This follows on from the talk I posted just below, conversations around related themes with many friends, and what I’ve been reading lately. Comments accepted with gratitude.
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These are notes in attempt to encapsulate in another way my basic problems with Hardt and Negri, which are really problems with a great deal of thought at least within the marxist tradition. I’m addressing Hardt and Negri’s work here as it’s in connection with their work, which I’m an enthusiast of, that I’ve begun to work out these problems. I should also note that I am aware that I perhaps play fast and loose with terms, categories, and thinkers referenced. This is partially due to the fact that my reflections here are in large part derived from incomplete readings and secondary sources and conversations. These are defects which I will need to correct in future research.
My disagreement is two-fold: Hardt and Negri risk constituting a secularized theodicy, and second, they risk re-inscribing Plato’s myth of the three metals from which humans are composed. I suspect both aspects are closely linked at the conceptual level - and not merely at the level of my own disagreement - but I can’t be sure here. At a minimum, both of these reservations of mine are in response to Hardt and Negri’s insistence on the newness of the - or, of a greater - capacity for self organization within the present. What follows are only provisional hypotheses, as the beginning of a medium term research project dealing initially with Plato, Augustine, and Leibnitz. In the longer term, this project aims at trying to develop for myself an understanding of marxism - or, a use of marxism’s valuable components - shorn of both theodictic and platonic components.
First, theodicy. Hardt and Negri’s insistence on the newness of the capacity for self organization risks constituting a secularized theodicy. Hard and Negri ascribe a new and greater capacity for self-organization, a greater communist potentiality, to the working class in the present. Walter Benjamin claimed that every generation has a weak messianic power, and that every moment is a narrow gate through which the messiah might pass and might has passed. That is, communism is always possible in any given historical moment. By this I mean that people at any given moment have or had the requisite capacities out of which communism could be or could have been enacted.
The easy response, of course, is “why didn’t a communist society happen yet?” My reply must be first off to admit that of course communism (in the sense of an entire communist society, I do believe that there are moments of communism possible and existent at a variety of moments throughout history, as I’ve elaborated, albeit imperfectly, elsewhere) has not happened. But “did not happen” is not the same as “could not have happen”. For example, at certain times and in certain places women, working people, and many other populations - generally speaking - have not read. Does this mean that they were incapable of learning to read? Of course not. In many cases, the teaching of the ability to read has been closely regulated, so as to prevent them from reading. The “they did not read” was a result of relationships of command and management, to prevent the capacity from being realized.
I want to make a brief aside about this word ‘realized’ before I continue further. When I say “to prevent the capacity from being realized” I say the word realized in a dual sense. I mean realized as in actualized, enacted, acted upon. I also
mean realized in the everyday sense of consciousness and awareness. That is to say, the relationships of command and management that I mentioned aimed to prevent people from realizing that they were capable of reading. This latter non-realization easily turns into - and often exists in the form of - a belief in incapacity. This is what Jacques Ranciere has called stultification, a belief in one’s own incapacity and fundamentally a fear of own’s own freedom. The prevention of realizing at the level of awareness that one has a capacity has the effect of contributing the nonrealization, in the sense of actualization, of capacities.
Hardt and Negri claim a new capacity or newly greater capacity for self-organization, which entails a prior incapacity or less capacity. Hardt and Negri deny that every generation has or had a weak messianic force, that every moment is a narrow gate that the messiah might pass through or might have passed through. Or, at best, they claim that our generation’s messianic force is not as weak as that of prior generations, our moment is a wider and more inviting gate for the messiah’s entry than prior moments were.
If prior moments could not accomplish communist potentials, if their weak messianic force was not able to open the gate to allow the messiah to enter, then the best those moments were capable of doing was to contribute to the ability of future moments to usher in communism, to open the gate for the messiah. That is, all that people in prior moments were able to do was to contribute to our own coming into the world. The absence of communism previously was necessarily the case, those moments were a priori incapable of communism. The people in those moments who fought for modes of communism were quixotic. Perhaps these quixotic people were useful to us in the present, by their being quixotic and carrying out attempts at doing things which they did not realize were impossible, but it remains that they were attempting truly impossible projects. In a way, the ‘perhaps they were useful’ is precisely what I object to. It risks becoming an apology for past atrocities, because without those horrible acts we would not be here today with our stronger messianic power. Those acts are regrettable, but ultimately a part of the unfolding of the good order and in a way our finally bringing about communism will redeem those prior atrocities.
This is a secular theodicy which retroactively ascribes necessity and impossibility to prior moments, and denies the simple brute ugliness and tragedy of the extinction of so many possibilities having been drowned in blood. As Benjamin noted social-democracy looks to the future - or, looks at a complex of the present and the future - and so, because unlike the historical materialist who looks to the past - or, looks at a complex of the present and past - and so social democracy diminishes the proletariat’s class hatred, which is one of our sources of strength.
Secondly, Platonism. Plato believed in an order of three types of souls, those made of gold, silver, and bronze. Within the social order of the city, the function of the gold is to rule. The function of the other is to be ruled, because they are not capable of self-rule. They are capable only of being ruled.
For Plato, the order of the city is one in which everyone does one thing. Thus, the incapacity of the bronze souled is due the fact that they can only do the one thing of meeting their needs, of producing, of working. They can act, but not think. That is why they need the gold souled to direct their action. The gold souled are capable of two things. They are philosopher-kings, philosophers and kings who can do two things:e to think - to determine what should done - and to act - to take steps needed to carry out, and to get others to carry out, what should be done.
We can see this same scheme at work in the Leninist-Lukacsian perspective. The workers are not capable of getting beyond trade-union consciousness. This is not biological, a natural soul as in Plato. Still, it is a result of the objective social order into which people are born, and order which the people who are turned into workers are not capable of changing.
We might say that for the Leninist-Lukacsian perspective, one is born an empty vessel with no soul, only the capacity to contain a soul. The order of the city places souls within people as empty vessels. Some are made workers, they are filled with bronze souls. These bronze souled people are not capable of changing the processes by which the city assigns souls to vessels. Some day, in the future, perhaps, there will be a world in which everyone has gold souls, but that is not the case today.
For the Leninist-Lukacsian, workers are not capable of getting beyond trade-union consciousness. That is why workers need the party as vanguard, which is directed by the leaders of the party. The gold-souled leaders of the party - for example, Lenin, and perhaps Lukacs - are needed to lead the bronzed souled in the construction of a better order of the city, a construction which requires the destruction of at least parts of the present order of the city. The leaders can do this because they are gold-souled, and thus capable of two things. We can note that in the new order of the city created afterward - and we could look to historical examples - the bronze souled may, at best, do a different or better thing, but they still do only one thing.
The claim of a new capacity or new greater capacity for self-organization implies a prior incapacity or prior less capacity. Hardt and Negri stretch the myth of the three metal souls across a temporal or historical grid. In prior eras there were bronze souls, or souls alloyed with bronze, or at least there were more of these souls. In our era there are gold souls, or souls alloyed with less bronze, and there is a historical process in which the composition the alloyed souls is changing, with a higher quantity of gold, and more gold souls. We are today capable of all being philosopher-kings, or we are all becoming more capable of this. We are or are entering the age of gold, as opposed the prior age of bronze.
It should be noted, however, that the becoming-gold and the becoming more numerous of the golden occurs connected with a process of immaterialization of labor, such that there are sectors with higher quantities or percentages of souls with greater amounts of gold within them. Hardt and Negri insist that these sectors, the most immaterial or immaterialized, should not be politically hegemonic, but it is not at all clear how they can consistently make this insistence.
The three metals were a myth. All souls are golden. The fact that people have done only one thing - and they haven’t really done only one thing anyway, that is an ideological distortion by those predisposed to see or with a vested interest in seeing a division of souls with an attendant division of labor and command - that people have done only one thing does not mean that people were capable of only one thing. The bronze souled can only do one thing. But what evidence is there for this claim? That the bronze souled only do one thing. This is a tautology.
The bronze souled do only one thing. Or more directly, they are meant by the rulers of the present order to do only one thing, and that thing is to follow orders, even if those orders involve suffering and dying horribly. The bronze souled do only one thing. Therefore the bronze souled can only do one thing. Women and slaves don’t read. Therefore women and slaves can’t read. Nonsense, and pernicious nonsense that serves the interests of those who want the bronze souled to do only the one thing that they are being ordered to do, to serve.
The bronze souled - we could also say the proletariat, and we could think of other examples as well - is simply the name that those in power give to those others who the powerful want to do only the single thing of serving. The name says nothing of capacity. The name does begin to say something of capacity, however, when the series of permutations is repeated enough times, chanted from many corners of society: “you do only one thing, you are capable of only one thing”, in a way that attempts to mask the moral judgment “you should do only one thing” and the command - backed up by force - “do only one thing”.
One way that this name and function - bronze souled, doing only one thing - can be maintained is precisely through the repetition of the chant such that those to whom the name and function are ascribed begin to chant it ourselves, and we begin to believe it. We can do only one thing. This is all we are capable of. The order of the city makes sense. This may not be a theodicy precisely, but the effect is similar.
I’ve digressed from Hardt and Negri, but I will get back to them. Marx wrote that the anatomy of the ape derives from the anatomy of the human. Though it contains an anthropocentric and a teleological tone, this phrase is useful here. The claim makes no sense at the level of physical bodies: apes did not derive historically from the human. It makes more sense at the level of epistemology or of the contents of knowledge.
We look at the present from our position within it (we look at the ape from our position as humans) and our understanding of the present (our understanding of the human) informs or creates our understanding of the past (of the ape). We look at postfordist capitalism and from our position within it we look back and the past looks different. Hardt and Negri see the present immaterial laborers and say in effect: “they work in conditions - they are themselves - flexible, mobile, different. They do two things at once! Because they do two things at once they must have gold souls!” From here Hardt and Negri derive the idea that people have gained gold souls in the present. We have all become or are becoming capable of self-organization.
It makes sense to say today in postfordism that we are golden souled. But why conclude that people were not also so before? Why say “immaterial laborers have golden souls” and treat that as evidence for the claim “we have become golden souled and are becoming increasingly so!” Why not look at flexibilized immaterial production and the workers in that production, say “They must have gold souls!” and so conclude that here we have evidence all souls are and have been gold?
From postfordism it makes more sense to look back critically at figures like Lenin and Lukacs and Plato. These figures served - tried to build, justify, maintain - certain orderings of the city. These social orders have treated many people as bronze souled, for some reason we can not comprehend, or rather for the reason which we viscerally hate: the reason of wanting those people only to follow commands. And if we look closely - as others have done - we can find further evidence for golden souledness in other historical examples, examples which are not surprisingly written out of the dominant histories that are written about - and by and for those with vested interests - the present order. These histories aim, among other things, to inculcate the myth of the three metals into those of us consigned to the name and function of bronze souled. In other words, they aim to stultify us, in the interest of those who see themselves as golden souled, and who do really rule the world.
I’m sure it is clear that I am arguing that Hardt and Negri repeat the myth of the three metals. Perhaps they do not do so in the present, perhaps they think the myth no longer obtains, or is coming to not obtain. I’m not sure. They do, however, repeat this myth for prior eras. As I have said elsewhere with regard to these kinds of concerns of mine, I am not entirely sure what is at stake. At a minimum, I see no good reason for Hardt and Negri to retain the positions I am disagreeing with. Their position, by repeating the myth and the attendant myth laden histories, they make it harder to see and to look for examples which we can use as additional evidence with which to assert the universality of golden souledness, or, what Ranciere has called the opinion of universal and equal intelligence. Additionally, I’m not sure what is at stake but I think it is a good idea to avoid any idea that ascribes a priori limits and incapacity to anyone, if our goals are the enacting our capacities, increasing of our individual and collective powers to do so, and destroying the social order that prevents these actions in order to steal our capacities from us so that they can be used to maintain our servility.
Hmm. I think I disagree with this fairly strongly.
Firstly, it’s ‘Leibniz’ - ‘Leibnitz’ are a type of biscuit.
Secondly, your reasoning is wrong. “Women and slaves don’t read therefore they can’t read.” This is valid - women and slaves could not read. Being able to read is not the same thing as having the capacity to learn to read. You need to distinguish this extra level: it’s not just a matter of doing or not being able to do, but also of being able to learn to do. This is the Leninist point. It is also Hardt and Negri’s point: workers are now educated to a far higher degree of abilities in a variety of politically important areas.
Thirdly, on necessity and possibility, consider this: possibility is really just about epistemic uncertainty. Forget your modal logic, which is really just sophistry. Everything in the past is necessary - we can say ‘what if’, but in fact there is a very complex network of reasons which we are incapable of understanding which brought about the results we have (quantum indeterminacy notwithstanding). The future appears as an open field of possibilities only because we cannot work out what is going to happen. Communism may happen or it may not happen. The classic Marxian clam is to have discovered a law of history that means it will happen. If we’re going to abandon that, then it’s all conjecture.
Comment by mark — October 24, 2005 @ 2:24 am
hi Mark,
Thanks for the comments. Leibnitz is an accepted spelling in the US (and we call them cookies, not biscuits. Biscuits are something else, which you probably call scones).
You’re right that I was sloppy on the distinction between ‘able to read’ and ‘able to learn to read’, thanks for pointing that out.
The point I want to make is elsewhere, though, which is precisely against the historically necessity argument your making. I probably can’t convince you out of the view of the future appearing as an open field of possibilities only because of epistemic uncertainty (I’m much more likely to employ an ad hominem or guilty by association kind of argument, which can be rhetorically effective in some circles but which you’re probably see right through). It’s been too long since I’ve engaged with the arguments I used to use when this disagreement would come up - analytic stuff on epistemology and metaphysics etc - but I don’t have time to refresh my memory by reading that stuff in the near future. I’ll pass your comments on to friends who do more rigorous philosophy than me, philosophy of logic and all that.
The only real argumentative rejoinder I’ll make is this: I think it’s a performative contradiction to assert on the one hand epistemic uncertainty and other hand ontological or real world necessity/pre-determinedness. If one has the knowledge to say the latter, then there’s only a weak form of epistemic uncertainty (we have the knowledge that events are pre-determined, but lack the knowledge of what precisely those pre-determined events will be). On the other hand, if there’s epistemic uncertainty, then it should apply to the knowledge claim that events are pre-determined as well. I don’t think you can have it both ways, unless you want to make a fairly in depth set of arguments about why there’s one type of epistemic uncertainty but not another, why there’s a pre-determinedness of events, and how we can know this. That seems like an awful lot of work when the simpler conclusion is just to reject pre-determinedness.
I suspect none of this moves you, just as your argument doesn’t in any way convince me. What you say is basically “if the future is an open field then everything is just conjecture”. The latter appears unacceptable to you, for reasons you don’t state (and which is a little weird because you are happy with a certain type of uncertainty but not with a more thorough going type), so you reject the future as an open field of possibilities.
My hunch is that your process of reasoning actually proceeds - it used to for me when I found these arguments convincing - such that epistemic uncertainty is produced as an argumentative support for the starting assumption of pre-determinedness. (That is, one wants to shore up belief ‘C’ and so argues ‘B’ and ‘A’ in order to derive an argument “Since ‘A’ and ‘B’ therefore ‘C’”.) Maybe not, though. I’m curious in any case to know why you’d want to argue for pre-determination. I’m fine with saying it’s all conjecture. You don’t have to be, and are welcome to agree with the Negrian and Leninist idea.
I am also pretty willing to admit that my view that its all conjecture (which is essentially a paraphrase of “the future is an open field of possibilties”) is itself a conjecture. I suspect that its harder to consistently say “it’s not all conjecture” and admit that this statement is itself a conjecture. You might say that this conjecture stuff just becomes a form of secular theology, but that too would be okay (the reply, though, would be “so’s your view, I’m just willing to admit it”).
If I’m really honest, though, I do have to admit that I think un(der)determination - and not simply as a result of epistemic uncertainty - is a regulative idea without which a great deal of other phenomena don’t make sense. I don’t think I can make an argument for that, though. I’d even be willing to concede that it can’t be conclusively verified (I already admitted it might be theological), but lack of verification is no reason to abandon a belief. Conclusive dis-proof is, but I haven’t encountered a conclusive disproof for the idea that it’s all conjecture so I’m happy to continue with this belief.
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — October 24, 2005 @ 3:47 am
Hi Nate
this is a kind of scattergun response, it seems to me. I take your point about underdetermination though, although it seems to me that this is in itself, as we see at the end, a epistemically indeterminate question! Here’s some Althusser I read this morning:
“If it is true, as Leninist practice and reflection prove, that the revolutionary situation in Russia was precisely a result of the intense overdetermination of the basic class contradiction, we should perhaps ask what is exceptional about this ‘exceptional situation’, and whether, like all exceptions, this one does not clarify its rule – is not, unbeknown to the rule, the rule itself. For, after all, are we not always in exceptional situations? The failure of the 1849 Revolution in Germany was an exception, the failure in Paris in 1871 was an exception, the German Social-Democratic failure at the beginning of the twentieth century pending the chauvinist betrayal of 1914 was an exception . . . exceptions, but with respect to what? To nothing but the ‘dialectical’ schema, which in its very simplicity seems to have retained a memory (or rediscovered the style) of the Hegelian model and its faith in the resolving ‘power’ of the abstract contradiction as such: in particular, the ‘beautiful’ contradiction between Capital and Labour.”
Sorry, I’m too lazy and busy to really attend to this issue right now!
Comment by mark — October 25, 2005 @ 2:54 am
hi Mark,
I’m afraid I’ll need the Althusser parsed for me, he’s not someone I know. I don’t know what is meant by ‘overdetermination’. I get the bits about exceptions being the rule. I don’t get the ‘dialectical schema’ bit either. What’s this an excerpt from and when was it written?
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — October 27, 2005 @ 2:04 am
easy question first: this is from ‘Contradiction and Overdetermination’ from 1962 which is available online here.
Overdetermination is where an effect is produced by more causes than it in fact needs. This occurs all the time in mental events, where there are simply loads of concatenating reasons for things that happen in your head, which are simply more than are needed to produce that effect. The idea is that in history as in psychology, the existence of multiple sufficient causes is why things happen, rather than indicative of competing explanations only one of which can be correct.
By “‘dialectical’ schema”, A. is just attacking Hegelian Marxism, which predicts results that never obtain in its abstraction (I think).
My point with this is that:
1. things are not ontologically ‘possible’. They are overdetermined or non-existent.
2. the idea that revolution is always possible is based on abstraction not materialism.
Comment by mark — October 28, 2005 @ 3:15 am
odd, I just tried posting a reply to this but lost it.
‘Overdetermination’ is when an event has multiple causes, any one of which in itself is sufficient to determine the event. Althusser thinks that in history as in psychology, this is generally how things work.
A. is attacking ‘dialectics’, which is what he sees as an incorrect, Hegelian Marxism which unlike Marx himself tried to understand history according to an abstraction.
The points here are that:
1. events not possible, but overdetermined or non-existent;
2. to say that they are possible is to abandon materialism in favour of an ideal schema.
Comment by mark — October 28, 2005 @ 3:20 am
hi Mark,
Where’s this from in Althusser’s work? I’d like to have a look as it’s interesting.
That said, I’m completley unconvinced. Particularly so given your (to my mind rather mystifying) attachment to one type of epistemic uncertainty (future is unknown, probably unknowable) but not another (there is at least one single predicate of the future which is knowable, which is that it is pre-determined).
I don’t see how overdetermination explains much at all. If events are either over-determined or they do not happen then over-determination seems to essentially a synonym for ‘having happened’ or for ‘having been caused to happen’. To say ‘events are overdetermined or they are non-existent’ seems to just be paraphrasing ‘effects result from causes’.
This also seems to only function retro-actively: we look upon some effect/event and apply after the fact a cause/overdetermining factor. We might, in a particular moment, speculate that this or that will be a cause/overdetermining factor. If the effect/event happens then we will have been right. If not, then we were wrong.
How does that add anything whatsoever to idea of ‘possibility’, other than a retroactive self-congratulation (we were on the side of history, we managed to act in line with the future despite epistemic uncertainty) or re-affirmation of our inability to predict (we wrongly identified the cause/overdetermining factor, epistemic uncertainty frustrates our ability to predict)?
“Why didn’t X effect/event which we believe desirable happen?” “There was no cause/overdetermining factor for X.” That simply restates that X didn’t happen, with the additional implication that X couldn’t have happened. I see no reason to find that a satisfying answer on any grounds other than argument.
Quite frankly, I suspect that the impulse or motivation here is a consolatory one, it was for me when I used to believe similar ideas and I think this is precisely one of the things at stake in determinist version of Marxism, of the “wait and see” or “internal contradiction” variety. “Why did we or X group we like lose Y conflict?” “Because they could not do other than lose. The time was not yet ripe.” This seems to be what this all boils down to. I can see the appeal: “the time was not yet ripe” implies that the time will be ripe some day. It keeps hope alive etc. But that’s not an argument for why anyone else should agree, and strikes me as being no more justifiable in argument than simply repeating “because they lost”.
More questions… why is retaining a term and idea like possibility an abandoment of materialism in favor an ideal schema? (I suspect you have a different sense or version of materialism than I do.) And, even if it is so, what’s wrong with an ideal schema? The epithet of idealism doesn’t convince me, particularly given that the materialism I think you’re using probably has all of the same problems translated into a different idiom (as Althusser has commented, there’s an idealism hidden in much of materialism), with the additional problematic premise of predetermination. What utility do you see in / what makes recommendable this materialism you favor?
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — October 28, 2005 @ 1:47 pm
hey Mark, housekeeping: your comment went to moderation, now it’s here. The default setting was for comments with links to get automatically sent to moderation, but not to notify me that there were comments needing moderating. I’ve changed it now, comments w/ more than 3 links get moderated. Sorry about the mix up, I’m not the most tech savvy.
Comment by Nate — October 28, 2005 @ 1:51 pm
Aha! I see the problem we were having now - you had made the (invalid) inference that I think the future is predetermined. I don’t. I think that the past is determined, and the future open. The future then might be determined, but that is unimportant really, plus the evidence is against it. I have no problem with accepting radical assymetry between the past and the future! Althusser I can’t speak for - I’m kind of going out on a limb in respect to my knowledge of him already.
Still, I think all this analytical guff about counterfcatuals and possible worlds really depends on a simple misunderstanding of the fact that possibility is really about the future, not the past or present. If I say ‘it was possible that things had happened differently’, then I’m really just making a statement about the perspective before it happened. Or something.
Comment by mark — October 29, 2005 @ 3:48 am
what I am willing to give you though Nate is that there is such a thing as a revolutionary situation. But if that is to mean anything, it has to be scarce. According to certain glib perspectives, we have been in an objectively revolutionary situation since the industrial revolution. In fact, we haven’t. I would be hard put to agree there is a revolutionary situation anywhere today, with the exception of Nepal, where the revolution is close to being overdetermined, with all quarters of political opinion but the far right being Marxist-Leninist. France in 1968, on the other hand, was (according to Althusser) a revolutionary situation, which had to be sabotaged by the PCF.
Comment by mark — October 29, 2005 @ 4:30 am
hi Mark,
I’m still not clear on this. In one sense the past is determined - things happened. But, I think you mean another sense of determined, one in which the past could not have been otherwise (necessary, as you put it). Have I misunderstood, or is that right?
If so then I don’t think you can get away from an implied pre-determination of the future. If the past is the first two dominoes in a series of ten falling over (and necessarily so) then the future will be the next eight following suit.
We don’t have to agree on this, but I am still puzzled as to why you’d want to argue that the past was determined and necessary. It doesn’t seem to be anything verifiable (not that possibility is either, but accompanying my views on possibility is also a claim about the relativity of certain knowledges, whereas the view of determined-ness you’re positing requires stronger views about what is and isn’t knowable). I also fail to see what useful rhetorical or analytic work the idea of determined-ness does, particularly in the area of politics and society. It just seems to reiterate that things have happened, only with some additional affective charge.
All of that aside, I agree that the end of capitalism doesn’t seem to be on the horizon any time soon. Regarding revolutionary situations, I think it’s important to note that they’re made (though of course not by the sheer force of will or activity of would-be revolutionaries), and that doing the sorts of things that, in some circumstances, lead to revolutionary situations are among the only options we’ve got anyway.
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — October 29, 2005 @ 6:39 am
I think we agree on the concrete issue that things are not determined by impersonal historical forces regardless of individual choices.
Philosophically speaking, I think the idea that things ‘could have happened otherwise’ is in itself pretty much meaningless, pace modal logic. I mean, you can say, if x hadn’t happened, y wouldn’t have happened, or at least not in the same way at the same time as it did - I understand that, and I understand that this kind of conjecture has an heuristic value. What concerns me is if you say, ‘everything could have happened exactly as it did an the outcome could have been different’. In a sense, that’s a reasonable conclusion to draw from the evidence for quanum indeterminacy, but I’m not sure what it really means. I suspect it is meaningless, unless you take the David Lewis line on it, i.e. say that it in a real sense both did and did not happen by quantifying across possible worlds. I take it that that is just crazy, because you’ve just posited the existence of an infinity of universes just to preserve a way of speaking for which there is no necessity or evidence.
Comment by mark — October 29, 2005 @ 11:39 am