OOO: a first try at some parameters

Incidentally, I’ve forgotten to mention that it has rained almost non-stop in Manchester. Right now it is raining especially hard. The umbrella purchased under similar conditions in Zagreb this June has come in handy.

Now, on to the main topic…

As for Speculative Realism, it was always an umbrella term (no pun itnended) and I see no reason not to have a “big tent” cocnept of S.R. If big enough, it may as well just replace what we call “continental philosophy”, because I think it’s big enough to cover any sort of approach that I would like to encourage over the next few decades.

But as for the object-oriented wing, a guiding definition is needed. S.R. is becoming big enough that it’s almost unwieldy, and almost contains too many mutually opposed ideas. It’s time for splinter groups and side projects to form.

Today I was discussing one such project with a blogger. I’ll adopt Levi’s coinage “OOO” for objcet-oriented ontology, both for the sake of differentiation from the computer science acronym, and also because of the pleasingly economical appearance of “OOO” itself.

In order to let people know who is welcome inside this smaler tent within the larger tent of S.R., I would offer the following preliminary standards for what counts as an OOO in my sense and presumably Levi’s:

1. The human-world relation loses priority. All relations are on exactly the same ontological footing.

2. Relations are inherently transformations, translations, or distortions. No model of a thing can replace that thing, and hence truth cannot be correspondence: one reality, but many truths.

3. Objects come in all different sizes. No layer of reality has privilege over any other.

My method for deriving these principles was to ask myself why I would not call any of the other three original Speculative Realists “object-oriented ontologists,” which they are not. So, these three principles serve to differentiate my position fairly economically from theirs.

Number one is the Meillassoux precaution. Meillassoux does not place all relations on the same footing. The human-world correlate remains central for him; he merely tries to radicalize it into a form of absolute knowledge. Meillassoux deals with correlationism as an “inside job.”

Number two is the Brassier precaution, though it also works vis-a-vis Meillassoux. Neither science nor mathematics can give us direct access to the reality of the things. Knowledge will always be oblique or indirect, and this is why there are many forms of truth even if only one reality. (I happen to prefer Latour’s “industrial” model of truth, but that is optional for OOO.)

Number three is the Grant precaution, though it may also work vis-a-vis Brassier. Where I most differ from Grant is that objects don’t really exist for him. He is a sort of Brunoesque monist. Objects emerge as “retardations” of a more primally unified force. He will soon write a friendly response against this claim, I think, but I’m sticking to it.

This is not the time or place to argue each of these points, I’m just trying to establish them as some rough sifting criteria. There will probably be some sort of regular OOO publication, and there will have to be some basic criteria as to who might fit inside the little tent.

One other interesting thing about these three criteria is that they don’t immediately exclude Latour or Whitehead, who probably do belong in the tent, and do (thanks to Whitehead’s ontological principle) deserve to be designated as “object-oriented philosophers.”

However, number 3 does exclude Leibniz: my favorite philosopher, but not quite a representative of OOO.

I’ll have to see what Levi thinks of these criteria, though.