By Svyatoslav Polevoy.
I came across this interesting section of modern philosophy while studying the problems of the interaction of artificial intelligence and humans. Graham Harman is one of the founders of object-oriented ontology, a professor at the American University in Cairo, is highly interested in the development of a new metaphysics in the form of speculative realism through a “specific” reading of the works of Martin Heidegger. Actually, object-oriented ontology is part of speculative realism.
Philosophical background
The first thing that catches your eye is the ontology of the object. Since the time of Aristotle, as the author correctly notes, objects (as a philosophical category) have not been given any “proper” attention and they have always faded into the background or were not taken into account at all. Whether it be a materialistic attitude towards them as one of the steps to understanding the fundamental principle and reason for the existence of objects, or an idealistic one, which claims that objects cannot exist outside of our consciousness or that they are nothing more than their own manifestations in the experience. Thus, objects are undermined (idealism) and overmined (materialism).
This is done deliberately to cleanse the object of misunderstanding, thereby giving it an independent and fundamental place in philosophy. Nonetheless, this is not enough. In order to place the object firmly on a philosophical pedestal, there is a need to “enliven” the object or give it its own autonomous being (ontlology). Imitating Old Testament God, object-oriented ontology takes the phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger’s Dasein into service and embeds them into the object. It seems that both phenomenology (actually intentionality) and Dasein are the prerogatives of the subject (man) and can in no way be inherent in objects. It also seems that the object does not possess such qualities, since it is a zuhanden (ready-to-hand) according to Heidegger, and the act of intentionality is directed towards the object but under no circumstances emanate from it (according to Husserl). Objects are given to us exactly in their “representation”. Ready-to-hand, a secondary aspect is a characteristic of an object for Heidegger. In other words, the hammer serves for something, directly for some purpose, it cannot exist on its own and we only learn about it when it breaks (Heidegger). Heidegger insists on Dasein (authentic human existence) being inherent exclusively to man and not to animals and what’s more to objects.
Turn towards the object
Turn towards the object But what does skeptical realism do? He simply inverts these concepts and assigns them to objects, drifting away from the subject. On the one hand, there is nothing bad and destructive, because we do not touch the subject, but only pay proper attention to the object. On the other hand, it would be an acute misinterpretation. When we invert the phenomenology of the subject into an object, then there is a possibility of everything turning into an object. Therefore, the so-called ontological egalitarianism emerges. So, a shopping cart, a cartoon on TV, oxygen atoms, or unicorns in dreams become equally real and possible, because they are all objects. Moreover, skeptical realism does not distinguish between the virtuality or materiality of objects. They can be anything, even a talking foot in a David Lynch film plus this foot can have its own being and its own logic of existence. Objects can exist both outside the relation (relationships among themselves) and outside the correlation (relationship with the subject). Simply put, a fork can exist on its own, without human interaction. It can fall, rust, gradually decay, grow into the floor, etc. Thus, object-oriented ontology insists on the autonomous existence of objects. It may sound gibberish, but this is only at first glance.
Objects can exist both in connection with other objects and autonomously Skeptical realism and object-oriented ontology are a consequent persistence of postmodernity. Postmodernity has thoroughly cleaned up the space for this type of ontology. He literally equated any statement to a common denominator, shifting the vertical to the horizontal. For example, a scientist’s statement is equal to a lawnmower’s statement. Even despite the scientific degrees and the authority of the scientific community, a scientist has no right to “oppress” the statement of a lawnmower, otherwise, it will already be fascism. The lawnmower would say “the grass is green,” and the scientist would say that it is his consciousness considers the grass green due to his eye’s perception of electromagnetic radiation and that the grass can change (turn red) if the eye cannot perceive green anymore. In this case, no one
claims to be right. Both statements are equal because the superiority of one’s statement over the other’s is already “fascism.”
Thanks to this merit of postmodernity, object-oriented ontology can unfold well in contemporary philosophy. Today, any classical, conservative, and religious views are often being marginalized and written off. Why? Mainly because they do not respond to the current-day challenges.
Machine thinking
Machine thinking But what is there to machines? Machines are the exact reification and embodiment of object-oriented ontology. For example, a cybernetic organism or any other type of computer while processing the income data or anything that is in its field of view will consider everything as an object. A desktop icon, photo, or barcode at self-checkout counters is considered an object by default. In the same way, a dog, a cat, a bird, and a person will also be considered objects, not static, but in motion. For a machine, ontologically, there will be no difference between a can of cola and a person. Both will be identified as objects with a difference in their structure, complexity, and interaction with them.
Quite logical thoughts: why do we need this? Where are we going? We submit to the voluntary replacement by machines because since then, we began to measure ourselves by quantitative parameters and the degree of efficiency (income level, GDP, the number of trophies in various tournaments, indicators of computing power, etc.). Machines in the future can simply push us out by such rates. This scenario will be quite natural if we move further in the direction of accelerationism (acceleration of technical progress). Bioelectric hands, carbon feet, hips with knee modules, and VR helmets; IBM Watson supercomputer that makes better diagnoses than doctors); neural networks deciding what is better for us to watch on YouTube or Netflix; Deep Mind, independently mastering 49 types of games; the VITAL algorithm, which analyzes colossal databases of finance, intellectual property, and clinical trials; the AIVA program, which writes music on its own in a few minutes and then is difficult to distinguish from human music. What, in the foreseeable future, can prevent an artificial person from replacing? Indeed, in terms of efficiency, computing power, and later in terms of physical endurance and productivity, the machines will receive superiority. Thus, adding here ontology, the machine exists independently of the person, gradually displacing it.