In my development of the ontology of objects within the framework of onticology I have tried to argue that objects are not their local manifestations or actualizations, but rather a virtual endo-relational structure composed of relations among attractors, singularities, powers, or generative mechanisms. It is this virtual dimension of the object that, in my view, constitutes the proper being of an object. This virtual dimension of the object, I argue, constitutes its substantiality. Consequently, it follows that no object ever directly encounters another objects, but rather objects only ever encounter one another as local manifestations of their virtual proper being. The proper being of the object, its virtual structure, is always in excess of any of its local manifestations.
This model of objects is proposed, in part, to account for the identity of an object throughout its variations. Objects continuously vary or change as their conditions change, yet there is something of the object that remains the same. But what is this something? Certainly it can’t be the local manifestations or actualizations of the object because those local manifestations change with shifting conditions or changes in exo-relations to other objects. It is this insight that leads many, I think, to overmine objects by reducing them to their relations to other objects. Yet as Harman has compellingly argued, this line of thought fails to provide the conditions for the possibility under which these variations are possible. As a consequence, it follows that the identity of an object cannot be something in the appearance (to the world, not to humans), local manifestation, or actualization of an object, but must reside in another dimension of the object. And because the object can undergo variations while remaining that object, it follows that the proper being of the object, its substantiality, must be something that does not manifest itself. It is there everywhere in the object, without ever becoming present in the world. It is the “principle” of the object, its “essence”, its “style of being”, without being something that we could ever find in the local manifestations of the object.
read on!
One way of fruitfully thinking of the endo-relational structure of an object is by analogy to the mathematical discipline of topology. Already I had been moving in the direction of conceiving objects in this way in Difference and Givenness (cf. especially pages 64 – 72, but the theme runs throughout the entire book). Unlike Euclidean geometry that treats of fixed figures that are thought of as distinct from one another (like the triangles depicted to the left above), topology thinks forms dynamically as undergoing continuous variations. As described by Wolfram Math World:
Topology is the mathematical study of the properties that are preserved through deformations, twistings, and stretchings of objects. Tearing, however, is not allowed. A circle is topologically equivalent to an ellipse (into which it can be deformed by stretching) and a sphere is equivalent to an ellipsoid. Similarly, the set of all possible positions of the hour hand of a clock is topologically equivalent to a circle (i.e., a one-dimensional closed curve with no intersections that can be embedded in two-dimensional space), the set of all possible positions of the hour and minute hands taken together is topologically equivalent to the surface of a torus (i.e., a two-dimensional a surface that can be embedded in three-dimensional space), and the set of all possible positions of the hour, minute, and second hands taken together are topologically equivalent to a three-dimensional object.
The definition of topology leads to the following mathematical joke (Renteln and Dundes 2005):
Q: What is a topologist? A: Someone who cannot distinguish between a doughnut and a coffee cup.
From the standpoint of Euclidean geometry the scalene, equilateral, isosceles, right, obtuse, and acute triangles are distinct entities. From the standpoint of topology, by contrast, these triangles are all the same structure because they can be transformed into one another through a variety of dynamic operations.
In my language, each of the triangles described by Euclidean geometry would be a local manifestation of this particular virtual structure. The structure preserving features across these variations would be the virtual endo-relational structure of the object as such. This clip thus gives a sense of how I think about the being of objects undergoing variation in their local manifestations:
The variations that these various figures undergo (the cone, tubes, mug, and torus) are local manifestations of the virtual object. The local manifestations change, but the virtual structure defined by a set of relations and singularities remains the same. The local manifestations are thus subsets of the proper being of the object that necessarily belong to the object. The singularities or attractors preserved across these variations constitute the endo-relational structure of the object. And, of course, the variations that structure can undergo are infinite in character which is why the proper being of any object never itself manifests itself or is “withdrawn” from any of its variations.
Now like all analogies, this analogy is imperfect. First, it deals with a particular sort of object, abstract objects, rather than individuals. OOO certainly has room for abstract objects like all possible variations of a triangle, but we would have to think of individuals like the tree outside the window of my study as having a topology as well. Second, topology only allows us to think variations in shape or spatial form. However, we need to imagine topological variations not only for spatial individuals like the bubble undergoing continuous variations as it floats through the air, but also of other qualities such as color. Take the rotating vase in the clip below:
Pay special attention to the band about the lip of the vase as it rotates. Notice how the color of each point on band surrounding the top of the vase changes color as it rotates. This is a sort of topology defined by an endo-relational structure and set of attractors pertaining to color. It would be a mistake to claim that the band about the lip of the vase is blue. No, the band is now silver, now blue. Any suggestion that the band is blue is an approximate statistical claim pertaining to averages and optimal conditions defined by an observer, not pertaining to the being of the vase itself. And how do these variations take place? In this case the color variations in the endo-relational topology of the vase are a consequence of its endo-relational structure and attractors entering into exo-relations with other objects (photons of light) that produce certain local manifestations as a consequence. One of the key things onticology seeks to investigate are how these variations are produced as a consequence of internal motions of the object and external relations among objects. Time for dinner.
Larval Subjects . 
February 25, 2010 at 10:21 am
This post is discussed in the comments here:
http://christopherkullenberg.se/?p=1389. Sorry for the swedish…
But one thing I would like your comment on is something i asked there. In both of your videos above, it is clear for me, as a human, where the borders of the object are. I recognize a vase when I see one, and in the topology video, the blue is the object and the white is outside the object. Ok, I got that, but this is very clean environments. But what about a dirty environment like this clip from a film by Svankmajer:
I have a very hard time saying somehting about objects here and how they retain their status as objects thoughout change. I can do a Latourian move here and say that we only have objects in the svankmajer video if I, as an actor, blackbox them in a more or less arbitrary way, but I’m guessing you’re not satisfied with that.
How would you solve this situation?
February 25, 2010 at 10:36 pm
You write, “In my development of the ontology of objects within the framework of onticology I have tried to argue that objects are not their local manifestations or actualizations, but rather a virtual endo-relational structure composed of relations among attractors, singularities, powers, or generative mechanisms.”
Isn’t this argument essentially in line with Plato’s take on ‘ideal’ forms?
Are you saying that the being of actual objects is something ‘other’ than its composite actuality (actual in the sense of a causal event with specific properties)?
Wouldn’t abstracting the being of an object as something other (an attractor or idea, or virtual machine, or an Idea, or whatever) than its manifest specificity entail – at least logically – a duality that betrays your commitment to a ‘flat’ ontology?
February 26, 2010 at 12:28 am
Michael,
No, as the virtual dimension is strictly a part of the object, not something other than the object as in the case of Plato’s ideal forms.
February 26, 2010 at 3:29 am
“strictly a part of the object” how?
If objects have a “virtual dimension” then it follows that this dimensionality is a property of the object (as assemblage) that might be hidden from an empirical gaze, or at least is an aspect of the object that is ‘in addition to’ its manifest constitution. If not, why talk about it at all?
For example, an object like a sandwich is composed of meat and bread, and maybe some cheese and letuce, and therefore composed of the material elements that make up meat and bread and such. Isn’t it enough to list the kinds of objects that come together to make a sandwich, and their relationships in space-time, without reference to any sort of abstract attractor-dimension-aspect?
The appeal of attractors, in my interpretation, is in the way they act as metaphors, or statistical representations (models) of actual-manifest dynamical systems.
Arguing that attractors are ‘the being of objects’ seems to me to miss the point of such tools for thinking, and impose a technical – and therefore strictly human – idealization (cf. plato) on objects.
Perhaps i’m missing the way you deploy these concepts, and perhaps my discontent is more a result of a lingering philosophical resentment with what i believe to be Heidegger’s mythic faith in ‘being-as-such’, as opposed to the actual beingness of particular objects.
Regardless, and although i think dynamic systems thinking and the tools it engenders are of great use to think about objects, i don’t think its increases our understanding of the particularity and beingness of objects to add an extra virtual dimensionality.
Just my thoughts…
February 26, 2010 at 6:25 am
Michael,
Simply because objects can always do more than what they do do at any given point in time. What you’re proposing is actualism or the thesis that objects are identical to any of their given states at a particular point in time. It is this view that leads to all the epistemological problems of correlationism. This doesn’t entail that an actual state is less real than this virtual dimension, only that objects aren’t exhausted by their local manifestation. Absent this thesis we’re left with the conclusion of relationism or correlationism that objects are nothing more than how they present themselves to humans. Presumably you’ve cooked on occasion and have noticed that raw garlic and cooked garlic have different properties but nonetheless are still garlic. How do you account for that within the framework of your actualism?
February 26, 2010 at 12:46 pm
Cool stuff! Question: can a virtual object be destroyed? Take the vase for example, if it’s smashed to bits and pieces, is it just another local manifestation of its proper being? And if I take the pieces and ground them to a fine dust, sprinkling it all over town, some of the dust getting stuck in some wet cement becoming part of a new building, is it still the same proper being with a new local manifestation?
Cheers
February 26, 2010 at 6:21 pm
Levi,
From Wikipedia: “In contemporary analytic philosophy, actualism is a position on the ontological status of possible worlds that holds that everything that exists (i.e., everything there is) is actual. The denial of actualism is possibilism, the thesis that there are some entities that are merely possible: these entities exist (in the same way that ordinary objects around us do) but are not to be found in the actual world.”
I do think everything that exists is actual – but not all actual objects are manifest or material. But actuality in my thinking doesn’t close off possibility, but rather provides the context from which the possible might emerge. Actuality in my framework is an ecology of tangible and intangible objects, assemblages, flows, relations, instantiations, sentience and inertia – generated out of historical contingencies going back to the ‘big bang’. ‘The possible’, therefore, is not opposed to ‘the actual’, but in fact generated from the primordial potential of emergent differentiation. Difference, it seems to me, is an inherent property of reality.
So I guess my use of the term ‘actual’ is a but too spooky and idiosyncratic to attempt to plug what I am trying to get at into the philosophical tradition – as I don’t understand the history of the formal arguments involved here. I’m an anthropologist, not a philosopher.
But let me try to sketch out, however tentatively, what I am trying to say. In my ontology (as in yours, I believe) there are ‘actual objects’ that are nonetheless intangible, or that are merely semantic and symbolic, without material manifestation. But for me, objects such as ‘love’ (for example) are ‘actual’ objects because they exist for us in our languages and operate in relation to mental repertoires, and have ‘actual’ semantic efficacy in directing communicative exchanges and can ‘actually’ work towards orienting behaviors. But such objects are in-themselves symbolic or semantic in nature – they are ideas. And, in my opinion, attractors-as-objects are of this sort – they too are ideas. Therefore, if we try to argue that the essence of a particular being is its attractor, or a combination of attractors, we are attributing to the object an ‘ideal form’.
And it is only appropriate, in my framework, to attribute an ideal form to ideal objects, and specify the actual attributes of tangible objects (at least as far as possible within the boundary of human knowing).
Take a Lorenz attractor for example, in that it is an ‘actual’ object by virtue of our participation in an embodied and extended language game that has delineated it as such. But a Lorenz attractor is not an actual property of any particular object. Other objects can have properties that behave ‘like’ a Lorenz attractor, but mainly because attraction itself is a property in the world, and among particular objects.
Attractors are intangible mathematic models created by hominids (thus still actually existing) which can be used to theorize tangible dynamical systems. The fact that dynamical systems have particular properties that behave in ways that resemble attractors does not justify our theorization (or projection?) of an object’s essential being as something other than its manifest constitution (what you call its ‘local manifestation’).
Attributing some essentially ‘idealized’ and ephemeral aspect to an object seems to me to be somewhat removed from an attention to particular objects – and may be more ‘speculative’ than need be.
Perhaps, I would do well at this point to add that in my framework tangible objects do in fact have an ‘in-themselves’ beyond our translation of them through our senses and sensibilities. I am no correlationist. If all the humans in the world were obliterated there would still be ecosystems and rocks and birds and…
But, I also think that mathematics is itself a human-generated set of tools with which to translate our encounters with objects and do not necessarily reflect the particularity of objects in-themselves.
February 26, 2010 at 6:40 pm
And more to your points:
YOU: This doesn’t entail that an actual state is less real than this virtual dimension, only that objects aren’t exhausted by their local manifestation.
ME: What gives this virtual dimension its reality then? What makes this virtuality a dimension at all, if not its actual instantiation viz material substances (local manifestation)?
YOU: Absent this thesis we’re left with the conclusion of relationism or correlationism that objects are nothing more than how they present themselves to humans.
ME: I don’t think it’s a case of either/or Levi. It is true that we can only ever know objects through our nervous system and whatever extended tools (such as mathematics or telescopes) we have created for getting about with knowing, but it doesn’t follow that objects are “nothing more than” the translations which occur in our encounters with them.
Humans know objects in a particular way, but objects are not exhausted by how we know them because they are what they are in-themselves.
The fact that we have encounters at all speaks to the reality of objects (cf. Searle’s use of the ‘background’, or Merleau Ponty’s chiasm arguments) beyond however we choose to speculate about them. Knowing itself is a relational, or what I call “intimate”, activity which logically entails, or ‘speaks to’ reality-as-such. All objects are involved and embedded, including humans.
In short, there is a whole logical apparatus that can be constructed which doesn’t rely on the correlationist vs. non-correlationst dichotomy.
YOU: Presumably you’ve cooked on occasion and have noticed that raw garlic and cooked garlic have different properties but nonetheless are still garlic. How do you account for that within the framework of your actualism?
ME: Easily. The properties of garlic, as that which garlic consists of (from molecule to cellular arrangement), can be disassembled and distributed, more or less, by the process of cooking. The activity of cooking – as framed by the stove, the pan, the animal wielding the pan, the butter, the electricity that powers the house kitchen, etc. – is a ‘situation’ and process that reorganizes the object, the object-constituents and the object-relations in such a way that dissolves the object’s properties (in this case garlic) and reassembles them into another object, say chili for example.
I think Maximiliam’s comment alludes to this as well…
Two things I would add at this point, without getting too much into it:
First, most objects are simultaneously wholes and parts, or assemblages – or what Koestler called holons. And it is only the particular manifestation (or actuality) of any specific object-holon that differentiates it from other objects and assemblages. This conglomerated particularity or ‘endo-structure’ (which is an absolutely endearing term BTW) is what gives an object its objectivity, or its object-ness, in relation to other, historically contingent, non-linearly developed, objects and assemblages. The endo-structure and endo-relations of an object is its ‘actuality’ – and becomes manifest only in relation to the historical space-time ecology of other exo-structures.
Secondly, that which you label (and thus heuristically reify, or make concrete in your cognition and translation) as “garlic” pertains only to the specific actualization (local manifestation) of a particular assemblage-object at that specific time and place. And the label only appropriately pertains to that object as long as that object remains assembled in such a way that fits your definition of “a piece of garlic”. Such an object may very well remain assembled in such a way as to be recognizable by you as garlic, but it’s garlic-ness may also become distributed and taken up in other assemblages to be recognized by someone else as “chili”.
Objects in-themselves can be de-objected or re-objected, reorganized or become more or less disorderly, and assembled and disassembled in a variety of ways – augmenting or creating new objects entirely. It depends on the particular properties of the object in-themselves and the context in which they are existing at any given moment. Objects are what they are through their actualization, their instantiation – their ‘local manifestation’.
February 26, 2010 at 6:40 pm
Michael,
I am using the term “actualism” in the sense that Roy Bhaskar uses it as denoting the treatment of only manifest or given impressions or sensations as being real.
You write:
Note the passage I’ve boldfaced above. If you advocate that there are potentials in things, then you do not advocate everything is actual. I note that you’re treating the term “attractor” in terms of how it’s used in chaos theory and whatnot. “Attractor” is a specific technical term within my ontology, not a reference to these scientific disciplines, so the reference to attractors as mathematical models is just irrelevant here. To be sure, there’s some influence here, but the concept is not the same. What you call “potentials” I call “attractors” and hold that attractors are strictly a real part of objects. These attractors or potentials are in the object, and would be in the object regardless of whether they are modeled symbolically or in language.
Here I think it’s important to attend to how a philosopher uses a particular term, and not import meanings from elsewhere as you’re doing here with your references to Lorenz and whatnot. I’ve written quite extensively on just what I mean by “attractors” on this blog, so there’s no real excuse for suggesting that I am referring to mathematical models and symbols when I’ve never made such a suggestion or claim. You make the claim that everything is actual but then proceed to talk about “potential” and what is not manifest. In the philosophical tradition the actual and the potential are opposed to one another going all the way back to Aristotle. Within my framework the potential (attractors) are a part of objects, the actual is the manifestation of an object, but both the potential and the actual fall into the category of the real.
February 26, 2010 at 7:03 pm
This is my whole point:
When the object enters into new relations new properties manifest themselves. The concept of potential or attractor is designed to account for this. These new properties weren’t actual in the preceding state of the object, but are actualized by the new relations the object has entered into with other objects. They were potentials within the garlic.
I’m not familiar with Koestler or the concept of holons. Here, however, there is a deep disagreement between my ontological framework and the one you are proposing. Objects, in my view, are not individuated by their particular manifestation or their actuality because one and the same object can manifest or actualize itself in a variety of different ways. Objects are individuated by what they can do or their powers (attractors), not by any of their particular manifestations. To know an object is not to know an actual manifestation, but rather these powers.
No, rather to know or recognize a thing is to know or recognize a particular power of acting, not an actual state.
I’m curious as to whether you’re a regular reader of this blog or if you’re just jumping in on this post as these issues have been developed and outlined extensively here.
February 27, 2010 at 11:14 am
Levi,
Let me back all this up for a minute. I don’t want your first impression of me to be as someone who is attacking you. I fully admit that I don’t know enough about how you use all these concepts to suggest that you are using them inappropriately. I have only recently started to read your blog, and I’m trying to catch up and learn your way of thinking the best I can. Without qualification, I think the framework you are developing now could very well be the most interesting philosophy I have come across since encountered Deleuze some time ago. You write (and think) with a clarity and vibrancy far exceeding your more seasoned peers. And, although it may not seem so at this point, my own strain of thinking is much more compatible with OOO, and ‘onticology’ in particular, than you might suspect.
That said, I find that appeals to traditional or conventional usage of philosophical terms have little impact on me. I don’t really care how Aristotle set up his technical vocabulary, and I certainly don’t care how my thinking fits into formal academic categories. When I say that, for me, ‘the actual’ and ‘the possible’ are not opposed to each other I do so without any obligation to frame such a comment in relation to a dead Greek aristocrat.
For me, actual objects and their contingent (endo and exo) relations are the very condition for what we might call ‘the possible’. Possibility is the gap, or distance that exists between different historically configured, or embedded objects – objects whose future relationships might “possibly” become configured differently depending on what eventually and actually occurs.
Moreover, another way to think about it might be to assert that ‘the possible’ and ‘the actual’ are simply two human terms that refer to a simultaneous reality (more on this below). For example, it might be ‘possible’ to construct a android (tangible object) based upon the ‘actual’ design ideas (intangible objects) of an actual engineer. For me, the possibility of an android co-exists simultaneously with actuality of its conception.
In both ways of thinking ‘actuality’ and ‘possibility’ are not opposed in any significant way, but are perceived facets of the same emergent and differential reality.
In regards to Bhaskar, well, I would not set up questions about actual objects in terms of “manifest or given impressions or sensations”. That, to me, would be privileging human perception as the ground and authority of the real. As I have asserted previously, there are a certain ‘class’ of actual objects that are in-themselves no matter how we perceive them, or regardless of what sensations or impressions we may have in our encounters with them. Such objects are what I call “tangible” – and their tangibility exists irrespective of our encounters with them. We just happen to have already encountered them (or in some cases created them) and are now privy to aspects of their tangibility.
And yes, we translate, or cognize such objects according to our own constitution (embodiment), and form approximations of them based of the tools we have, find or make, but generating a perspective on tangible objects doesn’t refute the facts of their inherent tangibility.
Maybe I have gone too far already? This is your blog, not mine, and it’s doubtful that you are as interested in my ontology as I am in yours. My original point, however, is that, because I see no explanatory power in the positing of a ‘virtual dimension’ of attractors, I think that not specifying exactly what objects you are referring to (in their actuality – or local manifestation) in every case, positing the “true” or “essential” being of objects can lapse into over-speculation.
Further, for the sake of clarity, you write, “If you advocate that there are potentials in things, then you do not advocate everything is actual.”
That’s the crux: I do indeed advocate that every-thing is actual, if we take objects for what they are, either tangible or intangible, and avoid the epistemological problems associated with mistaking one kind of object for the other. But I also would never argue that “there are potentials in things”. Rather, potentiality is a feature of different objects and assemblages – each with varied properties – at play within the wider field of contingency. Objects don’t possess potential they occasion it.
You write, “What you call “potentials” I call “attractors” and hold that attractors are strictly a real part of objects. These attractors or potentials are in the object, and would be in the object regardless of whether they are modeled symbolically or in language.”
That’s just it, for me “potentials” are not “in” objects – objects and assemblages are actual and potential at the same time. Potentiality is a feature of the relationality among actual objects (both tangible and intangible) as they have emerged historically.
The nuance here is based on my perception and understanding of the ‘simultaneous interrelationality of all beings’. Einstein intuited it as “relativity”, Jaspers attempted to think about it in his use of the term “The Encompassing”, and ancient Buddhists pointed towards it with the notion of pratiya-samutpada.
But this is not to de-emphasize difference. Difference is another aspect of reality that cannot be explained away. But, for me, difference and simultaneity are not objects in their own right either. Nor are they opposed. Reality, for me – to put it in a hyper-condensed package – is the actualization of emergent and differential object-assemblages (as organized properties) dynamically involved and interacting within a field of simultaneity.
But, again, I go too far.
You also write, “I note that you’re treating the term “attractor” in terms of how it’s used in chaos theory and whatnot. “Attractor” is a specific technical term within my ontology, not a reference to these scientific disciplines, so the reference to attractors as mathematical models is just irrelevant here.”
Is it? Or are you evading the responsibility inherent in using such a term – with all its semantic baggage and heritage? Surely we can reconfigure any word or concept in such a way as to radically appropriate its meaning for deployment in a different context, and for our own purposes, but where does that lead us eventually? Doesn’t it lead us to creating pockets of mutually unintelligible, an internally justifying discourses? I for one think your writings and philosophy are much more valuable than that. You have important things to say and people should be able to make sense of it within a wider context.
But, of course, when I eventually get around to reading your blog in depth, as I most certainly will, I may become part of the in-crowd who can work at getting a clearer picture of what it is you are intending with such terms.
You write, “within my framework the potential (attractors) are a part of objects, the actual is the manifestation of an object, but both the potential and the actual fall into the category of the real.”
If the attractor is the essential being of the object and the actual is the manifestation of this more essential, non-manifest attractor, then you are talking about the existence of non-manifest (ideal?) entities (forms?). Perhaps we have a different understanding about what manifest means? For me, manifest means ‘actual’ with the added bonus of alluding to an object’s historical emergence. I’m beginning to think that by manifest you mean manifest to an observer who perceives? And I sincerely acknowledge that, as you suggest, my unfamiliarity with the way you use these terms adds to my confusion here.
You write, “When the object enters into new relations new properties manifest themselves. The concept of potential or attractor is designed to account for this. These new properties weren’t actual in the preceding state of the object, but are actualized by the new relations the object has entered into with other objects. They were potentials within the garlic.”
I don’t think that this is the case. I think that when an object enters into new relations with another object they then enter into a new assemblage that is itself and object – just as the two original objects are themselves assemblages. The cumulative effect of the two original objects properties interacting is that of re-ordering, or re-structuring the properties such that they combine to constitute the very being of the new assemblage, or object. And, more to my points above, it is the actuality, or the actual manifest properties of specific objects that act as catalysts for the particular behaviors and properties of the new object-assemblage. The properties of the new object were always already manifest – that is to say existing – in the actuality of the original objects – only now they combine to interact in a new way.
In my framing, nothing new became manifest in the interaction of the new object-assemblage – rather, the actualities of one object combined (became related) with the actualities of another object in such a way as to reconfigure the behavior, or expressive character of the new object’s assembled properties. And this is what I mean by actualization, or manifestation.
This is also why potentiality, in this sense, is no more “in” garlic than it is “in” the original objects discussed above. Because potentiality is not a tangible object, but rather a concept we use to signify the relational opportunities that exist between particular objects and assemblages, it is not something that can be found “in” something else. Again, potentiality is simply the term certain humans give to particular objects relating to each other in particular ways, in actual historical and ecological situations. Certain objects-assemblages relate to each other in such a way as to produce a confluence of properties that may have specific effects.
Next you write, “Objects, in my view, are not individuated by their particular manifestation or their actuality because one and the same object can manifest or actualize itself in a variety of different ways.”
Isn’t this what Plato also argued about ideal forms: “One and the same object can manifest or actualize itself in a variety of ways”? I honestly think I drastically misunderstand your notion of manifestation? By manifest do you mean ‘manifest to an observer’? If so isn’t this a case of the dreaded “correlationism”?
When I use the term manifest I mean actualized as a new assemblage, consisting of previously actualized objects, and so on – traceable (in theory) through all the non-linear, linear and multi-linear developments going all the way back to the big bang.
You write, “Objects are individuated by what they can do or their powers (attractors), not by any of their particular manifestations. To know an object is not to know an actual manifestation, but rather these powers.”
I don’t follow. What is the difference between a particular manifestation and an object’s powers?
If what you call an attractor is what an object ‘can do’, and what an object can do is its capacity, and its capacity is inherent in its endo-structure, and its endo-structure (for me) is its actuality, its particularity, then I would agree with you. If you grant that chain of equivalences then we fundamentally agree.
But I still doubt the usefulness of applying the term attractor to an object’s capacities. Doesn’t the term ‘properties’ entail everything you want to say about those features of objects which consist of its particular being-ness? Why add an extra term?
Thank you so much for taking the time to engage with me Levi. I know this latest response overflows, but trust that its abundance, however misguided or superfluous it may indeed be, is indicative of just how stimulating and worthwhile I find you work to be.
m-
February 27, 2010 at 12:12 pm
Hey up Levi,
The virtual dimension, in what sense can we say that it belongs to the object given that it is a product of differential relations and interactions? Does that not spoil the integrity of the ‘belong-ness’ to the object?
Will
February 27, 2010 at 5:14 pm
Michael,
Thank you for your lengthy response. At this point this discussion has diminishing returns for me because you seem insistent on pushing me into claims I’m not making (your claims about Platonism, reification, and language), despite my protestations to the contrary. If you’re interested you can find the grounds of my arguments for the assertion of generative mechanisms, potentials, or attractors in the two manifestos in the side-bar. These are arguments I’ve already made and see no point in repeating them here. Good luck with your future work.
February 27, 2010 at 5:16 pm
Will,
That is Deleuze’s ontology, not my own, so I’m not sure how the question is relevant here. I don’t advocate Deleuze’s characterization of the virtual.
March 2, 2010 at 12:29 am
Okay, to put it another way…
“Rather, the proper being of the object is not its performance or manifestation, but the generative mechanism that serves as the condition under which these performances or manifestations are possible…”
“…No one has ever perceived a single object, but we do perceive all sorts of effects of objects….”
So far so good…
“Fortunately we do occasionally manage to cognize objects through a sort of detective work that infers these generative mechanisms from their effects; without, for all this, ever exhausting the infinity of a single object.”
What I fail to grasp is how we do not introduce the unity of the “single object” through this retroactive cognition.
Alternatively, what lets us suppose that these “effects” can be “owned” by a single object?
Will
March 2, 2010 at 2:25 am
[…] Bhaskar Leave a Comment In response to my recent post on Endo-Relations and Topology, Will writes: “Rather, the proper being of the object is not its performance or manifestation, but the […]