Related materials: foundation, form as a condition of description, reification, system as prescription and reality as interaction, ontological substitution in neurobiological rhetoric.
Introduction
The immanent and the transcendent become definite not separately, but within a single distinction. It arises where a boundary has been drawn around the field under consideration and the question has been raised of where the foundation lies relative to that boundary.
Immanent designates what belongs to the internal relations of the field under consideration and can be established without going beyond its limits. Transcendent designates what has a foundation introduced by going beyond those limits.
Both definitions require a prior question:
The limits of what, precisely, are being considered?
Nothing is immanent or transcendent in general. The same factor may be external relative to a cell, internal relative to an organism, and immanent relative to an ecosystem. Thus the pair denotes not two independent classes of beings, but the relationship of a foundation to a boundary that has been drawn.
The Field Under Consideration
The field under consideration may be a system, process, experience, theory, level of description, or some other whole that is being held. Its boundary determines:
- which elements and relations are regarded as internal;
- which transitions are admitted within the explanation;
- which foundations already belong to the accepted level;
- at what point the explanation appeals to something that does not belong to this field.
Let us designate the field under consideration as $F$, and the foundation of the explanation as $G$. Then the minimal scheme of distinction is:
$$
G \in F \quad \Rightarrow \quad G \text{ is immanent relative to } F,
$$
$$
G \notin F \quad \Rightarrow \quad G \text{ is transcendent relative to } F.
$$
This notation does not establish the location of the foundation by itself. It merely makes explicit the framework relative to which that location can be investigated.
The Immanent
An immanent foundation is not added to the field under consideration as a principle independent of it. It is discovered in relations, changes, and possibilities that already belong to that field.
In this sense, one can speak of immanent causality, an internal foundation, an immanent description, or immanent criticism. In every case, merely calling something internal is insufficient. One must show how it is established from the relations available within the field.
For example, the assertions
a cell divides
and
a cell strives to reproduce
are not the same description. The first records observable dynamics. The second introduces striving, a form that presupposes directionality relative to a possible result. Declaring this striving immanent to the cell does not yet show the transition:
observed change in a cell
→ the cell's striving
For the second thesis to become an explanation rather than the insertion of ready-made meaning, one must establish what precisely within the selected field permits the transition from change to striving, and in what sense this word is being used.
Calling a form immanent does not yet mean discovering it within a process.
Immanence Does Not Eliminate the Need to Show the Transition
The word “immanent” can create the appearance of an explanation already completed. If a property is declared internal, it seems as though its origin no longer requires separate examination. But locating a form inside a framework and being able to derive it from relations within that framework are different assertions.
For example:
Consciousness is immanent to a sufficiently complex organization of matter.
Here a field has already been selected:
material system
and consciousness is asserted to lie within it. But the assertion itself does not establish the transition:
material relations
→ subjective experience
If the structure of the transition is not shown, “immanent” does not explain the emergence of experience but places it within a preselected ontology. Locating the question inside the field is passed off as solving it.
The same substitution is possible when speaking of function, information, goals, value, or striving. A term is first introduced into a description, then declared an internal property of a process, after which the process is explained by the action of the imported term.
observed process
→ semantic form of description
→ the form is declared immanent to the process
→ the process is explained through that form
An immanent explanation must break this circle: show the relations from which the asserted form follows, rather than restore its status as internal by means of a word.
The Transcendent
The transcendent arises where the foundation of an explanation is not contained within the boundaries of the accepted field and introducing it requires moving beyond them.
If the state of a process is explained by a goal that exists independently of the process’s current states and directs them from outside the accepted model, that goal occupies a transcendent position relative to the model. This does not yet make the explanation false. It shows that the explanation does not close within the stated field and must independently justify the source of the introduced foundation and the manner in which it operates.
At the same time, what is external is not identical to what is transcendent. A stone may break a window while having been outside a house before impact. But the spatial location of the stone does not make it a transcendent foundation. If the explanatory field includes the physical interaction between stone and window, the impact remains an internal event of this field.
The distinction is:
spatially outside
≠
beyond the field within which the explanation is constructed
Conversely, a foundation may lack spatial location and still be transcendent relative to a chosen framework. What matters is not where it is physically located, but whether the explanation can obtain it from relations permitted within its field.
One Distinction, Not Two Ready-Made Entities
Immanence and transcendence do not exist before the boundary as two independent ontological regions. First a subject singles out the field under consideration; then they distinguish the position of a foundation relative to it.
the subject draws the boundary of field F
→ distinguishes what is internal from what goes beyond the boundary
→ establishes the position of foundation G relative to F
→ G receives the status of immanent or transcendent
Therefore, the same foundation may change status when the scale or framework of consideration changes. Such a change does not move the foundation itself. It changes the field relative to which its position is established.
For example, a hormonal signal may be external relative to an individual cell, internal relative to an organism, and absent from a psychological description of action. These statuses do not contradict one another as long as the different fields are explicitly named.
A contradiction arises when the boundary changes without being noticed: a foundation is introduced from a wider field but presented as though it were already contained within a narrower one; or an internal relation from one description acquires the status of a foundation at another level without a demonstrated transition.
The Subject of the Boundary
The boundary of the field under consideration does not draw itself. It is established by a subject when they choose the object, scale, language, and admissible ways of explanation.
This does not mean that the boundary is arbitrary. Actual interactions may resist the chosen division, violate the closure of the model, and demand its revision. But even an empirically justified boundary remains a boundary of consideration, not automatically a line given in reality itself.
Therefore, the complete question is not merely:
Is the foundation immanent or transcendent?
but:
Who drew the boundary, relative to what subject matter and for what explanation, within or beyond which the foundation has been placed?
Concealing this step makes it possible to present the chosen framework as the structure of reality itself. The subject first defines the field, then places the required form inside it, and finally declares it immanent. The trace of the operation disappears, and its result appears to have been discovered inside the object.
Diagnostic Questions
When using this pair, one must check:
- What precisely is the field under consideration?
- Who drew its boundary, and on what foundation?
- What counts as an admissible element, relation, and transition within the field?
- Was the asserted immanent foundation actually obtained from internal relations, or merely placed inside by definition?
- Does the explanation require a foundation not belonging to the selected field?
- Has something merely spatially external, or belonging to a broader level of the same explanation, been called transcendent?
- Does the boundary of the field change unnoticed during the reasoning?
These questions do not predetermine whether an explanation ought to be immanent. They make it possible to see where its boundary lies and which transition it is obliged to show.
Conclusion
The immanent and the transcendent constitute a single distinction concerning the position of a foundation relative to the field under consideration:
the foundation is established within the field
→ immanent relative to this field
the foundation requires moving beyond the field's boundary
→ transcendent relative to this field
Neither status is an unconditional property of the object. Both arise relative to a boundary drawn by the subject. Therefore, “immanent” does not complete an explanation, but establishes a requirement: to show how the asserted form actually follows from relations within the chosen field.
