One of the issues that’s repeatedly come up in debates surrounding various camps of speculative realist thought is the issue of whether or not the category of “object” should be retained within realist orientations of thought. Thus, in a recent post, Alex of Splinteringbonestoashes writes,
In using “object-oriented philosophy” as the term for any realist (anti-correlationist) position, isn’t there the danger of absolutising the object as realist ontological unit? I’m uncertain that, say, Brassier would want to limit himself in such a way for example, especially given recent critiques of metaphysical schema which rely upon objects as their basic structural component (I’m thinking particularly of Ladyman’s “Who’s Afraid of Scientism” in the latest Collapse). Indeed whilst it makes perfect sense to talk on a folk-metaphysical level about giving objects their proper attention (as you and Graham Harman do), to think at least as much about the interactions between inanimate non-human actants as human ones, does this not remain overly wedded to the very level of correlated folk-knowledge any realist must attempt to escape from? If the crucial component of science for realist philosophies lies in its anti-intuitive findings, leading to a continual disenchantment of the manifest image, why ought we to continue to think in terms divorced from these findings (i.e.- to remain at the level of “objects all the way down…”). Ladyman’s “Ontic Structural Realism” for example strikes up a radically eliminativist approach to objects tout court, in contrast OOP seems to remain overly in hoc to the visualisable structure of the objectal.
Before commenting further on this remark, it’s first important, I think, to point out that while all object-oriented philosophies are necessarily realist philosophies, not all realist philosophies are object-oriented philosophies. In order to qualify as an object-oriented philosophy the ontology in question must minimally argue that objects are 1) the minimal units of being (paraphrasing Whitehead in the first chapter of Process and Reality, “‘Actual entitites’– also termed ‘actual occasions’ –are the final real things of which the world is made up. There is no going behind actual entities to find anything more real” (PR, 18)), and 2) that these objects exist in-themselves or are not dependent on mind or the human to be what they are. Examples of object-oriented philosophies would thus be Aristotle, Lucretius, Leibniz, Whitehead, Latour, Graham, Harman, and myself. Note, all of these philosophies are wildly different, but they all share the common claim that objects are the minimal unit of being and are independent substances.
read on!
By contrast, Spinoza and Deleuze would be good examples of a realist philosophy that are not object-oriented ontologies. If Spinoza’s ontology is not object-oriented, then this is because for him there is only one substance in the universe and everything else is an affection (predicate, quality, property) of that one substances. Likewise, Deleuze’s ontology is realist (at least under my reading), but is not object-oriented in that all discrete individuals are local individuations of the One-All in a manner similar to Spinoza’s one substance. In relation to these two orientations of realist thought– monist orientations and object-oriented ontologies –it is noted that Kant’s empirical realism is not a realist ontology. If this is the case, then it is because Kant’s epistemology forbids the claim that objects in-themselves are as they appear for-us. For Kant we cannot know one way or another, so Kant’s empirical realism is restricted to the phenomenal world and remains agnostic as to whether things-in-themselves are as they are for-us. By contrast, the philosopher advocating a realist position is making a claim about things-in-themselves, not things as they are for-us.
Setting aside, then, the question of whether all realist philosophies are object-oriented philosophies, the more pressing issue is whether object-oriented ontologies fall into what Alex calls “folk-metaphysics”. Those familiar with the writings of Paul and Patricia Churchland will recognize folk-metaphysics as a variant of their famous folk psychology. Folk psychology would, roughly, be the common sense psychology we possess whereby the actions of persons are explained by reference to things such as beliefs, desires, emotions, centralized agency, etc. In short, we attribute a causal function to things such as beliefs. Thus, for example, we might explain Tom bringing roses to Mary by reference to Tom’s belief that women like flowers and his desire to earn Mary’s affection. Arguing from the thesis that the mind is the brain, the strong eliminativist argues that these mental states do not actually exist and therefore can serve no causal function in the mental processes of persons. This conclusion is reached through neurology. Consequently, in neurology we cannot speak of centralized agents presiding over decisions because there is no centralized agency in the brain, no “man in the machine”, but only a non-linear network of neurons acting in response to one another, giving rise to action as an emergent effect of a set of heterogeneous processes without centralized control. Likewise in the case of beliefs, desires, and emotions. The eliminativist thus argues that folk psychology confuses cause with effect, treating effects as causes where these effects are themselves nowhere to be found in the assemblage or network that constitutes the brain.
Transposing the eliminativist arguments against folk psychology to the realm of ontology, we can then ask whether the objects defended by object-oriented philosophy are not themselves the result of a “folk metaphysics”. In other words, just as the folk psychology is guilty of naively claiming that things like centralized agency, desires, and beliefs play a causal role in thought and action, the folk metaphysician would be guilty of claiming that the real exists in the manner that we perceive it. Thus, for example, folk metaphysics might lead us to the conclusion that time and space are homogeneous containers that everywhere exist in the same way, such that all objects are contained within one and the same space and all objects are simultaneous with one another in the present. It might also lead me to the conclusion that my desk before me or the tree outside my window is solid because this is how it appears to my five senses. In short, folk metaphysics– if, indeed it is something to be avoided –consists in the danger of naively transposing the world as we perceive it into the world as it is.
I think Alex is right to raise worries over the dangers of folk metaphysics, but wonder whether it is fair to charge object-oriented philosophies with falling into folk metaphysics. Minimally, all object-oriented ontologies claim is that the world is made up of objects. However, when an object-oriented ontology claims that the world is made up of objects, a good deal of ontological work remains with respect to the question of what constitutes an object. Objects could be, as I claim with Whitehead, events. They could be indestructable atoms and combinations of atoms as argued by Lucretius. They could be ideal monads, as claimed by Leibniz. They could be, as I claim with Latour, assemblages made up of yet other objects. They could be, as Graham argues, infinitely withdrawn or vacuum packed substances that share no relation to anything else. The ontological question of what objects are remains open, such that there is nothing to prevent the distinguishing objects as they appear to us with objects as they are in-themselves” (note: there is nothing in the speculative realist position that prevents distinguishing between how things appear and how they are in-themselves. The speculative realist need not deny that things appear a particular way for-us. All the speculative realist is committed to is the thesis that if we manage to capture a bit of the real, these properties belong to objects in-themselves, not merely objects for-us.) The folk metaphysical error only occurs if we make the move of arguing– in line with naive realism –that objects are as they appear to us.
In this respect, one is not necessarily falling into folk ontology if they claim that trees are objects. I bring this particular example up because Nick of The Accursed Share, has, a couple times now, asked me what warrants my belief that trees are metaphysically real objects. If I’ve understood his question correctly, the question here is why I hold that the tree I perceive actually exists out there independently of my mind as a tree, rather than existing in some completely heterogeneous way that can’t be described in terms of objects? Put differently, the tree of my perception or lived phenomenological world presents itself to me as a unified and self-identical object that persists as the same throughout time. It appears to be an independent thing, to have green leaves, rough bark, a particular shape, etc., etc., etc. Yet what warrants the thesis that the tree is this way? Could not the appearance that I refer to as this “tree” instead, in its real being, be many objects rather than one object? That is, just as it is a mistake to believe that we really have a centralized self or seat of agency if neurology is true, wouldn’t it be a mistake to claim that the tree is a unified and single entity if the tree appearance, in its real and mind-independent being is a series of, say, events, or energy, or something else altogether?
When Nick or Alex raises this sort of objection against object-oriented philosophy– and make no mistake, I’m thankful that they have –I find myself largely in agreement with them, but I am led to wonder why this is an objection against object-oriented philosophy? An object-oriented philosophy is only committed to the thesis that the world is discrete, or as Graham would put it, made up of “chunks”. Yet this thesis leaves a wide degree of lassitude as to just what these chunks are. Thus, to take a somewhat clear example, contemporary subatomic physics, contra Lucretius, tells us that atoms are mostly composed of empty space and that therefore large collections of atoms related to one another are largely composed of empty space. Now from the standpoint of my lived perception, the wall before me certainly appears to be solid and without any empty intervals. Moreover, when I touch that wall it certainly seems that I am touching the wall, that it has texture, etc. However, physics further teaches me that I never touch the wall, but rather what I experience as touch is actually electro-magnetic resistance arising from forces between the atoms that compose my fingers and the wall.
Here the “wall” as it is and the wall as it appears are entirely different. And it could turn out that it would be a mistake to refer to the wall as an object at all because further metaphysical investigation might show us that the wall does not meet those criteria necessary for being an object. In other words, there is no reason to begin from the premise that the manner in which our perception individuates objects corresponds to how objects are themselves individuated. However, if there is some warrant in holding that trees are objects, this warrant arises not from trees existing in-themselves in the way that we perceive them, but rather from the manner in which elements of a tree hold together across time and space in an assemblage. That is, a tree would be an assemblage that maintains a unity in time and space– a unity whose boundaries might be quite different than those that we perceive in ordinary mid-level experience –which is itself composed of other objects (for example, cells). If it is argued that the tree is an object in its own right rather than simply a multiplicity of objects without any overarching substantiality of its own, then this is because the objects of which the tree is composed themselves hold together in patterned relations across time and space. Further, these assemblage of objects making up an object act in concert on other objects, exerting causal effects on these objects. Finally, the relations belonging to the elements that make up the tree-adventure possess elements of ongoing patterns that don’t belong to any of the sub-elements of the multiple alone. That is, there are particular phenomena of organization that only arise from the interrelations of the sub-objects making up the assemblage and that cannot simply be deduced from the properties of these sub-objects. From a single molecule of H20 we cannot, for example, infer that it has the power to flow or wet fabrics. It is only when molecules of H20 are conjugated with one another that these powers emerge.
Returning to the example of neurology, the brain or nervous system is an object in this sense. If the brain or nervous system is an object, then this is not because we perceive it as such, but rather because of how its component sub-objects, neurons, relate to one another in an assemblage. While we can learn a good deal about the brain through the investigation of individual neurons, the manner in which a particular assemblage of neurons come to be related to one another, how they communicate with one another, the sorts of ongoing, evental processes that unfold in the brain, are themselves a distinct level of organization that are themselves governed by their own principles or structures. Consequently, the mistake to be avoided from the standpoint of object-oriented philosophy lies not so much in avoiding folk metaphysics (though this is important), but rather in recognizing that there are different orders and levels of objects with their own form of organization.
March 2, 2009 at 9:47 pm
I´m not sure I understand why a realist of the Spinoza-Deleuze kind would be less object-oriented just because he or she assumes there is one object rather than a lot. After all, the object-oriented philosopher will need some account of whether a portion of water is one object or several (perhaps each molecule being one object), and it doesn´t seem clear that one could not reach the conclusion that there is only one vast object. Perhaps the natural answer is to say that this is a pointless question, that we can delimit objects as we please. But then the Spinozist would seem to be object-oriented as well.
March 2, 2009 at 10:30 pm
Hi Vril,
Thanks for the comment. You write:
The claim that Spinoza and Deleuze are not object-oriented philosophers is not identical to the claim that Spinoza and Deleuze are not objective. Spinoza and Deleuze will, of course, hold that things like H20 are real and objective while nonetheless treating them as affections or qualities of a single substance. Consequently, the distinction between an object-oriented realism and a monistic realism revolves around the question of whether or not one asserts that there is only one substance such that everything else is a predicate of that substance, or whether there are an indefinite number of substances that are independent.
You continue:
Sure, and I think I argue this directly in the above post. My claim is that something can both be a single object in its own right and be composed of many other objects. Thus a body of water is both an object and many objects (the water molecules of which it is composed). However, from the thesis that many objects are often, in turn, composed of other objects, I do not conclude that there is a totality of objects that themselves form one object. That is, I do not endorse the Whiteheadian thesis that the universe forms one giant superorganism or object.
If what makes an object an object is dependent on how we delimit objects then we’re no longer realists as we’ve made being-an-object dependent on the person delimiting the object. Nor, I think, would Spinoza or Deleuze endorse this criteria for what constitutes a substance. I do think that whether one adopts a monist or pluralist ontology has real consequences for how we understand the nature of the world as well as practice. Take Deleuze’s account of individuation as set out in Difference and Repetition. There Deleuze argues that objects are individuated through a process of individuation involving different/ciation or a movement from the virtual to the actual. The virtual domain of differenTiation is composed of pre-individual singularities and differential relations, whereas the actual domain of differenCiation is composed, Deleuze tells us, of species and parts or how these singularities and differential relations come to be embodied in a material being. The domain of the virtual, we are told, opens on to the Whole or the One-All, and the relation between the virtual and the actual, Deleuze repeatedly emphasizes, is unilateral, proceeding from the virtual to the actual rather than from actual term to actual term. The net result is that because actualization or individuation is a unilateral movement from the virtual to the actual rather than from actual term to actual term, the actual becomes nothing more than an epiphenomenon or effect of the virtual, contributing nothing at all. The real motor of movement for Deleuze is therefore virtual differences, rather than actualities.
What practical consequences does this account of individuation have? Well, for any individual it means that that individual possesses no agency of its own. In a political context, for example, subjects or persons are merely effects of the prepersonal virtual fields of individuation, contributing nothing of their own. Consequently, change does not arise from the activity of agents. Likewise, since Deleuze expressly excludes any sort of movement from actual term to actual term, instead seeing actualization as a unilateral movement from the virtual to the actual, Deleuze effectively cuts off investigation of causal relations between actual terms. In my view, this ontological move thus has a number of deleterious consequences for our investigation of the world. While I am deeply sympathetic to Deleuze’s thought, I instead reject the category of the virtual altogether and begin from the premise that there is no other type of being anterior to individual entities, but rather that the world is composed entirely of individual entities and that any account of a particular individual entities can only proceed by reference to either a) something in the nature of the entity itself, or b) reference to other entities with which the entity in question is interacting.
March 3, 2009 at 12:53 am
Sure, but who that person is matters a hell of a lot if we want to talk about trees, which only seemed to get a passing reference in the post. I would’ve liked to have seen you work through the example of trees a lot more thoroughly, not least because there’s an excellent book on Deleuze and Forests by Mark Halsey that runs through the many different ways that the writing about trees bolsters different projects.
March 3, 2009 at 1:12 am
Levi: “an object-oriented philosophy the ontology in question must minimally argue that objects are
1) the minimal units of being (paraphrasing Whitehead in the first chapter of Process and Reality, “‘Actual entitites’– also termed ‘actual occasions’ –are the final real things of which the world is made up. There is no going behind actual entities to find anything more real” (PR, 18)), and 2) that these objects exist in-themselves or are not dependent on mind or the human to be what they are.
Kvond: I am curious, what is the Object-Oriented philosophical answer to the Medieval question of Universals? Is Green an Object, or an Actor?
March 3, 2009 at 1:17 am
Can you explain (or maybe link to previous posts where you have already explained) why you read Deleuze as a realist?
March 3, 2009 at 1:47 am
Hi dk.au,
No disagreement here. In my view, the relation between a person and a tree is no different than the relation between two non-human objects. In both cases, the object is related to in a particular way. My intuition or hunch is that these ways of relating to an object are every bit as real as other objects because they produce real effects in the world. My only caveat would be that the tree itself cannot be reduced to these ways in which it is grasped, nor is it dependent in its own being on being grasped in these various ways. Many thanks for the book reference!
March 3, 2009 at 2:05 am
Hi Anondynelite,
Perhaps you could say a bit as to why you don’t see Deleuze as a realist.
I suppose the first reason I read Deleuze as a realist has to do with the logic of his account of individuation and actualization. Where the anti-realist or correlationist argues that objects conform to mind such that we cannot know objects as they are in-themselves, thereby restricting our relationship to the epistemological, Deleuze’s claims about individuation or actualization are ontological in character. From his very early works all the way to his final published work, Deleuze is very careful to emphasize that the transcendental field is not immanent to consciousness or, for that matter, anything, but is rather immanent to itself. Moreover, he compares the transcendental field to Spinoza’s immanent being or substance. The transcendental field is thus not something that belongs to a subject, rather, as Deleuze repeatedly emphasizes, rather subjects and objects are individuated out of the transcendental field (and not, under my reading, necessarily together).
Second, Deleuze constantly give examples from ontological domains outside of the subject: physical multiplicities, biological multiplicities, etc. In my reading, Deleuze is not making claims about these beings for mind but in themselves. This reading is further supported by Simondon from whom he draws heavily, where individuation is a question of beings themselves, not for us. Consequently, in my view Deleuze is unique among the thinkers of ’68 in being the only genuine realist or the only philosopher that doesn’t shackle beings to a transcendental subject, language, the social, etc.
March 3, 2009 at 2:09 am
Kvond,
If you’re asking me what my position is on universals (given that “object-oriented philosophy” is not a school consisting of shared ontological positions I can only speak for myself), my answer is that I have not yet decided where I stand on the issue. Whitehead, by contrast, is a realist about universals– referring to them as “eternal objects” –and arguing that they are actors in the development of entities. His theory of the relationship between universals and actual occasions is far more complex for me to get into here, but if you haven’t read him already, I suspect, given your own philosophical tendencies, you would really enjoy Whitehead’s Process and Reality and Science and the Modern World.
March 3, 2009 at 2:41 am
Levi: “If you’re asking me what my position is on universals (given that “object-oriented philosophy” is not a school consisting of shared ontological positions I can only speak for myself), my answer is that I have not yet decided where I stand on the issue.”
Kvond: If I might ask, given the simplicity of your defintion of “object” (and I mean simplicity in a good way!), what is it that in the specific case of Green, you would not grant that Green is an object?
As to Whitehead I have to say that I find his use of terminology even worse than burdensome, but I have found his heirs in Process Theology quite inspiring at times, particularly elements of the Hartshorne, Cobb and Griffin line.
March 3, 2009 at 2:58 am
Kvond,
I agree with you vis a vis Whitehead’s terminology. You might, however, find Science and the Modern World avoids this problem (Process and Reality is a mess, though rewarding and highly suggestive if you can stomach its language).
With respect to my hesitations in treating Green as an object, my intuitions are two-fold. First, my hunch is that in order for something to count as an object it must be capable of independent existence. I’m willing to hold that a cell is an independent object despite existing in a body because a cell can at least potentially exist independently of the other cells to which it is related. Properties like green just don’t strike me as having this sort of nature. In Spinoza’s language they strike me as affections of substances rather than as substances in their own right. In response to this one might argue by arguing that “sure, instantiations of Green only exist as predicates of substances, but Green is not itself an affection, but an individual existing in its own right as an eternal and enduring object.” Here the question for me becomes what ontological advantage lies in granting Green substantial existence in this way? The ontological disadvantages are, I think, pretty clear. We get all of the problems of participation that haunted Plato’s metaphysics. The advantage is that it allows us to account for why reality has a particular structure in all instantiations of this universal (here my realism about universals would tend more in the direction of mathematical relationships rather than things like Green). However, if there is a way of avoiding the affirmation of these strange ontological entities, I would prefer that route being taken rather than asserting this sort of Platonic realism about universals. Again, I have not decided where I shake down on this issue. I do not like constructivist theories of mathematics as my hunch or intuition is that there is something real, mind independent, and ontologically deep about mathematics. I find it remarkable that the world seems to have the same mathematical structure in many instances that we are able to discover through thought alone. This leads me to believe that there is something about being and objects that is itself mathematical. Does this sense lead me to Platonism where mathematical entities are concerned, though?
March 3, 2009 at 3:10 am
I think this is an entirely accurate reading of my criticism (and presumably Alex’s as well), and I definitely agree with your response – but it seems then that the issue comes down (and this has been mentioned in a number of places on the blogosphere) to emergence. What is it? Does it exist? Is it ontological or merely a remnant of our particular epistemological perspective?
I’m starting to feel there’s another problem though, that stems from this move (although this may be more with Graham’s position, than your own):
“In my view, the relation between a person and a tree is no different than the relation between two non-human objects.”
Specifically, while the idea of generalizing the human-object relation (and it’s in-itself aspect) to all relations – including object-object relations – is admirable, it seems to also crucially rely upon its characterization of that original human-object relation. Which is to say that it risks anthropocentrism. I’m not sure it’s an explicit problem with your version of OOP, but I’d say that my general hesitation with these theories appears to lie in their intuitiveness. On the contrary, as Alex notes, science and realism should produce radically unintuitive conclusions – things that don’t conform to our particular viewpoint at all. (And the latest Collapse is terrific at pointing this out.) I’m not totally sure if there’s a justifiable reason behind my hesitation to intuitiveness there, but that’s the concern I’m grappling with now.
March 3, 2009 at 4:15 am
Nick,
No disagreement here. I’d like to be able to claim both that emergence is ontologically real and that unique patterns of order irreducible to their lower levels result in this emergence. What I want to avoid is some mystical hypothesis that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Bhaskar has some good things to say about this relationship. I’ll try to dig them up this week if I get some spare time as I think they are highly relevant to this discussion and avoid falling into this trap.
March 3, 2009 at 6:19 am
If the brain or nervous system is an object, then this is not because we perceive it as such, but rather because of how its component sub-objects, neurons, relate to one another in an assemblage.
I think I understand much more now about your project and your general direction, I think this post certainly put some questions if not at rest than at least where I can see how you’re dealing with issues. But I still can’t quite understand the attachment to the idea of an “object” as in above quote – I think calling the nervous system a system is good enough for me, but calling it an object? Just rubs me the wrong way – “objects” have such a strange philosophical history, I’m sure you’d agree, with all sorts of unnecessary attachments (like “subjects”)…
I am however starting to see what you are up to, so I am making some progress or you’re explaining things in a way that I can finally grasp them.
March 3, 2009 at 9:01 am
Thanks for the response. I think you may have read my question as antagonistic, but I actually tend to agree with you. I asked for your reasoning because I’m very interested in reconciling some Deleuzian concepts/terms with materialism and/or speculative realism. I certainly would love to be able to definitively label Deleuze a realist, but almost no one else seems to agree with me, so I hold back.
You say: “The transcendental field is thus not something that belongs to a subject, rather, as Deleuze repeatedly emphasizes, rather subjects and objects are individuated out of the transcendental field (and not, under my reading, necessarily together).”
I suppose the initial reason to hesitate is–why any ‘transcendental’ field at all? Wouldn’t this leave us vulnerable to correlationism, as any sort of ‘transcendental’ field before, behind, or ‘immanent’ to things might simply be a sort of neurological effect, a byproduct of our very limited powers of cognition? Couldn’t the subject itself quite feasibly be proven a figment of our limited imaginations and dispensed with altogether?
In a way, this comment might also fit under your more recent post about Deleuze and vitalism, because the other reason I hesitate to call Deleuze a “realist” has to do with his reliance on the work of Bergson (most definitely a vitalist), particularly regarding the temporalization of difference as “duration” in Deleuze’s essay ‘Bergson’s Conception of Difference’ (1956).
Any thoughts on this?
March 3, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Levi,
When you say that to count as an object one has to be able to “independently exist”. I find this to be a curious proviso, since it lead straight to Spinoza’s reasoning why there is such a thing as Substance. Nothing in the modal world can exist “independently” (it requires an explanation for its existence). So while a cell can “exist” independently on the other cells to which it is related, it certainly could not exist without the processes that brought it into being, and I can’t say that it would exist without the laws of physics being what they are, without space or time. This notion of “independence of existence” which is not presence in your elementary definition strikes me as a rather fundamental concept here. Perhaps you could clarify what you mean by “independent existence”.
I thought also I would like to bring up your summation:
“From a single molecule of H20 we cannot, for example, infer that it has the power to flow or wet fabrics. It is only when molecules of H20 are conjugated with one another that these powers emerge.”
This strikes me that you have made the same error I brought to your attention in your Spinoza piece. You have removed the explanandum and made something of the explanans appear irrelevant. It is not that you start with a single molecule. You start with the viscosity of water, or its freezing point, and then when looking for explanations for these properties, you can turn to the molecule, as it is. You then can make predictions (or observation) based on causal models, of what might happen if you changed that molecular structure. You see the connection between H2O and viscosity or freezing point in this way. For instance the freezig point and viscosity of “Heavy water” (D2O)is higher than with H2O. Because one is looking for causal connections, and not simply making deductions from scratch, it is the connections are found. Now whether one can conceivably go the other way, from individual properties to group properties, I cannot see how one can foreclose the possibility categorically, especially with the growing capacities of our computing and modeling power.
The best.
March 3, 2009 at 5:32 pm
Hi Kvond,
Yes, I understand how Spinoza arrives at his conclusion, I just think Spinoza begs the question with his definition of substance, assuming from the outset the very thing that he sets out to prove. Right now I’m still trying to work out these issues concerning the nature of substance, so a lot of this is in flux. I would argue that there’s a big difference between claiming that something is an affection of substance and claiming that individual substances belong to relational networks that play a role in evoking particular properties in their being. Thus, for example, I do not share your view that individual cells cannot exist independently of other cells. I think this speaks too loosely. On the one hand, cells can be separated from their network of cells and placed in a glass dish. On the other hand, what you’re claiming, I think, is not that a cell cannot exist independently of other cells, but that a cell undergoes a change in its affections when separated from other cells, in most case bringing about it’s death but not the end of its existence.
This would be correct if the issue were one of epistemology or the order of operations through which we come to discover or explain the particular properties of water, but the point I’m making is not about explanation or epistemology, but is rather an ontological point about properties that emerge when entities are related to one another. I certainly agree, for the most part, with the logic of discovery you outline here but think that’s a distinct issue.
March 3, 2009 at 5:48 pm
Hi Anodynelite,
Didn’t read you antagonistically at all, I just wanted to make sure you weren’t treating realism as equivalent to the Scholastic realist position (i.e., the existence of universals). I have a lot of problems with Deleuze’s transcendental field myself, but it doesn’t seem to me that it leads to correlationism. I think the hidden figure in all of these discussions is Deleuze’s good friend Gilbert Simondon. Simondon argued that something like a transcendental field has to be theorized to properly account for the individuation of entities. His view was that if we start from the discrete, actualized entity we necessarily fall back into aporia pertaining to form and matter, all of which lead ultimately, to the correlationist philosophies. It is only when entities are understood in their becoming, argues Simondon, that their individuation becomes intelligible. The factors presiding over individuation, however, disappear in the result at each stage of the becoming of the entity. It is these factors, I think, that Deleuze is referring to when he evokes the transcendental field. At any rate, Simondon is entirely clear that these processes of individuation belong to the entities themselves, not to those seeking to know the entities. They’re real processes in the entities, not external criteria of how we identify entities. It’s a shame that we don’t yet have a translation of L’individuation, though I’ve heard rumblings that one is in the works.
In my view, in both “Bergson’s Conception of Difference” and Bergsonism, Deleuze, heavily emphasizing Duration and Simultaneity, pushes Bergson to the limit, beyond the constraints of treating duration as the realm of the psychological, thereby arriving at a materialist conception of duration as the very being of matter. I actually have an article forthcoming on this in a Continuum anthology on Deleuze and Kant.
March 4, 2009 at 4:55 pm
Levi: “Thus, for example, I do not share your view that individual cells cannot exist independently of other cells.”
Kvond: I don’t know where you get this from since I thought I had explicity stated the opposite:
“So while a cell can “exist” independently on the other cells to which it is related, it certainly could not exist without the processes that brought it into being, and I can’t say that it would exist without the laws of physics being what they are, without space or time.”
I specifically say that I cell CAN exist apart from other cells (one of course can put it in on a microscope slide), but it cannot exist without the processes that brought it into being (whether these be the cells that produced it in most “natural” processes, or the scientist actions that cultured it in “unnatural” processes). And beyond this account of its dependent existence, it currently, at this one moment in time, cannot be said to exist without the physical condition of the universe being what it is. (Or as a 17th century philosopher might say, without “extension”).
So when you sum,
“On the other hand, what you’re claiming, I think, is not that a cell cannot exist independently of other cells, but that a cell undergoes a change in its affections when separated from other cells, in most case bringing about it’s death but not the end of its existence.”
This is not really my point. My point is that I can’t understand what you mean when you say that an “object” (the very core concept of a proposed Object Oriented Philosophy) is only an object if it can independently exist; the entire concept of “independently exist” makes no sense to me. Any object your provide as an example is dependent in two ways: on the causal interactions that brought it into being, and the causal conditions that currently are making its existence possible. In order for “independent” existence to stand it really has to be much more rigorously defined.
(If I can say a small thing as far as Spinoza’s notion of affection, it strikes me that you somehow read Spinoza’s theory in reverse. It is not that a living cell is “nothing but” an affection of Substance, and therefore minimized or reduced to near insubstantiality (Hegel’s reading). It is the other way around. Substance is “nothing but” a totalizing and immanent propensity to exist and act, something it only accomplishes through modal expression. A living cell is the fullness of Substance pushing itself through to the maximalization of its actions. Every speck of dust is Substance held at maximum tension, like a porcupine arrayed in quills.)
Levi: “This would be correct if the issue were one of epistemology or the order of operations through which we come to discover or explain the particular properties of water, but the point I’m making is not about explanation or epistemology, but is rather an ontological point about properties that emerge when entities are related to one another.”
Kvond; Epistemology and Ontology are intricately braided, an in particular one cannot remove the ontological properties granted to a “substance” or object from their explanatory value. That is what properties do, they explain relations. So when you want to start with a single molecule of water and say that it, as H20 does NOT have the property of a viscosity of 1.005, that this property only emerges with a host of such molecules, your starting with a single molecule is completely arbitrary, and not really even part of a thorough-going ontological study (one which must included the role of properties in explanation). For your claim to hold you would have to say something like “a single molecule of H20 does not have the property of, when combined with others of its kind (and several other delimiting factors), producing a viscosity of 1.005″. By virtue of what would you deny this property of a single molecule of H2O?
Thanks for your considerations of my questions.
March 4, 2009 at 6:22 pm
Hi Kvond,
Apologies, I read you too quickly yesterday and misconstrued your claim. I think you’re right that I need to more carefully define what I mean by objects. In my view, the fact that an object is the product of a genesis does not undermine its independence. When an object comes into being it takes on an autonomous existence. Your second argument from existing causal conditions is, I think, a greater challenge. Here the issue revolves, in my view, around the ontological status of causal conditions. Perhaps you’ll allow me to illustrate this issue through an analogy. One way of conceiving causal conditions might be akin to lines on a sheet of graph paper. The lines here would be the laws of physics and they would be intrinsic to the fabric of space-time. Any entity on this sheet of graph paper would be constrained by these laws as well as dependent on these laws. By contrast, another way of conceiving these laws would be as arising from objects themselves. That is, the laws of physics are not intrinsic to space-time, but rather arise from the properties of various types of objects. Where Newton seemed to conceive these laws as intrinsic to the universe, subsequent science seems to indicate rather that these laws arise from objects and relations among objects. Thus, in the case of relativity theory, space and time are not an empty container, but are variable depending on the speed of objects. Space-time arises from the objects rather than the objects being “contained” in space-time. Likewise, particle physics is now looking for gravitons that preside over the force of gravity. Here gravity is not a force exerted on objects, but is rather something that arises from a particular type of object, the graviton (of course, we haven’t found it yet, however).
It seems to me that this shifts the issue a bit as under this model we have a plurality of objects from which these constraints emerge, rather than these constraints already being there. It seems to me that as for the letter of Spinoza’s text, Hegel’s reading is essentially correct. Literally modes are insubstantial because they are not themselves substances but are properties of substance. If you were correct in your claim that “substance is ‘nothing but’ a totalizing and immanent propensity to exist and act and that this is only accomplished through modal expression” I would have a difficult time seeing how Spinoza’s arguments for 1p1 and 1p5 could possibly be coherent. In short, when you make this claim it seems to me that you’re asserting your own ontology– highly influenced by Spinoza, to be sure –not Spinoza’s ontology. That’s a good thing.
You will recall that for me objects are made up of other objects. Consequently, the fact that a particular object is dependent on other objects– my body, for example, is dependent on my cells –does not undermine the thesis that the object is nonetheless autonomous. I am willing to go part of the way with you in arguing that objects always belong to systems or networks relating to many other things, just not all the way to the claim that objects belong to one global system that is the sufficient reason for all objects.
I do not, of course, agree with your claim about the relationship between epistemology and ontology. As a realist I’m committed to the thesis that objects are what they are regardless of whether or not we know them. While I certainly agree that properties have an explanatory value for-us, these properties are ontologically a part of objects regardless of whether or not someone seeks to explain objects or exists to do so. In other words, the issue of explanation and discovery is distinct from the issue of what something is.
June 23, 2010 at 2:50 pm
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