Foundations of the Ontology of Emerging Complexity/Order as Local Effect/VII - Ontological and Ethical Consequences
3.3.7 – Ontological and Ethical Consequences
[edit | edit source]Introduction
If matter contains no pre-inscribed finality, the real configures itself through local reconfigurations that provisionally stabilise operative compatibilities. The emergence of the new does not aim to remedy a lack, but results from an operative excess—a relational pressure that forces matter to reorganise itself, without an implicit script or end. Within this framework, knowledge does not uncover essences; rather, it inscribes functional patterns under historically situated conditions—a perspective that echoes the primacy of intervention over representation (Hacking, 1983). The symbol, in turn, is understood as a material structure that represents and operates upon other material structures. This ontology of variation, where order and meaning emerge from immanent operations and not from transcendent foundations, engages directly with individuation as the resolution of metastable tensions (Simondon, 2005), with the ontological primacy of difference (Deleuze, 1968), with the agency of matter in the production of phenomena (Barad, 2007), and with the view that natural laws form a "patchwork" of local regularities (Cartwright, 1999).
Rejection of Teleology as a Moral or Cosmic Structure
Teleology, by converting order into destiny and history into a directed march, presupposed immanent ends that would govern nature and culture. The OEC [Ontology of Emerging Complexity] rejects this grammar: nothing in the real demands perfection, a final synthesis, or inscribed improvement. Emergence stems from gradients and excesses that install new compatibilities—a dynamic akin to the resolution of tensions within a metastable field (Simondon, 2005)—and not from the realisation of a telos. Order is an expressive pause within continuous turbulence, approaching the conception of stability as a local exception in dissipative systems (Prigogine & Stengers, 1984). Against the idea of a single law governing all levels of reality, partial and effective regimes hold sway—"effective theories" and mosaics of regularity (Cartwright, 1999)—which discredits cosmic teleologies and the use of stability as a universal moral criterion. Form remains an effect and not an origin (Deleuze, 1968), and material historicity does not require an ultimate purpose to generate operative consistencies.
Ethics of Responding to Instability, not of Adhering to Stability
If stability is a local exception and not a natural state to be restored, the ethical task shifts from adherence to invariant norms towards a situated response to singular configurations of tension. The norm is a historical effect of apparatuses and correlations of force (Foucault, 1977), and its legitimacy is measured by its material effects on bodies and relations. Proceeding from a shared vulnerability (Butler, 2004), ethics demands practices of care and accountability that avoid essentialisms. Agency is distributed across techno-material networks (Latour, 2005), without, however, dissolving the specific difference of the human biosoma. In this context, the critique of lethal rationalities (Mbembe, 2003) reminds us that ethical evaluation is intrinsically political. To decide is to inscribe material "cuts" that make worlds (Barad, 2007); therefore, every decision must declare its conditions of validity, incurred losses, and the possibility of redress (Stengers, 2010). Ethical failure is not a deviation from an ideal path, but an insufficiency of symbolic reorganisation in the face of an excess that demands a response. Just action is thus that which amplifies the capacities for reorganisation of the system and of the systems with which it couples, preserving difference and traceability.
Order as a Local Condition of Meaning, not as a Universal Criterion
Order is not the signature of the absolute, but a local symbolic effect that arises when certain material configurations achieve sufficient operative consistency to be named and reproduced. In epistemology, this view aligns with the notion that knowledge advances through ruptures that overcome obstacles (Bachelard, 1938) and with the idea that truth is valuable for its capacity to enable effective intervention (Hacking, 1983). Scientific models articulate and do not mirror the real, their validity being always conditional and scaled (Frigg & Nguyen, 2020). In politics, institutions and norms are contingent arrangements, whose value lies in their efficacy in sustaining complex relational fields, their revisability, and their capacity to declare the exclusions they produce (Foucault, 1977; Stengers, 2010). In the cultural sphere, the right to opacity (Glissant, 1990) stands as a barrier against the totalitarian pretension of any local order. In complexity theories, cohesion results from operative compromises and not from essences (Morin, 1990). In sum: to know is to inscribe under conditions; to govern is to compose without absolutising; to justify is to make criteria, limits, and costs explicit. This discipline of conditions replaces the illusion of universality with situated practices of validation.
Conclusion
The ontological and ethical consequences of the OEC converge in an operative programme: to replace guarantees with operations, foundations with conditions, teleology with operative excess. The criterion for evaluation ceases to be fidelity to a model of perfection, becoming instead the capacity for response that explicitly declares its losses, maintains the possibility of redress, and remains open to revision. Order only has value as a local condition of meaning that amplifies the power of connection without sacrificing the difference that made it possible. Philosophical and political work is thus measured by its efficacy in keeping the field open to variation, instituting mechanisms of public justification and practical reversibility. The ultimate demand is one of method: every inscription—conceptual, ethical, or political—must explicate its scales, costs, limits, and reasons, so that the achieved consistency does not become dogma, but remains a provisional resource for orientation within the incessant movement of the real.
(For students and readers in formation. This section does not replace the text — it accompanies it.)