Paper short abstract:

In this paper I provide speculative tools that enable one to resist the temptation of treating problems epistemologically, and to articulate the proposition that problems have a mode of existence of their own: they are the noise the future makes as it is folded into the present.

Paper long abstract:

What is the mode of existence of the problematic? The central aim of this paper is to provide us with tools that enable one to resist the temptation to treat the concept of 'problems' epistemologically, as a matter of uncertainty and ignorance. Instead, I interrogate the question of the ontology of problems, and the function of a problematic philosophy. Through an engagement that draws and expands on the philosophies of Gilles Deleuze, Alfred North Whitehead, Etienne Souriau, and Isabelle Stengers, among others, I will propose that the mode of existence of the problematic is that of a virtual future that demands practices of actualisation and counter-actualisation- problems, I suggest, are the noise the future makes as it is folded into the present. To that extent, philosophy therefore becomes the art of tapping into the noise by inventing concepts that may endow the present with alternative compositions.