Speculative Realism
Discussion
Speculative Realism and the Blockchain
Sasha Shilina:
"Speculative realism is a movement in contemporary Continental-inspired philosophy that emerged in the early XXI century, challenging traditional philosophical assumptions and the dominant trends in Continental philosophy, as well as exploring ontological questions about the nature of reality. Speculative realism takes its name from a conference held at Goldsmiths College, University of London in April 2007.
Speculative realism broadly positions itself as a proponent of metaphysical realism, contrasting with what it perceives as the prevailing trends of post-Kantian philosophy, which it refers to as “correlationism”, which the French philosopher and one of four main contributors, Quentin Meillassoux (2008) define as “the idea according to which we only ever have access to the correlation between thinking and being, and never to either term considered apart from the other”.
Speculative realists, who often disagree with each other on basic philosophical issues, are united by criticism of the philosophy of human finitude, a tradition dating back to Immanuel Kant. What unites the movement’s four main contributors Quentin Meillassoux, Ray Brassier, Iain Hamilton Grant, and Graham Harman is an attempt to overcome both “correlationism” and privileged “philosophies of access” — philosophies that privilege the human being over other entities.
While speculative realism and blockchain may not have direct connections, we can examine potential parallels and implications when considering their intersection.
At first glance, what unites these phenomena is their non-anthropocentric respective. Speculative realism encourages a shift away from anthropocentric views and explores the existence and agency of non-human entities. It criticizes correlationism and related philosophies. For speculative realists, both ideas represent forms of anthropocentrism. Similarly, blockchain technology is a technology that operates on machines and decentralized networks that prioritize the collective validation and verification of transactions, reducing reliance on human authorities. This decentralization aligns with the non-anthropocentric perspectives of speculative realism, emphasizing the importance of non-human actors and distributed agency.
Speculative realism acknowledges the radical contingency and uncertainty of the world. Similarly, blockchain embraces the concept of distributed consensus, where multiple participants validate and agree upon the state of the ledger. The decentralized nature of blockchain introduces an element of contingency and unpredictability, as the consensus process involves negotiation and continuous adaptation. On the other hand, it can be quite predictable because consensus rules are transparent.
As for epistemological considerations, speculative realism engages with questions of knowledge, perception, and reality. Blockchain, with its transparent and auditable ledger, can contribute to the epistemological exploration of trust and verification in digital environments. The immutability and transparency of blockchain records offer new possibilities for understanding and evaluating the provenance and authenticity of information.
Finally, speculative realism and blockchain may have parallels while considering decentralized governance and trust. Speculative realism challenges traditional notions of authority and hierarchical structures. Blockchain technology, by enabling decentralized governance models and eliminating the need for intermediaries, aligns with the ethos of non-hierarchical and distributed power structures. The self-executing smart contracts and DAOs built on blockchain can provide new avenues for exploring alternative modes of governance and trust."
Object-oriented ontology (OOO)
Sasha Shilina:
Object-oriented ontology (OOO), a branch of speculative realism, is a philosophical movement that emphasizes the existence and interactions of objects as independent entities with their own reality, regardless of human perception. The term “object-oriented philosophy” was coined by Graham Harman, the movement’s founder, in his doctoral dissertation “Tool-Being: Elements in a Theory of Objects” (1999). In 2009, Levi Bryant rephrased Harman’s original designation as “object-oriented ontology”, giving the movement its current name.
One way in which OOO may intersect with blockchain is through the concept of distributed agency. In the context of blockchain, this refers to the ways in which digital objects, such as smart contracts and decentralized networks, can act autonomously and make decisions without human intervention.
From an OOO perspective, blockchain can be seen as a network of objects that interact and affect each other within a decentralized system. Each block in the blockchain can be understood as an object that contains information about a specific transaction or data entry. These objects exist independently and interact through the process of validation and consensus within the blockchain network.
OOO also emphasizes the idea that objects have their own intrinsic properties and qualities, which can be extended to the blockchain. In a blockchain system, each object (block) contains a unique set of data and cryptographic signatures that make it distinct from others. This uniqueness and individuality align with the OOO notion that objects have their own reality and qualities.
Additionally, OOO posits that objects are withdrawn from direct access and can only be perceived through their interactions with other objects. Similarly, in blockchain, the information is immutable and can only be accessed and verified through the consensus of the network participants. This decentralized nature of blockchain aligns with the OOO idea that objects interact with each other without the need for a human observer.
American philosopher Graham Harman is a central figure in OOO. While Harman’s philosophy does not directly address blockchain technology, we can explore some possible connections and considerations between OOO and blockchain.
One way to approach this connection is through the lens of how blockchain technology operates. Blockchain’s decentralized nature aligns with Harman’s emphasis on the autonomous existence of objects and their interactions without the need for human intervention.
From an OOO perspective, one can argue that blockchain technology treats digital assets or transactions as discrete objects with their own reality. Each block in the blockchain can be seen as an object that interacts with other objects through the process of validation and verification. These objects, in the form of transactions or data entries, exist independently and are connected through their interactions within the blockchain system.
Furthermore, blockchain technology can be seen as providing a platform for a multiplicity of objects to interact and affect each other without privileging anyone. The consensus mechanisms used in blockchain systems involve the participation and agreement of multiple nodes or participants. This decentralized consensus aligns with Harman’s idea of a network of objects, where no single object holds a privileged position or complete knowledge of the whole system.
The second central figure of OOO is the American philosopher Levi Bryant. His own version of object-oriented thought, called ‘onticology’ (2011), disprivileges human experience from a central position in metaphysical inquiry while holding that objects are always split between two domains — virtuality and actuality. For Bryant, virtuality refers to the powers and potential of any given object, whereas actuality designates the qualities manifested by the actualization of an object’s potential at any given point in time. Here we can refer to the Web3 concept of the metaverse. Later Bryant, concerned with the doctrine of withdrawal and the non-relationism of object-oriented philosophy, departed from the OOO movement and developed a machine-oriented ontology that argues being is composed entirely of machines or processes.
English philosopher Timothy Morton, a prominent OOO thinker, also has written extensively about the relationship between humans and non-human objects. In his book, “Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World” (2013), he suggests that we need new ways of thinking about human relationships with technology in order to address the ecological crises facing our planet. Morton’s use of the term ‘hyperobjects’ was inspired by Björk’s 1996 single ‘Hyperballad’, although the term ‘Hyper-objects’ (denoting n-dimensional non-local entities) has also been used in computer science since 1967. Morton employed the term to describe objects that are so massively distributed in time and space as to transcend spatiotemporal specificity. In the context of blockchain, we may see blockchains as distributed networks that in the case of PoW heavily affect our environment. On the other hand, blockchain technology has the potential to intersect with ecological concerns and contribute to sustainability efforts in various ways, including the tracking of carbon footprints, or environmental data management, to name a few.
However, it is important to note that Harman, Bryant, and Morton themselves have not explicitly discussed or applied his philosophy to the blockchain. While connections can be drawn between OOO and blockchain concepts, these connections should be understood as speculative and interpretive."
Sadie Plant and Nick Land at the CCRU
Zachary Stein:
"Plant is a catalyst for cyberfeminist writings and was the alleged co-writer of a pseudonymous collection of “theory-fiction” fragments attributed to the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (2017). These texts were part of the birth of speculative realism. Nick Land (2011) was also a midwife to speculative realism as well as an alleged co-creator of the Ccru (sic). For the Ccru, taking the impact of computers on consciousness as seriously as possible means returning to metaphysics – returning to a form of metaphysical realism specifically. Remember that Kant was an idealist – he believed that the mind creates reality. For idealists (and most nominalists), matter is less primordial than the mind’s categories. Realists, on the other hand, maintain that that a structured reality exists beyond the human mind and that material reality includes emergent structures and processes that transcend and include the human mind. The human mind can therefore know reality (to some extent) through participation in it and as it.
Realism is entailed by computational extensions of human consciousness because ultimately code itself becomes identified as undeniably real, structured, and outside the mind. Just as Darwin forced Peirce to put the transcendental subject into a nervous system and into the natural history of an evolving planet, so computers forced a further pulling of the mind “down” into matter. In philosophy this marked a deepening of the “return to the object” (i.e., a return to considering the world beyond the mind as knowable, structured, and real). These trends “after Kant” put humans back in their place, not as a floating transcendental subject, but as embodied (and encoded) in space and time. Nick Land speculates (along with others) that time itself is best explained in terms of a metaphysics that posits each person’s total immersion in a computerized world-simulation (like in the movie The Matrix). With these speculations Land is seeking a transcendence of modern and postmodern forms of human subjectivity and is willing to take on a complex transpersonal metaphysics to do so. While I think his speculations are deeply confused, I also think they are a sign that basic metaphysical issues are once again being forced onto the table, even if it is just in the movies.
The Ccru uses science fiction as an entryway into metamodern metaphysics, finding a new location for the creation of speculative ontologies extrapolating from scientific advance. The Ccru is practicing a kind of “guerrilla ontology” by using the text itself as a means to alter consciousness and awareness in the moment for the reader. Guerilla ontology is a term used by the early metamodernist Robert Anton Wilson to describe his own work (Wilson, 1977/2016). The term suggests that the practice of metaphysics today can involve stepping outside of the centralized command and control structure of academic philosophy and engaging in all kinds of covert tactics, including theory fiction, anonymity, and revelations of the truths found in first-person experience. The guerilla ontologist forces readers to confront new realities in their own first-person experience by inviting (or jarring) them into uncanny phenomenological experiences. This is a common tactic among metamodern metaphysicians who are seeking to alter the consciousness of their readers in real time as part of justifying ontological arguments.
Following postmodernism’s critiques of abstract theorizing, it makes sense that metaphysics has taken a “participatory turn” (Ferrer & Sherman, 2009). Practicing metaphysics now demands more than reading and writing theory in the traditional academic sense. Doing metaphysics means engaging in behaviors traditionally understood as “rituals,” as well as in specific practices that allow individuals to see their own experiences objectively. Below I explore how Gafni and Kincaid practice guerrilla ontology in their explorations of human sexuality and love, revealing uncanny mystical experiences in the songs and films of popular culture. As we are exposed to different and larger realities already within our own experience, we are also invited to change our life and the world. The implication of all forms of participatory metaphysics are ultimately political. It makes sense then that Nick Land’s writings on politics have gained as much attention as his metaphysical speculations. Land has been promoting a certain kind of Accelerationism that seeks the political means to hasten the coming of the techno-capitalist singularity, and thus to catapult Earth into a transhuman future. Land is driven to these extremes by his ontological considerations about the new realities of planetary-scale computation. The phrase “planetary-scale computation” has been made popular by Benjamin H. Bratton (2015), who has theorized about our historical moment as involving the creation of an Earth-sized computer, which he calls “The Stack.” The basic question is: At what point does this planetary computational stack replace reality? At what point in history does code itself become more real and world-creating than even the human subjectivity that writes it? Land’s techno-Logos-mysticism presents a world in which humans are not in control of their future because laws of computation and “machinic desire” have already transcend but included them (Land, 2011 p. 319); we are being swept along by these laws into realms of human obsolescence that are politically unprecedented. Land’s speculative realism eventually turns towards forms of political thought that have long been discredited by modernity and postmodernity. Neoreactionary forms of fascism have been inspired by Land’s work because of his unabashed embrace of realities that contextualize human subjectivity and desire in broader geo-historical and ontological dynamics. The metamodern return to metaphysics also marks a return to metaphysically inspired political ideologies as well as their accompanying emotion and violence. The vacuum created by the modern and postmodern absence of metaphysics is now being filled, for better or worse. Land’s work is one attempt to fill this void of meaning – it signals the dark possibilities entailed by the metamodern return to metaphysics."
(https://integral-review.org/issues/vol_14_no_1_stein_love_in_a_time_between_worlds.pdf)
More information
- Speculative Materialism and its relation to the blockchain.