In his response to Adrian Ivakhiv’s terrific review of Prince of Networks, Graham Harman writes,
Generally speaking, I find that there are equivocations in all the relationist arguments I see. One of them is the claim that, if I say that objects withdraw behind all of their relations, then this somehow amounts to a denial of process and history. How? I am fully committed to historical objects that emerge over time. But they are only objects because they are irreducible upward to their current interactions with other things, and irreducible downward to the sum total of processes that gave rise to them.
It is simply not true that all of the past is preserved in the present– a lovely Bergsonian trope that is completely at odds with how things are. Each of us emerges from our parents, but it would be absurd to claim that each and every detail of the life history and courtship of our parents, grandparents, ad infinitum, is somehow inscribed into our current realities. Some of those details certainly affect us, but it is purely arbitrary to say that all of them do… Through speaking with my mother I am aware of some of the pure contingencies in her life from Kindergarten onward that eventually led to my receiving the name “Graham” (a rare name in America in my generation), but it would seem ridiculous to think that the exact color of clothing worn by both of my parents on January 10, 1950, or the exact nature of the breakfast they ate on that day in their early childhood, is somehow inscribed in my reality right now. It might be, if they ate something harmful that led to a genetic mutation that was passed on to me and will eventually give me cancer. But it’s not necessarily true that everything they did was of any importance at all in my future life.
Here I am in complete agreement. The point is not that objects do not have a genesis or a history. Nor is the point that objects do not enter into relations. My entire onticological dialectic, in fact, is a “physics” of objects that enter into relations. Nor is the point even that certain objects aren’t dependent on other objects. I don’t fare so well in my current state without oxygen. Rather, the point is that the proper being of objects is something that exceeds or is in excess to their relations. In short, entity is irreducible to its relations. Within my own ontological framework, it is for this reason that I distinguish between the object as O1 or actualized properties and the split object, Ø, as the excess of an objects endo-consistency over any of the relations it might happen to enter into. If I am led to claim– and Graham isn’t guilty of these claims –that the proper being of objects is incorporeal, immaterial, and a set of attractors presiding over a phase space, then this is because whatever points the object happens to actualize in this phase space by entering into relations with other objects, the objectness of the object still exceeds any of these relations.
read on!
All of this, however, begs the question of when an object is. In a prior post, I distinguished, following Zubiri, between different kinds of principles: ἔστιν, γίγνεται, and γίγνώσκεται. ἔστιν refers to the principles by whence something is. For example, Aristotle’s categories belong to the domain of ἔστιν. These are the basic structures of substance or what makes something a substance or object.
By contrast, γίγνεται refers to the principles by whence something becomes. There are two distinct issues here. On the one hand, there is the onticological dialectic that explores the manner in which exo-relations or relations between objects produce changes in objects. More fundamentally, however, γίγνεται refers to the question of how objects come into existence. When is an object? Or, to put it otherwise, when does one object emerge from other objects? The branch of onticology that addresses this question is referred to as “onticological deduction” or “onticological genesis”. DeLanda and Deleuze have contributed a good deal to these questions but suffer from the flaw of conflating the genesis of objects with the objectness of objects.
Finally, γίγνώσκεται refers to that through whence something is known. Is it through experience that we come to know? Through innate ideas? Through some sort of transcendental synthesis? For onticology, γίγνώσκεται no longer have the pride of place they have enjoying since the 17th century. Epistemology is not first philosophy, but is rather a subspecies of principles pertaining to γίγνεται or the principles through which something becomes. Insofar as knowledge is a relation between two or more objects, it belongs to the onticological dialectic or the analysis of inter-ontic relations. Since the 18th century philosophy has continuously conflated questions of the conditions under which we know with issues pertaining to what objects are.
Returning to the issue of γίγνεται or questions of becoming, Harman’s post raises a number of fascinating questions about the conditions under which objects come into existence. I accept the Lucretian thesis wherein it is claimed that “nothing can come from nothing” or that objects always come from other objects, while rejecting his metaphysical atomism. The question then becomes, under what conditions do we pass from a plurality of objects to a new object? There are also all sorts of mereological considerations here. Among the most interesting consequences of OOO, I believe, is the thesis that objects can contain other objects and that these objects the object contains are absolutely autonomous while nonetheless being parts of this other object. Nonetheless, the object formed out of these other objects is distinct from these objects while being dependent on these objects. As if things couldn’t be any more weird, it’s also necessary to stipulate that objects can be parts of more than one distinct object. For example, a person can both be a citizen of a country and an employee of a multi-national corporation. This example is particularly interesting in that this person (one object) is a part of two objects bound by entirely different principles (the multi-national corporation need not be grounded in the country to which the citizen belongs).
In order for an object to be an object, it is clear that it must attain a degree of closure or endo-consistency. It must maintain some sort of identity through time. Suppose we take– as we should –my blog as an example of an object. There are all sorts of ontological riddles here. First, my blog, Larval Subjects, is independent of both the platform and the technology that renders it possible. As far as programming platforms go, it once existed at blogspot rather than wordpress. At blogspot I was able to do things I’m not able to do here, enjoying much greater freedom to fiddle about with the programming, but at wordpress Larval Subjects is far more reliable and, I believe, attractive. Now, the fact that my blog could migrate from blogspot to wordpress is the first bit of evidence that Larval Subjects is independent of whatever platform it happens to use. It will be argued that my blog is nonetheless dependent on internet technology, and this would not be false. Nonetheless, Larval Subjects could be embodied in a variety of different media while still being Larval Subjects.
Now, it is clear that “closure” cannot signify sameness. Larval Subjects grows and changes all the time. New posts are added, people comment, it gets all sorts of traffic (if my counters are to be believed about 2000 to 3000 visits a day). Yet it is still Larval Subjects. Closure, then, is the persistence of an entity through time despite change. One will say that nonetheless Larval Subjects is dependent on me, the author of so many posts on Larval Subjects. But this is not true either. While I certainly perturb Larval Subjects in all sorts of ways, while Larval Subjects certain draws all sorts of input from the object that is Levi, nonetheless, there is no way in which Larval Subjects is reducible to Levi. On the one hand, I am not the sole creator of Larval Subjects. There are all the programmers, the people that maintain the internet, the telephone lines and satellites that allow for this form of communication, the people that comment, the design work that Mel did, and so on. On the other hand, Larval Subjects enjoys all sorts of adventures of which I am scarcely aware. There are all the differences it provokes in others, whether they be rage, admiration, perplexity, new projects, rejoinders, and so on. Only a small portion of that traffic ever responds. The blog gets linked to by other blogs without me knowing it. It gets, if my tracker is to be believed, forwarded in email. And so on. These are adventures of Larval Subjects, not Levi. Moreover, it is not at all an unusual event for me to be utterly baffled and surprised by something I wrote a while back. I am as much an interpreter of what I write as anyone else. And this because anything I write is an independent object. Such is the essence of what Lacan and Freud taught us about the essence of that strange object known as speech and writing.
Yet what is more interesting than the ontological status of my blog is the question of the ontological status of blog collectives. We can ask, at what point do objects shift from being networks of relations among objects, to objects in their own right? We talk, for example, of the “theory blogosphere”. Is that an object? A network? Both? There is a sort of entity here but it is closer to a cloud or a mist than a rock. How do we describe this difference ontologically? And what is the process by which something passes from being a collective to an object?
Larval Subjects . 
September 14, 2009 at 7:25 am
Here is a question, or rather a set of related questions for you. When does an object cease to be the object that it is? And does Ø itself ever change?
The obvious and classic answer to this question is that the essence of the object is unchanging, and that it dictates those changes the object can undergo, including which changes will cause it to no longer be _what it is_, i.e., which changes would undermine its essence. If your conception of Ø is similar to this classic picture of essence, then any object is self-identical in virtue of conditions of self-identity laid down by Ø. O1 changes, but Ø does not without the object ceasing to be.
If Ø can change on the other hand, one has to give up the idea that there is anything which constitutes ‘what’ that object is across al of its varying actualisations (i.e., an essence). On this scenario the object is not self-identical, but a continuity. You have talked about objects being self-different rather than self-identical before, but I wonder whether this is what you mean by it. The problem is that this approach produces some very fuzzy boundaries between objects (which I think Harman would have serious problems with).
September 14, 2009 at 8:58 am
‘We can ask, at what point do objects shift from being networks of relations among objects, to objects in their own right? We talk, for example, of the “theory blogosphere”.
Is that an object? A network? Both? There is a sort of entity here but it is closer to a cloud or a mist than a rock. How do we describe this difference ontologically?’
‘As if things couldn’t be any more weird, it’s also necessary to stipulate that objects can be parts of more than one distinct object.
For example, a person can both be a citizen of a country and an employee of a multi-national corporation.’
When you say ‘person’ I guess you are you referring to the body?
I still feel that some of these weirdnesses arise from the distinctions an observer makes – many of the cuts we make in our experience are just that – cuts we make in our experience.
‘There are all the programmers, the people that maintain the internet, the telephone lines and satellites that allow for this form of communication, the people that comment, the design work that Mel did, and so on.’
And so on.
On this line of thought there is no end to the network. ad infinitum
I guess that the outcomes of this post will be definitive for OOO . It is fascinating that you should have bumped into Zubiri.
‘Operational closure seems to invoke a kind of structural change in order to remain ‘the same’.’
‘I’ change, but in doing so I do not become someone else.
What is the diff between a mist and a rock?
I suspect that the answer to that might be interesting for 000.
It comes back to this question of aggregates – the mist, the sand dune.
Some of these objects are cuts we make.
Are there ‘persons’ who are not aggregates and that are eternal – not enduring thru time? ‘Primary true forms.’
‘Closure, then, is the persistence of an entity through time despite change.’
These are the fundamental questions.
September 14, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Paul,
I take it that your observations about cuts refer not to the onticological analytic, but rather to the onticological dialectic. The being of an object is not a function of what another object makes of it. If an object is an object then it is independent of any other object. When speaking of the role of observers, the issue becomes on of how one object translates another object. Thus, for example, a plant translates photons of light by transforming them into sugars. There’s no reason to suppose that there’s anything unique or special about observers.
September 14, 2009 at 1:32 pm
Hi Deon,
I think of the substance of objects or the essence of objects as being systems that persist throughout time. In this regard, objects are processes or, as you put it, continuities. Just as there are different types of attractors, I take it that there are different types of objects as well. On the one hand, there are objects that, at the level of Ø do not undergo any changes without being destroyed. On the other hand, there are objects or systems that change and develop. You, for example, are an instance of the latter type of object. Experience and development modify your endo-consistency. I take it that these latter type of objects differ from the former, by virtue of their relationship to time. Where the former type of object is not reflexive and is not such that it maintains a relationship to its past, the latter type of object maintains a relationship to its past, building a continuity between past states and present states. There are two ways in which I understand objects as differing. On the one hand, Ø differs in itself. Insofar as Ø is an act or process, it must contain a disequilibrium or inequality that distinguishes it from nothing. On the other hand, Ø differs from O1 or any properties it happens to actualize under contemporary conditions. The question of whether a change in Ø amounts to the object ceasing to be will depend, I think, on whether the object is a self-reflexive object or not, or whether or not it maintains an internal relation to its history such that elements of the past persist in the present of the object.
September 14, 2009 at 4:11 pm
Thanks Levi,
I must say that I have my doubts about the tenability of the distinction between self-reflexive and non-reflexive entities. I think you’re going to need to develop a very robust notion of self-relation to make it work. For my own part, I think that self-relation is not a binary opposition but more of a matter of degrees, or a matter of intensity of self-relation. I think I am a more self-related entity than a rock, I am more able to adapt myself and reconfigure in relation to external shocks, but this does not mean that the rock is devoid of adaptability or self-stablisation in relation to its outside. I need to present more of my interpretation of Deleuze to motivate this properly.
If I could add to my question, I would ask whether you think that Ø itself determines the conditions under which it is destroyed, in either case?
I am wondering whether your self-reflexive objects are genuinely open-ended continuities (which could become radically different in a gradual way) or whether the amount of change they can undergo is still prescribed by their internal essence (similar to the way in which Spinoza’s conception of modal essence allows for a certain amount of variation of the relations between the parts which instantiate the mode).
September 14, 2009 at 4:44 pm
Hi Deon,
I take it that the difference between self-reflexive and non-reflexive entities is a difference in degree, not in kind. In this connection I draw heavily on dynamic systems theory and autopoietic theory to flesh out the distinction between the two. One of the reasons I describe the being of objects as incorporeal or immaterial is to address the point you make about rocks. The self-stabilization of a rock is not, in my view, an instance of self-reflexivity. Rather, the self-stablization of the rock is a matter of the attractors presiding over the endo-consistency of the rock. In stabilizing itself with respect to shocks, new points in the rocks phase space are actualized (O1’s) that distribute this shock throughout the rock while still maintaining its structural organization. Here it’s useful to refer, once again, to the example of my coffee cup. My coffee cup is blue, yet the shades of that blue fluctuate depending on lighting conditions. These different shades are points in the phase space of the cup. The lighting conditions are shocks or perturbations that select points in that phase space. If I argue that the objectness of this object is incorporeal or immaterial, then this is because attractors and the differences of intensity they preside over are not themselves material things. The matter of the object can perpetually change, while the attractors remain the same.
Self-reflexivity, I take it, is a very different form of organization than this sort of fixed point attractor organization. Where non-self-reflexive systems tend towards fixed point attractors such that past states of the system are not retained in subsequent states of the system or object, in self-reflexive systems past states of the system play a role in subsequent states of the system. To make this concrete, the blue of my coffee cup in the dim light of my office plays no role in the blue of my coffee cup in the brilliant light of the noon-day sun of my patio. In a self-reflexive system or object, by contrast, past states of the system continue to play a role in subsequent states of the system. As a result of this discussion, for example, subsequent communicative interactions will differ between us by virtue of how those past events persist in our respective systems. What is crucial here, I think, is that the system maintains relations to these prior events. It is not simply that one event precedes another event as in a causal sequence, but that the prior events persist in the system. And again, I’m more than happy to recognize a wide variety of self-reflexive systems ranging from the organic, to the person, to the social and so on.
Depending on what you’re asking here, I would tend to think so. On the one hand, I take it that systems can reach bifurcation points where they become new objects and such that the prior object ceases to exist. On the other hand, I take it that if the attractors presiding over the endo-consistency of the object cease to exist and maintain no self-reflexive historical ties to past states of the system, the object is destroyed.
Yes, I’m committed to the thesis that self-reflexive objects can become entirely new objects, though I don’t think there’s a hard and fast line where this takes place. This, for example, is what happens in evolutionary processes. Species emerge out of new species through the accumulation of differences over time. You can’t pin down the precise point of transition, though.
September 14, 2009 at 7:57 pm
‘If an object is an object then it is independent of any other object.’
Ok, still getting up to speed here!
For OOO an object is an object if it makes a difference. It simply has to be an observer that is aware (and often determines) what makes a ‘difference’?
‘There’s no reason to suppose that there’s anything unique or special about observers.’
Au contraire, there may be something v. special about mindfull observers (whether human or non-human) in distinction to a mindless realm.’
There is also something special about entities that wilfully initiate causal chains rather than reacting to them or continuing them.
In other words there are ‘persons’ (whether ‘human’ or ‘animal’) and there is a mindless or non-empsyched realm.
I suspect that the mindless realm is homogeneously one and that only persons have the status of unique individuals – both one and not-another.
However, I guess this is both nonsense and hugely unfashionable.
Anyway I better exit before I get slain.
September 14, 2009 at 10:04 pm
Hi Paul,
No, the issue of whether or not anyone observes the difference or whether the difference acts on any other object is completely irrelevant to whether or not the object is an object. Ontologically an object is still an object regardless of whether or not it is observed.
This isn’t quite my point. My point is that there is nothing markedly different about the manner in which a plant transforms photons of light according to its own system-specific structure or how a hurricane organizes heat that it receives from the ocean, from what takes when a human or animal processes stimulations from other objects. Yes, there are all sorts of differences in how these processes are organized, but they are all inter-object relations. As a consequence, there’s no reason to place humans or observers at the center of philosophical questioning. They are one instance of inter-object relations among others, no more or less interesting than these others.
Yeah, OOO rejects this sort of thesis. From the standpoint of onticology, objects are ontologically primitive such that the universe is composed of discrete objects or entities. In this respect, onticology sides with Lucretius, Leibniz, and Whitehead, though differing as to what the nature of these objects are. It does not begin from the premise that there is first a homogeneous one that then gets cut up by observers.
September 15, 2009 at 12:59 am
hello, good to see new typing on this page; son ergon esti!
By ‘difference in degree’ are you saying that one-moment (if any mention of duration is acceptable) of reflexivity can differ in degree? Which, if carried through, could lead to an instance of one moment alongside a flow of degree change? And, would not the other option be that reflexivity can be measured in quantity, with number varying even among like objects, or similar among different objects?
September 15, 2009 at 2:02 am
Dillon,
I’m not sure I understand your question. Differences in degree might be thought through the example of all the shades of red between very light red and an extremely dark red. The point is that there is no hard and fast line that we could pinpoint that would allow us to say when dark red or light red pass into another color, but nonetheless there is a difference between the color red and other colors. The issue is similar with regard to self-reflexivity. There are a variety of “shades” (degrees) of self-reflexivity, but no hard and fast line that we could pinpoint that would allow us to say this and only this marks a self-reflexive system.
September 15, 2009 at 4:46 am
thank you:
my desire for quantitative results stems from the idea that every received action by an object, which is an active or passive participant, will trigger a reflexive action, but also potentially a self-reflexive action; yet, what differentiates the reflexive from the self-reflexive in something inanimate like a rock? question: have you written on causation through this blog? do you follow a formal causation (harman in vicarious causation?)? if yes, do genetic fields enter the discussion when considering objects as networks?
September 15, 2009 at 5:14 am
Dillon,
Are you using the term “reflexive” to signify something like a reaction of one object with respect to another? When I use the term “reflexive” and “self-reflexive” I am not referring to a reaction of this sort, but rather the capacity of a system to register its own states. For example, when you register being tired, this is an instance of self-reflexivity. It is not simply that you’re “in” the state of being tired, but that you are registering the state of being tired. You could easily be tired without reflexively registering the state of being tired. Likewise, when you reflect on your past and weave a narrative about how certain events led to you being the person you are, this is an instance of reflexivity. In its crudest and simplest formulation, then, self-reflexivity could be taken as the capacity of a system to refer to itself. The rock cannot refer to itself. It just is hot when heated. It cannot register itself as being hot.
Self-reflexive systems differ from non-reflexive systems in that past states of the system can modify present states of the system. A society, for example, can examine how it responded to a particular event in the past and use this as further input for how it should respond to similar events in the present. The past becomes an input in the present and contributes to the organization in the present. By contrast, while past states can impact the present state of a rock, they do so in an entirely different way. Barring panpsychism, in being heated up in the present the rock does not reflexively relate to past states when it was heated so as to change its response to this present state of being heated. Rather, the rock just is heated and responds accordingly. Reflexive systems can range from simple biological systems to very complex and self-aware systems such as consciousness in animals, humans, and the manner in which social systems use prior states as input for subsequent states. In the case of very simple biological systems, for example, reflexivity is found at the level of how genetic variations are preserved across generations and become inputs in the development of the organism.
I am not at all opposed to the quantitative. I’m just making the point that the conceptual distinction between nonreflexive systems like rocks and reflexive systems like social systems is not a matter of quantitative differences, but rather an issue of how these types of objects are organized and behave. I suspect that there are all sorts of ways in which reflexive phenomena can be quantified, especially since we’re increasingly getting artificial intelligences that seem to have properties of reflexivity.
Graham and I differ markedly on the issue of causation, though I don’t have an elaborate account of causality like he does. I am not entirely sure I understand the issues he’s responding to with his account of vicarious causality.
September 15, 2009 at 3:36 pm
hello again,
but couldn’t you say that the rock can and does ‘reflexively relate to past states when it (is) heated so as to change its response to the present state of being heated” in registering structural flaws, occurring over time because of constant heating, which causes each instance of heating to have differences in intensity?
question: i am writing a paper on a similar topic, and obviously, you are a main influence and source, yet, solely through this blog; are there many precedents in citing blogs? is this format, being public, freely open for citation because of that? come on democracy of objects!
September 15, 2009 at 4:22 pm
Dillon,
It does not seem to me that the rock refers to itself or its past state when heated the second time. Rather, after the first heating there has merely been a change in the molecular composition of the rock such that it behaves differently in the next heating. The situation is similar with iron. When the blacksmith heats the iron and then pounds it with his hammer, continually reheating it and then cooling it in water, it is not that the iron is reflexively relating to its past states, but rather that the molecular alignment of the carbon and iron molecules in the iron are being arranged through these cause and effect interactions in a way that strengthens the iron. The past state is not retained in the subsequent state, but rather the present state has simply been changed or modified.
Compare this with what takes place over the course of our discussion. It is not simply that you or I are in a new state as a result of our discussion– though that occurs too –but rather that we retain earlier moments in the discussion in ways that can be evoked in the present state of the discussion. Thus, for example, at any point in the discussion you can say something like “before you said x, but now you’re saying y”. You can retrieve what was said at this earlier point and weave it in to the current state of the discussion. The rock or iron cannot refer to itself in this way. For example, the rock cannot evoke its state prior to being heated the first time. Self-reflexivity has a lot to do with the ability of a system to monitor itself, regulate or correct itself according to ends, and draw from its past states.
I’m not sure what the guidelines are for citing blogs. I suspect that you simply cite the author, the title of the post, the name of the blog and the date that it was written, perhaps providing a link in the paper.
June 23, 2010 at 3:04 pm
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