A Response to Graham Harman

Part 1: Tradition and Metaphysics

I am very surprised by a recent post from Graham Harman responding to my comments about his four-fold structure of objects. I was surprised in two ways: first, that Harman even cares what I think or post. In terms of both learned philosophy and sophistication Harman is much more advanced than I probably will ever be. I consider my strain of thinking as “feral philosophy” - happening in relation to traditional philosophical concepts but not within it. My philosophy is untamed, rootless and often nomadic. Thus, by no means am I an expert on the kinds of issues Graham seems to be pursuing.

Secondly, I was surprised, especially upon re-reading my original awkward comments, with how much restraint Graham showed in his response. Most of his comments were fair and probably fairly accurate. I truly appreciate that. For me this shows that Graham truly is making the effort to consider me as a legitimate interlocutor. That is really generous of him. And I think Graham deserves all the credit for that.

But I also want to respond more directly to his comments:

1. As Graham notes, that post wasn’t really a critique. I advanced no arguments whatsoever. The post was merely meant to draw attention to what he was saying at this point about how we might go about interpreting his latest framework. I do plan on pulling together all my thoughts on the notion of “withdrawal” and Graham’s take on causality, but that won’t happen until things calm down a bit with my other paid projects. Graham suggests that if I have an alternative I should offer it up. He’s right. Stay tuned Graham.

2. My comments were certainly not directed at Graham, if only because it would never have occurred to me that he would read my blog. Now that I know Graham might be open to reading my posts I will certainly be more respectful of that.

3. As for not reading Tool-Being, that is a great point. I do have a copy of said book somewhere in the stacks but I won’t get to that until the end of the year at the earliest. The thing is though, I don’t feel it is necessary for me to get into that book in order to disagree with Graham about the ‘structure’ of object-encounters. My argument with Graham’s formulation revolves, for me, around empirical issues and not metaphysical issues, and because I’m not in the game of ‘proving’ anyone wrong I therefore feel no obligation at this point to track down the specifics of his argument. My only contention at this stage is that his ‘four-fold’ framework doesn’t resonate with me and is unconvincing (to me).

4. My main hang-up is the question of whether we encounter objects more or less directly or not. Do we sensually-physically encounter other things, and then go about ‘translating’ them according to our own specific receptive properties, or we don’t. And if we don’t, what is the nature of this unbridgeable gap? What properties obtain within objects and what relations exist between things that prevent the kind of creatures we are from encountering objects more or less directly?

Here was what I wrote re: my current stance on the issue of withdrawal and encounters from the original post:

If we really take seriously our deep embeddedness in the world, and what can be known about ‘objects’, we find that we do in fact encounter things ‘directly’ viz. our actual properties and the actual properties of objects, but not in their entirety. Encounters between things are direct but partial – according the onto-specificity (uniqueness) of any particular ‘object’ as a coalesced and organized assemblage (and their affective and receptive properties). And it is the interactive matrix of the processual linkages and maintenance relations of things in situ that determine what effects and affects are generated.

Again, there is a lot of work to be done to make such a position intelligible or formulate an argument, but the gist is simply this: human-objects, like all real objects, are intimately entwined with the world - from quanta to cellular activity to armed combat – and as such are never too far away from any other actual objects.

In this sense, as objects we encounter other objects through the immanent actualities that constitute what we specifically are. These “immanent actualities” are the very properties that constitute any particular entity. The endo-properties of an object are actually a plurality which coalesces (or individuates) as an emergent entity. But here’s the kicker: the plurality of properties coalesced are themselves always already emergent from the same ground of being from which all reality comes – including us. And this is why objects are never totally withdrawn. All objects are primordial relatives: we relate to each other (encounter each other) through the force and structure our shared being-ness.

Put another way, all tangible ‘objects’ are assemblages and form-ations of material-energetic properties. These assemblages ‘hang together’ insofar as the extensive and intensive properties that coalesce are maintained. And it is this relative (and relational) in situ integrity of particular things that gives them their “object-ness”. And because we only ever encounter tangible objects within the same field of material-energetic activity from which we ourselves come, all encounters can be considered direct but partial. “Direct” in that objects collide or interact via properties derived from the same source of actuality (the cosmos), but “partial” because the organization of properties particular to specific entities (their onto-specificity) only ever encounters other objects via their particular affective and receptive capacities.

Of course, this is all really abstract and I would want to give some very concrete examples that demonstrate the efficacy of my onto-story but I will leave that for another time, as I’m still not too sure Graham is interested in going down the rabbit hole with me.

5. On the issue of “simplistic” conceptions (as related to Husserl) I have two things to say:

i) Framing all the processes and causal relations that come into play between objects when they encounter each other in terms of “objects vs. qualities” is very simplistic indeed (especially when we are talking about how sentient beings perceive other objects). There are many more variables and relations that need to be understood and tracked in order for us to ‘model’ interactions between things - from quantum entanglement to neurocognitive functions to nerve signals and cell receptors to crystalline micro-particles in metal to the thermodynamics of hurricanes. The minutia of interacting assemblages and ‘objects’ need to be understood if we are going to be able to say anything relevant about real-world things. Even Graham’s four-fold structure with ten possible links doesn’t adequately map the onto-idiosyncrasies and interactions between objects.

ii) It is the ‘simplicity’ of philosophical models based on traditional lines of thought (such as Husserl’s) that is exactly the type of “strait-jacket” I wish Graham would toss out. I think Graham is a great thinker and an exceptional prose stylist but is currently working with conceptual ‘tools’ made to work within obsolete philosophical traditions. Academic philosophers have a disciplinary (and promotional) stake in perpetuating such concepts and distinctions, but with what effect? The stunting of innovations in semantic reasoning? We suffered a thousand years with Aristotle’s “science” and hundreds of years of Descartes’ dualism – so why keep digging up dead bodies? Why metaphysics? And why pre-scientific metaphysics to boot? Obviously I follow “eliminative” thinking here, but my point is that philosophy has much more to offer than ‘local’ discourses and internal argumentation. [note: I would point the interested reader to George Lakoff’s Philosophy in the Flesh for a potential way forward]

6. Which brings me to Graham’s (very fair) question about my so-called issues with academic philosophers in general. Graham writes,

Is his point that anyone accepting a philosophy-related post in a university is thereby automatically enslaved to some sort of traditional philosophical logic? In that case, both Deleuze and Derrida are “academic philosophers” as well, and I would like to see if Michael finds the same dreary academic blinders on them. Not to mention Kant, Hegel, and the like.

That is a great question. And I think I have a simple answer: no. I do not think that anyone accepting a philosophy-related post in a university is “automatically enslaved to some sort of traditional philosophical logic”. Deleuze and Derrida are great examples. They bucked convention and were conceptual innovators. Their interest was in ‘mutating’ our thinking and offering new lines of reasoning. Cool stuff.

But I do not believe it is an all-or-nothing situation. I think academic philosophers are a mixed-bag. If anything, it is the institutions of academia (with curriculums and departmental specialities) that perpetuate the ‘traditional philosophical logics’. And this is not a bad thing either. We need scholarship and pedagogy and I think the Western philosophical tradition should be retained. But, and this is my key point, it also needs to be surpassed not supplemented. Philosopher’s, in my opinion, might do well to adopt a post-metaphysical stance and rebel against (not ignore) traditional notions about how the world works.

So, my issue is not with where a person works, but what concepts they deploy and what intellectual projects they are involved with. An academic’s project can be more or less committed to conventional philosophical practices and arguments, and more or less involved in the deployment of traditional conceptual schemas. It is a matter of degree.

Take for example Graham’s OOP project. It is fantastic that he is compelling people to take ‘realist’ positions more seriously. That is an important project. That is worth doing. But why continue to deploy Husserl’s distinctions? Hasn’t cognitive science, for example, offered a more compelling and empirical account of perception? This is why I like what Gary Williams is doing. He is taking cognitive science and Heidegger and trying to advance the insights of both – but in a rigorous and methodological way.

The bottom-line for me is that Graham’s project seems more rather than less attached to traditional metaphysics than I would like to see. But that is just me. His thought and work is still very useful and fascinating - but how much more would it be if he were to take up a post-metaphysical ontography?