Harman has a post up responding to Shaviro’s post from yesterday. I agree with most of what Graham says, though I don’t have as much hostility towards talk of process and becoming as him. I am, however, left scratching my head as to why people think the objects of object-oriented ontology can’t become or have a processual dimension. The premise seems to be that objects are static and therefore need to be replaced by processes or events. I don’t see how this follows at all or how it is even true. We find a similar conclusion in Metzinger’s Being No One. Somehow because the self comes into existence and dissolves this entails that the self is not an object. How does that follow? All that is entailed is that the self comes into being and that it has a punctuated existence. Certainly nothing in Aristotle’s concept of substance entails permanence and even Descartes’ conception of mental substance is embodied, as Marion has compellingly argued, in act. So this strikes me as a very odd conclusion to reach.
Shaviro ends his post remarking that,
In this way, I think, Whitehead avoids the Deleuzian suggestion (which one also finds in Bergson, and — in Bell’s reading — already in Spinoza, and currently in the wonderful neo-Schellingism of Iain Hamilton Grant) that the actual must always (with this “must” being something of an ethical imperative) return to the flux of virtuality whence it came. In this way, Whitehead is in accordance with Graham Harman (who rejects the association of Whitehead with Deleuze and Bergson precisely on these grounds). But, to the extent that Whitehead does nonetheless retain the importance of the virtual, he also stands apart from Harman’s actualism. My biggest objection to Harman has long been that he doesn’t give a sufficiently satisfying account of the genesis and perishing of objects, precisely because he rejects the very notion of the virtual, seeing it as something that “undermines” the existence of objects. Whitehead to my mind splits the difference between Deleuze and Harman, in a way that is preferable to either. (Note: I cannot end this discussion without an apology to Levi Bryant, who offers a version of “object-oriented ontology” that includes the virtual. I think that Whitehead represents a preferable alternative to Bryant’s position as well, in the sense that he obviates the need to see objects as somehow being “withdrawn.” But I do not have the space or the energy to pursue this argument here).
Again, I’m left scratching my head. The thesis that OOO is unable to account for the genesis and perishing of objects has come up a couple of times (notably from Vitale). However, here again I’m left scratching my head. First, I just don’t see what the big mystery is here. Objects are generated out of other objects. When objects enter into certain relations with one another closure, under certain circumstances, is achieved and a new object is born. In other words, objects are emergent entities that emerge out of other entities. It seems to me that object-oriented ontologists talk about such emergence quite often. Likewise, the destruction or perishing of objects takes place when enough of the parts belonging to the endo-structure of an object are destroyed or taken away, undermining the ability of the object to maintain itself across time. Consequently, I just don’t see how OOO theorists are guilty of not having an account of the genesis and perishing of objects. Second, I don’t see how the category of the virtual as theorized by Bell and Shaviro solves this problem either. Indeed, I have yet to see a clear account of the virtual within this framework or what work it is doing.
Graham disagrees with me on this point, but I also think there’s far more withdrawal in Whitehead’s account of being than Shaviro lets on. While Whitehead certainly advocates the thesis that no being is independent of its relations, he does, nonetheless capture another dimension of withdrawal: the manner in which no entity directly grasps or relates to another entity. This comes out in Whitehead’s account of prehension early in Process and Reality. In every prehension, Whitehead observes, there is the subject that does the prehending, the datum prehended, and the subjective form or how of the prehension. Yet to my thinking, subjective form just is a form of withdrawal in that no actual occasion grasps another actual occasion as it itself is, but only under a particular subjective form that structures the datum in a manner unique to the subject or actual occasion doing the prehending. That, in my book, is a form of withdrawal.
Larval Subjects . 
August 2, 2010 at 9:06 pm
[…] August 2, 2010 It’s HERE. […]
August 2, 2010 at 9:53 pm
“Somehow because the self comes into existence and dissolves this entails that the self is not an object. How does that follow?”
Allow me to attempt a defense of Metzinger’s logic, since I think you and Harman are missing his point in regards to the self not being an object.
Metzinger claims that if we examine the way in which the self comes into and out of existence, we will find that the self is not really an object or “thing” but rather, a function which “does stuff” e.g. help control and coordinate behavior. This self-function is what Metzinger calls the “phenomenal self-model”. Now, it is perfectly possible to understand such functions as being things which are localizable in space. We say, for example, that the self-function is “in” the brain. But Metzinger’s point is that strictly speaking such discourse is nothing other than metaphorical. We treat the self-function *as if* it were an object in space, but in reality, it is a function which is no more in space than “bicycle riding” is “in” the brain.
This is why Metzinger’s model of the mind is a “no self” model. Not because he denies that there are self-functions, but rather, because functions are only “things” when understood metaphorically. The self is not a “thing” in the way a rock is a thing. Hence, “there is no self”. But the self certainly does exist, as a function, which comes into and out of existence.
Now, you can take issue with functionalism as an explanation of mind, but Metzinger is only taking it to its logical conclusion, so if you are going to fault him on this point, then you will need to also confront the huge literature defending functionalist explanations of the mind e.g. Global workspace theory, Dennettian multiple-drafts theory, etc.
August 2, 2010 at 10:17 pm
Gary,
And to repeat my point, I would ask what you are assuming about the nature of objects and rocks that leads you to see this conclusion as plausible. Rather than arguing that the self is not a thing or object, I would instead argue that the concept of object that is being argued against by Metzinger is an erroneous straw man. Of course, I have a rather exotic ontology that’s more than happy to see things like The Women’s Auxiliary Group or the Boy Scouts of America as objects. These sorts of objects are really no different than Metzinger’s self. They have a punctuated existence, coming into being and passing out of being with different meetings, occasionally being dissolved altogether only to be brought into being, engaging in second-order observation of themselves and their protocols in exactly the same way you describe “self modules” and so on. It is structure that defines whether something is or is not an object, not whether or not its hard. And rocks are quite porous and processual as well if the physicists are to be believed.
August 2, 2010 at 10:39 pm
I’m trying to devote all my philosophical time this month to completing Alien Phenomenology, but let me just say that I’m not sure I really care about the genesis and perishing of objects, or at the very least, that I don’t see why one would need to answer such a question to deliver an interesting and meaningful philosophy of things. Maybe that’s just a simpler way of saying that I’m less interested in the virtual than is Shaviro.
August 2, 2010 at 11:17 pm
>These sorts of objects are really no different than Metzinger’s self.
This seems right to me in some way, but I also think there is a case to be made that functional operators such as “multiplication”, the “narrative self”, or maybe even “consciousness”, all have a unique ontological constitution, whereby it becomes difficult to lump them in with “mere” or “bare” physical objects such as rocks or coffee mugs. The coffee mug is very stable and determinant. But functional operations such as Metzinger’s self-function come and go and moreover, are implicated in very messy and complex biological control factors. They are fully integrated, and hence dependent, upon the operator as a system. Consciousness, for example, could be said to wane in and out, narratizing behavior alternatives only when normal habit structures need top-level input for synthetic decision making.
But as you said, your ontology is exotic. I’m sure you can incorporate consciousness and intentionality and other such things as special kinds of fluctuating but semi-stable “objects” or “actants”. My worry is that calling these things objects (with all the inherited connotations of “mere objects” in our metaphoric language) distorts the descriptive phenomenology of lived experience, almost making it an eliminativist philosophy in the vein of Varellas hard autopoietic interpretation. In other words, how do you incorporate the unique phenomenological “properties” of the Umwelt into your ontology?
August 2, 2010 at 11:21 pm
Hi Gary,
In my view, the stability of things such as coffee mugs and rocks is, I argue, an effect of the “regimes of attraction” in which they exist. Rocks are fairly stable because the temperatures, gravity, pressure, etc., of the earth are fairly stable. Moreover, as allopoietic systems. rocks are fairly restricted as to what they’re open to. However, change any of these variables in a regime of attraction and you’ll encounter rocks undergoing quite profound qualitative changes. Nothing about OOO states that all objects have the same properties. Autopoietic systems are far more dynamic than allopoietic systems. Additionally, many autopoietic systems can evolve new modes of openness to their environment. What I would object to is the idea of a “mere object” that is static. This is the sort of erroneous conception of objects I’m objecting to.
August 3, 2010 at 12:04 am
An illustration that came to mind for the often invisible regimes of attraction is a scene from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. The gravity on-board a Klingon warship is turned off, incapacitating the crew, allowing the assassination of the Klingon Chancellor. The Chancellor is murdered, and his blood escapes his body at first in long, thick, tubular ribbons. The Klingon’s blood then becomes a gorgeous, bubble-like substance, more or less rounded, but able to absorb other round bubbles like itself into larger ones, or, conversely, upon being disturbed, shatter into hundreds of tiny globules, moving every which way, floating into tubes or up to the ceiling. When the assassins escape, and gravity is restored, the blood falls from its suspended place, some falling great distances to the floor, becoming long, quick ribbons till they meet the ground, exploding in pinkish purple splashes, or running down the walls. We get a hint at how dependent the form or manifestation of the blood is on certain factors which constantly shape its particular appearance, but which, at any moment, can be removed, greatly changing the movement, body and capabilities of the blood, but just as quickly, once gravity is restored, changes back to its previous state. Because the gravity on the ship, or here on earth, is relatively constant, we just don’t notice its exerting influence or power on the form of objects. But even mere objects are never mere objects. Even if the blood had never been exposed to zero gravity conditions, its present state is still an active co-conditioning of its own structure and environment.
August 3, 2010 at 12:12 am
[…] unit operations. Moreover, I find myself in a peculiar position in analyzing this relation, for as Ian wrote in response to a recent post, I’m trying to devote all my philosophical time this month to […]
August 3, 2010 at 12:33 am
Hi Levi,
I like very much your very precise statement of withdrawal at the end of your post. Thanks for this. I want to add that I don’t see my understanding of the virtual, which I prefer to call the problematic for reasons mentioned in my post, as being that greatly different from your understanding of autopoietic systems, and thus I certainly think OOO is compatible with an account that gives justice to the genesis and perishing of objects. Your work in particular could not go unnoticed in my response to Shaviro. Thanks again for the clear statement of withdrawal.
August 3, 2010 at 12:40 am
Jeff,
I’m excited to talk about this in October. For me there isn’t one virtual, but many virtuals. That is, I don’t see the virtual as a monistic field that’s then broken up, but rather see the individual as preceding the virtual such that we have discrete problematic fields, multiplicities, or ideas in the Deleuzian DR sense, that then take on a variety of manifestations. I will say– and Graham, no doubt, will box me around the ears for this –that I wonder how significant these differences are. In other words, at the level of analytic praxis I suspect we’d come to similar and complimentary conclusions and just desire to place emphasis in different areas. With Graham, Whitehead, and Shaviro, my universe is Leibnizian or discrete, whereas the Deleuzian-Bergsonian-Spinozist universe is monistic and then carved up. I’m not sure how much of a difference it makes, however, at the level of concrete analysis… A terrible thing to confess!
August 3, 2010 at 1:24 am
Looking forward as well to discussing these issues in October. Your comment reminded me that I probably should be clear about what I mean by monism. I don’t think of it as one substance or field that is carved up but rather I see all entities, all modes, as expressions of difference, or differentials of intensities. Nothing is privileged – there is one voice (univocity) of difference. This is the insight the title of your book, Democracy of Objects, captures so well – no object is privileged; there is no privileged access to things, etc. I suppose the issue to be clarified is precisely how and why there is no privileged object. For me it is a monism of differences, of differences that make differences, and thus naturally one would conclude that we never begin with one field but with many virtuals, many problematic fields. I may indeed be departing from Deleuzian “orthodoxy” on this point – calling into question THE plane of immanence – but it is how I’ve come to understand monism.
August 3, 2010 at 6:46 am
“Now, you can take issue with functionalism as an explanation of mind, but Metzinger is only taking it to its logical conclusion, so if you are going to fault him on this point, then you will need to also confront the huge literature defending functionalist explanations of the mind e.g. Global workspace theory, Dennettian multiple-drafts theory, etc.”
Nonsense. I can just as easily say “Metzinger will need to confront the huge literature defending substance e.g., Aristotle, Suarez, Leibniz etc.” And Metzinger doesn’t do this. Nor does he need to especially. He makes a philosophical argument for why the self isn’t a thing, and it’s a rather feeble argument, one that can be dispatched in a few pages. You can’t send people to the library every time they corner you philosophically.
August 3, 2010 at 6:50 am
[…] 3, 2010 I’ve already posted something similar as a comment on Levi’s FOLLOWING POST, though it won’t be there until he wakes up to approve it, and it’s the middle of the […]
August 3, 2010 at 3:04 pm
[…] but rather, a function. It is an operation rather than a thing or repository. Accordingly, over at Larval Subjects, I […]
August 4, 2010 at 12:54 am
[…] Steve Shaviro, I tend to find Steve´s arguments compelling. In the most recent volley, in a recent post over at Larval Subjects, Levi says the following, which I totally agree with: I am, however, left […]
August 4, 2010 at 4:43 pm
[…] interesting discussion has popped up between Graham, Levi, Chris Vitale and Steven Shaviro, on accounting for the genesis and perishing of objects in OOO […]
August 5, 2010 at 4:17 am
In no sense does Metzinger have the last word on the “subject” or on Buddhism.