I’m usually not comfortable with panpsychism in general (for several reasons), favoring instead to focus on the specific qualities of particular entities, but Steve’s thoughts are stimulating none the less.
One of the aspects of I really appreciated about Steven's paper is his summary of the four main challenges to contemporary philosophy presented by Object-Oriented Ontologies (OOO). Steven suggests the OOO position is guided by 1) a rejection of the human-world correlate ("correlationism"), 2) a rejection of 'philosophies of access', 3) a rejection of "relationism" ("the idea that every entity is entirely determined by, and can be completely described in terms of, its relations to other entities."), and 4) a rejection of "smallism" (the view that all facts are determined by the facts about the smallest things, those existing at the lowest ‘level’ of ontology).
Steven then goes on to relate and contrast Whitehead's process philosophy to those 4 key rejections with powerful effect. Below are a few of passages that brilliantly display the subtlety of Shaviro's critiques of several OOO positions:
Whitehead entirely agrees with OOO that terms can never be fully determined by their relations. A given term can always disentangle itself from some relations, and enter into other relations instead. But at the same time – and this is where Whitehead differs from Harman – no term can ever disentangle itself from all relations, and subsist entirely by itself. I can disentangle myself from the atmosphere, by isolating myself in a pressure-resistant bubble, and breathing oxygen from a canister instead. But deprive me altogether of my relation to oxygen, and I die. This means that I cease to exist as a thing, or as a term for any relations whatsoever. But after my death, my body persists as a thing; it interacts, or enters into relations, with the bacteria that dissolve and eat it. Of course, this can be avoided by cremating my remains, and sending the ashes into the depths of interstellar space. But even there, the dust that is derived by “a historic route of actual occasions” (PR 80) from the living flesh that I once was will still be affected by cosmic radiation, and will be subject to the fluctuations of the quantum fields that pervade empty space.” (p.9 ) […]
“On the one had, contra OOO, every change in relations transforms the term into something different from what it was before. This is inevitable, because every change in relations is an event, involving an encounter that has never before taken place in quite the same way. But on the other hand, contra radical relationism, this change in relations only influences the nature of the term, and can never determine it altogether. There is always some scope for the term’s own decision as to how it responds to the change in relations that supervenes upon it.” (p.8-9)
“We might in this way oppose a Whiteheadian doctrine of underdetermination to Althusser’s notion of overdetermination. A thing is underdetermined by its relations. It is never free of them, but it also retains a certain capacity to resist them, to alter and combine them in various ways, and to select among them. And this is always a matter of degree.” (p.9) […]
"[F]or Whitehead 'it is the definition of contemporary events that they happen in causal independence of each other' (AI 195). I suggest that this is the source, and also the extent, of what OOO sees as the “withdrawal” of objects from one another. For Whitehead, 'the vast causal independence of contemporary occasions is the preservative of the elbow-room within the Universe. It provides each actuality with a welcome environment for irresponsibility' (AI 195). Things are “withdrawn,” therefore, to the extent that they are able to be irresponsible…” (p.10)
In addition, Steven's willingness to engage the OOO brood in serious philosophical debate continues to stimulate much thought, and I find his argument to be a counter-balance to the strange rhetoric of objectological thinking. Do read the entire paper (PDF) @ The Pinocchio Theory.
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