(1) object-oriented ontology (OOO)
In metaphysics, object-oriented ontology (OOO) is a 21st-century[1] Heidegger-influenced school of thought that rejects the privileging of human existence over the existence of nonhuman objects.[2] This is in contrast to what it calls the "anthropocentrism" of Kant's philosophy by proposing a metaphorical Copernican Revolution, which would displace the human from the center of the universe like Copernicus displaced the Earth from being the center of the universe.[3] Object-oriented ontology maintains that objects exist independently (as Kantian noumena) of human perception and are not ontologically exhausted by their relations with humans or other objects.[4] For object-oriented ontologists, all relations, including those between nonhumans, distort their related objects in the same basic manner as human consciousness and exist on an equal footing with one another.[5]
Object-oriented ontology is often viewed as a subset of speculative realism, a contemporary school of thought that criticizes the post-Kantian reduction of philosophical enquiry to a correlation between thought and being (correlationism), such that the reality of anything outside of this correlation is unknowable.[6] Object-oriented ontology predates speculative realism, however, and makes distinct claims about the nature and equality of object relations to which not all speculative realists agree. The term "object-oriented philosophy" was coined by Graham Harman, the movement's founder, in his 1999 doctoral dissertation "Tool-Being: Elements in a Theory of Objects".[7][8] In 2009, Levi Bryant rephrased Harman's original designation as "object-oriented ontology", giving the movement its current name.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_ontology
(2) Agential realism
Agential realism is a theory proposed by Karen Barad, in which the universe comprises phenomena which are "the ontological inseparability of intra-acting agencies". Intra-action, a neologism introduced by Barad, signals an important challenge to individualist metaphysics.
For Barad, phenomena or objects do not precede their interaction, rather, 'objects' emerge through particular intra-actions. Thus, apparatuses, which produce phenomena, are not assemblages of humans and nonhumans (as in actor-network theory). Rather, they are the condition of possibility of 'humans' and 'non-humans', not merely as ideational concepts, but in their materiality. Apparatuses are 'material-discursive' in that they produce determinate meanings and material beings while simultaneously excluding the production of others. What it means to matter is therefore always material-discursive. Barad takes their inspiration from physicist Niels Bohr, one of the founders of quantum physics. Barad's agential realism is at once an epistemology (theory of knowing), an ontology (theory of being), and an ethics. For this, Barad employs the term onto-epistemology. Because specific practices of mattering have ethical consequences, excluding other kinds of mattering, onto-epistemological practices are always in turn onto-ethico-epistemological.
Much of Barad's scholarly work has revolved around their concept of "agential realism," and their theories hold importance for many academic fields, including science studies, STS (Science, Technology, and Society), feminist technoscience, philosophy of science, feminist theory, and, of course, physics. In addition to Bohr, their work draws a great deal on the works of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler, as demonstrated in their influential article in the feminist journal differences,"Getting Real: Technoscientific Practices and the Materialization of Reality."[1]
Barad's original training was in theoretical physics.[2] Their book, Meeting the Universe Halfway, (2007), includes in-depth discussions of Stern–Gerlach experiments, Bell inequalities, delayed-choice quantum eraser experiments, the Kochen–Specker theorem and other topics in quantum physics from Barad's neo-Bohrian perspective. In this book, Barad also argues that 'agential realism,' is useful to the analysis of literature, social inequalities, and many other things. This claim is based on the fact that Barad's agential realism is a way of understanding the politics, ethics, and agencies of any act of observation, and indeed any kind of knowledge practice. According to Barad, the deeply connected way that everything is entangled with everything else means that any act of observation makes a "cut" between what is included and excluded from what is being considered. Nothing is inherently separate from anything else, but separations are temporarily enacted so one can examine something long enough to gain knowledge about it. This view of knowledge provides a framework for thinking about how culture and habits of thought can make some things visible and other things easier to ignore or to never see. For this reason, according to Barad, agential realism is useful for any kind of feminist analysis, even if the connection to science is not apparent.
Barad's framework makes several other arguments, and some of them are part of larger trends in fields such as science studies and feminist technoscience:[3]
- They define agency as a relationship and not as something that one "has."
- The scientist is always part of the apparatus, and one needs to understand that his/her/their participation is needed in order to make scientific work more accurate and more rigorous. This differs from the view that political critiques of science seek to undermine the credibility of science; instead, Barad argues that this kind of critique actually makes for better, more credible science.
- They argue that politics and ethical issues are always part of scientific work, and only are made to seem separate by specific historical circumstances that encourage people to fail to see those connections. They use the example of the ethics of developing nuclear weapons to argue this point, by claiming that the ethics and politics are part of how such weapons were developed and understood, and therefore part of science, and not merely of the "philosophy of science" or the "ethics of science." This differs from the usual view that one can strive for a politics-free, bias-less science.
- Nevertheless, they argue against moral relativism, which, according to Barad, uses science's "human" aspects as an excuse to treat all knowledge, and all ethical frameworks, as equally false. They use Michael Frayn's play Copenhagenas an example of the kind of moral relativism that they find problematic.
- They also reject the idea that science is "only" a language game or set of fictions produced only by human constructions and concepts. Although the scientist is part of the "intra-action" of the experiment, humans (and their cultural constructs) do not have complete control over everything that happens. Barad expresses this point by saying, in Getting Real, that although scientists shape knowledge about the universe, you can't ignore the way the universe "kicks back."
These points on science, agency, ethics, and knowledge reveal that Barad's work is similar to the projects of other science studies scholars such as Bruno Latour, Donna Haraway, Andrew Pickering, and Evelyn Fox Keller. Barad's notion of "phenomenon" has also been compared to analogous concepts in the work of Ian Hacking and Nancy Cartwright.[4]
Barad's work has generally been received more positively within feminist technoscience than within mainstream science, technology and society studies (STS).[5]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agential_realism
(3) Process philosophy, ontology of becoming
Process philosophy, also ontology of becoming, or processism,[1] is an approach to philosophy that identifies processes, changes, or shifting relationships as the only true elements of the ordinary, everyday real world. It treats other real elements (examples: enduring physical objects, thoughts) as abstractions from, or ontological dependents on, processes. In opposition to the classical view of change as illusory (as argued by Parmenides) or accidental (as argued by Aristotle), process philosophy posits transient occasions of change or becoming as the only fundamental things of the ordinary everyday real world.
Since the time of Plato and Aristotle, classical ontology has posited ordinary world reality as constituted of enduring substances, to which transient processes are ontologically subordinate, if they are not denied. If Socrates changes, becoming sick, Socrates is still the same (the substance of Socrates being the same), and change (his sickness) only glides over his substance: change is accidental, and devoid of primary reality, whereas the substance is essential.
Philosophers who appeal to process rather than substance include Heraclitus, Friedrich Nietzsche, Henri Bergson, Martin Heidegger, Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, John Dewey, Alfred North Whitehead, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Iain McGilchrist, Eugene Gendlin, Thomas Nail, Alfred Korzybski, R. G. Collingwood, Alan Watts, Robert M. Pirsig, Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Charles Hartshorne, Arran Gare, Nicholas Rescher, Colin Wilson, Tim Ingold, Bruno Latour, William E. Connolly, Gilles Deleuze, Alain Badiou, and Arthur M. Young. In physics, Ilya Prigogine[2] distinguishes between the "physics of being" and the "physics of becoming". Process philosophy covers not just scientific intuitions and experiences, but can be used as a conceptual bridge to facilitate discussions among religion, philosophy, and science.[3][4][original research?]
Process philosophy is sometimes classified as closer to Continental philosophy than analytic philosophy, because it is usually only taught in Continental departments.[5] However, other sources state that process philosophy should be placed somewhere in the middle between the poles of analytic versus Continental methods in contemporary philosophy.[6][7
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_philosophy
See also
