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Naturalising Badiou: Mathematical Ontology and Structural Realism

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Naturalising Badiou: Mathematical Ontology and Structural Realism Naturalising Badiou: Mathematical Ontology and Structural Realism Fabio Gironi This thesis is submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Cardiff University, Department of Philosophy School of English, Communication and Philosophy September 2013 Declaration This work has not previously been accepted in substance for any degree and is not concurrently submitted in candidature for any degree. Signed ………………………………………… (candidate) Date 26/09/2013 STATEMENT 1 This thesis is being submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD Signed ………………………………………… (candidate) Date 26/09/2013 STATEMENT 2 This thesis is the result of my own independent work/investigation, except where otherwise stated. Other sources are acknowledged by explicit references. Signed ………………………………………… (candidate) Date 26/09/2013 STATEMENT 3 I hereby give consent for my thesis, if accepted, to be available for photocopying and for inter-library loan, and for the title and summary to be made available to outside organisations. Signed ………………………………………… (candidate) Date 26/09/2013 STATEMENT 4: PREVIOUSLY APPROVED BAR ON ACCESS I hereby give consent for my thesis, if accepted, to be available for photocopying and for inter-library loans after expiry of a bar on access previously approved by the Graduate Development Committee. Signed ………………………………………… (candidate) Date 26/09/2013 2 Thesis Summary This thesis offers a naturalist revision of Alain Badiou’s philosophy. This goal is pursued through an encounter of Badiou’s mathematical ontology and theory of truth with contemporary trends in philosophy of mathematics (mathematical structuralism) and philosophy of science (ontic structural realism). I take issue with Badiou’s inability to elucidate the link between the empirical and the ontological, and his residual reliance on a Heideggerian project of fundamental ontology, which undermines his own immanentist principles. I will argue for both a bottom-up naturalisation of Badiou’s philosophical approach to mathematics (insisting on an account mindful of the socio-biological roots of our mathematical abilities and concepts – brains to universe) and a top-down naturalisation (arguing that our best physical theories seem to indicate a collapse of the distinction between the mathematical and the non-mathematical – universe to brains). Articulating my particular understanding of what realism and naturalism should commit us to, I propose a creative fusion of Badiou’s attention to metamathematical results with a structural-informational metaphysics, proposing a ‘matherialism’ uniting the more daring speculative insights of the former with the naturalist and empiricist commitments motivating the latter. 3 Acknowledgements and Dedication I gratefully acknowledge the Arts and Humanities Research Council for their award of a Research Studentship. I would like to present a long and impressive list of fellow students and prominent scholars to thank for the priceless insights I have drawn from long conversations with them, over late-night glasses of single malt and endless walks in the misty countryside. However, this work is mostly the product of solitary work, mostly involving sparkling water and a comfy armchair, and such a list is thus very short indeed. Not being the most conversational type, my most productive work is done in isolation, with the sole mute company of books and a computer. Of the few individuals that have been instrumental in the successful completion of this thesis my gratitude goes, first of all, to Chris Norris. Accepting me as supervisee midway through my Ph.D. studies undoubtedly changed the fate of my thesis and my satisfaction with its form and content. As one of the handful of scholars worldwide capable of following and assessing my conceptual journeys in the lands of analytic and continental philosophy, his guidance has always been attentive but unobtrusive. He has time and again frustrated my hopes to try and refer to a book he hadn’t already read, he has voiced his disagreements with some of my ideas as a peer, without ever pressuring me to recant them, and he often seemed to have more faith in my project than I ever did. The breadth of his interests and knowledge, coupled with his humble and unassuming attitude towards everyone, has been an outstanding example of scholarly virtue to me. I have been immensely privileged to be his student. Among the very few people I have had interactions with in Cardiff, apart from the participants in the lively weekly postgraduate reading groups I occasionally attended, I am beholden with great gratitude to Rhian Rattray, ENCAP’s Postgraduate manager. Undoubtedly the most cordial, helpful and efficient administrator I have ever met in academia, Rhian was instrumental in making my transfer to Cardiff possible. She has always been willing to answer my questions, quick to resolve occasional communication failures between me and the Finance department and in general has made me feel genuinely welcome in the Department from day one. My affectionate thanks goes also to my first supervisor at the School of Oriental and African Studies, Cosimo Zene, who effectively introduced me to British academia and gave me an idea of what doing a Ph.D. actually meant. The gentle and patient guidance I received from him in that early period, and his generosity in understanding without acrimony when my mutated interests made me feel uneasy in my old department are the marks of a kind-hearted man and an intellectually honest scholar. For good or bad, my intellectual trajectory was radically modified by the discovery, sometime in early 2009, of a highly-active internet community of philosophers (mostly graduate students) that was flourishing around the then-novel movement of ‘speculative realism’. Whatever the intrinsic merits of this movement, the virtual encounter with many bright young philosophers loosely associated with it has been tremendously important for the development of my thought. It forced me continuously to try to 4 catch-up with brighter fellow students, a chase (still in process) which time and again shattered my fragile self-esteem, and which was punctuated by the occasional, dreaded gaze into the gaping abyss where The Books You Haven’t Read Yet lurk. In one way or another several of these dozens of virtual acquaintances have influenced me. Inevitably, however, some of these had a greater impact on my philosophical commitments, a set that luckily comes to largely intersect with those I now have the privilege to call friends. A few need to be singled out. Pete Wolfendale has for me variously taken on the garb of unreachable role-model of philosophical knowledge and responsibility, tireless unraveler of conceptual thickets, earnest networker, friendly critic and, last but not least, fellow lover of horror and science fiction movies of dubious quality. Dan Sacilotto has become one of my most regular morning (late-night for him) online chats, when he shares with me his humbling and deeply instructive philosophical insights and hot-bloodedly supports my rants against more or less fashionable figures or trends in our intellectual environments. Paul Ennis was one of my earliest online acquaintances, standing out among an occasionally snide and pretentious crowd (the dark side of online communities) for his intellectual generosity and candid enthusiasm for novel and daring philosophical ideas, something that took quite concrete shape when he created Speculations and accepted me (at a time when we had never even met) as co-editor. Editing the journal with him and the other guys on the editorial team has been an incredibly formative experience, as well as offering me a venue for publication and an occasion to interact with some of the best scholars in our field. Among those, I certainly have to single out Lee Braver, who has always been extremely supportive of my work, has provided commentary on a chapter of this thesis and has flattered me on more than one occasion by asking me for comments on his own work. His encyclopaedic philosophical knowledge and synoptic approach have been an inspiration and a model for me throughout the writing of this work. My thanks goes also to Ray Brassier, who has had a significant, if indirect, influence on my recent philosophical interests, and has always been exceptionally kind and supportive in our occasional email exchanges. Having attempted to counterbalance my imperfect theoretical skills with thorough research of background materials, I have to address a general thanks to all those anonymous individuals who made it possible, by spending conspicuous amounts of time and money (and often incurring in legal sanction), constructing amazingly comprehensive online libraries—a goldmine for any researcher, allowing for a new way of doing scholarly work, one from which there is no turning back (and profit-hungry publishers will have to come to terms with this). The proper name Aaron Swartz will metonymically indicate this militant multitude. I am also very grateful to all those Facebook contacts of mine who often helped to track down hard-to-access papers: Nick Srnicek and David Ryan Mullins must be mentioned particularly in this respect. Finally, my family. My parents and my brother have been and remain enormously supportive of my choice (or should I say my hope) of an academic career, have been patiently enduring long periods of silence, and have all performed loving child-caring duties, allowing me a priceless few distraction-free hours of writing. Sian deserves more credit than I can fully express here, having lovingly and selflessly provided me with indispensable emotional, financial, and editorial support. I thank her dearly for her patience on those numerous occasions when my mood was pushed way beyond my standard levels of mild cantankerousness into the (even) less pleasant territories of depressive self-doubt and frustration- 5 induced grumpiness. It’s a shame that all the witty ways to say that such a thesis would just not have been possible without her have been already used and abused.
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