Realist Magic: Objects, Ontology, Causality

The Rift

We should by now be in a position to think more closely how objects are ontologically riven between essence and appearance. If we refuse to accept this, we are left with some unpleasant choices. We could go for a world of real non-contradictory objects whose qualities were pasted onto them like stamps on Play-Doh: some kind of default Medieval ontology. Mark Heller gets into this pickle: since he can’t accept objects with imprecise boundaries, he is compelled to think objects as mind-numbingly dull “hunks of matter” unrecognizable as spoons, comets or Lego bricks. [30] We not only lose people and concrete and traffic signs, we also lose the briny sparkle of seawater and the cold elasticity of clay. Since there is no genuine way to distinguish between a thing and the matter that surrounds it, Heller gradually reduces the entire universe to one formless lump of extension. Some would prefer there were no tables, quarks or ocean currents rather than accept the Rift.

We could go with sets of non-contradictory relations, in which the “hot potato” (as Harman says) of a bona fide object is passed infinitely down a chain of relationships, never reaching the bottom. [31] Or we could go with nominalism or nihilism, in which objects are only what other objects make of them—these overmining views collapse into the relational one fairly straightforwardly. We could be reductionists who say that some objects, namely tiny ones, are more real than non-tiny ones—tiny being a question-begging adjective (tiny for whom or for what?). Or we could be holists who think that objects are simply manifestations of some larger flow, begging the question another way—how does this flow manifest as something different from itself (the question Neoplatonism tries to answer)?

Or we could just drop the requirement that everything in reality conform to a principle that has never been adequately justified, except in some taboo-like sense—thou shalt not think things that are self-contradictory, on pain of being ostracized from logic. If OOO is correct, then Aristotle’s critique of materialism and his embrace of different types of causation, including formal causation, has something interesting to tell us; but his originary assertion of LNC (the Law of Noncontradiction) does not. [32]

The intuition that there is something screwy about LNC when it comes to real objects is particularly potent when we think of objects that are especially large and long lasting relative to human scales. For instance, consider global warming, an entity that is made up of sunlight, carbon dioxide, fossil fuel burning engines and so on. Seven percent of global warming effects will still be manifest a hundred thousand years from now, slowly being absorbed by igneous rocks. That’s more than ten times all of recorded history so far, a preposterously high number. It’s almost inconceivable. Yet we see the effects of global warming all around us: we see charts from NASA that plot temperature rises; we feel rain on our heads at strange times of the year; we witness drought. None of these experiences are directly global warming: they are its aesthetic effects.

Think again about Bryant’s dark objects, objects that have no relation whatsoever to other objects. Whether or not these objects actually exist in this reality is open to question. But the fact that OOO allows for their existence is beyond doubt. The trouble is, when we think of objects, we are subject to extreme observation selection effects. A thought-about object is no longer an object in total isolation. At least one other object is now relating to it, namely my thinking. It’s tempting to think that the Hegelian “correlationist” paradigm arose out of such a phenomenon—trying to think an unthinkable object resulted in an observation selection effect whereby that object was bound up with the thinking of it. Speculative realism starts from the assumption that the world doesn’t have to be correlated to some (human) observer in order to exist. This kind of givenness isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, since humans (and sentient beings in general) are not uniquely good at disclosing it. If neutron stars and RNA also disclose givenness, the existence of a universe without humans is not very much of a problem. (We shall see, however, in the context of thinking about how objects begin, that deep phenomenological probing on givenness can reveal some counterintuitive and powerful insights. It is a profound rather than a superficial givenness, though it is still givenness, and thus falls within the realm of appearance or what Harman, following Heidegger, calls the “as-structure.”)

It’s ironic, then, that the very objects that are the most removed from relations provoke relationist reactions. Dark objects present us with a paradox—something similar to the Liar or to Lacan’s haunting statement: “What constitutes pretense is that, in the end, you don’t know whether it’s pretense or not.” [33] To think them is to think the purest possibility that they might exist. It’s the ultimate congruence of withdrawal and tricksterish illusion. Is there something behind the curtain? Objects are unspeakable yet perfectly available. They aren’t just lumps of whatever. They appear-as all the time: as a cinder block, as cinder block dust, as wet, fresh smelling concrete in a mold. That’s what objects do.

Let’s return to Heller’s hunks of matter for a moment. Heller explores the status of a table as an object. You take little chips out of the table—at what point can you no longer call it a table? [34] This is a version of the Sorites paradox mentioned earlier. I have a heap of sand. I remove one grain. It’s still a heap. I can keep going until I have just one grain left. It’s not clear at what point, if at all, it stops being a heap. Try it in reverse. If I have one grain of sand, it doesn’t make a heap. If I add another grain, it doesn’t make a heap either. Now I can carry on with the same reasoning process indefinitely—so I never get a heap, no matter how many tens of thousands of grains I pile up.

Heller is trying to explain the existence of objects, yet he spends a lot of time running again and again into this Sorites buzz saw. Why? Heller thinks that it’s because of some inaccuracy in his way of understanding tables. So Heller decides to give up the ghost and talk about objects without any specificity at all. Since you can’t tell when a table is a table, you are left to fumble around with well behaved but dull lumps of matter. Perhaps the saddest moment is when Heller decides to build a machine that will do the job for him—and runs into the buzz saw yet again, because how can you design a machine to figure out when the table stops being a table, if you don’t know? [35] You are thrown back on your perception.

Sorites paradoxes are said to depend upon vague predicates: “is a heap,” for instance, or “is bald.” Now we know from Darwin that “is a species” is also a vague predicate. Why? Because evolution is incremental and the difference between one life form and its mutated sibling is not well defined. Likewise “is alive” is a vague predicate. To break the vicious circle of DNA and ribosomes, we need some kind of RNA world consisting of RNA and some non-organic replicator such as a silicate crystal. Vague predicates, in other words, might not be evidence of vague objects. It seems that DNA is a very precise chemical, and that cats are very precise mammals. [36] I certainly don’t see the cat as a blurry, vague blob, but as this specific cat, sitting here on this mat. Phenomenology comes to the rescue here, with its discovery of intentional objects. I don’t assemble the cat from a rough aggregate of cat pixels, rather the whole cat appears in my consciousness. The precision of my cat awareness seems to be evidence that cats are pretty precise.

This suggests that there are Sorites paradoxes not because reality is vague, but because reality is paradoxical. This means that entities may not be entirely subject to the Law of Noncontradiction (LNC). So Heller can build all kinds of machines for measuring when a table stops being a table. He will never succeed. Why? There is a very fundamental reason, according to OOO. Because any knowledge about a table (mine, a machine’s, whatever) is not a table. It’s just not possible for my knowledge about tables to replace this table. So there will inevitably be moments where I am stumped as to whether I am seeing a table or not. The table withdraws.

If we’re going to have tables and RNA and badgers and silt, in all their specificity, we might have to give up the idea that we can be totally definite about them. If you want to be definite, you may have to accept a universe with all the appeal of a cold lump of gray oatmeal.

Sorites paradoxes also arise from overmining. For instance, there is the common tactic of seeing objects as bundles of qualities: an apple is simply something that is round, juicy, sweet and so on (for my mouth). A cat is this furry thing here on this mat, and if I remove the fur one hair at a time, does it remain a cat? Or, as Peter Geach has suggested, are there as many cats on the mat as there are hairs, so that when I remove a hair, there is a different (kind of) cat on the mat? [37] Overmining tries to conquer the Sorites paradox in the following way. Suppose that that when I put a cup on this thingamajig here, it’s a table. This is one way to vanquish the Sorites paradox. The deep problem, however, has to do with the existence of this thingamajig despite me. Sure, it’s “as-structured” as a table: I think of it as a table, it is a table for the objects around it, not a squashed banana, and so on. [38] The two issues might meet at some point. Suppose I have a wafer thin table after removing n chips. I put a cup on it and it falls right through. I think it’s a table but it no longer functions as one. Or I’m camping. I use a handy tree stump as a table, knobby as it is and wobbly as it makes my cup. The thingamajig in each case is quite unique, quite different. The tree stump smells of sap and has insects crawling around it. The badly glued piece of furniture in my kitchen, which I’ve been abusing with this Stanley knife, smells of baby food and is highly polished on one side.

Peter Unger gives an extreme method of overmining in his analysis of “the problem of the many.” A cloud is this puffy thing made of droplets in the sky. Except it isn’t: the cloud is made of all kinds of other puffy things that could be seen as clouds. The edges of the clouds are particularly ambiguous, as is the part of a rusty nail where the rust blends into the non-rust. [39] If we go on, we can do the philosophical equivalent of cloud busting. If we rule out the smaller clouds one by one, because they are clearly not the whole cloud, then all of a sudden we have no cloud. [40]

We simply can’t undermine a table into little wood chips and find the table in there. Yet we can’t overmine the table either. How come I can as-structure either the manufactured furniture or the tree stump (in my perception, my language or my usage) as a table? How come the floor can? Or this small crumb of toast and marmalade? The OOO answer is that they are non-tables. What they are withdraws from access even as I rest my cup on them and say “Hey, nice table.” We must tread carefully here, to avoid the thought of overmining. This doesn’t mean that there is no table, but rather that how I use the table, including thinking about it, talking about it, resting my teacup on it, is not the table. The whole point is that the table is not simply a table-for (me, my teacup, the floor, the concept table). This is not a non-table in the sense that François Laruelle means: there is no unspeakable, radical immanence that no philosophy can speak—that philosophy must banish from its mind in order to utter what for Laruelle are its garbled half-truths. In saying non-table I am not suggesting that we laugh at tables or at ourselves for even thinking of such a daft idea as a piece of wooden furniture. Precisely the opposite. The total vividness of this actual table, this tode ti (Aristotle), this unit, this unique being here, wooden cousin of the friend of many philosophers, is what is unspeakable, ungraspable. In this respect OOO draws on the powerful insight of phenomenology that I stated above. Again, I don’t perceive a thousand cat-like dots that I resolve into a cat, but instead the whole cat is intended by my mind, right there and whole, a fact that seems to be borne out by very recent magnetic resonance imaging of activity in the visual cortex of the brain. [41]

We can’t simply say that tables are lumps of blah that we call tables or use as tables. And we can’t simply say that tables consist of little lumps of blah. Doing both at the same time (undermining and overmining together) is how contemporary materialism functions. [42] The OOO view thus requires that we seriously modify or drop the idea of matter. Matter is always matter-for. If you use the term matter, you’ve already reduced a unique object to “raw materials-for” something-or-other. I light a match. The match is made of matter? No, it’s made of wood from a tree. The tree is made of matter? No, it’s made of cells. The cells? And so on down to electrons. The electrons are made of matter? No, they’re made of ... and so on. Thinking “matter” is thinking with blinkers on. It suits correlationism.

Yet might we say that a match is wood-for? As in wood-for-lighting-a-fire, for instance? Might it not be possible to believe that “purpose-built” objects are indeed at least to some degree objects-for without thinking that objects are only what they are because they are correlated with some human need or conceptual apparatus? Agreed, insofar as I think you could imagine that objects are purpose built without being a correlationist. Perhaps as long as you realize that they are objects-for “to some degree.” By then you’ve gone quite a long way towards conceding that the match is also wood-for a particle of dust that settles on it. It’s also wood-for an ant who climbs over it. It’s also wood-for a toy house made of matchsticks. Once you’ve gotten rid of the idea that it’s “raw materials-for” then you have no good reason to cling to the human telos of matches. A non-materialist but realist view might include more entities in its vision of what things are “for” (the as-structure). Alexander Pope’s poem Windsor Forest admires the scope of a beautiful forest (which still exists to some extent). Look, says the poem: look at all those potential battleships for the English Navy. [43] Philosophy should do better than that.

The problem with “matter-for humans” exposes a deeper problem, that matter is matter-for anything. Matter isn’t what it’s cracked up to be, some kind of real substrate of things that emerges as those things. It’s part of the as-structure, ontologically secondary to objects. “Matter” is correlationist in that it’s always correlated to some entity. Matter is the “out-of-which-it’s-built” of an object. It is the object’s past, or a past object. When you study it directly, it ceases to be matter. This is a problem for eliminative materialism, which holds that if you can explain what you’re studying in terms of supposedly basic material components, then you can eliminate the larger thing that you are explaining in favor of those components. If you don’t stop at some metaphysical substrate such as prime matter, you end up with equations in the void—you end up, pretty much, with idealism or nihilism. Since correlationism is hostile to the idea of dogmatic metaphysics, it is at risk of ending up with the void, if it goes the materialist route. The void becomes more real than other entities.

The disturbing thing about the Rift between appearance and essence is that it’s undecidable, irreducibly. We can’t specify “where” or “when” the Rift “is.” The Rift means that we are confronted with an illusion-like reality. The ramifications of this illusion-like reality will become clearer as we proceed.