Who says correlationism is a bad thing? Answer: folks like Harman and Meillassoux. — Joshs

Except for the fact that they don't say that. And even if they did, shouldn't you include Iain Hamilton Grant and Ray Brassier in that group? They are, at the end of the day, "the Founding Fathers of Speculative Realism", if you will.

Who says correlationism is a bad thing? Answer: folks like Harman and Meillassoux.
— Joshs

Except for the fact that they don't say that. And even if they did, shouldn't you include Iain Hamilton Grant and Ray Brassier in that group? They are, at the end of the day, "the Founding Fathers of Speculative Realism", if you will. — Arcane Sandwich

They don’t?

The loosely demarcated movement known as Speculative Realism (SR) got its title from a conference named Speculative Realism: A One-Day Workshop, held at Goldsmiths University in April 2007. [1] The speakers – and original members – were, Ray Brassier, Iain Hamilton Grant, Graham Harman and Quentin Meillassoux, even if the influence of SR has since spread well beyond the work of these respective philosophers. It would however be important to note from the outset that there are important and fundamental differences between the positions of the various thinkers that are often grouped under this umbrella term…

What is often said to almost exclusively unite all the original and current proponents of SR is their commitment to the critique of what Quentin Meillassoux terms ‘correlationism’ or what Graham Harman calls the ‘philosophy of (human) access.’..both terms are to an extent similar in terms of what they critique, namely (what proponents of SR see as) the prevalent tendency within Kantian and post-Kantian thought to treat the relation between thought and world as the primary subject matter of philosophy. In making such a claim, they argue that philosophy since Kant lamentably negates the possibility of thinking or knowing what the world could be like ‘in itself’, that is, independently of our all-too-human relation to it. (On Correlationism and the Philosophy of (Human) Access: Meillassoux and Harman.
Niki Young)

They don’t? — Joshs

No, they don't. They've never used those literal words of yours, "correlationism is a bad thing". There is no article, book or any other text in which Graham Harman said "correlationism is a bad thing", nor is there any text in which Meillassoux says "correlationism is a bad thing".

The loosely demarcated movement known as Speculative Realism (SR) got its title from a conference named Speculative Realism: A One-Day Workshop, held at Goldsmiths University in April 2007. [1] The speakers – and original members – were, Ray Brassier, Iain Hamilton Grant, Graham Harman and Quentin Meillassoux, even if the influence of SR has since spread well beyond the work of these respective philosophers. It would however be important to note from the outset that there are important and fundamental differences between the positions of the various thinkers that are often grouped under this umbrella term…

What is often said to almost exclusively unite all the original and current proponents of SR is their commitment to the critique of what Quentin Meillassoux terms ‘correlationism’ or what Graham Harman calls the ‘philosophy of (human) access.’..both terms are to an extent similar in terms of what they critique, namely (what proponents of SR see as) the prevalent tendency within Kantian and post-Kantian thought to treat the relation between thought and world as the primary subject matter of philosophy. In making such a claim, they argue that philosophy since Kant lamentably negates the possibility of thinking or knowing what the world could be like ‘in itself’, that is, independently of our all-too-human relation to it. (On Correlationism and the Philosophy of (Human) Access: Meillassoux and Harman.
Niki Young)

Where does it say that Harman and Meillassoux say "correlationism is a bad thing"?

Where does it say that Harman and Meillassoux say "correlationism is a bad thing"? — Arcane Sandwich

Ya got me there.

Ya got me there. — Joshs

But that's my point, Josh. Language can't be a sort of free-for-all game. It needs rules. And I think that those rules are something akin to what lawyers call "Letter of the Law", as something different than the "Spirit of the Law". Interpretations (Spirit of the Law) are all fine and dandy, but sometimes we just have to go back to the Letter of the Law.

Do you disagree?

But that's my point, Josh. Language can't be a sort of free-for-all game. It needs rules. And I think that those rules are something akin to what lawyers call "Letter of the Law", as something different than the "Spirit of the Law". Interpretations (Spirit of the Law) are all fine and dandy, but sometimes we just have to go back to the Letter of the Law.

Do you disagree? — Arcane Sandwich

Could you just tell me what words you would replace “is a bad thing” with? I’m dying to know.

Could you just tell me what words you would replace “is a bad thing” with? I’m dying to know. — Joshs

There are none. No such words, I mean. I have an email by Braisser himself telling me that people always get that part wrong (among other parts that they get wrong).

There is nothing bad about correlationism. And there is nothing that can replace the word "bad" there in such a way that we would be able to say "Correlationism is to be rejected because of X".

Correlationism is a live option in today's Continental debates. It is also a live option in the Analytic tradition. There is nothing inherently wrong with it. There is nothing bad about it. The whole point of Meillassoux's philosophy (and of Speculative Realism more generally, even though 3 of the 4 "founding members" no longer feel associated with it) is to keep what is True in correlationism, and to augment it further. Perhaps some aspects of it have to be reformulated, perhaps others discarded, perhaps others reinforced. It's more like making an oil painting, instead of being like doing your taxes.

Correlationism is a live option in today's Continental debates. It is also a live option in the Analytic tradition. There is nothing inherently wrong with it. There is nothing bad about it… Perhaps some aspects of it have to be reformulated, perhaps others discarded, perhaps others reinforced. — Arcane Sandwich

Could you give a quote from Meillassoux supporting this assertion? All I find are claims that correlationism has been a disaster.

Could you give a quote from Meillassoux supporting this assertion? — Joshs

Why would I need one?

Why would I need one? — Arcane Sandwich

Have you actually read After Finitude? I don’t find a single
positive statement about correlationism in it. Do you?

Have you actually read After Finitude? — Joshs

Of course I have. I've written a book about it, as well as several different articles about it.

I don’t find a single
positive statement about correlationism in it. Do you? — Joshs

Define "positive statement". What do you mean by that?

Define "positive statement". What do you mean by that? — Arcane Sandwich

I mean the opposite is of negative statements. Every reference to correlationism in After Finitude pits it in a negative light. For instance:’

contemporary philosophers have lost the great outdoors, the absolute outside of pre-critical thinkers:

we cannot get out of our own skins

every variety of correlationism is exposed as an extreme
idealism, one that is incapable of admitting that what science tells us about these occurrences of matter independent of humanity effectively occurred as described by science.

So? What's bad about it? I don't get your point. Explain it to me like I'm a dumbass.

So? What's bad about it? I don't get your point — Arcane Sandwich

15 minutes of my life I will never get back…

15 minutes of my life I will never get back… — Joshs

Then I take it that you don't know what's bad about it.

Every reference to correlationism in After Finitude pits it in a negative light. — Joshs

And you just say that as if it were a fact, like the fact that physicists study an actual thing called "gravity"?

EDIT: Here's your proof, @Joshs:

We will henceforth call correlationism any current of thought which maintains the unsurpassable character of the correlation so defined. — Quentin Meillassoux

That, is the very first occurrence of the word "correlationism" in After Finitude. It is literally a definition. That very reference to correlationism does not pit it in a negative light, in any way, shape, or form.

Satisfied?

Satisfied? — Arcane Sandwich

While I think the term is strictly speaking value neutral, I think its origin as a critical term of various strands of philosophy isn't a neutral move. So it's one of these cases, I believe, that adopting the vocabulary can prejudice your perspective. As an example, I doubt the correlationists accept the framing of the mediating role subjectivity/agency/discourse play in terms of subjectivity's/agencies'/discourse's relata. I'm aware that this is part of the framing in After Finitude too, but you don't need to accept this if you're a correlationist {or someone branded as such}. If you'll forgive me the bloviated metaphor, the ghost of the relationship between subject and object isn't seen as haunting a correlationist flavour of metaphysics from the inside. You kinda need to get tricked through argumentation into seeing the mediating medium as an object, transcendental warts and all. And that move isn't accepted by our hypothetical correlationist friends here, I believe.

So it's one of these cases, I believe, that adopting the vocabulary can prejudice your perspective. — fdrake

Ok, but we can all agree that this is a problem, right? This is what I would call "a bad thing" in @Joshs's sense of the term.

Ok, but we can all agree that this is a problem, right? This is what I would call "a bad thing" in Joshs's sense of the term. — Arcane Sandwich

Yeah! And I think that's how @Joshs is construing "correlationism" as a term. Right? There's a certain stodginess associated with correlationism when you call it that. You get "trapped in it". Like being "trapped" is a bad thing. You lose sight of the great outdoors, wilderness, the thing-in-itself in a substantive sense. All of those seem like bad things with that way of describing them. But you can adopt the position as if it's a good thing still, on its terms even. You probs won't though, if you're in the bucket of fans of so-called correlationist philosophers, since it seems like a distortion and a slur.

Yeah! And I think that's how Joshs is construing "correlationism" as a term. Right? — fdrake

Yeah, but it's like, I use the word "scientism" in a positive way. Mario Bunge himself championed that use, he used the word "scientism" positively. So why can't I? I believe in scientism, I have no problem saying such a philosophically loaded phrase like "I believe in scientism", because I say it as an ordinary person would (or at least, to the best of my ability to reconcile ordinary thought with philosophical thought).

So, if Bunge and I can do just that, I see no reason why correlationists can't use the word "correlationism" in a positive way. And some of them seem to be on the brink of doing exactly that. Now, I'm not the one to "give them a little push" in that direction, far from it. All I'm saying is, correlationism is something far more complicated than what Meillassoux would have you believe. That does not mean that correlationism is "a bad thing" or "a good thing". It just means that we have to study it more.

You get "trapped in it". Like being "trapped" is a bad thing. You lose sight of the great outdoors, wilderness, the thing-in-itself in a substantive sense. — fdrake

Well but hold on here a second, Mr. F. Drake. That sort of talk (i.e. "trapped in it", "being trapped", "great outdoors", "wilderness") is the talk of a Poet. If that's how you wish to formulate the problem (and it is a legitimate formulation of the problem under consideration here), then what I would say is that correlationists have stepped on their own bear trap, and now, like bears, are howling in pain in the great outdoors, the metaphysical wilderness that we call the thing-in-itself, which is arguably the Absolute in the sense of that "Great Outdoors".

So, what would you make of that? Those are surely pretty words, if I may say so myself. Do they mean anything, in a substantive sense? I don't think so.

All of those seem like bad things with that way of describing them. — fdrake

Yeah, but are they? "Bad things", that is. Honest question.

But you can adopt the position as if it's a good thing still, on its terms even. You probs won't though, if you're in the bucket of fans of so-called correlationist philosophers, since it seems like a distortion and a slur. — fdrake

But that's the point that I'm making here. The same thing happened with the word "scientism". It was a distortion and a slur. The same thing happens with ethnic slurs and racial slurs, for example. They start out as negative terms, then someone starts using them in a positive way. Sometimes there are community restrictions (i.e., you can't use racial slurs if you're not of that race yourself), sometimes there aren't (i.e., anyone can use the term "scientism", including the people that hold views that can only be described as anti-scientism).

Would you say an AI is sentient?