Object-Oriented philosophy

Speculative realism critiques the transcendental turn in philosophy, a turn that it sees manifested in Kant.  But Hegel, in contrast, theorizes a return to reality through the contradictions of the transcendental rather than by attempting to bypass it.  In this way, Hegel provides an alternative version of speculative realism.

In this article I take a critical look at the origins and sources of Bruno Latour's pluralism as it is expressed in his book AN INQUIRY INTO MODES OF EXISTENCE, and compare it to other similar projects (Wittgenstein, Feyerabend, Badiou). I consider the accusations of reductionism and of relativism, and demonstrate that Latour's «empirical metaphysics» is not an ontological reductionism but a pluralist ontology recognising the existence of a plurality of entities and of types of entities. Nor is it an epistemological relativism but an ontological pluralism affirming the existence of a plurality of types of existence. These two strands, pluralist ontology and ontological pluralism, mutually reinforce each other to produce at least the outlines of a robust pluralist realism.

It is now common to encounter appeals for movement beyond “the human” in diverse scholarly domains, yet the temporal and spatial connotations of this “beyond,” let alone destinations, are often underexamined. Contra the beguiling appeal of the “beyond,” I would ask: What and crucially whose conception of humanity are we moving beyond? Moreover, what is entailed in the very notion of a beyond? Calls to become “post” or move “beyond the human” too often presume that the originary locus of this call, its imprimatur, its appeal, requires no further examination or justification but mere execution of its rapidly routinizing imperative. In the brief space I have here, I want to caution that appeals to move “beyond the human” may actually reintroduce the Eurocentric transcendentalism this movement purports to disrupt, particularly with regard to the historical and ongoing distributive ordering of race —which I argue authorizes and conditions appeals to the “beyond,” maybe even overdetermining the “beyond’s” appeal.

Two conversations in the context of the artistic research »48h WASTELAND«.

Graham Harman talks about Speculative Realism in the middle of things in the the Garbage Village in Cairo.

Bruno Latour reflects how to exhibit thinking and how to think through exhibiting in line with the exhibition »Reset Modernity« at ZKM Karlsruhe.

http://waste.metaspace.de

This is my full review of Wolfendale’s book on Harman’s OOO. The book is quite interesting, but ultimately disappointing. Wolfendale has too much in common with Harman to provide a convincing alternative. I like the defence of speculation, but not the scientism.

Graham Harman judges science and common sense in terms of the crude philosophical criteria of another age and finds them lacking in knowledge of reality. He posits a ghostly "withdrawn" realm of real objects in order to explain the discrepancies between his naive abstract model of knowledge as access and the concrete reality of the sciences. Works such as THE QUADRUPLE OBJECT, THE THIRD TABLE and BELLS AND WHISTLES, like the whole of his philosophy, are the record of Harman noticing the discrepancies, but refusing to revise the model. His solution is a dead-end, it is the timid, nostalgic, and fundamentally misleading propounding of an antiquated epistemology under the cover of a "new" ontology.

The object of this enquiry is a silver-mounted, miraculously unbreakable drinking glass from early fourteenth-century Padua. Known as Aleardino’s Glass, the vessel took its name and status from the fact that it remained miraculously intact despite being cast to the ground by a heretical knight named Aleardino who had publicly challenged the sanctity of St Anthony of
Padua. Taking Aleardino’s wonder at his unbroken glass as a point of departure, this contribution explores the interlacing of material properties and conceptual representations that underlies and informs our understanding of the vessel. It considers the status of the glass as a conceptual work, and investigates the relationship between the physical properties of the vessel and its visual attributes. The essay explores the notion of material difficulty mobilised by a glass that does not break and discusses the cleverness of Aleardino’s Glass in terms of the reciprocal relationship between the physical resilience of the vessel and its resistance to interpretation.

This paper considers Object-Oriented Philsophy's interest in the human as object in the context of the emergence of technologies of self-mediation such as the forward-facing camera and the selfie. Furthermore, the author argues that OOP's notion of object relations shares an affinity with the theory of pathological narcissism proposed by Freudian psychoanalysis.

Mehdi Belhak Kacem highlights the tension between realism and historicity as a basic structural problem for the “post-badiousian” conceptual configuration, discussing primarily Tristan Garcia and Quentin Meillassoux, but including Harman's OOO in his analysis. The difficulty and the necessity of reconciling realism and the historicity of the sciences is an unresolved problem of contemporary philosophy. Paul Feyerabend gives us useful indications in his article “REALISM AND THE HISTORICITY OF KNOWLEDGE” included as chapter in CONQUEST OF ABUNDANCE, p131-146. Latour helps us think the “historicity” but is not so good on the “realism”, and the reverse is the case with Harman. So the “compatibility” between Harman and Latour is not a given to be explored, but a hybrid that remains to be created. This hybridisation is more at the level of propaganda for the moment, given their notable divergences on the questions of relations, reductionism, and withdrawal.

Recension de Fields of Sense & Pourquoi le monde n'existe pas de Markus Gabriel, via le concept de "libéralisme métaphysique" développé par Peter Wolfendale dans Object-Oriented-Philosophy, The Noumenon's New Clothes.
Sont également discutés Graham Harman (L'Objet Quadruple), Tristan Garcia (Forme et Objet) et Bruno Latour (Enquête sur les modes d'existence)
https://www.cairn.info/revue-critique-2015-10-p-793.htm

Summary: This article presents a new approach to studying the uniqueness of, and resemblances between medieval houses, and also of their continuity and change over time. I have labelled this approach a relational–habitus approach, and it is based
on elements from three relational approaches, Actor–Network Theory, Assemblage Theory, and Object Oriented Philosophy, in combination with the concept of habitus. A case study of 12th-century houses serves to show the benefits of the chosen approach.
It involves three steps: Steps one and two focus on processes affecting the individuality of houses and on commonalities at a given moment in time, the third on processes leading to continuity and the change of commonalities.

Keywords: Actor–Network Theory, Assemblage Theory, Object Oriented Philosophy, habitus, medieval buildings, archaeology,
history, 12th century.

Сегодня по сравнению со второй половиной ХХ в. представле-ние об инвалидности кардинально изменилось. Парадигмальный сдвиг от меди-цинской-к социальным моделям инвалидности заключается в смещении лока-лизации инвалидности с индивидуального человеческого тела к социальному пространству. Инвалидность в социальных науках стала рассматриваться как социальный конструкт (Ярская-Смирнова, ВОЗ). С позиций исследований науки и техники (STS) инвалидность оказывается не только предметом дискурса, но материально-семиотическим явлением. В контексте данного исследования ин-валидность выступает как пространственно-временной ансамбль (сборка), включающий в себя гетерогенные элементы реальности (тело, ассистивные тех-нологии, ситуация конкретного человека и проч.). Несмотря на сдвиг в понима-нии инвалидности, тело человека, тем не менее, остается значимым элементом сборки инвалидности-объекта. Процессы киборгизации тела изменяют границы инвалидности. Техногенная среда изменяет повседневные практики, увеличивая их разнообразие и создавая гетерогенность социального пространства. Темп трансформаций человеческого тела и инфраструктуры жизнеобеспечения по-стоянно нарастает. В статье обсуждается пространство взаимодействия телесно-сти, технологий и инвалидности. Ключевые слова: инвалидность, исследования инвалидности, исследования мобильностей, исследования науки и технологий (STS), объектно-ориенти-рованная философия, пространство, тело, технологии, гибриды Введение Чем является инвалидность в ХХI в. в ситуации сращивания тела и техники? Сегодня все чаще встречаются случаи, когда «инвалидное» тело (физическое и социальное) «нормализуется» с помощью «добав-ления» к телу техники. Процессы киборгизации тела изменяют границы инвалидности. Адаптированный протез-менее инвалидизирующий случай, чем ампутация ноги с неэффективной адаптацией протеза. У двух физических тел одинаковой «комплектации» (у обоих нет по ноге) могут быть разные следствия.

This paper contributes to debates about the ontological turn and its implications for democracy by proposing an experimental understanding of political ontology. It discusses why the shift from epistemology to ontology in STS has proved inconclusive for the study of politics and democracy: the politics of non-humans has been assumed to operate on a different level from that of politics and democracy understood as institutional and public forms. I distinguish between three different understandings of political ontology: theoretical, empirical and experimental. Each of these implies a different approach to the problem that non-humans pose for democracy. Theoretical ontology proposes to solve it by conceptual means, while empirical ontology renders it manageable by assuming a problematic analytic separation between constituting and constituted ontology. This paper makes the case for the third approach, experimental ontology, by analysing an empirical site, that of the ecoshowhome. In this setting, material entities are deliberately invested with moral and political capacities. As such, ecoshowhomes help to clarify two main features of experimental political ontology: 1) ontological work is here not so much relocated from theory to empirical practice, but distributed among actors and entities involved in it, and 2) normative variability does not just pertain to the enactment of things, but can be conceived of as internal to political objects. From these two features of experimental ontology something follows for democracy as an ontological problem. This problem does not dissolve in empirical settings, but these settings make possible its articulation by experimental means.

The map of the nation may be considered a power tool that persists in reproducing exclusive forms of nationalism in response to migration crises. Yet, in this article, we argue that in an era marked by new, rampant rhetoric regarding nationalism, maps are surprisingly among the few spaces left to cultivate progressive imaginaries of cultural diversity and migration as intrinsic, positive features of national experiences. Discussing critical readings of national mappings, we encourage a dialogue between map studies and nation and nationalism studies through the lens of everyday cartographic nationhood. Taking Italy as a context of analysis, the paper considers subject-centred refabrications of national maps (IncarNations), alien phenomenologies of national cartographic objects (AlieNations), and transformative creative cartographies of migrant nations (ContamiNations) to promote an alternative understanding of the national map as a sensitive tool of pluralism in multicultural societies.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20438206211017440

Ambitious designers everywhere still ask about the Corinthian column: how can we design such enduringly alluring, idiosyncratic, irrational objects? Within the context of Object Oriented Ontology, this short paper presents a unique interpretation of the Cornthian Capital as an examplar of a new tectonic theory: "Occasionalist Tectonics".

Software ontologies and object-oriented programming focus on taxonomies and "objects" to structure software, but what if a motivation of such a focus was to construct a virtual field of desire rather than simply to build a robust expert system or business logic? Programs show not only mappings of mind to code, but also human and non-human desire. https://www.gregorybringman.net/desire-oriented-programming/index.html

Carl Herndl and Stuart Brown argue that the complexity of environmental rhetoric is such that its concerns are embedded in both our lived experiences and across many intellectual endeavors. To think through environmentalism, they suggest, is to think through rhetoric, and both entail crossing boundaries. Environmentalism and its concomitant rhetorics, however, frequently draw a bold line between humans and nonhuman nature, and so long as rhetoric remains wedded to the human and the human alone, environmental rhetoric will continue to miss the mark. A strange environmental rhetoric, which blurs the line between humans and nonhumans, calls for more relations and not less—not a removal of humans from the environment, but another way of comporting ourselves with environments.

This paper develops the notion of heteroclite sociable objects in the context of the emerging internet of things, and examines their transformative effect for understandings of sociability and agency. The notion of sociable objects attempts to capture the heterogeneous identity-shift occurring when heretofore obscure and mute objects ranging from toasters to thermostats acquire the agencies to leave semantically distinct traces online, and detour their human interlocutors into an object-mediated entanglement. Using a toolkit drawn from actor network theory and object oriented ontology, the paper discusses several examples illustrating the case for new parameters of sociability, better suited to a materiality acquiring conversational and anticipatory agencies.

"Даны описания ключевых особенностей Иркутского ботанического сада ИГУ, которые придают самой крупной в регионе коллекции растений (5 тыс. таксонов) и самому крупному по территории (27 га) подразделению классического Иркутского государственного университета свойства УНИКАЛЬНОГО ОБЪЕКТА высшей школы и УНИКАЛЬНОГО ОБЪЕКТА города Иркутска.
The article describes the key features of the Botanic Garden of Irkutsk State University, Irkutsk, which give the largest collection of plants in the region (5 thousand taxa) and to the largest by area (27 hectares) of the scientific-educational division of the classical Irkutsk State University some features of unique objects of high schools sytem and the uniqueness of the site of the city of Irkutsk  "

This paper is an investigation of proximity between an artist and the art object by reworking of established cultural conventions and their aesthetics, such as art historical genres, character archetypes in film, traditional sculptural materials, also appropriation of existing works of art, literature, or political speeches. I trace this complex trajectory between the object and the artist looking at post-war Californian artists, Mike Kelley, John Knight, Allen Ruppersberg, and Ed Ruscha. I interpolate the dialogue with contemporary philosophers, Graham Harman, and the Object Oriented Ontology, as well as Bruno Latour and his Action Network Theory.

The quoted visual register brings an aspect of its history and previous context to the new arrangement, and can be dislocated from its original position or layered onto a new setting. In choreographing familiar art historical genres, styles, conventional uses of materials, the artist distances oneself from the art object as an original individual gesture to then re-claim that proximity by re-contextualizing the quoted identities. I will make a case for locating the weight of objectness and its originality in art works and how it affects the proximity between the work of art and the artist.

La présente journée d’études vient clore le séminaire de
lectures en sciences sociales de l’École française de Rome,
consacré cette année à la question des choses. Les sciences
sociales, qui se sont définies par l’étude des humains, de
leurs relations et de leurs représentations, accordent une
place de plus en plus remarquée aux choses. Que ce soit en
relançant l’étude de la culture matérielle, en proposant une
anthropologie symétrique ouverte aux non-humains, ou en
amorçant un « tournant ontologique » en sciences sociales,
les choses ne sont plus cantonnées aux statuts de témoins et
de sources, et sont désormais enchevêtrées dans des relations
sociales qu’elles organisent. L’instrument inerte, fabriqué et
manipulé cèderait donc la place aux choses animant le jeu
social des actions humaines.
Dans quels contextes académique, social et économique le
« parti pris des choses » fédère-t-il actuellement les sciences
sociales ? Qu’y a-t-il de profitable à se placer sur le plan des
choses ? Quelles perspectives le thème offre-t-il pour nourrir
le dialogue entre les différentes traditions des sciences
humaines ? Comment conditionne-t-il enfin la représentation
des choses hors du monde universitaire ?
Afin d’apporter des éclairages différenciés à ces questions
décisives, cette journée donne la parole à sept chercheurs -
philosophes, historiens et anthropologues - qui ont pris le
parti des choses.

Starting from a description of art activism, one of the relevant art movements in the XXIst century, as a working model for the possibility of a ‘things activism’, the article is approaching a series of posthumanist reasons to elaborate a ‘political aesthetics of things’ based on concepts derived from the sociology of objects, the object-oriented philosophy, the new materialism, the speculative realism, such as the ‘parliament of things’, the ‘internet of things’, the ‘democracy of objects’, and the ‘political ecology of things’, with the derived fiction of the possibility of a ‘nation of things’. To the extent that ‘humans’ are involved in political protests to respond, for example, to the consequences of the supercilious exploitation or noxious transformation of nature, there are also reactions and participations of natural or artistic ‘things’ or ‘hybrids’ that can be seen as being part of a ‘collective action’ of a ‘congregation of bodies’.
Keywords: things activism, art activism, parliament of things, democracy of objects, nation of things, political aesthetics of things, object-oriented philosophy, posthumanism.

The Security Engineering discipline has become more and more important in the recent years. Security requirements engineering is essential to assure the Quality of the resulting software. An increasing part of the communication and sharing of information in our society utilize Web Applications. Last two years have seen a significant surge in the amount of Web Application specific vulnerabilities that are disclosed to the public because of the importance of Security Requirements Engineering for Web based systems and as it is still underestimated. Integration of Web and object technologies offer a foundation for expanding the Web to a new generation of applications. In this paper, we outline our proposed Model-Oriented Security Requirement Engineering (MOSRE) Framework for Web Applications. By applying Object-Oriented technologies and modeling to Security Requirement phase. So the completeness, consistency, traceability and reusability of Security Requirements can be cost effectively improved. We implemented our MOSRE Framework for E-Voting Application and set of Security Requirements are identified.

Theoretical applications of time and temporality remain a key consideration for both climate scientists and the humanities. By way of extending this importance, we critically examine Timothy Morton’s proposed “ecological awareness” alongside Slavoj Žižek’s “parallax view”. In doing so, the article introduces a “past-present parallax” in order to contest that, while conceptions of the past are marked by “lack”, equally, our conceptions of and relations to Nature remain grounded in an ontological incompleteness, marked by contingency. This novel approach presents an ecological awareness that remains temporally attuned to the impasses and inconsistencies which frame our relations in/with Nature.

Editorial for special issue of the International Journal of Education Through Art focused on Speculative Realism (SR)—including object-oriented philosophy (OOP), object-oriented ontology (OOO), and new materialism (NM)—in art and design education.

What might an object-oriented philosophy look like? This video places a mundane object, a pen, at the center of meaning-making by plotting its mode of being as something other than anthropological or instrumental. The pen co-constitutes reality with human actors. Where does agency end and passive materiality begin?