NrG was kind enough to round up the principles and terms I’ve developed as I’ve worked out my differential ontology. I reproduce this list below with some variations.
Terms
Objectile or Ob-ject-ile – A sort of portmanteau word combining “projectile” and “object”, evoking the sense of ob-jects as events or verbs, unfoldings (ex-plications) of what is in-folded (im-plications), standing-forth from a ground against which the event makes or announces a difference. Thought of as both A) assemblages and b) multiplicities.
Field – All ob-ject-iles are attached to a field, a field of relations, a field of forces, through and in which properties of the ob-ject-ile are evoked or ex-plicated and upon which the ob-ject-ile acts in turn. A field can also be referred to as conditions or a world. While all ob-ject-iles are attached to a field, ob-ject-iles are not identical to their field. Moreover, asymmetries, inequalities, or disequilibriums within fields or conditions are only one way in which ob-ject-iles are evoked or ex-plicated. Ob-ject-iles themselves contain asymmetries or disequilibriums through which they can be ex-plicated.
Assemblage– A synonym for “ob-ject-ile”. There is no ob-ject-ile that is not a unified composite of other ob-ject-iles. Put otherwise, there are no Lucretian atoms, but rather the ontic domain is composed of assemblages all the way down.
Split-Object– Kant proposed that objects are split between their being as phenomena (for-us) and their being as noumena (for-itself). This, however, was an epistemic distinction pertaining to our access to objects. Within Onticology, “split-objects” refers not an epistemic split in our access to objects, but rather an ontological split in ob-ject-iles themselves. Insofar as all ob-ject-iles are assemblages, they are constitutively split between their being as a unity or an identity and the other ob-jectiles of which they are composed. These other ob-ject-iles are entities in their own rights and function as both necessary conditions for the assemblage but are also often in tension or struggle with the assemblage to which they belong.
read on!
Enlistment– In order for an ob-ject-ile to form it must be assembled from other ob-ject-iles. The process by which assemblages are assembled is referred to as enlistment. Those ob-ject-iles enlisted in an assemblage serve a necessary role in the ongoing “autopoiesis” or self-production of an ob-ject-ile or assemblage. For example, a political party must both enlist members in order to form an assemblage but these members also produce the assemblage.
Inequality– Any intensive difference that produces a state-change in an ob-ject-ile or assemblage. For example, pressure, temperature, speed, etc. All ob-ject-iles require a reservoir of inequalities to differentiate themselves or stand-forth from their field.
Singularity– Points of friction, density, tension, condensation, or resistance in relations between an enlister and an enlistee. In the case of a political party, for example, singularities would be the idiosyncracies of personal history, personal desires, and biology belonging to members in contrast to the official dogma of the party. Singularities, coupled with inequalities, are the true transcendental conditions of assemblages, presiding over the genesis of an ob-ject-ile’s form.
Aggregate– Relations between assemblages or ob-ject-iles that do not themselves form an assemblage or ob-ject-ile.
Principles
Ontic Principle – There is no difference that does not make a difference. This is to be understood in three ways: 1) Ob-ject-iles are compositions of difference (here “composition” should be understood as both having musical connotations and connotations of “material composition”), 2) Ob-ject-iles differ in themselves insofar as they are constantly changing through their adventure in time and “autopoiesis” or enlistment of other ob-ject-iles to produce themselves, and 3) ob-ject-iles make differences on other entities. Minimally, “to be” signifies to make a difference.
Ontological Principle– Being is said in a single and same sense for all that is. If, minimally, “to be” signifies “to make a difference”, it follows that anything that makes a difference is or ex-ists. This does not foreclose the question of how it ex-ists or makes a difference insofar as difference entails that there are different ways of ex-isting.
Principle of Reality – The degree of power or reality embodied in a being is a function of the extensiveness of the differences that entity produces. The Principle of Reality pertains to relationships among or between assemblages, measuring the extensiveness of one assemblages impact or differences on other assemblages. Power is a ratio of intensity, ranging from absolute zero or no difference on any other assemblage to infinity or differences made on all other entities. Zero and infinity are ideal intensities that are not to be found in any world or field.
Latour’s Principle – There is no transportation without translation. Follows from the Ontic Principle. Insofar as there is no difference that does not make a difference, it follows that no assemblage or ob-ject-ile can transport or convey its difference to another assemblage or ob-jectile without a process of translation or weaving of differences in which singularities must contend with one another in the production of a state-change in one or both of the assemblages involved.
Principle of Irreduction– Nothing is either reducible or irreducible to anything else. From Latour’s Irreductions, follows from Latour’s Principle. The Principle of Irreduction is a principle of labor, cost, or work, signifying that the transportation or conveyance of any difference, the making of any difference, involves labor cost where the singularities of the assemblage making the difference must engage the singularities of another assemblage to impose its difference on the second assemblage. This principle could also be called Lacan’s Principle, where it is asserted that there is no relation without a remainder.
Principle of Act-uality– All ob-ject-iles are act-ual or acts. Insofar as difference is made, it follows that ob-ject-iles are acts, verbs, processes, activities, or doings. Follows from the Ontic Principle.
Whitehead’s Principle– All ob-ject-iles arise from and are explained in terms of other ob-ject-iles. Whitehead refers to this principle as the “Ontological Principle”. Differences arise from differences and are to be explained in terms of other differences. Follows from the Ontic Principle.
Principle of Change– There is no relation that does not produce a change. Follows from Latour’s Principle and the Principle of Irreduction.
Principle of Infinite Decomposition– There is no ultimate difference or foundational difference. Insofar as to be is to differ, it follows that there cannot be an ultimate being out of which all other beings are composed.
Fallacies
Epistemic Fallacy– The position that questions of ontology can be reduced to questions of epistemology. From Roy Bhaskar’s Realist Theory of Science.
Hegemonic Fallacy– The reduction of difference to one difference that makes all the difference or one difference that makes the most important difference. This fallacy arises from failing to observe Latour’s Principle and the Principle of Irreduction, thereby ignoring the singularities of the assemblage to which differences from another assemblage are being transported.
January 31, 2009 at 10:41 pm
Great List. Nice to have it all in one place! Could you include in there your reference to an ontology of “Natural Kinds,” such as you find something like water to be? What is a Natural Kind in these defintions and Principles, and how do we come to know it?
much appreciation.
January 31, 2009 at 11:05 pm
It must feel quite peculiar to have your own terminology encyclopedicised back to you!
I have a misgiving about the “all the way down” property of some of these terms; it’s a bit like the way Derrida defines a trace as being the trace of a trace. His point was that there’s no prior presence at the start (or end) of a signifying chain, and I take it that your Latourian point is that there is no fundamental set of primitive elements that make up the “material” basis for everything else.
But I think that Derrida’s point is better made by saying that a signifying chain just isn’t structured as a series of displacements of a prior presence, rather than that it’s structured as an infinite series of such displacements which permanently “defers” its conclusion. One can say that the points at which such a chain begins and halts are in a certain sense contingent, but one should perhaps be cautious about helping oneself as readily as Derrida did to such a big serving of infinity.
Similarly with this infinitely-descending nesting of little boxes. The actual chains of descent one can describe have fairly contingent starting and ending points – they never end on some “fundamental” ur-box – but they might for example come to a halt around the point where the hierarchical structure started to lose coherence, where the lower-down boxes were no longer clearly contained “inside” the higher-up ones, where “lower” and “higher” became indiscernible and strange loops started to form.
In other words, I think you can deny that there’s something finally firm and concrete the turtles are standing on without having to say that it’s turtles all the way down.
January 31, 2009 at 11:37 pm
Dominic,
I think you’re right. I go back and forth on this issue myself. On the one hand, I think the Principle of Infinite Decomposition or the idea that there is no lower or upper level to assemblages is the weakest principle of all and one that can only be resolved empirically. On the other hand, if it is true, then it is likely that we’ll never know that it is true as we’ll always be holding out for that ultimate strata of entities with each case where one strata of existence calls for explanation by another, more basic, strata of existence. Were we to find an ultimate strata the question of whether it was the ultimate strata would still persist insofar as this either a) could be the ultimate strata, or b) we could have simply reached an intrinsic ontological limit with respect to what we can measure at our scale of existence. A while back you proposed that the main claims of a philosopher’s thought aren’t so much demonstrated or deduced, so much as they are declared in a fashion similar to a thought experiment: “if this were the case, what would follow?”. It seems to me that this is the only way the Principle of Infinite Decomposition can be sustained.
February 1, 2009 at 7:43 am
hi Levi,
You probably know it, but there’s a good example of this approach to philosophy in Ranciere’s Ignorant Schoolmaster. He asserts a commitment to equality but says it’s an opinion, the point being I think in part what you described (if this were the case, what would follow?) and in part to place the burned of proof on opponents (if this is not the case, then prove it).
take care,
Nate
February 1, 2009 at 12:38 pm
I wonder whether there doesn’t come a point where the system of stratification itself breaks down – not bedrock, but background noise.
February 1, 2009 at 6:02 pm
I appreciate your openly sharing your thoughts as you develop your ontology. I’m going to venture to comment even though philosophy is not my field and my thoughts are bound to be naïve. While you do mention, in defining the Principle of Reality, that the intensity of a relationship between assemblages is a ratio of the difference between the differences of one assemblage and the differences of another assemblage that the first assemblage is impacting (I hope I understood this correctly), I wonder if it would be possible to go further in defining the relationship between impact and intensity, which could make it possible to explicate a political dimension to your theory. In my work as a drama therapist, during sessions in which a client and I play together, improvising movements, sounds, pretend objects, and roles in scenes, I have found that there is an automatic tendency for my client and I to play at the maximum intensity of energy we are capable of, where our level of interest is highest, regardless of the level of physical activity, and this maximim intensity seems to be reached when we are on the verge of a threshold where, if we allowed ourselves to reach it, we would no longer be playing. In other words, the fun of playing seems to take us automatically to the point where the intensity is highest (which is also where the intimacy is highest, and therefore the value of the therapy) when we pretend to do whatever it is that, in the relationship between the particular configuration of differences that each of us brings to the play, would constitute actual violence and end the possibility of our ever playing together again if we actually did these things instead of pretending to do them. I guess what I’m wondering is if there might be a tendency toward the maximization of intensity within an assemblage, which would require that an assemblage to some degree avoid reaching the threshold to its decomposition.
February 2, 2009 at 11:25 am
Thanks a lot for the updated and extensive list…this will save me a lot of time in (re)reading your fascinating ideas and the comments left by others with better memories :)
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