I’ve added a menu of links to some of the key posts on this blog in process-relational theory: see “P-R Theory 101” in the right-hand column (scroll down). This is a somewhat random sample, and readers with the patience for it can find much more by following other links and tags on this blog. A […]
Archive for the ‘Philosophy’ Category
End of an ear…
Posted in Philosophy, tagged object-oriented philosophy, OOO on January 16, 2011 | 1 Comment »
Paradigms, productivity, perspective
Posted in Blog stuff, Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged object-oriented philosophy on January 15, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Levi Bryant responds to my last post (and by extension to Chris Vitale’s) here. I agree with him that he and Graham Harman have made worthy efforts at addressing concerns that are central to process-relational philosophical communities (e.g., in Bryant’s Difference and Givenness and in the books of Harman’s that I’ve lauded on this blog); […]
Vitale throws down the gauntlet…
Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged object-oriented philosophy on January 14, 2011 | 5 Comments »
Chris Vitale has “thrown down the gauntlet,” as he puts it, to the object-oriented ontologists to finally respond in a satisfactory way to process-relational critiques. (I admire his Sicilian bravado!) Chris is obviously writing in a somewhat feverish mode, blogging at the speed of thought rather than in the tempered and cautious tone written philosophy […]
Reply to Harman
Posted in Philosophy, tagged Harman on January 14, 2011 | 9 Comments »
Graham Harman has written a post about me in which he says that I was trying to “refute” OOO in my “2 cheers” post, and that I “claim[ed] quite frankly that OOO is wrong.” I thought it worth pointing out that nowhere in that post did I mention OOO, or Graham’s philosophy under any other name. […]
Puzzles
Posted in Philosophy on January 13, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Graham is “puzzled that Ivakhiv thinks OOO can be refuted by the fact that objects have histories.” I’m puzzled why Graham would think that I think that. I’m also puzzled why my brief comment (on Tim’s blog) about stability and instability, and about stability as an achievement rather than a default mode, should have set […]
2 cheers for lava lamps & Lego blocks
Posted in Music & soundscape, Philosophy, tagged lava lamps, minimalism, music, Ontology, epistemology on January 11, 2011 | 6 Comments »
Tim Morton seems not to have liked my comment suggesting that reality is a mix of stability and instability, and that stability is an achievement rather than a default position. The universe, I would say, is an achievement as well. His much-loved (?) lava lamps are achievements, as are Graham Harman‘s Lego blocks. They don’t […]
On animism, multinaturalism, & cosmopolitics
Posted in Philosophy, Spirit matter, tagged animism, anthropomorphism, biosemiotics, cosmopolitics, Descola, Latour, panpsychism, Peirce, Stengers, Whitehead on January 10, 2011 | 15 Comments »
Since there isn’t much available in English about Philippe Descola’s writings on animism, I thought I would share a piece of the cosmopolitics argument I mentioned in my last post. It will appear, in modified form, in the concluding chapter of the SAR Press volume mentioned there. Most of the volume will consist of ethnographic […]
Planes of immanence
Posted in Philosophy, Visual culture on January 3, 2011 | 1 Comment »
“Concepts are like multiple waves, rising and falling, but the plane of immanence is the single wave that rolls them up and unrolls them. … Concepts are the archipelago or skeletal frame, a spinal column rather than a skull, whereas the plane is the breath that suffuses the separate parts.” “it is a [the?] plane […]
…& beginnings (a toast to this moment)
Posted in Philosophy, Spirit matter on December 31, 2010 | 5 Comments »
A process-relational buddhontology sees every moment as a moment of grasping, or prehension, that begins with an open, spacious cognizance, gathers/feels/responds to what has arisen before it, and ends in the satisfaction of its own concrescence. When the object of that satisfaction is unrecognized as what it is — as the immanent flow of desiring-production, […]
On anthropomorphism: making humans, pencils, & souls
Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged animism, anthropomorphism, Jung, Latour, object-oriented philosophy, Whitehead on December 29, 2010 | 8 Comments »
Tim Morton has recently been suggesting that just as humans anthropomorph (that’s a verb), so pencils pencilmorph. I love this idea, though I’m not sure about its implications, which I want to think through here. Anthropomorphism #1 (traditional, & its extensions) The traditional definition of anthropomorphism is something like “the attribution of human characteristics to […]
Agreements & productive differences
Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged Bryant, OOO on December 13, 2010 | 10 Comments »
Levi Bryant has proposed a ceasefire on the objects/relations debate, and followed that up with a nice post calling for self-moderation of our more confrontational urges and for a more affirmative writing (and blogging) style that would render the form of our writing more consonant with its content. I’m all for the latter; it’s something […]