The four-ontologies schema

The grid through which Philippe Descola compares every human way of ordering the world — and reveals that our nature/culture dualism is but one among four.

Origin: Beyond Nature and Culture (Par-delà nature et culture), 2005

How can we compare, without betraying them, ways of seeing the world as far apart as those of a Parisian engineer and an Achuar hunter of the Amazon? For the anthropologist Philippe Descola, the difficulty stems from a presupposition the West takes for granted: the divide between nature (the domain of things, governed by laws) and culture (the domain of humans, endowed with meaning). What if this divide were not the universal bedrock of all thought, but our own particular way of composing the world?

To break out of it, in Beyond Nature and Culture (2005) Descola proposes a grid of remarkable simplicity. Faced with any being whatever — an animal, a plant, a river, a machine — a culture answers, implicitly, two questions. Does this being share my interiority: a soul, a point of view, a consciousness, the capacity to will or to dream? And does it share my physicality: a body of the same stuff, the same matter, the same processes? Depending on whether the answer is “similar” or “different” along each of the two axes, four great ways of ordering existents take shape.

Naturalism — ours — grants all beings the same physicality (we are all made of the same matter, studied by biology and physics) but reserves a true interiority for humans alone. Animism does the reverse: an interiority common to all beings (each has its point of view), but different bodies. Totemism gathers humans and non-humans into groups that share both interiority and physicality. Analogism, finally, shatters the world into a multitude of singularities that correspondences link together — ancient China, Renaissance Europe and its signatures.

The strength of this grid is not to assemble a museum of curiosities. It is to make our own self-evidence appear as a choice. The dualism that seems to us to go without saying — subjects on one side, objects on the other — ceases to be the neutral backdrop from which one would describe “the” world. It becomes again one ontology among four: powerful, fertile, at the origin of modern science — but situated, not universal. Descola takes care to make this clear: to recognise this plurality is neither to say that “anything goes”, nor to forget the all-too-real relations of force; it is to restore naturalism to its place among the possible worlds.

This grid casts an unexpected light on our debates about artificial intelligence. To ask whether a machine “really” has a mind is already to reason as a naturalist — to assume that there is only one right way of dividing beings into those that have an interiority and those that are mere bodies. The schema does not settle the question; it displaces it. It invites us to see that our way of classifying beings — including these newcomers, the AIs — is not given in advance, and that other divisions of the world might perhaps let our questions be better posed.

What this concept is not

Not a cultural determinism: a society may combine several ontologies to varying degrees (“minor modes”).
Not a classification of “cultures”: these are modes of identification, not labels for peoples.
Not a hierarchy: naturalism is not “superior” to the other ontologies.
Not exhaustive: the schema covers only the modes of identification, not the modes of relation.
Exoticising non-Westerners as “animists” or “analogists” in opposition to “us, the naturalists”.
Essentialising entire cultures into a single box of the schema.
Ignoring historical transformations and contemporary hybridisations.
Forgetting that Descola himself is a naturalist analysing other ontologies from his own position.

Examples

Rethinking our relation to AIs

The schema helps us understand why the debate over AI “consciousness” is ill-posed. From a naturalist perspective, the question is: “Does the AI really have an interiority?” Naturalist answer: “No, only humans have a true consciousness.”

But from an animist perspective, the question becomes: “What relation should one establish with this entity that responds like a person?” Attributing agency to AIs is not an “animist error” but a relational modality as legitimate as the naturalism that refuses it.

Ecology and the rights of nature

Naturalism radically separates nature and culture, making it conceptually difficult to grant “rights” to a river or a forest. But in Ecuador and New Zealand, the recognition of legal personhood for ecosystems draws implicitly on animist or totemic schemes.

counter-exampleCounter-example: The limits of the schema

The schema does not predict the concrete behaviours of a society. Two “animist” societies may have radically different practices. The schema identifies modes of identification (how one categorises beings), not modes of relation (how one interacts with them). Descola recognises the existence of six distinct modes of relation (gift, predation, protection, production, transmission, exchange) that combine in various ways with the four ontologies.

Other perspectives

Is perspectivism reducible to animism? For Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, no: Amazonian perspectivism is more a philosophical programme than a mere anthropological box.
Does Descola remain a prisoner of the naturalism he criticises? Tim Ingold argues so: to analyse other ontologies from a naturalist position would be a tension never resolved.
Does analogism not encompass societies too different from one another? The category is sometimes judged too broad; Descola acknowledges its internal diversity.
Is the schema too rigid and ahistorical? Descola admits transitions and hybridisations between modes of identification.

The concept in detail

Animism

Formula: Continuity of interiorities + Discontinuity of physicalities

In animism, all beings — humans, animals, plants, spirits, sometimes objects — share one and the same interiority: they have a soul, a consciousness, an intentionality similar to those of humans. What distinguishes them is their bodily envelope. The jaguar has an interiority like the human's, but its jaguar body gives it a different perspective on the world.

“Animism, as continuity of souls and discontinuity of bodies, is the exact inverse of naturalism.” — Philippe Descola, Beyond Nature and Culture

Concrete examples:

Society	Manifestation
Achuar (Amazonia)	The garden plants are persons. The gardener sings to her manioc plants as to children. The hunter negotiates with the “masters of the animals”.
Yanomami (Amazonia)	Each animal species forms a “tribe” with its own councils, social relations, and diplomacy with humans.
Cherokee (North America)	Flora and fauna have their own tribes that hold councils and maintain social relations.
Siberia	The spirits of hunted animals must be appeased through rituals of thanksgiving.

Relational implications: In animism, hunting is not “killing an animal” but negotiating with a non-human person. Cultivating is not “exploiting nature” but maintaining kinship relations with plant-persons.

Naturalism

Formula: Discontinuity of interiorities + Continuity of physicalities

Naturalism is the dominant ontology in the modern West since the seventeenth century. All beings share the same material substance (atoms, molecules, DNA, biochemical processes), but only humans possess a true interiority: reflexive consciousness, symbolic language, culture, morality.

It is the exact inversion of animism.

Concrete examples:

Context	Manifestation
Scientific laboratory	The biologist knows that mice share 85% of our genes. Total physical continuity. Yet he never attributes reflexive consciousness or language to mice.
Industrial farming	Animals are “biomass” — living matter without significant interiority.
Human rights	Only humans have rights because only they have dignity and consciousness.
AI today	AIs have “no consciousness” because only humans have a true interiority.

Implicit presuppositions:

“Nature” exists as a domain separate from “culture”
Physical laws are universal
Interiority (mind, consciousness) is a human monopoly
Attributing a soul to animals is an “error” or a “projection”

Totemism

Formula: Continuity of interiorities AND physicalities (within a totemic group)

Totemism establishes a total continuity — interior AND physical — between humans and non-humans belonging to the same totemic group. The members of a totemic clan share with their totem (kangaroo, emu, honey ant...) a common origin in the Dreamtime, an identical spiritual essence, and bodily/behavioural characteristics.

Concrete examples:

Society	Manifestation
Aranda (Australia)	A man of the kangaroo totem, seeing his photograph, says: “This one is exactly like me, like a kangaroo.” It is not a metaphor — he IS kangaroo.
Nungar (south-west Australia)	The clan members share with their totem origin, substance, temperament and behaviour.
Dreamtime	All the members of a totemic class — humans AND non-humans — descend from the same Dreamtime ancestor.

Relational structure:

         DREAMTIME
            │
     Kangaroo Ancestor
       ╱           ╲
  Humans of the   Kangaroos
  Kangaroo clan   (animals)
       │              │
   Shared: origin, flesh, spirit, behaviour

Difference from animism: In animism, ALL beings have a similar interiority. In totemism, only the members of the SAME totemic group share interiority AND physicality. An Aranda of the kangaroo totem has no continuity with emus — these belong to another ontological group.

Analogism

Formula: Discontinuity of interiorities AND physicalities

Analogism posits a world of radical singularities: each being possesses a unique interiority and physicality. Faced with this dizzying fragmentation, analogist societies seek correspondences between the elements in order to restore a cosmic coherence.

Hence the systems of microcosm/macrocosm correspondences.

Concrete examples:

Civilisation	System of correspondences
Traditional China	Yin-Yang, Five Elements (wood, fire, earth, metal, water), organ–season–emotion–colour–direction correspondences
India	The chakra system, body–cosmos correspondences
Pre-Columbian Mexico	Aztecs: calendar–body–destiny correspondences
Renaissance Europe	Astrology, alchemy: planet–metal–body-part correspondences
West Africa	Divination through correspondences

Detailed example: Traditional Chinese Medicine

Element	Organ	Season	Emotion	Colour	Direction
Wood	Liver	Spring	Anger	Green	East
Fire	Heart	Summer	Joy	Red	South
Earth	Spleen	Inter-season	Rumination	Yellow	Centre
Metal	Lung	Autumn	Sadness	White	West
Water	Kidney	Winter	Fear	Black	North

A disease of the liver manifests in spring, is accompanied by anger, and is treated with green foods. The bodily microcosm reflects the cosmic macrocosm.

Underlying logic: “Everything is connected to everything” through chains of correspondences. Divination, astrology and geomancy are techniques for deciphering these correspondences.

Entry co-created — Matthieu Ferry ⇄ AI