Object-oriented ontology
In metaphysics, object-oriented ontology is a 21st-century Heidegger-influenced school of thought that rejects the privileging of human existence over the existence of nonhuman objects. This is in contrast to post-Kantian philosophy's tendency to refuse "speak of the world without humans or humans without the world". Object-oriented ontology maintains that objects exist independently of human perception and are not ontologically exhausted by their relations with humans or other objects. For object-oriented ontologists, all relations, including those between nonhumans, distort their related objects in the same basic manner as human consciousness and exist on an equal ontological footing with one another.
Object-oriented ontology is often viewed as a subset of speculative realism, a contemporary school of thought that criticizes the post-Kantian reduction of philosophical enquiry to a correlation between thought and being, such that the reality of anything outside of this correlation is unknowable. Object-oriented ontology predates speculative realism, however, and makes distinct claims about the nature and equality of object relations to which not all speculative realists agree. The term "object-oriented philosophy" was coined by Graham Harman, the movement's founder, in his 1999 doctoral dissertation "Tool-Being: Elements in a Theory of Objects". In 2009, Levi Bryant rephrased Harman's original designation as "object-oriented ontology", giving the movement its current name.
Founding of the movement
The term "object-oriented philosophy" was used by speculative philosopher Graham Harman in his 1999 doctoral dissertation "Tool-Being: Elements in a Theory of Objects". For Harman, Heideggerian Zuhandenheit, or readiness-to-hand, refers to the withdrawal of objects from human perception into a reality that cannot be manifested by practical or theoretical action. Furthering this idea, Harman contends that when objects withdraw in this way, they distance themselves from other objects, as well as humans. Resisting pragmatic interpretations of Heidegger's thought, then, Harman is able to propose an object-oriented account of metaphysical substances. Following the publication of Harman's early work, several scholars from varying fields began employing object-oriented principles in their own work. Levi Bryant began what he describes as "a very intense philosophical email exchange" with Harman, over the course of which Bryant became convinced of the credibility of object-oriented thought. Bryant subsequently used the term "object-oriented ontology" in 2009 to distinguish those ontologies committed to an account of being composed of discrete beings from Harman's object-oriented philosophy, in order to mark a difference between object-oriented philosophy and object-oriented ontology. Harman has written "The term "object-oriented philosophy" was initially borrowed in jest from computer science, but took on a life of its own."Basic principles
While object-oriented philosophers reach different conclusions, they share common precepts, including a critique of anthropocentrism and correlationism, preservation of finitude, "withdrawal", and rejection of philosophies that undermine or "overmine" objects.Rejection of anthropocentrism
Anthropocentrism is the privileging of humans as "subjects" over and against nonhuman beings as "objects". Philosophical anthropocentrism tends to limit certain attributes to humans, while contrasting all other beings as variations of "object". Beginning with Kant's epistemology, modern philosophers began articulating a transcendental anthropocentrism, whereby the Kantian argument that objects are unknowable outside of the imposed, categories of the human mind, in turn, shores up discourses wherein objects frequently become effectively reduced to mere products of human cognition. In contrast to Kant's view, object-oriented philosophers maintain that objects exist independently of human perception, and that nonhuman object relations distort their related objects in the same fundamental manner as human consciousness. Thus, all object relations, human and nonhuman, are said to exist on an equal ontological footing with one another.Critique of correlationism
Related to 'anthropocentrism', object-oriented thinkers reject speculative idealist correlationism, which the French philosopher Quentin Meillassoux defines as "the idea according to which we only ever have access to the correlation between thinking and being, and never to either term considered apart from the other". Because object-oriented ontology is a realist philosophy, it stands in contradistinction to the anti-realist trajectory of correlationism, which restricts philosophical understanding to the correlation of being with thought by disavowing any reality external to this correlation as inaccessible, and, in this way, fails to escape the ontological reification of human experience. Many take this to mean that object-oriented ontologists see inert or inanimate objects as being equal to humans. Object-oriented ontologists, on the other hand, reject this understanding, arguing that the claim of objects existing in the same way humans do is not synonymous with the claim that all things are equal in terms of moral, ethical, or aesthetic value.Rejection of undermining, "overmining", and "duomining"
Object-oriented thought holds that there are two principal strategies for devaluing the philosophical import of objects. First, one can undermine objects by claiming that they are an effect or manifestation of a deeper, underlying substance or force. Second, one can "overmine" objects by either an idealism which holds that there is nothing beneath what appears in the mind or, as in social constructionism, by positing no independent reality outside of language, discourse or power. Object-oriented philosophy fundamentally rejects both undermining and "overmining", since both approaches hand-wave objects away by attributing their existence to other, more fundamental elements of reality.In a 2013 paper, Graham Harman also discussed the concept of duomining. Borrowing the word from computing science, Harman uses "duomining" to refer to philosophical or ontological approaches that both undermine and overmine objects at the same time. Harman asserts that Quentin Meillassoux's ontology is based on "a classic duomining position", since "he holds that the primary qualities of things are those which can be mathematized and denies that he is a Pythagorean, insisting that numbers do not exhaust the world but simply point to a sort of 'dead matter' whose exact metaphysical status is never clarified".
Withdrawal
Object-oriented ontology holds that objects are independent not only of other objects but also from the qualities they animate at any specific spatiotemporal location. Accordingly, objects cannot be exhausted by their relations with humans or other objects in theory or practice, meaning that the reality of objects is always ready-to-hand. The retention by an object of reality in excess of any relation is known as withdrawal. And since all objects are, in their fullness, partially withdrawn from one another, every relation is said to be an act of translation, meaning that no object can perfectly translate another object into its own nomenclature; Harman has referred to this as the "problem with paraphrase".Metaphysics of Graham Harman
In Tool-Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects, Graham Harman interprets the tool-analysis contained in Martin Heidegger's Being and Time as inaugurating an ontology of objects themselves, rather than the valorization of practical action or networks of signification. According to Harman, Heideggerian Zuhandenheit, or readiness-to-hand, indicates the withdrawal of objects from both practical and theoretical action, such that objectal reality cannot be exhausted by either practical usage or theoretical investigation. Harman further contends that objects withdraw not just from human interaction, but also from other objects. He maintains:From this, Harman concludes that the primary site of ontological investigation is objects and relations, instead of the post-Kantian emphasis on the human-world correlate. Moreover, this holds true for all entities, be they human, nonhuman, natural, or artificial, leading to the downplaying of Dasein as an ontological priority. In its place, Harman proposes a concept of objects that are irreducible to both material particles and human perception, and "exceed every relation into which they might enter".
Coupling Heidegger's tool analysis with the phenomenological insights of Edmund Husserl, Harman introduces two types of objects: real objects and sensual objects. Real objects are objects that withdraw from all experience, whereas sensual objects are those that exist only in experience. Additionally, Harman suggests two kinds of qualities: sensual qualities, or those found in experience, and real qualities, which are accessed through intellectual probing. Pairing sensual and real objects and qualities yields the following four "tensions":
- Real Object/Real Qualities : This pairing grounds the capacity of real objects to differ from one another, without collapsing into indefinite substrata. This tension thus refers to "a real or indescribable object" encrusted with "real properties" that cannot be experientially understood. Harman refers to this as "essence".
- Real Object/Sensual Qualities : As in the tool-analysis, a withdrawn object is translated into sensual apprehension via a "surface" accessed by thought and/or action. This tension thus refers to "the multiple facets displays to the outer world, and whatever organizing principle is able to hold together features." Harman identifies this as "space".
- Sensual Object/Real Qualities : The structure of conscious phenomena are forged from eidetic, or experientially interpretive, qualities intuited intellectually. This tension thus refers to "a perfectly accessible whose features are withdrawn from scrutiny", Harman dubs "eidos"
- Sensual Object/Sensual Qualities : Sensual objects are present, but enmeshed within a "mist of accidental features and profiles". This tension thus refers to "an enduring sensual object and its shifting parade of qualities from one moment to the next", which Harman identifies as "time".
Thus, causation entails the connection between a real object residing within the directionality of consciousness, or a unified "intention," with another real object residing outside of the intention, where the intention itself is also classified as a real object. From here, Harman extrapolates five types of relations between objects. Containment describes a relation in which the intention "contains" both the real object and the sensual object. Contiguity connotes relations between sensual objects lying side-by-side within an intention, not affecting one another, such that a sensual object's bystanders can be rearranged without disrupting the object's identity. Sincerity characterizes the absorption of a real object by a sensual object, in a manner that "takes seriously" the sensual object without containing or being contiguous to it. Connection conveys the vicarious generation of intention by real objects indirectly encountering one another. Finally, no relation represents the typical condition of reality, since real objects are incapable of direct interaction and are limited in their causal influence upon and relation to other objects.