Time and Harman
Posted on August 31, 2010
Filed Under OOP, Philosophy | 2 Comments
As I mentioned I’ve not had time to respond to Levi’s post on OOP and pragmatism beyond a few brief comments. I hope to finish that up tonight. I’ve just been really busy again. I did want to respond to Graham’s latest post though.
He wrote:
On the other hand there are people who claim to have read my books twice, but who still think I hold that time is a background in which objects move around. I don’t even know what to say to that, having slept on it. Prince of Networks is pretty clearly written, I think.
OOP
Posted on August 27, 2010
Filed Under OOP, Philosophy | 4 Comments
So I finished a second read of Graham Harman’s Prince of Networks. It cleared up a few issues in my head. That said I think my initial thoughts and criticisms were dead on. That is I don’t think there is a heavy engagement with the issue of time. It’s just taken as a clear and uncomplex background in which objects reside. I better understand Harman’s view of relations now, although I’m not sure I’m convinced. It is roughly the same as Whitehead’s prehensions with a little adjustment here or there. I also understand the arguments Harman makes for the “core” or “essence” to an object as well as his allowing only actuality and not real potential into his system. That’s probably the most controversial aspect since most other Object Oriented Ontologies seem to reject this key metaphysical position. I certainly can’t buy it.
Allow me a few brief notes on these issues.
How I Deal With Phone Spam
Posted on August 20, 2010
Filed Under Humor, Politics, Uncategorized | 5 Comments
How I deal with Phone Spam. Give the phone to one of my kids and let them have an interesting conversation.
I used to also answer polls by giving ridiculous answers as a kind of civil disobedience. I kind of think polls are pretty damaging to society since they lead to superficial views of problems rather than actually engaging with the public. They also are pretty misleading since they don’t typically give an indication about how strongly a person feels about their answer nor how informed they are in holding the answer.
But the worst are always the sales people. Ugh. Let them talk to my 4 year old.
Annoyances
Posted on August 20, 2010
Filed Under Uncategorized | 3 Comments
OK, something not tied to technical philosophy. This is my grumpy old man rant. (Even though I’m far from an old man yet, despite a few grey hairs are starting to make their appearance near my ears)
1. Blogger Comments: The software, not the hobby. Google’s blogger won’t allow blockquote tags so you can’t indent quotations. It involves way too many steps to just post your comment. It’s annoying as all get out.
2. White Text on Dark Backgrounds: Man I hate this. Guys – there’s a reason books aren’t published like this. It wouldn’t be quite as bad if the brightness and contrast were down a bit but typically it isn’t. It can be done well. (Witness Daring Fireball) Unfortunately very, very few are able to pull it off in a readable format. Fortunately this is why Apple came up with their Reader functionality in the new Safari. For everyone else put Readability into a bookmark. Trust me. It makes reading far too many blogs much easier.
Objects as a Point of View
Posted on August 18, 2010
Filed Under OOP, Philosophy | 3 Comments
OK, I know I’ve been posting a lot of responses to various of Levi’s posts. However they’ve been quite helpful for drawing out various things I’ve been thinking about the past few years. This will probably be among the last for a little bit as I want to return to a few more religious topics. Today though Levi had a fantastic post that brought up an issue I’ve worried about a long time: Metaphysics and the god’s eye view.
Levi is basically arguing that we have to keep separate metaphysics (what is) from epistemology (how we know it). Now this is true as far as it goes. However of course in practice it’s not that clean a divide in many ontologies. What can look like an claim about epistemology may be based on ontological concerns. The concern for a few decades that philosophy was beset by a “god’s eye view” that became characteristic of the so-called postmodern movement isn’t just an epistemological claim but often was also a claim about ontology.
What this all reminds me of is quantum mechanics.
Being Ethical
Posted on August 17, 2010
Filed Under Ethics, Philosophy | 2 Comments
There was a pretty interesting Bloggingheads TV this week featuring Joshua Knobe and one of my favorite bloggers Eric Schwitzgebel. Eric of course runs The Splintered Mind. The dialog between the two largely goes over what Eric has been posting on the past few years regarding whether reasoning about ethics makes one more ethical. Most particularly about the behavior of ethics professors. So if you are a regular reader of his blog the first part will seem quite familiar. That is that at best ethicists aren’t any better than others and are in some ways worse.
One Last One on Realism
Posted on August 16, 2010
Filed Under Derrida, Philosophy | Leave a Comment
One last post on realism. Graham has up a post on how everyone wants to be a realist. I think this really brushes under the rug what is the real bone of contention. (No pun intended) What kind of realism? I think some are shocked that people defend Derrida as a realist while never asking the fairly obvious question of what one means by realism. It may well be (and indeed likely is) that what an OOP proponent means by realism isn’t what others mean by realism.
I think Graham verges on this when he says,
Fate vs. Free Will
Posted on August 14, 2010
Filed Under Free Will, Philosophy | 2 Comments
From Bill Watterson:
It’s amazing how much my son is like Calvin. The only difference is no imaginary friends or stuffed animals. Other than that he’s a dead ringer…
Peirce & OOP
Posted on August 13, 2010
Filed Under Derrida, OOP, Philosophy | 2 Comments
OK, last post on OOP. I promise. It’s just not fair to discuss it until I know it better otherwise I’ll just end up critiquing a strawman. That said something obvious struct me while thinking about Peirce (who talks about objects a lot given their place in his semiotics) and OOP.
The main focus of OOP is to move to the objects themselves and move past the incessant focus on human consciousness. Peirce talks about signs typically as signs affecting human interpretations. However he also expands them out into the non-human realm. (He was a physicist after all) Where I think the difference between Peirce and the little OOP I know appears to be though is over the place of mediation. For Peirce all object – object interactions are mediated. This is obvious in human – object interactions but Peirce extends this role of mediation into a general principle.
For OOP however there appears to be the idea of the unmediated.
“Substances all the Way Down”
Posted on August 10, 2010
Filed Under OOP, Philosophy | 5 Comments
Levi and Graham made some comments about OOP today which were quite helpful for clarifying things. As Michael noted yesterday, Derrida has signs all the way down in terms of a basic ontology. Levi has a nice post related to Aristotle and determinism in this context. In response to one of my questions about tying OOP to substances and prime matter Graham clarified things further.
So in a sense, OOO’s position is not relations all the way down, but “substantial forms all the way down.” (The best treatment of Substantial Forms is in Francisco Suarez, by the way.)
Derrida and Basic Ontology
Posted on August 8, 2010
Filed Under Derrida, Peirce, Philosophy | 27 Comments
There’s been a whole lot of discussion at the various OOP related blogs the past few days on Derrida. Most of it appears to be tied to some discussions over at Levi’s blog. Graham talks about it here and then some additional comments here. Levi then chimes in as well.
There’s two interesting aspects to the comments (or three if you think the debate about Derrida as a correlationalist is interesting — I don’t as I think it pretty clear he isn’t one). The first is whether the anti-correlationalist / realist reading of Derrida is “deviant.” The second is over whether Derrida’s “text” deserves to be basic ontology.
Functionalism and AI
Posted on August 6, 2010
Filed Under Philosophy | Leave a Comment
Chris and Gary’s disagreement in the comments of my brief post on functionalism got me thinking. Now I’m pretty skeptical about functionalism because I just can’t see anyway to make 3rd person into 1st person logically. (Peirce sees his three categories as irreducible and provides some interesting arguments for that which I won’t go into) All that said many people embracing functionalism aren’t bothered about the issue of qualia because in a certain sense it is irrelevant for their position. I came upon a pretty compelling argument for this although I honestly don’t know the origin of the argument.
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Can We Explain Metaphors?
Posted on August 4, 2010
Filed Under Philosophy | 7 Comments
Can we explain what metaphors mean? “…it looks like it really is pretty impossible to explain what a metaphor means. But that is not because of anything special about metaphors. It is merely a reflection of the fact that we can’t explain what any sentence means.”
Gary and Peirce on Mind and Functionalism
Posted on August 4, 2010
Filed Under Peirce, Philosophy | 18 Comments
Gary, over at Minds and Brains has a discussion of functionalism and mind. The actual topic is a debate over Metzinger’s theory of consciousness which Gary is having with various OOP critics. Now I’ve never read Metzinger and have barely dipped into OOP so I’ll wisely remain silent on those topics. However Gary wrote something interesting I wish to take as a starting point for a tangental discussion.
Although I do not totally agree with everything Metzinger has to say (he is an internalist whereas I am an externalist), I do agree with him that the self is not an object, but rather, a function. It is an operation rather than a thing or repository.
This got me immediately thinking about C. S. Peirce and his famous statement “man is a symbol”
Mormonism, Grace and Works
Posted on August 3, 2010
Filed Under Religion | 14 Comments
The other day there was a rather longish set of comments in response to a post about misunderstandings of grace in Mormonism. As I tried to make clear I’m anything but an expert in Protestantism. In the comments though one of the interlocutors, Darrell, seemed to attack the Mormon concept of grace precisely because it was resistible. That is for a Mormon grace is always a free gift and typically is an enabling condition. That is it allows for choice but does not determine choice. The Mormon view then leads to a condition where humans progress grace for grace. That is from blessing to blessing. We don’t deserve the further blessing since our free acts are themselves made possible by grace.
Now my confusion on all this arises because I think a lot of Mormon beliefs aren’t that different from the Arminians or even Catholics. That is we accept a “prevenient grace” which can be resisted but which draws us toward God. While Calvinists of course reject this idea I confess I just can’t see where the LDS concept of grace significantly differs from prevenient grace.
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