There is No Fish

Inspired by the brilliant Mark Cabaj

1. The provocation

There is no fish. This statement is not a denial of what we encounter when we look into the water. It is a challenge to the way the word fish shapes what we think we are encountering. The word invites us to imagine a discrete object: a bounded, self-contained individual that exists in and of itself, separate from its surroundings. It suggests that the fish is first a thing, and only afterwards something that interacts with an environment.

The provocation refuses this ordering. It asks us to consider whether what we call a fish is not fundamentally an object at all, but a relatively stable coherence that emerges within a wider field of relations. To say “there is no fish” is therefore not to negate existence, but to challenge the assumption that discreteness and self-sufficiency are the basic form of reality.

2. The problem with objectness

From early on, we are trained to perceive the world as a collection of separate things. We learn to name, to distinguish, and to isolate. This habit is deeply practical. It allows us to measure, regulate, exchange, and intervene. It makes the world appear stable and manageable.

However, this mode of perception also performs a reduction. When we say “fish,” we make a conceptual cut in a continuous field of processes. We isolate a pattern and treat it as if it were self-standing. This move is operationally useful, but it obscures the conditions that sustain the pattern. The fish appears to be bounded by its skin, yet the processes that make its life possible extend far beyond that boundary.

The issue is not that object-based thinking is wrong in all contexts. It is that it is often taken as fundamental. The fish is treated as an ontological unit rather than as a produced coherence. It is this assumption that the provocation seeks to unsettle.

3. The fish as a relationally produced organism

The fish is real. It is a living organism with a degree of internal organisation, regulation, and persistence. It maintains itself, metabolises, responds to stimuli, and reproduces. Its individuality is not an illusion in the sense of being unreal.

However, this individuality is not self-grounding. It is produced and maintained through a set of interdependent processes. The fish is part of an evolutionary lineage that stretches across deep time. Its form reflects long histories of adaptation that cannot be understood at the level of the individual alone. It is also an epigenetic event, with gene expression shaped by environmental conditions such as temperature, salinity, and nutrient availability.

At the same time, the fish is a metabolic process, continuously exchanging oxygen, energy, and matter with its surroundings. It hosts microbial ecologies that are integral to its functioning, making any simple idea of a singular, self-contained individual inadequate. Its behaviour and survival are shaped by currents, predators, habitats, and food webs.

These are not external influences acting on an already complete organism. They are constitutive of what the organism is. The fish is therefore not simply in an ecosystem; it is formed through it. More precisely, it is a relatively stable mode of individuation that arises within a wider relational field.

4. Boundary as interface, not isolation

The fish clearly has a body, and that body has a boundary. This boundary is not imaginary. It marks a real organisational distinction. However, it does not establish metaphysical independence. It establishes a mode of regulated exchange.

The skin of the fish is not a wall that separates a fully self-contained interior from an unrelated exterior. It is an interface through which flows of matter, energy, and information are continuously managed. The organism persists not by isolating itself from its environment, but by maintaining a dynamic coupling with it.

This means that the boundary should not be understood as evidence of separateness in the strong sense. It is evidence of a particular form of relation. The fish is neither an isolated object nor an undifferentiated part of its environment. It is a differentiated participant in a field of ongoing exchanges.

5. The fish as a temporally stabilised pattern

Another way to understand the fish is as a temporally stabilised pattern. At any given moment, it appears as a coherent organism, but that coherence is sustained only through the continuous reproduction of conditions that allow it to persist.

The fish is therefore a temporal slice through longer processes. Its form has been shaped by evolutionary time. Its ongoing existence depends on ecological and metabolic continuity. Its identity is not fixed once and for all, but maintained through ongoing activity.

This does not make the fish ephemeral in the sense of being insignificant or fleeting. It makes its stability an achievement. The organism persists because a complex set of processes continues to hold together in a coordinated way. The fish is real, but its reality is processual rather than self-contained.

6. Epigenetic contingency within a wider relational frame

The epigenetic dimension helps to clarify this point by showing that gene expression is not a fixed internal program, but is shaped by environmental conditions. The organism’s development and functioning are therefore co-authored by its surroundings.

However, this is only one aspect of a broader pattern. The relational constitution of the fish extends beyond epigenetics to include evolutionary history, metabolic exchange, ecological embedding, and material throughput. At every level, the fish is dependent on conditions that it neither contains nor controls.

Dependence here should not be understood as a limitation added onto an otherwise independent entity. It is constitutive of the organism’s existence. The fish does not first exist and then depend on its environment. It exists through that dependence.

7. From objects to processes of individuation

The deeper philosophical shift lies in moving from an object-based ontology to an understanding of processes of individuation. The fish is not first a self-subsisting thing that later enters into relations. It is a relatively stable outcome of relations that generate and sustain it.

Individuation, in this sense, is real but not absolute. The fish is an individuated organism, but its individuation is produced, maintained, and limited by the relational field in which it exists. It is a living pattern that holds together for a time, rather than a fundamental unit that stands apart from its conditions.

To say “there is no fish” is therefore to deny that the fish exists as a self-grounding object. It is to affirm instead that what exists is a process of living individuation.

8. The role of naming and reification

Language plays a crucial role in shaping how we perceive this situation. Nouns tend to present the world as composed of substances. They stabilise what is in fact dynamic and ongoing. Once something is named, it appears to acquire a solidity that exceeds its actual mode of existence.

The word “fish” compresses a complex set of processes into a single term. This compression is often necessary, but it also risks reification. Reification occurs when a temporary, relationally produced coherence is treated as if it were a self-sufficient object.

The problem is not naming itself, but forgetting that naming involves abstraction. The word does not simply describe reality; it shapes it by foregrounding certain aspects and obscuring others.

9. Extending the argument beyond the fish

Once this way of thinking is established, it extends beyond biology. A forest is not merely a collection of trees, but a coordinated system of soil ecologies, fungal networks, water cycles, and climatic conditions. A city is not simply an arrangement of buildings and people, but an evolving pattern of infrastructure, behaviour, governance, and capital. An economy is not just a system of exchange, but a field of interdependent value flows and institutional structures.

In each case, what appears as an object or a set of objects is more accurately understood as a stabilised expression of deeper relational dynamics. The same mistake recurs: temporary coherences are treated as fundamental units.

10. Practical implications

This shift in understanding has significant practical implications. If we treat the world as composed of discrete objects, we design interventions that focus on managing those objects in isolation. For example, we attempt to regulate fish populations without attending to the ecological conditions that make those populations viable.

If, instead, we recognise that the fish is an emergent coherence within a relational field, then the task becomes one of stewarding the conditions under which such coherences can persist. This requires attention to ecosystems, interdependencies, and the broader dynamics that sustain life. It shifts the focus from control to participation and from isolated intervention to systemic care.

11. A more demanding realism

This perspective should not be mistaken for abstraction or denial. It represents a more demanding form of realism. It takes seriously the dependencies that are often ignored and recognises that stability is something that must be continuously maintained.

The fish is real as an organism, but it is not real as a self-sufficient object. Its reality lies in its patterned interdependence. It exists as a living coherence that is continuously produced and sustained through relations.

12. There is no fish

The provocation therefore remains. There is no fish in the sense that the word implies. There is no fully separable object, no self-contained individual that can be understood in isolation from the conditions that produce it.

What exists instead is a relatively stable, biologically individuated coherence arising within a wider relational field. The fish is a pattern that holds for a time, sustained by evolutionary inheritance, metabolic exchange, ecological embedding, and environmental conditions.

The fish does not disappear. What disappears is the assumption that it ever existed as a self-sufficient thing. What remains is a more precise understanding of reality as relational, processual, and continuously in formation.

There is no fish. There is only the ongoing process of living individuation that, for a while, we call fish.