Saturday, December 31, 2011

A New Way of Thinking the Object vs. Process Divide

An excellent post here:



The best part (for me):

"If the analogy holds, attachment to objects in ontology are somehow like the attachment to concepts concerning thought content. The issue is whether there is more to the world than ready-made objects, more to content than ready-made concepts."

Yes, and that lays the ground for why I am critical of OOO.  It wants its fundamental ontological unit, the object as substance, ready-made.   I think that's wrong.  It's that simple.

5 comments:

  1. Disclosure: I didn't read the linked post yet.

    My version of OOO is somewhat wackier than Graham's or Levi's, in that I endorse an incredibly promiscuous notion of object (or unit, which I generally prefer), that makes things be able to be in more than one place at a time, if you want to get all quantum metaphysical about it. But I think Levi's mereology also accounts for this.

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  2. Yes, Levi can handle this. So, are you giving a "field-theory" version of OOO? By "field," I'm thinking electromagnetic or electron field as a metaphor. Would not withdrawal be very different in that case?

    My own work is a cross between a field-theoretic and processional account of experience.

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  3. Not really a field-theory version of OOO. It's more a side-effect of the weird mereology. I should explain it more (this is an insufficient explanation to be sure), but that probably won't be possible in a blog comment.

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    1. Doh. The idea of objects and the Force was too cool to pass up.

      Can you reference an article? Or is your book open access and can I get a reference?

      Often, the background assumptions are more important than the foreground conversations, and thus I understand the limitations of a blog comment.

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  4. Ian, since we've been talking about this, I'm about to post a wrap up of the blogosphere materialist discussion. Feel free to add.

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