done for the day

OK, that’s all. It only took about 15 minutes to cut 81 words of fat from the initial draft.

The point is not that the second draft of the Introduction is final. Most likely it will be changed one or more additional times as the book develops. The point, instead, is that I can now legitimately feel like a small but important part of the book is finished.

one day ahead of schedule

Though I said I would not write the Introduction to L’objet quadruple until tomorrow afternoon, I found myself tonight in a mood to begin writing the book immediately. Moods to write must always be indulged, barring genuine social or work obligations, since they are not always present and cannot be squandered in the name of an arbitrarily paced schedule.

The Introduction is already finished. Or rather, the first draft of it is. You’ll remember that I was shooting for 388 words. The current length is 469 words, 81 over the limit. Though it would be easy to cut myself that much slack on the word count, it is almost always a good idea to trim the fat on any finished piece of writing, and 81 words is a nice manageable challenge when hunting for unnecessary words, which I will do tonight before sleeping. Approximately 1 word in every 6 should be deleted.

Points of interest in the writing of this Introduction, which ended up taking around 40 minutes:

*My initial outline proved completely unfeasible. There was no way to deal with all six of those themes in the Introduction, and in fact I ended up writing something that had nothing at all to do with the outline. That’s perfectly fine, of course. I started with the outline, but it quickly evolved into something quite different from what I expected.

*The Introduction transitions very nicely into Chapter One, which I will write next. I wasn’t expecting it to work quite that well.

*The style is surprisingly fresh. I’ve never written in quite this voice before. I’m not sure whether it’s the subtle unconscious influence of the French context for the book, or simply a matter of my being ready to start writing just a bit differently. Whatever the cause, I have a feeling this book will be especially easy and interesting to read.

*There are several lists of objects. Given how short the Introduction is, it’s easy to get away with that. And I think they are pretty well interspersed with more prosaic passages.

The psychological advantage of having started tonight… It can be extremely depressing to wait in line for passport services at the U.S. Embassy, which I will be doing for most of tomorrow morning. All electronic devices must be checked at the door for security reasons, meaning that you are effectively cut off from the rest of the human race as well as all time-passing music for as long as you are inside that heavily fortified compound. And it generally takes at least 90 minutes, and on occasion has taken me up to 3 hours of waiting. They’re not always the warmest and friendliest people either, so the entire experience can have a subtly degrading effect on morale.

For this reason, I always try to enter the Embassy on a high note, with pleasant thoughts to chew on rather than gruelling minor crises. As far as tomorrow is concerned, it’s a lot better to go in there with the book already underway, especially knowing that a tenable intellectual and verbal style has already been established for it from the opening page.

more Bogost

SAME LINK AS EARLIER, but he added a few brief responses to my response at the bottom.

All right, no more blog posts from me for awhile.

more on Heideggerians

Here’s one reader comment from the Paul Ennis blog:

“I hate to be so flippant, but who cares? Is Heidegger wrong about being-in-the-world because he betrayed Husserl? Is he wrong about the collapse of metaphysics and its implications for us because he was a cold-hearted snake? Is he wrong about techne because of this?

Please tell me why this is important. It seems to me that the whole discussion speaks to a very unfortunate tendency to argue about thinkers rather than ideas. I know that this is an old-fashioned critique, but I stand by it. Gossip is excusable in our interpersonal relationships, but has no place elsewhere.”

It’s called biography, not “gossip.” A great dead philosopher was a person, not just a disembodied set of arguments, and we want to know what sort of person a philosopher was, just as with a politician, scientist, or inventor. It enriches our sense of the drama of their lives, thoughts, and actions.

The first paragraph in the comment above is a simple straw man. As far as I’m aware, literally no one has ever claimed that Heidegger was “wrong about the collapse of metaphysics and its implications for us because he was a cold-hearted snake.”

It’s funny to imagine, though: “In this paper, I will argue that due to abundant evidence that Heidegger was a cold-hearted snake, his arguments about the collapse of metaphysics should be ruled invalid.”

For my part, I think biography is the best genre there is. Why? Precisely because it shows the emergence of new thinking from some prior state.

what Heideggerians always say

Here are two points that Heideggerians always tend to make against me whenever debate is launched. (Having been a “Heideggerian” for the whole of my youth, I mean no harm to my former tribe.)

1. “Dasein’s relation to the world is of a completely different kind from the relation of inanimate objects to the world. In fact, these have no relation to world at all.”

But this misses the point. Even most panpsychists wouldn’t deny that human dealings with the world are of a vastly different kind from all others. That’s not in dispute. The dispute is over whether the human relation is so vastly different in kind from that of other entities that it deserves to be built into a basic ontological rift around which all else revolves.

And in fact, this is Heidegger’s weakest point as a philosopher, the point where he sees least clearly with his own eyes and merely adopts what the tradition of modern philosophy handed down to him. For he is never able to clarify adequately how Dasein’s relation to the world is different. It always has something to do with the “as-structure.” Humans see world “as” world.

But the nature of the as-structure remains cloudy throughout his writings. At times it seems to mean that all human comportment takes things “as” what they are, as in his claims that even blindly using a hammer takes it “as” a hammer. But at times it seems to mean a heightened sort of articulate awareness, as when philosophy is claimed to be the what really sees world “as” world or being “as” being.

In short, he uses it both as a term for all human comportment, and as a measuring-stick for judging certain kinds of comportment as more “as” than others– e.g., philosophy.

This is why animals pose such a special difficulty for Heidegger. He never dares the Cartesian position of claiming that animals are machines that see nothing and feel no pain. Yet he also obviously isn’t comfortable granting the heightened theoretical sort of “as” to animals. So they remain stranded in something called “world-poverty” that is raised but never explained, in the famous and popular 1929/30 lecture course The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World-Finitude-Solitude.

My own procedure, different from Heidegger’s, was simple. I read the as-structure in the most basic possible way, with full justification in Heidegger’s own texts (though I admit he would never accept my conclusions). Being is what withdraws from all access, while the “as” is what has emerged into access. (See the distinction between Ereignis and Vorgang in 1919, or more famously that between Zu– and Vorhandenheit in Being and Time itself.)

Once you read it this way, there are no grounds for distinguishing in a basic ontological way between the human relation to a cotton ball and a flame’s relation to that same cotton ball. Both relations fail to exhaust the depths of cotton-being, though presumably the human access to the cotton is far richer.

In other words… Is the difference between human comportment and inanimate relations a basic rift in the cosmos (as almost all modern philosophy thinks)? Or is the basic rift not rather between objects and relations? If the latter is true, as I hold, then human Dasein is merely an extremely complicated and interesting sort of object, differing only in degree from the reality of a flame or ball of cotton.

My way involves fewer presuppositions. None of Heidegger’s talk of the as-structure or “openness” or the like has any virtue other than being more consonant with the basic dogma of modern philosophy that human being is some sort of special rip in the fabric of the cosmos, different from all others. This same dogma is defended today most lucidly and openly by Zizek. And though I love both Heidegger and Zizek, this assumption on their part always sounds to me like mere table-pounding.

That is the source of my very partial alliance with the denials, by scientifically inclined philosophers (“positivists,” some wrongly call them all), that there is something automatically special about humans for the purposes of ontology.

2. Heideggerians also like to say things like this: “There is no problem for Heidegger with object-object relations. Heidegger is perfectly supportive of science.”

But this misses the point again, even in terms of Heidegger scholarship, let alone philosophy proper. For Heidegger, science deals with objects by modelling them in terms of present-at-hand properties. And once things appear in terms of present-at-hand properties, they are no longer the things themselves. (Terminological note: Heidegger always uses “object” as a pejorative term for the present-at-hand incarnation of a thing; I use “object” for what he means by “thing” in the writings from 1949 onward.)

Here I do not depart from Heidegger’s own self-understanding. The reason he is so (needlessly) critical of the sciences, going so far as to claim that they “do not think,” is precisely because they posit their objects in terms of present-at-hand accessibility, which is what Heidegger’s entire philosophy was built to undermine. (Husserl, in his eyes, also does nothing more than reduce the world to presence-at-hand in consciousness.)

The problem is that Heidegger never develops an “authentic” sense of inanimate relations. Something like the relation between cotton and fire has meaning for him only in terms of present-at-hand proposition and measurements in the physical sciences. The sole relation that has philosophical weight for Heidegger is that between Dasein and Sein. And in that respect he’s just another modern philosopher, not as original as he is on so many other fronts.

two sides of the OOP debate

Just to show that there are two ways of looking at the parallels (or lack thereof) between the object-oriented model of compute programming and philosophy, here are some good basic “pro” and “con” arguments, both from people who know what they are talking about.

The “pro”:

“Weird! When I first came across your blog, I unhesitatingly assumed that the reference to Object-Oriented Programming was deliberate. I’m a software developer for a living, so I can say with confidence that the basic parallels are apt (the whole reason for the term in software development was a change in ‘focus’ toward objects that truly interact rather than just data structures and procedures). There are some strong nuances that might not match up (encapsulation, inheritance, polymorphism, etc) but reading those in would have to be pretty intentional and conscious.”

The “con” comes from Ian Bogost’s blog post back in January, which he has kindly re-sent to me:

“My worry arose not from the perception that Harman had absconded with the appellation without giving it proper credit, but because I feared the sense of ‘object-oriented’ native to computer science didn’t mesh well with that of speculative realism.

To wit, an object in the computational sense:

• describes a pattern, not a thing.
• exists in stable relation to its properties.
• exists in stable relation to its abilities.
• has direct access to other objects via their properties and abilities
• is not a real object
• (but can be made real, e.g. on magnetic tape or as a series of instructions on a processor stack)
• always relates to an intentional object (both because it is a designed object and because it strives to embody and enact direct modeling of the world)

Many—perhaps all—of the aspects above conflict with Harman’s understanding of objects and what it means to be oriented toward them (even if certain other properties of object-oriented programming, such as abstraction and polymorphism, might begin to approach the agitated relationship between objects and properties per Harman).”

FYI.

sorry, but…

Was just reading more about object-oriented programming, and the parallels seem plenty apt to me. Terms can be borrowed freely across disciplines with slight changes of meaning. This happens constantly across the spectrum of human knowledge.

Anyway:

1. It doesn’t matter, because there are plenty of other names that can be used. And more importantly,

2. It doesn’t matter unless people have such strong preconceived notions of what object-oriented programming means that they end up confused by the ways in which “object-oriented philosophy” might depart from those preconceptions. That is simply not the case with the vast majority of my readership and planned additional readership. The term is effective not only because it’s provocative, but also because people immediately know what it means in a philosophical context as soon as they hear it. It means that individual entities will again play a key role in philosophy that they lost long ago in favor of the human-world correlate.

Composition of Philosophy. July 15.

I’m glad so many people wrote or tweeted to say they liked yesterday’s long installment.

Today’s post is not so long, because I won’ be starting the actual writing until tomorrow. Today was the second day in a row of administrative commitments, and on top of that I ended up with only a few hours of sleep.

Tomorrow morning I have to go down to the U.S. Embassy and waste the usual 90 minutes in line before I can apply for my new passport. Once I’m downtown, I may as well do a few other things that need to be done there, which means half the day will surely be lost. So, I’ll make it easy on myself tomorrow and write only that 330-word introduction referred to last night.

It’s already outlined. I think I started outlining it while in Serbia. What usually happens is that I’ll be sitting in a café or walking, and three or four ideas will occur to me. They are immediately written down in a black notebook I’ve taken to carrying along on trips. Sometimes I’ll look at those notes again, and it will make me think of other ideas that will fit well with those.

On the flight back from England, I looked back at those thought and boiled them all down to 5 steps.

In the next draft of the outline, it was increased to 6 steps.

Those steps turned out to be in a not-so-efficient order, so I regrouped them in a final outline of 6 steps (same points as the preceding list, just differently ordered).

One question for this introduction was whether to include one of those “lists of objects” that a few sourpusses claim to disdain, but many dozens seem to love. I’ve decided to play to the dozens who love them. The reason I use these lists of objects is because they do genuine philosophical work, putting the reader in a frame of mind that is rather different from that of mainstream continental thought, where individual entities play little role. There will come a day when these lists may be tedious and unnecessary, but in my estimation we are not yet there.

Latour is not the only other person to use this technique. Many authors do it. In Prince of Networks I cited a very long list from Richard Rhodes of all the different kinds of objects that were destroyed in a flash in Hiroshima. In this sense it’s not an original technique at all, but a fairly widespread one used by any author who wants to remind us of a plurality of things otherwise muffled by some unifying, flattening force (whether it be being, consciousness, or the atomic bomb, depending on the author’s subject matter).

But look at the sorts of lists that each such author compiles, and you will find a very different tone in each case. Latour especially likes to mix technological and natural objects on his lists, perhaps to help cement his case that most objects are hybrids not assignable to one sphere or the other. (And in fact there are no objects that belong to one sphere or the other, since these two spheres do not exist; that’s his wider point.)

I do a bit of the natural/technological mixing myself, but also especially like to combine real and mythological entities, as well as astronomical objects in order to prevent the human world from taking too much space on center stage. I also create such lists with the mixed intonation of romanticism and drollery that characterizes my attitude toward life as a whole.

If you went to a Don Ho concert while he was still alive, you knew he was going to sing “Tiny Bubbles”; in fact, he did it twice, at the beginning and end of each concert. When Michael Jordan went in for a dunk, you knew he was going to stick his tongue out all the way. Lovecraft had recognizable flourishes, such as “the wild hills west of Arkham” and his recurring lists of the same horrifyingly forbidden books. There’s nothing wrong with repetitive personal trademarks, as long as they aren’t affectations. The best way to avoid affectation is simply to do what honestly seems to you to work the best, and over time you’ll find yourself locked in a few repeated stylistic gestures. And maybe they will strike a chord with readers. You can abandon them as soon as they cease functioning effectively. But judge that for yourself; don’t listen to those who critique for the sake of critiquing. Do listen to critics if they really seem sincere.

But enough of that topic, since we’re only talking about one or two sentences. I won’t give all six steps of the outline, but it goes roughly like this:

*general overview of the theme

*historical precedents for the theme, and why they leave me unsatisfied

*a small surprise best left till tomorrow (and I did say ‘small;’ don’t expect to be blown away– it’s just an introduction, after all)

One other point about introductions, which I’ve made before… It is extremely important that the introduction include only your current actual thoughts about the project. It is far too easy, when beginning a writing project, to go into “author mode” and put on a persona that is completely artificial and unconvincing. The best way to avoid that is simply to record, in the introduction, those thoughts that truly come to mind most powerfully when you think about the project.

In other words, the six points on my outline are not what I think one should say about the project, but what I actually would say if someone walked up to me right now and asked what the book will be about.

Also, the introduction is a low-pressure exercise, especially if short, since you can always throw it out later or right a new one. It’s just a warmup, not nearly as important as the first chapter.

As of now, I still plan to write Chapters 1-5 on five consecutive days, Friday through Tuesday. But things happen, and maybe it will take a bit longer than that.

Tomorrow’s Composition of Philosophy post will concern the actual writing of the introduction. If I feel like it, I may post each of the drafts on this blog (the chapters themselves will be too long for posting in full on this site).

on Latour’s website

Latour just wrote to say that he’d PUT PRINCE OF NETWORKS UP ON HIS WEBSITE.

Towards the left, about halfway down. Fun to see it there.

lost and found

Many readers will recall my missing passport scare just before the Croatia/Serbia trip, which began on June 19. Well, I just found the old passport. It was in the University’s Lost and Found room. I had tried them at the time but they didn’t have it. Apparently I dropped the passport down a crack in one of the shuttle bus seats, and I suppose they must not have found it until whenever the bus was cleaned.

It’s strangely comforting to have found it, even though it makes no practical difference. There have been mixed messages about whether or not the old passport has been cancelled. But even if it hasn’t, it is so beaten up after 4 years of heavy use that even the Dutch passport controllers were beginning to scold me about it’s condition. (I say “even the Dutch” because it usually the British passport controllers who are the first and only ones to scold me heavily whenever my passports get too beaten up, which happens every few years for me. The Dutch are usually a bit more relaxed than the British about travel documents but in April they gave me no problems at Heathrow but a stern and frownign lecture at Schiphol.)

In short, I’ll need to apply for a new one tomorrow anyway. The emergency passport is only 5 pages long, and was completely filled up by the Balkans and Istanbul and England and the Egyptian residence visas in the past month.

Actually, the old one is full too. I should go to that travel bar near the Bibliotheque Mitterand in Paris where they give massive amounts of free drinks for those who come in with a full passport.