immanence

An earlier post on this blog, entitled “Ontology 101,” proposed to clear the way for a general understanding of the different kinds of things an ontology (or general conception of reality) should be able to distinguish. My book The New Lives of Images, which will be out in September, examines in great detail the kinds of things called “images,” which I consider to be one of the main types of “things” we need to understand in order to improve our dealings with the world today. The bigger picture within which images function remains to be filled in.

“Ontology 101” elicited a private response from a friend, philosopher David Brahinsky, who reminded me that American philosopher Justus Buchler had a lot to offer with his ontological writings and that this blog has never adequately covered Buchler. This despite my years of writing about Whitehead, Peirce, and various more recent “speculative realists” such as Graham Harman, Levi Bryant, and others. So I invited David to write a guest post introducing Buchler’s thought. I’ve been sitting on it for a while, but am now sharing it in the hope that it can contribute to my and others’ further thinking about things, relations between them, and reality. Specifically, how is Buchler’s language helpful for distinguishing between the kinds of things that exist and what they are capable of?

David Brahinsky teaches comparative religion and philosophy at Bucks County Community College, Pennsylvania, and wrote his Ph.D. at SUNY Binghamton on the metaphysics of A. N. Whitehead and Justus Buchler. He’s also a folk singer, songwriter, and practicing therapist in the tradition of G. I. Gurdjieff and Wilhelm Reich. 

Buchler’s metaphysics

David Brahinsky

Justus Buchler’s Metaphysics of Natural Complexes is a study in the area of systematic metaphysics which, in its widest sense, is an attempt to formulate a conceptual system in which the concepts and principles discriminated express a most, and perhaps the most, general perspective on the world, the universe, existence, what is, reality, being, and so on. Buchler’s metaphysics, in my opinion, succeeds in this. It is used to describe what is common to all reality whatsoever, while also accounting for whatever differences prevail (which, of course, would be necessary in such a scheme since difference as well as commonality are essential aspects of existence).

His system expresses what is called “ontological parity,” where whatever is, in whatever way that it is, is just as ontologically real, in its way, as every other existent. This aspect of Buchler’s system differs from most metaphysical schemes in that they tend to entail some form of ontological priority, where one type of existent is most real or more real than others, usually seen in terms of some form of mind or matter, or, as with Whitehead, actuality. (Buchler’s essay “On a Strain of Arbitrariness in Whithead’s System,” published in October 1969 in the Journal of Philosophy, attempts to explain and justify this claim.) Buchler’s categories apply to what is actual, of course, but do not prioritize actuality over, for example, possibility. For Buchler, there is no primary sense of reality.

Buchler does not specifically concern himself with a number of topics that have been traditional in the history of metaphysics such as the nature of causation, freedom and determinism, perception, space and time, the origins of consciousness, the relation of mind and body, the specific nature of subatomic reality, and so on. He treats such issues as special questions, not questions a general system need address. His system discriminates concepts used for universal identification which is not vacuous or without content or perplexing as is, perhaps, the concept of being. It is also used to allow for discrimination of differences among what is identified, which is, of course, just as important. His system analyzes the nature of relations in general, discusses how to distinguish between actualities and possibilities, analyzes the general questions of identity, unity, uniqueness, ramification, location efficacy among others.

Buchler begins with his concept of natural complex as a concept of universal identification. As he puts it in Metaphysics of Natural Complexes (henceforth, MNC), “Whatever is, in whatever way, is a natural complex” (p. 1). This means, for him, that everything is complex, i.e., has “traits” (his preferred term – for its level of generality — rather than properties, characteristics, aspects, qualities, features, etc.). All that is has traits and all differences between complexes are differences in traits. Buchler tells us that relations, structures, processes, societies, human individuals, human products, physical bodies, words and bodies of discourse, ideas, qualities, contradictions, meanings, possibilities, myths, laws, duties, feelings, illusions, reasonings, dreams — all are natural complexes with traits. Traits too are natural complexes with traits, of course, thus every natural complex includes other natural complexes as traits.

Buchler uses the term “order” as another way of speaking about natural complexes. Traits are orders and are traits of other orders. This is not intended as a relation of enclosure, but, as Buchler puts it, one of “pertinence to an order” (MNC, p. 16). The term “order” adds a dimension to Buchler’s system in that as an order, a complex is a multiplicity that is also a relationality – it is a sphere of and for relatedness. Thus every complex is ordered in its specific way. Its traits pertain to it in just the way that they do. This gives complexes a unifying aspect and an identity. A complex, an order, is identified by its traits.

Some traits are traits of a complex’s “integrity,” which stands for whatever boundaries or limits prevail for a complex, whatever may be the conditions under which the limits obtain, wherever they may lie. The complex has just the status, the relations, the constitution it has. Its integrity is that in which its being a complex and that complex consists. The integrity of a complex, what makes it unique, is also a complex of traits. Its uniqueness is relative, ordinal, and so not absolute. Are complexes “things” or “individuals”? Are relations, processes, possibilities, structures, laws, kinds, groups “things” or “individuals”? Buchler thinks that if we use such terminology we lose the value of his terminology in terms of its power of generality.

Complexes, for Buchler, also have integrities in various contexts, thus to identify a complex involves understanding the complex’s various integrities, its various locations, which, for Buchler, constitute its “contour.” Reference to its contour, then, is required if identification of the complex as a plurality is desired.

Traits more weakly relevant to the uniqueness of a complex than those that constitute its integrity constitute its “scope” for Buchler. Thus a complex can remain itself, so to speak, even if it undergoes changes in scope. This accounts for the fact that complexes change yet retain their identity (if only Parmenides had figured this out!). A cup will be that cup even if it does not now contain the coffee that it contained. The man will still be the same man even if he does not run in a particular race.

Orders, for Buchler, are traits in relation, and relations are complexes with traits and of traits, minimally of the scope of the complex it is related to. Some like to say that everything is related to everything else. Not on Buchler’s scheme. Two complexes can be unrelated to each other if they are irrelevant to one another with respect to integrity or scope.

One significant implication of the term natural complex is that everything discriminated, every discriminandum, offers a prospect of query, is locatable in new orders, though not every complex is so open in every respect. As Buchler points out, technological limitations often prevail.

“Prevalence” is an important term in Buchler’s system. He finds it more useful to say complexes “prevail” in orders than to say they “exist.” Differences also prevail, of course, e.g., between actualities and possibilities (which, however, also have traits in common). But then for Buchler, every complex, every order, every trait is different in some respect.

Certain traits of complexes are possibilities, certain are actualities; both are complexes with traits, have integrities, scopes, contours, and prevail in and as orders. To identify a possibility is to identify a complex related to other complexes, some of which will be actualities. Sometimes an actual complex’s possibilities may be more relevant in certain contexts to its integrity or scope than its traits of actuality. For example, the possibility of getting cancer may be more relevant to a person’s desire to quit smoking than any actuality prevailing at the moment.

Of course, as Buchler points out, there can be “so-called possibilities,” possibilities whose integrity is arrived at by ambiguous or arbitrary means. Even so, such a complex is still an order of traits with its integrity and scope and contour. A possibility may never become actualized, of course, which doesn’t mean that it was not a “real” possibility at the time.

To my mind, Buchler’s system solves many metaphysical puzzles that I do not have space to elucidate here. But I would like to end with one, viz. the conundrums that pertain to how to identify and understand the ontological status of such “things” as plays and characters in plays such as Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Is the play the copy of it written in the book in your lap, the script the actors are using, the performance you are watching, the memorized lines in director’s mind, etc.? For Buchler, each of these is a complex, an order of traits that are related to other complexes and often to each other. They are all, therefore, at the highest level of generality, equally real, identifiable and uniquely, ontologically speaking, themselves. The play Hamlet is itself a natural complex, an order of traits, although it may not be identified as any one of the above mentioned traits in themselves.