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 An object is profoundly “withdrawn”--we can never see the whole of it, and nothing else can either....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.

[Edward theurj Berge]

From that video:

“There is no such thing as a rigid body extended in time and space. For every object there is a radical unknowable space and time because the speed of lights sets limits on what objects can apprehend. Hyperobjects and the idea of absolute, infinite time and space as neutral containers” (2:10).

I'm not sure of the last 2 words; I think that's what he says?

[Balder]

For future reference, I am making a link to this comment to Bonnie on her Critical Realism thread, since I think my comments there are of relevance to the discussion here as well.

[Edward theurj Berge]

Bryant's blog post on socio-economic class as a hyperobject might be on interest, given the recent turn in this thread.

[kelamuni]

Interesting, except for the stuff about QM. ;-)

 

[Edward theurj Berge]

Returning to Dial's reference to the debate between Harman and Shaviro on the primacy of relations versus substances, this was addressed in The Speculative Turn. I found the following in Harman's response to Shaviro in chapter 19 interesting:

“The problem arises when Shaviro says that ‘such properties are unquestionably real; but they are precisely not actual’. What I would say instead is that they are both real and actual—they are simply not relational. The mistake of Shaviro and many others is to assume that the actual must be defined by its relations.... Potentiality is merely ‘potential for a future relation’, when we really only ought to be talking about actuality. Thus I endorse the model of a non-relational actuality, devoid of potential, but containing reserves for change insofar as it is withheld from relations. So why then do I not drop the term ‘actuality’ and instead speak with Deleuze, DeLanda, and others of virtuality? For two reasons: First, theories of virtuality never seem to do justice to Whitehead’s ‘incurably atomic’ character of reality (and this is why Whitehead is not a philosopher of the virtual). Virtual philosophers always attempt to say that the virtual is a sort of quasi-plenum that does not contain gaps, even while somehow magically avoiding fusion into a cosmic lump of molten slag. Second, insofar as singularities are admitted to exist in the virtual realm, they never bear any resemblance to my ‘objects’, which are genuine individuals and simply withdrawn from all relations. Consider DeLanda’s virtual realm, for instance, which is made up of attractors, invariant topological structures, or genera such as ‘vertebrate’, not of anything resembling concrete individuals” (299).

Note that Bryant's virtual proper being avoids this by be specific structural enclosures, not invariant plenums. Recall Bryant's critique of Delueze and DeLanda above for this very thing.

[Balder]

Does he give any examples of his non-relational individuals?  He is not talking about cane toads or tardigrades or people or baseball teams or ...?  What is he talking about?

[Edward theurj Berge]

I haven't finished the chapter. When you get 15 minutes give it a read and we can both figure it out.

[Balder]

Sure -- that's fair.  I'll give it a look.  I guess I am just suspicious of what appears to me to be a move towards atomistic foundationalism.  (The approach we've been exploring in this forum would warn, I would expect, against both atomistic and continuum-based reductionisms.  In this discussion, I have sometimes pushed in the counter direction of relationism, to point out the problems I perceive with OOO's apparent atomistic reductionism, but I think I should then counter that contrary push as well.  The issue I need to explore more fully is whether I can sustain such a nondual perspective without committing the epistemic fallacy.)

[Edward theurj Berge]

Yes, what OOO has done for me so far, in part, is to challenge my own 'nondual' base, which requires a relation of me to the world. OOO, at least Bryant's variety, seems to be 'nondual' in the sense of eliminating the me-world (non)dual primacy.

[Edward theurj Berge]

Does the following from p. 295 address your question?

"This does not mean that I think objects never enter into relations; the whole purpose of my philosophy is to show how relations happen, despite their apparent impossibility. My point is simply that objects are somehow deeper than their relations, and cannot be dissolved into them. One of the reasons for my
saying so is that if an object could be identified completely with its current relations, then there is no reason that anything would ever change. Every object would be exhausted by its current dealings with all other things; actuality would contain no surplus, and thus would be perfectly determinate in its relations" 295.

[Balder]

I'm just returning from taking my son to Kung Fu practice, so I haven't read that chapter yet, but the paragraph you've quoted makes a point that I've discussed previously with Dial.  The conclusion here is opposite to the Buddhist one, which is that an object that is totally independent and non-related to anything outside of itself, in its essence, would have no reason to change at all.  Also, concerning the perfect determinacy of relations, one of Joel's arguments in SpinbitZ related to this is that infinite determinacy = indeterminacy (because there would then be no final or ultimate determination).

 

Theurj:  Yes, what OOO has done for me so far, in part, is to challenge my own 'nondual' base, which requires a relation of me to the world.

 

Can you say more about this?  One thought that comes immediately to mind -- though I'm just thinking out loud at the moment -- is that some of the primary arguments for nonduality in Buddhism do not appeal directly to the self, or the self-world relation, but are conducted almost entirely in 3rd person terms, via a discussion of the necessary interdependence of objects (the results of which analysis are then applied back to the self).

 

 

[Edward theurj Berge]

The Harman chapter does not give a full explanation of Harman's project; it is limited to some specific arguments in response to Shaviro. I do not get the impression though that for him objects are "totally independent and non-related to anything outside itself," but only that they are not completely defined by  relations and hold something in reserve despite relations. Even for Bryant this is true of most objects with the exception of rare dark objects.

As for the interdependence of objects, who determines this? It seems this 'awareness' must arise within a sentient being, particularly a human being, for even animals do not have this 'realization.' It seems a strictly human 'interaction' between a self and the world, no? Granted the same argument can be made of the OOO, that the supposition that objects exist independently from a human making this statement is also circular. Bryant deals with this but I cannot remember his counter at the moment.