Advanced Epistemology

1.
Quentin Meillassoux has recently proposed a compelling diagnosis of what is most problematic in post-
Kantian philosophy’s relationship to the natural sciences. The former founders on the enigma of the 5. Later on in his book he presents another argument against correlationism. It is called the argument from
‘arche-fossil’. A fossil is a material bearing the traces of pre-historic life, but an ‘arche-fossil’ is a factuality. Meillassoux’s argument seems to be that the correlationist must concede that she presumes an
material indicating traces of ancestral’ phenomena anterior even to the emergence of life. The ancestral absolute, namely the absolute possibility of any proposition about the in-itself. The correlationist
argument aims to show that correlationism fails because it cannot render scientific statements about a therefore presupposes an absolute. But this renders correlationism self-refuting, since on this view every
cosmos anterior to human existence meaningful. He starts his outline of the argument with the posited in-itself is inevitably relativized to a for-us. “When you think of [realism and idealism] as
observation that contemporary science has established beyond reasonable doubt that the cosmos is older "possible", how are you able to access this possibility? How are you able to think this "possibility of
than the advent of human life. There have been many events anterior to the coming into being of human ignorance" which leaves [both] eventualities open? The truth is that you are only able to think this
beings, such as the origin of the universe itself (13.8 billion years ago), the accretion of the earth (4.6 possibility of ignorance because you have actually thought the absoluteness of this possibility, which is
billion years ago) and the extinction of the dinosaurs (66 million years ago). Meillassoux calls events that to say, its non-correlational character. Let me make myself clear, for this is the crux of the matter. So
took place before the advent of human life ancestral. Now, anyone who takes science seriously must long as you maintain that your scepticism towards all knowledge of the absolute is based upon an
accept that ancestral events took place. This is undeniable. Time, space and matter clearly did exist argument, rather than upon mere belief or opinion, then you have to grant that the core of any such
before there were human beings. The history of the cosmos is much older than that of human life. argument must be thinkable. But the core of your argument is that we can access everything's capacity-
Ancestral claims clearly impose no problem for metaphysical realism. For the realist it is no surprise at not-to-be, or capacity-to-be-other, our own as well as the world's. But once again, to say that one can
all that the world we experience existed a long time before we came into being. After all, he or she takes think this is to say that one can think the absoluteness of the possibility of everything.”
it that the world we experience is the world as it exists in itself independently from us. But scientific
ancestral statements do seem to pose a problem for the correlationist. If science tells us that the correlate
emerged in the world, how can correlationists then maintain that it is the givenness of the world? The
only option for the correlationist seems to be to interpret ancestral statements in a specific way. Yes, the
universe originated 13.8 billion years ago, before the advent of human beings. But this claim is justified
only as a claim about how the world is for us. It doesn’t say anything about the world in itself. And yes,
science teaches that the earth came into being 4.6 billion years ago. Yet again, this undeniable fact is
only a fact for us. Whether it is true of the world in itself remains unknown for us. “An ancestral
statement only has sense if its literal sense is also its ultimate sense. If one divides the senses of the
statement, if one invents for it a deeper sense conforming to the correlation but contrary to its realist
sense, then far from deepening its sense, one has simply cancelled it. This is what we shall express in
terms of the ancestral statement’s irremediable realism: either this statement has a realist sense, and only
a realist sense, or it has no sense at all.”
4. In his book Meillassoux provides a detailed account of the post-Kantian position that he wants to reject.
He has coined the view correlationism. Its central concept is the correlation, that is to say, the
correlation between thought and being. According to correlationism “we only ever have access to the
correlation between thinking and being, and never to either term considered apart from the other.”3 Its
main thesis is that human experience and thought cannot get outside itself in order to compare the world
as it is ‘in itself’ to the world as it is ‘for us’. We simply cannot establish which aspects of reality are
independent from our cognitive faculties and which are a function of our cognitive relation to the world.
All we humans can ever apprehend are correlates. We are always and already situated “in the midst of
the correlation.” The correlation of thought and being is thus not necessarily the same as the relation
between subject and object. Many post-Kantians hold that the correlation is of a more original,
fundamental or inclusive nature. The inescapable epistemic togetherness of thinking and being is akin to
a wide range of post-critical positions within continental and analytical philosophy. Because we cannot
get beyond or step out of our human condition, everything we say, experience or think is always already
relative to us. This prior ‘for us’ is inescapable. The absolute “great outdoors” of pre-critical philosophy
is inaccessible. We will never reach out to reality as it is not relative to us, as it exists in itself regardless
of thought. Kantianism or transcendental idealism also has it that there are minds and mind-independent
objects. But these minds cannot know these objects. Further, metaphysical or speculative idealism asserts
that there are only minds. Objects are mind-dependent constructions and known to be such. According to
yet another position, let’s call it the epistemic stance, there are minds. But we cannot get outside our
minds. So we do not know whether there are mind-independent objects. And if there are objects outside
us, we do not know whether they are similar to what is grasped by our minds, or quite different. On
correlationism or the meta-epistemic stance the distinctions between ‘mind’ and ‘mind-independent
object’, between ‘the inside’ and ‘the outside’, between ‘subject’ and ‘object’, between ‘experience’ and
‘things grounding experience’ are also only justified as a human-relative distinction. Distinctions such as
those between ‘mind’ and ‘mind-independent’ object, between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ or between
‘subject’ and ‘object’, might not apply to the-world-in-itself. Due to the inescapable inaccessibility of the
world-in-itself we will never know. For everything we say can only be justified as a claim about the
world-for-us. As said, even the very distinction between the-world-for-us and the-world-in-itself is
merely justified within the world-for-us from which we simply cannot escape.

Advanced Epistemology

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