partial contact

I’m still hearing it from many people: why can’t objects make partial contact rather than being withdrawn from each other?

First, let’s translate this claim into more explicit terms. What it means is: “why can’t objects make direct and partial contact rather than being withdrawn from each other?”

The answer is that objects are units. Objects do have pieces in the sense of components, and they also have a plurality of features by which they manifest themselves to other entities. In short, they have pieces below and pieces above.

However, these pieces are not the object.

Remember, an object is something emergent over and above its pieces. Just as importantly, and often forgotten, an object is something submergent under and beneath its manifest qualities and relations.

The answer to the question of partial contact is that we do directly encounter pieces of an object. But the relation between these pieces and the object itself is highly perplexing.

It’s not as simple a matter as: “I can grasp 72% of the nature of this umbrella, but the other 28% withdraws inexorably into the veiledness of shadow.”

No, the object qua unit is the perplexing, weird joker in the pack, and is what OOO is all about.

My worry is that the “direct but partial contact” theory is destined to become the easy OOO Lite (every philosophy seems to generate its own non-threatening Lite Beer versions), and so I may start hammering it more diligently in the near future.