BOW & CS: Notes on Object Orientated Ontology (OOO)

Fellow OCA student Holly suggested looking at Graham Harmen

• A useful counter-argument to the overwhelming direction in science to reduce everything to process/event (naive realism)
• Two kinds of knowledge – 1 what it’s made of (physics), 2 what it does (Some modern philosophy) But problem with these – they are related. Duomining (over and undermining but never really getting the true essence of the thing) PDF of paper  – http://dar.aucegypt.edu/bitstream/handle/10526/3466/Duomining.pdf?sequence=1
• Relate to New Materialism
• Relate to Michael Fried’s writing about photography
• See assemblages (Feminist New Realism) (Lupton 2019 – very relevant, will need to record notes/bullet points soon for CS)
• Rhizome
• Relate to Thing-Power (Bennet, 2010, Lupton 2019)
• Harmen – a phenomenologist
• Relate to Klein object relations
• Objects relate to each other, there is some causal power – this is also key in new materialism although much else is opposing. Harmen is not a materialist. But link this to Santiago theory of cognition.
• like new materialism humans are not better than other objects (compare this to animism)
• Read and liked Alfred North Whitehead who is actually into the process (confusing!) but was a step forward from Heidegger https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alfred-North-Whitehead
•  And Xavier Zubiri https://metanexus.net/introduction-philosophy-xavier-zubiri/
• To perceive, you must enter into a relationship with another object
• There are dormant objects which may never relate with another object (
• Mention’s Tristian Garcia frequently http://continentcontinent.cc/index.php/continent/article/viewArticle/74
• Doesn’t believe in matter – the world is made of substantial forms, there is no such thing as shapeless forms
• You can’t describe the world, the best you can do is hint at what the real is
• Does not believe in absolute knowledge, likes art because it alludes which is a better way of trying to describe the world than spelled out scientific language, believes metaphor is a better way to access the real (i.e. Zizek’s real rather than Lacan’s version)

Harmen’s philosophy is directly opposed to Donald D Hoffman’s theory about reality.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kCgc_nLz1w

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W93DtzHCcnM