A new blog has emerged that has shown a great deal of interest in OOO and which is full of energy and thought. In recent days, a debate has emerged surrounding realism with Fragilekeys arguing for an antirealist position, and Joseph Goodson arguing for a realist position (here, here, and here). In my view, OOO doesn’t fit easily with any of these positions (and here I’ll cop that I’m speaking about my version of OOO, not Graham’s, Ian’s, or Morton’s).
This whole issue is very complicated. First, there are two types of idealism: metaphysical and epistemological idealism. Metaphysical idealism is the strong thesis that ideas (whether in the form of cognitive processes, signs, power, or language) literally create reality such that there is no reality apart from these things. This would be the absolute idealism that Hegel attempted to develop (under a non-Zizekian reading), but also the subjective idealism of Berkeley. Epistemological idealism is the thesis that there is a reality independent of human categories, but we can’t know anything about it. This would be the thesis of theorists such as Kant, Derrida, and moderate versions of Lacanianism. We can contrast these positions to those of representational realism (what is often called “naive realism”). Representational realism would be the thesis that 1) what we represent is reality as it is and 2) that this reality would be the way we represent it regardless of whether or not human beings represented it.
read on!
It’s further important to distinguish between epistemological realism and ontological realism. Epistemological realism is a thesis about our knowledge to the effect that reality is as we represent it. Ontological realism is the thesis that entities are as they are regardless of whether or not we represent them. OOO is an ontologically realist position and, I believe (at least in my variant, but I think also in Harman’s), an epistemologically anti-realist position. What does that mean and how is it possible?
OOO is a position about what is and how things are, not a thesis about knowledge or our ability to represent things as they are. What a being is, says OOO, has nothing to do with whether we represent it and what we call it. A dog, for example, is a dog regardless of whether we call it a dog. A stellar body is a stellar body whether we call it a moon, a planet, a star, an asteroid, or particle of dust. Within this framework, how we represent things (whether through concepts or language) is irrelevant to what things are.
However, here’s the twist: OOO is an onticological realist position, but an epistemological anti-realist position. This necessarily follows from the basic ontological claims of OOO. OOO argues that objects are withdrawn from one another such that no two objects ever encounter one another. As a consequence, objects are only able to relate to one another by translating one another. Yet a translation is a distortion of one object by another object. No object ever relates to any other object in terms of how that object is in and of itself. Insofar as knowledge is a form of relation, it follows that representation can never be a representation of objects as they are (naive realism), but can only ever be a translation of other objects. As a consequence, it follows that OOO is necessarily anti-realist where epistemology is concerned.
So if OOO is epistemologically anti-realist, why isn’t it led to an ontologically anti-realist position as well? I provide the answers to this question in the first chapter of The Democracy of Objects, which should be out very soon. However, the first answer is that for OOO that phenomenon of translation is no longer restricted to how humans relate to objects. What Kant says of the relation of humans to objects, OOO argues, is true of how any object relates to another object. OOO argues that “distortion” or translation is a ubiquitous ontological phenomenon for all inter-ontic or inter-object relations. In this way, OOO undermines the anthropocentric index of idealism and antirealism by generalizing it to all relations among objects in the universe. A rock is no less a Kantian subject that distorts or translates the “in-itself” in its own way than a human. Where Kant treats this phenomenon as unique to the human and as an epistemological affair, OOO treats it as an ontological affair that is true of all object.
Second, OOO argues– in my version, which I call “onticology”, at least –that second-order observation is possible. Second-order observation is the observation of how another observer observes. Although objects are withdrawn from us, we can observe how other observers (objects) observe, or how they sort the world and relate to the world around them. We can observe how societies observe, how bees observe, how rocks observe, how other persons observe, and so on. Put differently, we can investigate how they “construct” “their reality” based on inputs and outputs issues from these other systems and objects. Because objects are withdrawn and we must employ our own distinctions to observe another system or object, these observations will always be provisional and subject to revision. Yet nonetheless we are able to engage in second-order observation. In this way we are able to break with anthropocentric references, recognizing the contingency of our own observations, to see that other systems observe differently. We have a name for those human systems that aren’t able to observe in this way: psychosis. Von Uexkull, Luhmann, and Ian Bogost in Alien Phenomenology have pointed the way to how this second order observation is possible. OOO has sometimes been taken to task for not taking into account “point of view” and “perspective”. What this misses is the manner in which OOO is profoundly inspired by Leibniz in arguing that every object is a point of view or an observing system.
In this regard, the OOO theorist is unperturbed by the linguistic arguments that Fragilekeys deploys. These things are no surprise. Why? Because each object translates other objects in its own ways. Language is one of the ways in which objects translate other objects, producing what I call local manifestations. In a number of respects, I thus find I have no objections to Fragilekey’s observations. Ontologically, he is merely pointing out how one system or object translates other objects. My only differences would be two-fold. First, by virtue of second-order observation I believe we are able to observe how non-linguistic systems observe and relate to the world about them. Second, I disagree with the thesis that language is not an object. This line of argument will become clearer when my argument on Derrida– “The Time of the Object” –is finally released. For me language is a dimension of a particular type of objects: social systems. It has all the properties that Fragilekeys describes in his latest post, but is no less an object for all that. The thesis that language doesn’t exist comes as no surprise to me as it is merely the thesis that language cannot be totalized; yet insofar as objects are withdrawn from themselves, this is exactly what the onticologist would expect. The move to be avoided is the thesis that all entities are necessarily subordinated to language.
March 31, 2011 at 6:23 pm
If we stare too long into the abyss…… How do you, or do you avoid panpsychism? Language to me seems to be the sticking point in ontology. But the minute you accord language to all objects, the primacy of human language recedes. Hence your coffee cup has a ‘language’, but that language can only be partly and fleetingly translated by you? Am I using language in the incorrect sense? I have always wondered intuitively about panpsychism, it is one of my earliest philosophical speculations as a child. I wondered about the life of a house brick I can remember. The reality of the house brick was always withdrawn from me. It’s taken over forty years to find a tool to talk about the language of objects. My students will listen to these conversations. My colleagues (especially science teachers) would have me committed if they were not nice people.
Russell
March 31, 2011 at 6:33 pm
I don’t accord language to all objects. Language is one way a certain type of entity– humans –translate the world around them.
March 31, 2011 at 6:49 pm
would you treat language and translation as synonyms? Or is one a subset of the other?
March 31, 2011 at 8:59 pm
I think that Russell is at least right about this being about intuitions (which are often parochial if not idiosyncratic) and that it can be somewhat confusing reading about OOO (my reactions/commitments are roughly along the lines of f-keys/willscrimshaw)for those of us who don’t have similar intuitions when you folks talk in terms of more familiar/established vocabularies because it gives the appearance of closeness/likeness when in fact the ontological-intuitions that you are struggling to flesh out are truly more strange/alien than such terms convey. I don’t think that this kind of gap in intuitions (faith commitments) can be bridged but often by working against (as a ladder leans against) truly different positions one can come to see fruitful new aspects of one’s own calling(s). The difficult part is often recognizing the differences as truly different and getting past needing to convert everyone. Rather than us trying to come to One master vocabulary it might be helpful if we just ask for clarifications and trade possibilities.
March 31, 2011 at 9:02 pm
I completely agree with the above: I think epistemological anti-realism and onticological realism vigorously reinforce each other.
March 31, 2011 at 9:28 pm
No, translation refers to the way one system processes another, not to language. The way bats sense their world is a form of translation, for example.
March 31, 2011 at 11:15 pm
Intuitions and faith commitments? Ridiculous. OOO has made very concrete, inductive arguments. When did it become so theological?
April 1, 2011 at 3:01 am
so much for interpretive charity, intuitions and faith-commitments are certainly not restricted to the realm of theology, we all start with our interests and build from there.
April 1, 2011 at 3:05 am
dmf,
I think Joseph is making the point that you’ve entered a conversation midstream and then are protesting that you find it all very mysterious (big surprise, I’d be confused too) and using rather offensive and dismissive terms (“intuitions” “faith”) when arguments have been made, concepts have been defined, etc., etc., etc. You can even find a number of these arguments in print and in the side-bar. It’s rather rude to suggest such things. That might not be what you intended, but it’s certainly how you come off.
April 1, 2011 at 3:20 am
[…] on April 1, 2011 by fragilekeys Larval Subjects has given my recent inquiries the honor of a response. What follows is mine. I’ll say in advance how appreciative I am for whatever reading […]
April 1, 2011 at 3:31 am
I had no idea that “intuitions” and “faith” would be taken as either offensive or dismissive, and in my original comment I was including myself in/under such terms, also wasn’t protesting but trying to offer an observation as people seemed to be talking past each other, as we may be doing now. that said I’ll leave you folks to it.
April 1, 2011 at 3:36 am
Larval, here is my response, Opening upon nothing, to this post.
I think on many levels, content and form, it is clear that we are approaching these problems in different ways. Perhaps they are not even the same questions. It feels to me, however, that there is a whole lot to be said. And I do wonder how an OOO-based view of things would respond to what I’ve “advanced” in my response.
I hope you can at least enjoy this response for what it is. While I still find OOO a bit mysterious, I hope that you do not construe my response as offensive or dismissive. I am simply pleading my view of “things” as I see them. I was excited to find this thread of thinking, your page especially, and have only just begun to delve into it. Thank you for engaging me in such an outright way. Again, I do really appreciate it.
My best to you, and so sorry to hear about the loss of your friend Linda. Both of my parents have passed, so I know what it is like to lose those guiding-lights in your life. Make sure you’re giving yourself enough “you-time” amidst it all. It’s okay to do/be nothing! *wink*
April 10, 2011 at 3:27 am
I just wanted to share a poem I recently found which reminds me of my “argument” in this whole debate. My stated “positions” come nowhere near to articulating what I wanted to articulate… perhaps they never will. So here is a poem that says it all:
Vladimir Holan – Human Voice
Stone and star do not force their music on us,
flowers are silent, things hold something back,
because of us, animals deny
their own harmony of innocence and stealth,
the wind has always its chastity of simple gesture
and what song is only the mute birds know,
to whom you tossed an unthreshed sheaf on Christmas Eve.
To be is enough for them and that is beyond words. But we,
we are afraid not only in the dark,
even in the abundant light
we do not see our neighbour
and desperate for exorcism
cry out in terror: ‘Are you there? Speak!’