Object-Oriented Ontology 2. Graham Harman 2.

 Immaterialism: Objects and Social Theory

Harman, Graham. 2017. John Willy & Sons.

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The Object-Oriented Ontology or philosophy (OOO) equips us with new lenses or heuristic tools to see and understand social objects, such as people, nations, factories, the EU, the United Nations, and so on. The way by which we see social objects is the way that determines or at least impacts our actions, attitudes, and emotions towards these objects. To kill or not to kill, to escape a war or to die, to exploit weak people or help them are "decisions" formed through our eyes seeing these various social objects. 

OOO has a few premises: 

1. Objects are equal in their existence, but they are inequal in their reality. Me, standing in front of a restaurant, is a real object and non-contingnet on other objects (to some extent, of course). I am here in front of this restaurant, in reality. A poisoned plate offered by this restaurant to someone inside, as an idea passed in my mind, is an object as well. However, it is not real. It is a sensual object that cannot stand alive, cannot exist without my mind. When I meet my wife in a few minutes, this object (the poison) will disappear (according to the mood, maybe it would be more intensive 😉). Me, standing in front of a restaurant, is a real object. The poisoned plate is a sensual object. I am more real than the imagined plate. Both of me and the poison are objects, but we are not equal (See this post). 
2. Human being is an object at the same footing of existence with other objects. We are not superior ontologically. 
3. Any object cannot be defined (i.e., it is not) by its components nor by its actions, effects, or relations with other objects (See this post).

Accordingly, OOO stands firmly against two philosophies: (1) the philosophy that reduces objects to their essences or to their components (which is called undermining method of understanding an object); (2) the philosophy that reduces objects to their actions, effects, and relations with other objects (which is called overmining method). 

Iron Rolling Mill, Adolph Menzel, 1872-75

OOO says that the factory above is NOT the sum of the workers, the iron, the fire,  the mill, the manager, the owner,  the law of labour, and the guards. If you think that this factory can be reduced to these elements, then you undermine this object (the factory = object), reducing to its elements. But this factory is more than its components. OOO also says that this factory is NOT what it produces; it is not the sold iron, the power it creates for its owners, and it is not the effect it engenders on the nature and on the society. The factory is still the same factory even when it does nothing; when its workers strike, for example. If you think that the factory is understood as an action, as an event, and through its effect and relations with other objects, then you overmine it. 

This factory is an object; it is an object because it endorses a unity, an identity, a real existence that shows itself through the components it has and through the effects it generates. Hence, we cannot understand it fully through our knowledge. Human beings are objects; to know is to transform your sensual quality (or objects) closer to the real object you are trying to know. Knowledge is similar to throwing layers of objects closer to each other: no full or direct knowledge, only vicarious (through many sensual objects) knowledge. If you believe in that, then you will never claim a decisive theory that explains the object of factory. This object (as any other social object) will always be open, will always surprise you, and it is always opaque (hello Marx!). 

This factory (as an example of an object) surprises us and is opaque because it changes; it grows, shrinks, expands, dwindles, dies, or even merges with another object so a new object is born. It does so, as any other object, through a basic mechanism: symboisis. 

Object 👉 Only Vicarious Knowledge; Object 👉Always Opaque; Objects 👉 act through symbiosis 

An object firstly exists, then it builds flexible symbioses. The symbioses it builds will create stages of the object's life. Exactly as any human being, an object endorses stages (weakness, growth, death, etc.); these stages are nothing but a function of the symbioses it builds. For example, the factory above may sign a contract with a port to export iron. This new symbiosis would increase its wealth significantly, so a new stage is marked of the factory's lifespan. The factory's smoke may harm the peasants around. They attack the factory and burn parts of it to the ground. This is a new symbiosis that harms the factory and marks a new stage of its lifespan. We can find a plenty of relations, symbioses, between the factory and other objects. By searching for the most important ones, we can draw the causes (multiple causes) that have formed the various stages of an object's life. 

Four notes about symbiosis 

• The most important symbiosis is what creates a no-return point of its object's lifespan. The object after this critical symbiosis is no more the same before it. To capture this critical symbiosis, ask counterfactual questions: what if something, which has really happened, had never happened? 
• Symbiosis is not reciprocal in power. An object A can impact an object B while the latter barely impacts the former. 
• When the relations between an object and others become strong, this object becomes weaker because it is not dependent on these relations. When an object has weak (i.e., not essential) relations with other objects, it stays strong, because it continues to exist as an independent. However, here we see a trade-off relation we have to check very carefully. 
• Objects act, and their actions impact themselves and other objects. These ensuing effects can be understood as echoes of the object-as-actor. Hence, the factory above may release a lot of carbon; this effect (which is another symbiosis between the factory and nature) may appear in its clearest manner 100 years later. The metaphor of echo is useful to capture this idea. Objects do as if they echo. You may capture these echoes later on. 

New Materialism and Immaterialism 

New Materialism has the following premises:

1. Every object is constantly changing. Changing is the norm. 
2. Every object is not separated from others by borders but it is blurred with them as no solid borders, but only fog connects (not separates) an object from another. 
3. It is better to use verbs not nouns not talk about objects. 
4. Practice and action are what define an object. What an object does is what we have to ask. 

Immaterialism of OOO's  premises are, on the contrary:

1. Stability is the norm, not change. 
2. Any object has its own borders that clearly separate it from others. 
3. An object has its own nature, substance, and we cannot understand it only by asking what it does but also by asking what this object is. 
4. Use nouns not only verbs to understand an object.