The Anthropological Meaning of Infinite Regression

Infinite regression, which in logic marks the failure or incompleteness of a demonstration, is first and foremost a permanent possibility the existence of the higher primate called Homo sapiens is exposed to. What, precisely, does this possibility amount to? In a few words, it is correct to speak of infinite regression whenever the solution of a problem proposes again at a more abstract level the very problem which it seemed to have just unravelled. This article is part of a wider project in which I try to clarify how precisely infinite regression is made, what the circumstances are that contribute towards triggering it, and in what its anthropological and political relevance consists. More specifically, in this essay I will examine the gap that separates the interminable “and so on” from the compulsion to repeat studied by Freud, the crucial weight that syntactic recursion and the imagination have in it, as well as the taking root of regression in the naturally artificial disposition of the human animal, that is, in the paradoxical union of biology and culture

Epistemology · Homo sapiens · Meaning (existential · Political science · Recursion (computer science · Regression · Relevance (law · Sociology · Statistics · Anthropology · Mathematics · Race, Genetics, and Society · Law · Philosophy

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  Galina Oustinova-Stjepanovic, Galina Oustinova‐stjepanovic•Monumental Names•2022

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