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INTO_THE_OOONT
December 6, 2018
On Graham Harman's book
"Object-Oriented https://books.google.com/books?id=P6szDwAAQBAJ
Ontology: A New Theory
of Everything".
With occasional commentary
from Stephen Mulhall in the LRB:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n18/stephen-mulhall/how-complex-is-a-lemon
Late in the introduction, Harman
begins to outline "Object-Oriented
Ontology" in more detail:
"Some of the basic principles of OOO, to be
visited in detail in the coming chapters, are And an object is whatever
as follows: (1) All objects must be given equal I say it is, which is to
attention, whether they be human, non-human, say anything at all.
natural, cultural, real or fictional."
Not just physical
objects, not even just
And why must all objects be including living
given equal attention? beings, but every
thought, custom,
And that's not possible, is it? story... Is there
anyting left that isn't
an object? So how are
we oriented again?
"(2) Objects are not identical with
their properties, but have a tense
relationship with those properties,
and this very tension is responsible
for all of that change that occurs
in the world."
Not just *some* of the change, but *all* of
it. Those other changes that happen when
objects is just being objects, blissfully
content to wallow in their own well-defined
but inaccessible to human properties, those
changes obviously don't count as changes.
"(3) Objects come in just two kinds:
*real objects* exist whether or not they
currently affect anything else, while Otherwise known
*sensual objects* exist only in relation as "real objects"
to some real object." and "not-really-objects".
If I kick you in the nose, is my foot Though actually, I think
a *sensual* object, or is it a *real* Harman's take is that
object? the "real" is inaccessible
to us, and the "sensual"
is what we can work with
"(4) Real objects cannot relate to one directly.
another directly, but only indirectly, by
means of a sensual object." And he's *not* into
"idealism", because he's
One of the more baffling points here. willing to conceed that
The billard ball can't just bounce off the underlying reality
another billard ball, there has to be exists. (Why he would
a "sensual object" that mediates the isn't clear to me-- if
collision. Even though there's no it's all so unknowable,
intelligence involved that perceives how do you know it's
anything in the exchange... there?)
"(5) The properties of objects also come in
just two kinds: again, real and sensual."
Actually, that's pretty baffling, too,
but let's just keep going.
"(6) These two kinds of objects and two kinds
of qualities lead to four basic permutations,"
Hang on-- yeah, 2x2=4. Check:
real objects / real properties
real objects / sensual properties
sensual objects / real properties
sensual objects / sensual properties
Now it all makes sense.
But... couldn't you have a sensual object
with both real and sensual properties?
Maybe the idea is the real
And how *could* you have a *real* can be "sensed" by the
object with "sensual" properties if we "sensual". Of course, I
can't actually percieve them? think the term "sensual"
originally came from the
I find myself wondering how sensual idea that it's the veil that
objects acquire real properties-- maybe *we* percieve (i.e. "sense"),
through something like "Harman first which would seem to indicate
conceived his whacked ideas in 1998." the meaning of the term is
shifting in different use
But I keep falling back on common sense cases, but it avoids the
notions of "reality", so I may not be appearence of privileging,
getting this right. which is of course the
important thing.
" ... four basic permutations which OOO
treats as the root of time and space,
as well as two closely related terms time and essence and
known as essence and *eidos*." space eidos
\ /
I'm sorry, but okay so "time and space" \ /
are rooted in "the four basic four
permutations", but is it then perms
"essence and eidos" that is rooted in
"the four basic permutations"; or is
it "space and time" rooted in the time and
"essence and eidos"? space
/ \
/ \
/ \
four essence
perms and eidos
time and essence
I guess its more space = = = and eidos
like this: |
|
But on second four
thought, skip it. perms
"(7) Finally, "-- I breathe easier--
" ... OOO holds that philosophy
generally has a closer relationship Because it's way easier to get
with aesthetics than with paying gigs out of design schools.
mathematics or natural science."
But then, acknowledging the
importance of aesthetics in
epistemology is a point where
UGLYBEAUTY I might kinda sorta agree
with Harman. (Broken clocks,
and all)... but going by
Mulhall's account in the LRB
Harman loses me pretty quickly.
MULHALL_ON_HARMAN
"While some of the
ideas just listed ..."
Wait: those were ideas?
(And do they count as objects?
And if so, sensual or real?)
"... may sound challenging
or even implausible ..." No man, they sound like
*bleeding nonsense*.
"I will make every effort
to explain them as
lucidly as possible." To an empty room, I expect.
Or a room full of empty skulls.
Now, the use of the phrase
"object-oriented" here annoys
me slightly, because it's a
pretty clear attempt at Object-oriented programming has
borrowing some of the cachet been a Big Thing since the late-80s
of the computer programming or so, and a Thing for even longer.
field (by someone who is
otherwise very dismissive of There is a wide literature of varying
technical knowledge). degress of wonkiness about OOP, and a range
of opinion about what precisely it means--
Harman however makes a cute my take is that it's primarily about sets of
point here, though: while routine that share data between them without
he's lifted "object-oriented" explicitly passing it.
from programming and shuffled it
over into philosophy, the word These namespaces got called "objects"
"ontology" came out of out of some notion that they would
philosophy and got picked-up represent real objects. "Metaphors"
by the information sciences. were the bees knees back in the 80s--
an intellectual fad I've heard blamed
He makes the point that the on George Lakoff.
philosophical and information
science usages of either term GOLDLEAF_FRAME
have very little to do with
each other, which is fair
enough. In the information sciences, ontology
is a term the AI people like to use to
But then he mean something fairly specific about
goes on and generating taxonomies, dividing the world
makes a stab at up into hierarchies (or graphs?) of concepts.
using object
"encapsulation" In philosophy, ontology
as a metaphor (The unknowableness (much like metaphysics)
for unknowable of reality is one seems to be a flag to
reality... of the big things indicate the speaker isn't
Harman claims to going to make any sense.
I might point out know. I may never "The nature of being"?
that software get tired of making
"objects" are not fun of this guy.)
incapable of
communication, but
rather they
communicate in
only well-defined,
prescribed ways.
They're nothing like Harman's
lonely objects that spend their
lives in solitary confinement.
If I were going to draw analogies to
epistemology, I might make the point that
while we're limited in what we can know
about, say, an electron, we can actually
know many useful, significant things about
them without throwing up our hands at the
fundamental unknowability of it all, man.
Anyway, I've had enough for now.
Perhaps I can interest you in my new philosophy of
get-a-real-jobism, loosely based on the doctrine of
come-the-fuck-on-oriented epistemontogy.
You see, thinkers can be divided into two categories,
"real" and "nope-not-really". And it would be a
terrible thing to privilege people who can think their
way out of a paper bag, because it would make the
permanently en-bagged feel bad about themselves.
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