In discussions of speculative realism, a lot of ink has been spilled over debates about correlationism or whether or not it is possible to think being apart from thought, but, within an object-oriented framework, it seems to me that a far more profound ontological issue is at stake of which the issue of correlationism is only a subset. Here I hasten to add that I owe this conclusion to Graham Harman. The real issue is not whether or not whether or not it is possible to move beyond correlationism or whether being can only ever be thought in relation to thought and whether thought can only ever be thought in relation to being, but rather whether or not relations are internal or external. The thesis that relations are internal is admirably summed up in Karen Barad’s statement that “relata do not precede relations” (Meeting the Universe Halfway, 334). The thesis that relations are external is the claim that entities can break with whatever relations they happen to entertain to other entities at a particular moment and enter into new relations with other entities. Based on these two conceptions of relations, we can thus see why the issue of correlationism is a subset of the question of whether relations are internal or external. Correlationism is the thesis that the relation between mind and world or culture and world is always an internal relation, such that thought is necessarily inseparable from world and world is necessarily inseparable from thought. It is a specific variant of a broader thesis that all entities are internally related or inseparable from one another. We can see that if relationism or internalism is true, it is impossible for it to avoid correlationism, for in a world where everything is internally and inseparably related it would necessarily follow that all beings must be internally related to minds or culture. This, however, is not the issue I wish to focus on.
Before proceeding to discuss these issues of relation in more detail, it is first important to address what this debate is not about, as I’ve sensed there has been some confusion regarding these matters.
First, the debate over whether relations are internal or external is not a debate about whether or not relations exist. All sides are agreed that there are relations. The question is whether these relations are characterized by inseparability or separability. Can something break with its relations or is its being necessarily determined by its relations such that it has no minimal ontological independence from these relations?
Second, the question is not whether or not relations are important or whether they make a difference. Whether or not my cat is related to oxygen or food or certain atmospheric pressures makes a big difference for my cat. All sides, I think, can agree that the sorts of relations that obtain between entities make a tremendous difference to those entities.
Thus, third, the question is not whether we should focus on the analysis of objects or relations. In other words, the debate isn’t whether we should focus on objects, decontextualized, independent of any milieu, or whether we should focus on milieu/relations. Rather, the discussion is whether or not relations are internal to beings such that they are inseparable from their relations, or whether they are external in the sense that entities can break with relations. As I have said with respect to my own work on many occasions in print and publicly, it is not so much objects or substances that interest me, but what happens when a substance, machine, or object (they’re all synonyms to me) either enters into new relations or breaks with its existing relations. In my view, internalism just does not do a good job of responding to this question because it presupposes that beings are already internally related and thereby forecloses the question of what takes place when relations are either severed or forged.
Finally, fourth, it’s important to be clear as to what sorts of relations we’re talking about here. Clearly there are some relations that are of a purely internal. A parent cannot be a parent without a child. There is no left without right. There is no North without South, etc. A triangle can only be a triangle through relations between three points. We can call these “diacritical” relations. Diacritical relations are relations that only exist internally. Indeed, I would argue that every substance has its “diacritical domain” defined by what I call its “endo-relations”. This is its internal relations– like the three points of a triangle –without which it would not be what it is. The debate here is not between internal relations of this sort, but about relations between entities, substances, objects, or machines (again synonyms); or what I call “exo-relations”. Is the relation that my cat entertains to all other entities in the universe like that of the three, inseparable points of a triangle such that it cannot break with any of these relations, or does my cat possess some minimal ontological autonomy that allows it to break from whatever relations it currently entertains, such that it is able to enter into new relations? That’s the question.
read on!
With this question in mind, let’s return to Barad’s exemplary articulation of relationism, that “relata do not precede relations”, and examine why we might be wary of such a thesis. What is Barad saying? On the one hand, she appears to be saying that entities, “relata”, are generated out of relations. We have the relation first, and then the entities second. On the other, she appears to be claiming that these entities, “relata”, can have no subsistence or being apart from that relation. They are what they are only in and through this relation such that they can have no being independent apart from this relation.
In my view, this thesis is a catastrophe for ontological thought, empirical investigation, and concrete practice. To see this, let’s start first with empirical investigation. What is it we’re doing when we empirically investigate the world about us? Are we simply looking and recording what we see? Certainly this sort of observation that we find in fields like botany and zoology is of great importance, but it only makes up a small subset of what is meant by “empirical observation”. Empirical observation is not a simple “looking”– a view all too prevalent in a history of philosophy dominated by theoria and the denigration of the servant in Plato’s Meno as its paradigm –but rather is far more defined by acting. In the sciences, we do not simply look at entities, but rather act on them by perturbing them in a variety of ways by seeing how they behave under these conditions of pressure, temperature, light, when encountering these other chemicals or substances, when grown in these particular soils, etc. In other words, our practice consists in varying the relations between entities to see what they do when placed in these new milieus or contexts.
Nor is this variation of relations restricted to experimental practice in the sciences. There’s an increasing body of research ranging from developmental psychology to pedagogical theory (you’ll see some of it in the forthcoming issue of O-Zone) that suggests that this is how children learn as well. Children learn not by simply looking and listening, but by acting on entities in their environment and by varying their relations to other objects, to see what happens when these relations are varied. Both the experimental setting in the sciences and the phenomenon of learning suggest a very different conception of what an object, substance, entity, or machine is. A machine or entity is not a “bundle of qualities or impressions”, but rather is a collection of powers capable of producing certain effects under a variety of different conditions or relations. An object is a factory or set of potentialities, not a set of qualities. It is through interacting with objects or machines or through observing their interactions with other objects or machines that we begin to build up a diagram or cartography of what an object is. That cartography consists in building up a profile of what an object can do.
Yet if it were the case that “relata do not precede relations”, none of this would make sense. In the experimental setting it would not make sense to act on substances to see what they do or vary relations between substances to see what happens, because entities would be completely exhausted by their relations at this particular moment. Rather than saying garlic does this when it sits in a basket for three weeks or garlic does this when baked with olive oil in tin foil for twenty minutes at 350 degrees, we would instead be forced to say that the garlic in the basket and the garlic in the oven are two entirely distinct entities. These variations in relations would teach us nothing about garlic and the powers of garlic or what I call its “virtual proper being”. We can see just how strange such a thesis is in the domain of ecological thought. If it were true that “relata do not precede relations”, it’s hard to see why we would be concerned with what happens to bird egg shells when exposed to DDT, or aboriginal critters in the Australian eco-system when cane toads are introduced, or what happens to streams and water supplies when certain chemicals from fracking are introduced because, if this thesis is followed through, these are entirely new entities. Indeed, to take Barad’s favorite example, it is very difficult to understand what quantum mechanics could possibly be doing when acting on particles to locally manifest them in terms of position or vector, if there weren’t some excess of the particle in relation to how it’s acted on in the experimental setting. It is only where entities that possess some minimal ontological autonomy pass through a variety of different relations that these investigations make sense.
It is here that we encounter the disturbing political consequences of relationism as well. If relationism/internalism is true, then it is incredibly difficult to understand what projects of emancipation could possibly be about because insofar as “relata do not precede relations” there would be no beings to emancipate because those beings calling for emancipation would possess no independence apart from the social field of relations in which they’re enmeshed. Likewise, if it’s true that “relata do not precede relations”, it’s difficult to see how deprivation from things such as food, services, resources, goods, etc., could be a political issue insofar as talk of deprivation presupposes some ontological independence from currently reigning relations.
We understand what motivates internalist/relationist claims: All too often people believe they can act on entities in their environment without affecting other entities in their environment. We see this in many technological and scientific practices that seem to think that doing this thing here will not affect that thing there. We see this in many economic discussions where people seem to suppose that people are entirely self-made and are the result of their own “grit”. The corrective then becomes attending to relations and avoiding what Hegel called “thinking abstractly“. In our frustration with those who think abstractly, we then envision a metaphysics in which all things are necessarily related as an antidote. By all means, we should avoid abstract thinking in the Hegelian sense. Yet we must avoid the converse abstraction of seeing all relations as internal, lest we fall into an equally debilitating position. The idea that relations are internal undermines our sense of the fragility of relations, that they can be all too easily broken, and that the destruction of these relations often has incalculable destructive consequences. Yet the idea that all relations are internal also undermines our hope in the possibility of producing alternative worlds through the forging of new relations and the severance of old ones. Internalism makes a stab in the right direction, but does not yet fully reflect its own internal presuppositions and commitments.
Larval Subjects . 
September 27, 2012 at 8:19 am
I agree for the most part with what you’ve said here. But I’m not sure if I agree with the terms in which this debate has been set up. Why must relations be either internal or external – in either case, *where* do they exist? This seems to imply they are material, but I’m not sure what matter they would be made of, or why this would not mean relations are not also objects. At the same time speaking of relations in this way feels very abstract to me. How would we have a concept of relations without having observed a variety of associations of objects, and having built through induction a variety of types of relations?
If objects are what they do, then I think it makes sense to say simply that objects relate to one another – and that relating is a dimension of action. Activity is not a thing, internal or external to objects – it is the becoming of objects. And as the becoming of objects is the production of difference, I am hesitant to deduce anything about the nature of related objects absent the conclusions we make of objects related to objects in particular circumstances. As objects become, their relations aren’t fixed – there is flux, yet what changes is contingent. The way you have described internal relations here seems to me to describe those relations that are more static – it is conceivable that one could be a parent without a child, but unlikely now and a stretch insofar as both concepts are fairly stabilized metaphors. And the way you have described external relations seems to me to describe objectification – the way (scientific) experimentation introduces difference such that objects become (in a predictable, testable way).
What I think the divide misses is that whether bringing ddt and bird egg shells into relations produces new entities or not is entirely dependent on the human decision to conceptualize these things differently as a result of what was inductively learned. Thus the relative stability with which we can say usually say that we created a new encounter which brought out new qualities in these objects without saying these are new objects, yet we still occasionally experience the exciting transformation that takes place when scientific experiment brings things into relation in such a novel way that it forces us to reconceptualize what those things actually are.
As for correlationism, I’ve been increasingly feeling that this debate might be less important than it is sometimes presented. Saying that the human and the world are inseparable takes on a very different character if we consider both human and world to be concepts. And if, following Deleuze, philosophy is the invention of concepts, I don’t think this claim entails a commitment to saying that all beings or all entities are inseparable from mind. It merely entails the anthropological claim that philosophical concepts, as articulated through language practices, are invented by humans. I am a bit hesitant here because I think this can be taken in an interesting direction if we ask to what extent these concepts are the invention of an assemblage of humans and non-humans, but I don’t think that avoids the issue. Humans are still a part of that assemblage, as far as we know only humans have concepts, and we are still conceptualizing this assemblage in terms of the (non)human.
While from reading many of your previous posts on the subject, I know that you have claimed that the main goal is to escape correlationist ontology, as opposed to something broader. But insofar as ontology is a human area of inquiry and a concept invented by humans, I’m not sure in what way we can say that the conceptualization of the objects of ontology or the way they are taken up can be separated from a human perspective. In an almost paradoxical fashion, I think we talk about things in themselves all the time. All conceptualization aims at doing so, but falls short. And “the things in themselves” is still a philosophical concept with an anthropological history. Part of me feels like these observations on correlationism are rather banal, but I articulate them out of a concern that the disagreement (as manifested in this particular instance, at least) is really more a problem of communication and translation than anything else. I think that the dual importance of both relation and reality – in a form closer to what both sides desire than seems possible in either of the positions represented in your post – can be preserved through the small conceptual shifts I have suggested here.
September 27, 2012 at 9:44 am
I find this whole question very difficult to grapple with because, it seems to me, we are lumping together far too many things.
Am I independent of the glasses on my nose?
Yes, I think that I am. I can’t see a damn thing without them but I won’t perish if they are misplaced. Equally, the glasses won’t necessarily shatter or disintegrate if they are estranged from my needy fizzog. I’m happy to say that the relation between my body and my glasses is one of independence.
Am I independent of the cold I had last month?
Yes, I am. The remnants of that virus may leave traces in my body and, were I immunologically weak somehow, the virus could have killed me but it didn’t, I persisted, I moved on. My relation to the virus (whatever traces it leaves within my body) is clearly logically external.
However, both the glasses and the cold virus make me different to how I would be without them. Therefore, it is incorrect to say that the specific form I take at present is independent of my HISTORY. Counterfactually, I would probably have persisted had I never gotten that virus and I’d probably survive without my glasses but the absence of these things would make me different to how I am with them.
If I am made what I am by my history — my past relations — is it still accurate to say that I am ‘independent’ of my relations? Clearly we are running up against different meanings of the word ‘independent.’ I would still BE without these relations but I wouldn’t be what I AM without them.
And could I be without any relations? Of course I could get by without my glasses and I wouldn’t be at all upset if I never got a cold virus again but I would surely perish rather swiftly if the air got sucked out of the room. Am I independent of ALL relations? Again, this begs the question of what we mean, precisely, by ‘independent.’
Well, according to etymonline.com, ‘depend’ derives from the Latin dependere “to hang from, hang down; be dependent on, be derived.” I thing that last word is the most telling: derive. Could I exist without a great many of my relations? Sure. But do I derive nothing from them? Hardly. Could I exist without deriving anything from any of them? I can’t see how.
If every thing is a trajectory then everything is a derivation, everything hangs down from or latches onto its history. Of course ‘derivation’ sounds a lot like ‘translation’ and we can think of it in similar terms: just because A derives from B doesn’t mean that B determines A but it does mean that A wouldn’t be A without B. Like translation, every derivation is a transformation — if you’re ‘hanging down’ from something you can always ‘hang down’ from something else but you can’t float away as if by magic.
Long story short: these questions would make a lot more sense to me if we didn’t take words like ‘relation’ and ‘independent’ as if they name undifferentiated phenomena or as if their meaning is obvious.
If all relations are of the same sort then it does seem as if we must either be internalist or externalist. However, if we pick that term apart a bit we can see that both internalists and externalists have a point. Similarly, one thing’s independence from another thing is as much a question of the meaning of ‘independent’ as it is a question of the metaphysics of relations.
September 27, 2012 at 9:45 am
What you’re trying to claim now is not that objects precedes relations, but that objects precede the -particular- set of relations they have at a given time. But arguably, if a relation is broken, there is still a relation — only now temporally modulated, with the added qualification of “no longer”. Variation is a process in time, and time itself, a set of relations (between former and latter).
This discussion, in my eyes, have all the trappings of a pseudo problem. The concept of a relation implies relata, and the concept of an object implies relations. Why would either of them have to be “prior”? Even independence is a kind of relation, grammatically speaking. Let us not be fooled by everyday thinking into equating “relation” with some kind of direct causal interaction.
September 27, 2012 at 9:49 am
I should add of course that Levi does make a distinction between different kinds of relations (endo and exo). But I still feel that terms such as relation and, particularly, ‘independence’ can mean a number of different things and, as such, often cause antagonism when people mean different things by them.
September 27, 2012 at 3:17 pm
Karl,
The effect of a past relation is not itself a continuing relation; were it, the death of loved ones and hunger wouldn’t be so devastating. Moreover, the fact that an entity can break with one set of relations and enter another opens the ontological *possibility* of a completely unrelated entity.
Phillip,
I actually do think that relations require material connection to take place. Entities either need to either directly touch or some material entity like light, radio waves, etc has to be sent from one entity to the other.
September 27, 2012 at 3:43 pm
It always seems to me people get stumped over just what correlationism is. Obviously it goes back to Kant’s Copernican Turn (so called):
“Up to now it has been assumed that all our cognition must conform to the objects; but all attempts to find out something about them a priori through concepts that would extend our cognition have, on this pre-supposition, come to nothing. Hence let us once try whether we do not get further with the problem of metaphysics by assuming that the objects must conform to our cognition, which would agree better with the requested possibility of an a priori cognition of them, which is to establish something about objects before they are given to us. This would be just like the first thought of Copernicus, who, when he did not make good progress in the explanation of the celestial motions if he assumed that the entire celestial host revolves around the observer, tried to see if it might not have greater success if he made the the observer revolve and left the stars at rest” (Preface to Critique of Pure Reason B/XVI)”
It is this reversal from both the empirical and rationalist theocentric pre-critical stance to Kant’s Epistemic Turn that is at issue in Correlationism. Kant subjective turn internalized the external ontological relations of transcendental realism of both the empirical and rational traditions: “Space is not an empirical concept which has been derived from outer experiences.” (B/38) On the contrary: “…it is the subjective condition of sensibility, under which alone outer intuition is possible for us.” (A/26; B/42)
OOO is not a return to the pre-critical ontologies of the past, but a swerve from those traditions by shifting the questions from substance itself to relations. And obviously for relations to come about there must be a something that precedes a relation that instigates the relations to begin with (the old joke of which comes first the chicken or the egg). And I agree Levi we have differing kinds of relations. The shift beyond correlationism is to decenter the obvious connection with the human/world divide or gap that is central to humanistic thought and philosophy of finitude.
The major question is how do relations happen, how does contact or communication between objects/machines happen: a concept of happening and event is at issue. A relation is an end result of a process that has its origin in desire or anxiety, a probing of the lines of influence between objects rather than a study of the objects themselves.
September 27, 2012 at 6:08 pm
[…] HERE. […]
September 28, 2012 at 10:10 am
Levi: I don’t fully understand what “ontological possiblity” means. The capacity to undergo new relations seems to imply no more or less than the capacity to undergo new relations — i.e., it is perfectly compatible with the view that entities cannot be unrelated. And more strongly, if the breaking of old relations -always- means undergoing new ones, then this implies that entities are always related.
This, nota bene, is not the same as the stronger claim that entities are -nothing but- their relations. I wouldn’t want subscribe to this claim. But i feel that perhaps you are caught in a false dichotomy, between this “strong relationism” that reduces entities to their relations, and your view that entities are capable of independence. Once again I ask, why must either one, entity or relation, “precede” the other?
September 28, 2012 at 12:18 pm
Karl,
An ontological possibility is something that is possible but that could never be verified. It could never be verified because knowledge is a relation and we’re talking here about an entity independent of all relations. It’s possible because if an entity can break with one set of relations it is possible it could break with all relations.
September 29, 2012 at 6:57 am
I am writing this first commentary without reading the comments above which I shall return eventually. Thank you for this intriguing writing, most of which I read. Perhaps one must say relations are immanent rather than internal. Spinoza and Deleuze pointed this out in talking about modal essences and modal existences. Modal essences for these philosophers accentuate not relations but relation of relations, modal existence on the other hand is a different type of infinity determined by appetite (conatus) and the eternal rules of mechanics and composition. Inevitably, these two are related, the latter the determination of the prior. For the latter one, we also need to emphasize chance, ‘deontic’ existence, some may refer to this as ‘fall out of grace’ but it is nonetheless to come to terms with a realization and affirm whatever falls on the table and bind bundles of intensity (or potentialities as you remark), discover common notions qua ex-perience (especially of youth, the stupidity of youth) towards singularities. Subtraction of the ego culminates in the affirmation of the purport of a unique degree which I call singularities. Substance, machines, objects. No, the former, the outmost can never be a synonym for the latter two unless common notions have become inseparably active (including plant and animal) to become active affections. This we can find in the eschatology of Henri Bergson as well as in Benjamin’s divine violence albeit differently (more messianic and political form). All in all, we are talking about form here, form that is to liquidate real difference. In other words, this is an issue of aesthetics as well as kinetics. When it comes to geometry, I guess we need to think of a geometry in action, once again this you can find in Deleuze’s Spinoza and in Husserl’s famous book which I have not yet read, but sense it is very valuable.
Cheers!
September 29, 2012 at 4:14 pm
I think I agree with Dark Chemistry, as I tend to call myself at times a Kantian (not well-read in Kant though I know the four poetic formulas well) in disguise as Antonin Artaud. Anyways, the discovery of today was the beautiful word: correlation which is already past and still future. Thanks.
September 29, 2012 at 4:55 pm
I think I get what you’re saying here Levi. Here is where the experimental/investigative project begins. Some relations are internal and necessary for a given object’s persistence. Other relations are external. These relations may affect an object or even destroy an object, but they can never be necessary for defining the object. In part, this is the principle of redundant causation, right?
Let me use a chicken for example. It could be free-range or in a cage; it’s still a chicken. It could break a wing; it’s still a chicken. It gets slaughtered. Now it’s a dead chicken. Is that a different object now? It gets prepared for cooking and roasted. Is that a different object? It gets eaten. At some point it ceases to be a chicken.
Objects are not immortal. At some point they cease to exist and their component parts become reorganized into other relations and objects. In a few billion years, the sun will likely expand and all the objects on the Earth will be reduced to atomic particles. I recognize that part of Harman’s complaint with DeLanda is the notion that assemblage theory suggests that objects are purely the product of historical relations. I agree that objects exceed their relations, become more than those relations in a non-deterministic way. Some relations are more important than others to whether an object is transformed.
As such, I wonder if the underlying question here is “what differences make a difference?” If we can agree that external relations can transform objects (as when the fire burns the cotton in Harman’s common example), then the question becomes how often do those transformations take place. In a process-becoming perspective the mutations are ongoing such that all relations become internalized. In an object-oriented perspective, transformations are less common and must be uncovered rather than assumed.
That’s what I “see” anyway.
September 30, 2012 at 10:13 am
Regarding what Alex Reid says, I think one should also consider what happens to the ‘doer’ of the chicken as well as the chicken. IF we are talking about correlation, we are talking about composition where in the paradox cause and effect relation is perpetually displaced. Another important aspect of composition is the image of the composed smeared in the composer. In other words, did the cat eat the bat or the bat eat the cat? What matters is the surface, whence we always produce qua zero intensity, our one and only medium. On the other hand, allegory is the claim to capture all relationality concealed in masks beyond masks, such metemopsychosis also reveals the collector hidden in allegory, if it (one or the french pronoun on, let’s say the fourth person singular) were to succeed, it becomes a name for the event. This was Nietzsche’s doctrine which he called simulacrum of a doctrine, he claimed he could become all the names in history. He knew the rules of composition, he was the poet-philosopher, but he lacked solidarity or co-relation.
This may sound a bit cryptic, but I hope you will see the matter in hand that demands more elaboration which exceeds the present commentary.
September 30, 2012 at 6:10 pm
I know this is more of a discussion about internal/external relations, but I was interested in Barad’s ideas of relata not preceding relations… Your statement: “The real issue is not whether or not whether or not it is possible to move beyond correlationism or whether being can only ever be thought in relation to thought and whether thought can only ever be thought in relation to being, but rather whether or not relations are internal or external.”
Karen Barad’s notion of intra-action is key to her agential realism, which seems to be about the boundary rather than the gap between the internal/external relation. I think it is here that your thought and hers seem to be in partial agreement in the sense that it is this entaglement between internal/external relations at the boundary that is the question. The difference is that she does not accept the OOO concept of the real/sensual distinction, instead she seems to fall within the transcendental empiricists tradition in which only phenomenon exist. As she state it:
“The notion of intra-action is a key element of my agential realist framework. The neologism “intra-action” signifies the mutual constitution of entangled agencies. That is, in contrast to the usual “interaction,” which assumes that there are separate individual agencies that precede their interaction, the notion of intra-action recognizes that distinct agencies do not precede, but rather emerge through, their intra-action. It is important to note that the “distinct” agencies are only distinct in a relational, not an absolute, sense, that is, agencies are only distinct in relation to their mutual entanglement; they don’t exist as individual elements.(33)”
Unlike OOO she does not affirm a fully deployed universe of objects. She affirms Phenomenon but leaves any sense of a noumenon (real object in Harman’s sense) out of the equation. And, yet, I wonder if she is not collapsing the real into the sensual with her use of diffraction? She seems to be moving back into a transcendental empiricist tradition in this. As she says: “A specific intra-action (involving a specific material configuration of the “apparatus”) enacts an agential cut (in contrast to the Cartesian cut-an inherent distinction-between subject and object), effecting a separation between “subject” and “object.” That is, the agential cut enacts a resolution within the phenomenon of the inherent ontological (and semantic) indeterminacy.(334)”
It’s not about the marking of a distinciton (in the Luhmanian sense or Cartesian sense) that produces a gap between observer/observed, etc.; instead, it is the agential cut that is productive of a resolution – both ontological and semantic – in the inederminancy of the object (phenomenon) itself. It’s about the production of boundaries instead. It seems that for her what is needed is a method attuned to the entanglement of the apparatuses of production, one that enables genealogical analyses of how boundaries are produced rather than presuming sets of well-worn binaries in advance.(29) And it is in this sense that the central metaphor of ‘diffraction’ is at the heart of this agential realism: “I argue that a diffractive methodology is respectful of the entanglement of ideas and other materials in ways that reflexive methodologies are not.(29)”
Does Barad know of OOO? If so what does she think of the real/sensual distinction? For me at least I agree with Henry E. Allison and his use of the two-aspect theory of the phenomenon/noumenon concepts as being a distinction between what we as humans can describe (appearance/phenomenon) and what we cannot (noumenon). Kant according to this did not see phenomenon/noumenon as two separate objects but as one object for-us(phenomenon) and for-itself(noumenon).
September 30, 2012 at 6:59 pm
Alex, exactly!
September 30, 2012 at 9:34 pm
Levi wrote : ” There’s an increasing body of research ranging from developmental psychology to pedagogical theory (you’ll see some of it in the forthcoming issue of O-Zone) that suggests that this is how children learn as well. Children learn not by simply looking and listening, but by acting on entities in their environment and by varying their relations to other objects, to see what happens when these relations are varied.’
Yes indeed!:
‘1. Genetic epistemology is generally considered a branch of psychology, chiefly de-veloped in the last three quarters of the 20th century by the efforts of the biologist-psychologist Jean Piaget , and many collaborators. Their work shows that minds achieve intellectual development through behavioral probing of reality, not through its Platonic contemplation. The focus of the minds’ description thus shifted onto the origination of probing actions, or initiatives, a feature distinguishing minds from non-minds and discussed below. Whatever it is that senses, it proceeds as if en-closed in a supple bag: in this case, only by taking initiatives, i.e. by palpating the bag’s wall, can it recognize what is invariantly conserved outside and, so, build a mental map or picture of the surrounding happenings.’ (Mario Crocco, On Minds Localization’, http://electroneubio.secyt.gov.ar/localization_of_minds.htm
October 2, 2012 at 1:12 am
[…] response to my last post, Alex Reid of Digital Digs posts a great comment summarizing what is at stake in the external/internal relations debate. Alex writes: I think I […]
October 3, 2012 at 3:40 am
I propose that objects and relations correspond to nouns and verbs, which we use to describe a very real reality that cannot be reduced to either one. All human languages, according to what I am told, have nouns and verbs–usually organized into a syntax that uses subjects, objects, (both nouns) and verbs (that often describe relations of two nouns–subject and object).
Why are these two parts of speech so primary and universal? Why not three? Why not one? Why “parts” of speech at all? Why not speech as a continuous heterogenous onomatopoeiac flow of some sort? Does our world really consist of objects and actions/relations? Maybe, but the thing is, that which is described with a verb in one instance can be made a noun in another, and vice versa. “Dogs tree squirrels.” can be a list of “objects” or a subject-verb-object sentence.
Before OOO came along I was happily convinced by Heraclitus and Nietzsche. If I had to put my money down I would bet that the world is a verb, and nouns are an expedience of language. “Objects” are just slow events. (And events can be slow enough to make possible assemblages with discrete recombinable parts, like words or DNA base-pairs, which admittedly are very object-like.)
But whatever the world turns out to “really” be, I do think it is important to consider the possibility that the nature of our language–the fact that we use nouns and verbs–is neither reflective of nor determined by what the world is. I find Deleuze’s phrase apropos here: “double articulation.” We have two parts of speech because the double articulation it makes possible in turn makes possible a shareable language that can reference a world that is complex in the way ours is complex. We have nouns and verbs–i.e. we sort events roughly into slow and fast ones–simply because we need two parts of speech to have speech that is really useful. Maybe we are only arguing about “objects” and “relations” because of the same ontologically inconsequential eccentricity of language? Well, I would put that forward for consideration in any case.
One thing that gives me pause about OOO is that it seems that there is no noun that is not an object. I wonder, are gerunds objects? Is running an object?
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