Over at Now-Times, Alexei has written a post criticizing the central claim of the Ontic Principle. In response to some questions Alexei had over at Perverse Egalitarianism, I had evoked my Ontological Principle and wrote,
One of the strange things about the ontology I’m trying to develop is that anything that produces a difference would be included under the umbrella of the real. Consequently, insofar as concepts contribute differences– and often very important differences –they would, for me, be included under the real. I take it that this is one of the consequences of what I’ve called the Ontological Principle, which states that being is said in a single and same sense for all that is, i.e., being is univocal. Consequently, in my ontology, there is not one world that is “really real” like, say, physical objects, and another world that is not really real like, say, minds. Both are really real insofar as they contribute differences.
In short, the Ontological Principle asserts that if something is a difference or makes a difference it is real, full stop. Or, put otherwise, being is said in a single and same sense for all that is. This, of course, leads to a very strange ontology, for it commits me to the thesis that, say, the world depicted in Neal Stephenson’s Anathem has a claim to being. Insofar as this world makes a difference, it would follow from my ontic principle that it is real.
read on!
I am not entirely certain I understand Alexei’s argument, so I’ll quote a couple of passages from his post and respond to them. Alexei writes,
Leaving aside the Spinozism of his last two sentences, I think Levi’s right to say that Concepts contribute to, or create differences. In fact, I think all of contemporary aesthetics is built on this claim — it’s the cornerstone for Danto’s whole aesthetics and ontology of art: the differentiation between art and non-art, as Danto argues in his the Transfiguration of the Commonplace is conceptual. Hence Warhol’s genius. His brillo box is art, for although it’s perceptually indistinguishable form a Real brillo box, it has a conceptually distinct physiognomy. What I’m wary about is Levi’s Occamite nominalism: the thing (in its broad sense) that announces a difference gains ontological status. What delineates Danto’s thought from the one Levi is pursuing is, ceteris paribus, that whereas art is a human activity and Danto’s ontology is a social ontology, Levi thinks that this distinction between social ontology and natural ontology is bogus. To irritate him, we could say: this difference (the difference between the Naturwissenschaften and the Geisteswissenschaften) isn’t a difference that makes a difference. So despite radically different research paradigms, interests, and theoretical objects, there’s no difference at the level of ontology.
On the one hand, if I follow Alexei’s argument, he seems to be charging me with a performative contradiction. That is, my Ontic Principle states that the minimal condition for being a being lies in difference. There is a difference between Naturwissenschaften and Geisteswissenschaften, so therefore I should be committed to the thesis that these two orders are real. However, my Ontological Principle states that being is said in a single and same sense for all that is. This collapses the difference between nature and culture, thereby contradicting the Ontic Principle. I am unclear, however, as to how this conclusion follows from the Ontological Principle. The Ontological Principle does not state that all beings are of the same sort, but that all differences are real. That is, to be is to differ. Insofar as difference differs, it thus follows that we must investigate the nature of these differences to see how they are organized and function. In other words, there is nothing in my ontology that prohibits the distinction between pure ontology and regional ontologies, insofar as regional ontologies would investigate particular fields of difference, whereas pure ontology would be largely exhausted by the thesis that to be is to differ and make difference.
What I find perplexing in Alexei’s formulation above is the implicit thesis that culture is not real, and that it is only nature that is real. In other words, Alexei seems to be advancing the thesis that only the physical is, whereas somehow the cultural is not. I do not see why this would be the case. I will, however, say that one of the things I’m trying to accomplish at the level of social and political theory is, following Latour, the introduction of non-human actors into social networks. In my view, a good deal of social and political thought suffers from flawed assumptions at the level of social ontology. The field gets restricted to human beings, discourses, signifiers, language, ideas, norms, etc., and the non-human is set aside and treated as something outside of or other than the social. Following Latour, my thesis would be that the inhuman is an actor in the social as well, and that the social cannot be adequately thought without taking into account non-human actors.
I learned of a good example non-human actors play in social assemblages or networks as an undergrad in a course entitled Nature, Technology, and Culture. There the professor discussed a city where the bridges between the North and South side were built too low for the public buses to pass through. This simple fact contributed a major difference in both income distribution and cultural distribution in the city, as those who were from the South side of the city could not readily travel to the North side of the city where many of the jobs were. In addition, this difference, the bridge, had both catalytic and de-catalytic effects in the sorts of human networks formed. By virtue of this lack of ready transportion between the North and South sides, networks among humans became restricted to these particular regions, leading these networks to become self-reinforcing of particular relationships. In this example, the simple height of the bridge would be a non-human actor within the social assemblage. It will be objected that the bridges were built by human hands, that they would not exist without humans, and this would be true. However, the key point is that the difference introduced by the height of the bridges was not– as far as we know —intended to produce this difference.
Similarly, we have completely inhuman actors that play a significant role in processes of social assembly. Thus, for example, what role does the disappearance of Lake Chad, an inhuman entity, play in the process of assembly for human relations in Africa? Lake Chad is an inhuman actor that certainly plays a significant role in how life is organized among people in this region. Through the role of this actor, people are led to relate to the land differently, each other differently, occupations differently, and perhaps even their cultural beliefs differently. As a result of the way in which this lake acts, all sorts of translations must take place among the people in this vicinity.
In short, my thesis would be that the social is composed not of what is human, but of the inhuman and human alike. Once again, following Latour, this leads to a significant transformation of our understanding of the social. The social is not a distinct substance in opposition to, say, the natural or the psychological. Rather, the social now refers to associations. Following Whitehead, the social will thus refer to any form of association, whether completely inhuman or involving combinations of the human and the inhuman. What will be of interest in a social theory is how these association are made and remade. As Latour dramatically puts it, “the social does not explain but must be explained”… No groups only group formations. The point that inhuman actors play a significant role in human social formations might appear trite and obvious– and it really should be –but when confronting a world of social and political theory that seems to focus almost entirely on the discursive, the symbolic, and the normative, it is, I think, a tremendously important point to make. So long as these inhuman actors are not included in associations or assemblages, I just don’t see how we can pose the right sort of questions. George Bush states the terrorists are out to get us because they hate our way of life, i.e., culture is to explain it all. There are no small number of theorists who make similar claims in much more elaborate and sophisticated vocabularies. The point is not that culture, language, signs, history, etc., do not make a difference, but that we must also think these differences in their relation to inhuman differences.
Alexei goes on to write:
Synthetically rephrased: Levi selectively emphasizes difference. And I take this to be a paradox, one that Mikhail caught a fair amount of flak for articulating in the course of his Downer Principle. Now, unless Levi can somehow (1) rein in the cascade of conceptual differences that make a difference, say between ‘Nature’ and ‘culture,’ there’s no grounds for making distinctions or identifying differences in the first place. But that means that not every difference can ultimately be treated as an ontological entitity, at least in Levi’s robust sense.
This implies, moreover, (2) figuring out conceptually how concepts can contribute to or create difference, without themselves being ontologically central. This latter point is a corollary of the more consistent Copernicanism that characterizes Object Oriented Philosophy: Subjectivity — that begets all concepts — is not the Centre of Ontology, and hence it’s resources — concepts — cannot be central to the ontological. Mikhail announced versions of these criticisms earlier. And I think that were the two of us particularly churlish, we could write a very Platonic dialogue, akin to the Parmenides and the Sophist, to show why you don’t want to endorse Levi’s Occamite nominalism: this ontlogy of concepts always engenders inconsistency.
Here, once again, I think Alexei conflates the ontological issue with the epistemic issue (understandable given his correlationist commitments). For Alexei, the issue is one of identifying important differences and making distinctions. I do not at all deny that humans identify differences and make distinctions. A scientist practicing physics, for example, says “let’s ignore all the qualitative differences in a physical object such as its color, its taste, etc. and restrict ourselves to examining the relationship between its mass and velocity”. That same scientist also develops concepts that allow him to identify and distinguish qualities and these other properties. These distinctions and identifications pertain to what the scientist wishes to know about the world. This is even demanded by my Ontic Principle. If it is true that all differences make a difference, then we need to include human differences as well. This is one major way in which my position differs from that of the Speculative Realists. Where the Speculative Realist claims that we can only attain the real by thinking a world without humans, I include humans among the real things in the universe.
There is thus nothing in my ontology to prevent making distinctions, identifying things, excluding certain things as irrelevant to inquiry, etc. All of these are crucial for any sort of investigation. The ontological point is simply that if something is it both contains difference and makes a difference. Thus, my thesis is three-fold: First, I do not hold that the human-world relation is the central or key relation to ontology. Relationships between humans and other objects are one relation among many other relations that don’t include humans at all. Second, I hold that ontology ought to be able to talk about objects and relations that share no relation to the human whatsoever (though admittedly I’m not sure how this is possible). Third, just as a matter of philosophical ethics, I think it would be a tremendous improvement if it were simply granted that all differences make a difference, thereby opening a space in which a variety of factors can be seen to play a role. Thus, at the level of epistemology, I can perfectly well concede that for the sake of my particular inquiry or investigation I am going to restrict myself to the role that technology places in human assemblages. However, in making this methodological exclusion, I need not jump to the ontological conclusion that for social assemblages economics is unimportant, signifiers are unimportant, history is unimportant, etc. Where the technology studies person might illicitly confuse their particular region of investigation with the ontological essence of the subject, thereby dismissing the Marxist economist, this minimal acknowledgment of how difference functions might allow us to achieve a both/and perspective rather than an either/or perspective while acknowledging our very real incapacity to examine all differences. In doing so, this minimal admission would help to halt futile and silly debates.
Alexei ends his critique on a note that I just don’t understand. Alexei writes:
Appealing to Danto might be a nice way to illustrate this. For Danto, art is essentially and from the beginning a conceptual activity. So it’s not like there’s a work of art to which we apply a set of concepts post festum. There’s no real ancestral relationship. and hence our ability to create art and our aesthetic concepts are equiprimordial. Levi’s claim is different. Things are ontological, levi contends, in virtue of their ability to produce differences. Concepts, however, come late. They are effects of differences that can, in their turn, produce or identify other differences. Despite their ability to identify or produce differences, concepts are not equiprimordial with other differences, since they don’t have the same ancestral relationships, and hence don’t inhabit the same plane or level of ontological consideration. I suppose this is a version of Spinozistic parallelism, but who on earth was ever happy with this argument in Spinoza?
Here Alexei’s reference to the ancestral thoroughly perplexes me. I am unclear as to why the fact that something comes late in any way diminishes its being or its reality. The idea seems to be that in order for something to be it must always already have existed. Yet life comes late and is. Certain forms of society come late and nonetheless are, etc. My Principle of Irreduction states that nothing is either reducible or irreducible to anything else. The fact that concepts emerge or are products in no way diminishes the reality of those concepts and their capacity to produce differences. All that is being claimed is that conceptual differences are not involved in the being of all entities. The rock on the mountain gets along just fine without them. I would also disagree that our ability to create art and our aesthetic concepts are equiprimordial for the reasons I outlined in my previous post, “Correlationism”. Rather, I would hold that there is a field of singularities that generate forms and am committed to the thesis that art and aesthetic concepts can change significantly over time as a result of these processes of genesis.
Once again, I’d like to express my deep gratitude towards Alexei for the manner in which he’s approached this discussion. Rather than approaching this discussion as a matter of misinterpretation or textual dispute, he’s instead taken my claims seriously as philosophical claims– even if poorly developed –and responded to them with philosophical criticisms. I suspect that Alexei and I will not reach agreement, but both of us will benefit in sharpening our arguments and concepts nonetheless. This is the way to do it.
Larval Subjects . 
January 23, 2009 at 1:32 am
Thanks for the feedback Levi.
My original post was written far too quickly, so let me try to clarify a few of my arguments. I think they’re important, and I don’t want to be entirely misunderstood.
First off, you write,
Leaving aside the idea that ‘difference differs’ (which suggests to me that you can’t actually identify a difference because identification is re-identification, cognition is recognition, and something that is always differing isn’t stable enough to be identified) I am claiming that there’s a paradox here, but it’s not exactly the one you outline. To put the matter simply, ‘difference’ is an insufficient notion for developing an ontology. and this insuffiency is exhibited in the lack of context and context-dependence that differentially construed objects exhibit. To phrase it as a paradox: there’s no limits to difference, and there’s no difference without limits. Since the notion of difference requires context dependence in order to be intelligible, and since context is a determining factor of difference (as all the examples of DNA and gene expression, and non-human actors is meant to show), individuation of ontolgoical entities requires more than difference to occur. So it’s not about the privileged (un)reality of either the humanities or the natural sciences, or even of their respective objects of study, It’s about the fact that the context(s) that allow for the comparison and differentiation of these disciplines can’t be accounted for through the differences these disciplines exhibit relative to one another. And hence the contexts aren’t real. Without context, however, there’s no individuation. Hence there’s not difference to differ. Hence there’s no ontology.
Maybe I can illustrate by way of your remark concerning regional and pure ontologies. You wrote:
Now I think your ontology prohibits precisely this kind of distinction! Hence the problem — it’s the impossibility of identifying contextual features that call for, determine, and give value to regional ontologies (i.e. define context and context dependence) that gives you problems, since context-dependency can’t be delineated according to differences themselves (context is a material a priori, a concrete universal, which allows for the expression of certain differences at he expense of others). Here’s why: regional ontologies aren’t — by definition — on the same plane or plateau as pure ontology; you can have any number of regional ontolgoies on the same plane of lived experience (Chemistry, football, painting, physics, and biology all have their respective regional ontologies), but they are all expressions of a ‘deeper'(Husserl) or higher (Hegel), or more authentic (Heidegger) phenomenon. Unless there’s a fundamental, unifying ontological stratum, you’re not entitled to talk of regional ontologies (you can’t talk about continents, for instance, without implying the tectonic plates that compose the earth’s mantle). But your Flat Ontology’s fundamental stratum is difference as such. The rhizomatic character of difference precludes talk of deeper, higher, or purer ontologies. But such a preclusion entails the elinimation of regional ontologies, for there’s no longer anything for these ontologies to be regions of (hence why D&g start speaking of plateaus, which don’t have any necessary connection among each other). And hence, if the logic works out, the lack of regional ontologies precludes certain kinds of difference, which then undermines your starting point.
Ok, too much for one comment, so I’ll leave off here. hope that clarifies what I take to be the stakes of our conversation.
January 23, 2009 at 2:12 am
Perhaps this is a good place to insert Levi’s Latour point about non-human actors:
Alexi: “Appealing to Danto might be a nice way to illustrate this. For Danto, art is essentially and from the beginning a conceptual activity. So it’s not like there’s a work of art to which we apply a set of concepts post festum.”
It seems that we must understand Art solely within the realm of the conceptual, which is an essentializing delineation. Unlike the world of Nature, Art is primordeally conceptual (if understand the benefits of this distinction). And we understand its meaningfulness solely at the conceptual level, with like upon like. The problem is that Art is shot through with non-human actors of the kind Levi is attempting to put forth. The viscocity of Van Gogh’s paints (intentional or contingent?), the quality of light sources or instruments, the economic conditions which shape subject matter (The full appreciation of “The Potato Eaters” involves much more than Van Gogh’s conceptualization of them), the possibility of Van Gogh’s epilepsy or some other condition which enhanced/distorted his visual palate, the price of his paintings at auction, all of these actors are not capable of being conceptually, and purely removed from the conceptual appreciation of a conceptual act. In fact the art of Van Gogh is intimate to the non-human actors which help produce it. One cannot isolate the intentional from the causal in any exact manner. Art is its own category, but it is a category with varigated borders, none of it to be reduced to any pure term.
This being said, I keep hearing Levi suggest that he is doing something unusual, (“one of the strange things about ontology”) in saying that anything that produces a difference has Being. I have heard him pay homage to Bateson, and recently of Latour. And surely somewhere also he attributes this to Spinoza. It could be that I have missed it, but this claim, as Alexi seems to elude to (though I’m not sure if he has this in mind), comes from Plato’s The Sophist:
“Str: I suggest that anything which possesses any power [dunamin] of any kind, either to produce a change in anything of any nature or to be affected even in the least degree by the slightest cause, though it only be on one occasion, has real existence [ontws einai]. For I set up as a defintion which defines being [ta onta], that it is nothing else than capacity [dunamis]” (247d)
Whether this is obvious in everyone’s minds or not I cannot know. But it seems odd to be talking about this take on ontology as if it is something new.
January 23, 2009 at 4:20 pm
Nice catch, Kvond, with the Sophist reference! I did actually have it mind.
Anyway, here’s a few rejoinders to your comment above.
Viz my allusion to Danto: I take it that whatever else metaphysics is, it is an attempt to think Essence (Hence why it’s metaphysics, not physics, as Aristotle asserts near the beginning of the former work). So yes, Danto essentializes the conceptual element in painting. He makes art’s conceptuality the difference that makes a difference between art and non-art. From Danto’s perspective then, the non-human actors that influence the composition of a given artwork aren’t important, since any number of things — including non-art things — can have those same qualities, histories, you name it, without being art.
What’s more, it strikes me that so long as we think of metaphysics as trying to comprehend Being qua Being (i.e. the essence of Being), rather than identifying how an individual being emerges from the flux of differences (which would be Physics on Aristotle’s definition), the paint van Gogh used, the quality of light, etc, don’t matter. We’re after the meaning of Art (Being) qua Art (Being), not the salient features that led to the existent known as ‘the potato eaters.’ Danto has a few thought experiments that I find quite compelling here, but I don’t have time or space to outline them.
So I guess one of the questions that remained implicit in my criticism of Levi was the following: is object oriented philosophy physics or metaphysics? My instinct is to say that it can’t actually be metaphysics.
This brings us to non-human actors. I think there’s something important about this notion, so long as we’re not mislead by the commonsensical meaning of ‘actor,’ which doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the notion as Levi has invoked it. Or so it seems to me, based on Levi’s presentation. For the non-human actors that Levi mentioned and that you identified in your example don’t actually act. They’re ‘background conditions’ against which certain phenomena emerge. They’re contextual in precisely the same way as Marx’s notions of forces and relations of production. Non-human actors cannot form plans or undertake an action, although they delimit the field of possible action. Hence, as contexts, as means of productions, they’re not really actors.
Now, for reasons I’ve already outlined, I don’t think Levi’s developing ontology can yet think ‘context.’ I’ve two reasons for this: (1) his notion of action, or activity as an ‘interplay of difference’ seems incoherent to me (for reasons I outlined in the comment I just linked to), and (2) his flat ontology of differentially related objects doesn’t allow for the segmentation of regionalization of objects into contexts. These issues, I think, have led him to think of non-human actors as literally acting, as opposed to defining contexts of development and human agency.
January 23, 2009 at 8:02 pm
[…] Networks, Object-Oriented Philosophy, Ontic, Ontology, Relation In a response to “The Ontic Principles Tangled Beard“, Alexei contends that difference is an insufficient ground for an ontology: Leaving aside […]
January 23, 2009 at 8:22 pm
It seems to me that this thesis would spell the ruin of the social sciences insofar as so much of what the social sciences study have nothing to do with humans forming plans. For example, in Marx’s account of class, belonging to a particular class has nothing to do with whether or not the person intends to exploit another group or not. Rather, exploitation is an aggregate effect of actions with entirely different intentions. Within my framework, anything that produces a difference is an actor within a network. This is because objects are treated as acts. The issue of whether or not the actor has intentions, is conscious, devises plans, etc., is irrelevant to whether or not it is an actor in the network.
January 23, 2009 at 8:37 pm
Not so fast. Let’s not forget how the term “metaphysics” arose! Metaphysics was the term given by the editors of Aristotle’s writings because they couldn’t see how the issues of that text fit with the questions of the Physics. Of course, Aristotle does refer to these questions as questions of First Philosophy.
At any rate, claims about what makes an object and object are questions of first philosophy or metaphysics as they are questions about the essence of objects, and these questions have consequences for physics (in Aristotle’s sense) as well. If it is concluded that all beings are the result of a genesis, then it necessarily follows that this is true of art as well. This diminishes what art is just as little as an aardvark is diminished by being seen as the result of evolution.
January 23, 2009 at 9:00 pm
Fair point about the word, metaphysics, Levi, But if memory serves Aristotle does differentiate between Being qua Being and Being qua Becoming, and treats the latter in the Physics, reserving the former for what we call his metaphysics. When I have a moment, I’ll double check that — but I believe the second paragraph or so of the Met. Book Alpha makes this claim.
With respect to what you say about the social sciences, I only have a humble response. I’m no social scientist, and I’m not entirely sure what they actually study. I’d like to know.
From my contact with the social systems folks, however, I would meekly claim that they’re not interested in action at all. And from my reading of Marx’s description of Class and whatnot, neither is he.
I’m sure you disagree, but the disagreement seems to have everything to do with a symantic ambiguity in ‘action’ rather than a substantive, conceptual disagreement between us. I reserve ‘action’ for intentional action (like Arendt). and use ’cause’ for non-intentional action. Both sense are in ‘action’ of course (i.e. ‘every action has an equal and opposite reaction’), so i can see how we would end up disagreeing on it.
the only reason I bother to bring it up is because of this sentence of yours:
Why not make this clearer and call it a cause instead of an actor? Especially since ‘production’ means causation. I don’t mean to be nit-picky, but the polysemy of ‘actor’ actually seems to be to your detriment in cases like these, rather than to your benefit.
January 24, 2009 at 1:50 am
Alexei,
I am not familiar with Danto, but I can’t say that I can follow your argument as to why Art must be defined by the category of the Conceptual (and thus I presume, its appreciation also so confined). You seem to bury this distinction within a Being qua Being distinction which is in stark contrast to the process by which a thing comes into Being. Unfortunately this presupposes all sorts of categories which like a meat grinder make a certain kind of sausage.
Sorry to plague you with Spinoza but indeed in Spinoza (and not Aristotle), the aim is to understand the essence of something, but in a large variety of circumstances the defintion of a thing is not available to the Mind of the Philosopher (Van Gogh’s painting is not a circle). In such cases, when considering a modal expression,one simply understands that the essence of the painting is to be understood as expressed in both the Attributes of Thought and Extension, and part of a mutuality of modal causations and assemblages, through the essence of its conatus (striving). The conatus of a thing is ever in combination with the conatus of other things. That is, isolating the painting as a thing and a thought from the painter does not aid in our understanding of its powers. In fact, we must combine the two into an assemblage, “Van Gogh-Potato Eaters”. But this is not all, for there are the much greater assemblages that compose this assemblage. “Paint-Van Gogh-Economic Conditions-Light Qualities-Brain states” form one huge “Body” in communication. To embrace and understand the painting one has to go as wide as one can. And this Body, Spinoza would tell you, also has an “essence”. One must understand a thing through its becoming, because the process of understanding is a process of one’s own Becoming, that is, your body is also entering into combination with these bodies. This is a necessary embrace of the general inadequacy of human thought.
But is another fundamental problem with your reduction of Van Gogh’s painting merely to the Conceptual. The painting, in real life, works on so many levels other than the conceptual. When appreciating the painting, we are not trying to gain access to the concepts Van Gogh had of the Potato Eaters, any more than when we taste our mother’s cooking we are tasting her concept of food. At some point philosophy has to come back to the brute richness of our experiences of the world, one might say.
I too agree that the word “actor” is a central problem (a posted earlier that Latour in his restriction against reduction doesn’t provide the path by which all things are then reduced to “actors”, in violation of his own philosophy). But I think that the term is completely salvageable with Spinoza’s ontology, where each thing indeed does act, because essence of existences are strivings. Something exists because it strives to exist, and in striving, combines with the strivings of other things (this is not only Spinoza 101, it is Latour 101). This goes back to the original sense of the Greek term, “Agw”, “to lead, to carry, to bring”. It is from this word that we get our word “agent”, or, one might say, Actor. For Spinoza all Being is a movement towards agency, towards the capacity to act, much as in Plato’s defintion of Being which makes of Being a power or capacity. When you ask, why not say “cause”? It is because cause itself, under an immanent determination, is understood to be an action, a power. It is in view of a recasting of what a cause is that I think turns the more common word “cause” into “actor”.
January 24, 2009 at 2:46 am
Nice comment, Kvond. Just to clarify, “actor” is not my own term or a key term in my ontology, but derives from Latour’s sociology. One of Latour’s more heretical sociological claims is that any element or a participant in the social must be treated as an actor. This includes both the human and the inhuman. For me it’s sufficient to refer to entities as “act-ualities”, which is intended to capture the sense of the ontic as composed of acts and the sense of entities as actual (i.e., it’s a portmanteu word).
Back to Latour, I think the point is that inhuman objects can’t be treated as mere vehicles of social and cultural significations, but act within the social as well. Stiegler (Time and Technics) brings this out with respect to his theory of technology nicely, where humans become operators of technology, rather than users of technology. That is, technology takes on a life of its own independent of human intentions or uses, such that technology becomes an actor. McLuhan also makes this point nicely in his idea that “the medium is the message”. That is, the simple formation of media such as electricity or computers have a an autocatalytic effect on social relations that significantly transform the nature of these relations. I think the term “cause” is inadequate because this suggests a determinism. Rather, these inhuman actors are occasions for changes, introducing new singularities, without determining what the assemblage will be.
January 24, 2009 at 3:02 am
I think to add to this “life of its own” notion that Latour wants really to emphasize the way that non-human “actors” resist human organizations, and that part of this sense of resistance is the way that non-human actors actively participate in the network relations that sustain them. In this way, the environment (let us say as an ecosystem), is active in regards to environmental politics. That is, it is not just that its state is cause of policies, but also the networks of non-human actors which composes an ecosystem in a certain sense resist policies, even policies designed to aid them.
There is something a bit too Nietzschean in this Will To Power conception, a kind of projective fantasy I think which operates in surplus of the theoretical framework (perhaps we should consider it part of Latour’s rhetorical strategies to bully us into a kind of vision which would make us more an Network of his actor Theory). But I think that if one discards something of the rhetoric of actor and resistance, there still is a critical and analytical framework available.
Your comments on the life of technology are significant, but I would go beyond even becoming operators of techology, and suggest that we are only participants with technologies, necessarily a fusion of times when operated on, and times operating. We form mutual and informing bodies with technologies, and ourselves are composed of technologies.
(I will say that the one dramatic thing missing from Latour’s ontology is the ontological shift in power that occurs through the knowledge of the causes of something. This does not mean that one completely understands something through its causes, but there is a fundamental shift in power (and therefore network assemblage), when we understand how and why something works. This is underplayed in Latour’s occasionalism.)
January 24, 2009 at 8:03 am
I suppose we have very different ways of thinking, Kvond, about ontology. For the life of me, I can’t figure out what you think I’ve buried, let alone what you think I’ve buried it behind. I’m sorry I’m so unclear.
I’m not really sure how to explain Danto’s point, for instance. I’ve tried twice, and seem to have failed miserably, so maybe the best thing I can do is recommend that you read him yourself. The Transfiguration of the Comon place is about 150 pages.
Of course I don’t dispute that one’s reception of a work is nuanced, functions on many levels, and is stimulated by the complexities of a given artwork. I don’t wish in any way to reduce a work.
I do think however, that one’s reception of a work has little to do with the ontology of Art. To say otherwise would be a gross misunderstanding of both art and ontology. But, to give offer an example for why complicated, nuanced response don’t equal responses to an artwork, I react in a complex, nuanced and rich way to my lover’s face — but she is not to be classified as an artwork (save for metaphorically).
So (to use yet another example), just because my reception of a sunrise or sunset is rich, nuanced, and complex, doesn’t make it art. And no matter how much you may disagree with Danto, at least he can explain why: there’s no difference or set of differences inherent in a work of art that make it a work of art. To use Danto’s favourite example, the original brillo box, which is not a work of art, looks exactly like Warhol’s brillo box, which is a work of art. And there’s nothing about the relative histories of these two objects that’s realy going to differentiate them (turns out the guy that designed the original brillo box was an artist too….).
I’m afraid that if I still haven’t made myself clear on this point, I’ve totally failed. I give up. But, for the record, I don’t think you’ve really addressed the argument I’ve sketched on Danto’s behalf — and I still take it that it presents a problem for Levi. Failure, remains failure though, so I won’t mention it again.
Past that, Kvond, I’m truly perplexed by your insistence on Spinoza, especialy since Spinoza is a heterodox Averroist (through the work of Gersonides and someone else whose name I’ve forgotten). I.e. he rejects a universal teleology and a certain kind of emanationism (pace Deleueze’s reconstruction).
January 24, 2009 at 8:07 am
Ouch, bad editing lead me to a completely incoherent sentence. I wrote,
which should have read: there’s no perceptual difference or set of differences inherent in a work of art that make it a work of art — the difference that makes a difference is conceptual.
January 24, 2009 at 9:15 pm
Alexei; Past that, Kvond, I’m truly perplexed by your insistence on Spinoza, especialy since Spinoza is a heterodox Averroist (through the work of Gersonides and someone else whose name I’ve forgotten). I.e. he rejects a universal teleology and a certain kind of emanationism (pace Deleueze’s reconstruction).
Kvond: We’ll leave Danto’s conceptual notion of Art aside, but the above perplexes me as well. You are very big on this concept of “Orthodoxy” (but here you make someone a “Heterodox”!). (I feel sometimes like I am talking with a Cardinal in 1532.) You seem to treat these orthodox/heterodox designations as some how self-evident, and then once classified, a person’s thought is disqualified; a bit like calling someone a Red in the 1950’s. Is universal teleology and emanationism or non-emanationism (I can’t tell which you are asserting) a prerequisite for philosophical standing in your mind? I consider Spinoza’s stand against teleology to be quite in keeping with Latour’s occasionalism, in fact I think that Spinoza’s treatment of teleology works to inform Latour’s actors in constant battle. As for emanationism, I don’t see how this is a problem either, for Spinoza grants full reality to the modes, they are that by which God “exists and acts”, as he says.
The point isn’t that everyone should be a Spinozist, but rather that insofar as one is adopting a Latourian ontology of actors, and then attempting to deepen it as Graham Harman is, Spinoza is actually a very helpful place to look for argumentive structures to enhance the coherence and descriptive powers of this potential position. (Graham resists this move it seems solely because he has very strong and admitted repulsion from the popularity of Spinoza, in particular in its post-structuralist forms..I have not been able to feret out more than this from him.) As to Levi’s attempted Harmanian/Latourian metaphysics, I feel that Spinoza’s collapse of the epistemic into the ontological is an important step in understanding actors who are substantively made through relations of power; the two independent but closely related fields of “epistemology” and “ontology” are largely a product of the Idealist split between the subject and the world, or the counterpart split of the Empiricists. Insofar as one is going to be pre-Kantian about this, and proposes a world composed of actors in power relations, in my mind the pre-Kantian to turn to is Spinoza.
January 25, 2009 at 3:53 pm
There’s no disqualifications implied, Kvond, in my use of the labels ‘Orthodox’ and ‘Heterodox.’ I hope you see that I’m using them descriptively, and not with any prescriptive intention. They’re just a useful way to distinguish among forms of textual reception and appropriation: if the core tenets of a given thinker are accepted, then one is orthodox, if one refuses some of these core tenets, while embracing some of the peripheral issues, or conclusions, then one is heterodox.
Now I mentioned the notions of universal teleology and emanationism because they are the two major tenets that Spinoza rejects. His rejection distinguishes him from classical Aristotelianism and from the Arabic synthesis of Neo-Platonism and Aristotle. I have no opinion on these ideas one way or another (save that Spinoza’s rejection of them complicates the expressive triad that Deleuze argues for in his big book on Spinoza), but they serve to situate and individuate Spinoza’s thought within a larger historical context. They help us identify what’s truly ‘original,’ ‘New,’ etc in his thought.
Past this attempt at explanation, I think you’re right about Spinoza: there’s no difference between epistemology and ontology in the Ethics. And I think that, in a certain sense, Levi’s claim that “if concepts produce difference, they are real” is a similar way of collapsing epistemology into Ontology. I just don’t think that’s helpful.
Maybe you could tell me why you think it is.