I will begin, to the best of my ability, with the pre-philosophical attitude. In this I am surely doomed to fail. The pre-philosophical attitude is that stance in which there has not yet been a split between appearance and reality. The way things appear is the way they are. There is not yet any sense that in reality things might be different than they appear and for this reason there is not yet any call for philosophical reflection. I am trying to begin as Plato’s prisoner in the cave staring at the wall where what you see is what you get and there is not yet any reason to question what I see. In the pre-philosophical attitude the earth is stationary, I know what it is that I think, the sun and moon rise and set, etc. Everything is as it appears. I begin in the pre-philosophical attitude to begin thinking once again about things and objects. I am not suggesting that the pre-philosophical attitude should be the authority that decides what things are.
Nothing could be more evident than that we are surrounded by things of all kinds. Some of these things are inanimate and natural such as rocks. Other things are inanimate and technological or carry the imprint of human work such as the table at which I am now writing. Yet others are living like my dog sitting next to me or my wife sitting across from me or the bird flying in the sky. As I write the last sentence I involuntarily cringe. To call my wife, dog, and the bird flying in the sky things seems to denigrate them. It seems offensive.
Already I have learned two things: First, I have learned that things or objects belong to different kinds. There are inanimate things, technological things, and living beings. To this list we should add art things such as the painting that hangs on my wall. They are all things, but they differ– perhaps –significantly from one another. I will have to inquire into what those differences are and what distinguishes them at some point. But I will have to start by some time asking myself what makes a thing a thing in general or what is common to all these things as things.
Second, I have learned that things have different degrees of value. If I wince in counting my wife and dog as things, then this is because calling them thus suggests that they are of equal value to rocks when that certainly not the case. They differ in value and dignity than the mere rock. Even placing my wife and dog in the same category fills me with a sense of unease, for while my love for our dog is immense and I would risk or lay down my life for my dog without even thinking about it (e.g., if we were on a lifeboat I would share our limited food with our dog), nonetheless there is something unsettling in putting my wife and a person in the same category with dogs and birds. This worth is not of an economic or monetary kind. It is not a price. Rather it is an esteem or dignity. Perhaps later we will have to explore whether this shouldn’t be questioned.
For the moment, though, I have learned that I must inquire into value and how we rank things in terms of dignity and worth. It is as plain as day to me that some things are filled with an aura of dignity and worth, yet what is this strange phenomenon of value that shines forth from some things? What is this esteem and from whence does it come? In the pre-philosophical attitude it seems self-evident that the redwood forests, the beautiful animal, the rock formations of Goblin National Park, the person, the work of art shine with dignity and that it is sacrilegious to destroy or harm them. I grasp it immediately in these things just as I see things immediately and experience a sort of animal faith that they are really there and not just illusions. Yet this worth, this value, this dignity is not a feature of things like their color, texture, and heft that I can point to. Yet it’s there. How is this to be thought?
I now glance up at the sky as a cloud passes. Is that cloud a thing or object I wonder? Somehow the cloud seems less an object than a cat, table, rock, or person. It somehow seems wrong to call the cloud an object, but surely it is something? And what of the crowd I saw yesterday milling about campus? Is it an object or is it just a group of persons? In other words– now a third thing, this time a question –where do we draw the line between objects and, for lack of a better word, non-objects? We seem to rank some things as more things than other things. Why? And should we? I will leave off here, hoping that questions will begin to percolate marking the transition from the pre-philosophical attitude to a philosophical attitude where how things appear no longer indicates that it is so evident as to how they are.
Larval Subjects . 
May 1, 2022 at 7:32 am
I am happy to see your return to the blog format.
Although I like what you post on Facebook, the blog format seems to lend itself to present a deeper, more focused think that I enjoyed reading from you.
May 1, 2022 at 1:13 pm
Good to see new posts at Larval Subjects!
May 1, 2022 at 2:03 pm
Classifying your wife as a thing offends because her inner truth of existence, since the things that move within her and constitute her experience, are not captured by any static notion of what a thing is.
You probably could not even create a set theory to describe the range of those inner motions, that you experience as her personality and ever-evolving life experiences.
So by trying to render her as any kind of thing within a flat ontology, you are offending the very basis of your relationship, of relating to each other’s incredibly varied and layered inner experiences.
Since it seems this inner life of movement, energy, and in some sense motion or emotion characterises all things to varying degrees (e.g. what is an atmosphere if not an aggregation of motions and in some sense moods), this sort of panpsychism-oriented angle is a quite a strong to flat ontology, since it suggests that levels of existence can emerge in relation to these inner and outer motions, that are nested enough, complex enough and unpredictable enough to make a flat ontology unworkable.
Hence the shift in neuroscience to considering pan-psychism as a more viable approach to theories of mind, precisely because it does not operate from a flat-categorical place (e.g Galileo’s Error by Phillip Goff)
Similarly Geoff Hinton and Jeff Hawkins are moving towards a nested theory of mind, as a way forwards past current roadblocks in artificial intelligence research, again a similar move away from flatness (E.g. A Thousand Brains, a New Theory of Intelligence)
Flatness is a bit overblown. There is no universal way to define it (because there is no universal substrate or ether), and it does not hold in practice
Yes, it is important not to forget the innocence of encountering things in the world, and the meanings that this carries in our lifeworlds, but it does not help to explain how things assemble and what emerges from that, which is often more rooted in complex inner and outer motions, rather than any sense of objective form
May 1, 2022 at 4:34 pm
When you hear the word “thing” or “object” it can be substituted for being or substance (Aristotle). The claim is that being is composed of nothing but beings. Humans and animals are among those beings. I try to make very clear in the post that these beings differ in terms of how we value them and in terms of dignity, nodding to some of what you’re saying here.
May 1, 2022 at 4:48 pm
I’m curious as to what you think a flat ontology is given the confidence with which you cite all sorts of things it can’t do. What does this term signify to you?
May 1, 2022 at 6:18 pm
Objects and things fall within the merely occurring, they are nearly interchangeable terms for extended, delimited substances. Clouds are clearly things, they belong as substance to categories within meteorology, composed of such and such a vapor mixture, caught in the web of entropy etc. In a preontological understanding of being the moving center of a world of meaningful concern, your wife would never show up as a piece of equipment or a mass of substance…unless you were a surgeon who had to perform an emergency procedure on her, then she would temporarily light up as substance. In the exact same way you cannot account for and completely miss the ontological content of tennis if you exclusively attempt to build it up naturalistically from the cloud of atoms, particles and forces stretched thinly over a void etc, it will seem obscene to think of your love as a thing or substance. “In itself, it is, indeed, monstrous to designate love a ‘consciousness-of-something’.” (Heidegger, pg44 Introduction to Phenomenological Research) You’re contoured by Care, you cant help but be absorbed in organized coping within a significance drenched landscape of meaningful concern.
May 1, 2022 at 8:33 pm
Hi Thomas,
In the blog series I’m writing I’m trying, for the moment, to avoid theorizing. I’m simply making a series of descriptive observations about experience that will then all be questioned and complicated once I enter the philosophical stage when appearance and reality are fissured. As such I’m remaining agnostic for the moment. I’m doing a sort of phenomenology.
May 2, 2022 at 6:16 am
Levi, argue against my orthodox Heideggerianism, you dont need to explain a single entity or methodology to me. I can see this is some kind of decriptive psychology here, I understand everything you’re doing and for those with eyes to see and ears to hear your commitments in this piece are very clear. It is nice to see your longform writing again