a frequent objection

Though Vitale didn’t touch on this directly, my exchange with him reminded me for various reasons of one of the understandable objections that is often made to OOO.

It runs something like this: “If Paris is an object, then are the suburbs of St.-Denis and Vincennes separate objects, or part of the same one? And is each neighborhood of Paris an object? And why can’t Paris plus Rome be an object?”

These are all fair questions. A few thoughts:

1. People need to remember that, at least in my own version of OOO, there are two kinds of objects. The real objects are the ones we can never adequately describe, because they withdraw from all access and are known only in translated form. The sensual objects, which exist in my position because I am convinced that Husserl is totally right in viewing perceptual objects as more than bundles of qualities, are always accessible, with the rather different problem that we confuse them with their inessential incarnations. The reason eidetic reduction is necessary in phenomenology is because it’s never clear at first what is an essential aspect of the experience of a tree or mailbox and what remains there unvarying at all times.

“Sensual objects” is meant to be the same as the “intentional objects” of phenomenology. I initially changed the name because “intentional objects” sounds too sterile and I hate writing sterile prose when it’s not necessary; given how often I use this term, I feared boring the reader to repeat it endlessly.

My French translator wasn’t satisfied with this explanation of my terminological change, and suggested that I explain it at greater length. And while I still think he’s wrong that a sterile sound is insufficient grounds for dumping a technical term, I thought of another good reason, which is that everyone always seems to be confused about whether “intentional object” means an object immanent to experience, or an object lying outside experience. Brentano and Husserl mean it in the former sense, but some people use it in the latter, and some of those even misread Brentano and Husserl as doing so as well. So, “sensual object” is also preferable in order to avoid any confusion: no one reading “sensual object” will think that it refers to something lying outside sensual experience.

The point is, in the realm of sensual objects, pretty much anything goes. It is not the least bit inflationary to say that an object made up of the left bank of Paris, all of Rome, and all red gummi bears might exist for me (though it’s one thing to say it and quite another to make oneself believe it). But that doesn’t put it on the same level as an autonomous entity that exists in independence from me.

2. The fact that we can never have direct access to real objects does not mean that they are useless for knowledge. Quite the contrary. I’ve used the analogy of black holes before: nothing can escape from a black hole (yes, I know about Hawking Radiation), and no one can see the interior of one. But this doesn’t mean that the black hole is a ridiculous, stupid, worthless concept that ought to be banished from physics. Many of its properties can be deduced, and its existence accounts for certain anomalies in the entities that we can see. Staying with the analogy, OOO (in my version at least) treats
all real objects as black holes. This includes you yourself, dear reader. All of your deepest introspection merely brushes the surface of what you are. And here I have always agreed with those neuro-philosophers who are justly suspicious of the priority of inner evidence.

3. The fact that we cannot see real objects directly automatically entails that we can never be absolutely sure about what is a real object and what is a pseudo-object. For several Preisdential elections, U.S. campaign consultants might believe that “soccer moms” are an important demographic swing group to which candidates ought to make themselves appealing. Later work by political scientists might thoroughly debunk the existence of this group. The Gore, Bush, Kerry, Obama, and McCain campaigns will have been duped by the soccer mom illusion. From 1860-1915, there were many who believed, on decent evidence, in a planet called Vulcan inside the orbit of Mercury. Only Einstein put an end to that.

So, the difference between an object and a pseudo-object is not something that can be ascertained a priori in each case, or even in any case. But there are still possible methods for distinguishing them; indeed, we use them all the time, we simply haven’t ever united them under an OOO methodology. We are all constantly testing evidence as to whether certain people are really trustworthy, as to our standing in the workplace, as to whether an idea we had for a business is really feasible or not, and so forth.

But to reject these tentative methods either because they are tentative, or because one wants to ontologically exclude any notion of an object that would be deeper than its visible effects. Only once the need for a concept of real objects is recognized do we have any chance at all of starting to clear the slum of pseudo-objects.

The reason I mention this is because I’m planning to talk about this method at the UCLA conference on December 1.

One good list of criteria for a real object is found in DeLanda’s A New Philosophy of Society— he’s speaking of “assemblages” there, though all his criteria hold as well for what I call objects. These are all mentioned in my article on DeLanda in Continental Philosophy Review from 2008, and I think several more could probably be added.