Structation

Thought I'd start posting YouTube videos here so I don't have to write out all my thoughts.  Here I address a conflict between process philosophy and object-oriented ontology, and my attempted synthesis between the two camps.




For those who want a visual representation of what I'm talking about:

Deterritorializing Authority

I think it's crucial to understand the role of habit in upholding social systems.  Yes, it is true that the state's authority is ultimately backed by violence, but most people don't encounter this violence, and don't even give it a second thought.  They're simply used to always doing things a certain way.  David Graeber, in his book Debt: The First 5,000 Years, suggests that hierarchy develops out of habit.  If someone acts like royalty, people will begin treating them like royalty.  In what sociologists refer to as the Matthew effect, there is a common social tendency to give more to those who already have more.  More prestigious scientists are likely to be given more credit for a discovery than lesser-known scientists who did more significant work that preempted theirs.  If you do a favor for someone, you are more likely to do favors for them in the future.  If someone does a favor for you, they are more likely to do favors for you in the future.  In order to avoid the emergence of such hierarchy, rules about reciprocity need to be established and made habitual.

We also see the notorious effects of habit in all systems of privilege.  White privilege exists because white people are used to being treated a certain way and people of color are used to being treated another way.  White people are oblivious to their privilege because for them, things have always been a certain way, and it's working great for them, so they don't understand why everyone's complaining about it.  They don't see what it's like for people of color when interviewing for a job, applying for a loan, trying to move into a neighborhood, or getting pulled over by the police.  And if they did see it, they might not recognize what's going on, because they don't see the influence of habit in these situations.  The person interviewing a person of color for a job probably isn't consciously looking to disqualify them based on their race, but they might think they look "unprofessional." The police officer might pull over a black person not because they're consciously looking to persecute black people, but rather because they look "suspicious."

Habit creates systems of privilege through normativity.  It determines the norms that people follow without questioning them.  This is not to demonize habit.  Habit is neutral.  The issue is what kind of habits we have, and how to shift toward healthier habits.  This is no easy task.  If morphic resonance means anything, it is that each repetition of a habit makes it more solidified and deeply entrenched.  Counteracting these habits involves the construction of new habits.

Cosmic Creativity

Previously, I mentioned my long-standing enthusiasm for Whitehead, and the compelling critique of his ideas presented by Graham Harman.  I must say that I am in broad agreement with much of Harman's thought, and cannot continue to identify myself as essentially Whiteheadian.  However, if there is one thing I take away from Whitehead's work, and wish to preserve, it is this fundamental polarity between habit and novelty.  It seems to me that these two components are the only necessary ingredients to have any kind of creativity.  I think Sheldrake's theory of morphic resonance is about the best theory of habit I've encountered.  Novelty is a more subtle problem that I think needs a bit more unpacking.

I think Whitehead had the right idea, but ultimately I find his system a little too Platonic.  Whitehead's idea is that every occasion is mediated by eternal objects(essentially Platonic forms) that are narrowed into a set of probabilities by God and selected by each actual occasion in its act of becoming.  First of all, I don't like this atomistic account of becoming.  I'm much more keen on Bergson's idea of duration.  Second and more importantly, I have trouble believing that every form or type of experience existed in this potential realm for billions of years before there were lifeforms that were able to prehend them.  Yes, I realize that Whitehead's system is panpsychist(or to use David Griffin's term, panexperientialist), and I'm very sympathetic to that idea.  But there are different types of experience that different entities are capable of.  Vision, for example, is a type of experience that was not available until the evolution of eyes.  The qualia associated with the color red could not have predated vision, even if the part of the light spectrum we associate with red may have existed and made a difference for photons bouncing off of surfaces we would perceive as red.  The kind of universal forms we experience visually are very different from the ones we encounter through auditory or tactile sensations.  If these forms are indeed eternal, we'd have to believe that the universals available to sight were just sitting in the ether waiting for a creature that is able to prehend them.

What I think Whitehead is getting at, though -- and I very much agree with this -- is that creativity is archetypal.  There is a sense in which creative acts of novelty are moving toward something virtual that has not yet been actualized.  It is moving toward a form.  In this way, final cause can be considered to be simply a broader variety of formal causation.  So where do the forms come from if they aren't eternal?

Object-Oriented Ontology

I find the most interesting philosophers are ones that make me rethink my previous ideas while still not quite sitting well enough with me to fully sign on to their philosophy, thus forcing me to develop my own ideas in response.  Such is the case with Graham Harman and his object-oriented ontology.

I've long been fascinated by Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy(a fascination that runs in the family).  Actually, it would better be described as "process-relational philosophy," as Whitehead, like Wittgenstein and a few other philosophers of his day, took relations as the fundamental building blocks of reality.  Reality, for him, is constructed of single "actual occasions" which are relational in nature, and which form complex occasions called "societies" or "actual entities."  Some of these actual entities form what are called "enduring objects," which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like.  But the enduring objects have to recreate themselves at every moment to maintain their identity.  Thus, instead of a continuity of becoming, what you have is a becoming of continuity.  I won't yet go into the role that God plays in Whitehead's system, because that's not really important for the point at hand.  The point is that in his system, objects are defined by their relations, and maintain their identity through a process of inheritance from the past.

Harman, starting from a Heideggerian perspective comes to a very different view.  Heidegger famously spoke about the use of a hammer.  While you're using a hammer, its status as an object is invisible to you.  It exists purely as a tool that is "ready-to-hand."  We can use it with theorizing about it.  Only when it breaks does it become "present-at-hand" -- that is to say, present as a real object.  But whereas this analysis has traditionally been interpreted from a phenomenological angle, in terms of what tools are "for us," Harman offers the more radical suggestion that whether he knew it or not, Heidegger is actually giving us an ontology of objects.  Using the example of a hammer is a bit deceiving, since hammers have to be wielded by the person using them.  But the ready-to-hand can be found all around us at any moment.  As I speak, there are wood beams holding up the roof over my head, which in turn are held together by nails.  Solar radiation is penetrating the Earth's atmosphere and warming up the planet to a temperature at which I am able to survive.  Plants are producing oxygen I require to breathe.  Electricity is being supplied to my house, thus allowing me to type this sentence on the keyboard and have it show up on the internet.  Objects all around me are exerting a real force upon the world to form a background of order that is invisible because it functions so perfectly.  Only when these things break down do they become present to me.  These objects don't exist the way they do for me.  They exist in their own right, and they exert a real force upon the world because of some inner quality that gives them the capacity to relate to other objects.