brief response to Vitale

Chris Vitale says the following in a post today:

“So let´s take an example. I walk out of my house, and there in front of it is a big, furry dog. The object of the dog enters into combination with the object that is me, and a new, compound object is formed of my perception of the dog (and all three of these objects are split appropriately).

But who gets to say that this compound object really exists? In this case, I do, because I´m the one that sees the dog. But if you are in the house, looking out the window, and see me, but not the dog, and you see me from behind, so you don´t even see my face change when I see something, then the compound object of ´me seeing dog´doesn´t exist to this other person, right? So, does the object ´me seeing dog´exist, or not? This is why I think perspective is so important. TO ME, it exists, but to say it exists in itself hits me as problematic.

Likewise with the genesis and destruction of this new compound object. From my perspective, that object begins when I see the dog, and ends when I, say, walk back inside the house and stop looking at that dog. But to ask when that object formed or dissolved in itself seems to me to be a nonsensible question. Because to my friend in the house, that object never existed in the first place. This is why I think that, without perspective, the question of the genesis or destruction of objects generates paradoxes.”

1. It’s not a question of who gets to say which objects exist. The whole point of OOO is that no one ever “gets to say,” because no one and nothing ever has direct access to a real object. Both individual error and group delusion are quite possible about the existence of real objects. But the features of a real object can be deduced, in much the same way that the properties of the interior of a black hole might be deduced despite the impossibility of direct information from that interior. No one thinks a black hole is a meaningless concept just because reports from the inside are physically impossible.

2. The following is simply wrong: “But who gets to say that this compound object really exists? In this case, I do, because I’m the one that sees the dog.” Here Chris misreads OOO. The dog that I see is not the compound object. The dog that I see is a sensual object, and I’m the only one who sees it. Here Metzinger and I agree, and for strangely similar reasons despite his more scientistic language. Namely, he says that no one can experience the same phenomena that you do, because those phenomena supervene on a specific neural state that belongs to you alone, and hence even if we could rig a camera inside your mind and I could watch that camera, the experience I’m watching wouldn’t be the same experience as the one you’re having. Now, I wouldn’t use the language of neurology, because I think there’s a lot more involved than the brain here, but I would agree that the sensual object, the dog of which Vitale speaks, belongs to the perceiver alone. According to OOO, and here I again ironically agree with Metzinger, we don’t even have direct access to ourselves. Introspection is also a translation.

3. “But to ask when that object formed or dissolved in itself seems to me to be a nonsensible question. Because to my friend in the house, that object never existed in the first place.” I just read in the news about a possible grenade attack on Ahmadinejad in Iran. Assuming the attack really occurred, then it really did occur. It doesn’t matter if Vitale’s friend is asleep in the house and not watching the news, or if his friend is dead and will never read the news again. If there was a grenade attack on Ahmadinejad, then there was an attack, quite regardless of whether Vitale, his friend, I myself, or a dog know about it.

4. ” So, does the object ´me seeing dog´exist, or not? This is why I think perspective is so important. TO ME, it exists, but to say it exists in itself hits me as problematic.” If the perception of the dog didn’t exist, then you couldn’t be having the experience. Insofar as Vitale is one component of this experience (the dog is the other) then Vitale is a piece of the Vitale-dog perception. But that doesn’t mean that the Vitale-dog perception is the same as Vitale’s perception of the dog. This might be easier to see if you consider the case of a marriage. If Columbine marries Pierrot, these two people are the basic components of the marriage. Each of them also views her/his marriage in specific ways at specific times. But it would be absurd to say that the marriage of Columbine and Pierrot is reducible to what either of them experiences of it. After all, it is also a legal and social entity. The marriage changes the social position of both in ways that neither of them is equipped to understand, and it will shape the biographies of both in ways that they don’t understand. The fact that the marriage would not have happened if one of them didn’t agree to it or even had never been born does not mean that the marriage is nothing more than how it feels to either party. The same holds, mutatis mutandis, for Vitale and the dog.

Whether or not a given compound object exists (and by the way, all objects are compounds in OOO, because there are no final atoms) is precisely not dependent on someone observing or acknowledging it, because this is simply not possible. Vitale is mixing the real and the sensual objects and asking questions of one that are appropriate only to the other.

However, I continue to be pleased by his interest in the OOO project.