Hyperrealism and Limits of Metaphysical Thinking

The aim of this paper is an analysis of opportunities for representation of the content of thinking - formal abstractions and general notions - as real objects, autonomous of the subject's mind. This conception has been named hyperrealism, as it combines simultaneous assumptions of the real existence of abstractions and of the exteriority of real objects to a subject. Being a conceptual oxymoron, hyperrealism treats the relations of mind and reality beyond the oppositions of ideal - material, abstract - concrete, objective -subjective, single - multiple and so on. Hyperrealism follows the literal reading of the notion of "this very" "thing": the essence of the thing is determined by existence and is not ready-made; the thing exists independently of mind; reality is an endless universum of finite things. Abstractions do not signify essences of some more real objects, but imitate them in their own existence. Along with the axiomatic-deductive mode of organization, they are characterized by associative-inductive reproduction. The question of the real existence of exterior abstractions has been repeatedly raised in the history of philosophy and science: the controversy of sophists and philosophers, the controversy of universals, Cartesian dualism and the problem of grounding the objective knowledge. This question in this paper is discussed through an appeal to some notions of Duns Scotus' philosophy: "double being", the one, formal difference, singularity, virtuality; and their interpretations by Martin Heidegger, Gilles Deleuze and Manuel Delanda. The key assumption here is the exteriority of reality to mind as not only a matter and energy, but also in the form of singular existing abstractions (ideas). Abstractions' singular existence is made up by relations of single objects that appear as series of repetitions and differences forming manifolds of conceptual events, in which co-possible objects are virtual for each other. Since abstractions are concrete, they are finite like empirical experience. The finitude of abstractions makes them existing like things, i.e. they get their meaning from the environment. Since abstractions are finite and singular, they cannot be sufficiently interpreted as correspondence, i.e. as signs of some more real physical objects. Having their own existence, abstractions merely imitate objects rather than represent their essences. Experience and abstractions are entities of different kinds, they are variations and not (top-down) levels of reality.

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