Differing Objects: Formally Ungraspable, Ontologically Vulnerable?

Over at Attempts at Living blogger extraordinaire and fellow post-nihilist pragmatist Arran briefly mentions the strong affinities between Tim Morton’s ‘realist magic’ and the work of Jean Baudrillard via the following two quotes.

Morton:

“An object is not an illusion. But it is not a non-illusion. Much more threatening than either is what is the case, namely an object that is utterly real, essentially itself, whose very reality is formally ungraspable. No hidden trapdoors, just a mask with some feathers whose mystery is out in front of itself, in your face. A miracle. Realist magic. This all means that the skills of the literary critic and the architect, the painter and the actor, the furniture maker and the composer, the musician and the software designer can be brought to bear on the workings of causality.” [Realist Magic 2013]

And Baudrillard:

“Objects are such that, in themselves, their disappearance changes them. It is in this sense that they deceive us, that they generate illusion. But it is in this sense too that they are faithful to themselves, and we must be faithful to them: in their minute detail, in their exact figuration, in the sensuous illusion of their appearance and connectedness. For illusion is not the opposite of reality, but another more subtle reality which enwraps the former kind in the sign of its disappearance.” [in 'Photographies']

Both theorists posit an absolute absence (withdrawal or disappearance) of giveness in human perception, and both gentlemen suggest we stop bitching about this absence and start attended more to the miraculous illusions they cast out. For Morton the ‘ungraspability’ of things is a feature of the causal structure of reality, whereas for Baudrillard the reality of illusion is simply part and parcel with what reality has generally and ultimately become.

What both men don’t seem to consider, however, is the ontic difference that makes a difference between epistemic relation (conceptual or formal grasp-ability) and structural relation (physical or material grasp-ability). Not all relations, encounters and contacts are enacted viz. the 'withdrawl' of formal accountability or the disappearance of unmediated sign connection. Some interactions are more direct and consequential, at least in terms of structural composition and operational efficacy. This ontological vulnerability is prior to the kind of thetic coding, logico-linguistic recursion, or formal iconic representations that are at the core of the types of interpretation or “translation” OOO rightfully argues is inadequate for the total comprehension of things. Without a fundamental ontic openness and affective potency intimacy is impossible, and alterity is ineffectual and incomprehensible.

Instead, I argue human cognition and signification is a relatively unique complex and emergent affair, and perhaps should not be taken as the quintessential kind of relation in the cosmos. Nonhuman objects are often co-determining assemblies (ecologically embedded, indebted and enacted) interfacing in non-reflexive, non-thetic, non-psychological ways governed by their material and operational structures and capacities. To reduce the particularity of object-encounters, or to project some sort of anthropomorphic specular theory of reflexive distance onto objects universally, is to be ontographically unfaithful to the contingent nature of things.

I think the easy descent into panpsychism (or rather pan-epistemology, as the onto-theologizing of representational cognition) that certain strains of object-orientation seem to require is a major flaw of an otherwise fascinating philosophical adventure. [also see here]

UPDATE: In the comment section of a great post on Laruelle and Luhmann Levi Bryant had this to say:

What I call “alien phenomenology”, following Ian Bogost, is an analysis of how beings, both human and non-human, correlate to the world around them, e.g., how does a bat experience the world? On the other hand, I take it that the various forms of OOO are pan-correlationisms. What does that mean? Harman, Morton, Bogost, and myself all argue that no entity has access to any other entity; though we argue this in different ways. Rather, each entity distorts other entities in relating to them. Seen within this framework, the claim is not so much that correlationism is false, as that it is wrong to claim that there’s something unique about the human correlation. This is what pan-correlationism means: that there is as much a correlationist structure with how the cat or computer relates to the world about it, as the human. 

There are, I think, two key points here. First, we must take care never to reduce entities to their correlations. In relating to my cat, I no doubt reduce/distort it in a number of ways, but my cat can’t be reduced to how it is given to me or what it is for me. Second, we must attend to the frame of reference in which claims are being made about another thing or observe the observer. Which observer are we talking about? Jonah? A scientific institution? Insurance companies? Cats? Etc.

Wouldn't these “pan-correlationisms” found at the core of the various forms of OOO also be considered to be variants of panpsychism (or pan-epistemology)? If all objects have a 'alien phenomenology' and all encounters are ‘translations’ then do all object interactions have some sort of processual mind-like quality to them? This seems to me to be universalizing cognitive experience such that all reality operates hermeneutically. And pushed far enough I believe pan-correlationism would lead strait to Idealism. Am I missing something here?