In response to my last post, Mark Crosby writes:
As you may know, John Protevi has a pair of translations up for two sections from Gilbert Simondon’s L’INDIVIDU ET SA GENESE PHYSICO-BIOLOGIQUE. These may be more useful for thinking the determinism and indetermism of object individuations than the more abstract theses of Goedel. For example:
“Indeterminism is not only tied to measure; it also comes from the fact that physical reality has topologically imbricated layers of magnitude, which nonetheless each has its own becoming, its particular chronology… a system reacts on itself not only in the sense of the principle of entropy … but also in modifying its own structure across time… Determinism and indeterminism are only limit-cases, because there is a becoming of systems: this becoming is that of their individuation: there exists a reactivity of systems in relation to themselves”.
This is what many of us mean by saying that it’s ‘relations all the way down’.
In response to this, I’m first led to wonder what people believe objects are such that they contrast relations to them in this way. Let’s recall that for Aristotle every substance can be analyzed in terms of four arche: The material cause, the formal cause, the final cause, and the efficient cause. Here we should focus on the formal cause. The form or structure of an object is one of the defining features of substance. However, forms are nothing if not structures and structures are nothing if not containing determinate relations. Someday someone will have to analyze the rhetoric of objects as it functions in process oriented and relational ontologies. In a number of discussions here on the web I have seen objects characterized by critics as static and reified, as being incapable of process or becoming, as being eternal, etc. This strikes me as an exceedingly odd characterization of objects and suggests that we are not really thinking about the being of objects but rather are using the term “object” as a sort of straw man whipping boy to embody all the things we believe to be bad, bad, bad.
Somewhere in Prince of Networks Harman remarks that every object can simultaneously be viewed as a collection of other objects and as a set of relations. This is because, as Harman argues in Tool-Being, the withrawn being of objects consists in a structure of notes. Structures are networks of internal relations among singularities or elements.
Given this, can the object-oriented ontologist embrace the thesis that it is “relations all the way down”? I don’t think so, because I believe such a claim is deeply misleading. Object-oriented ontologists distinguish between two types of relations. Graham distinguishes between domestic relations and foreign relations. I distinguish between endo-relations and exo-relations. These concepts are, I believe, more or less the same. Domestic relations and endo-relations are relations that make up the internal structure of an object. There is no object or substance without domestic or endo-relations. Destroy these relations and you destroy the object. In Aristotlean terms, they are the form of the object. Foreign relations and exo-relations are relations an object enters into with other objects.
What is crucial for OOO is that objects be detachable from their exo-relations or foreign relations. There are two reasons for this. First, objects must be capable of being detached from their foreign or exo-relations such that they can break with existing exo-relations and enter into new exo-relations. If we argue that objects are their exo-relations, then we are at a loss to explain how change takes place and why it takes place. This is why object-oriented ontologists argue that, in principle, objects are independent of their exo-relations. To be sure, all the objects we ever encounter are related in some way or another. But that’s not the point. The point is that the condition under which it is possible for relations to shift and change requires the existence of autonomous substances as a matter of metaphysical principles. Do the exo-relations an object enters into make a difference to that object? Absolutely. This is the whole point of my distinction between virtual proper being and local manifestation. However, the fact that objects take on new qualities or local manifestations when they enter into new exo-relations (think about what happens when water is related to a pot and heat) does not entitle us to claim that the substantiality of the object consists in these relations.
Second, as Harman has compellingly argued, if objects are their exo-relations to other objects, we get what Graham calls a game of hot potato or a hall of mirrors. Insofar as every object 1) is treated as related to every other object (an extravagant and untenable ontological thesis), and 2) every object is treated as being its relations, being becomes a featureless lump without any difference. Substance is necessary to properly account for the diversity of the world.
In many respects, I think Bogost does the best job of explaining just why the concept of autonomous substances is so important. In Unit Operations Bogost distinguishes between systems and units. A good example of a system would be Saussure’s concept of language as a set of negatively, differentially, and internally related elements such that no element exists independent of any other. Each element is subordinated to a law or structure and has no being apart from that law or structure. By contrast, units are discrete substances or entities that can enter into different relations with one another.
What Bogost wants to emphasize is how meanings and effects are produced as a result of units (objects) constantly being reconfigured. Think of Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 version of Romeo and Juliet. Luhrmann produces something new as a result of bringing distinct units into relation with one another. On the one hand, we have the unit of Shakespeare’s play. On the other hand, we have the unit of contemporary L.A. gang rivalries. And each of these units, of course, contains all sorts of sub-units or sub-objects that can themselves be reconfigured in new exo-relations with other units. Bogost wants to capture the way in which units can pass in and out of exo-relations, producing new effects and meanings as a result of these mobile and changing configurations. A whole new form of criticism emerges here that can range promiscuously between the world of the semiotic and the nonhuman.
When we claim that its relations all the way down, it is precisely this sense of mobile and fleeting configuration among units or objects that’s lost in thought. Indeed, while many relationists claim to distinguish between internal and original relations, we instead perpetually see the privileging of holistic interrelationships over mobile and nomadic substances within these forms of thought. What we thus get is a prison-house of relations where no mobility is possible. It is precisely for this reason that we must champion substance and vigorously defend the autonomy of substances or units.
This might sound like a strange thing for an ecological thinker such as myself to argue. However, it is my belief that ecology doesn’t understand the premises of its own practices. Ecology rightly notes the importance of exo-relations within eco-systems. However, it goes too far in suggesting that objects within these eco-systems are their exo-relations. If we look at the actual theoretical and worldly practices of ecotheorist we note that they are extremely attentive to the play of nomadic and autonomous substances. What obsesses the ecologically inclined thinker is the differences made by the appearance of a new substance within an existing set of exo-relations in an eco-system. For example, the appearance of Burmese pythons in the Florida Everglades. Yet attentiveness to these sorts of issues entails, metaphysically, the primacy of autonomous substances or units over local and temporary systems.
Larval Subjects . 
August 10, 2010 at 4:07 pm
[…] 10, 2010 I think this is A KNOCKOUT POST, would add only a few minor corollaries, but prefer not to do so here because they would garble the […]
August 10, 2010 at 5:00 pm
“Graham distinguishes between domestic relations and foreign relations. I distinguish between endo-relations and exo-relations. These concepts are, I believe, more or less the same.”
If the peanut gallery gets a vote, I’d like to cast mine (slow-roasted and seasoned with Camrague sea salt)for endo/exo. The domestic/foreign lingo smacks far too much of the legal nomenclature of business entity incorporation and gives me the willies.
August 10, 2010 at 6:09 pm
This is all interesting to me, and I can grasp the exo/endo-relations concept. In fact, De Landa uses similar concepts.
The question, it seems to me, is, can objects be altered by their exo-relations? If not, then how do you account for change within an object? If so, how and to what degree? Also, at what point can a set of relations be said to have turned into an object? Morton mentions endo-symbiosis – at what point did those exo-relations between different objects transform into endo-relations within a single object? Or have they?
Just seeking some clarification – I apologize if you’ve answered these questions before. Feel free to simply direct me to further reading.
August 10, 2010 at 6:16 pm
Levi, I think I am missing something here. That quote said:
“this becoming is that of their individuation: there exists a reactivity of systems in relation to themselves”
How is this different from the autopoietic theory you put forward? The author seems to be saying that each object is a closed operational system which is related to all the other systems by means of complex causal dynamics (with “relations” being a mere formal indicator for something very complex). I mean, maybe you are reading that passage very differently from me, but if we apply the principle of charity and not immediately react to the word “relations” in a negative way, then the passage becomes quite sensible, and close to a charitable interpretation of your own theory of objects.
August 10, 2010 at 6:20 pm
Gary,
I was not objecting to that passage, but to the dissolution of objects or substances in relations. In my view, we need to preserve a central place for substances within ontology and our terminology should reflect that.
August 10, 2010 at 6:21 pm
Levi, some possible support for your post from an unlikely quarter, AN Whitehead and his notion of objects “prehending” the world. Prehension–literally grasping part of the world–creates the possibility of exo-relations. Objects prehend in a limited but not determined fashion; however, their prehensive capability itself is an endo-relation– part of what makes up the very object. Prehension is the possibility of (multiple) exo-relations, but does not, by itself, exhaust the capabilities of the object, including its withdrawal from prehensive relations themselves. An axe prehends both a hand and wood (on different ends, one hopes), but can also prehend ice or flesh, and it can withdraw from the lumbering scene completely.
August 10, 2010 at 6:27 pm
Jeremey,
Yes, of course. Exo-relations can bring about changes in endo-relations. These transformations can occur in a couple of different ways. First, exo-relations can bring about the destruction of an object. This occurs when an object can no longer maintain its own existence as a result of the exo-relations it’s entered into. Suppose we treated the United States as an object. Such an event might occur were the Yellowstone super volcano to explode. Such an explosion would have the effect of destroying the network connectivity upon which the U.S. is dependent to maintain itself to exist. As a consequence, the U.S. as an object would fall apart and survivors would likely form a plurality of smaller scale objects. Alternatively, an object can enter into exo-relations with other objects such that its local manifestations lead to bifurcation points where the object becomes qualitatively new. A number of chemical reactions in response to heat and cooling have these characteristics.
Both Graham and I agree that every object is simultaneously an object and a crowd. That is, every object is both a substance defined by its own endo-structure and a plurality of other objects. The question of when a plurality of objects becomes “one-ified” or an object in its own right is a difficult question, but my position is that pluralities of objects become a single object when this plurality enters into relations of structural coupling such that the elements continuously signal back and forth with one another. What you get in a circumstance like this is a situation in which the smaller scale objects become interdependent and you get a larger scale object that has attained closure, independence, and self-referentiality as an emergent entity.
August 10, 2010 at 6:37 pm
Hey Hugh!
Great to see you! Are those blocks of wood still in the back of your pickup truck ;)
I’m much softer and more sympathetic towards Whitehead than Graham is it (i.e., I’m largely in agreement with you, with a few qualifications). When, early in Process and Reality, Whitehead outlines the three-fold structure of prehension (the datum grasped, the subjective form under which it is grasped, and the entity doing the grasping) I get the sense that Whitehead and I are largely in agreement. I draw on autopoietic theory to make largely the same points. As I’m sure you know, AT argues that systems never relate directly to the world but rather process perturbances according to their own internal structure or organization. So basically, within my framework “system” (i.e., objects) would correspond to Whitehead’s subject and “organization/distinction” would correspond to Whitehead’s “subjective forms”, “perturbations” would be “datums”. I add the additional distinction between virtual proper being and local manifestation. Local manifestations would be the qualitative actualizations in an object produced as a result of prehensions.
The only two qualifications I can think of off the top of my head are 1) that while exo-relations/prehensions play a massive role in the actualized form an entity takes, entities can enter into new and different relations, and 2) I don’t share Whitehead’s thesis that actual occasions are instantaneous events that completely exhaust themselves the moment they occur or take place. My concept of objects is a lot closer to what Whitehead calls a “society” or “nexus of actual occasions” than an instantaneous actual occasion. I believe that systematicity is a ghost like substantiality that persists across time, evolving and developing in all sorts of ways, until destroyed. I guess my third qualification would be that I don’t think everything is related to everything else. I believe that exo-relations are always selective and think that Whitehead’s “negative prehension” concept is a bit of a dodge on this issue.
August 10, 2010 at 6:46 pm
Thanks for this post Levi. This really clarifies some issues for me after finishing Prince of Networks. I’m glad you brought up Aristotle too as it raises an issue for me. That is the relationship between prime matter and substantial cause in Aristotle. It seems to me that many of those (like I believe Derrida) who adopt a “relations all the way down” end up with a concept of prime matter of the Aristotilean or neoPlatonic sort. (Even if not explicitly made clear) The OOP folks want something more like Leibniz where you might have infinite divisibility but eventually you end up with something like a monad. (Not to say that the subtance of an object is a monad for OOP – I’m just drawing an analogy)
Given all this I wonder if you might comment on the place of prime matter and whether you think I have this difference right.
August 10, 2010 at 6:53 pm
Jeremy, here’s how I would put it.
Yes, of course exo-relations *can* lead to changes in endo-relations (to use Levi’s terminology for the moment, since this is his blog).
The problem is that relationist philosophies think that *all* exo-relations lead to changes in the thing. OOO holds this to be a special case in need of explanation, not the norm.
Levi and I also may have different theories about how this happens. My own theory is in fact that the exo-relations *never* affect the thing directly, but can only affect it indirectly by affecting its components. To take a trivial example: bacteria can kill me, but rather than attacking me directly, they attack my components. All effects must be mediated. (Maybe Levi thinks the same; I don’t recall if he addressed this particular point in his manuscript, though he may have done so in the pages on Luhmann.)
August 10, 2010 at 6:54 pm
And yes, though I admire Whitehead greatly, I’m less convinced of his escape from relationism than Levi is, and certainly *much* less convinced than Shaviro is.
August 10, 2010 at 6:57 pm
Levi – I appreciate this very lucid reply to Mark’s question. It seems a very useful summary of your and Graham’s positions.
There are a few things I would like to respond to, but don’t have the time to do that at the moment. Just a couple of quick questions, however – and these don’t require answers; they’re more to let you know a couple of spots where a “relationist” (if that’s what I am) might be left wondering.
1) You write:
“Indeed, while many relationists claim to distinguish between internal and original relations, we instead perpetually see the privileging of holistic interrelationships over mobile and nomadic substances within these forms of thought. What we thus get is a prison-house of relations where no mobility is possible.”
This kind of claim is common in Graham’s writing as well, but I’m never very clear about who the people are who do this. When you use the term “relationist”, who do you have in mind?
2) “Ecology rightly notes the importance of exo-relations within eco-systems. However, it goes too far in suggesting that objects within these eco-systems are their exo-relations.”
Again, I’m wondering which ecologist, or what kind of ecologist, does this. While ecologists study relations between things (between organisms and their environments, etc.), I don’t think they would normally deny the existence of the things (e.g. the organisms) that make up the systems they study, or the difference between what you’re calling exo-relations (say, relations between a cow and a field) and endo-relations (between that cow and the bacterial ecologies within its digestive tract). Just because everything is ultimately related, this doesn’t mean that everything is equally related. Relational processes follow certain trajectories and produce systems that are relatively autonomous from each other, that are organized in certain relations with each other (eg. in nested hierarchies), etc.
Perhaps what’s missing in common understandings of “relationism” is the emphasis on process that is central to any relational ontology worth pursuing. A process philosophy focuses on things as they change (which everything does), by trying to understand the different ways in which change occurs. An object-oriented ontology focuses on the stabilities within a changing and dynamic universe. (Even though you define objects in a very fairly processual way, as objects they are stabilities by definition – unless the word “object” means something quite different from its everyday English meaning.) To the extent that they arrive at viable descriptions of the world, both objectalists and relationists should get more or less to the same point, just arriving at it from different directions.
Cheers,
Adrian
August 10, 2010 at 7:00 pm
I’m swamped today moving into my new Georgia Tech office, but I just wanted to mention what a great and generous account this is of my unit operations concept. Thanks Levi.
August 10, 2010 at 7:02 pm
Having just seen your comment about Whitehead and autopoietic theory, I see that we are even closer in our thinking than I had previously thought. It makes me wonder if I’ve been overreacting all along to perceived differences that weren’t really there…
August 10, 2010 at 7:08 pm
Hi Graham,
This would be my take as well:
My tendency is to think of substantial forms as “ghostly” or incorporeal. I haven’t developed all this yet, but for some reason I’m just tickled by this comparison and see it as rich in all sorts of fun resonances. Given that SR and the OOO theorists have developed an entire bestiary (trolls, grey vampires, minotaurs, etc), it seems fun to play this up a little bit in other areas as well. At any rate, it’s the ghostly nature of substantial form or endo-composition that entails that objects can only be destroyed through their components.
August 10, 2010 at 7:12 pm
Hey Clark,
Yeah, I would say that OOO takes the Leibnizian, rather than Spinozist option (though I am a great lover of Spinoza). Both Graham and I share the position of rejecting anything like prime matter. The distinction between matter and form is a formal or real distinction, not a numerical distinction. Things are formally distinct if they are really distinct without being able to exist apart from one another. For example, color and shape are formally distinct. Color is not the same as shape and shape is not the same as color, but it’s impossible for color to exist apart from shape and for shape to exist apart from color. Within the framework of OOO, the claim would thus be that there is no such thing as un-form-atted matter. Matter is always structured in some way or another. Of course, new structures can come into being in and through other structures.
August 10, 2010 at 7:47 pm
Hi Adrian,
In my view, relationist approaches almost always tend towards some theory of holism or internal interdependence. I’m not going to name any names here, but I happen to like a number of relationists and to be very sympathetic to them. One thing I hope to accomplish with dark ecology is to diminish this sort of new age talk as I see it as both an unfounded ideology and a hindrance to ecological thought. If I can persuade Morton, this will be part of what makes dark ecology dark.
Like you I want to focus on the investigation of relations, but it is my view that these relations need to be understood as external to objects and the being of objects or substances needs to be preserved. Your opposition between process and object keeps coming up in various corners of the blogosphere. I just don’t understand this opposition. I don’t even think it’s right to say that “object” denotes something static in ordinary language. This seems to be a myth created by process philosophers, not unlike the myth promulgated by the Churchlands to the effect that ordinary folk practice “folk psychology”. There is nothing about the concept of substance that denotes stability over time. This is not even true in Aristotle’s concept of substance where primary substances are undergoing all sorts of processes and transformations across time (that’s the whole point of his account of the four causes). However, even if ordinary language denotes “stability” when it refers to “objects”, I’m not sure why we should treat ordinary language as an arbiter of concepts in philosophy. In German “Dasein” denotes “existence”, but we readily recognize that “Dasein” has a highly technical meaning in Heidegger.
At any rate, I see now opposition between objects and processes. Objects undergo all sorts of transformations and becomings. My concepts of local manifestation and virtual proper being are designed to get at this. Ignoring these points would be a bit like me arguing that the relations discussed by the relationist are static because relations like being-taller-than or to-the-left-of are rather fixed and somewhat like crystal lattices. Clearly that wouldn’t be fair, yet it is how we commonly think of relations in ordinary language. It seems to me that OOO deserves the same courtesy and charity. What’s important, I think, however, is that substances have a being independent of whatever relations they happen to enter into, that these relations be detachable (though such detachment can cause death and destruction in many instances), and that substances be autonomous entities in their own right.
August 10, 2010 at 8:14 pm
But as to Clark’s point, though I think we feel closer to Leibniz than to Spinoza, there’s still the problem that in Leibniz you have a *final* layer of monads that is real, and then a bunch of *aggregates* that are not real made out of those monads.
For OOO, contra Leibniz, a man is not *necessarily* more real than a circle of men holding hands (though that circle may not be an object either; that depends on various things). A better example would be an army, which I am quite willing to see might be a real object, whereas for Leibniz it couldn’t be: only the individual soldiers could be objects. That’s because he’s too tied to the idea of nature. Humans exist by nature, armies don’t.
So in a sense, OOO’s position is not relations all the way down, but “substantial forms all the way down.” (The best treatment of Substantial Forms is in Francisco Suarez, by the way.)
And given that Levi has just aptly referred to substantial forms as ghosts, we could say there are nothing but “ghosts all the way down,” and that perception occurs on the interior of a ghost. But that’s probably getting a bit too cute, and I’ll drop it.
August 10, 2010 at 8:50 pm
Levi, so would you say that OOP is committed to the existence of real and not just potential infinities?
August 10, 2010 at 8:53 pm
Graham, why do you think the aggregates aren’t real in Leibniz? I’d think the more interesting critique is to ask whether Spinoza is actually closer to Plotinus’ prime matter or Leibniz. I’ve seen it argued both ways although I’ve honestly not read nearly as much on Spinoza as Leibniz and all that was years ago.
I wonder in practice what the difference between “substantial forms all the way down” and “relations all the way down” entails. I guess that depends upon how you take a subtantial form.
August 10, 2010 at 8:59 pm
Actually never mind. Leibniz sees all relations anti-realistically and that’s probably what you’re referring to.
August 10, 2010 at 9:13 pm
“exo-relations *never* affect the thing directly, but can only affect it indirectly by affecting its components. To take a trivial example: bacteria can kill me, but rather than attacking me directly, they attack my components. All effects must be mediated.”
I think I can relate (forgive the pun) to this view. I’ve been thinking something similar (and have grasped at it in a couple of recent blog posts) when I say that change doesn’t occur on the system level. To borrow Bogost’s term, it happens at the unit level. Or, to use Bateson’s terms, always one or more orders of abstraction lower.
This is important, I think, because we often demand rapid systemic change (because we tend to think in gestalts, perhaps). We think we can simply make things move the way we want by pushing them in the right direction, but, like Bateson’s dog they never move simply along the trajectory of the force of the kick. Thinking of change properly, though, might make us more effective change agents (then again, it might not).
Levi, you said something about thinking of the US as an object. And Graham mentions something about the military being an object. Maybe those were just examples, but I have a hard time with them, since those “objects” seem to me to be composed of exo-relations rather than endo-relations. Again, I’m stuck on the question of how interdependent the relations need to be for something to qualify as an object? Maybe it’s a spectrum? Adrian’s point:
“Just because everything is ultimately related, this doesn’t mean that everything is equally related.”
seems relevant in that sense.
On another note, Levi, I had no idea how much of a workhorse you were until I subscribed to this comment feed!
August 10, 2010 at 9:20 pm
[…] noted yesterday, Derrida has signs all the way down in terms of a basic ontology. Levi has a nice post related to Aristotle and determinism in this context. In response to one of my questions about […]
August 10, 2010 at 9:33 pm
Hi Jeremy,
I’m in a bit of a rush at a minute, but this is what I call “the strange mereology of object-oriented ontology”. You write:
Apologies for letting my inner nerd out for a moment, but I would say that these are both exo-relations and endo-relations. The way cool thing (in my opinion) about OOO is that the sub-objects that belong to any larger scale object are simultaneously elements of that larger scale object and independent of that larger scale object. An army has its own endo-structure that constitutes an absolutely unique and singular object of its own. This object also contains other objects (soldiers, horses, cooks, bridles, guns, swords, etc) that are also independent objects. In the case of the United States we can show very easily that this entity is independent of its parts: Citizens are born, die, and renounce their citizenship, yet the United States continues to exist. This entails that the U.S. must be an independent object of its own, with its own internal structure that allows it to persist across time. As Graham puts it, there are objects wrapped within objects wrapped within objects all the way down. The fact that an object is born out of other objects does not entail that that object is reducible to these other objects.
August 10, 2010 at 9:42 pm
But isn’t it reducible to the other objects plus relations?
August 10, 2010 at 9:50 pm
Clark,
nope, that’s the point. Substantial form is not nothing and it can’t be found in the parts. This is why Graham criticizes leibniz’s distinction between aggregates and monads.
August 11, 2010 at 4:10 am
Levi: “One thing I hope to accomplish with dark ecology is to diminish this sort of new age talk as I see it as both an unfounded ideology and a hindrance to ecological thought. If I can persuade Morton, this will be part of what makes dark ecology dark.”
You can persuade me…
August 11, 2010 at 7:17 am
As to the idea that an army is an object, I would also agree. The army would be an object because its internal unity would be partially independent from its components, which would not simply be the same. Individuals in the army could be transferred or court-martialed and executed. Some members of the army may go on leave, their uniforms change, they learn new languages or go on medication which alters their personality — but the “army” seems to persist through these changes in its components. The army might be transplanted to another planet or star system to battle strange xenomorphs without thereby becoming a totally different entity or become embroiled in a mutiny (see Kubrick’s fantastic The Paths of Glory). In the same way, you can’t ever really directly change the army itself, but only its pieces — the technologies it uses, the firearms it carries, the knowledge it accumulates or the men and women which are wounded or killed. None of those things are, themselves, “the army,” and you can’t find “the army” within any of those parts taken individually. A uniform does not make an army, neither does carrying firearms, etc, etc. You could say, yes, all of this depends on definitions and distinctions of some kind, but that is the point — all objects depend on distinctions that are drawn by the object itself. If one is not willing to see an army as an object, it has to be because of some unspoken prejudice that only natural or nonhuman unities count as objects — but then we fall, as Graham says, into a classical idea of substance which is problematic for many reasons.
To use the example of Kubrick’s Paths of Glory, we see how the particular division of the French army is able to isolate and define its own pieces, and any of its particular pieces — the individual French soldier — is caught up qua part in a unity and substance which he cannot fully anticipate or control, though he remains a component of it. Even the commanders of the army are only other parts, and do not have absolute sovereignty over the whole. Levi’s use of the term “ghostly” to describe the substance of objects is really too perfect, and it conjures up in my mind the idea of the poltergeist — a spirit whose wild behavior is known only through its effects. The unity of the object is real, but is not known, related or changed in the same way as the parts of that unity are. Things get even weirder, as when that unity becomes itself part of an even greater unity, such that there are really only indirect (that is, mediated) causes, relations or knowledge. No object, at any time, directly touches another object, even while it may touch “parts” of the object, and then only “parts” of those parts, which are themselves objects (I can destroy two-thirds of the soldiers, thereby destroying the army, but I still haven’t directly touched the soldiers themselves, only those aspects which respond to, say, bullets or fire, and likewise the soldiers have not related directly with the reality of the fire or the bullets — there are only translations and transformations between objects and never unmediated, symmetrical contact. It should be kept in mind that total destruction is not at all total or absolute or direct contact. I think this is an assumption many readers have.)
August 11, 2010 at 8:39 am
[…] has an excellent summary of why, again, the tide is turning on the privileging of relational […]
August 11, 2010 at 9:05 am
Hello Levi,
“The way cool thing (in my opinion) about OOO is that the sub-objects that belong to any larger scale object are simultaneously elements of that larger scale object and independent of that larger scale object.”
If one was to think of this topologically, the “meta-object” would form a surface in which the sub-objects are on? In this way the sub-objects preserve there individuality by not being *in* the “meta-object” whilst still relating to the ‘whole’ as such.
Will.
August 11, 2010 at 2:39 pm
I have a post up: Are Cultures Objects?
Be interested to hear other thoughts.
I think I like OOO for pointing out that systems can be changed only by changing their components. And I like the endo/exo-relations talk. I think what confuses me is the “strange mereology” and I dislike the idea of talking about organisms and cultures as if they were of the same kind of thing (objects). Maybe it’s just my anthropology background, but there have been all kinds of problems with this in the past.
I feel that process-relationism provides a better vocabulary for distinguishing between different kinds of objects with different degrees of internal interdependence between their components and openness to the world.
Then again, I admit that I need to read more OOO. Maybe I’ll just pick up a copy of Tool-Being and Dem. of Objects when it’s published.
August 11, 2010 at 3:07 pm
[…] up expanding on our discussion of relations and mereology in relation to my earlier post, “Relations All the Way Down“. I can’t respond in detail right now as I’m getting ready to head off to the […]
August 13, 2010 at 4:53 pm
Sorry – just saw your comment Levi in (26). If you wouldn’t mind, could you clarify what a substantial form has which is excess to constituent object plus relations?
In Leibniz this is easy, which is why I immediately qualified my question to Graham. For Leibniz all relations are non-real. He’s a nominalist in that sense of their being imposed by mind. But if one accepts real relations (which is what I got out of OOP) then I guess I’m missing what extra there is. (Almost certainly an error in my reading)
February 1, 2014 at 5:34 pm
[…] https://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2010/08/10/relations-all-the-way-down/ […]