Recently I’ve had the pleasure of picking up A Foray Into the World of Animals and Humans by Jakob von Uexküll. At the moment I’m rather exhausted from grading until late last night, so I don’t have a whole lot to say about the details of Uexküll’s animal ethology beyond saying that I can’t recommend this book enough. Many will be familiar with the animal ethology of Uexküll through Heidegger’s Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics and Deleuze and Guattari’s “Becoming-Intense, Becoming-Animal, Becoming-Imperceptible” in A Thousand Plateaus. For those not familiar with Uexküll’s thought, he was a great cartographer of the inner world of animals. Uexküll approached animals such as ticks, flies, bees, birds, sea urchins, etc. as subjects rather than mechanisms. Through a careful analysis of their physiology, observations of their behavior, and behavioral experiments, Uexküll would make deductions about what the experience of the animal is like or how that particular animal experiences the world or what he calls its “umwelt“. Thus, for example, in the picture to the right above, we see a comparison between the umwelt of humans (top) and the umwelt of bees. Uexküll is able to infer the bee world from, among other things, the structure of their eyes and their behaviors. As will be noted, the world of the human and the world of the bee are entirely different. If Uexküll’s analyses are so arresting, then this is because they break of the unity of a world, introducing us to a plurality of incommensurable yet strangely overlapping worlds.
From an object-oriented perspective, Uexküll’s animal ethology is a striking example of withdrawal. In many respects, the objects of object-oriented ontology can be said to be Janus-faced. On the one hand, there are local manifestations of objects, the surface features of objects, that arise or appear as a result of the object’s interactions with the world about it; while on the other hand there is the withdrawn interior of objects. When I speak of the “interior” of objects care must be taken not to confuse this interior with the spatial inside of objects. If you cut open an orange, for example, you don’t get at the interior of the orange, but only the inside of the orange. The interior of the orange is forever withdrawn from all other objects and could be described as the way in which an object “lives” itself and its world. Here Harman’s distinction between sensual and real objects is helpful. For Harman, real objects are independent and exist in their own right. By contrast, sensual objects are objects that exist only in the interior of another real object. As Graham writes, “[i]nstead of saying that the sensual tree has ‘intentional inexistance’ in human consciousness, we should say that both the sensual tree and the real me ‘inexist’ on the interior of the object composed of the real me and the real tree” (Prince of Networks, 211).
read on!
Here we must be careful not to confuse local manifestation with sensuous objects. Local manifestations are appearings in the world that take place regardless of whether or not there are any other entities about to grasp them. Sensual objects, by contrast, are events that take place in the interior of an object as it lives itself and its world. The point, I think, of Graham’s sensual objects is that these objects have no existence independent of the real object in which they occur, but only live or exist in the interior of the object that experiences them. In Prince of Networks Graham gives an example that is perhaps more illuminating. He tells his readers that as he is writing he is currently imagining the most fearsome monster ever conceived by a human being: Monster X. He doesn’t tell us anything about this monster, beyond noting that it is incredibly frightening. Monster X would be an example of a sensual object. It has no existence outside of Graham, but exists only on the interior of him. Likewise, if the tree for Graham is a sensual object rather than a real object, then this is because the way in which Graham grasps the tree exists only in him and is not the tree itself. Here it is crucial to note that this in no way undermines the existence of the real tree. All it entails is that the tree is grasped in a particular way by other real objects.
Uexküll can be understood as a great cartographer or explorer of the interior world of real objects and their sensual objects. Insofar as his investigations revolve around nonhuman animals, his work is a forerunner of what Ian Bogost has called “alien phenomenology”. Where phenomenology has an anthropocentric reference, exploring the intentional or sensual world of human beings, Uexküll’s alien phenomenology explores the intentional or sensual world of all sorts of nonhuman beings through a method of inference and allusion. Thus, in the bee umwelt depicted above, we encounter the interior world of bees or the world as they navigate it. Note, this alien phenomenology does not exclude the human, but merely opens us on to other worlds beyond the human. We’ll also notice that in the world of bees there are things that don’t appear in the human world and in the world of humans there are things that don’t appear in the bee world.
Uexküll gives a marvelous example of this with respect to sea urchins that I am, unfortunately, unable to reproduce here (FWAH, 77-78). As in the case of the drawing above contrasting the sensual worlds of bees and humans, he presents a drawing contrasting the world of sea urchins and humans. In the world of humans you see a fish, a sailboat, and a cloud. In the world of the sea urchin, the fish, sailboat, and cloud turn into black blobs that are qualitatively distinct from one another. At the level of what Uexküll calls “perception-signs”, the sailboat, fish, and cloud are all “coded” in exactly the same way (as potential predators) and are therefore sensually encountered as indistinct from one another, even though it is only the fish that is truly a predator. Evidence of this is found in the manner in which the urchin points a group of its quills in any direction where one of these black blobs appears. In the picture to the right it will be noted that some of the quills point towards us. Perhaps here we can infer that the urchin is directing its quills towards the photographer.
This reference to perception-signs allows me to address some recent debates surrounding semiotics. In a recent post, Ivakhiv writes,
Another difference that I think we will continue working on, each in our respective ways, has to do with the role of semiosis. But this, too, seems more a matter of emphasis than genuine disagreement. Following Peirce, I take semiosis to be integral to experience “all the way down,” and I rely on the growing body of work in biosemiosis, zoosemiosis, and related fields to make this case.
I don’t think I would formulate our difference in this way. If I reject the thesis that it is “semiosis all the way down”, then this is not because I deny that semiosis takes place all over the place, but because I believe that such statements fail to properly attend to the difference between real and sensual objects. Within my framework, semiosis is something that strictly takes place in the interior of an object, and therefore belongs to the domain of sensual objects and their qualities. Graham likes to remind us that Husserl’s intentional objects (what he calls “sensuous objects”) exist only in the mind. The same holds true of Peirce’s signs. In his account of signs, Peirce distinguishes between the representamen (of which Uexküll’s “perception-signs” would be an example), the interpretant (of which Uexküll’s reactions would be an example), and the object (of which Uexküll’s stimuli would be an example). For Peirce, a sign as a unity of these three elements. However, the point not to be missed is that the semiotic object is not the same as the real object. The semiotic object is a sensual object that only exists on the interior of another real object. For example, on the interior of a sea urchin. A boat might function as a stimuli (or in my Luhmannian language, “information”) evoking the semiotic object of “predator”, but predator is not the same as predator. The boat is withdrawn from this semiotic object.
Isn’t this really the point and value of semiotics? The problem with a semiotic ontology, with an ontology that argues that it is semiosis all the way down, is that it blunts the radical edge of semiotics. The value of semiotics lies precisely in its ability to draw attention to the difference between the world of sensual objects and real objects for different entities. When we argue that it is semiosis all the way down we lose precisely this difference and withdrawal, thereby denying ourselves the critical edge that semiotics offers. Here I hasten to add that I suspect Adrian is trying to get at something like this in his talk of semiotics, I merely disagree with his formulation. What needs to be avoided is the reduction of real objects to their sensual avatars.
I can scarcely do justice to Uexküll’s rich book. It is, by turns, charming and challenging, requiring all sorts of imaginative leaps. There are discussions of how entities generate space and time, the genesis of perception-signs and action-signs, different fields of telos and much more. Insofar as we begin from the premise that all communication is miscommunication, Uexküll’s book is a Lacanian’s delight. The only thing that could make it better would be a leap into the umwelts of inanimate entities such as rocks and stars, as well as quasi-animate entities like machines. Yet one can’t do everything.
December 16, 2010 at 3:19 am
I am curious if the perspectives presented here indicate that real objects have some common substratum through which their miscommunications function?
All the other worlds this alien phenomenology relates seem tethered to relations among real objects.
I would continue this line of thinking by drawing upon Badiou’s Theoretical Writings. My feeling is that we are called upon to make decisions about the technicalities of a pre-symbolic ontology, or else discuss a naturalized ineffability.
Does that make sense?
December 16, 2010 at 5:21 am
Lacan indeed was a fan of Uexküll as his Television makes clear.
http://ecologywithoutnature.blogspot.com/2010/12/ooo-uexkull-vs-uexkull-regulars.html
December 16, 2010 at 6:54 am
[…] HERE […]
December 16, 2010 at 7:28 am
Now you’re talking!
Ah!: “It would be foolish to impute or ascribe philosophical inadequacy to Uexkull’s interpretations, instead of recognizing the engagement with concrete investigationss like this is one of the most fruitful things that philosophy can learn from contemporary biology.” (Heidegger).
As you know there is an account of Uexkull’s and Heidegger’s Umwelten in ‘The Primacy of Semiosis’.
I totally agree that it is not semiotics all the way down. Deely and Peirce cannot accept this. But strangely Aquinas does! The ‘species’ or vicars of the substance never give more than ‘qualities’. Maybe Uexkull’s kantianism wasn’t so bizarre after all?
December 16, 2010 at 7:34 am
the only question I have is whether these intentional objects are on the interior. Maybe neither exterior nor interior…..
December 16, 2010 at 8:22 am
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December 16, 2010 at 8:22 am
[…] available – here (via Charles Wolfe on APPS, who notes he is doing a review for NDPR), here and […]
December 16, 2010 at 11:21 am
Wonderful post Levi. I have a somewhat innocent question: what would an object oriented account of something like ‘demonic possession’ might be like? For some reason this split between the object’s interior and the inside made me wonder about how we would construe such a case.
Think of the standard fictional case from the exorcist: the demon ‘takes possession of the girls’ body. What is the relation between the host and the occupant there? Would we say the demon is merely sensual insofar as it merely occupies the same body, but that the real host withdraws? This might be attractive if we want to say that the demon can never strictly speaking, be the other person, insofar as it merely displaces the host’s psyche rather than modifies it. This would make the invader merely sensual with respect to the integral being of the host, which in the fictional case, obtains as a bundle of powers which include the psychic potentialities of the host’s mind. Since this mind becomes displaced or suppressed rather than inhabited, the demon is a sensual presence, without potency disembodied. Demons merely get thus inside their hosts, not to their interiors. Just like a car changing drivers.
However, there seems to be an intuitive case for taking the demon to be real, under the hypothesis of its own non-spatial modality of existence. This is easily seen, since there is a sense in which objects can only exist within others, even real ones however. For example, if we say that the environment is a hyper-object, or the internet, then we can say that biomass and cyber-beings can only exist within this space, and within these conditions. Of course, this doesn’t suffice to make biomass or cyber-objects are merely sensual; that beings can only subsist inside others doesn’t make them reducible to sensual construal within their hosts. But then, I am left wondering whether there is any additional criteria to say that my thoughts and imaginings, as well as things which I abstract on relation, are merely sensual. That is, surely the girl I am imagining has no consistency outside my being. This suffices to make it sensual. But then how does it differ from other beings which can only subsist within others; like the cyber-beings, biomass, and perhaps demons?
One seems tempted to say that this is because the imagined girl has no potentiality which I do not possess, whereas the demon, or the organisms which populate the environment, have specific potencies which the environment does not have (I can get tanned; not the environment…). Likewise, the demon can modify the cognitive potency of my body (I can turn my head 180 degrees) and has distinct cognitive powers (it can speak English in reverse, not me!).
That I can imagine sensual objects with all kinds of powers I do not possess must not entail they possess these powers. If they did, then the imagined girl(s) would suffice for me to drop philosophy for good. Of course there has to be some form of distinction between real potentialities and imagined powers, which does not rest on bare materiality. The ‘sensual girl’ is not just incapable of interacting causally with the physical world, but in an OOO incapable of affecting all kinds of real objects. Perhaps a feature of the sensual objects proper to imaginings is that their powers are only capable of affecting their host object “directly”. How to construe, for example, my dream of the imagining girl effectively blinking towards me (without me foreseeing this blink) and I becoming shy at the occurrence. Imagined objects sometimes operate with efficacious autonomy, which can be mortifying or delicious. A different question is whether an sensual, imagined object can affect the endogenic/virtual structure of a real object, i.e. it can change its powers. Can one learn or forget, expand or contract, through dreams/imaginings/sensings? This might not just be a site for the juncture between psychoanalysis and OOO, but more generally how sensual objects are capable of affecting/modifying their hosts. A typology of such affections might be interesting.
Anyway, I’m sorry for the long diatribe.
Hope all is well Levi!
Best,
Daniel
December 16, 2010 at 9:31 pm
This is a new translation – used to be ‘A stroll through the worlds of animals and men’.
December 19, 2010 at 2:35 am
@cameron
Your question is apt; I’m suprised to see here umwelt (all world) being discussed without it’s correlate, lebenswelt (life world) or world in common.
December 19, 2010 at 6:19 am
Daniel:
The object’s interior is a matter of ontological independence, whereas “inside” is a spatial metaphor, as such it is relational through and through. The question of demonic possession does not seem ontologically different than any other infra-object causality, does it? Triple-o’s definition of object is strategically beneath distinctions of mind, matter or spirit and I would think would apply to any of these or demons or angels, should they exist. How do any objects, with their substantial forms, influence, control or destroy other objects? This is the real mystery. The sensual or vicarious realm is a model to solve this problem.
This question of the imagined girl is complex. If I understand Harman correctly, it isn’t enough to say that the girl is “inside” your mind — this is misleading. The imagined girl isn’t a bundle of qualities or pieces alone, but an ideal unity, and as such stands over and against you as an object in some way (just not a real one). Even though it may have no real correlate, you and the sensual object in this sense must be a new relation, that is, something new is emerging from your concentration on this image, however fleeting or momentary (remember that duration is not an indication of substance). Even though the imagined girl isn’t real, your act of sincerity on or for this sensual object is, and as such must be a new object in itself, I would think. I’m not sure, this is a complex question which is only further complexified by Harman’s concept of sensual objects and one’s relationship to them, especially since the sensual object is still an object whether it has a correlate in the real or whether it is a pure construct of a fever dream.
December 19, 2010 at 9:00 pm
@J.C.Goodson
That’s a v. perceptive comment. the intentional object (‘species expressa’) must be ‘suprasubjectve’ (not ‘in’ a subject/um)…Deely is quite good on this in ‘Intentionality and semiotics’. Will have to wait for harman’s nw bk to see how he deals with the ‘interior’….
December 20, 2010 at 1:28 am
@Joseph:
So what exactly makes the unity of the imagined girl sensual, while my own real? This is what I don’t quite understand yet. Of course, the imagined girl is not extended in spacetime, except insofar as there is a brain-state which corresponds to the imagining. But OOO isn’t basing the sensual-real distinction on a materialist basis. I am said to have a real, not merely sensual unity, but my own existence is also dependent on being in relation to other beings (the hyperobject which is the environment, etc).
The following passage brings this problem to the front:
“Sensual objects, by contrast, are events that take place in the interior of an object as it lives itself and its world. The point, I think, of Graham’s sensual objects is that these objects have no existence independent of the real object in which they occur, but only live or exist in the interior of the object that experiences them.”
This ‘interiority’ of sensual objects with respect to real ones is obscure, because it seems to apply for real objects as well. My being depends on there being within the environment, there’s dependency and interiority right there. How is this kind of interiority non-ontological, while that of the imagined girl is? It can’t be on the basis of materiality for OOO. And if the idea of a ‘real correlate’ makes any sense here, it must be that is exists in spacetime.
If you remove my relating to it by removing me, the imagined girl disappears. But by the same token if you remove the suitable constraints of physical spacetime all extended bodies disintegrate too. Surely this doesn’t suffice to make bodies sensual objects with respect to the ‘physical universe’. The additional criterion I envisaged was that of powers: can we say the girl has powers I do not have? If not, then this might be a suitable indication for a sensual object: it does not have any powers of its own. However, this requires a more detailed elaboration of how precisely sensual objects interact with their hosts. That is why the question of possession became interesting to me, just as that of dreams, schizophrenia o hallucinations. Many times the ‘sensual’ objects which I produce appear and act with certain autonomy from my willing: when I dream I don’t always know in advance what my dream characters will tell me or do. In the case of schizophrenia, there is a more dramatic split between what the subject perceives as divided identities, or cognitive personalities. Would we say that a split personality constitutes two sensual objects or two real ones? If it’s just one real object, what guarantees this, anchoring in a spatial body? This seems again a materialist copout. Similar Fregean problems emerge here: are Clark Kent and Superman the same being, or merely two senses (sensual unities) in the interior of the same real object? What individuates the real object beyond the use of our singular terms with which I relate to the world, even myself? The problem I see is that without a possible criterion for discrimination given the irreductionist thesis, the real object seems to remain as an absolutely anonymous unity. I’ve explored the problem of this potential virulent proliferation in my blog in the past, but I’m still not sure how they can be worked out.
Anyhow, thanks for your comment!
December 20, 2010 at 3:44 am
Daniel:
You ask:
The sensual object does not exist outside of the relation of perception, but real objects do. When the object that is the relation of me and the computer, of the computer-me hybrid, breaks down, the sensual object which is the correlate of the computer for me disappears, but the real computer does not.
Now, a purely fabricated or imagined object that has no real correlate at all can still do things in a Latourian sense (and Harman makes this point in his Prince of Networks), but it still isn’t the same as a real object because the real object, by definition, is able to exist independent of any relation whatsoever. The sensual object, whether it is a correlate of a real object or not, only exists in relationship — here we can also nicely detect Latourian versus triple-o distinctions. Latour, at least the early Latour, would not differentiate this imagined girl as sensual over and against some real objects. It would be an actor, though of lesser strength, perhaps.
The problem I see in your formulation above is that a real object can exist apart from the networks or relations it is embedded in at any one time. In the strictest sense, the object has no environment at all, or, rather, there is no environment tout court. Rather there are only objects and their interiors in which the object, like a machine, can then affect its own pieces. A hyperobject, of course, is a very massive object (like a civilization, for instance), and while it can have an effect on its own pieces, it doesn’t have to, and its pieces are still independent of their relation to each other and the larger hyperobject. A sensual object, as complex as it is, does not enjoy an autonomous existence once the object it is inside of is dissolved (though a sensual object can become real — but that’s a whole other issue).
Lastly, and this is perhaps the most mysterious but fascinating triple-o idea — objects are not in time and space as in a container as much as they produce time and space through their interiors and relations. This is as far from materialism as you could get. There is no time and space as such, only times and spaces. But your questions at the end are precisely the correlationist ones in which triple-o has constructed its case against, and there is ample discussion of this already available.
December 20, 2010 at 5:02 am
@Joseph:
Thank you for your explanation. I’m still not sure what it means to say that a real object can exist independent of any relation whatsoever in this context. I think the thesis of ontological irreducibility cannot transparently imply a thesis about existential independence.
OOO says objects are irreducible to each other; and this is fine insofar as I can be said to have powers/properties irreducible to my parts. But this surely doesn’t entail by itself that I can exist independently of all relations: if you take away my relatings to my environment or other beings, I simply die or cease to exist as I am. You might be using a more specific sense of existence here, but it would need clarification.
Now, you say that there is no concept of ‘environment’ tout court in OOO. But you mention that what separates the sensual object from real objects is that the latter ceases to exist when perception stops. This happens since the bundle-object of the relation wherein this object is instantiated ceases to be. But I am not sure why perception functions to make ontological valences here, while environmental relations don’t. After all, perceptual relations are one kind of relations between objects.
Why is the relation between my perception/imagining and the object it entertains ontologically invested, while not that of the environment with my own bodily existence? Why can being-within the object installed through perception suffice to make the object sensual, but not the physical bodies which are constituted in relation to certain external conditions, and which disappear when these conditions disappear or are changed dramatically?
Put differently: in what sense does the sensual object in my imaginings ‘cease to exist’ when I stop perceiving, while the real object continues to do so when physico-chemical laws stop/change? Why does perception/imagination occasion this split? This is still not clear, and to say that there is no concept of ‘environment’ in general is problematic, since there is no concept of ‘perception’ in general either.
Finally, about the last series of questions, I’d just ask:
So Clark Kent and Superman are two real objects, or one real object with two different ‘
‘sensual objects’ as produced identities? The latter option might be tenable since ‘personal’ identities a function of relatings; they can be said to constitute merely sensual objects, relative to local manifestations proper to an endogenous real object with powers which include those of all possible identities. But this still doesn’t tell us how we know we’re dealing with one real object rather than many: is there something like objective embodiment which mobilizes the real object? What about the schizophrenic with divided personalities? How do we decide which is the real object there: IF it is the body anchoring this unity then that would be a surreptitious appeal to a materialist register. That OOO doesn’t do this is fine, but then we need an explanation which shows us how we know we’re dealing with real objects rather than sensual ones. If it isn’t the body, on the other hand, then we have a even more general problem. Consider your computer case. How do you know when you stop relating to the computer that what subsists underneath your construal of the computer is a ‘real computer’, and not an indefinite plurality of ‘computer-parts’. There is a problem concerning individuation here, since obviously given the irreductionist thesis, one cannot say it is bodily space which anchors real objects. How do we know which of our sensual objects in relation correspond to real hosts behind my apprehending, and not a plurality? Since we have to help ourselves to what we mean by computer, how can we ever make sure that a stratified domain of objects lurks behind my apprehensions?
If all descriptions potentially target a real object, say by perception in acts of ostentation, we still allow for an undefined ways to individuate what I perceive. For Kripke it is physics which finally provides the individuation proper to real objects, but OOO has no such principle of individuation. If we can’t know which realities correspond to which terms, we make of real objects virulent noumena, potentially conforming to each of our singular terms, utterly intractable by speculative means. Graham often emphasizes how science today will change in the future, and so that we can never know whether we are really targeting the real. But this seems to obviate the more difficult problem, which is how do I know that there is a realm of real objects with properties and such, and not the infamous flux of production which OOO despises? But all of this I’ve addressed in substantive detail elsewhere anyway.
This is getting lengthy already. Hope I haven’t misunderstood things, and thanks again for your attention!
Best,
Dan
December 20, 2010 at 5:03 am
Sorry, this should read as follows:
**But you mention that what separates the sensual object from real objects is that the FORMER ceases to exist when perception stops.
December 20, 2010 at 6:38 am
Daniel:
Have you read any of Graham’s books, specifically, Tool-Being, Guerrilla Metaphysics or Prince of Networks? Any responses I might give to your questions, and most of my previous responses, now that I think of it, will just rehash arguments already superiorly written and presented in those books. I’d start there.
December 20, 2010 at 7:12 am
I have read the three books, and have actually raised these concerns to Graham in person and via e-mail; you can read our communication in my blog, but I raised a second series of question which he unfortunately was too busy to reply to. As much as I enjoy Graham’s work and think he is a brilliant thinker, I don’t think any of his works work these things out. Maybe the Quadruple Object will.
If you think you can provide an answer to these questions, then by all means do. You could indicate where in Graham’s books you think these are answered if you are not willing to do this. But it sounds like you do have an answer at hand, so by all means tell me! Inferior or not, i’d be very interested in hearing it out!
All the best,
Daniel
December 20, 2010 at 11:57 pm
Levi:
I have recently received Uexküll’s book and it is fascinating. In the foreward I was instantly struck by this sentence:
“But then, one has discovered the gateway to the environments, for everything a subject perceives belongs to its perception world [Merkwelt], and everything it produces, to its effect world [Wirkwelt]. These two worlds, of perception and production of effects, form one closed unit, the environment.”
But then this is almost identical to triple-o’s definition of object — the interior of which is the place where perception, causality, information, etc, can happen. Uexküll’s environments are objects. What we then have are not things floating in some universal temporal or spatial container, context or universe, but unified environments within environments within environments, worlds within worlds within worlds, with no ontological privileging of size, density, duration, or origin and with each world or environment invisible both from below (its parts) and above (as a part in a larger object), each as disturbingly rich as the next.
Fascinating stuff, Uexküll.
December 21, 2010 at 12:21 am
I’m also detecting a lot of Luhmann-esque kernels, too, especially in Uexküll’s idea of the subject and “machine-operator” of the cells as a unique unit which produces particular effects from particular stimuli…
December 21, 2010 at 1:28 am
Joseph,
I was thinking the same thing as well. Uexküll’s account of subjects sounds remarkably like Luhmann and OOO’s account of objects.
December 22, 2010 at 12:47 am
So it is ok to say that x is remarkably like y….
I guess we have to be alert to it not being a put down.
For example, I see some likeness btwn Aquinas claiming that we never know substances and OOO claims of radical withdrawal). We know their vicars (the species).
This is not a put down – It’s interesting to discover that there was a theory of vicarious cognition around throughout the middle-ages (not arabic occasionalism but scotist/thomist). But they don’t talk about thing-thing withdrawal only person thing.
Graham Harman is right to insist on this diff. And I am not suggesting that 000 be a ‘hand maiden’ for 12c theology. Nevertheless, what is conspicuous by its absence is a ref to this scholastic trad. One which Brentano and Heidegger were v. aware of.
I don’t follow 000’s thing – thing withdrawal because I don’t follow the pansychist path this entails. Non-empsyched beings aren’t ‘withdrawn’ from each other. Even someone like Latour has, according to G. Harman, ‘never understood’ H’s theory. I’m sure your and GH’s forthcoming bks, DoO and Quadruple Object will give us all a much better corpus to engage with!
Merry exmas and Happy new year
December 22, 2010 at 5:58 am
on second thoughts…one doesn’t even need pansychism to embrace things never encountering each other things’s ‘proper being’….
December 23, 2010 at 1:27 am
I turned in a thesis on Uexkull and Lacan literally days before the new one was issued and still have yet to get to it. How has “Umgebung” been translated and/or used in the new translation? I think clarifying this notion is crucial to a deeper understanding of U and his place within various traditions/the validity of “x is like y” type claims. As far as I can tell there is still very little agreement on the role of Umgebung in his work.
December 23, 2010 at 8:52 pm
@kevin. Isn’t Umgebung the same as Umwelt -‘environing world’, or for Deely ‘species-specific world’.
von Uexkull remained a Kantian, but Deely sees him as a ‘cryptosemiotician’ who cannot, in spite of himself, be contained within the Kantian frame.
I can’t remember if Levi extends structure determinism or op. closure to objects. In fact for M@V any system’s structure determines what interactions it may undergo.
Also, the term information (transmission of a message from A – B with coding, emission, reception, decoding) does not apply in biology – but can apply in fixed systems such as telecommunications.
So there are some objects open to ‘inputs’…..?
It also seems pretty likely that if objects, in their ‘proper being’ are withdrawn from persons they will be withdrawn from other objects….with the exception that empsyched persons are not withdrawn from themselves. Hmmm.
Life seems more interesting with some veils and shadows.
December 24, 2010 at 4:46 am
[…] loves wisdom without fully possessing it” (50 – 51). Recently I attempted to make a similar point with respect to Uexküll’s analysis of animal umwelts. In the picture to the right above, […]