On Mattering: Cycles of Behavior, Standards / Values, Attitudes, and Perceptions
Cultural norms are embedded within ontologies. The way things are linked together, systems of being and doing, the way we believe things to behave in our world. Ontologies are not universal, and often fragmented and synthesized as we go. Ontologies enact very different and often times, incommensurate investments of worlding across naturecultures.
Ethics express “rationality” only within a given ontology, and not necessarily across ontologies. Further, ontological differences underly our critique of Kant’s deontological ethics–we can’t express a universal ethics either, or rather, an ethics outside of an ontological system. Kant’s whole notion of deontological ethics is entangled within a Western ontology, specifically the concerns of the Enlightenment. There is nothing here that argues one ontology is somehow better than another, for any reason.
Consider the following as ontology:
1) The possibility of a non-Euclidean space, a mesh (a topological manifold^[1] to be precise) with performative agential cuts or investments of enacted knowledge (is knowable), power (generates consequence), or ethics (has orientation and valence). The intra-relationship of the mesh is indeterminate until measured or valued.
”..space is not a collection of preexisting points set out in a fixed geometry, a container, as it were, for matter to inhabit…What matters is marked off from that which is excluded from mattering but not once and for all. Intra-actions enact specific boundaries, marking the domains of interiority and exteriority, differentiating the intelligible from the unintelligible, the determinate from the indeterminate.”
“Discontinuity plays an important role. Changes do not follow in continuous fashion from a given prior state or origin, nor do they follow some teleological trajectory–there are no trajectories.” -(Barad 2007, 181)
2) The space remains indeterminate until an intra-action is performed to resolve and determine what matters and what is excluded from mattering. Neither topological manifolds have preexisting properties or states or boundaries independent of an apparatus of measurement (“inseparability of objects and the agencies of observation is the basis for complementarity,” Barad (308)). The application of power to impose difference can be independent of how much we know and whether or not that application of power results in good or bad consequences too. To paraphrase Ghandi: the means used determines the ends gained.
The full manifold of what we know, or can know, emerges from an indeterminate existence via measurement (observation) and valuation (performed investments enabling (re)configurations of our worldings). The valuation through ethics as to whether something is “better or worse” is going to be independent of the knowledge we posses and how the power ends up being applied and experienced.
Measurement and valuation are performed within the contexts of stakolder and locale.
Locale
Where do the contexts of stakeholder (human, soil, plant, ecosystem) and locale (place and time) cause a dynamic shift? Why use the term “subject” instead of “stakeholder”, and how does the choice of terms tend to predeterimine a binary rather than plurality relationship? Answer: agential cuts..
Subject doesn’t imply object here… as subjectivity is not the binary opposite of objectivity. There simply can be no objectivity without first having subjective experiences. We then correlate across a wide variety of subjective experiences, and call it objectivity because we can come close to agreeing that the descriptions of our experiences are pretty much the same, i.e. commensurable. In this regard, objectivity can only ever be pluralistic.
Causation of a dynamic shift implies there is a beginning and end to the cause and a beginning and end to an effect/affect. Without a viable ontology, a subject cannot differentiate between cause and effect… as all is just a continuum.
The stakeholder is a subject, but a subject is not always a stakeholder. The very notions of human, plant, soil, and ecosystem are based on the ontologies of human subjects… as human subjects have collectively experienced the world. For the most part, the earth is the earth and the sun is the sun… and everything below we differentiate via an ontological strategy. Subjects are the one’s that say that this description belongs to one ecosystem and this other description belongs to another… but when you get to describing the boundaries between ecosystems… it’s not so clear… distinctions get muddled and our ontologies are challenged to point of crisis. Further, stakeholders have agency, whereas subjects do not necessarily posses agency… they just need to be able to detect and describe a shift in all three axes.
But yes, to cause a dynamic shift, a subject must have intricate knowledge about the system to be shifted, be able to describe the consequences of the shift, and be able to describe the orientation of the shift (better or worse, inclusive or exclusive, happy or sad, alive or dead). Otherwise we’re just riding a mechanical bull on the chaos setting.
Thinking of localizations of events in time and place: Decentralized and distributed pluralisms, mulitiple dynamic locales embedded in hierarchies of valued knowledge types and power differentials, and stakeholders that are obligated to ‘act as if they live here’. What is right action then?
Ontologies can reside within other ontologies and contain other ontologies that are incommensurable with each other. Ontologies are not necessarily exclusive and can be overlapping and porous. (Look at all the various flavors of Christianity that still claim to be a Christian ontology, then, look at all the religions that are the products/sons of Abraham. They co-exist, borrow from each other, and can reside within broader ontologies. Or, look at the U.S. Constitution’s freedom of religion and all the various kinds of religious viewpoints that exit under the constitution but that are fundamentally incommensurable with each other. ) How we conclude whether something is a right action depends entirely on the ontologies we are using to evaluate “rightness”. There is no deontological rightness to be achieved. As such, rightness will always come from a subjective choice based on an ontological strategy. The degree of rightness of a given subjective choice may be relative to the ontological strategy, but the consequences of any choice are real, regardless.
The only thing that is “right” according to an ontological entity/system is whether or not said actions either work to affirm or negate that ontological entity/system… and this is where sustainability comes in. Actions that are “not right” negate the further iteration/reproduction/repetition of a given ontological system. Actions that are right affirm the further iteration/reproduction/repetition of that ontological system. In other words, “actions that are right,” allow the ontological system to sustain itself, even if changes/shifts are needed and it is no longer qualitatively the same ontological system it was before the action was taken. The problem here is that “right actions” are very difficult to determine before the fact (a priori). But, this is another area where pluralism can really help… in collectively projecting the plausible outcomes of a given action and in weighing the consequences of those outcomes.
In the end, we can never really achieve an objective/outside description of an ontology… and can only really ever describe/map an ontology from the inside, based on subjective experiences.
And so…back to exploring the two statements from A World Without Thermometers (relative to solar energy and light in society)
3) There exists a reciprocal space of any mesh (in physics, a k-space, a frequency space, or momentum space relative to a lattice or ‘real’ space) that is complementary, and enacted by a diffractive cut of of the indeterminate mesh.
That reciprocity of intra-action can be formed into a rhetorical chiasmus:
AB: We measure what we value. BA: We value what we measure.
Let’s take A through B:
- *We as Jointly Intentional Group Agents, or Group Agents existing as superposition of agency.
- Measurement as causal intra-action that resolves indeterminacy within phenomena, and effects collapse of indeterminate super positions into entangled mixtures.
- What as mattering, including our collective-individual accountability and responsibility to think in terms of what matters and *what is excluded from mattering.
- We as one or another JIGA or GA, yet another superposition of agency.
- Values as investing: agents endowing matter and “specific material engagements that participate in (re)configuring the world” [practices of knowing]. Values as integral to being and knowing. [2007 Barad —]
Now let’s take B through A:
- We as JIGA or GA and superposition of agency.
- Valuation as causal intra-action that (re)configures and resolves indeterminacy within material-discursive phenomena.
- What as apparatuses, including discursive practices rendering boundaries “that give meaning to certain concepts to the exclusion of [other concepts]. [2007 Barad, 147]
- We as JIGA or GA and superposition of agency.
- Measures as agential cuts effecting a separation between “subjects and objects of knowledge practices.” [2007 Barad, 147]
AB) We measure what we value. BA) We value what we measure.
4) “Values of complementary variables (such as position and momentum) are not simultaneously determinate.” The reciprocal spaces are just as “real” as each other, with an essential continuity between them–measurement practices and apparatuses are inseparable from the results obtained.
cf. Bohr’s indeterminacy principle as a quantitative expression of complimentarity: “a general reciprocal relation exists between the maximum sharpness of definition of the space-time and energy-momentum vectors associated with the the individuals.” (Barad 2007, 300, from a Bohr 1927 essay)
Portal to Systems Thinking
A system is a functioning ontology (ontological entity). A system does not need to be a closed or complete ontology. A system just needs to be able to be distinguishable as a coherent pattern (and collection of sub-patterns) that is able to respond and adapt to internal and external ontological inputs, which are either knowledge (is knowable), power (generates consequence), or ethics (has orientation and valence).
A system as ontological entity (coherent pattern within) is a topologically identifiable pattern residing a local Euclidean space of n-ontological axes. i.e., knowledge, power, and ethics. The power axis distinguishes between the inside and the outside of the application of power by a system. The knowledge axis distinguishes between the inside and outside of a given set of epistemic system(s). The ethics axis distinguishes between actions and consequences that either grow the system or diminish the system in its capacity to function and sustain.
A subject must reside (partially or wholly) within the system to comprehend the difference between which ontological inputs are internal and external to the system. A subject can reside within multiple concurrent systems/ontologies. A subject can also initiate interactions and create intersections between systems, as long as they are coherent. A subject is never independent from a set of systems, but a subject may choose to no longer interact with a given system, as a subject is a system unto itself. As such, only subjects can describe the functional boundaries of systems.
Ontological truth exists, but only where the extant of such a truth’s existence is derived based upon the quality of the descriptions as to how the ontological system is experienced via the subject. In other words, truth is always subjective.
Wittgenstein stated that which cannot be spoken must be passed over in silence…. whereas here we argue that those ontological entities which cannot be described require greater engagement by subjects via their experiences.
Ethical practice and norms reside and function within a given ontology, and may not function within a different ontology. This is what gives the appearance of ethical relativism, however, ethics are not relative, they are real within that ontology. Kant describes deontological ethics, which are intended to be applicable across all ontologies, however, he was still operating within the ontological movement known as the Enlightenment, and more broadly construed, and within Western Civilization writ large. In other words, there is no such thing as deontological.
[1] Topological Manifold is a space from mathematics that locally resembles Euclidean space at any given point (homeomorphic), yet does not require the conditions of differentiation (smoothwise behavior everywhere, a differential manifold).
[2] Anderson, Elizabeth, “Feminist Epistemology and Philosophy of Science”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2017/entries/feminism-epistemology/.