Over at Knowledge Ecology, Adam has a nice post up on object-oriented ontology and ecology. In comments I’ve noticed that the old debate between substance versus process and substance versus relations has emerged yet again. One respondent writes “OOO looks like a substance ontology!” So as to forestall any confusion over this, OOO not only looks like a substance ontology, it is a substance ontology! OOO is committed to the independent existence of substances. However, what is a substance? In The Democracy of Objects, I argue that substances are dynamic systems. In other words, I see no contradiction between substance and process precisely because I hold that substances are processes and processes are substances. This is precisely why I spend so much time writing about entropy and negentropy. The fact that my cat’s body is a collection of processes doesn’t undermine the fact that my cat is also a substance. Why someone would see a contradiction here or necessity of choosing is beyond me. The best I’ve ever gotten from the process-relational crowd is that language is important and that it is egregeous, for some reason, to talk about things or substances. At any rate, returning to the issue of entropy, every substance faces the problem of how to continue itself throughout the course of time lest it dissolve into entropy or a plurality of other objects. Substances evolve, change, develop in all sorts of ways and can even become different substances. In other words, they are not inert clods.
What OOO does insist on, however, is that objects or substances are external to their relations. Objects can enter into their relations, but they can just as easily pass out of relations. Every object enjoys a minimal independence from the relational field it happens to inhabit. And this is precisely what I’ll never understand about so many ecological theorists who defend relational internalism. In my view, if ecology has taught us anything, it has taught us not so much the importance of relations, but to be attentive to the independence of entities from their relations.
Ecology, in its best moments, in its practice, when it isn’t reflecting on its practice in a distorted way, draws our attention to what happens in networks of relations when either new substances are introduced into existing networks of relations as in the case of the introduction of cane toads into Australia, and what happens when existing substances are subtracted from networks of relations as in the case of bees disappearing in the United States. These introductions and subtractions are only possible if substances are, in principle, detachable from relations or if, as Deleuze liked to say, relations are external to their terms. Without this externality of substances from their relations, ecology would have nothing to investigate because ecosystems where everything is internally related wouldn’t undergo changes.
I get the sense that the place where so many ecologically minded thinkers go wrong is in a confusion of the difference between normative claims they would like to make and descriptive analysis of existing ecosystems. Many ecologists, it seems, want to argue that ecosystems are “delicate and harmoniously balanced systems that we shouldn’t interfere with.” They deplore– as I do –things like the introduction of cane toads into Australia. However, the thesis that there are better and worse ecosystems, that it is possible to disrupt ecosystems in disastrous ways and that we shouldn’t do so is a normative claim, not an ontological claim about what ecosystems are actually like. These normative claims wouldn’t arise at all were it not the case that every order is contingent, that relations between entities can be broken apart and modified in all sorts of ways, thereby necessitating attentiveness to different types of systems and the effects introducing and subtracting substances has on these systems. This is a very simple point and I’m endlessly surprised that so many ecologically minded thinkers don’t recognize the contradiction between their practice and theory.
Larval Subjects . 
August 10, 2011 at 11:35 pm
Dr. Bryant,
Given that I raised many of the questions, I will respond to you directly.
With your definition of the term “substance,” why use it at all when you appear to deliberately mislead the reader? Most everything you say about substance is not even remotely true of the traditional or conventional understanding, which leads me to suppose it is a rhetorical device designed to get the reactions that it does as a sort of shock value. “Organism” or the more abstract “homeostatic dynamic” could just as easily have been used.
But then, the insistence on the strict externality of relations makes me wonder how one can justify knowledge of them at all other than as a posit. And when I think that, I see the not-always present qualifier of “minimal independence.” Even then, and when removed from one “ecology” into another, the new context does not become irrelevant in supporting the migrant “substance.” A fox wandering in new territory still needs air that it cannot get on Mars, though maybe some Martian bacteria do just fine. That case makes a little more sense, but when we’re talking about the more abstract dynamic systems, migration only makes sense when talking about animals, plants, etc., but not the balance of wetland hydrology.
In sum, it appears that there is a frequent use of a vocabulary that confounds even the attentive reader, which leads me to wonder why invoke it at all. I have been discussing the issue with Adrian, Adam, and Leon, because, aside from their willingness to discuss, the vocabulary is never more than a momentary problem, especially among those who respect the use of technical vocabularies.
A parting thought about the following:
” The fact that my cat’s body is a collection of processes doesn’t undermine the fact that my cat is also a substance. Why someone would see a contradiction here or necessity of choosing is beyond me. The best I’ve ever gotten from the process-relational crowd is that language is important and that it is egregeous, for some reason, to talk about things or substances. The fact that my cat’s body is a collection of processes doesn’t undermine the fact that my cat is also a substance.”
I will presume that you know the traditional denotation(s) of “substance,” and that you can easily give me an answer to the implied question of “why someone would see a contradiction here.” Aside, I’m starting to wonder if nominalism is an issue here as well, or if there is a lurking solution to the analytic problem of the reality of “middle-sized objects.” Finally, I’m wondering if “substance” means anything of than an identifiable existence, an invocation of the axiom of choice upon existence.
In conclusion, you should not at all be surprised that these questions arise, and it is not something that you can claim as simply misunderstanding of the reader, as you perform them contradiction even when asked to clarify it. I would, by the way, presuppose us to be allies on these issue, and not opponents.
August 11, 2011 at 1:28 am
Khadimir,
I retain the term substance because objects are individuals, they are unities, and they are able to move in and out of relations. Moreover, objects are able to entertain contrary qualities at different times while remaining the substance that they are. I find your appeal to “traditional philosophy” (whatever that might be) to be perplexing. Like any other philosopher, I disagree with other philosophers and how they conceptualize things. Plato held that substances are forms, Aristotle that they are individuals. I hold that they are dynamic systems and give arguments for that position. I’ve been pretty clear about this in the development of my thought here and elsewhere, making arguments for this claim and develop my arguments in detail in the first chapter of The Democracy of Objects which will be out any day now. This aside, is my use of the term “substance” so idiosyncratic? Leibniz’s substances, for example, are dynamic processes unfolding over time. I differ from Leibniz in holding that substances are composites, not simples, and that they exist at a variety of levels of scale. I’d say I’m in good company with Leibniz. At any rate, my remarks about the linguistic issue are based directly on extended discussions with Ivikhiv who has repeatedly made those arguments over the last couple years.
Your remarks about foxes are common and are, I believe, based on a simple fallacy. The life of the fox is a quality, not its being as an object. If I launch a fox into outer space it ceases to be alive, but it doesn’t cease to be that object. It continues to exist as that object despite being severed from its current relations. Now clearly, “being alive” is a particlularly important property for the fox. I do not disagree with this. But nonetheless the relations the fox entertains do not preside over whether it is an existing individual or not. I do not see what your worries are about relation. All I claim is that relations are external. All that means is that entities can enter into relations and break with relations. Knowing is one way of entering into relations. You can get a sense of my theory of knowledging by following the link to my interview over at Fractured Politics. You’ll find the link in the sidebar on the right of the screen.
August 11, 2011 at 1:57 am
Levi, I wonder if part of the problem here – and I’ve brought this up before, but I think the conversation got sidetracked – is in the question of when does an object become an object and, concomitantly, when does it cease to be the same object? With the fox, for example, if the you send it into space, it dies. For you it is still the same fox. But when does it cease to be the same fox? How far does it have to decay before you would say this is no longer the same fox that had once run free in a meadow? On the other end, when does the fox become the fox? When is it sufficiently composed so that you can safely say that this is the same fox as the one you will eventually shoot into space?
Talk of objects and substances – right or wrong – bring to mind these kinds of discrete differences in being. The fox is either the fox or not the fox, but when does it make that discrete transition?
As far as I’m concerned, this is mostly just nit-picking, since I find both OOO and PRO extremely valuable for practice. I’m far more concerned about that than having a solid grasp of what is real… if that makes sense. :)
August 11, 2011 at 2:24 am
Jeremy,
The question you’re asking is a question about entropy: “what degree of entropy marks the dissolution of an object?” Reciprocally, “what diminution of entropy marks the emergence of a new object?” I’ve nodded to these issues in this post:
https://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2011/03/28/towards-a-theory-of-the-self-organization-of-objects/
That said, I don’t think there’s a hard and fast answer to this question. Suppose, rather than being launched into outer space our unfortunate fox is thrown in a fire. The being of the fox as a fox begins to dissipate pretty quickly. Can we mark a precise line where this dissolution occurs? I don’t think so. But I also think that the question itself is premised on a fallacy known as “the line drawing fallacy.” The line drawing fallacy occurs when someone rejects the existence of something because a clear criteria can’t be defined for something. Take the example of a cop pulling someone over for “reckless driving”. The offender asks, “What exactly constitutes reckless driving? Driving 30mph, 40mph, 40.5mph? You can’t say can you! And that’s because reckless driving doesn’t exist!” There are all sorts of things in the world where precise demarcations can’t be drawn (the phase shift between liquid and gaseous states, for example), but it doesn’t follow that they don’t exist. For me, the minimal condition for being an object is historical continuity and unity across time. In the past I’ve described objects as “space-time worms” to allude to their vector character in tkme. Objects are patterns of organization that possess a low degree of entropy. My cat is an object because she possesses a low degree of entropy over time or has a continuing organization across time. By contrast, a collection of people in a subway car are very “dim” as far as objects go as the relations they entertain to one another possess a high degree of entropy (ie, it’s equally probable that any person in that car can appear anywhere in that car). Here a hurricane or a tornado is more an object than the collection of people in the subway car.
August 11, 2011 at 4:14 am
Levi,
Your fox example is interesting. When the quality, life, disintegrates some dynamic relations of the substance, fox, there is a temptation to make a kind of eternalist assumption about the substance, fox. Is OOO in some turmoil about this eternalist individuation?
Are you suggesting that no combination of quality subractions could eliminate that fox from the ontological?
If we don’t identify the fox’s substance with its historical quality dynamics — that is, if we insist on withdrawal — it would seem that the substance would withdraw eternally. So the fox certainly dies; the fox does not live on; and yet, you gotta admit, “That Fox” is true.
This is not necessarily an eternalist position, to be sure. But many thoughtful people might think that your fox example brings to light a tendency to implicitly assume some logically eternalist, withdrawn from time, abstract ontology. That is a difficult position to manage, judging historically, without arguments derived from mathematics, number theory, et cetera. General or Dynamic systems theory is, however, perhaps the most accurate mathematical or structural analogy available for mending the process-view and the substance-view. The ability of these mathematical/structural examples to redefine seemingly logical-eternalist terminology will depend on how philosophers think about “traditional philosophy”. Why should we stop using the latest mathematical-structural genius to reevaluate traditional philosophy? As law professor Roberto Mangabeira Unger points out, “one way forward is to use old words in new ways.”
One reason the process view thinks it doesn’t need your substance view is that process thinkers tend to view the fox as a PERSPECTIVE. The disintegration of the fox is a disintegration of societies of perspectives that were necessary and sufficient for That Fox’s Perspective. When the necessary conditions of That Fox’s Perspective were subtracted — meaning those perspectives ceased to form a society of prehensions — That Fox’s Perspective ceased to obtain in the ontological domain, Universe.
Thus, from this perspective, for you to say that That Fox as a substance remains in the ontological domain, Universe, beyond the substraction of the quality “Life” sounds like REIFICATION. In process-terms, reification is one of the major fallacies of process thinking.
August 11, 2011 at 4:42 am
Read the comments, Cameron. I am not advocating the eternalism of substances. It is not unusual for autopoietic substances to die and be brought back to life. It can be done with frogs and it actually happened to my mother during surgery once. Obviously, however, there are time constraints on these things. Entropy sets in rather quickly once an autopoitic system is no longer living, rendering the destruction of the substance irreversible and leading to the production of a variety of distinct substances. The only point is that life is a quality of certain kinds of substances, not constitutive of their being as a substance. This is no more mysterious or a reification than pointing out that a match need not actually be on fire to be a match. The ecologists argument about the fox (originating, I believe, with Arne Naess) is thereby based on a false premise, confusing a state of a substance (being alive) with the being of that substance. None of this suggests that substances are eternal, that these states aren’t crucially important (I certainly perfer my mother alive than as a corpse and am grateful for the work of her doctors), nor that substances can’t be destroyed (they’re destroyed all the time and thisndestruction is possible precisely because relations aren’t internal but can be broken apart).
August 11, 2011 at 5:12 am
Once again in a ‘manner so far from pleasant’ comment here focuses on what is deemed correct or in correct. What is generative and interesting goes unrecognised. It was just such willful departures from textbook meanings that allowed pioneering ecologist/ philosopher Kinji Imanishi in The World of Living Things (1941!), to describe the life of living and non-living things in terms of dynamic system (s); systems that are both structured by discreet entities acting upon/within them and how, in turn, these systems structure, or give form, to discreet entities. Perhaps such entities could be understood as being generated by both substance and process.
August 11, 2011 at 10:24 am
Could you equally summarize it as extending hegelian living subject/substance to what had previously been considered an substance determined externally (i.e. form giving to matter) and in this way extending ‘actorship’ to objects previously denied such agency (i.e. giving voice to the subalten objects!)
Will.
August 11, 2011 at 2:27 pm
First, I want to thank you for spending the time to address my queries. It is much appreciated. Second, I edited my profile so that I’m now posting under my real name.
Yes, the use of the term “substance” is idiosyncratic, since we could have named many, many other noted thinkers who use the term in other ways. I know I cannot be the first or fourteenth person to say that. I understand your chagrin, as I had to reconcieve my whole philosophical system because the term “phenomenology” has such negative and overtly Husserlian connotations in my field, pragmatism.
I have seen the discussion relating to foxes before, and it puzzles me. Why is the living “quality” of an “object” not “essential” to it? The foxe’s existence is radically, radically changed, especially how it engages and disengages its relations. Also, being a conscious animal adds another wrinkle.
Yes, I know what “external relations” means, and a problem with them is that explaining change becomes difficult, and deciding what does and does not count as belong to the substance/essence/identity of a thing becomes controversial at best. It’s the identity dance. I might have to track down your explanations of identity-in-difference unless you’ve got a quick answer for me.
Mr Trombley well states a lot of my concerns. I feel like I’m reading the Parmenides again, which I adore by the way. But again, while responding with the “line drawing fallacy,” I think you overlook how absolutely crucial “having a line” is to an object. That’s why the questions abound–the insistence of a line that nobody must draw. That said, in my own process work, I say that we draw lines only for practical reasons as its a formal distinction at best. But relatively little rides on those lines in my work, whereas it appears that much does in yours. And when you emphasize continuity and unity, it appears that you’ve thrown out line-drawing and external relations entirely, because I cannot see how you can invoke “continuity” with external relations. Should I be understanding “object” more in line with a Buchler “natural complex?” that would make more sense and better cohere with your words, but would endanger external relations.
I have seen a few of your interviews, and I as so delighted by them that it lead to having this discussion in the first place.
August 11, 2011 at 2:50 pm
Cameron,
Great points. Yes, it does look like there’s an “eternalist individuation,” but I presumed that there was not, and Levi confirms this. But that makes trying to understand the “historical quality dynamic” difficult, because I wonder what powers the unity, continuity, and withdrawal. What is it about the identity or substance that does this? Is “identity” a stable pattern of force/existence, a habit of nature inhering in time with an inner locus from which it derives its potency? The “object,” does not really answer this question, but for now I take the burden upon myself to study the literature in more detail.
Levi’s later response doesn’t set the issue to rest for me, because I assume that “being a fox” is the “being of a substance,” whereas he makes the distinction between a state and being of substance. Then, if the substance wasn’t a fox, but only a state of not-a-fox, what is the substance before, during, and after foxing? Moreover, what is the relative temporality of that substance compared to that fox? In short, I don’t think the distinction settled anything by itself, but I await an explanation that does, and I can already think of one but I would prefer not to presume.
I would agree with what you say about process, which is part of the reason I push the issue. I’m trying to figure out what we’ve gained with the “object” other than a much less challenging theory of identity, because it does look like reification. But again, I defer to the OO scholars since I am not one.
August 11, 2011 at 4:04 pm
Jason,
It seems to me that explaining change becomes impossible if we hold that relations are internal. By contrast, where relations are external, much of what causes change becomes comprehensible. I argue that objects have two dimensions or sides: virtual proper being and local manifestations. The virtual proper being of an object consists of its powers or potentials. The local manifestation of an object consists of the manner in which it actualizes itself under determinate conditions. Much of local manifestation is highly relational (which is why I call such actualizations “local”). As the object enters into new relations it actualizes itself in new ways. Take the skin of your body. You walk into a highly air conditioned room from the hot outside. Here you’ve shifted relations: your initial relation was to the outside heat. Your new relation is to the indoor room and air conditioner. Based on this shift in relations your body undergoes a new local manifestation: your skin prickles or gets goose bumps. It is the shift in relations that explains the change. What interests me is not so much objects taken in isolation, but rather what happens to objects when they enter into new relations.
I do not hold that the identity of an object is something over and above the processuality of the object. This is why I spend so much time writing about entropy and negentropy. From moment to moment objects need to reproduce themselves and their unity. They can fail to do so and thereby suffer destruction. In other words, identity and unity are, for me, processes or activities on the part of the object. This is why objects can undergo all sorts of mutations and transformations as in the case of a caterpiller becoming a butterfly (this would be impossible if identity were a fixed substratum).
Withdrawal means something different in the framework of my ontology than Harman’s. For me withdrawal means two things: First, it means that there is always an excess of virtual proper being over local manifestations. In other words, objects can never be reduced to their current or present properties but always harbor powers or potentials that are not manifest but that could be manifest were the object to enter into different relations. Second, withdrawal means that objects are operationally closed to the world. Objects only relate selectively to other objects and are not open to perturbations from other objects in any old way. For example, I cannot sense infrared light, but am only operationally open to certain wavelengths of light. A rock cannot be compelled to action through speech. Etc.
You might be interested in my article in The Speculative Turn to get a better sense of what I’m arguing. You can find a link to it in the sidebar.
August 11, 2011 at 4:06 pm
Cameron,
The eternalism issue would only arise if form could exist independent of matter. I hold that forms are always immaterial hence there can be no existence of “The Fox” over and above the fox space-time worm.
August 11, 2011 at 4:44 pm
Levi,
Change does not become impossible if relations are internal. Rather, what becomes difficult is explaining stability and identity, but I won’t go into that.
In your answer, and thank you for it, you replicate the problem that I indicate at a deeper level. I foresaw this as likely, and thus asked this line of questioning to see if my inference was right. Is the “virtual proper being” static, i.e., self-identical, whereas self-similarity is a product of its “local manifestation?” Then, the identity-in-difference becomes two things, an inner and outer, a duality. This begins to look isomorphic to traditional conceptions of substance that fail to address change except through a duality or denying its reality entirely. And again, the inner reality becomes a mystery, especially for those of us no longer illumined by God.
In your response to Cameron, are you asserting the being of generals and insisting on the distinction between being and existence? That would make sense to me, and I find no complaint with it, except that I still wouldn’t see the need for an objective duality.
I’ll take a look at the article to see if this becomes clearer.
August 11, 2011 at 7:38 pm
Jason,
No, virtual proper being is not static or unchanging. All it consists of are powers, capacities to act, or potentials. These things can and do change. For example, if you learn how to play the piano, you’ve acquired new powers or capacities that you didn’t have before. Likewise, a super-heated stone– say one that becomes lava –can lose powers it once had as a result of changes in its chemical composition. This is why, I think, individuation is a composition of both pattern and history. When you learn how to play the piano your pattern of powers or capacities has changed. So why are you still Jason? Because of your history. What I call a substance is very close to what Whitehead calls a “society” in Process and Reality. The virtual proper being/local manifestation couple isn’t a form/matter distinction, but a distinction between capacity/power and quality. I argue that the substantiality of beings consists in their powers. Objects are what they are capable of doing. Power or capacity is not the same as a quality. Your power to play the piano is in excess of any song you might happen to play and is inexhaustible. The color of my coffee mug (a quality or local manifestation) differs from the power or capacity of my mug to produce color. My mug’s capacity to produce color is in excess of any local manifestation of color my mug happens to enact as a result of changing fluctuations of light. The spatial powers of my cat are different than any extension it happens to locally manifest. At different altitudes and pressures my cat will have different extensions (local manifestations of spatiality) ranging from utter flatness deep in the ocean to deckmpression in outer space (both extremes of which would produce irreducible changes in my poor cat’s virtual proper being). Substamces, in my view, are generative mechanisms or powers; yet those powers can change.
I forgot to add, in my previous response to you, that phenomenology is not a major reference point for my ontology (though it is for Harman’s). My major reference points are Deleuze, DeLanda, Spinoza, Leibniz, Latour, developmental systems theory, dynamic systems theory, cybernetics, autopoietic theory, and figures like Badiou. Returning to the issue of how “traditional substance metaphysics” thinks the being of substance, I think it just turns out that substance is far more interesting and dynamic than it was ever portrayed by many of the traditional substance metaphysicians.
August 11, 2011 at 7:58 pm
Levi,
Thank you. This clears up much confusion. It also makes it clear that you disagree strongly with Harman, unless I am mistaken. You are fighting a war for the word “substance.” I have to fight one for “pragmatism,” so I know how that goes.
Does your article in the Speculative Turn, or writing elsewhere, specify what “power” is? In my own work, I use a heavy modification of Aristotle’s; power is a 1) capacity, 2) activity, and 3) realization unto actuality. This is thought in a Peircean context and triadic metaphysics. Your final explanation is very friendly to my own view, I believe, where the key is the relationality and composibility of power.
I just posted my thoughts on Harman’s “vicarious causation” on my blog at Immanent Transcendence. Perhaps I’ll be enlightened on what I say there as well, especially since I’ve paid quite a bit of attention to Heidegger’s tool analysis, and would enjoy being corrected of misunderstandings as you have done for me in your case.
August 11, 2011 at 8:09 pm
[…] Read it HERE. […]
August 11, 2011 at 8:59 pm
Jason,
I use power as “capacity”. I don’t treat it as identical to activity or realization unto actualization because it’s crucial to my position that powers be capable of existing in an object without being active or actualized. I’ll check out your post.
August 15, 2011 at 9:26 pm
Mr. Bryant,
I am glad that you point out that the injunction to not disrupt ecosystems is a normative and not ontological claim. I would further assert that the notion that one should not disrupt natural habitats or ecosystems is an absurd normative statement.
In their mania to establish nature as a value unto itself, many ecologists view the societal “disruption” of nature to be an inherent moral transgression. While it is often true that humanity disrupts natural systems to the detriment of both society and nature, it is no less possible that humanity might “disrupt” nature to the benefit of both society and nature. In this way, the human exploitation of nature, by sole virtue of which we survive, can be seen to be a relatively neutral action when considered by itself. Social technologies can benefit, nay, enhance nature. This should be the goal of humanity, not vain attempts at the artificial “preservation” of “untouched wilderness” or some such nonsense.
A socialist society would be one of abundance, in any case, not eco-scarcity, the way most environmentalist nit-wits surmise.
August 15, 2011 at 10:40 pm
Levi,
This is a difference between our respective positions, which I mention and explain to be informative. Deweyan pragmatism is act-theoretic, which in this metaphysical case means that force or activity is understood to always be active unless inhibited by another activity. It acts in accord with its “telos” (entelechy), although a singular force does not really amount to anything. It is the nexus or complex of interacting forces, full or partial inhibitions, etc., that are creative and generative of a non-trivial “realization unto actualization.” Almost the only time that we have “capacity” without “activity” is in the case of universals/generals per Peirce’s version of scholastic realism.
If I rightly recall, this view of activity as always active was also a feature of Nietzsche’s Will to Power.
Where this may lead to divergence from your view, and I defer to your judgment due to my partial knowledge of it as I mean this post only to be informative, is that powers don’t “hide.” There is always “more,” but it is not a hidden power of an object, but the fundamental creativity of nature itself, which may be localized in any given case. I note that the analysis encapsulates our analogous concepts very differently, and this makes parallel comparisons difficult.
Thank you for your time, and for understanding that I do not mean to challenge your views, but to question a few seeming contradictions, i.e., the term “substance.” I have an outside perspective and have no horse in the OOO or SR race.
If I may reply to Dr. Rosenblum (?), a prima facie reason not to disrupt ecosystems would be that any change sufficient to do so would likely be sufficient to produce widespread unintended consequences that may be disastrous, and we have a prima facie moral responsibility for the consequences that may be within our control.
August 17, 2011 at 9:48 pm
Jason,
No “Dr.” is necessary. The solution to this problem, the problem of unintended consequences, is not to recoil into a reliance traditionalism of longstanding empirical practices (traditional farming practices, resource-gathering, etc.), but rather to better comprehend what the consequences of our actions might be. One of the major impediments in this regard is the worldwide capitalist economic system, in which private interests seek to hyperexploit a given environment without regard to the long-term effects their actions might cause. A more socialized economic system would be able to exploit the necessary resources with greater self-conscious control, and thus regulate its manipulation of the environment more exactly. I would even extend this hypothesis further and claim that if nature is currently not predictable enough, society should remake nature (to the extent that it can) in such a way that it is more predictable.
August 17, 2011 at 10:47 pm
I’m with you until the last point in the last sentence. That seems like a dangerous prospect given our finite knowledge, unless you have benign ideas in mind.
I wax formal upon first corresponding with a person.
August 18, 2011 at 12:45 am
[…] his position on the question of “substance” from the OOO perspective writes: “In The Democracy of Objects, I argue that substances are dynamic systems. In other words, I… Thus in both Harman and Bryant we find rather dynamic notions of the withdrawal of the real object […]
August 19, 2011 at 1:52 am
[…] ironically, it’s foreclosed the dimension of building. Am I a process philosopher? Sure. I argue that objects are processes and processes are objects. Yet all of my work is focused on the precise […]
November 3, 2011 at 2:41 pm
[…] to object-oriented ecology see Levi Bryant’s blog post “Object-Oriented Ecology” at https://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2011/08/10/object-oriented-ecology-2/ and Timothy Morton’s post by the same name at […]