UPDATE: Graham wrote me the following this evening:
I’m not sure why you think I don’t believe that dreams can’t be made real through transformations such as recording them. I’ve said the opposite many times.
It would thus appear that we’re in broad agreement and were talking about distinct issues. It’s always gratifying to discover that a disagreement isn’t really a disagreement at all!
***
Today, in a thread on Reza’s Facebook page, Robin wrote:
OOO=popeye riding a unicorn, reading a pop science book, with a lava lamp on his head.
I’m not sure if Robin intended this as a mocking criticism or not (it certainly seems that way), but it is an issue worth discussing. Rhetorically Robin’s point seems to be that OOO endorses the existence or reality of fictional entities (and that we engage in pop science). The idea would be that we don’t draw any distinction between fictional and mythological entities such as Popeye and unicorns and material entities like stars or neutrinos. Over at Object-Oriented Philosophy Graham responds to this characterization as follows:
In my position there’s an absolute difference between real and sensual objects. Popeye riding a pink unicorn with a lava lamp on his head would almost certainly not be a real object. (You never know, of course. We’re not omniscient. But I agree that such an entity almost certainly doesn’t exist.)
However, this same Popeye must be accounted for by any ontology worth its salt. Why? Because imaginary things are not utter non-beings. They don’t have independence from the one who is conceiving them as real objects do, but they’re not just nullities or holes of nothingness. I don’t think Raskolnikov is a real object either, but millions of people have read Crime and Punishment and been influenced by it. Raskolnikov needs to be accounted for by ontology.
There’s more, so make sure you read the whole post. As Graham notes, we differ on this issue. I have mixed feelings about Graham’s position here. In my view, the capacity to produce differences is an index of the real. If something can produce differences then it is very likely real. Note, when I claim that the ability to produce differences is an index of the real, I am alluding to an epistemological criteria for counting something as real, not an ontological criteria for what makes something real. Why is this important? This is important because ontologically something can be real or exist without producing any differences with respect to us or anything else. In other words, it is not the production of differences that constitutes the reality of a thing. Rather, the production of differences is merely how we determine whether or not something is real.
read on!
By this criteria, anything that produces differences deserves, I think, to be called real. If that’s the case, then Popeye and unicorns deserve to be called real because they produce all sorts of differences in the world. This is where all the fracas starts. “Popeye is real?!?!” exclaims the hard-nosed materialist, “how could you possibly claim that a fictional being such as Popeye as real! You moron! You’re the worst kind of sophist! You must believe in Popeye riding a pink unicorn reading a pop science book with a lava lamp on his head!” I can claim it because Popeye produces all sorts of differences or effects in the world. However, when I claim Popeye is real, what am I claiming? I am certainly not claiming that an entity like Popeye exists out there in the world in the same way that Reza exists out there in the world. Popeye doesn’t eat, he can’t prepare spinach, he can’t read pop science books, he can’t punch me, he doesn’t catch fish or sail boats, he can’t make decisions, he doesn’t have emotions, etc., etc, etc. Popeye does not have the sorts of powers that Reza or I have, but nonetheless he does have a substantiality qua fiction that produces real differences out there in the world. I am not sure why this point is difficult to get or accept. Most of us generally accept that if something produces effects then it has causal powers, and that if something has causal powers it is a being. If that’s the case, then why would we make an exception for fictional entities?
Here I think is where I begin to part ways from Graham. Graham argues that fictional entities are sensual objects that exist within real objects. A sensual being is a being that only exists on the interior of a real being. Put a bit differently, Graham’s thesis is that real beings have substantial and independent being in their own right, whereas sensual beings have no independent or substantial being. Destroy the real being that contains the sensual being and the sensual being is destroyed. By contrast, if someone destroys the sensual being of me– for example, my daughter ceases to think about me –I, nonetheless continue to exist.
While I certainly understand Graham’s point, it nonetheless does not seem to be the case that semiotic entities function in the way he describes. I can readily agree with Graham that the dream I had last night is a sensual being that has no existence apart from me and that ceases to exist when either I am destroyed or when I cease thinking about. However, it seems to me that matters change significantly when I commit this dream to paper, record it, or otherwise preserve it in some medium or other. At this point, the dream passes from being a sensual object and seems to become a substantial entity in its own right. It becomes a material being that circulates throughout the world no matter who might be thinking about it.
My interest in fictional entities isn’t really about fictional entities. Sure, it’s fun to drive those of a scientistic turn of mind that claim that the entities studied by science are the basic furniture of being bonkers with claims that Popeye is a real entity; but that’s not really the issue. For me, the interesting issue pertains to the ontological status of semiotic and symbolic entities. What is the ontological status of language, constitutions, charters, money, myths, texts, films, narratives, social categories, etc., etc., etc.? Semiotic entities are strange because they’re neither quite subjective nor quite objective. A law, for example, is certainly not like a rock. It doesn’t appear to be localized in space and time like rocks are. It doesn’t seem to be an individual thing in an ordinary sense. Yet it also doesn’t seem to be something that merely exists in the mind or imagination. In a number of respects, laws are every bit as objective as frigid air capable of causing frostbite. They are real constraints in the world that people must navigate. Likewise, social categories (or what hacking calls “interactive kinds) such as “terrorist” or “schizophrenic” (or, more mildly, your credit rating) are not merely descriptors in the world, but have real effects on the people they befall. They are embedded in all sorts of institutions and institutional practices that have significant impact on both how we experience ourselves and our action in the world around us.
In The Origins of Greek Thought, ethnographer Jean-Pierre Vernant talks about, among other things, how Greek law underwent a significant transformation when people began inscribing it in the walls of the marketplace. When law was no longer something brought into being through speech but was inscribed it seemed to take on a new reality. Vernant speculates that this act of inscription played a key role in leading the Greeks to consider the existence of things such as eternal universals independent of mind and speech. Something about that inscription transformed law into a real entity in the world.
For me the point would be that these semiotic beings are real entities in the world that exist independent of minds or individuals. When I say something like “the Flying Spaghetti monster is real” I am not making the claim that what this myth refers to is real, but the claim that the myth itself, as a text, is a real thing that circulates throughout the world producing all sorts of effects. It plays a role in organizing collectives of human beings in particular groups, thereby contributing to the production of associations. It plays a role in producing disassociations, pushing others apart (those put off by the myth and how it pokes fun at creation stories) etc. The point is that it’s a real factor in why people act as they do and do what they do. And here I’m left wondering were it not the case that classifications, myths, ideologies, etc., not real features of our world producing real effects, why would we spend so much time critiquing these things and trying to, in many instance, destroy them?
January 25, 2011 at 8:08 pm
he doesn’t eat. he can’t prepare spinach… you can ask them/ anything you want/ they won’t answer/ they can’t talk
eat them up, yum!
January 25, 2011 at 8:28 pm
Levi,
I fully agree. Harman’s sensual/real distinction is certainly useful, but to a point. Objects like class or fictional characters, while on the one hand being sensual objects existing on the interiority of real objects, also have, on the other hand, very real impacts, much like Harman’s real objects. Object’s like class occupy a curious middle ground between real/sensual objects, and thinking of them merely as sensual objects in a large way diminishes their real effects. This post brilliantly points towards a OOO method for thinking through class, ideology, etc. To hazard a hypothesis, perhaps one could think about Foucault’s apparatuses within an OOO frame. Not sure how exactly, but Foucault (although largely a correlationist), does point towards a way of thinking about purportedly “fictional”/”abstract” forms having very real, concrete impacts on living beings.
January 25, 2011 at 9:01 pm
Note, when I claim that the ability to produce differences is an index of the real, I am alluding to an epistemological criteria for counting something as real, not an ontological criteria for what makes something real.
Have you written something in more detail about what caused you to arrive at this view? If I’m reading it correctly, the Ontic Principle of around two years ago took the opposite position (arguing that it was an ontological principle, not an epistemological one). Nothing against revising one’s positions, of course, but since that explanation seemed plausible to me at the time, I’m curious to understand what was wrong with it!
January 25, 2011 at 9:06 pm
Mark,
There’s a difference between producing a difference in something else and being composed of differences. The latter is ontological. All things are composed of differences but the need not produce differences in other things to exist. I still hold to that. In an epistemological context, however, the issue is whether one thing produces differences in another thing.
January 25, 2011 at 10:01 pm
Ah ok, thanks, that does make sense. I thought it was a revision because I remember you saying a bit ago, in this post it looks like, that you no longer endorsed the ontic principle, and was curious why. But perhaps I should just wait for your book…
January 25, 2011 at 10:30 pm
Consider the history of Standard Units of Weight and Measure. The Standard Meter seems like a semiotic entity, and yet there is a physical object housed in a building that is considered THE STANDARD UNIT, as ratified by treaty and signed by over 50 countries in the 19th century.
Before the metric system existed, John Quincy Adams wrote,
“Weights and Measures may be ranked among the necessaries of life to every individual of human society. They enter into the economical arrangements and daily concerns of every family. They are necessary to every occupation of human industry; to the distribution and security of every species of property; to every transaction of trade and commerce; to the labors of the husbandman; to the ingenuity of the artificer; to the studies of the philosopher; to the researches of the antiquarian; to the navigation of the mariner; and the marches of the soldier; to all the exchanges of peace, and all the operations of war. The knowledge of them, as in established use, is among the first elements of education, and is often learned by those who learn nothing else, not even to read and write. This knowledge is riveted in the memory by the habitual application of it to the employments of men throughout life.”
The standard meter, then, straddles some of your philosophical positions. In one sense it is a sensual object a la Harman. However, the physical object, THE PROTOTYPE meter and kilogram are housed in a building in Sevres, France. Any dispute amond entities as to the sensual translation of the meter or kilogram is referred to the prototype. Thus, the meter and kilogram exist in their own right, beyond sensual translation. Constructing the prototypes was a collective act that coincided with the ratification of an international treaty. However, perhaps only one or two individuals actually constructed the prototypes — parents of THE meter or kilogram to which any and all disputes about the existence and features of the meter and kilogram are referred.
Do the meter and kilogram themselves have sub-terrenean existence beyond their sensual manifestations? In 500 years, if world civilization has transformed, if the International Bureau of Weights and Measures were abandoned, but the prototypes still remain, perhaps their sensual manifestations will be gone, but the objects themeselves will continue.
If the prototypes are destroyed, do the meter and kilogram cease to exist as real objects? Apparently the meter and kilogram as sensual objects preceded their existence as real objects.
Perhaps there is some issue raised here about the morphogenesis of real objects.
Some objects are sensual before they are real. Other objects are real before they are sensual.
A propos your previous post on temporality, this issue of the ontogeny or morphogenesis of objects may find the issue of standard weights and measures useful.
cheers
cameron
January 25, 2011 at 10:44 pm
we do have language for discussing these things (mythography, art criticism), & that they are objects of thought & have consequences according to how we opine about them, is a given in those discourses. however, i think adding two other terms to logic (both- true-&-false, neither-true-nor-false)–the latter reserved for “nonsense” (although nonsense too has its kinds & uses)–helps immensely in INTEGRATING those discourses into a discourse of physical objects. Finally, an old note from my blog:
“A novel which purports to be an exchange of letters between Teddy Roosevelt & Sherlock Holmes. Suggests that any combination of fiction & nonfiction has the truth value of fiction.”
January 25, 2011 at 11:22 pm
Isn’t Popeye (and every semiotic “entity”) rather a quality or a set of qualities, that several real objects (working as media, or extensions) can execute, and not so much an object in his own right – until perceived as a sensual one? That would make each drawing or written account of Popeye a new real object, that is a drwaing or a written account of Popeye and not Popeye himself.
January 25, 2011 at 11:56 pm
I don’t know if you’ll be pleased at the association, but this position seems strongly reminiscent of Descartes’ argument in the 2nd and 3rd meditations. Perhaps even as a corollary: just as ideas have a reality that has to be understood as being caused, so must they in turn have effects. In this sense, they are fully qualified substances (objects).
January 26, 2011 at 12:37 am
As Latour argues, there are many degrees of reality and existence. One imaginary and never repeated and verbalised object in my mind is less real than Popeye, because it is less formulated, less articulated, less reproduced, hence it produces less difference in the world. Popeye on the other hand is very real and makes a lot of difference. Just ask the people (King Features, a subsidiary of the Hearst Corporation) who own the trademark and collect the royalties… I bet Popeye is pretty real for them…
January 26, 2011 at 1:16 am
Forgive me, Levi, if you articulated this before or elsewhere, but I’m curious to know on what principle it is that OOO makes the claim: physical effects = real objects?
Isn’t this blurring any difference between any purported object and any effect that it may be in relation with?
January 26, 2011 at 1:22 am
Informe,
See my article in The Speculative Turn. It is, however, a classical principle of philosophy. As Lucretius puts, nothing can come from nothing.
January 26, 2011 at 3:26 am
Thanks, Levi, just ordered the volume and am looking forward to getting the grips with this strange idea.
January 26, 2011 at 4:16 am
Fascinating post. A couple of questions.
What would you see as the effect of inscribing the law in terms of its existence as an entity? It sounds like you are saying that by making a material object (written words) out of the law, it becomes more real. But the law is not the same as a set of marks on paper or a wall; if the marks are destroyed, the law can be rewritten. I recall somewhere in the late Vedas is a line “cursed by the writers of the Vedas” – the text was no more or less real for being, for the initial part of its (pre)history, stored in the memories of generations of reciting Brahmin rather than the pages of books. In any case, whatever the nature of the mind, brains are just as material as books. I guess I just don’t see how writing something down makes it more real – feels like a red herring.
Also, one thing I have been wondering about (if you’ve already addressed this, I’ve missed it) is the multiplicity or otherwise of such imaginary beings. To what extent, would you say, does Popeye exist, as a singular entity, versus a multitude of slightly-differently-imagined Popeyes?
And finally, I’d have take issue with Graham Harman’s “They don’t have independence from the one who is conceiving them as real objects do”. Surely, they do. One can memorise a poem, _and then_ reflect on it, be changed by it, and tussle with it as we would a material object. Knowing the form perfectly does not mean that one has exhausted the content – a poem is probably a better example for this than Popeye because poems are more obviously withdrawn – they also have a mysterious inner core. We can know more and more about them and never exhaust them. Since Barthes, surely we know also that the poem was never fully possessed – not even by the poet.
January 26, 2011 at 4:17 am
Dammit, I meant “cursed _be_ the writers of the Vedas” – i.e. the oral text itself, composed after the advent of writing, is pre-emptively cursing those who write the Vedas down.
January 26, 2011 at 4:23 am
Michael wrote as follows:
“Harman’s sensual/real distinction is certainly useful, but to a point. Objects like class or fictional characters, while on the one hand being sensual objects existing on the interiority of real objects, also have, on the other hand, very real impacts, much like Harman’s real objects. Object’s like class occupy a curious middle ground between real/sensual objects, and thinking of them merely as sensual objects in a large way diminishes their real effects.”
I don’t see any need for a third category. Class can be a real object. It can also be an unreal object, such as if I falsely believe myself to belong to a social class that does not exist (“Vegetarian Chicago Bears fans of the world, unite!”). Whether real or unreal, it can also be a sensual object, when it is considered by someone who thinks about it.
In any case, there is no problem with sensual objects having effects. They have effects all the time. But that doesn’t make them real objects in my technical sense of the term.
January 26, 2011 at 11:57 am
I resolve these kinds of issues using Walton’s prop theory (the make-believe theory of representation). I believe it plugs into your object-oriented ontology (as much as I understand it) effortlessly.
In brief, props (i.e. representations, e.g. paintings, novels, films, plays, games) prescribe specific imaginings; imaginary entities are referred to in pretence; the props (and the principles of generation that produce the relevant imaginary games) are real, but the imaginary entities are fictional (i.e. true solely in the relevant imaginary game).
If you don’t want to tackle “Mimesis as Make-Believe” in full, you can find a decent summary of the work at my blog – I get third ranking on Google for this title, which is neat. :D
My own prop-oriented ontology draft is pending, but I doubt you’ll like it, since it’s a long way from anything you might call realism. :)
All the best!
January 26, 2011 at 4:39 pm
It is still interesting to see why this issue continues to bring up so many misunderstandings when Mr.Bryant has articulated it a hundred times over. I remember reading Brassier’s article in the Speculative Turn about Latour and Santa Claus. Somehow, he conflates Latour’s clearly anti-realist pro-idealist ontology with OOP. He states that OOP has no way of distinguishing between ‘real’ and ‘unreal’ entities since both fictional and nonfictional objects could exert similair affects and so Santa might as well be as ‘material’ as this desk. This leads him to conclude that the term ‘real’ becomes conceptually meaningless to OOP. Again, this seems like a terrible misunderstanding of the arguement but it’s an arguement that is repeated again and again by those who aren’t taking the time to check the nuances (no offense Brassier). Add to that the disagreement/misunderstanding between Harman and Bryant over this issue and Onticology is up against a hailstorm of criticisms and strawmen.
January 27, 2011 at 11:35 pm
I must side with Graham on this one. Sensual objects exist in real objects; when the real object ceases to exist, so too does the sensual. In the case of Levi’s dream example, if Levi writes his dream on a sheet of paper with pencil and then stops thinking about it, the dream continues to exist. But if I come along and erase the dream from the paper, the paper continues to exist but the dream does not. More so if I entirely destroy the paper.
January 27, 2011 at 11:59 pm
“But if I come along and erase the dream from the paper, the paper continues to exist but the dream does not. More so if I entirely destroy the paper.”
Why the need for a physical object? Before the oral recitations that became Homer’s Iliad were written down, they didn’t exist?
January 28, 2011 at 12:08 am
Surely for imaginary beings, the critique of correlationism does not apply – they _are_ entirely dependent on the (inter)subjectivity that imagines them. Even if they’re written down on stone tablets that survive the extinction of the human race, they cease to exist once no one remembers them or can read them.
January 28, 2011 at 12:32 am
Joshua,
Why should whether or not people understand them or imbue them with meaning have any bearing on whether they’re real entities? The understanding of a person is an instance of one entity translating another. Consider the example of a person in a foreign country violating a law inscribed in a traffic sign. They did not understand the sign yet it functioned nonetheless.
January 28, 2011 at 12:55 am
I see what you mean. Another example would be the Sumerian cuneiform script, which for a long time no one could read, but was then deciphered. It doesn’t really make sense to say that the inscription ceased to exist, and then popped back into existence. What about Gilgamesh himself, though? Was he there, the whole time, even when no one could read him? I’m not sure in what sense he could be said to exist during the time when the script was un-deciphered.
January 28, 2011 at 9:13 am
Still, I don’t see that there is such a thing as a semiotic entity, only entities with semiotic qualities – that is, qualities that can be reproduced, often in several different media, to execute meaning for someone or something. (The sensual profile of the real qualities is what produces meaning, not the real qualities in themselves – they can exist whether or not anyone or anything perceives them as having meaning. “Meaning” should also be understood in the broadest possible sense.)
The written down dream is not the dream made (more) real, but a real object in itself, executing a sensual profile that to you resembles your dream in certain limited aspects. Every copy of that written down dream is also an independent object in its own right. The collected body of copies, or parts of that collection, can be parts of one larger object, but that object would not have semiotic qualities – it would be a warehouse, an industry perhaps, a registred trademark.
Maybe this is what you’re saying, too. But I keep bouncing at statements like “Popeye is a real object” or “Popeye is a sensual object”, asking myself: WHAT Popeye? I see millions, perhaps billions of Popeyes, that have similar qualitites…
It seems to me that a fictional character can only be thought of as a set of real qualities, that might be executed as sensual objects, for a real object able to make sense of them. The fictional character can be “located” in real qualities, but can never be seen as a real object.
Does this make any sense at all?
January 28, 2011 at 1:48 pm
If all things (objects) are real, where then the unreal? Not the misapprehended, but the spectre that isn’t there, real in its unreality, unmaker of difference? Would it be wrong to call this, death?
January 28, 2011 at 2:31 pm
Hey Jacob,
Yep, death and destruction would, for me, be unmakers of difference. In The Democracy of Objects I devote a section to entropy, arguing that every object faces the problem of entropy or dissolution. I want to take care with the thesis that all things are real. Myths are real in that they are materially inscribed and circulate throughout the world producing all sorts of real effects. They aren’t merely about something (referential function), but are something. However, I want to take care with the assertion that what semiotic entities are about are real.
January 28, 2011 at 5:45 pm
I think a lot of the misunderstanding here comes from a confusion about the way objects translate eachother. In the case of the Gilgamesh example, the story itself is an object, as is the tablet that has the epic written on it. It is immaterial whether any human being exists to read or understand the tablet or know the story. When a person DOES read the story, however, the Gilgamesh epic and the human are coming into translation with eachother. This leads to the creation of new objects such as mental images of Gilgamesh, Enkidu, the city of Uruk, etc. These images are, as I said, also objects in their own right. Sure, they may be intentional/sensual objects that wouldn’t exist without human thought, but they are still REAL objects. In fact, if neurological studies are correct, these objects are produced by the brain before a person is even consciously aware of them- so we may be dealing with synaptic objects that transform into mental-image objects, and so on. Therefore, I think the site of the problem here is Harman’s use of the term ‘real’ in opposition to ‘sensual/intentional’ that is throwing us off. I’m sure he agrees that both types of objects are equally in EXISTENCE but the debate is how these objects behave. Correct me if I’m wrong.