Instrumentality

Brings One into Being

Given an intentionality, there must be some instrumental way, some instrumental means to move one from the state of "not-yet" to the state of satisfaction.  I have used the rather pretentious phrase, "the instrumental act brings one into being," to describe what I believe to be a point of convergence (if not the point of convergence) for ontology and epistemology, and the point of convergence is in "instrumentality." If we revert to our hunger game for a moment, it should be clear enough that, considered from a purely utilitarian frame, some things in the world will count as food, other things will not, and hunger will drive a creature to seek out those things that count as food and ingest it.  The former, I might add, takes place within a realm of freedom, the latter is rather mechanistic, but it is important to note for the moment that the intentionality creates a dualistic categorization of the world, a differentiation between those things that are food (and all that is not).  An amoeba swimming in a droplet and a human being in a wider world are not fundamentally different in this respect.  Both "categorize" their world into food (and all that is not food) and there must be some level of "awareness" of the differentiations within their world.  I would not, of course, be so bold as to suggest that the "awareness" is of the same nature or the same quality -- indeed what counts as food will be wholly different for the two creatures -- I am simply suggesting that intentionality brings it and us into interaction with the world, such as it is, and it does so instrumentally.

There are a number of things I can and should point out here, and I should begin with the observation that instrumental acts are, to a certain extent, arbitrary, but it is an arbitrariness bounded by contingency and utility.  If I am hungry, there are any number of instrumental acts that I can use to satisfy my hunger, any one of which might be sufficient unto the cause.  As I pointed out earlier, if I am hungry enough, and if circumstances are dire enough, I could even go so far as to scrounge for insects.  Fortunately, circumstances are not so dire, and I can open the refrigerator and scrounge there for something that might take away my appetite.  Just how I go about satisfying my hunger, the instrumental acts I actually engage, are the result of many things, not least contingency (what is available for me to do).  I am in the world here and now, and I interact with a world here and now, in the early twenty first century, in the United States, in a mid-sized city replete with grocery outlets, to which food is brought through a wide distribution net from as far away as Mexico and from which I can purchase from an equally array of potential foods.  The notion "I can purchase" -- as opposed to say, "I can grow" -- evinces a whole range of preliminary activities within institutions that provide "a living," the money that was needed to purchase the tomatoes, the mozzarella, and the basil that are waiting in the refrigerator to become the salad which in turn will satisfy my hunger.  To suggest that a given intentionality, my hunger, brings me into being is at once a statement trivial and profound.  I am hungry here and now, and I am free to engage in any number of instrumental acts, any efforts I might make to free myself from the subjectivity of my hunger must take place within the contingency of here and now.

On the side of utility, given an intentionality, some things do (and other things do not) contribute to its satisfaction.  If I am hungry, I do not go to the garage and rummage through my tool box for something to eat, but go to the kitchen and rummage through the refrigerator.  In some ways this seems too obvious to mention, and perhaps it is, but often the obvious is overlooked.  Here I want to make a couple of ancillary points.  The utility of any instrumental act (or the actual instrumentality of any instrumental act) is bounded by contingency, the historical "here and nowness" of its performance.  I have already elaborated on contingency, and don't really need to do so again, but I need to point out something that is equally obvious but often overlooked -- the performance of an act is adaptive, both in the micro scale adaptations of and to the world such as it is here and now (including the adaptations of my individual physical being in the world, my "going" to the refrigerator) and in the macro scale adaptations of and to the world such as it is here and now (including the adaptations of the institutional contingency, the facts of a refrigerator, the electric power to run a refrigerator, the distribution networks necessary to fill the refrigerator, and so on).  I am, so to speak, subject to the subjectivity of a given intentionality -- I am hungry -- and the "I am" that is hungry, the "self" that is hungry, makes use of the world such as it is here and now to free itself from its subjectivity.  The "self" that is hungry at once adapts to the world in which it finds itself to free itself from its hunger, and in doing so the performance of the act, changes the world, however slightly.  If I eat the tomatoes and mozzarella, it is no longer there to be eaten.  The instrumentality of an instrumental act is both bound by contingency and, in the performance, changes contingency.

A Bit of Summative Elaboration

If I might elaborate a bit here, there are several claims implicit to what I'm saying.  The first set is materialist.  I have a physical being such as it is, and because my physical being is such as it is, I have intentionality.  We can describe, for example, the physical mechanisms that make me grow hungry, and that might be useful knowledge, but the "makes me" in "makes me grow hungry" implies that my physical being exercises a certain autocracy over the "me," the subjective self, an autocracy that I express in the phrase "I am subject to the subjectivity of a given intentionality."  The "makes me" in "makes me grow hungry" also implies that the autocracy, being subject to the subjectivity of a given intentionality, is undesirable, is being bound to one degree or another in a form of suffering.  It is an imperative to no longer be subject to the subjectivity of the given intentionality, or an imperative to free myself from its suffering.  To free myself from the subjectivity of the given intentionality, I must be free to act, but my freedom is bound up within contingency and utility.  I am here and now, but I am "not yet" free from my subjectivity, and I must act within and on the world such as it is, and my act must be efficacious if I am to free myself.   The imperative, or so I want to say, "brings me into being," brings the "me'ness" of the "me" into being as the subject that must act, and is also intended to suggest that it brings me as a subject into awareness of and engagement with the world such as it is.  The given intentionality shapes "me" as and within a "form of life."

The second set is institutional.  To extend the argument a bit, it is possible to imagine a single individual  fraught with intentionality -- the science fiction scenario, where the protagonist wakes from an apocalyptic event, alone in the universe, a singularity.  The physical trappings of institutional life remain -- the abandoned cityscape -- but it is rendered uncanny by the absence of others.  We do not, of course, live in a world absent others, but it is possible to imagine being in the world alone in part because we are in the world alone.  I do not have the immediate access to others intentionality in quite the way that I have immediate access to my own intentionality.  I do not "feel" others suffering in quite the way the way that I "feel" my own suffering, indeed, for the most part, I do not feel it at all.  This has a number of implications.  At some fundamental level, of course, I can behave as though I were truly a singularity, and that all others around me were simply automatons of one sort or another, that all others around me were part of the world within which and with which I must satisfy any given intentionality.  There is, in this, a reduction of the other to a mere instrumentality, the value of which, to "me," is merely their instrumentality to a given intentionality, their utility.  I am suggesting, of course, that is precisely how we behave in the world -- to an extent.  To do so wholly, to reduce the other to mere utility, is pathological, though it goes without saying that we all know those who see others principally in their instrumental value.  It might be indicative of a creeping pathology that much recent apocalyptic fiction, where protagonist inhabits a world almost, but not quite bereft of others, cannibalism has become a central trope.  In Cormac McCarthy's The Road, the protagonist must navigate a world where most value him, not as human beings, but for his utility as meat stock.

It perhaps goes without saying that the protagonist would prefer to be valued otherwise, and part of the horror of reading The Road lies in the disconnect between our own recognition of the protagonist for his humanity within a world where he has been reduced to a potential meal.  It is one thing for "me" in my singularity to reduce others to their instrumental value, but quite something else for others to reduce "me" to a mere instrumental value.  I am suggesting, of course, that the "me'ness" of the "me" comes into being relative to a given intentionality, and one such intentionality that brings the "me'ness" of the "me" into being is the need for "recognition" as full human being.  I should point out that my need for recognition does not place a special or metaphysical demand on others -- they may still view me solely as an automaton -- but the instrumental means available to me, and the efficacy of those instrumental means, does imply and depend upon what might be called an semiotic epistemology of others.  If I see someone eating, for example, I make the assumption that their behavior is governed by the same intentionality that my behavior is governed by when I eat, and the ravenousness of their eating signals the urgency of the intentionality.  I know the other, not because I can feel their hunger, but because I can, so to speak, read their acts as signifiers to a signified intentionality, one that I share.  There are, of course, any number of things wrong with the assumption.  When I see a spider eating a trapped fly, though we recognize the governing intentionality of "hunger," there is little reason to assume that the spider with all its differences of physiology "feels" hunger in the way that I feel hunger.  That argument extends upward and outward to suggest that unless another is "me" precisely, and of course no one is "me" precisely, they cannot know with certainty how "I" feel when brought into being by "my" governing intentionality, so I am left with my singularity and my impossible need for recognition -- one of the great discoveries of adolescence.

Having said that, however, the reconciliation of my singularity and my need for recognition implies not a social contract as such (there is no particular time at which people sit down and decide upon these matters) but a social semiotic where my instrumental acts signify a signified intentionality.  I should point out as well that there is nothing particularly "intentional" about this, nor is it contingent upon "language" per se.  I eat, not because I wish to signify a signified intentionality, but because I am beset to one degree or another with hunger and eating is instrumental to the satisfaction of that intentionality.  My actions, so to speak, nevertheless signify a signified intentionality, and insofar as I am also beset with the need for recognition, and that need demands of my instrumental acts that they be comprehensible to others, there is a corresponding instrumental demand that my acts conform to the apparent expectations of others -- to choose from among the available instrumental acts those acts that will signify the signified intentionality.  This implies a two-fold contingency -- a physical contingency that determines the available acts, and from within the physical contingency a social contingency that limits the available acts.  The latter is not necessarily "rule" bound, though the limitations might well be described as "rules," perhaps even prescribed and enforced as "rules" (one can think here of dietary restrictions -- more on that later) but it is worth noting that, under duress, the "rules" break down and the instrumental acts nevertheless signify a signified intentionality.