Metaontology. Toward a prehuman thinking

Why

What is the relationship between Being and thinking?

Is it possible for multiplicity to be?

These two deeply intertwined questions - that have haunted Western thinking for centuries - are the starting point of this proposal.

The goal of this text is to foreground these two questions and to demonstrate how a particular form of publication, in this contemporary historical moment, responds to them.

The key assumption of this proposal is that thinking is always a material form of inscription. Many philosophical and theoretical analyses have shown how different inscriptions influence, determine and structure thinking.

The originality of this project lies in the fact that it performs the indissoluble relationship between thinking and material forms of inscription rather than simply analyzing it.

Being and thinking

There are two possible approaches to the first question: either Being can be separated from thinking or not. In the first case, Being could be even without the someone - or the something - who thinks it. Thinking is defined here in a very formal way as any form of access. Therefore, if Being can be separated from thinking, it can “be” even when there is nothing capable of accessing it.

⊕ Whereas I say, that things as objects of our senses existing outside us are given, but we know nothing of what they may be in themselves, knowing only their appearances, i.e., the representations which they cause in us by affecting our senses. Consequently I grant by all means that there are bodies without us, that is, things which, though quite unknown to us as to what they are in themselves, we yet know by the representations which their influence on our sensibility procures us, and which we call bodies, a term signifying merely the appearance of the thing which is unknown to us, but not therefore less actual. (Emmanuel Kant 1902, Part I Remark II, See annotation)¹

But this implies an evident paradox: how can it be possible to talk about something without having access to it? The simple fact of talking about Being implies that someone or something thinks it. To affirm the possibility of Being without thinking is an inherently dogmatic gesture because it is unable to be proven: the statement in itself implies a form of thinking which thus denies the possibility of Being without thinking. But if, in the second case, Being cannot be separated from thinking, this implies that Being - and thus also everything that “is”: the real, the world - is dependent on having access to it. There is no Being without thinking, thus all that “is” depends on thinking, which risks meaning that there is nothing but thinking - or at least that nothing can be proven to exist outside thinking.

⊕ With regard to the superstitions of logicians, I shall never tire of emphasizing a small, terse fact, which is unwillingly recognized by these credulous minds–namely, that a thought comes when “it” wishes, and not when “I” wish; so that it is a perversion of the facts of the case to say that the subject “I” is the condition of the predicate “think.” one thinks; but that this “one” is precisely the famous old “ego,” is, to put it mildly, only a supposition, an assertion, and assuredly not an “immediate certainty.” After all, one has even gone too far with this “one thinks”–even the “one” contains an interpretation of the process, and does not belong to the process itself. (Nietzsche 2003, Chapter I, 17. See annotation)²

Obviously, the first question to ask here is: who thinks? Who is the actor of the action of thinking? Who has access to Being? In modern Western philosophy, this actor is often considered a human being, and more precisely an individual. This individual is the subject who thinks the world. But if Being cannot be separated from thinking and if the actor of thinking is the individual, this means that the individual is the condition of possibility of Being.

Here is the paradox: on the one hand, there is a world that exists independently of human beings, but which, for that very reason, is totally inaccessible to them - and so they cannot affirm anything about its properties, not even that it exists; on the other hand, there is a world that exists only because human beings have access to it, but its existence is determined by their relationship with it. The former statement implies that there is a world without access to the world, whereas the latter affirms that there is an access to the world without a world. This is the paradox of access.

Albeit somewhat caricatured, these two philosophical positions can be defined as “dogmatic realism” and “correlationism”, respectively.

⊕ By ‘correlation’ we mean the idea according to which we only ever have access to the correlation between thinking and being, and never to either term considered apart from the other. We will henceforth call correlationism any current of thought which maintains the unsurpassable character of the correlation so defined. (Meillassoux 2009, 13.)³

Dogmatic realism requires dogmatism in order to be a realist: to affirm that there is a reality, it must disregard all experience and base its affirmation of reality on an a priori which is not demonstrable and not rational. The world, says the dogmatic realist, exists independently of human beings. There is no way to prove this, and their assertion is therefore dogmatic. Correlationism consists in avoiding the realist’s dogmatic naivety by asserting that human beings can only talk about what they have access to.

⊕ If one insists that metaphysical realism is incoherent (because we cannot even discuss realism outside of language or outside our context of practices), then one is openly stating that philosophy can be concerned only with our access to things. And this is idealism pure and simple, whether “transcendental” or not. (Harman 2002, 123)

But in doing, so correlationism risks falling into a radical constructivist logic whereby the world is no more than a product of the human mind. If the world is only what human beings think or perceive, they risk being unable to prevent everyone from seeing the world they would like and to build reality as they see fit. How is it possible to avoid historical negationism, for example? Is it possible to refer to a sense of reality as a means of countering fake news or conspiracy theories?

Another philosophical problem tied to correlationism is that some statements regarded as scientifically valid appear to be void of meaning if we do not accept the existence of the world beyond our perception of it.

⊕ Let us proceed then from this simple observation: today’s science formulates a certain number of ancestral statements bearing upon the age of the universe, the formation of stars, or the accretion of the earth. Obviously it is not part of our remit to appraise the reliability of the techniques employed in order to formulate such statements. What we are interested in, howevei, is understanding under what conditions these statements are meaningful. More precisely, we ask: how is correlationism liable to interpret these ancestral statements? (Meillassoux 2009, 21)⁴

This is particularly true for scientific statements concerning a time anterior - sometimes very anterior - to the origin of the human species. What would be the meaning of statements concerning geological eras, for example, when at that time there could be no access to the world simply because there were no human beings? According to a correlationist approach, statements that relate to eras prior to mankind have meaning only after a “retrojection of the past on the basis of the present”: this past exists only now, for human beings today. And yet, this does not take into account the fact that this kind of scientific statement refers to a real past entirely independent of human access.

⊕ The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. I do not mean the systematic scheme of thought which scholars have doubtfully extracted from his writings. I allude to the wealth of general ideas scattered through them. His personal endowments, his wide opportunities for experience at a great period of civilization, his inheritance of an intellectual tradition not yet stiffened by excessive systematization, have made his writings t an inexhaustible mine of suggestion. Thus in one sense by stating my belief that the train of thought in these lectures is Platonic, I am doing no more than expressing the hope that it falls within the European tradition. But I do mean more: I mean that if we had to render Plato’s general point of view with the least changes made necessary by the intervening two thousand years of human experience in social organization, in aesthetic attainments, in science, and in religion, we should have to set about the construction of a philosophy of organism. (Whitehead 1978, 39. See annotation.)

Both dogmatic realism and correlationism therefore have impossible consequences. Philosophical history, in its totality, can be interpreted as an attempt to find solutions to this opposition. Many philosophers propose convincing solutions to this antinomy by working on the nuances of concepts, on the complexity of structures of reasoning, on different models of thought. In other words, no philosophy worthy of this title falls into the naivety of either position. However, this problem remains open, giving rise to another perspective and mode of reasoning: it continues to appear necessary to repeatedly address this opposition and to propose new solutions. This is due to the very nature of the philosophical gesture, which consists in proposing new structures of thought and inferring logical pathways in order to overcome paradoxes and to (re)interpret the world. This need is justified by the fact that thought always corresponds to the material conditions of its production. These conditions are simultaneously technical, historical, political, social and economic… They are the reason why it still makes sense to philosophize even after 2600 years of philosophy.

Prehuman thinking

⊕ The third syllogism is the Idea of philosophy, which has self-knowing reason, the absolutely-universal, for its middle term: a middle, which divides itself into Mind and Nature, making the former its presupposition, as process of the Idea’s subjective activity, and the latter its universal extreme, as process of the objectively and implicitly existing Idea. The self-judging of the Idea into its two appearances (§§ 575, 576) characterises both as its (the self-knowing reason’s) manifestations: and in it there is a unification of the two aspects:—it is the nature of the fact, the notion, which causes the movement and development, yet this same movement is equally the action of cognition. The eternal Idea, in full fruition of its essence, eternally sets itself to work, engenders and enjoys itself as absolute Mind. (Hegel 2012, sec. 577. See annotation)⁵

A radical solution to the paradox of access is to focus on the very structure of thinking as a mediation, a dual back and forth, a folding, a reflection of Being. In this way, it remains impossible to separate Being from thinking and instead becomes possible to separate Being from human beings. What makes the paradox of access philosophically problematic is the fact that it seems to reduce all existence to its relationship with human beings. But if thinking is not necessarily human, then it can be considered inseparable from Being. This reasoning is the one of history’s many “realistic” idealisms, considered by philosophers for centuries, from Plato to Berkeley and, in the modern age, by Hegel.

Being cannot be separated from thinking because Being is thinking, thinking is the very structure of Being. There is not a world and then an access to the world, but rather an original mediation that produces the world and an access to it. These are two interconnected concepts. The world is originally an “accessible world”, insofar as the concept of “world” is inextricably defined by its accessibility. Mediation would not be a gesture made by the subject to access the world, but a dynamic inscribed in the world itself.

⊕ To say that we cannot extricate ourselves from the horizon of correlation is not to say that the correlation could exist by itself, independently of its embodiment in individuals. We do not know of any correlation that would be given elsewhere than in human beings, and we cannot get out of our own skins to discover whether it might be possible for such a disincarnation of the correlation to be true. (Meillassoux 2009, 22–23)⁶

This idea can be criticized as a disguised form of dogmatic realism: how is it possible to state that thinking is originary? Criticizing dogmatism - as Hume did, then Kant and contemporary anti-dogmatic philosophers - fundamentally teaches two things: first that there is no world without access to the world, and second that this access must be embodied, that is, it must be concrete, objectifiable and real. It is indeed impossible to separate thinking from being. And this thinking must be embodied. But this thinking, must it necessarily be human? This embodiment, must it necessarily take place in the body of a human being? Is it true that there are no forms of embodiment other than that produced by human beings?

⊕ Humans may enter into symbiotic relationships with intelligent machines (already the case, for example, in computer-assisted surgery); they may be displaced by intelligent machines (already in effect, for example, at Japanese and American assembly plants that use robotic arms for labor); but there is a limit to how seamlessly humans can be articulated with intelligent machines, which remain distinctively different from humans in their embodiments. The terror, then, though it does not disappear in this view, tends away from the apocalyptic and toward a more moderate view of seriated social, technological, political, and cultural changes. (Hayles 1999, loc 824)

In today’s digital environment, this question arises in a particular way, and this text could not exist independently of the technological environment in which it emerges. The whole history of philosophy can be interpreted as an attempt to depart from the opposition between dogmatic realism and correlationism, and yet the specifically digital forms of inscription invite a different perspective. In fact, technological developments question the very concept of “human” and its relationship to the nonhuman, the machine, and technology. The point is not to find new solutions, or to criticize the great philosophical gestures of the past which have proposed functional ways of understanding the relationship between the world and human access to it. Rather, it is a matter of knowing how, today, this relationship concretely and tangibly presents itself: it is necessary to take into account the historical, social, cultural and technological environment in which philosophical discourse emerges.

⊕ The hypothesis of this essay is that the word ‘modern’ designates two sets of entirely different practices which must remain distinct if they are to remain effective, but have recently begun to be confused. The first set of practices, by ‘translation’, creates mixtures between entirely new types of beings, hybrids of nature and culture. The second, by ‘purification’ creates two entirely distinct ontological zones: that of human beings on the one hand; that of nonhumans on the other. Without the first set, the practices of purification would be fruitless or pointless. Without the second, the work of translation would be slowed down, limited, or even ruled out. (Latour 1993, 10–11)

This is the first step towards considering the materiality of the inscription, that is to say, the very concrete, physical way in which something exists as a trace or a sign, or more generally material elements. The Digital Humanities, as a discipline and as a field of inquiry, proposes some paths enabling an analysis of the materiality of the inscription, without necessarily linking it with human beings. The notion of Digital Humanities relates to the definition of “human” and its relationship with technology and machines. The expression Digital Humanities seems, at first sight, an oxymoron because it unites two opposing notions: the human and the machine. The topos of the unquantifiable human who has feelings and a life – a life which cannot be reduced to a digital logic – is undermined by this expression which associates the human and the computer.

⊕ My posthumanist account calls into question the givenness of the differential categories of human and nonhuman, examining the practices through which these differential boundaries are stabilized and destabilized. (Barad 2007, 66)

In line with Digital Humanities, Posthuman studies develop an anti-dualist approach which helps to question the status of the human in relation to technological developments. “Post-human” is, indeed, a complex and ambiguous label because it assimilates extremely distinct and even contradictory approaches.

⊕ posthumanism in my sense isn’t posthuman at all — in the sense of being “after” our embodiment has been transcended — but is only posthumanist, in the sense that it opposes the fantasies of disembodiment and autonomy, inherited from humanism itself. (Wolfe 2010, XV)

This text will understand posthumanism as a category which proposes to break down the human/non-human binary. The concept of posthumanism does therefore not imply moving beyond the human to an augmented humanity - this would be a “transhumanist” interpretation -, but to question the very category of human and its relationship with the non-human.

⊕

Rather than enhancing the intellect and physiology of human beings, it is a matter of questioning the notion of human as it emerges from humanism, considering it a category positioned as the centre of the universe. It is here that the post-human approach can help solve the paradox of access. To assert that thinking can only be embodied in an individual implies that there is a definite and recognizable “human”, and that this human alone accesses the world as the subject of an “I think” or an “I perceive”. On the contrary, the originary mediation can be non-human. The “I” of the “I think” can be an “it”.

⊕ By “posthumanist” I mean to signal the crucial recognition that nonhumans play an important role in natural/cultural practices, including everyday social practices, scientific practices, and practices that do not include humans. But also, beyond this, my use of “posthumanism” marks a refusal to take the distinction between “human” and “non-human” for granted, and found analyzes on this presumably fixed and inherent set of categories. Any such hardwiring precludes a genealogical investigation into the practices through which “humans” and “nonhumans” are delineated and differentially constituted. A posthumanist performative account is worthy of mentioning the nature-culture of dichotomy in its foundations, leading to a genealogical analysis of these crucial distinctions are materially and discursively produced. (Barad 2007, 32)

This is why rather than a post-humanism, the key-concept here is pre-humanism. Prehumanism indicates a dynamic of production based on the relations that precede humanity. There is not a human, a non-human and then a relationship between these two poles, but rather the opposite: a series of dynamic relationships from which emerge the human who ultimately is only an “après-coup”, an idea stabilized a posteriori for the purpose of discourse. This state of relations is an open process that involves acts rather than essences, and essences - concepts like “human” - are crystallized afterward.

It is therefore not only possible to speak of a nonhuman thinking, but necessary that this prehuman thinking exists in order to refer to the human at all. First, there is an “it thinks” and it is only this “it thinks” which makes it possible to talk afterward about an “I think”.

Unity and multiplicity

⊕ What is your meaning, Zeno? Do you maintain that if being is many, it must be both like and unlike, and that this is impossible, for neither can the like be unlike, nor the unlike like–is that your position? (Plato 2008, 127e. See annotation)⁷

The notion of a prehuman inscribed thinking makes it possible for Being and thinking to be inseparable and, at the same time, avoids the anti-realist implications of correlationism.

This solution is nevertheless problematic. The fact that Being cannot be separated from thinking could mean either that Being can be reduced to thinking, or that thinking is inherent, and innately tied to Being. If the former is true, this means that ontology is impossible, and that only gnoseology is possible. Gnoseology welcomes multiplicity because it invites the possibility of different points of view (on the same thing). ⊕ The first of created things is being, and nothing was created before it. […] Ever since, it is clear why there are multiple intelligible forms, and that Being can only be one, simple, and why there are multiple souls, why some of them are stronger than others, and their Being is one and simple, bearing in itself no diversity. (Liber de causis. Pattin 1966, my translation. See annotation and annotation)⁸ At the same time, this approach returns to the paradox of access. If the latter is true, the structure of thinking has an ontological value, wherein thinking is Being. In this case, however, multiplicity is a problem because Being cannot be multiple.

Multiplicity could be possible according to one of the following propositions:

1. to postulate an irreducible difference between beings and Being (an ontological difference): but this means that ultimately the difference is reduced to the unity of Being. “Beings” are multiple, but “Being” is singular, and yet “beings” derive from “Being”. ⊕ Being and that which is are different. For being itself does not exist yet, but that which is exists and is established when it has taken on the form of being. (Boetius, n.d. See annotation)⁹
2. to postulate multiple ways of thinking, perceiving or knowing Being - different interpretations of what is: but this affirms that difference has only a derivative place, and therefore no ontological value. In fine these multiple ways of thinking are only ways to know one singular unit: Being. Difference and multiplicity would thus be only one kind of gnoseological hallucination: different ways of perceiving a single world. ⊕ so “being” is used in various senses, but always with reference to one principle. For some things are said to “be” because they are substances; others because they are modifications of substance; others because they are a process towards substance, or destructions or privations or qualities of substance, or productive or generative of substance or of terms relating to substance, or negations of certain of these terms or of substance. (Hence we even say that not-being is not-being.) (Aristotle 1989, 4, 2 1003b 5, See annotation)¹⁰

This means that any consistent ontological approach risks denying the very possibility of multiplicity: Being is singular.

The impossibility of an ontological approach to multiplicity was one of the main reasons why correlationism has developed in 20th century philosophy. Theories such as otherness, difference, and virtuality… each attempt to conceptualize an irreducible multiplicity. In order to do this, 20th century philosophers appear to renounce ontology.

The question is thus open: how is it possible to develop an ontology which:

1. Accepts the inseparability of thinking and Being
2. Takes into account the materiality of thinking without reducing it to a human production
3. Allows multiplicity

These are the goals of metaontology.

What

What is metaontology?

1. Metaontology is an ontology. As such, it proposes an ontological approach to the world. It aims to develop a discourse on Being itself.
2. Metaontology is based on an irreducible and originary multiplicity and it considers this multiplicity as an originary characteristic of Being. The subject of metaontology are multiple-Being.
3. Metaontology is an ontology of mediation. It considers mediation as the formal structure of thinking and it considers Being as inseparable from thinking. Multiple-Being are thus originally mediated.
4. Metaontology considers mediation and thinking always as inscribed material forms. This inscription is prehuman: thinking, according to metaontology, should not be considered a human action.
5. Metaontology is one ontology among other ontologies. It is not a super ontology.
6. Metaontology develops formal logic systems to create relationships between different ontologies without reducing one to the other.

How

⊕ The hermeneutics which appears to me much more interesting is that which, when one attempts to use the word in more conventional terms, refers to works by a learned community of Alexandrines, active three centuries before Jesus Christ: philologists, grammarians, librarians, archivists, cartographers, astronomers, who associate the quest for meaning with the research of highly reliable manuscripts, the description of forms with the material arrangement of objects, linguistic tools with the historicity of cultural styles, the science of the stars with the world’s dimensions. The most interesting element in fact being that there is no relation between a god, priests or soothsayers and ignorant humans bound by a necessarily vertical relationship, but an entire community of scholars working on and with objects in a way that is, so to speak, horizontal. (Méchoulan 2017, Cf. annotation)¹¹

Meaning always emerges as a result of the dynamics of inscription. Author’s names are often a metonymy pointing to a complex interaction of forces: transmission mediums, traditions, social contexts, historical facts…

For example, “Aristotle” refers to complex and multiple dynamics between a text’s inscription, dissemination, annotation, translation, and circulation in different spaces and in different communities. These dynamics have continued for many centuries, and the name “Aristotle” is the crystallization of this complicated and seemingly ungraspable process.

Metaontology aspires to produce and analyze the material form of inscription which constitutes the conditions of its own emergence.

Metaontology proposes a form of thinking which is materially inscribed, but inscribed in something different from a human being. The materiality and the non-humanity of the inscription is the condition of possibility for metaontology.

In fact, if the mediation is not inscribed, metaontology becomes a form of dogmatism. And if mediation is human, metaontology becomes a form of correlationism.

Metaontology can exist only if it brings about its own conditions of possibility, which means that metaontology must at the same time be a discourse and the material forces which produce this discourse.

⊕ The human is a historical construct that became a social convention about ‘human nature’. (Braidotti 2013, 26)

This book aims to act as a surface of inscription for metaontology. This does not mean that an author will produce it. Metaontology must emerge in the book as the outcome of a series of dynamics and interactions between particular texts, practices, environments, as well as technical and political contexts. The book is therefore collective and technical insofar as it relates to particular sociotechnical conditions.

⊕ In an agential realist account, materiality is an active factor in processes of materialization. Nature is neither a passive surface awaiting the mark of culture nor the end product of cultural performances. The belief that nature is mute and immutable and that all prospects for significance and change reside in culture merely reinscribes the nature-culture dualism that feminists have actively contested. Nor, similarly, can a human-nonhuman distinction be hard-wired into any theory that claims to take account of matter in the fullness of its historiality. To presume a given distinction between humans and nonhumans is to cement and recirculate the nature-culture dualism into the foundations of feminist theory, foreclosing a genealogy of how nature and culture, human and nonhuman, are formed. Hence any performative account worth its salt would be ill advised to incorporate such anthropocentric values in its foundations. (Barad 2007, 183.) The production of meaning in digital environments is indeed a clear example of non-human and inscribed mediation. Given that digital environments are artifacts, it may seem counterintuitive to consider them as prehuman: digital environments in fact seem to be human productions whose only purpose is to prolong human thinking. However, this objection is based on a very essentialized conception of human - the same conception that posthuman studies criticize. Technological mediations can be interpreted as prehuman because the human is derived from a series of interactions between agents, in which technology is just one part.

The theory of editorialization is useful in analyzing this production of meaning, because it considers the set of relationships and interactions within digital environments as the dynamics that lead to the production of space, and ultimately to the production of meaning.

Editorialization is the set of dynamics that constitute digital space and that allow the emergence of meaning. These dynamics are the result of different forces and actions that subsequently determine the appearance and the identification of particular objects (people, communities, algorithms, platforms …)

⊕ Editorialization is the set of dynamics that produce and structure digital space. These dynamics can be understood as the interactions of individual and collective actions within a particular digital environment. (Vitali-Rosati 2016b)

Editorialization can thus be interpreted as the set of material conditions of mediation that determine the emergence of a world. Editorialization is an access to the world that comes with the world itself.

In this sense, this text and the reflection that emerges from it is a form of editorialization. The form and subject of this text are one: this text performs its subject and this is why metaontology can only be a form of editorialization. The originality of metaontology lies in this profound union between the form of its exhibition and its subject.

Manifold

⊕

A printed book is a relatively limited delivery channel to develop metaontology. It struggles to reflect the actual ways in which discourse and knowledge emerge today. Digital environments demonstrate the inscription of a prehuman thinking and question the relationship between theory, on the one hand, and an author as a productive and creative individual, on the other.

This is why using Manifold would be an excellent way of realizing this project. Manifold allows the contents to be inscribed within a network of additional and interconnected material.

In order for metaontology to be consistent with its purpose, it is necessary that:

1. Writing be a process. Metaontology is not a theory which has been developed before its inscription. The inscription is the theory. The initial project which is presented here makes sense only if it is considered as an open draft which will change throughout the writing process. The process will be as important as the final work. Starting from the process, it will then be possible to produce many outputs of the project - such as a printed book. But these outputs should not be the “realization” of the project, only partial manifestations of it.
2. Annotation and collaboration are capital. Metaontology cannot have a unique utterer. Metaontology, as a form of prehuman thinking, must be the result of a complex set of dynamics involving communities, platforms, practices… Showing the process(es) of production – such as the dialogues, discussions, and comments that are the material forces allowing the emergence of discourse –, is a fundamental part of the metaontological methodology. The text will be put online during the writing process and it will change thanks to the interaction of the community of readers that it engages. Manifold’s various annotation tools are crucial for this projet. The Canada Reseach Chair in digital textualities will be involved in managing the community and promoting reactions, annotations, and comments.
3. The writing environment must be open. Metaontology emerges as an infra-theory. The project does not want to produce a thought, but allow and enable it to emerge. It is based on a network of many different contents: other texts (as in this proposal), and different activities of many actors such as databases, algorithms, platforms, clicks… Manifold allows many interactions with different platforms (first of all social networks). In addition, different forms and reuse of contents are an integral feature of the project. The multiplicity of metaontology depends on the possibility to produce many parallel discourses, starting from the writing process. The Manifold API allows reuse of written material in various contexts and with different visualization tools. The Canada Research Chair on digital textualities will produce many outputs of the project using Manifold’s API. For example, it will be important to visualize an output as structured in this proposal, with margin texts developing a parallel discourse.
4. Open access is the condition of possibility for this project. Only open access can enable its free circulation and reuse of content. The Canada Research Chair on digital textualities can provide some funding to pay the fees associated with open access (at this stage, it is estimated at between 5000 et 10000 CAD).
5. Text involves a plurisemiotic set of materials. Text is not only words. Videos, pictures and sounds are also forms of text. This project is based on a network of plurisemiotic materials that will be organized, annotated and structured. Manifold welcomes all textual forms.

Outline

⊕ The Cantino planisphere, completed by an unknown Portuguese cartographer in 1502, is one of the most precious cartographic documents of all times. It depicts the world, as it became known to the Europeans after the great exploration voyages at the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century to the Americas, Africa, and India. It is now kept in the Biblioteca Universitaria Estense, Modena, Italy. As outlined above, this project is based on a process. This outline should be considered as a hypothetical map, like a map used by the explorers during Age of Discovery.

The outline will be published at the beginning of the project and continually revised during writing process as a result of changing interactions, annotations, and events throughout the realization of the project.

Preamble

The book will begin with an introductory text which explains the topic, the form and the editorial device, and which invites collaboration.

Why metaontology

This first chapter will explain the problems associated with metaontology and its theoretical requirements today. It will analyze the anhistorical reason - the philosophically ever-present problems of the relationship between Being and thinking, the problem of unity and multiplicity… - and the historical reasons, relating to the digital, to new forms of content production, to new ways of questioning humanism.

• The relationship between Being and thinking
• The problem of multiplicity
• Digital cultures

Prehuman thinking

⊕

Metaontology’s condition of possibility is a form of thinking which is independent from human beings. This chapter will analyze this hypothesis by outlining the achievements of Posthuman studies and by proposing the notion of prehuman thinking.

• I think or it thinks
• Human, posthuman and prehuman
• The materiality of prehuman thinking

Material inscriptions

The idea of a prehuman thinking risks falling into a dogmatic metaphysics if it hypostatizes the mediation of thinking as an eternal and anhistorical form. To avoid this kind of critique, it is necessary to show how thinking is always something inscribed.

• Histories of inscription
• Inscriptions and materiality
• Writing and prehuman writing
• Digital environments as prehuman writing
• The theory of editorialization

Logic of multiplicity

Multiplicity seems to be necessarily derived from unity. Is it possible to imagine an originary multiplicity? Even the language seems to resist to it - the term “multiplicity” itself is a unity: one multiplicity.

This chapter will analyze different reasons which seem to make originary multiplicity impossible. It will then propose strategies to resolve this problem.

• Paradoxes of multiplicity
• Transcendency, otherness, difference, and multiplicity
• Being and Being-multiple
• Logical strategies to think multiplicity

What is metaontology

This chapter will present the principles of metaontology and demonstrate the relationship of metaontology with other philosophical approaches.

It will summarize the results of the analyses developed in previous chapters.

• A definition of metaontology
• System and metasystems
• Ontologies of relations and relations between ontologies

Toward a prehuman ethics

What are the ethical challenges of metaontology? Is it possible to imagine a prehuman ethics?

This chapter will address these two questions on the basis of the previous theoretical outcomes of the project.

This chapter is more exploratory than those which precede is. It is impossible - albeit useless, at this stage – to definitively determine its content.

Writing strategies

⊕ About this text
This text has been written in markdown. Bibliographical references are structured inBibTeX. Metadata are specified in yaml. The HTML is produced with pandoc, using pp pre-processor and an awk script. The style is based on Tufte CSS, using Tufte-markdown. The text has been written using Vim and revised with Stylo. The text has been versioned with git and pushed on Framagit. Hypothes.is has been used for annotations. Isidore and Duckduckgo allowed to find sources and other material. Thanks to Beth Kearney for revision, and to the CRC team for thinking together about this topic. The project begins right now. This document is already online and it has an annotation tool - hypothes.is - which enbles comments and interaction.

At this stage, it is impossible to predict its development.

If the project is accepted by UMP, this is a possible strategy (that could be realized in a year and a half - January 2019 - June 2020):

1. Annotation on this page
2. Evolution of the proposal
3. Creation of a Manifold project
4. Publication on Manifold of a Preamble, an outline and a set of sources and additional contents - annotated bibliographies (Zotero, curated annotations on other platforms etc.)
5. Depending on interactions and events: a publication of a first chapter draft
6. Publication of drafts of other chapters and other contents
7. Annotations, revisions, open peer review
8. Confirmation of a uniform structure for a printed book
9. Production of other structures, published in different formats using Manifold API

The project should remain open, even after it has been realized. The Canada Research Chair in Digital textualities will be engaged in enhancing the project for at least two years after the first printed publication.

The journal Sens public could ensure a French translation of the project and a parallel French edition which could enhance the contents of the English version and engage discussion within the francophone community.

Marcello Vitali-Rosati

Marcello Vitali-Rosati is an associate professor in the Department of French Literature at the Université de Montréal. He holds the Canada Research Chair in Digital Textualities. He develops a philosophical reflection on the challenges of digital technologies: the concept of virtual and digital identity, the notions of authorship and authority, the forms of production, legitimization and dissemination of knowledge in the age of the web, and the theory of editorialization - of which he is one of the most active contributors. He is the author of numerous articles and monographs and also works as a publisher: he is the director of the journal Sens public and co-director of the series “Parcours Numériques” at the Presses de l’Université de Montréal. He leads several digital humanities projects, particularly in the field of scholarly publishing. In this context, he has and continues to develop platforms for publishing academic journals) and enriched monographs, a text editor for scientific papers (Stylo) and a collaborative editing platform of the Codex Palatinus 23.

All his publications are available in open access.

orcid.org/0000-0001-6424-3229

Bibliography

On Metaontology