A great quote from Andrew Collier’s Critical Realism: An Introduction to Roy Bhaskar’s Philosophy:
If there is a single philosophical idea which reflects more closely than any other this commercial (rather than technological) spirit, it is the epistemic fallacy, which reduces nature to our cognitive appropriation of it, just as this spirit reduces it to our economic appropriation of it. This epistemic fallacy has dominated philosophy for just the same period. In offering us the chance to break decisively with this fallacy, and the consequent anthropocentric world-view…, Bhaskar’s realism makes possible… a much greater respect for the integrity of things independent of us. (149)
This point is far broader than talk about cognition. The same point could be made with respect to linguistic appropriation of the world, semiotic appropriation of the world, social appropriation of the world, historically informed appropriation of the world, etc. There is a common structure among all of these strains of thought. Collier’s point holds every bit as much for object-oriented philosophy, where the realism of object-oriented philosophy opens the way towards a much greater respect for the integrity of things independent of us.
Larval Subjects . 
December 4, 2009 at 7:29 pm
Absolutely.
And in that vein some readers of LS might be interested in the forthcoming ‘Realism for the 21c: a John Deely reader.’
I guess the challenge is knowing what ‘things’ do have ‘integrity’ – and would continue to ‘exist’ apart from being observed – LS’s ‘non-human naturally occuring objects).
For that one needs a theory of things (and maybe a theory that distinguishes things from objects of awareness).
As I’ve suggested previously things like ‘sand-dunes’ or Leibniz’a aggregates (a ‘flock’, ‘a heap of stones’ may have no ‘integrity’ – to put it bluntly sand-dunes are very human things (and I used to live on one – the Perth coastline IS a sand-dune for us). Raymond Ruyer continues this Leibnizian tradition with his primary true forms (a form in-itself), like the brain in absolute survey in D/G’s WIP.
The integrity of many things (like Heidegger’s moon or a kilo of sugar) occur in an observer’s mental representations).
As you know I do talk about some of these questions in ‘Primacy of Semiosis: an ontology of relations.’ That was completed 9yrs ago in relative isolation.
Today I would emphasise the ontology of relations more than our access to things indep of us (which is the touchstone of ‘realism’ and an approach that Peirce was quite fond of). And apparently for Kant, impossible.