NOTE-1230: Jaksland — Naturalized, fundamental, and feminist metaphysics all at once

Contribution

It identifies the argument that has to hold if Barad’s quantum-based metaphysics is to bear on social and feminist theorizing at all, which Barad “only ever alludes to” (p. 375): that some features of an ontology cannot appear or disappear under approximation. It names the conception of agential realism Barad holds (naturalized metaphysics with an unrestricted scope) against the two she rejects (analogy, template). And it shows that the division between fundamental metaphysics and the metaphysics of the lifeworld, which Ladyman and Ross, Barnes and Mikkola present as principled, is at most contingent.

Key insight

The question is not whether quantum effects are large at human scales; Barad agrees they are not (p. 374). It is whether an ontological feature can be present only approximately. “If an ontology lacks/contains features that cannot appear/disappear as the result of approximation then these features will be absent/present throughout the ontology regardless of scale” (p. 376). If the subject–object dualism is such a feature and is absent at the fundamental level, it is absent everywhere, and metaphysics of the lifeworld must take account of fundamental metaphysics, and the converse: evidence about the lifeworld would bear on fundamental metaphysics (p. 378). If no feature is like that, a fundamentally relational world can approximate a world of individuals, and the lifeworld “just happen[s] to be autonomous enough from the details of fundamental metaphysics to be practically independent” (p. 365).

Assumptions

• Agential realism is assumed, not assessed, as an interpretation of quantum mechanics (p. 365). Its assessment is Faye and Jaksland’s (LIT-1672; note 6, p. 379).
• One reality, no ontological stratification (pp. 372–373, 376): the macroscopic is “derived from or grounded in the quantum world”, which is Barad’s premise and the paper’s for the argument.
• The quantum-to-classical transition occurs (note 26, p. 380); how it occurs (decoherence) is set aside.
• “Levels” talk is kept for the argument, though Ladyman and Ross object to it (note 12, p. 380); micro and macro here mark typical length scale only.

Key results

The problem (introduction, pp. 363–365)

Mainstream metaphysics, naturalized metaphysics included, privileges the fundamental; feminist metaphysics studies gender and social structure, which are not fundamental (Barnes 2014; Mikkola 2017). Earlier reconciliations were permissive: let metaphysics include both (Mikkola, Bennett, Sider, Schaffer, Hawley, Passinsky). Barad’s is different: she denies the division, by arguing that fundamental metaphysics already bears on feminist themes. “Barad’s agential realism is fundamental, naturalized, and feminist metaphysics all at once” (p. 365).

Agential realism (pp. 365–368)

• Radical relational holism. “Objects emerge from the whole, what Barad (e.g., 2003, 815) denotes ‘phenomena’”, which “admits multiple separations into configurations of objects that have properties only relative to the whole” (p. 366). From Barad 2003, 815: “phenomena are ontologically primitive relations—relations without preexisting relata” (p. 367). It is radical “since only the relational phenomena are ultimately real” (p. 367), and note 9 likens it to Schaffer’s priority monism.
• The argument from complementarity. Bohr: complementary properties are meaningful only relative to an experimental setup that measures them, so the property belongs to the phenomenon, object and setup together (pp. 366–367).
• The agential cut. “Barad (2007, 140) describes such a separation between object and apparatus as an ‘agential cut’ (more commonly known as a Heisenberg cut) and argues that no agential cut is an inherent distinction” (p. 367); note 8: it “is thereby different from a Cartesian cut where the separation between subject and object is fixed”.
• Meaning and exclusion. Intra-actions make boundaries and properties determinate and concepts meaningful (Barad 2003, 815), so word–world dualism goes. Barad 2010, 253: an arrangement that gives determinate meaning to “position” “will, by necessity, always produce its constitutive exclusion (for example, ‘momentum’)” (pp. 367–368). The exclusion is what makes intra-action “agential”, and agency is “cut loose from its traditional humanist orbit” (Barad 2007, 177; p. 368).
• Against OSR. Both treat individuals as non-fundamental, but OSR “focuses on the intrinsic relationality in states of entangled particles … that is, on intra-level structures”, agential realism on “the inseparability between observer and observed, that is, inter-level relationality” (p. 368). That shift of emphasis, Jaksland argues, is what carries agential realism into philosophical anthropology.

Feminist and naturalized (pp. 368–373)

• Ladyman and Ross’s “truce” with philosophical anthropology (“go in peace” to Heideggerians; p. 368) is the division Barad breaks.
• Barad is a moderate naturalist: metaphysics “inspired and constrained” by science, with “a distinctive task for philosophers” (p. 371), and with science itself held accountable (Barad 2007, 407).
• Three conceptions of agential realism (pp. 372–373). (1) Analogy: quantum concepts used metaphorically outside physics. (2) Template: “an overarching metaphysical template that is claimed to be instantiated by quantum mechanics and which may also be instantiated in other domains”, “a bowl admitting many different kinds of content”, with its concepts “content-neutral generalizations” (p. 372). (3) Naturalized metaphysics: constrained and justified by science “irrespective of the context in which this metaphysics is applied”. Barad rejects (1) and (2): “I am not interested in drawing analogies between particles and people” (2007, 24), and the template would be “an illegitimate stratification of ontology into separate realms”: “the universe is not broken up into two separate domains” (2007, 85). Note 21: agential realism “is only deployed and applied once, as an account of fundamental reality. It thus never leaves physics, but rather extends its scope from there”; Hollin et al. 2017 read it as a template.
• Pinch’s objection, that Barad situates science but not the physics she relies on (p. 373), and Barad’s reply by complementarity and “experimental meta/physics”; not decided here.

Metaphysical approximation (pp. 373–377)

• The challenge. Newtonian mechanics is a very good approximation macroscopically and lacks entanglement, so a quantum metaphysics seems irrelevant at lifeworld scales (p. 374).
• First modification: contingency. It is “the (apparently) contingent size of Planck’s constant” that makes quantum metaphysics irrelevant to the lifeworld (p. 374). Had it been larger, the autonomy of philosophical anthropology and naturalized metaphysics “would have been lost in both directions” (p. 374). So the distinction Ladyman and Ross draw “cannot” be principled (p. 375).
• Barad’s position. h/m being non-zero “is the key point”; good Newtonian approximation “is not evidence against the new epistemology or ontology” (Barad 2007, 416; p. 375). Jaksland reconstructs the argument she alludes to: dualisms “are features of an ontology that are either there or not there. They cannot differ in magnitude” (p. 375). Adding particles to an electron does not reinstate the subject–object split, and “Even if the entanglement between agency of observation and object is negligible for some practical purpose in the macroscopic domain, the entanglement is nevertheless still there” (p. 376).
• The general form (p. 376): scale-independent, all-or-nothing features of an ontology; candidate examples the dualisms, representationalism and “(joint carving) notions”. This is “the second and more significant challenge to the truce”.
• Individualism is the other way. “Whether a metaphysics of individualism holds could similarly be regarded as a question of all or nothing. Either there are individuals, or there are not. Regardless, it seems immediately more agreeable to regard this as something that can obtain through approximation. Circumstances can be such that a fundamentally relational metaphysics can appear to be one of individuals (if they are separable enough)” (p. 376). The subject–object dualism or representationalism might also obtain approximately, “though the way they do so remains more elusive”.
• A no-miracles argument for approximation: the success of Newtonian mechanics would be a miracle if Newtonian metaphysics were not even approximately true (pp. 376–377). Denying it “without further specification … simply begs the question”, and Barad’s response is unknown since her argument is implicit.

Consequences (pp. 377–379)

• Barad’s contribution is methodological: feminist metaphysics need not defend a place beside fundamental metaphysics, since it is fundamental metaphysics (p. 377).
• Mutuality runs both ways: “If careful analysis of our lifeworld for instance indicates that there is no subject-object dualism, then this would, by Barad’s argument, be evidence that this dualism is absent at all levels of description” (p. 378).
• The method is “experimental entanglement” (Fitzgerald and Callard) and demands “a rather extraordinary degree of attentiveness and responsibility to the totality of inquiry” (p. 378).
• It cuts both ways: if Bohmian mechanics were vindicated, an ontology of individuals with irreducible dispositions would be what flows to social theory, perhaps McKitrick’s dispositional account of gender (p. 378). The method “does not leave us the choice to later recompartmentalize inquiry in response to any unwelcome implications” (p. 379).

Claims

id	claim	strength	support
C1	Barad holds agential realism to be naturalized metaphysics applied once, and rejects the analogy and template readings	strong	textual; Barad 2007, 24 and 85, with her repeated dismissals of analogy (2007, 6, 7, 18, 24, 70, 88)
C2	Barad’s extension to the lifeworld requires ontological features that admit no approximation	moderate	reconstruction; Barad “only ever alludes to” the argument (p. 375)
C3	Whether such features exist is open	—	stated as the author’s view (p. 365)
C4	The independence of philosophical anthropology from quantum metaphysics is contingent, not principled	moderate	the counterfactual on Planck’s constant (pp. 374–375)
C5	Individualism can plausibly obtain by approximation in a relational world	weak	stated as “immediately more agreeable”; no argument beyond the Newtonian analogy and the no-miracles argument

Concepts

• Metaphysical approximation — a metaphysics (e.g. Newtonian individualism) obtaining approximately in a domain where the theory it is tied to approximates the more fundamental one.
• Scale-independent (all-or-nothing) feature — a feature of an ontology that no parameter controls, so it cannot appear or disappear between levels (p. 376).
• Template conception — agential realism as a content-neutral structure instantiated by quantum mechanics and possibly by other domains (p. 372); rejected by Barad.
• Agential cut — Barad’s term for the separation of object and apparatus, “more commonly known as a Heisenberg cut”, not inherent and enacted by specific intra-actions (p. 367); unlike a Cartesian cut, not fixed (note 8).
• Radical relational holism — Teller’s relational holism (inherent relations not supervening on the relata’s non-relational properties), made radical because only the relational phenomena are ultimately real (p. 367).

Connections

• Faye and Jaksland (LIT-1672, read in NOTE-1220), the assessment of agential realism as quantum mechanics that this paper brackets. Note 6 cites it: Barad’s reading of Bohr “is rather different from all the other interpretations of Bohr found in the literature”.
• Ladyman and Ross, whose Every Thing Must Go (LIT-301, unavailable) supplies the Primacy of Physics Constraint and the “truce”, and whose scale-relative realism the record reads in Ladyman and Lorenzetti (LIT-184, NOTE-129).
• Teller (1986) on relational holism, and Schaffer’s priority monism, neither held.

Bearing on the record

• CLAIM-476 compares luria to Barad’s apparatus on the conception Barad rejects. The claim says luria is an apparatus “in Barad’s sense” for a record’s objects, taking the notion out of physics and applying it to a governed record. That is Jaksland’s template conception (p. 372), the reading he attributes to Hollin et al. (note 21), and Barad rejects it as “an illegitimate stratification of ontology into separate realms”. On Barad’s own conception luria would be an apparatus without any comparison, since agential realism applies to all of reality; but that holds only if agential realism is correct as quantum mechanics, which Faye and Jaksland dispute. So the claim’s comparison is the template reading and should say so. Its “What it does not say” had it as “the exchange’s account of her”; the reading shows the account is of a use Barad disowns. A dated note is filed on the claim.
• CLAIM-477 is a template too, and that is its warrant’s shape. The record’s unrestricted frame is stated “over all” domains and “settled domain by domain”. That is the multiple-instantiation conception, not Barad’s extension of one fundamental metaphysics. Jaksland gives the cost: a template’s application to each domain needs its own justification, whereas Barad’s route needs no-approximation features. The record has chosen the first; the owner’s “extremely abstract and unrestricted” (U6 of 2026-10-27) is an unrestricted template, not a claim that the fundamental ontology settles every domain. A dated note is filed on the claim.
• QUESTION-280 was framed on individuals, where Jaksland leans the other way. The question asks whether the independence of individuals can be approximately true. Jaksland’s own view is that individualism plausibly can (p. 376); the features he leaves open are the dualisms and representationalism. A6 of the exchange had put this correctly (“for important aspects of her ontology, particularly the rejection of fundamental subject/object and word/world separations”), and the question should carry the split. Jaksland’s contingency argument (Planck’s constant) is a third answer the question did not list: that the independence is real, approximate and contingent. A dated note is filed.
• TERM-087 kept the Heisenberg cut apart; Jaksland identifies them. The TERM’s “What it is not” said the Heisenberg cut “was not used in the exchange” and is a neighbour of Pattee’s sense. Jaksland glosses the agential cut as “more commonly known as a Heisenberg cut” (p. 367), and Faye and Jaksland note that a movable cut is Heisenberg’s view against Bohr’s. The TERM is corrected in place: the agential cut is the Heisenberg cut, movable as Heisenberg held, made ontological.
• CLAIM-472’s first half has its source. Barad 2010, 253 as quoted here: an arrangement “will, by necessity, always produce its constitutive exclusion”; and note 18, Rouse on Barad’s view of science as “inherently normative”. The exclusion Barad means is complementarity’s; the claim’s second half, that an exclusion fixes no obligation, remains A6’s pressure and is not addressed here.
• CLAIM-136: Barad’s view is eliminative at the fundamental level. “Relations without preexisting relata” (Barad 2003, 815) and “only the relational phenomena are ultimately real” (p. 367), with objects emergent. That is not the record’s non-eliminative choice; the dated note on CLAIM-136 is extended.
• CLAIM-157 and CLAIM-405. “Separable enough” (p. 376) is the condition under which a relational world appears as one of individuals, and CLAIM-157’s gap criterion is a measure of exactly that, for a target. Jaksland gives no measure. The record’s claims hold the verdict objective once the criterion is fixed; Jaksland’s contingency point adds that whether the verdict is true for human-scale units may depend on a constant, not on the criterion. Noted in QUESTION-280, not on the claims.

Limitations

• The approximation argument is reconstructed, by the author’s own account, from allusions; Barad’s response to the no-miracles argument is unknown (p. 377).
• No account of what metaphysical approximation is beyond the Newtonian analogy; the paper does not say what it would be for an ontological feature to be approximately present.
• Agential realism’s quantum credentials are assumed throughout, so the paper’s conclusion is conditional on what Faye and Jaksland contest.

Open questions

• What is an account of approximation for ontological claims, as there is one for theories? (QUESTION-280.)
• Are the dualisms in fact scale-independent? The paper’s examples are candidates only.