A Further Response to Graham Harman

Part 2: Scoreless in Obscurity

I know Graham Harman has already agreed to agree that my approach lacks a certain degree of sensitivity and etiquette and has subsequently moved past our original disagreements, but I am still posting part two of my response with the hope that he will not take my criticisms too personally, because what I say here (and in previous posts) is really just me thinking ‘out loud’ and in no way meant as a personal attack. My only reason for posting this second part is that I have just recently come off a much needed rest/retreat deep in the Canadian Rockies I am more and more feeling the need for clarity on my own positions. And Graham’s comments offer an opportunity for just such clarification.

Graham writes:

Michael hasn’t done the work of showing the specific academic traces on my own thought. Essentially, he’s just hinting that my manner of earning a living (a fairly typical one; not exactly slave trading and gun running à la Rimbaud) somehow compromises the content of my books. But no internal connection has been shown. How does the mere fact of teaching roomfuls of 19-year-old Egyptians each semester subvert the internal logic of object-oriented philosophy and reduce its imaginative powers?

Again, being a professor does not disqualify Graham’s framework. In fact, it is probably only by virtue of his education and vocation that he is even capable of developing such a nuanced object-oriented schema. The only relevance his vocation has to his thought is that he necessarily draws upon the intellectual resources of the discipline he has been trained in and the discourses that circulate therein. Hence the word “discipline”. Not a real contentious claim in my opinion. I would think that since we are at least a generation removed from Bourdieu, and couple generations post-Wittgenstein, the sorts of claims (e.g., that academics are deeply embedded within the discourses and language games they attach themselves to) I made about “academia” would be fairly understood? There is a necessary reliance and relationship between an academic philosopher and the institutional systems and discourses of which he is a part.

Here is what I wrote in the comments section of my original post on the topic:

In theory, Harman is no more or less entangled than you or I. We are all entangled – and we are all influenced by what we personally, habitually and professionally do. As I say in my response to Harman, it’s a matter of degree. We can be more or less committed to traditional concepts and projects. I judge his ontology to be un-necessarily reliant on borrowed terms from Husserl and Heidegger and others, while also being quite innovative and productive. And, from what I understand, Harman’s “weird occasionalist” philosophy has its roots in Islamic thinking and Whitehead as well.

And, just to be sure, I do think Graham is doing work less within the purview of “established” philosophical discourse than most philosophers - but more than what I would like him to be.

So what remains is 1) my assertion that much of our thinking will always be entangled with those lived-commitments and social interactions in which we historically and continually engage, and 2) my personal judgement about Graham’s use of distinctions such as ‘objects v. qualities’ as unnecessarily constraining. Both claims are relatively harmless because #1 is a fairly wide-spread observation about human discourse and intellectual activity (discussed in detail by Foucault, Bourdieu, and others), and #2 is merely a personal evaluation based on admittedly limited investigation.

But, to synthesize both claims, I suggest that certain philosophies seem to have an internal “logic” or semantic structure grounded in implicitly assumed (a priori) understandings of the world. These logical-semantical arrangements often lead to particular arguments and certain entailed conclusions. In other words, we think through and with more or less networked conceptual systems brought together by linguistic and logical entailments. So when we accept and operationalize certain discourse-specific distinctions (in this case between objects and their qualities) we, almost by necessity, are lead to particular pathways of thinking, with more or less resultant chains of reasoning (perhaps four-fold conception of objects?) and forms of argumentation.

Here is a related quote from sociologist Loic Waquant:

If you don't know what determines you -- how you are being shaped to think in a certain way because of your professional interests, your proclivities, your membership in a certain discipline, and so forth -- if you are blinded already by all these biases, what chance do you have to produce rigorous analyses of anything? [source]

And my only point in bringing all this up is that I would like to see Graham’s talents being pushed in new ways – beyond conventional metaphysics and towards something approaching a 'post-metaphysical phenomenological ontography'. My question, for example, is what would a post-metaphysical object-oriented philosophy be like? What if, instead of “real objects” and “sensual objects” Graham investigated more closely actually existing and embodied entities (in all their glorious specificity) and their encounters with other specific entities - unmediated by a etheric realm of the “sensual”?

My main issue simply put is that OOP seems to me to be too metaphysical and not all that empirically supported. And this is why I find Gary William’s project perhaps more oriented towards praxis in the long run. [note: I hope to explore more of what a “post-metaphysical phenomenological ontography” might look like in the near future, but not here. See Habermas (here) for a quick inclination]

Again, I have no desire to attempt to dismantle Graham’s project. And I’m fairly certain that I couldn’t do such a thing even if I wanted to, since his intellectual background is probably much different than mine, and I wouldn’t have the theoretical resources to refute, one way or another, the “internal logic” of his philosophy. Graham is no dummy.

Moving along, Graham writes:

Steven Shaviro is credited with showing how I box myself into some very problematic positions, which Michael views as the inevitable result of my employment status. However, Michael neglects to mention that Shaviro is also a university professor: indeed, the holder of a named endowed professorship, perhaps the very summit of official academic recognition. Does this also compromise Shaviro’s critique of my positions in some way? Is the author of Doom Patrols just another bland cog in the university machine? Or has Shaviro found the special trick that allows him to be “in the academy but not of it”?

There are two different things going on here:

1) My mention of Steven Shaviro’s critiques of Object-Oriented Philosophy was only ever meant to provide an example of someone who has brought up some fairly significant critiques of Object-Oriented philosophies that, to my knowledge, remain unanswered. Steven’s posts on OOO and causality (here), and “actual encounters” (here), are strong arguments for including more relationality into our accounts of things. And my linking to him in the original post was meant to direct interested readers to that work and those critiques. So, again, not really about “employment status” at all.

2) On the question of whether I think Shaviro is more entangled in institutional academics than Graham, well, I really don’t have a clue about that. I have yet to read more than a handful of Steven's essays. Much of his thinking on OOP (and many other issues) does indeed seem very close to mine. But I’m sure if I read one of his books I could probably point out where I think Shaviro relies too heavily on Whitehead or Deleuze re: an issue that might be better resolved with reference to biology or neuroscience. But maybe not? Maybe Steven is more rather than less removed from such reliances? I’m not prepared to say either way at this point.

But, again, being a philosophy professor is not a deadly sin – it just means that a person’s intellectual background will be more or less institutional and guided by professional and ‘internal’ disciplinary interests. And, to be sure, we all have such linked-interests and commitments.

Graham goes on to provide some advice:

What Michael ought to do is focus on making more specific criticisms of this or that position taken by me or by others... But with the posts on Archive Fire, it often feels like Michael is simply out to score points, and can’t tell the difference between balls going through the hoop and darts thrown at faces.

I have made a few more specific criticisms in comments on particular people’s blogs and elsewhere (for example here) and they have gone largely ignored so far. Which, as far as it goes, is perfectly fine - because my criticisms, or questions, may not have been presented in the most cordial manner. Or, people just didn’t find them compelling enough to pursue. Whatever the case, I’ve been making them with little response (and with little expectations for response). Take Part 1 of this series for example, I provided a bit more specifics as to where I disagree with OOO and the only (fruitful) reaction came from Skholiast, someone not in the OOO clubhouse.

Moreover, to be quite frank, I’m not in the business of spending my hours making the kinds of detailed criticisms Graham might find appealing. Two reasons: first, I’m not invested in the outcome, as most schematic debates are endless, with little resolve, and I have no stake in being perceived as ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in these cases. And so who it is I would “score points” with is unclear.

And second, following my own advice, I have little interest is becoming too wrapped up in traditional philosophical schema or immersing myself in strictly academic arguments. I want to maintain a high degree of independence in my thinking. The reason I blog at all on such topics is because I’m thinking for myself but in public, so to speak. I seek to delineate and borrow strains of thought from various places and then mutate my own thinking into something different - to be applied in more pragmatic and political contexts.

And, finally, I consider the comments I make and the issues I take up here to be truly tentative. I consider intellectual activity primarily as play. If I was to enter into an actual “debate”, which this back and forth with Graham never really was, my approach would be much different. I would provide actual arguments and formulate more or less comprehensive replies, but my original post (as I have already said here) was not intended to be a specific argument, much less a debate.

In sum, I do have serious doubts about the efficacy of object-oriented metaphysics (and metaphysics in general) as I interpret them, but will continue to investigate and learn more – and perhaps I may even offer some more specific arguments if I get the urge. Speculative realism, broadly speaking, intrigues me and OOO is simply one possible outgrowth from a more general orientation that takes things and the world intensely seriously.

And as for the anonymity of my posts and comments, well, let me just say that I have very good reasons for this. As someone who has been involved in “radical” politics for the last 15 years or so, had his home searched (twice) by federal officials, been investigated by “anti-terror” organizations and has had his CPU hacked numerous times it would be nothing less that clinically insane to go about advertising my name all over the inter-webs. Were I to be so reckless I would be asking for more trouble than I can currently handle, and would subsequently become unable to express myself freely and explore the topics I do here – which in turn would result in blogging becoming ridiculously pointless for me.

But for those of you who I trust you are invited to email me and ask questions or learn my full identity. If I refuse to disclose then I don’t know you well enough to trust you (yet). And Graham: if you truly want me to disclose who I am to you so that you can feel comfortable in discussion, please, just ask.

See Also: Part 1: Tradition and Metaphysics

Got Realism?

Over at Larval Subjects Levi Bryant has recently posted an amazingly clear and succinct statement on the importance of a full-blown realism. On this issue, and everything else in that particular post, I couldn’t agree with Levi more.

After language what? Realism, that’s what. True significance is generated from the consequences of real action.

Here are the passages that resonate with me the most:

“Rorty famously said that a number of philosophical problems are never really solved, but rather we just cease asking these questions. No philosopher has yet refuted the solipsist, nor has anyone ever refuted Berkeley. If you’re worried about how we can escape language perhaps you should just stop asking the question and move on. More importantly, you should attend to the methodological consequences that follow…”

"Lacanianism and its linguistic idealist cousins needs to be castrated. We need forms of theory and practice capable of both talking about talk, signs, the signifier, narrative, and discourse capable of indicating the non-semiotic and approaching the non-semiotic on its own terms as best we can. Absent this we are missing a massive dimension as to why our social world is as it is."

“What we need is a realist rhetoric. For me, it’s not so much Kant that is the enemy, but the linguistic and semiotic turn. I wish to retain a place for these things, but to overcome the hegemony they currently have in the world of Continental theory. Reference to the real does not a realism make. It is only when you abandon the thesis that any entity constructs another entity that your position is deserving of the title of realism.”

Read the entire post yourself @ Larval Subjects

In commenting on Bryant's post Alex Reid remarks that,

…the rhetorical (and compositional) challenge isn’t to develop a discourse that reveals the real but rather one that allows us to speak in new ways about the world, to see new possibilities, to develop new relations (with both human and non-human others), and maybe invent a way of living (which is maybe humanocentric but given our impact on the planet, maybe not).

To which Bryant adds:

A realist rhetoric would minimally be two things: First, a realist rhetoric would not focus on speech and writing alone. There would, of course, be a place for the analysis of content or the semiotic in a realist rhetoric, it just wouldn’t be the whole story.

As a langauge game OOO just got a lot more compelling. Got realism? Indeed.

Disclosure and Objects in Relation

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DR. HOWARD: Object Relations in psychology puts another layer on to the grid. The object cannot be present without the self to be aware of the object.

MICHAEL: In what sense? If you mean that objects do not exist without human selves to perceive them then I would have to disagree strongly. Everything we know (e.g., geology) indicates that objects exist ‘out there’ in the environment, ‘external’ to human perception, and even prior to us. I am a strong realist in this sense.

However, if you mean that the presence of an object within perception indicates that there must be a ‘self’ that perceives – that the presence of objects confirms the existence of a perceiver - then I totally agree. We know that we exist by virtue of our existing independent of something else (be it an object, objects or the world at large). There seems to always be a ‘background’ to our ‘foregrounded’ awareness.

DR. HOWARD: So now we have the Self and the Object. But what makes it interesting is there is also the Relationship between the Self and the Object. I may love my guitar for the experience it can give me, that has nothing to do with it's structure. The relationship is a context built upon my emotional experience with the object.

MICHAEL: I don’t agree. I think the relationship between a human and a musical instrument is more ‘intimate’ and dynamic than that, especially since that particular object is an artefactual ‘tool’. In fact, the “structure” and properties of the guitar have everything to do with how it relates to you. The guitar has “powers” or capacities inherent to its constitution (properties, structure) that come together with the capacities and ‘powers” (skills) that you embody to make sweet sweet music. Without the specific constitutions (properties and structure) of both you and the guitar there would be no music at all.

You could say that the endo-properties that you are ‘collide’ with the endo-properties of the guitar to create a resonating assemblage (or event) where music emerges. Both you and the object in this case afford each other the opportunity to make music. Your emotional experience is only one component/aspect of the assemblage/event. Your embodied skills are another. Emotions and skills might even be a major component of such an event, contributing much of the intensity internal to the event, but they are not the only components - and perhaps not even the most determining.

DR. HOWARD: The object, of course can be other people. Which leads to I and Thou by Martin Buber. My qualities and constructs cannot exist without another. This is a way of knowing via social interaction. How we humans view reality or objects is based upon learning this social interaction process.

MICHAEL: I get what you are saying, but I would suggest that you extend the I-Thou relationship even further to include non-human objects as well. There are many non-human, or non-cultural, or non-sentient aspects that contribute towards the genesis of the kinds of assemblages we are and relationships that develop. Objects are always part of the contingent interactions that flow into specific events.

Consider our bones, for example: they are mineral deposits, but they play a major role in our being what we are – especially in our ability to act in the world. Bones have an ‘agency’ all their own, affecting the world in various ways depending on where and how they exist. They contribute to our experiences of reality.

So humans don’t simply view reality or objects based on socially acquired understandings, we also encounter and must cope with the things-in-themselves - based partly on their own inherent properties, capacities and the relations they affect and enter into. In a sense, things ‘speak’ to us and demand to be heard while we are making our meanings.

DR. HOWARD: The severely autistic person does not have this social interaction, so he never learns to view objects around him. He is forever caught in some other world. I wonder how Heidegger (or other posters here) would define the world and reality of an autistic person?

MICHAEL: I think there is even more going on. It is the combination of genes, epigenetics and complex social environments that create the situation known as “autism”. Autistic persons have particular properties (a peculiar neural-capacity for instance) which are unique, and often maladaptive within certain environments. And my sense is that autistic persons do view objects, they just do so differently.
And the person does not exist in “some other world”, but rather the combination of their particular bodyself-properties and other objects and environments create a particular world-space that is uniquely experienced by them within the wider field of affordances.

We might then say that Dasein thrown into the world in the context described above is what allows “autism” to unfold. But maybe that’s just how I see it…

Shaviro on Deleuze and Whitehead

Deleuze’s Encounter With Whitehead
By Steven Shaviro

In a short chapter of The Fold (1993) that constitutes his only extended discussion of Alfred North Whitehead, Gilles Deleuze praises Whitehead for asking the question, “What Is an Event?” (76). Whitehead’s Process and Reality (1929/1978) marks only the third time – after the Stoics and Leibniz – that events move to the center of philosophical thought. Deleuze wrote less about Whitehead than he did about the other figures in his philosophical counter-canon: Lucretius, the Stoics, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hume, Nietzsche, Bergson, and Foucault.

But Whitehead is arguably as important to Deleuze as any of these other thinkers. It is only today, in the wake of Isabelle Stengers’ great book Penser avec Whitehead (2002), that it has become possible, for the first time, to measure the full extent of Deleuze’s encounter with Whitehead. My work here is deeply indebted to Stengers, as well as to James Williams (2005) and to Keith Robinson (2006), both of whom have written illuminatingly about Whitehead and Deleuze.

“What is an event?” is, of course, a quintessentially Deleuzian question. And Whitehead marks an important turning-point in the history of philosophy because he affirms that, in fact, everything is an event. The world, he says, is made of events, and nothing but events: happenings rather than things, verbs rather than nouns, processes rather than substances. Becoming is the deepest dimension of Being.

Read More (PDF) @ Shiviro's Homepage

SR and OOO in Brief

Follow th links to a brief Intro to Speculative Realism and Object-Oriented Ontology by Graham Harman:

One thing I’ve noticed from a lot of the mail is that SR and OOO have started to bleed together in many people’s minds. For example, Meillassoux is sometimes being referred to as an “object-oriented philosopher,” which isn’t true. So, for those who are new to this part of the blogosphere, here is a renewed summary of what the different terms mean.

Read More @ Graham’s Blog

See Also Ian Bogost's definition here:
What is Object-Oriented Ontology?

- And from Wikipedia -

DeLanda on Deleuze and the Genesis of Form

Deleuze and the Genesis of Form

by Manuel DeLanda

One constant in the history of Western philosophy seems to be a certain conception of matter as an inert receptacle for forms that come from the outside. In other words, the genesis of form and structure seems to always involve resources that go beyond the capabilities of the material substratum of these forms and structures. In some cases, these resources are explicitly transcendental, eternal essences defining forms which are imposed on infertile materials. The clearest example of this theory of form is, of course, religious Creationism, in which form begins as an idea in God’s mind, and is then imposed by a command on an obedient and docile matter. But more serious examples also exist. In ancient philosophies Aristotle’s essences seem to fit this pattern, as do those that inhabit Platonist heavens. And although classical physics began with a clean break with Aristotelian philosophy, and did endow matter with some spontaneous behavior (e.g. inertia), it reduced the variability and richness of material expression to the concept of mass, and studied only the simplest material systems (frictionless planetary dynamics, ideal gases) where spontaneous self-generation of form does not ocurr, thus always keeping some transcendental agency hidden in the background.

Yet, as Gilles Deleuze has shown in his work on Spinoza, not every Western philosopher has taken this stance. In Spinoza, Deleuze discovers another possibility: that the resources involved in the genesis of form are not transcendental but immanent to matter itself. A simple example should suffice to illustrate this point. The simplest type of immanent resource for morphogenesis seems to be endogenously-generated stable states. Historically, the first such states to be discovered by scientists studying the behavior of matter (gases) were energy minima (or correspondingly, entropy maxima). The spherical form of a soap bubble, for instance, emerges out of the interactions among its constituent molecules as these are constrained energetically to “seek” the point at which surface tension is minimized. In this case, there is no question of an essence of “soap-bubbleness” somehow imposing itself from the outside, an ideal geometric form (a sphere) shaping an inert collection of molecules. Rather, an endogenous topological form (a point in the space of energetic possibilities for this molecular assemblage) governs the collective behavior of the individual soap molecules, and results in the emergence of a spherical shape.

Read More @ cddc.vt.edu

Object Lessons: Games as Theory and Practice

Ian Bogost has an interesting post up (here) about his latest invention Cow Clicker. Apparently Cow Clicker is a facebook game designed as “partly a satire, and partly a playable theory of today's social games, and partly an earnest example of that genre.”

Personally, I loathe meaningless and mindless facebook games. I never play them – I have better things to do with my existence. However, Cow Clicker seems to be about something more than this.

And I still find the idea that video games can become innovative learning environments if done properly intriguing. So it is interesting what Bogost seems to be implying about how technology might be used to increase reflexivity on a concrete level of action and cognition, rather than be used simply as tools deployed unconsciously.

Here is the part of his post I found most interesting:

The dialectic between theory and practice often collapses into a call and response panegyric. This in mind, I thought it might be productive to make an example [of a social game] that would act as its own theory. It's a strategy I've been calling carpentry, and which I'll be discussing in more detail in my forthcoming book Alien Phenomenology (including this example). In the case of social games, I reasoned that enacting the principles of my concerns might help me clarify them and, furthermore, to question them. So I decided to make a game that would attempt to distill the social game genre down to its essence. Cow Clicker is the result.

Thinking about how our discourses and theories translate into practice and address issues of coping and understanding in the world is important for very obvious practical reasons, so Bogost’s move towards an ‘applied’ object-oriented philosophy is welcomed. As I have continually argued, we are never going to understand 'things-in-themselves' without a full-out engagement (attentiveness and experimentation) with actual things in the world - and all their idiosyncrasies. Bogost’s carpentry may be just such an engagement?

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?

A Four-Fold Encounter?

Graham Harman has a great post up over at his blog Object-Oriented Philosophy that includes some meaty comments regarding what he is calling “the quadruple object”. It is a great post for me to learn more about how he ‘structures’ his arguments. Here is the meat:

As for the fourfold structure, a few quick points…

1. Heidegger is far from the first person to use one. The history of philosophy is saturated with them, from Empedocles onward.

2. All of the even remotely rigorous ones don’t reach the number four through empirical observation. Instead, they result from the intersection of two dualisms, some of them better than others.

3. If you don’t like my version of the fourfold structure, then you have to say which of the two axes you reject:

*Do you reject the Heideggerian distinction between concealment and unconcealment? If so, then I’m afraid you’re simply another underminder or overminer of objects. In the former case you’re trying to reduce or eliminate the phenomenal level, and I have found all such efforts feeble. In the latter case you’re celebrating appearance and making a cliché attack on deep and hidden realities, in a form that is already a couple of centuries old. So, I think rejecting the distinction between withdrawn objects and their sensual translations is a big mistake.

*Do you reject the distinction between objects and their qualities? If so, then you’re simply following the well-established empiricist tradition, slavishly followed even by most anti-empiricists, which holds that an object is a bundle of qualities, nothing. But then there are all sorts of problems explaining how the bundling occurs. Either it’s through some bland and unconvincing material substrate, or (more frequently) people are allowed to decide what belongs together as one object. Or at most, objects are defined functionally in terms of the effects they have on other things. But in my opinion, you don’t have to read too much of Husserl’s Logical Investigations to be convinced of the ramshackle character of the “bundle of qualities” approach to objects.

And if you reject neither of these distinctions, like me, then you have the very fourfold structure I describe. There are then a ton of difficulties in trying to account for everything that happens within it, but that is no proof against the necessity of the structure itself.

Harman’s four-fold explication of how ‘objects’ exist, become encountered and known is certainly interesting, but, I believe, not entirely convincing. For me, I think there are a variety of ways we can conceive entities outside the simplistic object v. qualities binary. If we take seriously human embodiment we find that we do in fact encounter things ‘directly’ through the physical interaction between our constituent properties (flesh, etc) and the constituent properties of other objects - but never 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.

I won’t go much more into details at this time because I’m still hoping to get some more definitive posts up about this summer about how we can align object-centered philosophies with relational ontologies. The way forward, I believe, is to let go of some very confused understandings of what human ‘knowing’ entails through an acceptance of the primal activities of perception and by paying closer attention to actual encounters in the world.

*UPDATE: About 10 minutes after I posted this I read a recent blog entry by Gary William's on Heidegger and 'truth' which resonates nicely with what I think is wrong with metaphysical notions of perception and appeals to 'withdrawn' realities in general. Although Gary's post was not directed at Harman's ontology specifically, I think it goes a long way to helping Heidegger-influenced philosophies become even more realistic. From Minds and Brains:

Structural coupling occurs whenever there is a history of recurrent interaction between two systems. More specifically, in virtue of its autopoietic (i.e. self-organizing) unity, an organism is structurally coupled with the environment insofar as it maintains its unity it respect to the environment. Accordingly, cognition can be defined as “A history of structural coupling that brings forth a world.” This definition of cognition is in stark contrast to the traditional conception of cognition as the manipulation of explicit symbol tokens by a central processing unit.

What does this have to do with Heidegger’s notion of truth? I propose that for Heidegger, Dasein is “in the truth” insofar as it is structurally coupled to a real environment. Dasein isn’t coupled to itself, nor its ideas, representations, or thoughts; it is coupled to the Umwelt, which is composed of real entities that have a structural determination independent of whether we are there to disclose it. Indeed, look at this passage:

Because the kind of being that is essential to truth is of the character of Dasein, all truth is relative to Dasein’s being. Does this relatively signify that all truth is ‘subjective’? If one interprets ‘subjective’ as ‘left to the subject’s discretion’, then it certainly does not. For uncovering, in the sense which is most its own, takes asserting out of the province of the ‘subjective discretion, and brings the uncovering Dasein face to face with the entities themselves. (SZ 227)

I have elaborated on this notion of encountering before (more recently here). Basically, the idea is that our cognition is directed towards the things themselves rather than any putative re-presentation of the things inside a mental theater. As I put it earlier,

perception is a matter of encountering or attending to what is already presenting itself to us. As long as we are alive, we have no choice but to encounter the Earth. Understood this way, sensations are irrelevant for the achievement of perception. All that matters for the act of perception is the performance of the act. And it is only dogmatism which supposes that the act of perception involves re-presenting the phenomena in terms of sense-data. For this, there is no need. We only need to respond or react to that which is there in such a way as to maintain the unity of our bodily singularity.

This direct response to what is “really there” in the environment grounds Heidegger’s notion of truth. This notion is taken from his definition of phenomena as that the totality of what shows itself. I contend that this notion of showing and encountering can be explained in terms of J.J. Gibson’s theory of direct realism.

As for Graham’s ontology specifically, I must admit I have only read Guerrilla Metaphysics and his essay on “vicarious causation” (along with numerous posts on his blog) but I continually get the sense that Graham is unnecessarily boxing himself into some very problematic positions (most of which have already been outlined by Steven Shapiro here) if only because he is still operating within the traditional boundaries of philosophical discourse (metaphysics per se). Of course, it makes sense professionally seeing as he is an academic philosopher, but now that he is becoming somewhat more established I think there could be room for Graham to stretch beyond certain established ‘logical necessities’ to think objects in new ways (cf. the distinctions he makes above re: concealment and unconcealment, qualities, and bundle theories). A mind as obviously powerful as Harman’s should be unleashed without recourse to established conceptual modes.

Goldman Sachs Earns 250m as Punishment for Fraud

As middle class and low-income families continue to struggle to keep from going bankrupt and losing their homes, the U.S bank and finance corporation Goldman Sachs made a profit by agreeing to settle their civil suits and pay a fine of $550 million U.S dollars for fraudulent activity and misleading investors. [source]

The UK's Royal Bank of Scotland, which is now 84% owned by the UK taxpayer and lost about $840m in investments as result of Goldman Sachs fraud, will receive $100m compensation. The German bank IKB Deutsche Industriebank will receive $150m, with the remaining $300m going to the US Treasury. [source]

In a statement, Goldman Sachs said the move to settle their fraud cases was "the right outcome for our firm, our shareholders and our clients". In this they were most certainly correct. As a result of the “deal” Goldman Sachs’ stock rose today by 4.5% - earning the firm $800 million dollars. The resulting net profit for those of us not inclined to math: 250 million U.S dollars. [source]

Neo-liberal pundits everywhere are hailing this a huge win for a few dozen wealthy elites who continued to make record breaking profits throughout the “financial crisis”. From BusinessWeek Magaizine: 

“You’d have to look at it as a victory for Goldman,” said Peter Sorrentino, senior portfolio manager at Huntington Asset Advisors in Cincinnati, which manages $13.3 billion including Goldman Sachs shares. “This takes a cloud off the stock.” [source]

Goldman Sachs made a profit of $3.5 billion dollars in the first three months of this year – most of which went directly to a few dozen U.S and foreign citizens. [source] Lesson for the kids: crime does pay.



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