Disclosure and Objects in Relation

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DR. HOWARD: Object Relations in psychology puts another layer on to the grid. The object cannot be present without the self to be aware of the object.

MICHAEL: In what sense? If you mean that objects do not exist without human selves to perceive them then I would have to disagree strongly. Everything we know (e.g., geology) indicates that objects exist ‘out there’ in the environment, ‘external’ to human perception, and even prior to us. I am a strong realist in this sense.

However, if you mean that the presence of an object within perception indicates that there must be a ‘self’ that perceives – that the presence of objects confirms the existence of a perceiver - then I totally agree. We know that we exist by virtue of our existing independent of something else (be it an object, objects or the world at large). There seems to always be a ‘background’ to our ‘foregrounded’ awareness.

DR. HOWARD: So now we have the Self and the Object. But what makes it interesting is there is also the Relationship between the Self and the Object. I may love my guitar for the experience it can give me, that has nothing to do with it's structure. The relationship is a context built upon my emotional experience with the object.

MICHAEL: I don’t agree. I think the relationship between a human and a musical instrument is more ‘intimate’ and dynamic than that, especially since that particular object is an artefactual ‘tool’. In fact, the “structure” and properties of the guitar have everything to do with how it relates to you. The guitar has “powers” or capacities inherent to its constitution (properties, structure) that come together with the capacities and ‘powers” (skills) that you embody to make sweet sweet music. Without the specific constitutions (properties and structure) of both you and the guitar there would be no music at all.

You could say that the endo-properties that you are ‘collide’ with the endo-properties of the guitar to create a resonating assemblage (or event) where music emerges. Both you and the object in this case afford each other the opportunity to make music. Your emotional experience is only one component/aspect of the assemblage/event. Your embodied skills are another. Emotions and skills might even be a major component of such an event, contributing much of the intensity internal to the event, but they are not the only components - and perhaps not even the most determining.

DR. HOWARD: The object, of course can be other people. Which leads to I and Thou by Martin Buber. My qualities and constructs cannot exist without another. This is a way of knowing via social interaction. How we humans view reality or objects is based upon learning this social interaction process.

MICHAEL: I get what you are saying, but I would suggest that you extend the I-Thou relationship even further to include non-human objects as well. There are many non-human, or non-cultural, or non-sentient aspects that contribute towards the genesis of the kinds of assemblages we are and relationships that develop. Objects are always part of the contingent interactions that flow into specific events.

Consider our bones, for example: they are mineral deposits, but they play a major role in our being what we are – especially in our ability to act in the world. Bones have an ‘agency’ all their own, affecting the world in various ways depending on where and how they exist. They contribute to our experiences of reality.

So humans don’t simply view reality or objects based on socially acquired understandings, we also encounter and must cope with the things-in-themselves - based partly on their own inherent properties, capacities and the relations they affect and enter into. In a sense, things ‘speak’ to us and demand to be heard while we are making our meanings.

DR. HOWARD: The severely autistic person does not have this social interaction, so he never learns to view objects around him. He is forever caught in some other world. I wonder how Heidegger (or other posters here) would define the world and reality of an autistic person?

MICHAEL: I think there is even more going on. It is the combination of genes, epigenetics and complex social environments that create the situation known as “autism”. Autistic persons have particular properties (a peculiar neural-capacity for instance) which are unique, and often maladaptive within certain environments. And my sense is that autistic persons do view objects, they just do so differently.
And the person does not exist in “some other world”, but rather the combination of their particular bodyself-properties and other objects and environments create a particular world-space that is uniquely experienced by them within the wider field of affordances.

We might then say that Dasein thrown into the world in the context described above is what allows “autism” to unfold. But maybe that’s just how I see it…