Object Oriented Ontology
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Dear Colleagues, One of you [wretches], assigned me this book for a little light summer reading before I left SF in March. It was a seductive assignment. In the first place, the book is a little book. I LIKE little books. Cheap and easy to carry. In the second place, as I read around in it, I see echoes of Peirce in its monism and realism and fascination with metaphors (aka “signs”?). Every chapter begins in an ingratiating introduction that gives promise of progress in the rational construction of a complex idea. There my praise ends. I have started all the chapters with the greatest of good will and have gotten thoroughly lost in every one. I deeply suspect that whichever one of you [wretches] who assigned it to me has never read it from cover to cover. SO: Will you now do that with me? And will others join? It would be best if we could snare a few philosophers to join us because the author does seem to be rather deeply into philosophy, both post modern and the other kind. It’s hard to believe that it has nothing to do with object oriented programing, but it may not. Fess up! NIck Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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Nick
Twas I that brought the book to your attention and I have read it twice and am using it as a foundation for writing a chapter in my Natural Systems Design book.
Happy to discuss and perhaps answer some of your questions and help you find the path through the forest.
davew
On Wed, Jul 4, 2018, at 7:51 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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Ah, David. It WAS you. I might have known. (};-/) Has anybody else read it? I guess one question I might have concerns any relation between Object Oriented Ontology and Object Oriented Programming. Harman, disclaims much of a relation (pp 10-11), but I’m betting you see one, and even that it’s important to you. I am also wondering, as I have often done, what you experts make of the word “ontology.” I have no idea what it means. Never have. It is a deeply philosophical word yet some philosophically skeptical computer folks that I know (ahem, ahem*) seem to use it. Where are you David? Are you “in country” or did we lose you to Europe? Have you become a Eurokid? Are you reading Lacan and sipping espresso in the shade of the plane trees en la Place de la Sorbonne. Great to be in touch! Nick *Who am I to cast the first stone, Owen? Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Prof David West Nick Twas I that brought the book to your attention and I have read it twice and am using it as a foundation for writing a chapter in my Natural Systems Design book. Happy to discuss and perhaps answer some of your questions and help you find the path through the forest. davew On Wed, Jul 4, 2018, at 7:51 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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In reply to this post by Nick Thompson
I realize I'm that tool who always invites himself to these parties. But I'm intrigued enough to read along with you. At first I was skeptical because of this:
https://philpapers.org/archive/BLAMSR.pdf > Harman's objectal reduction is an apodictic posit, invulnerable to empirical testing. But this revived my interest: http://www.re-press.org/book-files/OA_Version_Speculative_Turn_9780980668346.pdf > In this spirit, then, when we reflect on the basic questions of philosophy we note that in one way or another they all revolve around issues of difference. What are the relevant differences? How are differences to be ordered or hierarchized? How are dif- ferences related to one another? Let us therefore resolve straight away to begin with the premise that there is no difference that does not make a difference . Alternatively, let us be- gin with the premise that to be is to make or produce differences. How, in short, could difference be difference if it did not make a difference? I will call this hypothesis the ‘Ontic Principle’. This principle should not be confused with a normative judgment or a statement of value . It is not being claimed that all differences are important to us. Rath- er, the claim that there is no difference that does not make a difference is an ontological claim. The claim is that ‘to be’ is to make or produce a difference. In part because there's something counter-intuitive, self-contradictory, or paradoxical about *not* starting with a method like criticality, yet starting with the assumption that all the basic questions revolve around issues of difference. What is critique *except* pointing out differences? So, that question will force me to learn more about OOO. On 07/04/2018 06:51 PM, Nick Thompson wrote: > One of you [wretches], assigned me this book <https://www.amazon.com/Object-Oriented-Ontology-New-Theory-Everything/dp/0241269156/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1530754578&sr=8-1-fkmr1&keywords=Graham+Harmon+Object+Oriented> for a little light summer reading before I left SF in March. It was a seductive assignment. In the first place, the book is a little book. I LIKE little books. Cheap and easy to carry. In the second place, as I read around in it, I see echoes of Peirce in its monism and realism and fascination with metaphors (aka “signs”?). Every chapter begins in an ingratiating introduction that gives promise of progress in the rational construction of a complex idea. > > There my praise ends. I have started all the chapters with the greatest of good will and have gotten thoroughly lost in every one. > > I deeply suspect that whichever one of you [wretches] who assigned it to me has never read it from cover to cover. > > SO: Will you now do that with me? And will others join? It would be best if we could snare a few philosophers to join us because the author does seem to be rather deeply into philosophy, both post modern and the other kind. > > It’s hard to believe that it has /nothing/ to do with object oriented programing, but it may not. -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
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I bought a copy. For real.
On Thursday, July 5, 2018, uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote: I realize I'm that tool who always invites himself to these parties. But I'm intrigued enough to read along with you. At first I was skeptical because of this: -- Sent from Gmail Mobile ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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Great, Let me know when you have cc’s Does anybody know a genuine philosopher who might be rung in. Somebody who has actually read some Kant, for instance Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Patrick Reilly I bought a copy. For real.
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I know this guy . . . On Thu, Jul 5, 2018 at 11:17 AM, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:
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In reply to this post by Nick Thompson
Hi Nick,
I write this from Kloster Irsee, Bavaria. A beautiful, mostly restored old monastery that was a THE civil authority in the Middle Ages with about 20 villages and 3K tax paying villagers. Also an "insane asylum" and a minor part of Hitler's extermination program — about 2,000 inmates transported for death or killed on site. Of course now it is a conference center and I am attending EuroPLoP. From here to Istanbul then Amsterdam, then home at end of July.
I know a philosopher, mostly his expertise is in Asian Philosophy but he did read Kant's Critique in high school and is quite familiar with most of the postmodernists (read Lacan, but not in Paris).
Harman:
1) He, and I, pretty much equate ontology with metaphysics - differentiation of "Reality" into discrete entities and giving each a name — plus, very importantly, stating which named things are "real" and which are not. E.g. Atoms are 'real', unicorns are not. BTW, "pure mathematics is not metaphysically 'real' in this context.
2) Harman uses the label "object" for those entities that are both differentiated and 'real'. He expressly imbues his own conception of objects with the sense/quality of that from object oriented programming (circa Alan Kay, but not since then) because both are differentiated on the basis of behavior— how they act, what they do.
3) Absent a shared ontology - discussion becomes difficult if not real. Harman makes this point with regard politics, "fake news" and Trump.
4) A lack of shared ontology is what doomed object-oriented programming. One side, always a minority, deemed that only those objects defined by their behavior were 'real'. The other side deemed only those objects reduced to data structures or aggregates of op-codes were 'real'. A generalization, mostly accurate, one-side believed that only that within the computer was 'real' the other only that outside the computer was real. Objects were supposed to provide a share vocabulary — a shared ontology — that bridged that gap. Didn't happen.
5) I am interested in ontology on two fronts: one, pragmatic, how an "ontology tool" would facilitate the design and development of "natural systems" — defined as the antithesis of the "artificial systems" built by computer scientists, software engineers, IT professionals et. al,, the past fifty years; and two, the possibility of an ontology for the mystical and/or "altered states of consciousness."
davew
On Thu, Jul 5, 2018, at 8:35 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
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Re: Object Oriented Ontology
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I read Kant's "Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics" as a sophomore philosophy major but I don't claim to be a philosopher. Frank ---- Frank Wimberly www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2 Phone (505) 670-9918 On Thu, Jul 5, 2018, 2:16 PM Prof David West <[hidden email]> wrote:
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