A: All I know is I am screwed.
#HowMany light bulbs does it take to change an object-oriented ontologist?
A: All I know is I am screwed.
Category: philosophy
I love Kant, the later Wittgenstein, Derrida, post structualism, postmodernism and the philosophy of language.
#HowMany object-oriented ontologists does it take to change a light bulb?
Q: How many object-oriented ontologists does it take to change a light bulb?
Continue reading “#HowMany object-oriented ontologists does it take to change a light bulb?”
Catch/stone
“God is a metaphor,” I said.
“Is that with a capital ‘G’ or a lowercase ‘g’?” my friend asked.
“You know I only throw stones at Christians (I had meant ‘to Christians’).”
(I am really just playing catchball with stones, you know. The Other(s) always think I am attacking them.)
#define institution
Institution (or social institution) – a “structure” which simultaneously uses and is used by individuals and social groups. Well known and often studied institutions are culture, society, religion, science, philosophy, art, literature, music, language, politics and government, economy and business, family and the individual.
God/Metaphor
God is a metaphor.
in/space
space
is that special room where
everything is in
What is Object-Oriented Ontology?
I have been trying to get into Speculative Realism lately. Not an easy philosophy but then again philosophy is dealing with anything but easy subjects. Nothing less then the what exists and how we know.
During this little adventure I came across a term – object-oriented ontology – that, at first, seemed illogical but made sense after careful inspection. Here is an excellent jargon-free definition of it by Ian Bogost:
Ontology is the philosophical study of existence. Object-oriented ontology (“OOO” for short) puts things at the center of this study. Its proponents contend that nothing has special status, but that everything exists equally–plumbers, cotton, bonobos, DVD players, and sandstone, for example. In contemporary thought, things are usually taken either as the aggregation of ever smaller bits (scientific naturalism) or as constructions of human behavior and society (social relativism). OOO steers a path between the two, drawing attention to things at all scales (from atoms to alpacas, bits to blinis), and pondering their nature and relations with one another as much with ourselves.
Essentially, it is a kind of trying to be objective about something by stepping into every objects’s shoes. The language is nuanced to be human center-free.
It feels like something David Suzuki would agree to (this would make sense since he is a geneticist-turned-activist). In sustainability, it seems to have something in common with the animal rights movement opting to be less anthropocentric.
(Monologue: There seems to be a move away from human-centred views and looking at the world from what I call The Other. But whether we can learn to avoid projection of The Self in performing this act. Perhaps I can call this project Willful Philosophical Out-Of-Body Re-embodiment.)
The world has a characteristic
From experience you and I “know” that the world has a characteristic. For example, we play the game of tennis by following the “rules” or laws of physics. Otherwise, the game would not be very fun to play. We share the world which is “out there” from “in here”. And I understand the outside through the senses and the mind. I also understand the inside through the mind and its concepts and knowledge, and accordingly interact through my object, the body.
In this way, I have inducted (not deducted) that there is a world with independent objects and I am one of those objects.
the empty machine
minds do not emerge
as metaphors
would like them to
the machinery, empty
mysteriously move through
space, time
how are we to know
if any thing exists at all
if this, our greatest illusion
kept up its charade
until the very last
and beyond
i cannot know anything
a god or a self
but only
to have concepts of them
trust them
to be our creations
that the world
out there
is void and full
all at once
from the beginning, and
until the very end
I have no direct knowledge of God
It took me a while to figure this out.
I cannot say that I have ever had direct knowledge of God. I have had notions of God pitched to me for as long as I can remember, but I have never had direct contact from him (if it is a him).
Christians may say I am not “chosen”. But I would rather think of it as maybe there isn’t God.
Buddhism has gods and whatnot in their “pantheon”, but they are imports from other religions and systems such as Hinduism, Taoism and Esoteric Buddhism. I, for the most part, ignore them but accept somehow gods were created to represent the teaching, as manifestations of these ideas, and that the concepts and ideas (the teachings) are more important than the gods. To me, this seems to be the healthier attitude to have than to believe (more often than not, blindly) in God or gods.
signature103 