BothAndBlog Forum

Introducing Karen Barad’s New Materialism
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussi ... ent/824975


Barad says:
“In an agential realist account, matter does not refer to a fixed substance; rather, matter is substance in its intra-active becoming—not a thing but a doing, a congealing of agency. — Joshs

The quote from Barad's book does indeed sound as-if she is moving toward a middle position between Hard Mechanical Materialism and Soft Mental Idealism. This trend may be due to the undermining of classical Materialism by modern Quantum Physics, which is more mathematical than mechanical. Now, the sub-atomic "substance" of reality seems to be more an act of becoming, as an intangible waveform --- when observed --- "collapses" (i.e. transforms) into a measurable particle.

We, flesh & blood, humans still conceive of reality as-if it is a static thing instead of a dynamic process. Our senses typically paint a mental picture of reality that is a snapshot of a fleeting instant of ongoing change. That idealized image (merged into a movie) is what we sense as the material world. But, in reality, the ding an sich remains forever beyond the reach of our physical senses. Only our metaphysical imagination can "see" into the sub-atomic foundations of Reality.

Idea/ideal : Etymology. The word idea comes from Greek ἰδέα idea "form, pattern," from the root of ἰδεῖν idein, "to see."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idea
Note -- What we really "see" is our own ideas about reality.

Barad : In agential realism, realism is not about something substantialized and fixed or demarcated. Realism instead emphasizes that intra-active agentiality has real effects – effects that become ingredients in new and always also open-ended intra-active agencies.
https://dpu.au.dk/en/research/research- ... aterialism
Note -- The "Agent" is the Observer who "measures" reality into snapshot concepts

Information Realism :
Artificial Intelligence researcher, Bernardo Kastrup, seems to be finding evidence to support the ancient philosophy of Idealism, which further weakens the equally venerable Atomic & Materialistic paradigms of modern science. He is the author of a book, The Idea of The World, which argues for the “mental nature of reality”, also known as “metaphysical realism” . In this article he discusses “information realism”, and begins by quoting physicist Max Tegmark, author of the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis. “For Tegmark, the universe is a ‘set of abstract entities with relations between them,’ . . . Matter is done away with and only information itself is taken to be ultimately real.” Kastrup then describes how reductive methods failed to find the definitive atom, and instead discovered only amorphous fields. “At the bottom of the chain of physical reduction there are only elusive, phantasmal entities we label as “energy” and “fields”—abstract conceptual tools for describing nature, which themselves seem to lack any real, concrete essence.”
. . . . But in the Quantum realm, scientific certainties get turned upside down. “Indeed, according to information realists, matter arises from information processing, not the other way around. Even mind—psyche, soul—is supposedly a derivative phenomenon of purely abstract information manipulation.” The notion of purely abstract information does not compute in a materialistic world.
http://bothandblog4.enformationism.info/page18.html
Note -- Information Realism does not deny the feeling of reality that we get from interacting with the abstract fields around us. When we touch a tabletop, we don't feel the field, but merely the substantial surface implied by its resistance to penetration of the atomic force field.

While there are many forms of new materialism, Karen Barad’s agential realism is the first and most widely cited account. Barad is a physicist and philosopher who has updated Niels Bohr’s interpretation of the two slit experiment in quantum field theory and incorporated it into a model of material reality that re-thinks traditional notions of non-human material reality as well as human linguistic discourse in such as way as to dissolve distinctions between nature and culture, the real and the ideal. I am posting Barad’s ideas there because many of the discussions on the philosophy forum begin from one side or the other of such dualist divides between inside and outside, difference and identity. — Joshs

I was not acquainted with Barad's novel approach to reconciling Materialism with Idealism. But I am somewhat familiar with physicist (manhattan project) John A. Wheeler's notion of a Participatory Universe*1*2, where object & observer "intra-act", to use Barad's term. Dogmatic Materialists and Idealists may interpret the significance of that assertion by minimizing the contribution of the other side of the equation. But, I prefer to take a monistic BothAnd compromise : to accept that the world consists of both objects & agents, so Information passes in both directions ; in the form of Energy and Ideas. The dynamic system of intra-action includes both Nature & Culture. Humans don't literally create material Reality, but do participate in its creation as a concept.

*1. Wheeler :
It from bit. Otherwise put, every it—every particle, every field of force, even the space-time continuum itself—derives its function, its meaning, its very existence entirely—even if in some contexts indirectly—from the apparatus-elicited answers to yes-or-no questions, binary choices, bits. It from bit symbolizes the idea that every item of the physical world has at bottom—at a very deep bottom, in most instances—an immaterial source and explanation; that which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes–no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Archibald_Wheeler

*2. Our Participatory Universe :
This agrees with Niels Bohr‘s suggestion to his students, at the end of a life-time of thinking about our quantum reality, that Man is inside the equation, simply by being there. Man is “entangled” in this “participatory universe”.
And so, it follows, as Wheeler asserted, that the “laws” of the functioning of the Universe (physics) make man’s participation in the flow of events – in the observable material reality – a given. And if that is true, then, it follows, that that participation leads to more “creation” (actions by man) which, as Wheeler put it, is new “information” added to the world (the observable reality) which gives rise to (more) physics (more material effects in the Universe).
https://medium.com/@tarek_osman/our-par ... 640fed6585