Background consensus trance

Mark Schmanko started an interesting FB IPS discussion on the background consensus trance (BCT) here. My comments so far:

There are ontologies without assholons, as I call them. And that don't colonize everything into their ontologies but leave space-time for change without an overriding telos. And still incorporate complexity and mereology but of a different sort. Perhaps read the 'flat' ontologies of the speculative realists and object-oriented ontologists? (Latour, Bryant, Morton, DeLanda, Protevi, Stengers, Badiou etc.) They also seem to avert the BCT, since there is no lockstep agreement about the field among them, though there are some very broad parameters of kinship.


As to the BCT being unavoidable, perhaps so. It seems we must draw a distinction per Spencer-Brown's law of form. As well as per Lakoff's cogntivie linguistics. As well as Varela's autopoiesis. Therefore we have the autonomy of the object by differentiating itself from the environment. And yet we are part of larger assemblages, again with drawing distinctions. As you say, we can examine this distinction-drawing via reflexive inquiry, which does allow us to be a bit more open and a bit less dogmatic. But if there are no distinctions, if everything is one homogenous goo, then the assholons creep in the back door and bugger us, often without vaseline.