Object-oriented ontology

[Edward theurj Berge]

In my research today I came upon this interesting article, “Here comes everything: the promise of object-oriented ontology” by Timothy Morton. (New link, old one broken.) It is of interest not only to speculative realism but also to some recent discussions on Caputo's ontology, modes of apprehension of such, and quantum theory. The article is 27 pages of text so I've culled some excerpts, lengthy in themselves.

 

Excerpts:

 

Speculative realism...asserts the deep mystery of a Non-Nature....object-oriented ontology (OOO)...goes further than this, rejecting essentialist Matter.... OOO is a form of realism that asserts that real things exist--these things are objects, not just amorphous “Matter”.... OOO extends Husserl's and Heidegger's arguments that things have an irreducible dark side: no matter how many times we turn over a coin, we never see the other side as the other side--it will have to flip onto “this” side for us to see it, immediately producing another underside. Harman simply extends this irreducible darkness from subject–object relationships to object–object relationships.... Causation is thus vicarious in some sense, never direct. An object is profoundly “withdrawn”--we can never see the whole of it, and nothing else can either.... We've become so used to hearing “object” in relation to “subject” that it takes some time to acclimatize to a view in which there are only objects, one of which is ourselves.

 

The notion of the “withdrawal” of objects extends my term strange stranger to non-living entities. Strange stranger names an uncanny, radically unpredictable quality of life forms. Life forms recede into strangeness the more we think about them, and whenever they encounter one another--the strangeness is irreducible....the uncanny essence of humans that Heidegger contemplates extends to nonhumans.... The more we know about a strange stranger, the more she (he, it) withdraws. Objects withdraw such that other objects never adequately capture but only (inadequately) “translate” them....This is what “irreducible” means.

 

Rhetoric is not simply ear candy for humans: indeed, a thorough reading of Plato, Aristotle and Longinus suggests that rhetoric is a technique for contacting the strange stranger....[it] amplifies imagination rather than trying to upstage it, and it revels in dislocation, not location.... Harman's imagery differs from ecophenomenological ecomimesis that confirms the localized position of a subject with privileged access to phenomena.... Harman's rhetoric produces an object-oriented sublime that breaks decisively with the Kantian taboo on noncorrelationist scientific speculation....ekphrasis is not about the reaction of the (human) subject, but about rhetorical modes as affective-contemplative techniques for summoning the alien.

 

The aesthetic, as we shall see, is the secret door through which OOO discovers a theory of what is called “subject”.... Melancholia is precisely a mode of intimacy with strange objects that can't be digested by the subject.... To lapse into Californian, OOO is so about the subject. There is no good reason to be squeamish about this. The more the ekphrasis zaps us, the more we fall back into the gravity well of melancholy. Sentience is out of phase with objects, at least if you have a nervous system. So melancholia is the default mode of subjectivity: an object-like coexistence with other objects and the otherness of objects--touching them, touching the untouchable, dwelling on the dark side one can never know, living in endless twilight shadows. If the reader has experienced grief she or he will recognize this state as an object-like entity that resides somewhere within the body, with an amortization schedule totally separated from other temporalities (in particular, the strict digital clock time of contemporary life). Through the heart of subjectivity rolls an object-like coexistence, none other than ecological coexistence--the ecological thought fully-fledged as dark ecology . The inward, withdrawn, operationally closed mood called melancholy is something we shake off at our peril in these dark ecological times.

 

Melancholy starts to tell us the truth about the withdrawn qualities of objects. OOO thus differs from theistic ecophilosophy that asserts, “There is a Nature.” It maintains no absolute distance between subject and object; it limits “subject” to no entity in particular. Žižek's suspicion of SR to do with the “feminine” self-absorption of objects: precisely what he doesn't like about Buddhism. Changing “self-absorption” to “withdrawal” or “operational closure” discloses what's threatening about Buddhism: an object-like entity at the core of what is called subjectivity. Like ecomimesis, Harman's passage affirms a real world beyond mentation. Unlike ecomimesis, this world doesn't surround a subject--it's a world without reference to a subject.

 

If OOO construes everything as objects, some may believe that it would have a hard time talking about subjects--indeed, Slavoj Žižek has already criticized SR in general along these lines. This subjectivity is profoundly ecological and it departs from normative Western ideas of the subject as transcendence. Thus we see off Nature and its correlate, the (human) subject. I argue that OOO enjoins us to drop Matter just as we must drop Nature, and that this means that it can save the appearance of the most coherent and testable physical theory we have, namely quantum theory.

 

Let's turn our attention to... things....how far “down things” does OOO really go? Are these things made of some kind of substrate, some kind of unformed matter? Does “withdrawal” mean that objects are impenetrable in some non-figurative, nonhuman sense? Do objects have a spatial “inside”? Surely they might. But the principle of irreducibility must mean that this inside is radically unavailable. It's not simply a case of the right equipment passing through it, like a knife through butter. Even a knife through butter would not access the butter in all its essential butteriness. The proliferation of things that ecology talks about--from trees to nuclear power--do not compromise a holistic Nature. Nor yet are they comprised of some intrinsic, essential stuff. To dispatch Matter, we must explore the most rigorous and testable theory of physical Matter we know: quantum theory.

 

Unlike some thinkers who discovered OOO in spite of deconstruction, I backed into OOO through deconstruction. SR tends to mistake deconstruction for nominalism, subjectivism and Meillassoux's correlationism.... Contemporary physics concurs with a principle tenet of Lacan and Derrida: there's no “big Other,” no device, for instance, that could measure quantum phenomena without participating in these phenomena. All observations are inside the system, or as Derrida puts it, “There is nothing outside the text” (or, in Gayatri Spivak's alternative, which I prefer, “There is no outside-text”). Arkady Plotnitsky has traced the affinities between deconstruction and quantum physics. People commonly misconstrue “there is no-outside-text” as nominalism: we can only know things by their names. Far more drastically, the axiom means: (1) Any attempt to establish rigid boundaries between reality and information results in unsustainable paradoxes; (2) Language is radically nonhuman--even when humans use it. It would be a mistake to hold that (1) is correlationism. “There is no outsidetext” occurs in a passage in which Derrida is analyzing Rousseau's position on Nature, so it's worth pausing here since this issue is directly relevant to ecocriticism. Derrida tacks close to the text he’s analyzing, which is why he appeals to close readers in the first place. He is not making a sweeping generalization about reality. Derrida is only saying, “Given the kind of closed system textuality that Rousseau prescribes, there is no outside-text.” That is, Rousseau can’t go around making claims about nature, not because there is nothing out there, but because the way he models thinking sets textuality up as a black hole....[but] Derrida abstained from ontology: he considered it tainted by the generalization-disease. Unfortunately this defaults to various forms of antirealism. Derrida's is a sin of omission.... OOO shares one thing at least with deconstruction--refraining from assertions about some general essence or substance at the back of things that guarantees their existence.

 

OOO is troubling for materialisms that rely on any kind of substrate, whether it consists of discrete atoms or of a continuum.... Certain uncontroversial facts, demonstrable in highly repeatable experiments, shatter essentialist prejudices concerning Matter.... Quantum phenomena are not simply hard to access or only partially “translated” by minds and other objects. They are irreducibly withdrawn.

 

OOO is form of realism, not materialism. In this it shares affinities with quantum theory. Antirealism pits quantum theory against its opponents, since quantum theory supposedly shows reality is fuzzy or deeply correlated with perception and so forth. In fact, quantum theory is the only existing theory to establish firmly that things really do exist beyond our mind (or any mind). Quantum theory positively guarantees that real objects exist! Not only that--these objects exist beyond one another. Quantum theory does this by viewing phenomena as quanta, as discrete “units” as described in Unit Operations by OOO philosopher Ian Bogost. “Units” strongly resemble OOO “objects.” Thinking in terms of units counteracts problematic features of thinking in terms of systems. A kind of systems thinking posed significant problems for nineteenth-century physicists. Only consider the so-called black body radiation problem. Classical thermodynamics is essentially a systems approach that combines the energy of different waves to figure out the total energy of a system. The black box in question is a kind of oven. As the temperature in the oven increases, results given by summing the wave states according to classical theory become absurd, tending to infinity.

 

By seeing the energy in the black box as discrete quanta (“units”), the correct result is obtained. Max Planck's discovery of this approach gave birth to quantum theory. Now consider perception, for the sake of which antirealism usually cites quantum theory. What does quantum theory show about our mental interactions with things? Perceptual, sensual phenomena such as hardness and brilliance are at bottom quantum mechanical effects. I can't put my hand through this table because it is statistically beyond unlikely that the quanta at the tip of my finger could bust through the resistance wells in the quanta on the table's surface. That's what solidity is. It's an averagely correct experience of an aggregate of discrete quanta. This statistical quality, far from being a problem, is the first time humans have been able to formalize supposedly experiential phenomena such as solidity. What some people find disturbing about quantum theory (once in a gajillion times I can put my finger through the table) is precisely evidence for the reality of things. (This is a version of an argument in Meillassoux, AF 82–5).

 

Quantum theory specifies that quanta withdraw from one another, including the quanta with which we measure them. In other words quanta really are discrete, and one mark of this discreteness is the constant (mis)translation of one quantum by another. Thus when you set up quanta to measure the position of a quantum, its momentum withdraws, and vice versa. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle states that when an “observer”--not a subject per se, but a measuring device involving photons or electrons (or whatever)--makes an observation, at least one aspect of the observed is occluded (QT 99–115). Observation is as much part of the Universe of objects as the observable, not some ontologically different state (say of a subject). More generally, what Niels Bohr called complementarity ensures that no quantum has total access to any other quantum. Just as a focusing lens makes one object appear sharper while others appear blurrier, one quantum variable comes into sharp definition at the expense of others (QT 158–61). This isn't about how a human knows an object, but how a photon interacts with a photosensitive molecule. Some phenomena are irreducibly undecidable, both wavelike and particle-like. The way an electron encounters the nucleus of an atom involves a dark side. Objects withdraw from each other at a profound physical level. OOO is deeply congruent with the most profound, accurate and testable theory of physical reality available. Again, it would be better to say it the other way around: quantum theory works because it's object-oriented.

 

Probing the quantum world, then, is a form of auto-affection. Bohr argued that quantum phenomena don't simply concatenate themselves with their measuring devices. They're identical to it: the equipment and the phenomena form an indivisible whole (QT 139–40, 177). This “quantum coherence” applies close to absolute zero, where particles become the “same” thing.

 

Implication and explication suggest Matter being enfolded and unfolded from something deeper. Even if it were the case that OOO should defer to physics, in the terms set by physics itself objects aren't made “of” any one thing in particular. Just as there is no top level, there may be no bottom level that is not an (substantial, formed) object.

 

To this extent, “object” (as a totally positive entity) is a false immediacy. Positive assertions about objects fail because objects have a shadowy dark side, a mysterious interiority like the je ne sais quoi of Kantian beauty. Is this nothing at all? Is there a path from the carnival of things to a bleak nothingness? Nihilism, believing that you have no beliefs, maintains that things emerge from an impenetrable mystery. Nihilism, the cool kids' religion, shuns the inconveniences of intimacy. We have objects--they have us--under our skin. They are our skin. OOO can't be a form of nihilism. It's the opposite view (relationism) that tends towards nihilism. Relationism holds that objects are nothing more than the sum of their relations with other objects. This begs the question of what an object is, since the definition implies a potential infinite regress: what are the “other objects”? Why, nothing more than the sum of their relations with other objects--and so on ad obscurum. At least OOO takes a shot at saying what objects are: they withdraw. This doesn't mean that they don't relate at all. It simply means that how they appear has a shadowy, illusory, magical, “strangely strange” quality. It also means they can't be reduced to one another. OOO holds that strangeness is impossible if objects are reducible to their relations. Since relationism is hamstrung by its reluctance to posit anything, it tends towards obscurantism. Relationism is stuck in a Euthyphronic dilemma: objects consist of relations between other objects—and what are those objects? An object as such is never defined. So while ecological criticism appears to celebrate interconnectedness, it must in the end pay attention to what precisely is interconnected with what.

 

This radical finitude includes a strange irreducible openness.

[Darrell R. Moneyhon]

Quantum theory specifies that quanta withdraw from one another ...

If we apply the salvation by extreme theory to this, then the way a quanta can relate with another quanta is to withdaw so thoroughly that it no longer sees/senses or acts like there is a there there where it thinks or acts like itself. Object yes. Object there or object here, no. A placeless quanta. A placeless Darrell. And now I can relate with Theurj. Once Darrell goes so deep into Darrell that there is no there there, then Darrell is an abstraction that can be applied to other quanta. Darrell is no longer concrete. No longer measured by himself. The measurements exhast themselves as ojbects and Darrell collapses into Theurj's waiting arms! 

Darrell R. Moneyhon said:

theurj, After processing the thread topic a bit more thoroughly (thanks to your re-direct), I ended up in a familiar place of believing or sensing that in some way deep = wide and wide = deep. This concept means of course "very deep = wide"  and "very wide" = deep. A little othery, relatey, or "wide" would not be "deep." That would be the sense of attention deficit "flitting." Or "fluffy." 

But the kind of wide I experienced as a boy who took in all the starry night sky at once is wide enough to take me deep. If the mind allows itself to project enough to become, as Kristnamherti (sp?) says, "expansive," then that same mind feels "deep." I captured this intuitively sensed reality or theory of deep = wide in the following little poem I wrote many years ago: 

from The heavenly strains. (unpublished book of poems): 

The Snowfall

With the sun shining

and the temperature climbing to a predicted 48 degrees,

the snow will soon melt.

But, for now, it is here, and that is enough.

I feel it crunch beneath me

and it makes a sifting sound as I drag my feet.

On a still, open, plain

I see footprints of different sizes, shapes, and patterns,

writing the history of this snowfall

and of the lives which touched it.

This record will disappear.

The story will be lost.

The expanse will become a sea of bleached brown spongy sod,

and, later, a lush green lawn

covering all signs of snow.

But, for now, snow crystals glisten

like millions of twinkling stars.

The white blanket is a microcosm of the universe’s

time and passage. As I walk by,

stars appear and then burn out,

as if each step carries me light years.

You and I will soon no longer walk,

our stories will fade. Our lives will be covered

by new life. Still, its enough

to be here now,

with the universe glistening inside us.

What do you think of the premise or proposition that deep = wide? At some depth-point in an object's self there appears to be an emptiness (just as material things, at the atomic level, have 90-some percent empty space in them) or an unknowableness that we call "formlessness" or "void." Same for the very wide. Recall the 60s and 70s phrase "far out?" Far out, reality looks pretty unknowable, empty, formless, and void also. Kristnamherti's "expansive" and Tillich's "ground of being" seem to be in the same ontological space. (Very) Wide is ontologically equivalent to deep .

I also believe that when expansive/wide moves through the invisible portal to deep it may also open up intermediate depth levels rather than only extreme, "very," depth/deep. This is aids in the application, rather than only apperception, of a mystically revealed truth. Access to very wide =  a chance to apply depth. Thus, I suspect an asymetrical equivalence between depth and width. And this works out beautifully. If I can go into the "door" of deep and end up seeing intermediate circles of reality around me (instead of only far out realities) then I have a chance to integrate Ultimate Reality with immediate reality.

Repeated applications of Ultimate Reality then can be internalized or assimilated into my whole life and being. Thus all three stages of mastering the Mysterious are available: access, application, assimilation. In about wholeness Layman and I called these the 3 Amigos. Each of the Amigos can act either as a mode (at any stage of mastery) or as a stage. While in the access stage you are mostly just accessing the wholeness or whatever you hope to master. You are getting glimpses. Wilber's "state." In the application stage, learning ways to apply the skill is your default program. In the assimilation stage, learning ways to assimilate/integrate the skill into your whole being is the main thing you do. 

The proposed asymetical equivalence in deep = wide seems to be a form of what John Wesley called "prevenient grace" a something-or-other (of course Wesley would call it "God") that helps you grow despite or irregardless of your conscious choice or will. If my asymetrical equivalence hunch about the deep = wide pattern is right, then the prevenient grace lies in the inherent design of reality. Open up and walk through the door called deep and you end up in a room called wide, but not necessarily as wide as you were deep. This is like a BOGO (Buy one, get one free) sale. Accept and allow ("buy") access to a very deep (or wide) reality and you get a free extra product that is a bit more applicable to your immediate reality or life situation. You get "apply" when you buy "access." 

darrell

Darrell R. Moneyhon said:

Thanks for that correction, I will "bark up that branch" of that one tree before fliting to the next tree! 

darrell

theurj said:

Interestingly Darrell, you say you stick to a topic and dive deeper when others move on. And yet you have not even begun to stick with the topic of this thread enough to know what some of the OOOers think deeply about. If you want to know what they think about quantum entanglement, or anything else, then do your homework. As but one example, the very first post of this thread on Morton discusses quantum theory and its relation to OOO.

[Darrell R. Moneyhon]

Another thought came to me while processing the OOO ideas. I get it that the OOOers see objectness in the discrete nature of the quanta, but what do they make of the apparent lessening of objectness. The quantized particle acts like a particle and wave, participates in quantum entanglement, "leaps," etc. Some theorists like Bohm and Hiley believe there is an actual quantum substratum of reality that is "non-local" and in which "active information" can be picked up on between particles. They liken it to a ship that can pick up on radio information about an iceburg up ahead and then change course even though the information was not a cause in the sense of physical inertia. They envision or postulate an "implicate order" in which such non-local things can happen. They also speculate how energy too (not just information) might come from the implicate order and override expected Newtonian physics at time. The notion that even a stupid particle like an electron can recieve and respond to active information from the quantum substratum also implies an "intelligence" inside the particle and suggests a "super-implicate" order within the implicate order. Some reviewers match their three level reality with Vedic gross (explicate order, realm of "classical objects"), subtle (implicate order, quantum field), and causal (super-implicate order).

My point is that while the quanta may have object like discrete qualities, they are less hard-headedly object-like than in the explicate order, and probably even less so in a speculated super-implicate order. In other words the deeper you go the less "object" like (or at least less material object-like) the "thing" becomes, the more it leans toward wave functions or feild effects, etc. The more it appears to act like energy than mass. The direction of the change is sort of working against the OOO folks in that we could extrapolate a very non-object-like, non-dual, characteristic the more we go in the deep direction.

Actually I am somewhat in the OOO camp when I maintain that God is part of True Self that goes all the way in and unfolds all the way out to the regular object, thing, called me. This is in line with Hindu thought, I think. And yet I see the "ways" of the deep Self distinctly different and more "spiritual" or energy-like, or energy field-like, than the surface realm's "ways."

My own experiences of getting non-local and trans-temporal information from the Deeper side (or is it not really deeper, just "other"? ) suggests that the depth levels do have different ways that may not compute with reality here at the surface where we tend to look the most. Why we don't feel in deeper, I don't know. But I would tend to say the deep is part of the self/object, not not part of it. The duality of God and man is a real problem that disempowers folks spiritually and energetically. There is no reason to believe that "grace" forever equal accidental or other-directed only. We can go deeper and intend what has been called "grace." We are able to be quantum mechanics. Possibly even sub-quantum mechanics. The object or self has within it powers previously thought outside of it only. In this way I am in the OOO camp myself, I guess. 

darrell

Darrell R. Moneyhon said:

Quantum theory specifies that quanta withdraw from one another ...

If we apply the salvation by extreme theory to this, then the way a quanta can relate with another quanta is to withdaw so thoroughly that it no longer sees/senses or acts like there is a there there where it thinks or acts like itself. Object yes. Object there or object here, no. A placeless quanta. A placeless Darrell. And now I can relate with Theurj. Once Darrell goes so deep into Darrell that there is no there there, then Darrell is an abstraction that can be applied to other quanta. Darrell is no longer concrete. No longer measured by himself. The measurements exhast themselves as ojbects and Darrell collapses into Theurj's waiting arms! 

Darrell R. Moneyhon said:

theurj, After processing the thread topic a bit more thoroughly (thanks to your re-direct), I ended up in a familiar place of believing or sensing that in some way deep = wide and wide = deep. This concept means of course "very deep = wide"  and "very wide" = deep. A little othery, relatey, or "wide" would not be "deep." That would be the sense of attention deficit "flitting." Or "fluffy." 

But the kind of wide I experienced as a boy who took in all the starry night sky at once is wide enough to take me deep. If the mind allows itself to project enough to become, as Kristnamherti (sp?) says, "expansive," then that same mind feels "deep." I captured this intuitively sensed reality or theory of deep = wide in the following little poem I wrote many years ago: 

from The heavenly strains. (unpublished book of poems): 

The Snowfall

With the sun shining

and the temperature climbing to a predicted 48 degrees,

the snow will soon melt.

But, for now, it is here, and that is enough.

I feel it crunch beneath me

and it makes a sifting sound as I drag my feet.

On a still, open, plain

I see footprints of different sizes, shapes, and patterns,

writing the history of this snowfall

and of the lives which touched it.

This record will disappear.

The story will be lost.

The expanse will become a sea of bleached brown spongy sod,

and, later, a lush green lawn

covering all signs of snow.

But, for now, snow crystals glisten

like millions of twinkling stars.

The white blanket is a microcosm of the universe’s

time and passage. As I walk by,

stars appear and then burn out,

as if each step carries me light years.

You and I will soon no longer walk,

our stories will fade. Our lives will be covered

by new life. Still, its enough

to be here now,

with the universe glistening inside us.

What do you think of the premise or proposition that deep = wide? At some depth-point in an object's self there appears to be an emptiness (just as material things, at the atomic level, have 90-some percent empty space in them) or an unknowableness that we call "formlessness" or "void." Same for the very wide. Recall the 60s and 70s phrase "far out?" Far out, reality looks pretty unknowable, empty, formless, and void also. Kristnamherti's "expansive" and Tillich's "ground of being" seem to be in the same ontological space. (Very) Wide is ontologically equivalent to deep .

I also believe that when expansive/wide moves through the invisible portal to deep it may also open up intermediate depth levels rather than only extreme, "very," depth/deep. This is aids in the application, rather than only apperception, of a mystically revealed truth. Access to very wide =  a chance to apply depth. Thus, I suspect an asymetrical equivalence between depth and width. And this works out beautifully. If I can go into the "door" of deep and end up seeing intermediate circles of reality around me (instead of only far out realities) then I have a chance to integrate Ultimate Reality with immediate reality.

Repeated applications of Ultimate Reality then can be internalized or assimilated into my whole life and being. Thus all three stages of mastering the Mysterious are available: access, application, assimilation. In about wholeness Layman and I called these the 3 Amigos. Each of the Amigos can act either as a mode (at any stage of mastery) or as a stage. While in the access stage you are mostly just accessing the wholeness or whatever you hope to master. You are getting glimpses. Wilber's "state." In the application stage, learning ways to apply the skill is your default program. In the assimilation stage, learning ways to assimilate/integrate the skill into your whole being is the main thing you do. 

The proposed asymetical equivalence in deep = wide seems to be a form of what John Wesley called "prevenient grace" a something-or-other (of course Wesley would call it "God") that helps you grow despite or irregardless of your conscious choice or will. If my asymetrical equivalence hunch about the deep = wide pattern is right, then the prevenient grace lies in the inherent design of reality. Open up and walk through the door called deep and you end up in a room called wide, but not necessarily as wide as you were deep. This is like a BOGO (Buy one, get one free) sale. Accept and allow ("buy") access to a very deep (or wide) reality and you get a free extra product that is a bit more applicable to your immediate reality or life situation. You get "apply" when you buy "access." 

darrell

Darrell R. Moneyhon said:

Thanks for that correction, I will "bark up that branch" of that one tree before fliting to the next tree! 

darrell

theurj said:

Interestingly Darrell, you say you stick to a topic and dive deeper when others move on. And yet you have not even begun to stick with the topic of this thread enough to know what some of the OOOers think deeply about. If you want to know what they think about quantum entanglement, or anything else, then do your homework. As but one example, the very first post of this thread on Morton discusses quantum theory and its relation to OOO.

[Edward theurj Berge]

"I get it that the OOOers see objectness in the discrete nature of the quanta, but what do they make of the apparent lessening of objectness."

The "OOOers" are a diverse bunch and have their own opinions of most things. So you won't find a uniform opinion among them to your question. They are not like kennilinguists, who take but one authority for all answers to everything.

As for all that non-local woo woo, Morton might be more inclined but Bryant not so much. If you search for 'hyperobject' or 'non-local' in this thread you'll see a lot of that discussion. And my own take, different still from either of them. And I consider myself an hOOOlon.

[Edward theurj Berge]

We might even say an hOOOlon includes adherents of integral theory/practice, those who include OOO in their investigations as well as a variety of other sources. You know, like integral. And like an asshole (everyone has one), still maintain their own opinions (each asshole is unique). And so are assholons, another story, despite them wanting to control The Story.

[Ambo Suno]

At this point, t, I just want to know if in this ever withdrawing social grammar of IPS, the spelling could also be "asshOOOlons?" I guess we can't really know. amboguous

[Edward theurj Berge]

Yes, I considered calling myself an asshOOOlon, given I may be so perceived by those with paper thin skin. That's fine with me, as my skin is a bit thicker. As Pat Benatar sang: "Fire away." Where I grew up back east creative and insulting name-calling were terms of endearment.

[Ambo Suno]

That's fortunate for you, t, since you won't have any reverberating reactions - still water. Cool! ambo

[Layman Pascal]

Darrell,

Hey. That's a good area of inquiry. 

I agree with Bohm, Einstein, Aetherometry, etc. that there is a material-energetic sub-quantum realm (although I agree with Bohr and Heisenberg that, at some point, we do reach an area in which simultaneity and uncertainty become features rather than 'bug's -- but that is not necessarily the quantum realm).  More specifically I agree with Debroglie, Schroedinger, Milo Wolff, etc. that wave-particle duality is redundant if there are no particles.  Incoming and outgoing continuous waves can generate an oscillating, persistent, torus-like fold at their "turn around point".  To view that in isolation leads to the particle hypothesis which may be only a convenient, human-scale fiction. 

But does this have any consequences for OOO, etc?  How "particle-like" are their "objects"?

I don't think so.  "Objects" must be considered as not being particle-like.  At least not material particles.  They are closer to "causal realm entities" which are inexhaustible, necessary, infinitesimal, individually unbounded and always a dynamic approximation of themselves.  All that is the "extra" which our experience of objects conceals. 

The everyday fact that there is a lot of stuff we don't know about chairs, trees, friends, etc. is only a crude short-hand for the actual reality of self-exceeding (self-adjacent) objects.

[Edward theurj Berge]

I was re-reading some earlier pages in this thread and came upon this Zizek quote from The Speculative Turn:

"The last great breakthrough was quantum physics, and it compels us to...drop the assertion of ‘fully existing external reality’ as the basic premise of materialism—on the contrary, its premise is the ‘non-All’ of reality, its ontological incompleteness.... Materialism has nothing to do with the assertion of the inert density of matter; it is, on the contrary, a position which accepts the ultimate Void of reality—the consequence of its central thesis on the primordial multiplicity is that there is no ‘substantial reality’, that the only ‘substance’ of the multiplicity is Void" (406).

[Layman Pascal]

Lots to agree and disagree in that.  

I can affirm that Materialism exceeds the inert density of matter -- but "the ultimate Void of reality" is a pretty much unthinkable metaphysical claim.  Unless he only means non-extended tautological preconditions which have no dimensionality. 

Two breakthroughs seem to be entangled around quantum physics -- first the production of a new wave mechanics for a discrete universe whose various iterations have given us our contemporary tech based & secondly the popularization of the conceptual framework of Copenhagen.  I'm convinced that the latter does not adequately explain the former and that it will, before long, be considered an historical relic as actual physical theory.  Yet its insights about "reality" are superb and evocative.

Almost all my Zizek feelings in one place!

[Edward theurj Berge]

Also see this post in another thread.

theurj said in this post:

Going back to this post and the 3 following re: Bryant's comments on Lacan's 'plus-one,' something has been nagging my subconscious on it. Bryant's description of the +1 as an empty function that doesn't participate in the discussion, and has no special knowledge of the topic discussed, yet functions to focus discussion enough for participants to make a decision reminds me of a couple of things....the role of the Fool in Tarot.

[Darrell R. Moneyhon]

I think you are right that "object" does not imply "particle" for the OOOers. An object is almost more like a thought than a particle, in the way the OOOers seem to be using the word "object." Can you have two thoughts at once? Probably not. Two thoughts at once would be interpreted as one hybrid thought.

Objects as used by the OOOers also seems to resemble the Judeo-Christian "the Word." Or Plato's Ideal Forms. If an object is a discrete something or other that the mind focuses on, or as the OOOers say, "orients" to, then "objects" are surprisingly close to discrete ways the mind/measurer has of formating itself, in terms of object-like thoughts.

And if thinking thoughts seems to be the only game in town, then object-oriented means something more like reason. Even good old reason can open itself up to intuition once it reaches its limits. Hence the value of koans. One could argue that the OOOers would claim that a koan works not because it transcends reason and object-like discrete thoughts but because it uses those thoughts to open a door to a place that appears relatively free of thoughts per se. The "orientation" to the objects then can be thought of as bearing good perceptiveness/expansiveness/receptiveness/voidness/non-discrete "fruit."

The phrase "object-oriented" does not necessarily mean a metaphysical claim about the superior realness of objects; it implies that an orientation toward them is productive. It is really just a way to work with the thinker tool (the mind) itself. Don't try to make a pig sing by thinking non-thoughts. Think discrete units called thoughts all the way "home" (as in "this little piggy came home") to nirvana, etc. Think as thinking is. And it is always coming up with some sort of "object." Or I suppose you could say "discrete content."

Even if this is but a wave-collapsed energy blip from a unified field mind, even if it is a projection of the process-based projector, it is the way the process-based projector works. Accept the projection at face value and then see what happens. If the acceptance is "sincere" enough then the process-based projector will be revealed in due time.

Don't insinserely act like the projection or object isn't even there though. That would not be very productive. Instead accept it as the object it presents itself to be and then eventually you will notice that while there is an object, there is no discrete "there" where the object is located or based. It has no base or basis in reality, because part of the object's true identity is that it is not the most real stuff.

Object orientation is more of a process than a metaphysical claim. Go ahead and work with your mind as it tends to operate. Don't try to get out of your mind. Have faith that whatever is ultimately real will be eventually revealed or achieved by means of an object orientation. 

Do you think this "process view" or "functional view" of OOO is correct? 

My next question is where I had planned to start, but instead I'll finish there: 

Do OOOers consider energy fields an object? Probably yes. If so then doesn't that pretty well stretch the meaning of object all to hell? Energy fields could extend all the way to space and to a possible unified field of the universe. More or less all incompasing of many, many, many "objects." A boundless, locationless object such as an energy field seems to almost put objects out of business, in a manner similar to how Rifkin claims that supply side economics capitalism will narrow its own profit margins until it puts itself out of business. 

These ideas are extensions of my paradoxical intention-inspired concept of "salvation by extemes." Also probably close to what the Taoist may have meant by "sincere" thought. Let thought run its course; it will find the river and then the ocean. It will find its Way home. "This little piggy ran all the Way home."

Please bring this post to theurj's attention. If all my other posts are too cumbersome or off-topic to process fully then pay attention to this post as a kind of representative to where my mind was heading with all the other posts anyway. This is a sumary of my overall thoughts on the matter of OOO. Plus it represents an improvement in my thoughts, thanks in very large part to Theurj's helpful feedback about my not actually listening to the OOOers arguments in the first place prior to my speaking up on this thread. He was correct, and the feedback helped me to listen better to what the OOOers might be really saying. Even if I got it wrong here, it at least is a more thoughtful and considerate (as in thought out or thought through and as in carefully considered arguements, reasons) "wrong." A more insightful wrong. Thoughts took me deeper, and his nudge helped change my thoughts in order to allow greater "in-depth" thought. 

Layman Pascal said:

Darrell,

Hey. That's a good area of inquiry. 

I agree with Bohm, Einstein, Aetherometry, etc. that there is a material-energetic sub-quantum realm (although I agree with Bohr and Heisenberg that, at some point, we do reach an area in which simultaneity and uncertainty become features rather than 'bug's -- but that is not necessarily the quantum realm).  More specifically I agree with Debroglie, Schroedinger, Milo Wolff, etc. that wave-particle duality is redundant if there are no particles.  Incoming and outgoing continuous waves can generate an oscillating, persistent, torus-like fold at their "turn around point".  To view that in isolation leads to the particle hypothesis which may be only a convenient, human-scale fiction. 

But does this have any consequences for OOO, etc?  How "particle-like" are their "objects"?

I don't think so.  "Objects" must be considered as not being particle-like.  At least not material particles.  They are closer to "causal realm entities" which are inexhaustible, necessary, infinitesimal, individually unbounded and always a dynamic approximation of themselves.  All that is the "extra" which our experience of objects conceals. 

The everyday fact that there is a lot of stuff we don't know about chairs, trees, friends, etc. is only a crude short-hand for the actual reality of self-exceeding (self-adjacent) objects.