txzdave:
Is it possible that the straining for the material unconcious is a sign that the concept of matter isn't doing any work for us anymore?
Can we continue to theorize about objects and physical systems without recourse to it?
Physics doesn't seem to have any kind of ultimate matter, or most basic, solid stuff, whether in the form of atoms or some kind of flow.Biological systems make their own elements out of energy and (bio) chemicals.
Why not talk about all of this without raising any ultimate concept of matter?
There are objects of many different kinds, none more real than any other, whether we're on the scale of neutrons, chairs, or cells.It seems like there is a certain convergence around this kind of materialism without matter in Luhmann, Sloderijk, and Harman, among others.
Heisenberg has been called idealist for his critique of substantialism in Physics and Philosophy, but isn't he doing something more like physics sans the concept of matter?
In media theory, it's clear that discursive practices are always bound up with the resistance of things. They can't get away with just being abstract or conceptual, taking place in some immaterial space of language or thought.
And then in the feminist theory, there's been the focus for decades now on how embodiment affects discursive practice.
The idea that matter is a-semiotic and a-conceptual seems to require an immaterial ontological plane, which seems to work against naturalistic meta-philosophy.
So the three questions would be.
Isn't there a lot of work in the ' humanities ' that takes resistance of things seriously?
Do we need the concept of matter for a naturalistic philiosophy of objects and practices?
Doesn't the passion for the real of matter and things reinscribe the matter/form distinction in spite of best intentions against hylomorphism, by reaching for an ultimate, most real substance- and then, conversely, doesn't it make the conceptual or linguistic realm seem all the more immaterial, which it can never really be ( especially if we're avoiding logocentrism )?