A number of people have balked at talk of objects or substances, wishing to oppose them to processes. The worry seems to be that the concept of object or substance presupposes some fixed and unchanging core of identity in which qualities inhere. Within the framework of onticology, however, I have tried to argue that objects are dynamic systems that produce their identity across time. The identity of an object is not something that lies beneath change such that change and activity is a surface-effect of an unchanging core; rather, identity and persistence are activities and processes on the part of substances. This is why I perpetually emphasize the phenomenon of entropy when discussing objects. Entropy is a measure of the degree of order embodied in a system in terms of probability (for me “system” and “object” are synonyms). The more entropy a system possesses the less order or organization it has. The less entropy a system has the higher degree of order and organization it has. In terms of probability, the higher the degree of entropy within a system, the more probable it is that sub-elements can occur anywhere in the system. By contrast, the lower degree of entropy a system has the less probable it is that a sub-element of the system will be in a particular place.
My thesis is that objects are ontological improbabilities. If objects are improbabilities, then this is because objects are forms of organization and order. The elements that make up any object exist within the object in such a way that their structural placement is improbable. To see this point, contrast the difference between a crowd of various types of people (men, women, people of various faiths and ethnicities, rich, poor, etc) and a Roman legion. What is it that entitles us to call a Roman legion an object and a crowd of people a collection of objects (plural)? Our crowd of people is characterized by a high degree of entropy insofar as the sub-elements that make up the crowd have an equal probability of occurring anywhere in the crowd. Like particles in Brownian motion, each type of person can occur anywhere in the crowd. By contrast, a Roman legion can be thought as an object because the occurrence of the elements has a low degree of probability indicating a high degree of organization and order. Each soldier has a defined position with respect to the others and moreover, the soldiers receive the placement they have based on different ranks and skills. As a consequence, these smaller scale objects (the persons) combine together to form a unit that functions as an object.
read on!
Entities, objects, or substances are negentropic units. However, as we look at the example of both the crowd and the Roman legion suggest, it follows that the identity of substances must be a process that must perpetually produce their identity or unity across time. Every substance, I argue, is perpetually threatened by entropy or de-objectification: destruction. Likewise, many collections or aggregates tend towards the formation of objects. Let’s take the example of the Roman legion in battle. Perhaps fear overcomes the soldier, leading them to scatter. At this point entropy has set in, leading the object to dissolve. Perhaps the soldier that carries the flag or the captain is struck down and the soldiers scatter and fall apart. Likewise, in the case of the crowd, all of the different types of people that populate the crowd might tend coagulate together, forming various unities. For example, in The Mist, directed by Frank Darabont, those in the crowd of the grocery store begin to form objects or substances around religious, racial, and class characteristics when encountering the horrific entities that inhabit the mist (these horrific events functioning as what Deleuze calls “intensities”). The mechanisms and forces by which objects coagulate or crystallize are of the utmost interest to onticology. These mechanisms can be natural forces, material constraints and infrastructure, libidinal, semiotic components, and many more besides.
At the risk of stepping on Robert Jackson’s toes and his path breaking explorations of cellular automata in the context of object-oriented philosophy, I can think of few ways for better illustrating what onticology intends by an object than John Conway’s Game of Life. The Game of Life is a very simple simulator that gives rise to surprising complexity. Imagine a grid, as in the case of graph paper, where each square can either be occupied or not occupied (0, 1). Now imagine that the configuration of the occupied positions in this two dimensional universe change with each subsequent moment. What we need here is a set of rules, a physics, that regulates the transition from one “instant” (and as my Onto-Cartographies will argue, “duration” and “instants” are highly variable depending on the type of object in question) to another. In Conway’s game, this physics is very simple:
Life Physics: For each cell in the grid, count how many of its eight neighbors is ON at the present instant. If the answer is exactly two, the cell stays in its present state (ON or OFF) in the next instant. If the answer is exactly three, the cell is ON in the next instant whatever its current state. Under all other conditions the cell is OFF. (Dennett, Freedom Evolves, 36)
If the cell is off in the next instant this means it dies. If two adjacent cells are on, nothing happens. If three cells adjacent to the cell are on, this means that cell turns on. In other words, based on these simple rules or this simple physics, we get change and process.
Now what is interesting about this impoverished universe (only three rules and the possibility of being ON or OFF) we get the surprising result of emergent substances and substances that evolve. Our initial intuition might be that only ON squares (1’s) are genuine entities (Democritian atomism), but what we instead discover is that there are emergent entities that possess powers (virtual proper being) that could not have been anticipated from the sub-elements (0’s and 1’s). To get a sense of this, consider the following video of a set of simulations derived from Conway’s Game of Life:
As we watch this clip we see all sorts of patterns or negentropic unities emerge that dance across the screen. Now, based on this clip, there are a few things I’d like to draw attention to with respect to the being of substances. First, we see that the identity of substances is not a withdrawn core that remains the same as “surface qualities” change, but rather consists of certain topological (e.g. temporally malleable) processes that sustain a vector trajectory across time. This, in my view, is the substantiality of substance. The substantiality of substance is not something other or beneath these activities, but rather consists in these activities themselves. Second, we see the “strange mereology” I have often discussed here and elsewhere. Mereology investigates the relationship between parts and wholes. If the mereology of onticology is “strange”, then this is because I argue that the parts that compose an object are themselves objects in their own right, irreducible to the larger scale object of which they are a part and because the larger-scale object is a larger-scale object independent of the parts that compose it. This is basically the thesis of emergence. Moreover, there is, in principle, no limit to these strange nesting relations. We can have aggregate objects composed of aggregate objects composed of the elementary 0’s and 1’s if such true “atoms” exist. Finally, third, the powers of the larger-scale objects differ from the powers of the smaller-scale objects. The larger-scale “floaters” that dance across the screen relate to other smaller and larger-scale objects than the smaller-scale objects relate. This is what I mean by withdrawal. Withdrawal is both a counter-factual thesis and a thesis about exo-relations between different objects. At the level of counter-factuality, withdrawal means that the object would manifest itself differently given different relations to different objects. At the level of exo-relations, withdrawal means that the manner in which an object manifests itself at a subsequent stage of duration is a function of its own internal organization.
August 25, 2011 at 2:12 am
Is this really a dispute between you and Harman, insomuch as Harman strongly diverges from this position, but yours as “object-oriented” is presumed to be much similar to his? That is, what is “object-oriented” about it? Who claims the term? Why even fight over it?
August 25, 2011 at 2:21 am
Jason,
I’m highly sympathetic to Graham’s positions and am deeply influenced by him, but there are also perhaps major differences between us. Generally the “code” is as follows: “object-oriented philosophy” (OOP) refers to Graham’s ontology, object-oriented ontology (OOO) refers to any ontology that takes entities seriously (Graham, myself, Latour, Whitehead, Bennett, Bogost, etc., etc., etc.). “Onticology” refers to my particular formulation of OOO. It’s hard to say where Graham and I stand with respect to one another right now as The Democracy of Objects has not yet been published so we haven’t been able to map all this out yet.
August 25, 2011 at 7:53 am
I agree that the GOL exhibits some kind of emergence. And that’s needed if you are going to motivate a flat ontology like OOO. But I think proponents of flat ontologies ought to be troubled by the ‘undermining’ potential this model. The behaviour of some GOL objects is weakly emergent (unpredictable ahead of running a simulation) but the behaviour of all GOL worlds supervenes nonetheless on the states of component cells. That is, the rules of life + given assignment of binary values to the component to the GOL world completely determines its dynamics. If our world were like this then objects would just be aggregates of microstates governed by immutable laws. How flat is that?
August 25, 2011 at 9:18 am
Hi, long time reader but first comment.
I find myself very much in agreement with most of your ontological project but I remain perplexed as to how the account you develop here is anything but processual. No processualist would ever argue with the fact that there is some persistence of entities in the world but crucially would explain them with reference to particular processes, just as you do here. You may wish to continue using the term of substance and that’s fine but effectively you are only imbuing it with the character of a moment in a processual flow. This is coherent with the visible Deleuzian influence in your work, of which i am also unclear how you significantly depart from.
Maybe I am missing something, mind… I ask this not in the spirit of criticism but out of genuine interest as so much of your thinking has been a fertile ground for my own reflections.
Thanks
August 25, 2011 at 9:27 am
[…] a post over at Larval Subjects – The Game of Life, Cellular Automata and Objects – which bundles recent maggots from the Speculative Realist blogosphere into a neat package: […]
August 25, 2011 at 3:26 pm
David, if I may,
Although I cannot speak for Levi, I can say that it appears that you hold a lot of background assumptions that are likely not applicable. Your statements appear to be reductive, i.e., assuming that there can be a reduction to binary values. This is problematic because it presumes reducibility, which is a contrary of emergence, and that there are binary values, which I suspect are not applicable.
Kontarex,
I am of the same view; Levi’s take appears to be processional with only a few significant differences. If he would disagree, then there must either be something special hidden in his forthcoming book, or we’re quibbling over names. That said, I’m not sure what “processional” means in this community, as the term differs from my native land of pragmatism. Perhaps I see similarity whereas he and others see difference because of this equivocation.
August 25, 2011 at 3:39 pm
Levi,
May I succumb to the narcissism that you have been reading my blog, for you are directly answering a lot of my charges? That said, I think most of them were obvious criticisms.
The point about the relative independent of larger scale objects is crucial to the process view, else we really do fall to Graham’s criticisms. Relations are usually asymmetric, and emergence is the asymmetric, creative relation.
August 26, 2011 at 1:19 am
Jason,
For me the issue isn’t whether relations exist (they do), but whether relations are external. All that is required is that entities be able to detach from whatever relations they happen to entertain. This doesn’t entail that such severance won’t be accompanied by change (up to and including death), but only that such severances are ontologically possible. One of the key things I’m interested in is what changes take place when relations are either severed or new relations are forged.
August 26, 2011 at 1:23 am
Jason,
You write
I take myself to be clarifying what a substance or thing is ontologically. What constitutes the substantiality of substance has very much been up in the air throughout the history of philosophy. I see no reason to abandon the category of substance, thing, or object because they turn out to be processes. However, one important difference is that I do not hold that relations are internal to or constitutive of entities as many process philosophers do. I’m interested in networks of relations, but hold that terms are irreducible to their relations.
August 26, 2011 at 12:20 pm
Levi,
For the record, as I’ve clarified on my blog, I do not hold relations to be strictly internal or strictly external. Moreover, I have argued that there appears to be equivocating on the term “relation” as not all are equal. I mention this because not all process thought adheres to the strict internality of relations. But as you might know by now, I’m probably not your usual SR interlocutor as a pragmatist, so you may be right about them.
Could you define “independence” in “If the mereology of onticology is “strange”, then this is because I argue that the parts that compose an object are themselves objects in their own right, irreducible to the larger scale object of which they are a part and because the larger-scale object is a larger-scale object independent of the parts that compose it?”
I ask because I’m trying to get a sense of your “emergence.” My explanation, over multiple posts, also exhibits the different senses of relation and thereby independence. In closing, if you really mean that objects are absolutely “independent” then you run into the logical problem that occasionalism and such is meant to solve. It’s an unavoidable problem and has a long history, and I see you sometimes resolving it and sometimes re-instating it.
August 26, 2011 at 2:39 pm
I have summed up a few of these points here: http://immanenttranscedence.blogspot.com/2011/08/seeing-it-only-sideways-on-ooo-process.html .
I do this not as a “challenge,” but as part of a friendly elenchus. I would greatly appreciate your doing the same for me when my article comes out … predictably late. I applaud your direct responses to the issues, which happens much less often than it should in our field.
September 3, 2011 at 11:52 am
Hi Jason,
Any GOL shape is token-identical to an arrangement of its its constituent cells. Each cell is a state defined by a binary state variable and a grid location. I don’t see what’s not applicable about these assumptions. They’re just built into model.