Onto-Specificity and the Varieties of Assembly

While discussing the difference between ‘contingent withdrawal’ and ‘absolute withdrawal’ with Adam Robbert (here and here) the always perceptive Jeremy Trombley intervened to highlight a fundamental question:

“[C]ould withdrawal be a characteristic that is not intrinsic to all entities, but which reflects the different ways in which entities are composed?” [source]

In my estimation this is exactly the right question. Jeremy’s question goes right to the core of what I am trying to think with regard to ‘onto-specificity’. My own commitment to onto-specificity (or compositional particularism, if you will) entails that each 'event' must be considered in its own right, and always in context. The argument here is that every entity and situation is irreducibly what it is composed of. And it is the specific composition of things-in-relation that need to be respected, engaged and described in detail if we are going to be able to understand complex nature reality.

However, one might wonder, does this compositional view entail a reductionist formulation where everything is viewed as a mere ocean of atomic combinations? Absolutely not. I fully accept the cosmological emergence of complex phenomena endowed with differential and cumulative capacities and powers. So when I use the term 'composition' here I mean to include the myriad of ways quarks, atoms, molecules, cells, organisms, etc., become co-implicated together to form various assemblages at various scales. And when I refer to onto-specfic compositions I am attempting to take seriously and call attention to all those levels of organization and material-energetic associations and expressivities present in particular situations/ecologies. The specificity of complex and emergent beings and capacities is exactly what I do not want to gloss over on the way to reified metaphysical categories. As a result, the ontographic project of 'taking seriously' must entail a ‘partnership’ with scientific modes of practice and thought in an ongoing negotiation of concepts, facts, influences, speech-acts and materials.

But to answer Jeremy’s question more directly: YES, entities/assemblages are unique compositions that can be more or less structurally withdrawn depending on their particular constitution and embodied powers. It seems to me there is a wide spectrum of assemblages which display differential powers and capacities for structural relation with and among each other. An object/assemblage’s ability to enter into relations with another assemblage or group of entities is specific to its material-energetic composition as deployed in particular affording contexts. It is the varieties of onto-specific confluences of embodied properties, expressions and affects that I am trying to map out – and which cannot adequately be described as “objects” in every instance.

This, in general, is the problem I have with metaphysics. Metaphysics is an attempt to abstract general axioms about beings and ‘being-as-such’ in ways that often underdetermine the diversity of things and thus do symbolic violence to the complexity of specific realities. In this case, it provides very little philosophical assistance to posit, project or abstract some a supposed universal (ontological) tendency when dealing with specific events or situations which involve so many different scales of interaction, forces, flows and structures. To universally apply a label such as “object” or “process” to actually existing complexes and assemblages seems merely academic in the presence of so many different sorts of events and situations which otherwise overflow, exchange, transgress and organize.

 As Jeremy explains:

 “What I mean is that there's so much talk about how objects are withdrawn as if it's an essential and characteristic trait of all objects. Also, it implies that all objects are equally withdrawn in every circumstance. Maybe that's not what anyone is arguing here, but that's certainly the sense that I get sometimes. But why couldn't an object be composed in such a way that it is not withdrawn at all - at least in certain circumstances? Similarly, why couldn't an object be composed in such a way that it is completely withdrawn in almost every circumstance (neutrinos, and dark matter come to mind)? It seems perfectly reasonable to me to say that different entities are differently withdrawn in different circumstances. Maybe this is what you and Adam mean by "contingent" withdrawal?” [source]

That is exactly what I suggest. Withdrawal is contingent upon the onto-specific assemblages and contexts involved. And, again, it helps little for us to have abstract conversations about a particular framework or ontology if our claims are not checked against the background features of existing empirical and theoretic facts, knowledge sets and methods. Without building in a high degree of specificity to our discourse and research we may never be able to understand the rich nuances of both objects and processes as they actually exist.

Jeremy then goes on to clearly state the main thrust of my comments regarding the problem with conflating 'knowledge' and embodied experience:

 Also, I think there's still some ontological confusion about the nature of knowledge in this debate, and I think you're right to point out the conflation between, as you say, "understanding" and "grasping." The gap between "essence and appearance" exists, I believe (and have argued on my blog, briefly), because the thing-itself and the knowledge-of-the-thing are ontologically distinct entities. The one can never become the other, and so the gap will always persist. Whereas the apple and my body can become intimate through the process of digestion. I'm not sure where to go from there, but I'd be interested to see where you and Adam take that. [source]

This is it precisely: if we willfully ignore the characteristic differences between the capacity for knowledge (cognitive powers) and the capacity for contact (powers of the flesh) we generate unwarranted and empirically invalid assumptions about the nature of object-object relations.  Just because we can never "completely" or "totally" or "absolutely" or "exhaustively" know or symbolic code the inherent structurally withdrawn complexities (depths) of an object does not mean we are unable make direct contact with their substantial being. It simply means that both humans and non-humans only have partial access to them. Mistaking the natural limits of conceptuality for the supposed limits of embodied experience is a fatal mistake for any serious realist philosophy. These capacities obtain at very different levels of organization.

Rather, in order for us to build a robust realist ontology attention must be paid to specific assemblages (and their potencies: materials and expressions) as well as the particular “event mechanics” they are enmeshed within - regardless of the fact that we can never truly step outside our networks and constitutional relations to get a intellectual ‘view from nowhere’. We are of this world in a way that simultaneously destroys our fantasies and affirms our ancestral flesh. The way out of correlationism is through.