Agent Ontologies and American Philosophy: Possibility for Revitalized Politics and Ethics

A philosophical shift is occurring in contemporary philosophy of science and social science. It is born of a weariness with well-rehearsed debates between epistemological foundationalists (be they positivists, critical theorists, or interpretivists) and epistemological anti-foundationalists (be they contemporary hermeneuticists, poststructuralists, or Rortyean neo-pragmatists.) Despite their differences, these philosophical literatures share a common assumption: that agency in the process of inquiry lies entirely within human minds. Either we create representations of a “real” world that passively awaits our accurate representation of it or uniquely accurate representations are impossible and humans “construct” their reality through selective representation of their experience. Both conceptions of inquiry presume the “objects” of our inquiries to be ontologically passive and so are examples of what Dewey called “spectator theories” of knowledge. This assumption is being questioned by an increasing number of contemporary philosophers and social theorists who are seeking a way out of unproductive cycles of realist/constructivist debates. This panel takes up a (re)emerging genre of response to these questions that we will refer to as agent ontologies. Agent ontologies posit that elements of epistemic constructivism and ontological realism can be reconciled if one posits that the objects of our inquiries are protean and agential. The idea of non-human agency has been given currency by the work of feminist philosopher of science Karen Barad (2007) who uses classic experiments in quantum physics to show that the reality of quantum phenomena emerges in the intra-action that occurs between observer and observed. The implications of quantum physics are not limited to a subatomic scale according to Barad. Instead they require our rethinking of the relationship between human knowledge and the material objects of knowledge. Reality, she offers, is not pre-determined and singular, but multiple and contingent. Different modes of being for both observer and observed emerge within an inquiry in a mutually co-constituting way that suggests a form of agency for both human and non-human elements of the intra-actions. Agent ontologies have been applied to a wide variety of fields of study including political science (Bennett, 2010), education studies (de Freitas & Sinclair, 2014), medical policy studies (Mol, 2002), ecological studies (Alaimo & Heckman, 2008; Kohn, 2013), and computational studies (Dixon-Roman, 2017; Hayles, 1999, 2017). Agent ontologies are relevant to the advancement of the American philosophy tradition for three reasons. First, among its central influences are American philosophers like William James, Alfred North Whitehead, and Donna Haraway (whose semiotic theory is drawn from that of Charles Sanders Peirce). It also has precedents in the philosophies of many North American Indigenous communities (Deloria, 1999). Second many of its primary proponents are located in American universities (such as Karen Barad, Jane Bennett, Stacey Alaimo, Susan Heckman, Samantha Frost and others). Third, agential realist scholars advocate for an ontological pluralism with ethical and political implications that are resonant with commitments found in American pragmatism. This panel will examine agent ontologies as they emerge from three perspectives that seek to foster inclusive communities (per the call for papers): the intersection of pragmatism and North American indigenous thought, the epistemic flexibility and political pessimism of critical race theory, and the application of contemporary feminist philosophy of science to practices of social inquiry. The shared argument of these papers is that agent ontologies can enable and extend the already existing commitments to social and political amelioration found in the American philosophical tradition.

References

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