In response to a recent post, Paul Bains raises a number of questions that I believe are worth responding to as they often come up in relation to object-oriented ontology. Paul writes,
Trees = ‘big’ multicellular perennial green plants (which obviously lack semovience/self-movement).
So, at the risk of the deadly repetition here’s the thing:
The class of nonhuman natural objects is not as simple as we might think – e.g. we think it includes ‘trees’ and honycombs rather than ‘periodic oscillations’ (Sonigo) where these apparent entities are subjective categories.
In a previous post LS refers to something like the non-epiphenomenal level of complexity of the organic….
I’m no physicist but I suspect some of them might demur.There might be many smaller objects but not some many ‘classical’ ones.
Now this is likely to be dismissed as some kind of valorizing of the sub-atomic – but within the domain of ‘natural non-human objects’ the sub-atomic might be the real thing.
Of I would never actually say that – just curious as to how those non-anthropocentric ‘tree-believers’ really, really, believe in trees – The same way they believe in ‘neutrinos’ or ‘black holes’…or God.
Altho there might (for Whitehead?) be a god without any trees.
I really cannot say anything about Sonigo as I know nothing of his work.
With respect to Paul’s comment here, there are two particularly relevant claims advanced by object-oriented ontology. The first of these claims is mereological or about part/whole relations. For the object-oriented ontologists, objects contains other objects in much the same way that Russian dolls contain other dolls. The point that a rock contains atoms, electrons, and other particles besides, does not undermine the thesis that the rock itself is an object, nor does it make the rock less real than the particles it contains. While it is indeed true that the rock cannot exist without these particles, the pattern or structure or system that characterizes the rock is nonetheless what characterizes the rock as a distinct object. Here it is worthwhile to think of Zubiri’s characterization of existents or objects as “systems of notes” in his book On Essence.
read on!
This brings me to the second point, which, I believe, is one of the stranger and more provocative claims of object-oriented ontology. All objects are independent of one another. This is where the mereological thesis gets really strange. The particles that the rock contains are themselves independent objects and the rock itself an object independent of the particles that it contains. Thus, while the rock cannot exist without these particles, the rockness of the rock is nonetheless independent of the particles that contain it. Since Paul is familiar with dynamic systems theory and autopoietic theory I suspect he’ll recognize that the logic at work here is similar to that of how the environment/system distinction functions for autopoietic systems. As Maturana and Varela argue, for example, atoms belong to the environment of cells. While cells certainly cannot exist without atoms, atoms do not compose the systematicity of cells.
There are all sorts of good reasons we can evoke for this odd mereological thesis about the object-independence of objects contained in other objects and the object that contains these objects. Thus, for example, the cells that compose a body are constantly dying and new cells are constantly being produced. Nonetheless the body that contains these cells persists. In the case of the rock above, all sorts of atomic events are taking place among its particles where electrons are jumping from state to state and being exchanged with electrons in other atoms, but the pattern of the rock persists. Similarly, the United States, an object, contains all sorts of other objects like persons, trains, trees, and so on, yet these objects are both independent of the United States and the United States persists with the coming-to-be and passing-away of these other objects.
In this connection, I see no reason to demure to the quantum physicist, though I certainly acknowledge the reality of the objects she investigates. The reason for this is simple: There is no reason to grant the smallest as having the most reality or as being true reality simply because it is a condition for other entities. Entities at different levels of scale have emergent properties distinct from the properties of objects at lower level of scale. In the past I have called these emergent properties “logoi” to capture the distinct “logic” or behaviors of these different patterned relations.
In my last post I argued that object-oriented ontologies tend to advocate an anti-realist epistemology while nonetheless advocating a realist ontology. It is worthwhile to rehearse and expand upon this thesis a bit in response to Paul’s comment above. Anti-realist epistemology actually flows directly from the basic claims of object-oriented ontology and one of its central claims regarding the being of objects. In my experience, this basic and central claim is the most ignored and overlooked claim in all discussions of object-oriented ontology.
In Harman’s ontology, this claim is the claim that all objects withdraw from one another such that no two objects ever directly encounter one another. In short, Harman’s move is to take Kant’s thesis about the mind’s relationship to things-in-themselves and generalize it to all relations between objects. In other words, the inaccessibility of objects to mind is not, for Harman, unique to the human-world gap, but is a gap that exists between all objects. Within the framework of my ontology, onticology, I make a similar point using the language of translation or interpretation. As Latour puts it in Irreductions,
What those who use hermeneutics, exegesis, or semiotics say of texts can be said of all [relations among forces]. For a long time it has been agreed that the relationship between one text and another is always a matter for interpretation. Why not accept that this is also true between so-called texts and so-called objects, and even between so-called objects themselves? (modified, The Pasteurization of France, 166)
In my last post I characterized the core idea of anti-realist epistemologies in terms of the concept of black boxes. Where a naive realist epistemology holds that the mind contains a copy of objects as they are in-themselves out there in the world, the anti-realist epistemologist points out that the world presents the mind with inputs that pass through a black box with a particular programming, structure, or software that produces an output that differs from the input. In Kant’s epistemology, the output is called “phenomena” while the input is the “thing-in-itself”. The black box in Kant contains the a priori categories of the understanding and the two forms of intuition, time and space. The key point not to be missed is that knowledge, for Kant, falls not on the side of inputs, but on the side of outputs. What we know is not what the inputs are like, but rather the outputs or phenomena that result from going through the factory of our black box. Arguments among anti-realist epistemologists thus consist in debates about what the black box contains. You get advocates of Kant’s model, you get Derrideans that argue that the black box contains traces and a play of differance, you get Foucaultians arguing that the black box is structured through power, and so on.
Apart from the thesis that the world is composed of objects– a thesis common to Harman, myself, Whitehead, and Latour –this anti-realist thesis about black boxes is at the heart of all genuinely object-oriented ontologies. Where object-oriented ontologies differ from anti-realist epistemologies is that where anti-realist epistemologies sees this input/output structure as unique to the human-world gap, object-oriented ontologies hold that this input/output relation is true of any and all relations between objects. The relation between a leaf and photons of sunlight is not structurally different than the relationship between humans and objects. Just as humans translate the world around them through their various black boxes, the leaf translates photons of sunlight, turning them into complex sugars.
Now one of the criticisms that commonly emerges in response to object-oriented ontology is the critical question of why claims such as these are not dogmatic. What is it that authorizes these claims? Here my response to this challenge is not to adopt the hat of realist epistemology and make the case that we can represent the black boxes of other objects besides humans, but to show that arguments based on human black boxes are themselves speculative. First, the very fact that we have a debate as to what human black boxes contain (categories and forms of intuition, difference, power, etc), shows that we have no direct access to our own black boxes, but rather only arrive at claims about the black boxes presiding over the production of our outputs through indirect inferences. The sadly departed Levi-Strauss will claim that our black boxes contain structures of mind, Lacan will claim they contain the symbolic, Derrida the trace and differance, Foucault structures of power and discourse, Kant a priori categories and forms of intuition, and so on. The key point not to be missed is that our own black boxes are every bit as “withdrawn” as objects themselves. Second, by way of analogy we can make the point that speculation about what our black boxes contain are, as speculations, deeply prone to error. Take the example of computer black boxes. If I examine the output of a computer alone I might be led to make all sorts of erroneous influences. For example, when I notice that a blog contains italic and bold faced fonts I might be led to think there is a category in the programming that produces this output. However, the actual computer code that produces italics shares very little resemblance to a category or the font. The point here is that we can’t hit on accurate inferences about what black boxes contain, but that these black boxes are themselves objects of speculation and indirect inference that are not immanently or immediately accessible.
So what is my argument here? My argument is that all things being equal, if we are speculating about our black boxes, if our claims about our black boxes are not “critical” claims but speculative claims, then there is no reason not to open the door to a generalized speculation that allows us to freely hypothesize about objects independent of humans and how their black boxes function. Notice the strategy of argument here. My move is not to argue, contra the last 200+ years of sophisticated anti-realist epistemology that somehow we have a mysterious immediate access to objects, but rather to show how the anti-realist position contains a speculative core at the heart of its thought. As a result of this super-ninja, surprise judo move that uses the force of my critics own arguments against his onslaught, I thus arrive not at a transcendental idealism but at a transcendental realism. In other words, the question becomes “under what conditions can such-and-such a type of difference be produced?” This conditions are not mind dependent, but instead are attributed to the objects themselves.
Clearly the question arises of what knowledge is within the framework of an object-oriented ontology. Insofar as object-oriented ontology holds that all objects “withdraw” from one another (Harman) or that all objects “interpret” one another (Levi, Latour), or that all objects are black boxes with respect to one another, it follows that knowledge cannot be a representation of objects. Why? Because you cannot represent an object whose inputs disappear behind their outputs. My hypothesis at this point is that knowledge consists in know-how with respect to producing differences. To know is not to represent an object but rather to have know-how as to evoking differences within various objects under particular conditions. To know an object is to know the differences it is capable of producing under specific conditions.
Larval Subjects . 
November 5, 2009 at 1:09 pm
This is one of the clearest descriptions of the move from transcendental idealism to transcendental realism I have seen.
One question about objects and their mereological relations:
I can see how this works for atoms, rocks, animals, even countries or economies. For some objects, though, I find it much harder to understand. For instance
– Numbers, equations, etc. Mathematical objects, in other words. What is the mereological relation between, say, circular shapes in nature and the number pi?
– Space and time. If space and time are objects (as surely they must be, since they produce all sorts of differences) then what are their mereological relations?
– Logical laws. If, as seems prima facie plausible, nature (above the quantum level, at least) is non-contradictory, what mereological relation does this imply between physical objects and the law of non-contradiction?
– Philosophical principles and basic concepts. Being, for instance. (Plato’s “The Sophist” is good on this) Or the principles you have invoked here on this blog.
November 5, 2009 at 5:26 pm
Levi,
I’m afraid that unlike inregard I don’t find the movement to transcendental realism all that lucid. Maybe I’m missing something obvious (and this is, of course, the nature of ninja-like moves), but I don’t see how discrediting your critic opens up any positive content for your own position. If someone (me, for example) says that much of what you say sounds arbitrary and dogmatic, and then you retort that my position is no less dogmatic, even if I agree with you that I’m worse than the pope himself, it doesn’t at all follow that you are no longer dogmatic. In fact the opposite conclusion seems more likely: you are dogmatic, and you’re OK with that. Is this your argument? Dogmatism is inescapable so quit worrying about it?
Joe
November 5, 2009 at 5:33 pm
Hey Levi,
I have a real quick question about the mereology of your objects. If, like you say, that there are parts independent of their wholes and vice versa, can an outside object ever relate to an inner or part-object without also relating to the larger or whole-object?
In other words, are all objects open, closed, or restricted (i.e., closed to a degree)?
November 5, 2009 at 5:46 pm
Joe,
My argument is basically that there’s no compelling or defensible reason to attribute the transcendental to mind or the human and that the critical project collapses when measured against its own criteria. The only reason to privilege the attribution to mind is if we’re implicitly advocating the thesis that we have special access to the mechanisms of our own mind. But that is not, in my view, a defensible hypothesis. As a consequent, it becomes a form of anti-realist dogmatism to grant special privilege to mind, language, or society in its arguments, while excluding transcendental arguments with respect to things. I think there’s a little sleight of hand at work in your comment here because you move from the thesis that speculative is equivalent to arbitrary. Here we have all sorts of questions about transcendental methodology. Claims about conditions cannot simply be arbitrary or pulled out of thin air. They have to square with phenomena or outputs. Here we have the question of what entitles us to these indirect inferences. However arguments to the effect that they are “dogmatic and arbitrary” are, in my opinion, lazy and not really arguments at all. No, in order to overturn a proposal for such and such a mechanism belonging to the field of the transcendental you need to find counter-examples at the level of the phenomenal or the output that the proposed mechanisms can’t handle or account for. At this point, revision is called for. Think, for example, of how Husserl develops an implicit critique of Kant in his works on temporality. Husserl doesn’t take the lazy route of saying that Kant’s forms of intuition are arbitrary, but rather attempts to show how they fail to square with our lived experience of time. For the transcendental realist a similar methodology would be required. Your point about the pope, I think, only holds if there is a workable alternative that would allow us to escape from the necessity of responsible speculation. There has been, so far, only one workable alternative: the Cartesian/Husserlian alternative of an immanent and immediate relationship to the contents of consciousness. However, that alternative has failed. Therefore we are left with either skepticism or responsible speculation that attempts to infer real conditions that square with the world.
November 5, 2009 at 5:50 pm
Nate,
I don’t think so. A really basic human-based example would be an American citizen abroad. All sorts of other persons and objects relate to that citizen without relating to the United States. Similar examples could be made with respect to ecosystems and the critters that an ecosystem contains or galaxies and the objects that a galaxy contains. From the standpoint of social and political thought I believe this weird mereological point is of crucial importance as often it is argued that parts of a social system are nothing but the manner in which they are constituted by that system (Althusser, Foucault, for example). This then leads to a rather pessimistic form of political theory as it’s believed that agency is impossible as subjects are just props of a structure, not genuine agents.
November 5, 2009 at 5:59 pm
Nate,
Just to follow up on my last point, one might suggest that in relating to the American citizen the plate at the cafe in Paris is relating to the United States. However, the point here is that objects must have channels to be able to communicate or interact with one another. Somewhere or other– or maybe it’s Harman’s example –Latour talks about radio signals being all about him, but nonetheless he has no relation to these radio signals as he has no channels through which he could receive them. The case is similar with all objects. Objects have very specific channels of communication. This is one reason that OOO rejects the thesis that everything is related to everything else. No, in order for there to be a relation between objects there has to be a structure of receptivity in the object such that the one object can receive signals from another object. Hopefully that makes some sense.
November 5, 2009 at 6:44 pm
Levi,
I wonder if you misunderstood me? My question was certainly not a prolegomena to a lazy critique of your ontology. I was asking for a clarification of your post.
As I understood the last half of your post, you were trying to show “why claims such as these are not dogmatic.” The question itself and the word ‘dogmatic’ were yours, and my addition of ‘arbitrary’ was meant to highlight one of the many problems with dogmatic statements, viz. that they are arbitrary or are derived in some way from an arbitrary principle.
So I wasn’t (yet) trying to defend a critical approach (which is why I was willing for now to accept your charge of dogmatism and liken myself to his highness, the pope). I was merely pointing out that you haven’t answered your own question, a question which I find very interesting: “what is it that authorizes these claims?”
My point was that by discrediting one point of view (the critical) you have in no way justified your own, shown that your principles are “authorized,” and that they are not, ultimately, “dogmatic.” Even in your reply to me just now I hear the same response: the alternative is no longer viable. Fine. This evaluation says nothing about the critical or dogmatic nature of your own approach.
So I repeat my question: without worrying about the fate of critical philosophy, are you saying that dogmatism is inescapable so we should just quit worrying about it? Or is there something your ninjutsu has concealed from me yet again?
Joe
November 5, 2009 at 7:56 pm
Thanks Levi,
Although I don’t understand your example with the American tourist, the radio wave one is better.
So correct if I’m wrong, but ultimately what you are saying is that all objects must be restrictive mereologically. That is, they must be open (or receptive) to some objects, but this doesn’t mean that they are open or receptive to ALL objects – closing them off, to a degree. So, a dog can interact with a leaf as a whole, but only sunlight can interact with the leaf on a “parts” level, correct?
November 5, 2009 at 10:13 pm
Joe,
I think what I’m objecting to is the use of the term dogmatic at all in this context. The term “dogmatic” is, as I see it, a philosopheme that derives its meaning diacritcally with reference to the term “critical”. If we continue to use the term “dogmatism” we are continuing to allow critical philosophy to hegemonize or define how these questions are posed. If the framework of the critical project is itself overturned, then it follows that the binary critical/dogmatic is itself overturned. In short, we have to abandon that way of talking all together as it is no longer operative. To ask “are you saying dogmatism is inescapable so we should just quit worrying about it” is to implicitly suggest that there’s an alternative position, critical philosophy, that one could adopt. But if critical philosophy itself collapses the question no longer makes sense. Hopefully that’s a little clearer.
You write:
Here I think you misunderstand the nature of my argument somewhat. You would indeed be right that I am committing a fallacy by inferring a positive from a negation (i.e., inferring that a ball must be white because it is not black) were I doing what you suggest above. Pointing out that critical philosophy is itself speculative is not equivalent to grounding or demonstrating my own position. To ground or demonstrate my own position requires independent arguments which, I believe, I’ve been providing throughout the development of onticology. Rather, showing that anti-realism is grounded on a speculative core merely clears away the current discursive field of philosophy, deflating the privilege of that philosophical approach through revealing the shakiness of its foundationalist claims.
November 5, 2009 at 10:25 pm
Hi Nate,
In certain respects I think the example of the American citizen abroad is the better example because here you have an object that is a part of the United States interacting with other objects independent of the United States without these other objects interacting with the United States. When I engage with my friend Lars upon visiting London, Lars is interacting with me, not the United States. Nonetheless I remain a part of the United States.
I’m a little nervous about your contrast between parts and wholes in your contrast between how a dog relates to a leaf and how sunlight relates to a leaf. Within the framework of OOO no object ever relates to the whole of another object. Rather, any object only ever relates to another object selectively and in a piecemeal fashion. When a photon of light interacts with a leaf cell it is relating to a particular object, the leaf cell. When a dog relates to a leaf it is relating to another object, a leaf. A photosynthetic cell and a leaf are two distinct objects, but both are grasped selectively. As Harman likes to put it, objects only ever grasp one another at the level of their “qualities”, and this grasping at the level of qualities is always selective (i.e., the object grasping the other object only grasps it under partial aspects). When, for example, the dog eats the leaf, the dog is reducing the leaf in a very specific way, filtering out all sorts of differences that make up the internal composition of the leaf, reducing it to it palative and nutritive qualities. The other qualities of the leaf are withdrawn. This is one reason that the language of “withdrawal” is appropriate in discussing these interobject relations.
Thus, while I agree with your thesis that relations between objects are restrictive, I think the really important ontological point is that the “parts” of an object and the “whole” of an object are distinct objects and should be discussed as such. The parts do not make the whole.
November 5, 2009 at 11:01 pm
Levi,
But when you state:
“Thus, while I agree with your thesis that relations between objects are restrictive, I think the really important ontological point is that the “parts” of an object and the “whole” of an object are distinct objects and should be discussed as such. The parts do not make the whole.”
How is it, then, that we can discuss endo- and exo-relation split? It wouldn’t be a split but a separate entity all together, right?
November 5, 2009 at 11:14 pm
NrG,
I don’t understand the question. Endo-relations are not the “parts” of an object or the other objects that an object contain, but rather the structure or systematicity of an object. Can you expand on your point a bit? There’s no mystery in the idea of objects relating to one another selectively. Think about two isosceles triangles touching one another at their tips.
November 5, 2009 at 11:52 pm
Yeah, sorry about that. I’m a little “medicine-y head” because of my allergies.
I guess my question is related to your notion of the “split” object and your above claim that “Within the framework of OOO no object ever relates to the whole of another object.” I understand that the exo-relations and endo-relations are different than parts and wholes, but to some degree they speak to the same problem I am having.
But maybe I should first ask you, what do you consider to be a “whole” object? Is a whole even possible in OOO? Or, is it all parts?
November 6, 2009 at 12:58 am
Nate,
I believe I have an answer to this but I’m going to reserve it for the moment. Before giving it, perhaps you could explain what leads you to the possible conclusion that objects cannot be wholes within OOO. My answer, I think, is surprising. I get the sense that you’re making certain assumptions about what endo-relations are that my version of OOO doesn’t advocate. Additionally, “split” doesn’t mean “incompleteness”. Rather because objects always translate one another they never encounter another object as it is. If the thesis that objects translate one another isn’t constantly kept in mind all these points are very difficult to track. One object cannot relate to the whole of another object precisely because objects translate each other. However, this point is distinct from the question of what the whole or proper being of an object is.
Two additional questions:
1) When you think of objects and these mereological relations, what image do you have in your mind? The prototypes we use for thinking about abstract concepts can make a huge difference in how we think about abstract concepts. Do you think of something built up like the castle my daughter built with her wooden blocks yesterday? Or do you think of something closer to a tornado or a hurricane, the processes of a cell metabolizing itself and producing itself, or the pulsations of an atom puffing in and out of existence?
2) When you think of the relationship between objects and their properties or qualities, do you think of a relation like a painted cup where the paint can be chipped away, such that qualities are encrustations on a substance?
November 6, 2009 at 2:12 am
Levi,
Perhaps a lot of my questions might become clearer with the help of this post:
http://un-cannyontology.blogspot.com/2009/10/3-types-of-relationships-between.html
As for your other questions:
1)Does it matter what image I have in mind? Aren’t all objects ontologically the same? And as such, shouldn’t all objects be mereologically the same?
2)I don’t know if I’ve ever addressed an object’s qualities. When an object is encountered as a whole, I don’t have in mind that we encounter only some aspect or quality put forth by the object, but instead feel that the object as a whole is the result of the work or relations of the parts. I too hold to the notion that no relation can be reduced to a single aspect or quality, but that the whole must be seen as multiple. In other words, all of the organs, systems, and particles/cells in my body are working together to allow me to encounter this computer as a whole. We can think of the whole in terms of a set, A={body} which contains all sorts of parts A={heart, lungs, spleen, liver, small intestine, large intestine, prostate, etc}. These parts aren’t “qualities” per se, but are members of the larger set.
November 6, 2009 at 2:26 am
Hey Levi,
Please don’t read my response to question 1 as being snappy or mean. I meant only to point out that I wasn’t sure, ontologically, if there was a difference between any of those objects and since mereology (as I see it) is part of ontology, then there shouldn’t be a difference either. Thanks.
November 6, 2009 at 2:52 am
Nate,
I think it matters a great deal what examples we use when thinking about these issues. A transcendental account can’t be inferred simply by “looking” at the world around us as conditions disappear behind phenomena or manifestations. Consequently, the examples we use can be extremely misleading if we’re not careful about them. This comes out clearly in your example of organs, cells, etc., and most importantly in your reference to sets. All of these examples lead completely in the wrong direction when thinking about the being of an object. Talk of sets is a particularly damaging way of discussing these issues and does more to obscure than to clarify.
In my various discussions of objects I have continuously referred to pattern, structure, and system. These qualifications should be taken seriously. Within the framework of my ontology the proper being of an object is not material. The objectness of objects is its pattern, structure, or systematicity through time. The objectness of objects is closer to a ghost than a pile of blocks. After all, what is a ghost but the pattern of a person that persists independent of their “blocks”. In short, the proper being of an object is incorporeal. This is what I mean by endo-consistency and is the proper whole that constitutes an object. The objectness of an object is nothing that can be touched, grasped, seen through a microscope, and so on. It is nowhere to be found among the material parts of an object, but nonetheless pervades all these parts. When we talk about a system or pattern we’re talking about a system of relations or an organization that persists through time.
This is the reason that if examples are used it is better to think of hurricanes or tornadoes than blocks. The problem with blocks is that we end up confusing the blocks with the objectness of the object. The matter of a tornado is constantly changing. It is constantly pulling in dirt, dust, bits of hay, small pebbles, bits of wood, etc., and then kicking them back out into the world again. There is no constancy to the matter that makes up the tornado but the tornado persists. It is the pattern, not the matter, that makes the tornado what it is. This is its endo-consistency, not the matter.
So four points here:
First, when I claim that objects are more like ghosts than blocks, this is a dramatic metaphor designed to draw attention to the incorporeal structure or systematicity of objects. I am not making the absurd claim that patterns can exist independently of their material instantiations in the world, only that the matter is not the being of an object.
Second, although the endo-consistency of an object (its pattern) is a whole it is not a totality or a completeness. Wholes are open, which is to say that they can, within limits, change. Between the birth and death of an object that object can undergo all sorts of variations. The tornado can grow stronger and weaker while remaining that tornado. The important point is that it be conceived as a process or activity.
Third, the problem with talking about the endo-consistency of the body as consisting of things like lungs, livers, and cells is that it leads to thinking of these parts as fixed entities rather than as processes. A cell is not a thing that a body has but is an activity that is constantly producing itself across time. It’s like a tornado. It’s the pattern that’s important where the cell is concerned. Certain evolutionary idiosyncracies of our perceptual systems lead us to think of the world in terms of blocks (i.e., these cognitive structures generate highly inaccurate ontological intuitions). That said, I am not making the absurd claim that bodies don’t need lungs, spleens, hearts, nervous systems, etc., only that these don’t constitute the proper being of the body or, indeed, any of the parts of the body.
Fourth, Badiousian set theory is a neat tool, but objects simply cannot be thought as “multiples” or collections. This is the whole problem with Badiou. This problem is two-fold:
a) There are no ordering relations among elements in a set because sets are defined by their extension and each element is absolutely independent of the others. Thus, {a, b, c} is equivalent to {b, a, c}, and is also equivalent to {c, a, b} and {b, c, a}. By contrast, insofar as the endo-consistency of an object is its pattern or organization, this sort of extensionality is unacceptable for an ontology of objects. The ordering in time and space do matter for objects. Badiou’s use of category theory in his most recent work is a substantial advance over his set theoretical orientation because in categories ordering relations matter.
b) Set theory invites us to think in terms of fixed blocks rather than in terms of dynamic patterns or systems, thereby turning thought away from what is most crucial, in my view, about the objectness of objects.
Hopefully it will be clear why examples do matter. While it is certainly true that all objects are ontologically the same, the ontological truth of objects is not something given in intution or to the five senses. When we evoke examples we’re descending from the level of the concept to the level of intuition or sensibility. As I’ve suggested, we’re evolutionary wired in ways that are ontologically misleading. For example, we have a tendency to think that the solid and enduring is more real than a cloud. This is because our perceptual and cognitive systems are not evolved for the sake of ontological truth but for acting on and getting around in the world. For this reason we have to take the greatest care in using examples and be aware of our cognitive biases.
November 6, 2009 at 3:42 am
Hmmm..I like your last point, and I think you made your argument as to why examples matter. I am probably most at fault for mixing these up.
However, in point three you state: “A cell is not a thing that a body *has* but is an activity that is constantly producing itself across time.” [A point I would agree with.]
Yet earlier you make it very clear that: “For the object-oriented ontologists, objects *contain* other objects in much the same way that Russian dolls contain other dolls.”
My question (and perhaps a large part of my confusion) is that given our need to be “aware of our cognitive biases”, then how can we think of objects as both containing and NOT containing other objects without a movement away from wholes?
So for example, hot air and cold air meet to form the thunderstorm that is needed to form the funnel cloud that picks up debris into something which we call a tornado. The tornado is in no way a whole, since we can further blow this up and out to air pressure, wind speed and terrain – all of which affect the process that is the tornado. So, how can such a whole (a tornado) exist independently?
I don’t know… maybe I’m just not getting it.
November 6, 2009 at 4:10 am
Hi Nate,
I think the concept of endo-consistency answers your question. Endo-consistency is a set of ordered internal relations or an organization that defines an interiority or persistence through time. The term “independence” should not be read as being “without conditions” but rather as being non-reducible to other entities. In other words, what is independent or proper to the entity is the pattern or endo-consistency. The tornado certainly requires all the conditions you cite. Moreover, the tornado is responsive to the world around it. Nonetheless it is a pattern that has attained endo-consistency and that exists for a time. The “whole” is that immanent plane of relations that defines this endo-consistency. The matter and perturbations that the tornado “processes” are like temporary passengers that pass in and out of that endo-consistent system.
November 6, 2009 at 4:20 am
Hey Levi,
Okay, that makes much more sense. Thanks for spending the time clarifying this for me.
November 6, 2009 at 4:32 am
Another interesting post! You are a v.quick writer. Unless you’re using Voice recognition.
Will have to think about all this a teensy bit more deeply.
I am still uncertain about ‘rocks’ having an ‘organization’ indep. of its ‘structure’. Maturana liked the example of the toilet organization existing apart from its particular embodiment in wood or metal or plastic…but rocks…(the exposed surface of the earth’s crust).
I think it may be observers that lend such entities (rocks, chairs, metagalaxies) their supposed unitariness…no doubt we will know by xmas.
‘their discrete pieces of action, or quanta, glue together
through causal interaction without thereby supplying unitary existence to the
wholes.’ (Szirko.
Zubiri, Sentient Intelligence.
Btw, this work is close to the Argentine/German traditiono of neurobiology. Particularly in its understanding of persons (Crocco met Zubiri).
Translator’s intro, Sentient Intelligence.
Btw, the text is available at:
Click to access Sentientintelligence.pdf
November 8, 2009 at 5:55 am
In complete ignorance of OOO, I wrote a paper called “Continuously Recognizable Self-Perpetuation and Identity Paradoxes” in 2008 that argues for something like OOO only from a heuristic point of view (not metaphysical). One area that I overlooked but that you emphasized in this piece is the importance of media of communication. I’ll have to think about that some more.
Anyway, the piece is online at http://carlsensei.com/docs/essays/masters.pdf and I’d appreciate whatever feedback you can give.
November 9, 2009 at 2:08 pm
I really like this black box metaphor. As someone who’s worked in analysis you must have often considered the various trauma related misalignments in the block box that especially warp the relationship between inputs and outputs. I think of dogs who’ve been abused by a certain person, and who from then on avoid anyone representing that individual. We could just call this prejudice but I think the principles you’re working with refresh and add traction to the distinction. Anyway, it’s a very interdisciplinary box you got there.
Aestheically it’s also captivating, one things of the Camera Obscura as well as assemblages by Joseph Cornell, and of course all those still lives including skulls.
November 9, 2009 at 10:24 pm
LS writes:
‘the anti-realist epistemologist points out that the world presents the mind with inputs that pass through a black box with a particular programming, structure, or software that produces an output that differs from the input.’
Doesn’t Latour in ‘Circulating Reference’ claim that something is conserved (a set of relations) thru this process of translation; and ‘texts’ really do speak truthfully of the world… E.g. we really do get to know about the rainforest’s production of it’s soil. There is something that does not differ as it moves thru the ‘black box’.
Stengers (following Latour) takes up the concept of ‘black box’ in a slightly different way in ‘Power and Invention: situating science’…
I don’t have it handy… it’s to do with the way science constructs black boxes which can rarely be opened or questioned – but it can happen. I think this may be in the essay ‘Is psychoanalysis a science’ (the answer being ‘no’ – but Freud ‘could have’ constructed one). The analytic scene is not ‘a reliable witness.’
Just copying a littel Ruyer (from Neo-finalisme, difficult to buy or borrow), the book, and chapter ‘Absolute Domains et Liasons’, that Deleuze liked so much):
November 9, 2009 at 11:11 pm
Paul,
Yes absolutely with respect to your point about Latour. My epistemological position is very similar to the one Latour describes in his essay “Circulating Reference”. Nonetheless, I characterize Latour’s epistemology as “anti-realist” not because he rejects the existence of mind independent objects or claims that we cannot “know” the world, but because he emphasizes all the mediations and transformations things must undergo to reach the final product of “knowledge” in the journal article. Rather than pitching knowers as passive receivers of the world that mirror reality as it is, instead Latour emphasizes the activity of producing knowledge. I’m on board with all of this. I would, however, argue that it is not true that for Latour there is something that doesn’t differ as it moves through the black boxes. Rather, if I’ve interpreted Latour correctly there’s no “resemblance” or “one-to-one mirroring relation” between the finished journal article published in a professional journal and the Brazilian rain forest. Rather, there are a chain of relations or mediations between that article and the jungle that we can retrace should we wish to re-open the black box. These epistemological points, I believe, follow directly from Latour’s ontology. That is, because Latour argues that objects relate by translating one another it follows that objects never encounter one another as they are but only as they translate one another. Epistemology becomes a subset of Latour’s more general ontological thesis.
November 9, 2009 at 11:15 pm
Paul,
I forgot to ask, is your final remark about Levinas from you or Ruyer? It would be interesting had Ruyer said that. That was exactly the point I was trying to make with respect to Levinas– That he would have been on mark had he extended his points about alterity to fish, stars, quarks, trees, and so on. As I’ve tried to emphasize to Glen, I really have no preference as to what words we use to express the concept of objects. Within the framework of my ontology you could just as easily call objects machines, autopoietic systems, black boxes, actants, events, etc. While I do indeed hold that the world is ultimately composed of objects our common sense understanding of the objectness of objects doesn’t really hit the mark of what I have in mind when I talk about objects.
November 10, 2009 at 4:07 am
Well, it’s something that really deserves a close look (I have the essay here). I think it’s an important element of 000.
<blockquote.Reference…is our way of keeping something constant through a series of transformations….What a beautiful move, apparently sacrificing resemblance at each stage only to settle again on the same meaning, which remains intact thru sets of rapid transformations. The discovery of this strange and contradictory behaviour is worthy of the discovery of a forest able to create its own soil. In order to understand the constant that is maintained throughout these transformations… </blockquote. (Latour, Pandora's Hope, p.58.
The final remark is mine (keep forgetting the html code at the end of quotes – btw I do find quotes an interesting way of developing comments – the box is small – and it's good to include other voices – but it's all 'indirect speech' anyway – smile).
Ruyer would be happy if otherness was extended to all living beings + microphysical domains (his term) BUT not to aggregates.
In this he follows Leibniz (as Deleuze notes). Aggregates such as 'an army or a flock', or 'a heap of stones' do not possess a dominant monad and thus no unified mind.
'Even such an apparently unified object as a "block of marble" is not a true individual, but rather is "only like a pile of stones", that is, only exists as a unity in the mind of an observer, not in reality (because it is divisible and destructible)' (D.Skrbina, Panyschism as an underlying theme in western philosophy.)
"Throughout his work Ruyer has directed a double critique against mechanism and dynamism (Gestalt), which differs from the critique made by phenomenology." (WIP, 234, fn. 11).
Stengers, Black Boxes; or, Is psychoanalysis a science?;
However, just to complicate things Stengers argues that what would be more interesting would be learning to work together without the closing of black boxes (a science is all the more prestigious with the number of black boxes it has succeeded in closing).
She is partly following Latour in ‘Laboratory Life’ but with different nuances.