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Yes, I appreciate Edwards' critiques.  I consider his contributions to be part of "Integral thought" -- not confining it to Wilber.  What I was responding to was this remark by Morton:




I have spoken with Sean about his ideas and know that he does not mean by object, "something that isn't social, human, sentient, or noetic" (as if the UR refers just to a particular class of interiorless things). 

In excerpt D it notes that it will deal with zone 2, the outside of interiors. Excerpt C dealt with zone 1 (inside interiors) and that forthcoming excerpts (presumably E and F) will deal with  zones 3 and 4 (inside and outside of exteriors). The latter excerpts have not appeared to date but from figure 2 in D this would deal with the topics of autopoeisis, empiricism and systems theory, the stuff of Bryant's oeuvre. Perhaps these excerpts are awaiting the study and integration of OOO before release?

Also see Integral Ecology, where Sean maintains the distinction between quadrant-perspective and quadrivium-object (p. 176). Granted Sean has changed some views since then but does he still retain this correlationist view of kosmic address? It would seem so if we look at his more recent article referenced in this post on p. 11 of this thread (e.g, fn 23). Later in that page I question the kosmic addressing system with reference to past posts on the topic. He also says on p. 168, quoting Wilber:

"This is why I use the word sub-sist. There is a reality or a What that subsists and has intrinsic features but it doesn’t ex-ist without a Who and a How."

I believe so, but I will need to review this paper to see how this might have changed.  (I'm heading out the door now, so I'll do this later).  Can you tell me why you think the quadrivium-object and quadrant-perspective distinction is correlationist?  As I said above, I do not feel Integral thought is correlationist in the sense frequently criticized (as anthropocentric).  It might still be organism-centric, but not anthropocentric.


Concerning distinguishing between sentient and insentient objects, I do think Edwards makes a good point.  But there does appear to be a qualitative difference between types of objects that we should account for somehow.  We can cut up, throw, burn, puree, squish, or otherwise roughly treat a flapjack, but it feels like quite a different act to do this to a live chicken, an elephant, or the Pope.  How would you approach this from an OOO perspective?

I'm starting a new thread on this latest line of inquiry, bringing in another integral theorist Tom Murray. This can be a jumping off point for other discussions about his work.


my thoughts are rather muddled at the moment. I'm in the very midst of moving home and country and preoccupied with that. Still my slew of questions above was an attempt to point a shaking and righteous finger (I say that in jest at my own muddle of concern and frustrated articulation) at the theoretical emphasis shown here. Integral retails in spirit and co-arisings and above all self-reflexive folding back and embodiment. (I should add creative becoming?). It tries to be a theory of everything. In this thorough and careful discussion of texts where are all the other bodies? Not only the disciplining of our own bodies and the dynamics we experience there, but also simple old empirical data - examples to body theory. And the resonance and dissonance we might then find between these different registers. 


You mentioned Shobogenzo above and your sense that Dogen might provide resources to find a way forward. I quite agree. He seems an exemplar of not only bodying the world in all registers but of making/seeing those registers resonate. He's a genius, sure, and one who uses classical japanese in a highly allusive way, but in broader formal terms he's a marvelous model. 


Fellow OOO traveler Jane Bennett would argue - via Kant, Schiller and Foucault that it's matter of aesthetics which teaches us to appreciate detail and the singular. This appreciation is an always already

(re-)enchantment of the world which in turn results in greater connection, generosity, and the like. She notes how the dangers of aestheticization - sensationalism, spectacle, indulgence are tempered by the sort of discipline of the self among the greco-romans that Foucault examined. 

One could argue the degree of singularity - embodiment/object-hood found in a flapjack is rather less than is found in an elephant. Isn't that essentially the Integral route - greater complexity = higher value. 


Bennet's book:


edit: meant to say - Object Oriented Chthonic Spirituality sounds excellent - ha ha. Only half the picture, mind you.

Thanks for your comments, Dial.  I'm glad you see the same potential in Dogen that I do.  I want to explore that further.


Just a random thought (as I work on other things today):  Harman's treatment of objects as irreducible particularities at all levels (neither giving in to undermining or overmining of objects, after ample use of both strategies in scientific and postmodern anti-realist circles), reminds me oddly enough of Wilber's Da-esque championing of a return to "self" language on the far side of Nagarjunan deconstruction.

Dial: "Isn't that essentially the Integral route - greater complexity = higher value."

Indeed, and what is the most complex organism on the planet? Human beings. Anthropocentric? Somewhere above in this thread I argued that more complex is not necessarily the most "evolved." One might even make an argument that too much complexity becomes self-defeating and what is leading to our socio-economic and ecological crises. Also somewhere above, to answer Balder's question about valuing humans more than flapjacks, Bryant does give some credence to those 'larger' objects that contain many more objects as being more something.... but not necessarily more better.

Recall this for example, and this.

There are some computers now that may be more 'complex' than some animals.  Is there a moral / ethical difference between sticking an M80 in the rear end of one of these animals and sticking one in the CD drive of one of these computers?

I think this is where Bennett/Foucault might suggest some sort of 'training' in aesthetics is valuable. Reasoning is transformed. And complexity bound into simple to perceive wholes. 


Concerning Bryant's rejection of the thesis of holism, it may be a move required by certain metaphysical or theoretical commitments, but I don't think we should accept it without regard for empirical evidence.  And there is a significant degree of coherence within organisms, such that the various elements work in highly coordinated fashion, which is suggestive of holism.  Elements of quantum theory are also suggestive of holism.  I could see OOO developments possibly leading to a "weird holism" but I'm not ready to follow Bryant fully into his flat world of autistic objects.




My swipe at Bryant above might be less than charitable, and I might not repeat it tomorrow.  But it does seem OOO, in what I've read so far, does not provide many resources (yet) for answering such ethical questions.  How, with a flat ontology, can we nevertheless avoid flatland?

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