary of “certain determinate conditions” is still the language of the conditions of possibility, in other words, the transcendental!66 An “after” Heidegger? But in The Principle of Reason, Heidegger goes much further in the equivalence between “nothing is without reason”67 and everything is “without why”!68 The notion of “play,” developed at the end of that book, a play that is also without probabilities or winning formulas, unsettles the constancy of the “ground/reason (Grund)”69 more effectively.
In closing, we might therefore ask what is the advantage of surpassing correlationism and relinquishing the transcendental if the power of transformation and changeability implied in and by this very surpassing are less than what is being surpassed? What’s the point? “To break with the circle of correlation”70 – but what does that change? And if it changes nothing, then why try? Above all, how? Indeed, isn’t giving up the totality of the possibilities also giving up the very idea of the possible? For Kant, again, an idea is the form or rule of the totality of the conditions, that is to say, the possibilities of a thing. And so, without an idea and without an other, without the idea of the other, where does the “speculation” of contingency lead us? Shouldn’t our answer be: “From nothing. For nothing”?71
Towards a Critique of Neurobiological Reason
Not what happens but rather what evolves
Where are we now in regard to the question regarding the equivalence of reason and the brain presented by mental Darwinism and epigenetics? What does it bring to the table for relinquishing the transcendental? In the end, why can’t we follow their guiding tracks either?
Let’s start by commenting on an aspect shared by Heidegger and Meillassoux: their silence on biology. We are familiar with Heidegger’s mistrust of life science and the question of life in general.72 As for Meillassoux, there is no doubt about the meaning ascribed to the “empirical science” constantly evoked in After Finitude. Throughout his book, “empirical science” refers exclusively to physics. Biology is the great absentee in this reflection, despite the fact that it seeks to renew “the empirical sciences’ capacity to yield knowledge of the ancestral realm.”73 Given that biology is never once mentioned, we might well ask what this plural includes.
The question is important since, as the analysis of the “neo-skeptical” thesis demonstrated, it appears that biology alone is capable of supplying reason with a plausible concept of the contingency of the laws of nature. In this sense, contemporary biology serves the radical contingency thesis more convincingly than does mathematics. The biological perspective is brimming with a potential that is both post-metaphysical and post-critical, one that philosophers have been wrong to ignore. Let’s recall that in the early twentieth century some physicists supported the idea of a possible evolution of the laws of nature, that is, they borrowed the hypothesis of a possible “mobility” of these laws from biology. I have already mentioned the positions of Helmholtz and Boltzmann on this matter. In France, philosopher Émile Boutroux also supported the evolutionary thesis. In his book The Contingency of the Laws of Nature, he writes the following on the principle of causality:
[W]e must not forget that experience itself has introduced to the human mind the scientific idea of natural cause and has gradually clarified this idea. The latter is not the idea of a principle a priori which governs the modes of being, it is the abstract form of the relation existing between these modes. We cannot assert that the nature of things has its derivation in the law of causality. To us, this law is but the most general expression of the relations arising from the observable nature of given things.74
Later he continues: “[D]eductive science [. . .] determines the relations of things, once it is granted that their nature remains immobile or fixed.”75 Bouveresse comments on this remark, adding: “But of course there is absolutely no necessity that forces this nature to remain immobile.”76
Here, the concept of a possible variability or modifiability in the laws of nature is not attained via a mathematical reading deprived of phenomenal proofs, but is based instead on the biological theory of heritage – both ontogenetic and phylogenetic. It is worth emphasizing that according to this viewpoint, contingency derives not from an axiom – whose origin is obviously always a priori – but instead from the idea of a constitution of the a priori itself by experience and adaptation.
So long as an occurrence-based understanding of contingency – in other words, a definition of contingency as that which happens – is mobilized, as in Meillassoux, only support the hypothesis of variability in the laws of nature can be supported. Indeed, despite what may be claimed, this kind of understanding is based on the logic of the dice throw. Contingency is reduced to the pure whim of its occurrences and is thus confounded with the pure virtuality of the frequency, rarity, or lack of modification in the order of things. Yes, indeed, the evidence indicates that this conception of the contingency of nature can absolutely not be verified in nature.
The idea of a gradual transformation of the stability of the world and laws – the laws of both nature and thought – is entirely different. The “neo-skeptical” argument is not only a transformation of Hume’s argument, it also contains a transformed concept of transformation. Indeed, the occurrence-based understanding of contingency is replaced by the far more convincing idea of progressive change and changeability of the laws, based on an empirical derivation of the a priori.
This conception makes it possible to conjoin the concept and phenomenality of change and leads neither to the absurd supposition of a chaotic world, a versatile nature, or a shattered representation, nor to the position of a pure mathematical possibility.
And yet, it might be objected that it has been years since any physicists have supported the idea of an evolutionary modifiability of the laws of nature!77 Edelman reflects on this in Bright Air, Brilliant Fire when he writes: “[I]t was Einstein who first understood the significance of the invariance of the laws of physics [. . .]. Indeed, his general theory of relativity may be considered a means by which to search for conditions of absolute invariance!”78
We have seen, however, that the duality of the invariable and variable continues to disturb theories of the constitution of mental objects. A third-generation skeptical argument is at work: in neurobiology, brain epigenetics has taken the lead in the evolutionary conception of thought. The processes revealed by Darwin are studied and verified at the level of neuronal populations. Neural Darwinism transforms the assertion of the contingency of the laws of nature by orienting it tow
ards the recognition of the selective mobility at work behind the rigidity and stability of connections and objective forms.
Let us recall the definition of mental objects proposed by Changeux in Neuronal Man: “The mental object is identified as the physical state created by correlated, transient activity, both electrical and chemical, in a large population or ‘assembly’ of neurons in several specific cortical areas.”79 The mental object is constituted at the point of intersection between the operation of categorization by the brain and the real object. But,
when our brain interacts with the external world, it develops and functions according to a model of variation-selection that is sometimes called Darwinian. According to this hypothesis [. . .] variation – the generation of a diversity of internal forms – precedes the selection of the adequate form. Representations are stabilized in our brain not simply by “imprint,” as though it were a piece of wax, but indirectly via a process of selection.80
Physical neuronal reality is subject to epigenesis. The constancy of mental objects comes from stabilization more than from stability. Their physical reality emerges constantly from a range of possibilities and their selection is highly contingent. But this contingency does not only belong to the form of the mind. Brain epigenetics is not a production apparatus of the sole “holding-true” that concerns only subjectivity. Brain activity is the natural and material capturing of nature and matter; the contingency of its epigenesis thus also engages the contingency of the world concretely. The brain is no more a subject than the world is an object. The epigenetic development of the brain affects the totality of the real.
Indeed, epigenesis involves several strata
embedded in one another, each one subject to random variability: the evolution of species in paleontological time, together with its consequences for the genetic constitution of human beings; individual evolution, through the epigenesis of neural connections, which occurs throughout the individual’s development; cultural evolution, likewise epigenetic but extracerebral, which spans not only psychological time but also age-old memories; and finally the evolution of personal thought, which occurs in psychological time and draws upon individual and cultural memories that are both cognitive and emotional.81
Up to this point, in commenting on Kant’s phrase “system of the epigenesis of pure reason,” I have discussed epigenesis and epigenetics more than system. Yet, as we see in the light of Changeux’s claim, it is not possible to think the different evolutionary, phylogenetic, and ontogenetic regimes of brain development other than in the form of an organized whole. Kant was therefore right when he spoke of a system.
Nevertheless, it bears repeating that systematic form is not transcendental and does not contest contingency. Rather, it is its paradoxical expression. The nervous system is certainly a system, but as Changeux also says, “[W]e do not evolve in a system in which imprints are rigidly propagated from one generation to another.”82 Stabilized connections can be destabilized or engaged in processes of reorganization and remodeling. Gradual and non-occurrence-based contingency is not associated with the question of what can or cannot be, may cease to be or not be all of a sudden, but rather is associated with the lability of forms of being.
What we can henceforth call the epigenetic structure of the real therefore reveals an entirely other meaning of contingency. It has nothing to do with the dice throw. Nor does it have anything to do anymore with the complexity of mathematical reasoning without phenomena. It refers to the adaptive pliability of the world and the metamorphic power of imprints.
Lastly, this contingency reveals another meaning of time. The postural origin of time gains consistency in mnesic replication. Time therefore ceases to be a pure somatic given and gradually becomes, through rememoration, the time of thought. Consciousness, writes Edelman, is a “remembered present.”83
Analyzed thus, the epigenetic development of the brain allows us to situate the origin of reason in a systematic economy that goes beyond the split between “authentic” and “inauthentic.” Contrary to what Heidegger claimed, it is not actually clear that the neuronal constitution of time is entirely reducible to the genesis of “vulgar” time. After all, the neuronal is also a form of “there is”. . .
Why the resistance to neuroscience?
We have seen that the problem is that the neurobiological viewpoint simply erases the transcendental. A bridge is thrown directly between epigenesis, understood as organic growth, and brain epigenetics, understood as a selection-stabilization process of neuronal connections, without going through the transcendental question of the formation of reason and rationality. From one skeptical argument to the next, the a priori never intervenes in the processes of constitution, which are declared inseparable from adaptive logic.
Why did I not come to these conclusions either? In the end, isn’t the relinquishing of the transcendental implemented by neurobiology the most convincing of all? After all, doesn’t it offer us a concrete and well-argued version of the epigenetic nature of thought?
Clearly, it is of the utmost necessity today to rethink relations between the biological and the transcendental, even if it is to the detriment of the latter. But who’s doing so? And why do continental philosophers reject the neurobiological approach to the problem from the outset?
Why must the barrier of irreducibility be maintained by insisting that the agreement between categories and objects does not evolve, that truth does not adapt to the present state of that which it is the truth? What then is this mysterious, purely formal and symbolic place that prevents the comparison of rationality to a living system like any other, in fact, one that is subject to epigenesis? If the transcendental is the empty name of an empty place (the irreducible), if it refers only to a principled resistance to any materialization of thought, then why keep it? And if instead it defines a formal rule, a program (hyper-normativity), then why reject the integration of the transcendental to the genetic program proposed by Changeux? Why not accept taking a step back from just such a program, precisely by following the adventure of epigenetics, even against Kant if need be?
Epigenetics and the need for philosophy
At the same time, if the neurobiological approach to rationality elicits such resistance among continental philosophers, isn’t it because an essential aspect of this approach is resolutely anti-philosophical? No robust theoretical discourse has yet constructed itself on the basis of contemporary epigenetics so as to conceptualize its contributions and successfully integrate its interpretative metaphors – be they readings or musical performances. We must admit, there is no epigenetic philosophy. And the fault lies with both philosophy and neurobiology.
I hypothesize that it is not certain that Kant would have been opposed to assimilating reason to the brain. There is no doubt that he would have taken the present-day neurobiological revolution seriously, that he would have been interested in all the opportunities offered by medical imagery to observe thinking caught in action, and that he would perhaps have undertaken an analysis of the philosophical implications of brain epigenesis.84 But, of course, he would also have introduced critique to all this! If the transcendental and neuronal conflict with one another, it is less because of the supposed risk of reducing the transcendental to the neuronal than, as I suggested earlier, because of the absence of a fundamental question about the status of the philosophical consciousness of brain epigenesis among neurobiologists.
What the neurobiological perspective lacks fundamentally is the theoretical accounting for the new type of reflexivity that it enables and in which all of its philosophical interest lies. Again, the problem is not so much, as is too often assumed, the reduction of the cultural to the biological, but rather the relation of the neuronal subject to itself, the way in which it sees itself, perceives itself, or is auto-affected – a problem that has never been considered on its own count. Critique, understood here as thinking the brain, is still necessary. The task of developing a critique of neurobiological reason is urgent and i
s one of the fundamental challenges facing contemporary philosophy.
To Conclude
It is clear that our three opening questions are beginning to run out of steam. One lacks time. The other lacks an other. The third lacks concepts.
How then should we ultimately interpret the analogy in §27? The “system of the epigenesis of pure reason” implies an originary co-implication of a priori and a posteriori, before and after, whose paradoxical complexity and meaning have not been elucidated by any of the exegetical “keys” that we have tried so far.
Do we wish to understand transcendental epigenesis, with Heidegger, as primordial temporality? We then run into the irreducibility of the biological meaning of the notion, which refers back to a natural and objective time, one that is unthinkable in terms of authenticity and that is ontologically beyond redemption.
Or, instead, do we wish to go with biological meaning? We then face two major difficulties. Either we seek to clarify the meaning of the figure through a kind of historical recourse to the third Critique – but then we still fail to unify the transcendental and scientific meanings of the notion, and the problem of categorial epigenesis remains as mysterious as ever. Or we start with biology itself (evolutionary theory of the mind and contemporary epigenetics), but then the transcendental is denied by being exhausted in experience. And the critical dimension that ought to support this naturalization of reason disappears along with it.
One final possibility: we conclude that the transcendental, which no figure and no metaphor of vital growth can save, is absolute facticity, but we fail to replace the Kantian deduction of the necessity of laws with anything else, any wholly other.
The only way out, then, is to reframe the question, and to do so with Kant.
Before Tomorrow- Epigenesis and Rationality Page 23