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 An object is profoundly “withdrawn”--we can never see the whole of it, and nothing else can either....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

[Balder]

Light is certainly unusual and not like most other objects. For instance, its 'place' is quite ambiguous. We have a common sense view of light as a kind of projectile, but this doesn't appear to be correct, since attempts to detect or describe light-in-motion always turn up ambiguous and puzzling results. Some have suggested that, even though we use the term "light speed," we should give up talking about light as actually moving. Since light speed is a constant across all relative inertial frames, it transcends them, and it might be more accurate to speak of "light speed" as referring to the ratio of spacetime manifestation (186,282 miles of space unfolding for each second of time).

[Edward theurj Berge]

if you read big bang theorists, they posit a time just after the big bang when all matter was light.

So light comes after the big bang, so there was a time before light.

[Edward theurj Berge]

From Bryant, chapter 3.3:

"As an additional consequence of this concept of multiplicity, the Kantian conception of space and time as containers must here be abandoned as well in favor of a model of space and time arising from substances."

[Balder]

"As an additional consequence of this concept of multiplicity, the Kantian conception of space and time as containers must here be abandoned as well in favor of a model of space and time arising from substances."

 

TSK rejects the "container" view of space and time as well.  But that aside, this is another reason for my speculative attempt to connect OOO substance with light, since in the various texts on this subject that I've been reading (Zajonc, Grandy, Skolimowski), space and time 'arise from' light.  But if substance is meaningfully connected with light, this would appear to undermine the object-first orientation which would make individual objects the sources of light...

[Balder]

Tom, yes, well said*.  This is close to Grandy's view, which you first introduced back on the old forum, and I'm finding similar views voiced by Zajonc, Russell, and others.  Regarding the universe being "in" light, this is something Zajonc argues in Catching the Light, and this is what I was referring to in my post yesterday, when I talked about light being 'outside' of time and space, with spacetime domains unfolding from/as light.  About light's relationship to matter or 'objects,' I recall Bohm mentioning once that matter is "gravitationally trapped light," and I've heard others refer to matter as "spent light."  I don't know how widely these views are accepted, though.

 

 

* I was responding here to your longer post an hour back, not this most recent one; I'll read that one now.

[Balder]

Tom:  I don't think it makes sense to say objects are sources of light.  Matter can be destroyed, reshaped, changed, molded, but light cannot.  Light is in many senses quite obviously primary to matter.  It therefore makes more sense to me to say light is the source of objects.  Cosmology says as much.  On the other hand, because matter is a form of light (light in form), neither is it fully apropos to say without qualification that light is the source of objects.  That would be akin to saying light is the source of light, which I think is true, but that's a very different (non-causal) understanding of source.

 

Yes, I understand.  If light 'is' matter, or if light 'matters,' then it would make sense that the intuition of 'substance' at the 'heart' of objects that Bryant and others are articulating would parallel to some degree our descriptions and understandings of light itself (and I am suggesting that it does).

[Edward theurj Berge]

If light 'is' matter, or if light 'matters,' then it would make sense that the intuition of 'substance' at the 'heart' of objects that Bryant and others are articulating would parallel to some degree our descriptions and understandings of light itself (and I am suggesting that it does).

Except that according to Bryant, substance is individual to each object and limited, not a substance monism that is everywhere present and unlimited, and out of which a multiplicity of individuals express. That was his criticism of Deleuze's take on Spinoza's monism. (Whether it is 'accurate' according to Joel is moot here.)

[Edward theurj Berge]

No, without matter, there is neither time nor space.  My casual language is therefore misleading.  There is no "before" matter.  Matter, and with it space and time, appear with matter.  Poof.

Forgive me, I'm slow on science/math. This makes it sound like creation came from nothing? And yet there was a very dense and hot thing (singularity) prior to the big bang, but it didn't exist in space and time? And this thing had the qualities of density and heat, which could exist before the advent of space and time? Nothing with qualities in no space-time? At least with Bryant substance it planted firmly in space-time, not metaphysical, as it were.

[Balder]

I understand.  I'm just noting the parallels between his description of substance and present descriptions of light, and trying to make sense of them.  The similarity may be coincidental and without import.  But perhaps not.  An interesting thing about light is that light is never encountered as a single monolithic entity, or as 'anything' at all; we don't see light, we see 'things' or 'things lit.'  But light appears also to be something which transcends time and space.  I wonder how Bryant deals with something like 'light' (and with the fact of nonlocality) in his worldview, especially if his substance is not the same as light and his worldview allows ultimately only for separate, local individuals or 'objects.'  I am here not arguing for a monistic worldview myself; I am just wondering if his worldview leans too heavily in the opposite direction and will be unable to account for certain important (and empirically verifiable) features of our world.

 

Concerning Bryant's views on substance, would it be fair to say (in your reading of him so far) that the 'basis' of objects, substance, is itself non-objective -- being immeasurable, inaccessible, without the 'primary qualities' that have characteristically 'defined' objective reality since Newton?

 

[Edward theurj Berge]

Would it be fair to say (in your reading of him so far) that the 'basis' of objects, substance, is itself non-objective -- being immeasurable, inaccessible, without the 'primary qualities' that have characteristically 'defined' objective reality since Newton?

No. As I quoted him on p. 13:

"No object is ever fully known insofar as every object necessarily has an infinite phase space while simultaneously having a finite structure of powers."

While an object's phase space (manifestations) might be infinite nonetheless its individual substance has a "finite structure of powers."

[Balder]

Ed:  No. As I quoted him on p. 13:

"No object is ever fully known insofar as every object necessarily has an infinite phase space while simultaneously having a finite structure of powers."

While an object's phase space (manifestations) might be infinite nonetheless its individual substance has a "finite structure of powers."

 

Here, I wasn't referring specifically to infinity.  I was asking about primary qualities.  Are you familiar with the distinction?  Those properties that are imagined to inhere in matter itself and are objectively measurable (such as weight, length, etc), as distinguishable from secondary qualities which are more subjective and depend on the observer (color, taste, beauty, etc).   Locke, Galileo, Descartes, Newton, etc, have traded on this distinction, and classical science has identified 'objective reality' with primary qualities.  But, it seems that substance in Bryant's account is metaphysical, not physical and objectively measurable.  Primary qualities would be qualities of objects, but not ever-withdrawing, inaccessible substance itself, which suggests that (to the extent that primary qualities have been identified traditionally with "objective reality") substance, the basis of "objects," is not itself "objective" in this sense.

 

P.S. To be clear, I did not ask this because I thought this represents an inconsistency or "problem" with Bryant's approach; I was just confirming that this was the case (since I thought this was part of the point of OOO, i.e., a return to metaphysics, substance being a term with a long history in metaphysics).

[infimitas]

Hi Balder,

 

Are you familiar with Berkeley's criticism, directed at Locke, of the division between primary and secondary qualities?  He said that there are only observable/measurable qualities, and that it's a metaphysical article of faith that can't be justified experientially to say that some of these qualities inhere objectively in a non-empirical substance (what Locke called a "something-I-know-not-what"), and that others are subjective.  All we have, he thought, were observable qualities, and that's it -- no primary/secondary division, and no substance.  This is the first time in Western metaphysics that I know of where a genuine bundle theory of "objects" is proposed.

 

I'm not trying to defend Berkeley here, but he does have a point.  If we expand his notion of empirical qualities to include not only that which we can directly perceive, but also what we can measure scientifically, then why not just say "objects" consist of all those qualities, together in a bundle?  We can still believe in the possibility there are properties that we cannot observe (yet), but why assume the need for a something-I-know-not-what "in" objects?  What work do substances do here?  What am I not getting?  Seriously, I'm starting to feel like that one person in the room who hasn't got the joke yet...