I haven’t been paying much attention to the blogosphere lately as I’m busily writing The Democracy of Objects. At any rate, Graham has a nice post up describing his position vis a vis Meillassoux. Paul has a post up announcing the first issue of Speculations. Over at Critical Animal, Scu has a post up riffing on my earlier post on the new scholasticism. At the risk of having caused confusion, I hope I didn’t there give the impression that I don’t believe we should engage with other philosophers. The Democracy of Objects is replete with detailed discussions of Bhaskar, Badiou, DeLanda, Deleuze, Harman, Lacan, Zizek, Aristotle, Kant, Locke, Hume, Luhmann, Maturana, Varela, and a host of others. The point is not that we shouldn’t engage with other philosophers, but that we shouldn’t allow this to place us in the position where we find ourselves forcing these figures to say what we wish for them to say, and that we shouldn’t deny ourselves the authorization to freely assume responsibility for our own positions.
Over at Networkologies, Chris Vitale has a post up raising questions about OOO. Unfortunately I can’t respond to Vitale’s post in detail right now because I’m busily working away on The Democracy of Objects, but I did want to address one point. Vitale writes:
All of which brings us back to the issue of ‘who gets to decide’ if an object is a cane toad or a froggie. Obviously, the toad itself does not know whether or not it is one or the other, because it doesn’t have language. The ideas we call ‘froggie’ and ‘cane toad’ are in fact ‘objects’ that were invented by humans. A toad does not know if it is a cane or not. Yes, there is a real amphibian there in front of us, but humans decide whether or not the objects ‘cane toad’ or ‘froggie’ apply in a given case. They can be mistaken, obviously, and this is what Graham means when he discusses the lamp-post example in Prince of Networks. But what is the toad in itself, beyond the ideas we give of it?
A Whiteheadian approach would be that it’s all a matter of perspective (not that there is something there, but what type of something), and this is where Levi accuses me of the ‘epistemic fallacy’. I think the toad IS a cane toad for the expert, and a froggie for my nephew, and these are both equally ok from their points of reference. But is this the dreaded correlationism?! So it might seem at first. But in the post in question, I gave an additional example, namely, the perspective of my nephew, the expert, AND THAT OF AN ELECTRON, which Levi doesn’t mention when he goes at me in that last post for being correlationist.
But this addition is crucial. To an electron, the cane toad is most certainly NOT a froggie or cane toad, but simply a pattern of sub-atomic particles, some more dense or differently composed than others. That is, the electron has a perspective, and makes decisions, but this is NOT old-fashioned correlationism simply because Whitehead uses the terms ‘perspective’ and ‘decision’. Whitehead is trying to radically rework what these terms mean. This is why Whitehead uses the term ‘prehension’ rather than ‘perception,’ because he doesn’t think that entities like electrons are conscious, even though they do have a form of proto-perception, called ‘prehension.’ Its correlationism, but not quite, in fact, it really deconstructs the correlationism/non-correlationism binary as a false one. That is why at times I’ve referred to this as what Meillassoux has called ‘absolutizing the correlation’ – but with a multiplicitous twist. Just saying this is an example of the epistemic fallacy doesn’t really say much more than we disagree on the border between epistemology and ontology. My sense is it shifts the terrain of the question.
I get the sense that Chris is getting frustrated with my protestations that he’s not “getting it”, but Chris, you’re not getting it! Before explaining why, first let me say that the object-oriented ontologists more or less agree with Chris. We share the thesis that the nephew, the expert, and the electron grasp the frog differently. As Graham put it in his post yesterday,
Some critics have accused OOO of 1, naive realism. But that’s clearly not the case. Position 1 on Meillassoux’s Spectrum doesn’t just entail belief in a world outside human access. It also entails a correspondence theory of truth, since it holds that the world not only exists outside of us, but that we can know it.
But the core of Object-Oriented Ontology is that we can only translate it, not know it. And translation is a feature of Kant as much as of Latour and Whitehead (Shaviro will be pleased by that remark, and possibly Cogburn as well).
Here’s where I think Vitale is going wrong. If I am following his questions correctly, Vitale hears the word “realism” and immediately jumps to the conclusion of representationalism. Representationalism, crudely construed, is the thesis that we can represent the world as it is. Thus representationalism is both an epistemological thesis (a thesis about the nature of our knowledge) and a naive realism (the thesis that the world is like the manner in which we perceive it). This is the only way I can understand Vitale’s questions: Vitale seems to be working on the premise that OOO is a representational realism that argues that we can represent objects as they are. Working on this premise, he then points out that different persons (his nephew and the expert) and different objects (the electron) perceive the frog differently and that therefore OOO must be mistaken.
What Vitale is missing, I believe, are the two core claims of OOO: First, OOO claims that objects are radically withdrawn from one another. Insofar as objects are radically withdrawn from one another it is impossible to represent an object. In this respect, OOO entertains a polemical stance against naive realism to the same degree that it entertains a polemical stance against correlationism. OOO vigorously rejects the thesis that other objects are anything like they are perceived by us or any other object; and this for the precise reason that objects are withdrawn.
Second, and more importantly in this context, OOO argues that objects relate to one another through translation. Translation is a radically different relation than representation. If this is the case, then this is because there is no translation without transformation. Where representation is based on metaphors of mirroring where there is purported to be a resemblance between the reflection and the reflected, translation is a relation of difference. A translation is not a faithful representation of an original, but is rather a transformation of the original in terms of the system specific structure of the entity doing the translation. Here we get all the perspectivism that Vitale might like. Vitale’s nephew translates the frog in one way, a snake translates the frog in another way, the expert in yet another way, and the electron in yet another way. These are all ways in which one entity grasps another entity, the frog.
There are thus two claims that OOO rejects in this context. First, OOO rejects the correlationist claim that somehow there’s something special about the human-object relation and the way in which the mind “distorts” the thing-in-itself. OOO does not reject the thesis that the mind distorts the thing-in-itself in particular ways precisely because OOO endorses the thesis that all objects relate to other objects through translation. What OOO rejects is the thesis that this is somehow unique to humans. Rather, OOO holds this is true of all objects in their relation to other objects. In this respect, OOO can claim that all objects have a unique perspective on other objects.
Second, however, OOO rejects the thesis that objects can be dissolved in these perspectives or reduced to these perspectives. This is what OOO is objecting to in Vitale’s formulation. Vitale appears to be claiming that the object is the other object’s perspective on that object. If this is indeed what he’s claiming, he is rejecting the autonomous existence of the object being perceived. As such, he falls into Berkeleyian idealism which holds that esse est percipe or that being is perception. OOO is more than happy to endorse the thesis that different objects grasp other objects differently and therefore have perspectives on different objects. However, OOO also holds that each object is an autonomous withdrawn existence of its own and that no object can be reduced to another object’s perception of it. Were this the case we would fall into the game of hot potato Graham is talking about because there would be no instigator of these different perspectives in the first place, nor would there be perceivers because they too would be but effects of being perceived by other objects.
Larval Subjects . 
June 12, 2010 at 1:26 am
[…] a quick response to Levi’s last post. Oddly enough, I find that when I blog early in my day, it primes my brain for writing later in the […]
June 12, 2010 at 1:29 am
Hi Levi,
I’ve been thinking a lot about these issues in my own conversations, and it occurred to me to check in here to see what you’re writing and/or thinking about. Your post above is one of the clearest I’ve read of yours, yet, and it helps me to formulate some responses.
I want to first say that if “correlationism” means privileging human-object relations, or if it is asserting that objects can be dissolved as you put it into perspectives, then I certainly agree with your critique of those views. That is to say, if that’s what correlationism is, then I’m definitely not a correlationist. However, I think one can reject what you’re calling correlationism while coming up with an intermediate position that doesn’t go as far as OOO — that is, one can reject “naive correlationism” without adopting OOO, and I’d like to put forward a hypothesis along these lines.
From what I can tell, there are several independent assertions in speculative realism, and I’d like to list them out here as I understand them:
1) There is something beyond just what humans perceive, and we can talk about it (i.e., we can talk about a universe before humans existed, about patterns which might prevail in domains beyond the human realm, and so forth)
2) Perception involves some sort of translation from a reality which cannot be directly accessed into representations which inevitably distort that reality, by necessity
3*) Reality can be thought of as decomposed into objects which exist independently of how they are perceived, even if we can never directly access these objects because we can only perceive them via translation. A perceiver can be thought of as an object, and the perceived as an object, and the two objects are inaccessible to each other except via translation.
My view is that 1 and 2 are correct, but I have an alternate formulation of 3*) which maintains the validity of 1 and 2 while not going as far as 3*):
3+) Reality is an inaccessible ground of being which nevertheless somehow supports perceptual processes. The perceptual processes create an apparent decomposition of this ground into a perceiver and objects of perception, but the perceiver and the objects of perception are not entirely separable but are in some sense always already connected and within the primordial ground of being. The properties of the objects are not, however, solely due to the part of the perceptual process one can call the “perceiver” but do entail properties of the inaccessible ground which we cannot directly perceive; thus perception is not entirely arbitrary but is constrained in some way by properties of the ground which we can only indirectly infer from observation. A further property we can infer is that the ground allows for what are, in effect, overlapping perceptual processes, which can create the basis for intersubjective agreement and thus the appearance of a shared, somewhat stable, world — but this intersubjective agreement is always approximate, because the processes do not exactly coincide and because the processes themselves always involve a form of translation. The translation is not, however, between an object and another clearly defined object, but information translation within a perceptual process which involves perceivers and perceived connected via the perceptual process but not entirely separable into these parts.
It seems to me that 3+) gets you everything you seem to like about OOO, i.e., it decenters philosophy from the human perceiver, in that there is a ground posited which is beyond the human perceptual process, but it grants more of the critique of the correlationists, in that it accepts that ontology (dividing the world) is a feature of the perceptual process, not a preexisting feature of the world a priori. Since the perceptual process is based on properties of the inaccessible ground, it isn’t entirely arbitrary nor is it entirely human-centric.
I don’t necessarily require a response to my thoughts from you, but I felt like communicating this as it helps me in my own thinking, and what the hell, I figured it might be slightly interesting to you to read as well.
June 12, 2010 at 1:37 am
[…] a quick response to Levi’s last post. Oddly enough, I find that when I blog early in my day, it primes my brain for writing later in the […]
June 12, 2010 at 7:31 am
Thanks Levi, this is the clearest and most succinct account of OOO’s position on epistemology that I have come across.
June 12, 2010 at 9:41 am
Mitsu, thanks for the effort. I’ve critiqued that option a number of times in published and soon-to-be-published articles. It fits very well with a number of well-known recent trends (Deleuze, DeLanda, Simondon) but in my view it tries to get the best of both worlds and ends up with neither It ends up on the slippery slope to monism, and that’s why individuals are needed. I would call your proposed position an undermining of objects, or as a ground-floor materialism, to use the terms from two forthcoming articles.
But the real question is why you don’t want to go as far as individual objets. You never explain in your post what you have against them, but seem to take it for granted that one should wish to avoid them.
And this is something I’ve been fighting a lot: the basic, unstated assumption among the educated philosophy public that individual objects are an inherently naive/reactionary/depressingly parental sort of model, and that all the cutting-edge novelty is on the side of grounds deeper than all distinct individuals.
Keep in mind, we’re not offering crusty old substances and essences here. Anyone fighting that is fighting a battle already won.
June 12, 2010 at 2:47 pm
Hi drzamalek,
Thanks for your response. First of all, I would rather avoid the term “materialism” as I would rather use the more neutral term “ground”. In response to your question about why I don’t want to go so far as individual objects, I would reverse the question and ask, why bother going so far as individual objects? The idea that there is some sort of ground with properties or patterns which are in some sense independent of perception or perspective it seems to me gets you everything you need to have a speculative realism without the complication and bother of positing independent objects.
Again I want to make it clear that what I am objecting to is not so much the idea of independence as the idea of objects. The most fundamental objection (no pun intended) I would have is that there doesn’t seem to me to be any objective (again, no pun, etc.) criterion for establishing the boundary of an object, or a way of dividing the world into these supposed objects. An “object” it seems to me is by definition a separated out part of the world which has some kind of boundary defined in some way… but how do we define such a boundary, except in reference to a perceptual convention of some kind? I might consider this aggregate over here to be a “drum kit” as an object, but the amoeba certainly doesn’t interact with a drum kit as an object. In some sense, the whole idea that the world ought to be thought of in terms of objects brings us back to the human-centric fallacy which I understand SR to be critiquing in the first place.
Thinking of the world in terms of some sort of inaccessible ground, which one could imagine as a kind of continuous flux of some kind (though even that implies some metaphysical assumptions which I think are unwarranted a priori — nevertheless it’s a useful image), we don’t see objects there a pirori but they instead arise out of overlapping perceptual processes. Yet the apparent objects are not entirely relative to their appearances nor are they reducible to the ways in which they are perceived. To me, this intuitive picture captures what is going on far more sensibly than the “independent objects” picture.
I can easily imagine building, for example, a mathematical computer simulation in which there are data creatures which interact with a data bucket of numbers which comprises the “ground” of their world. You can design the creatures so that the way in which they interact with the bucket involves a sort of Fourier transform over the data at different frequencies, so that the same bucket of bits can be used to represent a simulated physical substrate in such a way that multiple superimposed worlds could be created. That is to say, because they’re using different frequencies to transform and store the state of their world, what appears to be an object to one set of data creatures would appear to be noise to another set of creatures. Alternately even data creatures that use the same frequency to store and retrieve the data might decompose the world very differently, in such a way as their natural ordering of the world into objects is only partially overlapping with the ontology of a different set of creatures, and so on. And even the *same* data creature might evolve their ontology as time went on so that without changing the world itself, the data creature might change the way it divides the world to help its survival and so forth.
It just seems far more elegant and general to say that objects and perceptual processes are coupled, objects are approximate, and objects and perceivers aren’t entirely separate but are really just two aspects of one overall perceptual process embedded in an independent ground of some sort. It covers all these cases without the need for any difficult intellectual contortions, and gives you a sound basis on which to ground talk of a kind of independent reality.
June 12, 2010 at 3:33 pm
“Representationalism, crudely construed, is the thesis that we can represent the world as it is. Thus representationalism is both an epistemological thesis (a thesis about the nature of our knowledge) and a naive realism (the thesis that the world is like the manner in which we perceive it). This is the only way I can understand Vitale’s questions: Vitale seems to be working on the premise that OOO is a representational realism that argues that we can represent objects as they are.”
Please help me out here. I am a big fan of OOO, but now I am a bit confused and a little bit worried. I am also very, very frustrated!
Primarily, I’m worried about your rejection of ‘representationalism.’ Maybe I just don’t understand your critique.
If we start saying things like: “We can never really hope to know the world as-it-exists,” then what is the point of doing science? We might as well just stop studying physics, chemistry, astronomy, biology, etc.
Seriously, I am looking for a reason to study these things.
If we can never hope to come to ‘represent’ the world as-it-exists, then what is the point of carefully measuring things–e.g. taking blood samples, core samples, urine samples, etc–and putting all of our observations and measurements into notebooks, etc? What a waste of time!
If we can never hope to understand and represent objects ‘as they are,’ then why should anyone study the (so-called) natural sciences? We might as well just stop pouring money into these silly, naive disciplines. That money would be better spent elsewhere.
I hope I am just misinterpreting your views; but, I thought OOO was different from social constructivism, which is also sceptical about science, and feminist critiques of science, which make it seem as if science is somehow evil, wrong, ‘patriarchal’ and ‘masculinist,’ etc.
Seriously, who wants to study something that is either ‘horribly, horribly evil’ or hopelessly naive?
If we can never hope to represent things as they REALLY exist, then what the hel* are we doing?
June 12, 2010 at 5:16 pm
[…] be far from what is meant by translation. (I began to realise where I was going wrong through the post here at Larval Subjects). Graham continues… In fact, it tends to imply the more […]
June 12, 2010 at 6:55 pm
[…] under Epistemology, Object-Oriented Philosophy Leave a Comment In response to my recent post where I offhandedly remark that object-oriented ontology does not advocate a representationalist […]
June 12, 2010 at 9:40 pm
[…] and a psychological terms. Bearing those caveats in mind, I wanted to jot down my reactions to what in a recent post Levi Bryant termed “the two core claims of […]
June 13, 2010 at 3:24 pm
Mitsu has put his finger on what exactly I have most trouble with in OOO: “An “object” it seems to me is by definition a separated out part of the world which has some kind of boundary defined in some way… but how do we define such a boundary, except in reference to a perceptual convention of some kind?”
As a humanist, I am very excited about the possibilities of OOO for textual analysis, and, I am generally convinced about its descriptions of the world as we encounter it. But, because of the point Mitsu raises, I am still unconvinced that it gets away from some residue of correlationism. If I analyze a text within an OOO framework, I am the one drawing distinctions between objects and their environments.
Here is the only way I can make sense of it, and I would love to be convinced otherwise:
If a frog encounters a fly, the frog is the one drawing a distinction between the fly and other objects (of course I take your point that this distinction and experience of the fly never exhausts the fly itself, etc. – my point is that the material ground that constitutes the fly as the frog sees it is that which the frog never fully exhausts; the part that withdraws is that which forms the intrinsic conditions of the object’s existence, but which the frog cannot access when it separates out that object as he perceives it). But, if a pool of water encounters the frog that just leaped into it, the water experiences a material ground only–a set of environmental forces that impact it in one way or another; and in this sense the frog is equivalent to and indistinguishable (from the water’s pov) from the wind, the rain, a fish that swims through it, and a rock that is tossed into it.
I see no reason to assert that the water as an object encounters a tossed rock as another object, unless you add a third term: the observer that draws these object distinctions. I cannot see a way that water or rocks can draw these distinctions on their own.
June 13, 2010 at 6:39 pm
[…] Graham Harman, Ian Bogost, Object-Oriented Philosophy Leave a Comment In response to a previous post responding to Christopher Vitale and my post on OOO and Epistemology, there’s been some […]
June 14, 2010 at 12:30 pm
[…] subjects has some key sketches of the OOO position here, while Stuart continues to engage, following the ontology sessions at AAG in […]