Ivakhiv and Bryant on Objects, Process and Orientations

I have a feeling I will be posting a lot of these, “hey go look at this” type of posts in the next few days, as it seems the ‘Objects vs. Relations’ debate is flaring up again among the speculative realist crowd. Adrian Ivakhiv has catalyzed discussion with comments he posted yesterday (here) about the recent Whitehead conference, and on the “the attractions of process”. Levi Bryant then responds (here) with comments about Adrian’s position, setting in motion much talk about objects and their relations, or, alternatively, about relations and the objects they form.

This is great news for a geek like me because the more these guys debate the more I understand where my views hang in the great hall of abstractions. On some level, I support most of what both Levi and Adrian have to say on these issues (which might seem odd, but actually isn’t), and would argue for a mediating position that respects both ‘individuation’ and ‘process’ as fundamental principles of the Real. 

Below are some interesting excerpts from each of these fellas. I’ll start with Adrian:

When an object-oriented philosopher makes the case for a description of the universe that is made up of objects, things that are never fully related and that are always somewhat withdrawn from other things, he (or, in theory, she) is making the case for describing the universe as a universe of things that do certain things, that act in certain ways, and that maintain themselves over time, like Tim’s mouse, unless something happens to change them from the outside. While this may not be equivalent to a Newtonian world-picture — of objects in space moving around and bumping into each other, setting off or redistributing lawful causal effects as they do that — it is, in its overall contours, highly consonant with such a world-picture (minus perhaps the space, and plus a kind of space-time curvature at each node for indicating where the objects might be withdrawing to). [source]

To which Levi responds:

Why should we bow to Newton’s concept of objects as purely passive points that are only acted upon without acting? Certainly we get a very different picture of substances in Aristotle’s De Anima and Generation of Animals. However, that aside, nothing in either my account of objects or Graham’s remotely resembles the Newtonian universe. Graham objects are both capable of acting (rather than merely being acted upon) and are infinite multiplicities of objects wrapped in objects wrapped in objects wrapped in objects. My objects are actors that perpetually face the problem of entropy or disintegration, thereby having to produce themselves from moment to moment to endure in time. [source]

Adrian goes on to make the following comments with re: to Ian Bogost’s notion of “firehose metaphysics”:

So if life (or existence, or any piece of the universe) is like water flowing through a firehose, it’s because life is movement. It is inherently temporal; it doesn’t stand still. But there is no hose containing it, and no faucet at the end of it controlling the flow. There is no programmer, no ventriloquist behind the world because everything that’s real is creative in its own becoming. And this is only “magic” (as Levi seems to suggest would be necessary) if one thinks that the things are not inherently creative and active in themselves. Since process philosophy defines them as such — that it’s first principle — there is no need for magic here. (Or it is all magic, which I happen to believe is a better way of thinking about it; but that’s another story.) [...]

Process-relational philosophies insist that if there are things running the show, these too would have to be the kinds of processual entities that are possible in a world that’s always in the process of its own becoming.

Stopping the flow of that world, actually, is the kind of thing that we can do if we attain a certain societal/assemblage/ecological complexity — a certain formal and structural (relational) consistency that would allow us to monitor things over time (the changing seasons, the growth of our children), to take pause and put (a part of) the universe on hold while we do other things, and then call back at a later date. This is where continuity occurs in Whitehead: it’s in the things that hold together as they move forward, arranged in larger, coordinated, but similarly active, creative, feelingful unities (Whitehead’s “societies,” or as Steve argues, “assemblages,” though the definitions of these terms vary). [source]

Cool. Especially interesting is Adrian's follow-up statement made in the comments section of his initial post:

My point is about a certain overt style of ‘languaging’ that makes it easier to think of a mouse as a mouse even when it’s no longer a mouse. Process philosophy, I would argue, makes it much more difficult to do that. [source]

But don’t take my word for it go read for yourself how things develop.

UPDATE: Adrian has two follow-up posts replying to Bryant (and Harman) and commenting on his intentions with his initial remarks: here and here. Apparently some of the OOO peeps didn't take kindly to the mention of Sir Issac, but hopefully people will calm down a bit and keep the debate going, because it would be shameful for people to gloss over substantial arguments in favor of dwelling on rhetorical statements.