Whereas self–reference is primarily studied in the context of philosophy of language, this volume attempts to show how it encompasses very traditional questionings in the history of continental philosophy from its beginning and all along its most crucial turning points. Every time philosophy has looked for causes, both on an ontological and an epistemological plane, it has ultimately faced the phantom of the inﬁnite regress, the ramiﬁcation of&nbsp;the supposed linearity, and the loss of the origin. The circularity of self–reference is itself the expression of a fundamental indetermination and seems to sanction an impassable boundary for thought. We tried to challenge this sentence by discussing some very implications of self–reference, some of its occurrences, and, if needed, recasting its deﬁnition to the extent of shift-ing the connected idea of aporetic reﬂexivity to that of self–transcendence,&nbsp;where the preﬁx “self” stops to make allusion to the selfhood of an idem and points at the dynamic processuality of a complex system.
application/pdf
2036-542X
8000
2
it
Francesca Dell’Orto
Trópos
Preliminary Remarks on the Notion of Self–Reference
Text.Serial.Journal
https://ojs.unito.it/index.php/tropos
10
Monografica
2017-12-01
2023-08-01
2017-12-01
2023-08-01
5-11
1
Francesca Dell’Orto
2017/12/01
5
2036-542X
2
11
Preliminary Remarks on the Notion of Self–Reference
https://ojs.unito.it/index.php/tropos/article/download/8000/6724
10
                                                       trópos • anno X • numero 2 • 2017 – ISBN 978-88-255-1253-3
                                                          DOI 10.4399/97888255125331 – pag. 5-11 (dicembre 2017)




                             Preliminary Remarks on the Notion
                                             of Self–Reference
                                                                  Emanuele Antonelli*
                                                                 Francesca Dell’Orto**




   On another occasion, I wished to jump across a lake. When I was in the middle of
   it, I found it was much larger than I had imagined at first. So, I at once turned back
   in the middle of my leap, and returned to the bank I had just left, to take a stronger
   spring. The second time, however, I again took oV badly, and fell in up to my neck.
   I should, beyond any doubt, have come to an untimely end, had I not, by the force
   of my unaided arm, lifted up my pig–tail, together with my horse, whom I gripped
   tightly with my knees.

                                         E. Raspe, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

    The Adventures of Baron Munchausen have illustrated and sometimes
allegedly inspired great insights in philosophical reflections. The essential
feature that unites most of them is the issue of self–reference. This usually
attracts the interest of those into logic and epistemology: the paradox of
the liar, just to make an example, is one of the most famous riddles in
the entire history of philosophy. Bertrand Russell’s solution to this and
to all the paradoxes of its kind, as well as the so–called Munchausen’s
trilemma formulated by German philosopher Hans Albert are not inferior
in fame. The adventures of the famous Baron also sprang up, in a somehow
related field, in the coinage of the computer–science term bootstrapping that
usually refers to a self–starting process that is supposed to proceed without
external input.
    Besides, it would be simplistic to only point out logical–semantic and
epistemic aspects of this adventure. The Baron’s self–congratulatory rhetoric
also reveals an ambiguity of an ontological–transcendental rank: the famous
scene, in fact, puts on stage more than just a circularity between truth and
method, but also one of higher order between grounding and grounded,
condition and fact, epistemology and ontology. In the history of philosophy,
   ⇤
        e.r.antonelli@gmail.com.
   ⇤⇤
        francesca.dellorto@gmail.com.


                                                                                                               5
6     Emanuele Antonelli, Francesca Dell’Orto


this problem has popped up in many forms and under diVerent names,
from Aristotle’s prime mover — the thought of thought —, up to the causa
sui in Spinoza, the recursive eVect of sympathy in Adam Smith, the Kantian
Prozess of Reason to reason, and to the critical–idealistic notion of autonomy,
eventually re–emerging in the Twentieth Century as hermeneutic circle.
    Self–reference is indeed said in many ways; and the relationships between
these ways are yet to be thoroughly screened. As far as logic is concerned,
it mostly gives way to paradoxes of a rather scarce interest, whereas in
literature it oVers one charming rhetorical device. In visual arts, it shows
up as Droste eVect, or as a mise–en–abyme. In Derrida’s reflection and, in
general, in post–modern philosophy, it appears as a necessary consequence
of the denial of any hors du texte.
    When it is said as self–foundation, it appears in its most disturbing
form. In such cases, some also suggested to call it self–transcendence: in
the murky reflections of self–referential collective practices, some saw the
dawn and the genesis of the sacred, i.e. a violent system of diVerences
grounded in violence (Girard 1972; Dupuy 1996). In other contexts, some
imagined that the same logical form might be underlying the genesis of that
socio–economic phenomenon that, after a millennium of full–fledged Chris-
tianity, has taken the place of the sacred and which we refer to as Capital.
The latter could in fact be the result of a logical–ontological short–circuit in
which the diVerence between money and goods, that is, between the condi-
tion of possibility of the existence of value and its very same occurrence,
no longer exists (Amato, 2015).
    Attempts to properly explain what is involved in these and other occur-
rences of self–reference are far from finding a complete synthesis; for the
time being, the only thing that seems certain is that where a meaningful
experience is given, in one way or another, a self–referential kind of ground-
ing principle is always hiding; and where self–reference shows up as such,
meaning seems to be fading.
    The contributions to this volume focus on the nature of self–reference,
in various historical and logical implications and in its links with the prob-
lems of the transcendental and of meaning in general. As one may expect,
a multi–disciplinary approach defines most of the papers. Though not in
formalized terms, the volume oVers a number of attempts to both clar-
ify the notions of self–reference, self–foundation, self–transcendence in
themselves and to outline their diverse and yet consistent manifestations, in
disciplines as diverse as epistemology, hermeneutics, literary theory, ped-
agogy, aesthetics and in other domains, such as philosophy of economics
and philosophical anthropology.
    In particular, the paper by Jean–Pierre Dupuy — oVered as a tribute to
his friend Francisco Varela — presents an epistemological reflection on the
                              Preliminary Remarks on the Notion of Self–Reference   7


numerous problems emerging from the hasty application of the notions
of autopoiesis and the like in the social sciences. Yet one thing is to apply
them to the analysis of the social realm, a completely diVerent thing is
to reveal them as already constituting the fundamental logic of much of
the traditional corpus of Western humanities. With regards to domains as
diVerent as Literary Theory, Religious and Social Anthropology, Political
Science, Sociology, Psycho–sociology and Philosophy, Dupuy shows that
relevant ideas on the organization of the living, such as organizational closure,
autonomy, endogenous fixed point, help us to better understand our age–old
knowledge in social, economic, moral, and political philosophy.
    Especially, with regards to the theme of this volume of Trópos, he sheds
light on the only seemingly paradoxical relation that links relevant social phe-
nomena such as self–referentiality, self–externalization (or self–transcendence)
and (self–)deconstruction. Indeed, Dupuy claims that the notion of self – tran-
scendence is best clarified when confronted with that of (self–) deconstruction,
especially when we deal — as he does in the last section of his contribution
— with the infinite closeness of a process of social totalization to a process
of social decomposition. It is a matter of understanding that both the social
whole and its destruction (or deconstruction) have the same logical form:
tangled hierarchy.This is the form of self–externalization proper both to the
self–constitution of the social order and to its spontaneous decomposition
or destruction: one just has to realize that neither social totalities are always
already constituted.
    Francesca Dell’Orto firstly points out the parallel between traditional
metaphysics and naturalism moving from Husserl’s perspective; secondly,
she aims to clarify the specificity and the ambition of a “phenomeno-
logical metaphysics”, which measures against the diYculties of a radical
self–reference.
    In Husserl, natural attitude and traditional metaphysics have in common
the denial of the epoché, that is of the a priori and immanent correlation
between the constitution and the constituted. This way, running parallel
to the natural naïveté gleams a transcendental one. As Dell’Orto argues,
phenomenology discovers that truth and method, so to say, overlap each
other, in reducing the world the ego makes it possible according to eidetic
laws. Therefore, a “phenomenological metaphysics”, if it has a sense, should
give genetically reason of this movement, which makes reference to the
corporeal rootedness of consciousness, that is to its sensible, practical and
pre–predicative level.
    Apparently, enactive emergentism seems to respond to this issue, as far
as it claims for a co–emergence of living organisms and world, and their
co–evolution along a performative path marked by passivity. On this ground,
harking back to Francisco Varela, it is possible to develop a “neuro–psycho–
8     Emanuele Antonelli, Francesca Dell’Orto


(evolutonary)–phenomenology”, which has the merit of trying to avoid the
risk of reductionism and the static absolutizations of classical metaphysics.
But the ambition of genetic phenomenology, according to Dell’Orto, should
go further: in as much as it includes time, it should take into account the
not–individually–lived, the already–constituted significations which are nei-
ther merely biological nor environmental, rather intersubjective, historical,
and cultural. These diVerent ways of giveness are always intertwined, since
they stem from a unique process of constitution which progressively com-
plexifies. The mistake of naturalism consists in tending to isolate “nature”
from the more complex range of conditions of possibilities. Phenomeno-
logical metaphysics should answer for an inclusion and a self–inclusion: the
inclusion of all experiences in the “multilayered” temporal display and the
inclusion of itself in itself, for itself contributes, while describing, to that
temporal display.
    Distancing from metaphysical questions, and addressing the epistemo-
logical issue about scientific inquiry and verification, John F. DeCarlo’s con-
tribution has for goal mitigating the self–referential nature of the Bayesian
model so to broaden its experimental and theoretical verification process.
DeCarlo’s starting point is the Quine–Duhem paradox, highlighting, from
a holistic perspective, the contradiction between the need to isolate known
and unknown hypothesis, in order to test a given hypothesis, and the im-
possibility to do so. Discussing the Bayesian solution, which introduces
the notion of degrees of belief that an investigator has for a hypothesis,
relative to others, DeCarlo underlines the tradeoV between the positing of
meaningful–verifiable experience and the type of limiting self–referential
implications in the use of self–credences. In fact, the Bayesian response to
the methodological and epistemological issues posed by the Quine/Duhem
paradox has been upgraded by using a new historical interdisciplinary ap-
proach, whereby the patterns of structural forms of creative thought could
improve qualitative methodologies of exploration and analysis, leading to
new scientific insight. Following the work of Mary Hesse about confirma-
tion theory, DeCarlo’s investigation extends the question of the significant
role played by various types of analogy and structural creative thought,
including: synthesis, blind spots, thin places, inversions, poly–holism, and
wild and divergent strands, many of which often stand outside the purview
of investigating scientists.
    But, in contrast to Bayesian model, the paper oVers a non a priori ground-
ing and/or functional and explanatory set of principles founded in the
pattern of historical–interdisciplinary structural creative thought, evident in
the history of the physical sciences, at large, and in particular scientific his-
tories of physics, biology and political economy, which DeCarlo accurately
reviews.
                             Preliminary Remarks on the Notion of Self–Reference   9


    Via this critical methodology, the self–referential nature of the Bayesian
model turns out to be significantly moderated and its experimental and
theoretical verification process objectively broadened. In this respect, a new
set of mental categories associated with various structural types of creativity
could both help to guide scientific explorations and evaluate new theories
and models and related experimental data.
    Adding a further insight to our investigation on self–reference, and
moving from literary suggestions, Bill Johnsen provides an attempt to
reckon the postcolonial world of the XX–XXI Centuries by looking at Joseph
Conrad as the chronicler of colonialism’s failure from the inside point of
view of the colonists, at Chinua Achebe, from the inside point of view of
the colonized, and at Dermot Bolger, who insists that it is time for both
colonisers and colonized to be done with postcolonialism, at least in Irish
writing. He argues that to properly do so, we have to count heads beyond
the intense partisans of pro and con and to include the great majority who
lost their allegiance to imperialism.
    Conrad’s Marlow rehearses that loss in Heart of Darkness, his tale is one
of the earliest and most eVective of all subsequent interventions into the
twentieth century colonialist archive, culture and imperialism’s tale, and
Johnsens claims that it is best understood in light of René Girard’s theory
of human culture. Girard’s general model of sacrifice is crucial for belatedly
revisiting and crediting modernism’s anthropological insights. According to
mimetic theory, human culture originated in religion, in man’s power to fool
himself so to believe that the gods require blood sacrifice, and, consequently,
the ritual victim is credited for everything wrong and right in society; yet,
when violence, once misunderstood as transcendent, is understood as solely
human, as self–transcendent, it can produce nothing but itself. For Girard,
this revelation derives from Scripture, but, as Johnsen’s study confirms, also
from great literature, the secular scripture. In Johnsen’s view, the place of
Conrad in the formation of this secular scripture is given by Marlow’s denial
to accuse, that is his admission to share the guilt of the accused. In parallel,
the weakening, or “secularization”, of Kurtz as well as the crowd that first
adores and then vilifies the accused refers to the necessity of turning down
the satisfactions and self–justifications of the violent sacred until we see, as
Girard says, that the time of this violent ‘transcendence’ is over, that there
is nobody to blame but ourselves for our violence.
    Emanuele Antonelli tackles the issue of self–reference with regards to
aesthetics. He oVers an interpretation of Luigi Pareyson’s notion of forma-
tivity, claiming that the best way to understand it is through an analogy
with the notion of self–transcendence recently put forward in the vast do-
main of the sciences of the self–organization of complex systems. Following
Jean–Pierre Dupuy’s approach, of which the reader has an outstanding
10    Emanuele Antonelli, Francesca Dell’Orto


example in the first contribution of the volume, he shows — by referring to
the numerous topoi where often surprisingly precise parallelisms, conver-
gences and semantic identities are to be found — that, though being largely
independent in their genesis, the logics of the two notions are intrinsically
consistent with each–other. As a result, he claims that our understanding
of Pareyson’s theory of the work of art is improved when we look at it
as a study on the integration of diVerent layers of organizational closures.
The success of the relation between the matter, the form, the idea, the
artist and her technique, gives way to a work of art where the process of
self–transcendence is accomplished. This process is described by Pareyson
as an attraction of the future and already achieved form, the forma formata,
on the operations of which it will be the result. The final outcome is, thus, at
the same time an eVect and a very special cause of the process: the vicious
circularity of self–reference is avoided by self–transcendence, since the self
to which the process refers to forms itself only through this reference.
    Staging a “dialogue” with and between philosophers and psychologists,
from Piaget to Heidegger, from Aristotle to Kant, the essay by Andrea
Amato discusses the thesis that, in its original condition, man lives a sort of
communion with the world given by a substantial aYnity between inside
and outside. This original condition of man rests both on undiVerentiated im-
pulses and on the faculties of feeling and emotion. In particular, the primary
impulses find a world already organized and can refer to it without suc-
cumbing immediately as they possess and are governed by an autonomous
principle, that of economics. Feelings and emotions, on the other hand, can
regain agreement with the world only after a break in the balance between
us and the external reality, which implies the exit from an already–separated
self. At this point, the new relationship will be internalized and, in some way,
will become more aware. Otherwise, in everyday life, we tend to bring back
the relationship with the world to a balance, based on the routinization and
on the average of our usual energy consumption. Therefore, in multiple
ways, there arises some form of stabilization and conceptualization of our
general and overall disposition towards life and the world. Nonetheless,
if this stabilization, which takes root in our rational faculty, “stores” the
pulsional chaos, reason, while stabilizing, lets the chaos appear as chaos. It
can only appear to a will that seeks to stabilize it. On one hand, chaos needs
practical reason in order to be separated, seized, and especially organized;
on the other hand, practical reason can never completely stop referring to it.
To put it diVerently, following Amato’s words, it can be argued that as life
and world, with their impulses and disorder, and reason, entail each other,
both logically and existentially, so chaos and praxis belong together.
    Whereas self–reference is primarily studied in the context of philoso-
phy of language, this volume attempts to show how it encompasses very
                                Preliminary Remarks on the Notion of Self–Reference   11


traditional questionings in the history of continental philosophy from its
beginning and all along its most crucial turning points. Every time phi-
losophy has looked for causes, both on an ontological and an epistemo-
logical plane, it has ultimately faced the phantom of the infinite regress,
the ramification of the supposed linearity, and the loss of the origin. The
circularity of self–reference is itself the expression of a fundamental inde-
termination and seems to sanction an impassable boundary for thought.
We tried to challenge this sentence by discussing some very implications of
self–reference, some of its occurrences, and, if needed, recasting its defini-
tion to the extent of shifting the connected idea of aporetic reflexivity to
that of self–transcendence, where the prefix “self ” stops to make allusion
to the selfhood of an idem and points at the dynamic processuality of a
complex system.


References

Amato M., 2015, L’enigma della moneta [2010], Salerno, Orthotes.
Dupuy J.–P., 1996, Introduction aux sciences sociales. Logique des phénomènes collectifs,
  Paris, Ellipses.
Girard R., 1972, La violence et le sacré, Paris, Grasset.
