One of the more idiotic charges that sometimes come my way is that if difference is made a criteria for existence, then we are no longer able to make distinctions. I am not sure whether people who advance such charges are idiots, lack the ability to reflect, or have simply become stupid as a result of their knee-jerk attempts to dismiss speculative realist thought and object-oriented ontology in particular. At any rate, I clearly find this to be one of the oddest charges leveled against differential ontology. On the one hand, what else could we possibly mean by “existence” than difference? What else could existence possibly be than the capacity to make and produce differences? More to the point, however, on the other hand, if difference is the ultimate ground well, that entails that differences differ! Differential ontology allows as many differences as we might like. We can examine the differences that compose a piece of technology. We can examine the differences that compose a city. We can examine the differences that compose fictions and signs. We can distinguish all these differences. We can examine how and in what way these various differences make differences in other things. We can examine degrees of strength and weakness, ranging from things that make very slight differences to things like the sun that make extensive differences well beyond their own being.
The only qualification is that if something makes a difference it is. That is all. It is not being suggested that all differences are equal, that all differences are identical, or that all differences impact the world as extensively as other differences. In a certain respect, it could be said that OOO is an attempt to reset the philosophical clock. Rather than accepted a set of rather bad distinctions that we have inherited from the history of philosophy and that have led to a number of deadlocks in thought, OOO instead wipes the slate clean and tries to begin anew. There are many grounds upon which the various forms of OOO can be criticized. The inability to draw distinctions or speak about differences is not one of them.
Larval Subjects . 
September 19, 2009 at 8:03 pm
“There are many grounds upon which the various forms of OOO can be criticized. The inability to draw distinctions or speak about differences is not one of them.”
This may be a simple-minded question, but is not ‘difference’ an n-ary predicate for which one of the relata must be an observer? How else would one distinguish ‘difference’ from any other n-ary relation, if not by its inclusion of an observational position, which remains privileged? After all, ‘difference’ is an evaluative notion, implying the ability to discriminate among properties. The main thrust of the idiotic criticism you mention above appears to be this: there is no way to discriminate among properties once you define ‘difference’ as you have done. I think this is actually correct, and your position is deeply flawed.
To exclude the subjective position from the difference-relation requires either some form of anthropomorphism that smuggles subjectivity back into the picture in the form of a non-human agency (ANT being one such example, Harmans discussion of ‘apophansis’ being another) or else results in incoherence. How do you account for the observational perspective through which difference alone can be said to be, if you do not privilege an observational position within some differential context so as to be able to determine what exactly is making a difference in a given n-ary relation?
September 19, 2009 at 8:13 pm
I think one of the reasons people tend to misunderstand differences as you speak of them is that there’s not a lot of information about how differences work — not just why objects produce differences, but how they accomplish it.
Without that information, it’s easy to see difference as a sort of “all” that isn’t “difference as opposed to something else”. Does that make sense?
September 20, 2009 at 4:01 am
Hi Asher,
The aim of ontology is to articulate the most general or abstract structure of the being of beings. One could just as easily accuse the set theorist of not saying anything specific insofar as the set theorist examines sets independent of whatever might happen to belong to any set. With that said, I think I constantly provide concrete examples to illustrate my points, referring to the role played by various differences. For example, I recently spoke about what the world would be like were the moon not to exist. In short, I perpetually move back and forth between the highly abstract and specific examples.
September 20, 2009 at 4:05 am
Hi Tuffini,
I think there are two distinct questions. Ontologically, differences require no difference to be or to make differences. They get along just fine without being observed by anyone. The job of the ontologist, I believe, is to describe these highly abstract and general dynamics among beings. What you’re asking is an epistemological question. I certainly agree that epistemologically we must observe differences to determine what difference they make. Has anyone, realist or idealist, ever said otherwise? When we vary conditions in the experimental setting, for example, we are seeking to determine the differences that play a role in some phenomenon and the conditions under which these differences act.
September 20, 2009 at 10:43 am
I think the problem here is that the term difference is (ironically) being deployed in several different ways. For instance, Tuffini is obviously considering difference as a relation between constituted entities, as in x differs from y because x is F and y is not. This is just the converse of the identity relation, or what we might call distinctness.
However, I think there is at least two ways in which you are using the term. You talk of differences producing differences, and it seems as if what is doing the producing on the one hand, and what is being produced on the other are somewhat distinct. To put it another way, it seems as if there is a distinction between “the capacity to produce differences” and the differences that are produced. These might be two sides of the same coin, but they still seem to be two sides.
Could you elaborate, or do I still have the wrong end of the stick?
September 20, 2009 at 2:56 pm
My point is not epistemological. Speaking ontologically, differences are dispositional. They require an observer, and do not exist prior to observation at all. This is their ontological characterization. Differences are the instantiation of a specific type of relation which includes a privileged observational position (which need not be a human of course).
Whether objects ‘get along fine’ without being observed is besides the point. Varying experimental conditions requires an observational position (a dispositional relation). Hence the appearances of differences. It does not show that the differences play a role in anything, however. The red spots that indicate Measles are differences in skin colour, but they are not coextensive with the disease. They are symptoms of something unobservable. Every scientific experiment I can think of operates by treating what you call differences as symptoms of an underlying and unobservable process or entity.
This point concerning experimental practice aside, I would like to characterize why dispositional predicates are not epistemological. To use Locke’s language (only as an example, not to make a substantive point), primary qualities do not exhibit differences; they have causal powers. Only secondary qualities exhibit differences, but precisely because they are dispositional. And both are ontological characterizations
So I think there are in fact three problems, which you have not successfully distinguished. The first is the ontological/epistemological. The second is a logical problem concerning ‘difference’ itself. The third is the either/or of anthropomorphism or incoherence. With respect to the first problem, you fail to draw a coherent distinction between ontology and epistemology. Dispositional properties are ontological, not epistemological. Differences are dispositional. Dispositional properties emerge from a specific kind of relation that privileges subjectivity, broadly construed so as to include animals, plants amoebae, etc (effectively what satisfies the notion of living’). Hence, if ‘difference’ is the lynchpin of your OOO, then so is some notion of dispositionality (affect, if you prefer). But only what is living are subject to affects. To claim otherwise leads to anthropomorphism (problem three). A similar way of phrasing the same thing would be to reformulate your position in terms of Dennett’s Stance Stance: something exists insofar as you can attribute intentions to it. For, as Dennet argues, ‘differential responses’ appear to be dispositional, and allow us to describe certain forms of causal interactions as intentional. Your OOO is a version of this.
With respect to the problem of logical form, you use ‘difference’ in such a manner so as to cover everything from causation through to intentional attitudes, without paying attention to the logical form of the notion itself. As I have mentioned already, ‘difference’ is a dispositional predicate: an n-ary relation which includes an observational position among its relata. You cannot remove the observational position without also removing the dispositionality of ‘difference.’ No affection without observation, as it were. But this is tantamount to saying that your ‘difference’ is not difference. It thus leads to the second arm of the either or: an incoherence in the notion of difference itself.
September 20, 2009 at 3:06 pm
the question of an observer leads to the interesting question of whether there is always an observer, animate or not, material or not, that in some way ‘contains’ the related objects and which receives a difference from each object prior to connection and after connection receives a difference from the relation of the two objects being related.
September 20, 2009 at 3:51 pm
The set theorist isn’t arguing against a bunch of other people with totally different ideas about how sets work. In ontology, you’re in the position of addressing the problems that arise in other formulations. SR, for example, is to some extent defined by its rejection of correlationist claims.
When you use an example like photosynthesis, and there’s no abstract, general formulation of *how* difference is effected, some people (including non-idiots and non-jerks) are going to assume a physical model of causation, and they’re going to wonder how that works with the non-physical things that you give equal ontological footing (like Batman or Divorce Rates).
I don’t think that the “how” of difference is outside the realm of ontology. That’s why I’m asking some of the questions I’m asking on the Eliminativism thread. I think it’s fair to wonder whether difference is a sort of causality, whether it works the same way in physical and non-physical situations, etc.
I sympathize with the “starting anew” thing. But one of the drawbacks (besides accusations of reinventing the wheel) is that there will be lots of gaps in the beginning, and that people are going to tend to fill them in with concepts from elsewhere.
September 20, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Asher,
I don’t believe there is one way in which difference is effected. In certain instances difference effects itself in the causal form you’re referring to. In other instances, difference effects itself in other ways. With literary objects, for example, I think one would be straining quite a bit were they to attempt a discussion of intertextuality or the manner in which one text can refer to another. When Quentin Tarantino’s latest, Inglorious Basterds uses a variation of a song he used in Kill Bill (the song whistled by Daryl Hannah when she’s going to kill Uma Thurman’s character), we’re talking about differences and how differences are translated across objects, but we’re not talking about causality in any ordinary sense. Hence the cageyness in answering your question. It’s an empirical question that requires analysis of the specific domain in question. Ontology, as a meta-theory, should, in my view, give the most abstract formulation of these relations, while also preserving as great a variety of different types of relations possible. Take Badiou’s set theoretical ontology. Badiou argues that being is composed of pure multiplicities without one or identity that get structured in consistent multiplicities or sets. He doesn’t tell us anything specific about the difference between situations (his technical term for a consistent multiplicity or a set) like the relationship between the moon and the earth, or another consistent multiplicity like a work of art or a political system when he’s working at the ontological level. The analysis of the structure of these consistent multiplicities is reserved either for others, or belongs to other works where he’s investigating particular situations or structures. This is how it is with ontology. A good ontology should direct us at the right sorts of questions to ask, with pre-determining what the answer to those questions should be. I begin very abstractly with the suggestion that the right sort of question to ask is 1) what sorts of differences does an object embody, 2) how do these differences interact with other objects, and 3) how are these objects and their differences related to one another in networks. The answers to these questions will vary widely depending on whether we’re analyzing video games as Bogost does so nicely, or whether we’re analyzing the growth of a plant in a garden over the course of Summer of 2009.
September 20, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Tuffini,
If you’re making the claim that differences do not exist prior to being observed, then you’re in the domain of epistemology, not the domain of ontology. Ontology deals with what is not with what is observed. Differences belong to the beings themselves regardless of whether anyone observes them. Additionally, your position leads to the rather odd conclusion that there is no world that exists independent of observation, thereby falling into a sort of Berkeleyian idealism. As for whether it is incoherent to claim that differences covers everything from physical causation to intentional states, I fail to see why this is any more incoherent than the claim that being covers everything from ducks to quasars.
September 20, 2009 at 5:25 pm
“Ontology deals with what is not with what is observed. Differences belong to the beings themselves regardless of whether anyone observes them.”
You are trying to define the problem away here, instead of dealing with it. There is a vast literature on the metaphysics of dispositions and related matters. I am not asking any epistemological questions. I am pointing out that the nature of ‘difference’ is dispositional.
Furthermore, my position does not lead to any such problems, since I do not have a position. I simply pointed out that ‘difference’ is dispositional, and that your emphasis on the latter notion generates a number of serious problems. It is only when you decide to make difference the sine qua non AND refuse its dispositional nature that you run into problems.
September 20, 2009 at 5:37 pm
Tuffini,
Perhaps it would help if you explained just what you have in mind when you claim that difference is “dispositional”. If you have been following the posts on this blog, then you are aware that I distinguish between the object as a split object (Ø) and the object as actualized properties (O1). The split-object refers to the internal structure of objects or what I call their “endo-consistency”. This endo-consistency is a structure of attractors defining a phase space that can be actualized in a variety of ways. Perhaps this is something like what you’re referring to when you refer to “dispositions”. To make this concrete, take the example of my blue coffee cup. The attractors presiding over one aspect of the coffee cup revolve around the molecular structure of the color that can vary depending on lighting conditions. The cup can be a variety of different shades of blue depending on whether it is sitting in bright sunlight or in the dim light of my office. These variations in color are, in my language, O1’s or actualized properties. The range of variations open to the object would, by contrast, be the system of attractors or, perhaps, what you call “dispositions”. Points in the phase space defined by these attractors are actualized either through internal instabilities in the object or through interactions with other objects.
If I am led to claim that you are conflating epistemology and ontology, then this is because you sound to me to be claiming that the actualization of points in the phase space of an object are dependent on an observer. That’s simply not the case. An observer is one object that can actualize particular potentialities of another object. But observers aren’t the condition for the actualization of potentials. And of course you have a position. If you’re claiming that differences are disposition and they require observers, you’re articulating a position.
September 20, 2009 at 5:54 pm
” It’s an empirical question that requires analysis of the specific domain in question”
I am with you on that. And I don’t think it would be useful to insist on empirical analyses of every specific domain. At the level of the general ontology, though, if there are several different domains, I think it’s crucial to say why there are several instead of just one, how those domains arise, and why they operate differently from each other.
Since I’m provisionally a physicalist, I’m wanting to examine whether all types of differences can be unified in some way, or whether causation is simply weirder than any naturalist description can deal with. But I don’t think your position has to be “set against” physicalism for the question of why there are multiple domains to be relevant.
September 20, 2009 at 6:06 pm
I agree, Asher, though I do wonder whether there is an answer to the question of why there are many forms difference takes rather than one. Why are their four forces– gravity, electro-magnatism, strong, and weak –rather than one? From what I understand, physicists might be approaching the point where they are able to show that in reality there is only one force, but perhaps the example will give you a sense of what I’m getting at. I am not against physicalism by any means. What I am opposed to is the thesis that physical beings are the only real types of beings. This has emerged in the discussions surrounding the issue of the ontological status of fictions. One interlocutor in particular keeps saying “but Dostoyevsky’s Raskolnikov doesn’t really live in St. Petersburg, he didn’t really kill the pawn broker, etc”. For this interlocutor real means “physical” and all entities like language are to be evaluated representationally in terms of whether or not they refer to a physical entity. Clearly I neither do, nor logically can, accept such a thesis by the lights of my own ontology. But then again, never once had I anywhere suggested that there is a physical being named Raskolnikov that kills a pawn-broker. I have said that Raskolnikov is a real and existing entity– because he makes all sorts of differences and contains all sorts of differences –but certainly these differences are entirely different from those possessed by physical objects. What I refuse is the physicalist move that would treat the term “existence” as a synonym for “physical”. The problem here is that the physicalist is never able to say what it is, precisely, that they mean by “physical being” or “existence”. They wave their hand in a ever expanding circle of tautologies saying “you know, physical things, real things, things that are!” In contrast to the physicalist that can never say what he means by existence, I have a clear and straightforward criteria: productive of difference. This criteria leads to some unusual and interesting consequences like having to say that money is real, that Raskolnikov is real, that contracts are real, as are pulsars, tadpoles, and quarks, but it does have the merit of at least being able to articulate existence.
September 20, 2009 at 6:10 pm
Again, you are trying to define away the problem without attempting to deal with it. None of the terminology you have introduced explains anything. At best, it provides new designations for well known philosophical problems (like intrinsic and extrinsic properties). I have already explained what I mean by ‘dispositional’ and I see no reason to repeat myself.
Furthermore, differential calculus has nothing to do with our present discussion. You cannot explain the transformation in the colour of the coffee cup dynamically. Try it, you’ll see that what you are modeling is not actually the colour of the cup. But, since you have introduced the calculus, let me say that, of course phase spaces, vectors, and attractors are mind dependent. They are theoretical entities within a mathematical model, which helps we humans explain a given set of causal interactions among phenomena. You will not find a phase space outside of the equations, you will only find natural phenomena that exemplify it.
September 20, 2009 at 6:13 pm
Well then, Tuffini, I suppose we are at the end of our discussion. You are merely dogmatically making your assertion, rather than defending it in any way or showing its necessary. Bully for you. Tautological thinking is fun! “Differences are dependent on observations because differences are dependent on observation!” You should pound the table a bit too to show that you’re really serious.
September 20, 2009 at 6:54 pm
Levi wrote:
Ontologically, differences require no difference to be or to make differences.
But Tuffini’s point, which seems perfectly well expressed to me in his first post, is that because they are dispositional, ontologically, differences cannot be said to exist prior to some form of observer (in the broadest possible sense).
I am assuming that your use of ‘difference’ is related to Deleuze’s. Deleuze gets round Tuffini’s point by talking about two types of difference with the movement from virtual to actual. The virtual being sub-representational and, therefore, pre-dispositional Deleuze’s use of ‘different/ciation’ indicates an expansion of what difference means beyond the standard (i.e. dispositional) usage. Whether or not this is a successful move is another matter, but is this akin to what you are doing? Your copy cup example seems to hint at it but I really don’t understand how it works.
September 20, 2009 at 7:22 pm
LS, You’ve recently addressed ELIMINATIVISM (and I’m in basic agreement) but what I smell here are its twins: The Anthropic Principle and COMPUTATIONALISM, both of which seem peversely propagated by a ‘logic of subtraction’. I’ve been struggling for months (in my very spare time) with this in the form of Brian Whitworth’s “The Physical World as a Virtual Reality” (http://arxiv.org/abs/0801.0337) I can barely read the margin notes scribbled while reading this on the bus to work. In reviewing this mess I see that the claim “Reality is relative to the observer” is underlined instead of merely highlighted. Computationalism is the new idealism. I do not agree with it – unlike Tuffini, I believe that vectors, attractors, etc. exist independently of any models of them.. Maybe these analytic computationalists need to read a bit of Baudrillard (like “The Object and its Destiny” ; )
September 20, 2009 at 11:35 pm
Johneffay,
The first question is what is being observed if differences are constituted by observers? There must be something produces differences for differences to be observed. As such, it follows that differences are prior to being observed. Second, let’s return to the original example of red spots and measles. Tuffini remarks that red spots indicate measles, and that measles are themselves unobservable. Presumably then, Tuffini who makes lame arguments like “you’re just defining things away” is wondering how we know that red spots are linked to measles. First, let me say this is a great question, it just isn’t an ontological question. It is a question of how inquiry is undertaken and works. Second, not the sleight of hand Tuffini employs. Tuffini grants the status of difference to the red spots, but not to the measles virus itself. There are two problems here: First, if measles were not themselves composed of virus, they wouldn’t be able to do anything in the world. Regardless of whether you or I observe measles, regardless of whether the doctor makes a mistake in relating the red spots to the measles virus, confusing these red spots instead with a poison ivy rash, nonetheless the differences that compose the measles virus, these strands of RNA, interact with the cells of the body to produce new differences. Ontologically the measles virus is by virtue of its differences and acts through its differences. Second, our brave and rather obnoxious Tuffini seems to miss the point that red spots are something and that they are something and that the observer is something. The interaction between the red spots and this other object that Tuffini refers to as an observer is itself a real and ontological relation. Now as I have argued elsewhere on this blog, if Tuffini is really serious in arguing that observers constitute differences (why do I get the sense that Tuffini might be Mitsu?), he is going to find himself in all sorts of trouble. Why? Because he will necessarily be required to either argue that observers constitute themselves by observing themselves, which is absurd (i.e., we must reflexively apply Tuffini’s thesis to observers themselves), or we must posit a transcendental subject or ego outside of being that constitutes the rest of the world ex nihilo. Neither of these options is particularly attractive or promising. Tuffini can pound the table all he likes, claiming that observers constitute differences, but in doing so he’s simply not paying attention to what he himself is saying and he is speaking sloppily, saying something I suspect he really doesn’t mean or believe. Do observers select differences and try to relate them to other differences? Yes! Whoever said otherwise? Can they be mistaken about relations among differences? Yes, an observer can mistakenly relate a difference like red spots to the differences that compose the measles RNA virus, when in fact the red spots in a particular instance came from poison ivy. Whoever said otherwise? Do they constitute differences or “make them be”? Absolutely not. I am not sure why this is such a difficult point to get.
September 20, 2009 at 11:55 pm
I think I agree totally about difference though I may worry about how that spills over into the concept of an object or of a system about objects – yours or anyones. What worries me most here, however, is the tone with which this begins not because one cannot chastise those he feels wanting but because it seems unlike your usual temper and logically unproductive. Your blog strikes me as a worthy attempt to incite that new compositional and community form of thought that blogging may entail. That open door lets in a self-selected public who care in some way about issues most find abstruse or incomprehensible. Each brings with herself not just the thoughts on the day’s post but their axiomatic and often tacit presuppositions. These create absurdities of incommensurability and in most places these are not addressed but simply debarred or silenced. However, here what is at issue seems in part to be exactly that attempt to talk about what is foundational, about what is. I admit this is difficult since everyone wishes to move “ahead” and the axiomatic conversation circles both because the differences about the fundamental are not resolved and maybe not resolvable but also because new faces appear. I wonder if their is not a way — other than for you to become less democratic — to manage this better. You have said, I think, that you are up to chapter 3 in the new book. If typical, your chapter 1 must be an attempt to secure the foundations of your system. Maybe you could have something like that in the header of your blog as basal or required reading.
September 21, 2009 at 12:14 am
Dan,
I suspect that if you saw the posts that I chose not to post, you would feel differently about my tone here. There are some modes of address that deserve no regard. If a person’s first move is to insult, refer to you as insane, claim that you have gotten everything wrong, no further dialogue or communication can take place. Fortunately I’ve gotten to the point now where if a person’s comment is unduly belligerent, sarcastic, insulting, or snarky, I just delete it. There is no reason to give such people a platform when they can only address myself and others in an abusive fashion. When confronted with such modes of address or communication, it is clear that the person isn’t really interested in discussion but has other motives. In other words, it isn’t an issue of deleting anyone’s comment that disagrees. I think the comments I post on this blog demonstrate that I am far from doing anything like that. The point is deleting those comments that are either unnecessarily abusive or those comments that make it clear that they’re not really interested in participating in dialogue by virtue of constructing straw men and absurdly uncharitable characterizations of my position that indicate that they’re not entering into dialogue in good faith. Certainly there’s no reason for me to make my blog a platform for assholes of this sort. They are free to publish their thoughts elsewhere on their own blogs.
September 21, 2009 at 2:49 am
LS: I think the important thing to note about the forces thing is that unifying the forces is seen as a valid and important problem for physics (at this point, only gravity is really recalcitrant). In the same way, I’d say that it’s a valid problem for ontology to find a unifying framework for how difference or change occurs.
I am hearing you about physicalist tautologies with respect to existence. In a way, this is the same thing that is, rightly or wrongly, giving some people problems with your notions of difference. If you say “productive of difference”, people are going to ask a lot of questions about what difference is and how exactly it works. So once again, I’d say that those answers are important to the ontology in general.
There are physicalist notions that are not tautological in the sense that you’re pointing out. Crudely put, saying that “everything is physical” is not equivalent to saying “existence equals physicality”.
There is a sense in which Raskolnikov and the pawn broker have a physical reality. They are physically in people’s brains. That would make them a lot more complicated than a lot of physical objects are, but this shouldn’t put us off, because brains are some of the most complicated things we know of. There is also a sense in which Raskolnikov makes physical differences (again, in bodies and brains) which may not be reducible to a description at a lower physical level, but which may require a description at a lower level for us to fully understand.
I suspect that your ontology might end up being compatible with that kind of physicalist view. What that depends upon is how the differences made by an object like Raskolnikov work. My suspicion is that the differences you’re talking about always go both ways between objects. If that’s true – if there’s no “unidirectional” difference – then you can’t really call anything an epiphenomenon.
In a nutshell, that’s why I’m so interested in how differences operate in your ontology.
September 21, 2009 at 2:35 pm
I was in complete agreement with letting others continue discussing this post, but Larval subjects’ insistence on misrepresenting every single point I have brought up compells me to comment one last time. I haven’t banged any tables (I haven’t been motivated enough to do so), nor have I been beligerant and condescending. I simple question that has received a stock of pre-prepared answers that do no answer or clarify the problem.
First: using Locke’s language (or Meillassoux’s, or a host of others, including Harman), primary and secondary qualities are both ontological. secondary qualities are dispositional. Why are they dispositional? Because they are (1) relational, and (2) require a set of conditions to be met in order to be expressed. Difference is dispositional, because it is an n-ary relation (requiring at least three relata, minimally something X at time 1 and time 2, and something to register X at time 1 and 2), and requires some set of criteria in order to be expressed. Among the criteria for expression is what I called an observer (something able to register Time 1 and Time 2, something able to register the comparison). This isn’t an epistemological issue, it is the nature of difference: two things that are related does not equal difference, and hence one needs to identify the precise conditions under which difference qua relation can be delineated. Despite your emphasis on the notion Larval Subjects, you fail to give it any meaning, which, for a realist, is tantamount to metaphysics.
Second:”Second, let’s return to the original example of red spots and measles. Tuffini remarks that red spots indicate measles, and that measles are themselves unobservable. Presumably then, Tuffini who makes lame arguments like “you’re just defining things away” is wondering how we know that red spots are linked to measles”
No. My point was very simple. The difference (red spots) is a symptom. But symptoms are neither causes nor coextensive with an underlying cause. Your speak of difference as a symptom. And so do not do any of the real metaphysical work. Hence why I said your epistemology/ontology distinction is problematic.
Third: I claimed you define things away instead of dealing with them in order to point out that introducing new concepts simply masks the problem. Honestly, what’s the difference between an endo- and exo-structures and instrinsic and extrinsic properties? You constantly rehearse the “ontology, not epistemology” but then you define these terms in a way that no other person (not even Harman I think), would accept. That is where my charge of defining problems away came from.
Finally ” Now as I have argued elsewhere on this blog, if Tuffini is really serious in arguing that observers constitute differences (why do I get the sense that Tuffini might be Mitsu?), he is going to find himself in all sorts of trouble. Why? Because he will necessarily be required to either argue that observers constitute themselves by observing themselves, which is absurd (i.e., we must reflexively apply Tuffini’s thesis to observers themselves), or we must posit a transcendental subject or ego outside of being that constitutes the rest of the world ex nihilo. Neither of these options is particularly attractive or promising.”
I never argued this. And I certainly never poinded the table once. If anything, you, Larval Subbjects, seem to pound the furniture a great deal: Ontology –Pound! — Difference — Pound! Pound! Pound! The fact remains, if difference is a dispositional (and I would be happy if you simply explained why it is not), then differences include some observational position. This is not like a Kantian claim that the mind constitutes its objects. It is simply to say that ‘difference’ only obtains as an n-ary relation n which an observer must be present as part of the conditions governing the expression of a given ontological property. There is nothing epistemological about that.
Suffice it to say, no one need respond to this. I simply do not enjoy seeing my views, unintentionally of course, being misrepresented.
September 21, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Tuffini,
I believe that it is you that are misrepresenting my position. Nowhere have I claimed that difference is a symptom, yet you keep claiming that I have. You quite miss my point about red spots. The point is that there is a real interaction that takes place between an observer and red spots. The issue of whether these red spots relate to measles is beside the point. You also mutilate my distinction between endo-relations and exo-relations. The distinction is not a distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic properties as you suggest. If you had been following my blog, you would know this. An exo-relation is a relation between objects. Endo-relations pertain to objects treated in isolation from other objects. Moreover, if you had been following discussions, you would know that I undermine the whole distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic properties or primary and secondary properties. Finally, it seems to me that if you don’t believe Harman draws a distinction between ontology and epistemology, then you are unfamiliar with Harman’s work. Harman’s whole critique of philosophies of access revolves around objecting to the thesis that questions of ontology must be posed in terms of questions of access to beings. In other words, he’s rejecting the primacy of epistemology as first philosophy. In situating the question of being in terms of observation you are pitching it in terms of epistemology. There’s no other way of seeing it. And yes, I do take great offense to the suggestion that I simply “define problems away”. There are hundreds of pages on this blog where you can examine the arguments for yourself.
Are you Mitsu? You’ve suddenly appeared on my blog out of nowhere and your arguments are almost identical to his.
July 10, 2010 at 9:30 am
[…] always had some misgivings about the way Levi uses the term ‘difference’ (see here and here), but I can just about make sense of the three different ways he thinks information […]