A synopsis and discussion of "ontocubism"

[j_j]

“Ontocubism” is one name for my attempt to sketch our basic situation. I offer a summary in this OP and invite others to criticize what I present. I am also glad to go into more detail on points that others find obscure.

First, I explain the allusion to “cubism.”

Cubist subjects are analyzed, broken up, and reassembled in an abstract form. Instead of depicting objects from a single perspective, the artist depicts the subject from multiple perspectives to represent the subject in a greater context.
…
Early Futurist paintings hold in common with Cubism the fusing of the past and the present, the representation of different views of the subject pictured at the same time or successively, also called multiple perspective, simultaneity or multiplicity,^[8]

influences

Ontocubism is ontological perspectivism. Husserl’s analysis of the spatial object as the system of its adumbrations was perhaps the primary influence, at least in terms of personal inspiration. It’s so simple and yet so rich.

The “pure realism” of Wittgenstein’s TLP is another important influence. But the TLP doesn’t consider the “global” implications of a “local” pure realism. That’s where Husserl ( and Leibniz) are helpful. For we share the same objects.

summary

The “consciousness” of an organism is not a stuff in the world but rather the “presence” or “being” of every kind of stuff in the shared world for a sentient organism within that world. Ontocubism is therefore a radical pluralism, not a “monism of being.” Nor is ontocubism an idealism. Indeed, “consciousness does not exist.” There is only the world, but only “from points of view.” The novel As I Lay Dying is a nice metaphor for ontocubism. Each character describes the same shared world from an embodied point of view.

Objects in the world are the “ideal manifolds” of their manifestations. They are temporal and interpersonal “systems of faces.” “Perceptions” of objects are not internal icons in mind-stuff but instead “pieces” of the genuine empirical being of objects. So perceiving subjects are not “containers” of “user-interface icons.”

disclaimer

The approach sketched here is only minimally original. For the most part, I have merely curated, synthesized, and paraphrased my influences.

invitation

Like anyone, I think, I hope to be understood. Can I add anything to contribute toward being understood here ?

Of course I invite criticism too. What do you object to ? What would you tweak ? What rival positions do you prefer ?

[j_j]

While I arrived at perspectivism via Husserl and others, I looked for other thinkers and discovered the largely forgotten Ortega :

For Ortega, the individual ego is conscious of itself through the awareness of both its physiological features and behavioral gestures, and those of “others” in reciprocal human interaction, a consciousness of self that proceeds through self-analysis of the inner essence of the being of the “I” and the “I’s” awareness of other selves as similar beings in the “circumstances” of the world of lived experience.
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That is, each individual and each collection of individuals apprehend reality from the point of view of their respective perceptions of reality. The varying perceptions of reality are all legitimate and account for the postulate that different individuals interpret the same “horizon” differently so that “every life is a point of view directed upon the universe” (Obras, III: 200). Ortega’s “perspectivist” postulate thus promised to perform the function of unifying reality. From the assumption that “perspective” comprises both “one of the component parts of reality and its organizing element”, Ortega arrived at the position that “all knowledge is knowledge from a definite point of view”

[Elephant]

@j_j

Ortega’s “perspectivist” postulate thus promised to perform the function of unifying reality.

Explain this. What is the definition of unifying reality?

[j_j]

@Elephant

Explain this. What is the definition of unifying reality?

I can’t speak for Ortega, but I’m glad to explain this in the context of ontocubism.

The world is fundamentally a “forum” or “stage.” In other words, ontology’s necessary object is the framework in which something like ontology makes sense. We share the world through a shared language. As I see it, it’s performative contradiction to argue otherwise. For who is one arguing with ? And about what ?

An object like a chair is an interpersonal and temporal synthesis of its manifestations. I see it from this side of the room today, and you see it from the other side of the room tomorrow. But both of us apprehend the chair. This chair is “transcendent” in phenomenological jargon.

More generally, the sign “world” vaguely points at the entire encompassing context, which is to say the “forum” or “stage.”

Note that the metaphor “forum” emphasizes an awareness of fellow “conscious” sign-users who have their own perspectives on the reality or world that they share with me. I can’t see the world through their eyes, but they and I can learn to trade perceptual objects ( signs ) so that we can benefit from the experience of others.

Your prompt was terse, so let me know if I missed the target.

[Joshs]

@j_j

The “consciousness” of an organism is not a stuff in the world but rather the “presence” or “being” of every kind of stuff in the shared world for a sentient organism within that world. Ontocubism is therefore a radical pluralism, not a “monism of being.” Nor is ontocubism an idealism. Indeed, “consciousness does not exist.” There is only the world, but only “from points of view.” The novel As I Lay Dying is a nice metaphor for ontocubism. Each character describes the same shared world from an embodied point of view

If I defined knowing as a way of making changes in the world that is inferentially compatible with what one already knows, would this be consistent with your perspectivally shared world? That is, do we form a perspective on a world which is already there, or is each perspective a modification? Is what is shared already there or are we sharing in ways of modifying the world?

[j_j]

@Joshs

If I defined knowing as a way of making changes in the world that is inferentially compatible with what one already knows, would this be consistent with your perspectivally shared world?

Yes. Each “face” of the world is “becoming” or “streaming.” Thrown projection is prejudicial comportment-disclosure-enactment.

This of course gets into the strong influence of Heidegger on ontocubism.

@Joshs

That is, do we form a perspective on a world which is already there, or is each perspective a modification? Is what is shared already there or are we sharing in ways of modifying the world?

Great question. I’d like to emphatically distance myself from the world as W and then perspectives like f_1(W), f_2(W), f_2(W).... Instead we have something like W_1,W_2,W_3,..., with all of these “faces of world” intensely entangled.

Perhaps \bigcup W_i isn’t too misleading as a symbol for reality as a whole. I know, in some vague sense, that others have the world in ways that I don’t. As a philosopher, I declare that “all experience is real,” without of course pretending to value all of it the same.

We “meet in objects.” My “consciousness” is, for instance, the being of a “moment” of an object I share with others. For instance, my “consciousness” is the qualitative presence of a sentence you speak to me.

A “face” of the world is not representation but rather an enacting of world, a worlding of world.

I’m currently partial to distinguishing between “consciousness” as a brutal simple “presence(ing) of world” and the intricate “empirical subject.” I think we agree that how the world manifests ( what is fluidly and fugitively “there”) is intensely related to the physiology and history of this empirical ego. Basically it makes sense to talk of the “constituting function” of the empirical ego, but this is best understood as a kind of causal entanglement.

The empirical subject does not of course create the world. The world “happens” to the empirical subject, but the empirical subject is in the world too, and part of what happens to itself and others.

The witness is given with the witnessed.

[j_j]

This is an example of how Husserl inspired me.

Let us begin by noting that the aspect, the perspectival adumbration through which every spatial object invariably appears, only manifests the spatial object from one side. No matter how completely we may perceive a thing, it is never given in perception with the characteristics that qualify it and make it up as a sensible thing from all sides at once. We cannot avoid speaking of such and such sides of the object that are actually perceived. Every aspect, every continuity of single adumbrations, regardless how far this continuity may extend, offers us only sides. …it is inconceivable that a perceptual object could be given in the entirety of its sensibly intuitive features, literally, from all sides at once in a self-contained perception.

Zahavi uses passages like these to defend Husserl against accusations of “the metaphysics of presence.” I take Heidegger to have intensified Husserl, but I also take passages like the above to speak against the possibility of “compressing” a transcendent object into a punctiform now.

[Astorre]

Greetings.

Excellent. Your method has finally been presented. I have a number of questions for the author.

1. The title theme emphasizes a rejection of substantialism, which appeals to me. However, unlike, for example, processualism, the thing remains present in your work. But the thing as what? Or the thing as?

2. Cubism, as I understand it, is used by you as a metaphor: a metaphor for the multifaceted nature of any object. Am I correct in understanding that a thing is thus presented as something given to another object interacting with it? For example, to an observer, another object?

3. Am I correct in understanding that, when two things come into contact, they reveal each other only in the aspect in which they interact?

4. Am I correct in understanding that you are using “cubism” as a metaphor for multifacetedness, or is that too strong a statement? So, are you saying that things are reducible to squares, or is this just a figurative expression - “plane” as a facet of interaction?

[j_j]

Thanks for the friendly entrance !

@Astorre

1. The title theme emphasizes a rejection of substantialism, which appeals to me. However, unlike, for example, processualism, the thing remains present in your work. But the thing as what? Or the thing as?

I should clarify. I believe in things. Like horseshoes and integers and bitter divorces. But I am definitely a pluralist. I don’t see a need for a fundamental stuff. So I reject idealism, physicalism, dualism, and so on. Categories are convenient but not ontologically deep. Instead I focus on the structure of objects, the structure of the world.

@Astorre

2. Cubism, as I understand it, is used by you as a metaphor: a metaphor for the multifaceted nature of any object. Am I correct in understanding that a thing is thus presented as something given to another object interacting with it? For example, to an observer, another object?

Well yes. But one of the trickier distinctions that’s important for me is that between the “consciousness” of a organism and that organism itself.

Consciousness does not exist — is not a stuff in the world. But we use “conscious” to describe entities that function as “sites of the world’s streaming.” I may aim my speech at the ear of an organism, but my ultimate target is the world itself from another point of view. My hope is that my sign will be “present” for other with a desired “significance.” In other words, I take my listener to “be conscious” and to be “faced” with my world from their situation (POV). So “my” world is of course our world.

@Astorre

3. Am I correct in understanding that, when two things come into contact, they reveal each other only in the aspect in which they interact?

That sounds more like Harman’s approach. I like Harman, but he would call me a “correlationist.” I would push back on this, but there’s a sense in which this is fair.

I’m focused on “sentient” organisms “perceiving” or “manifesting” entities in the world, including other sentient organisms. My view is “radical” because I don’t feel the need to postulate an “independent physical substrate” or God’s truth, etc.

@Astorre

4. Am I correct in understanding that you are using “cubism” as a metaphor for multifacetedness, or is that too strong a statement? So, are you saying that things are reducible to squares, or is this just a figurative expression - “plane” as a facet of interaction?

Objects are “systems of faces.” Many facets, many “sides.” More exactly and more generally, objects are systems of their moments. Saussure’s “acoustic image” is a great example of this. The word “mother” is relatively stable and “frozen.” But it only “lives” or “exists” in trillions of fugitive and singular speakings of that same repeatable word. This weird structure is a theme in Plato’s Parmenides. The “idea” is not “more than” its exemplars but what strangely makes the exemplar an exemplar. The concepts of type and token are like left and right, fundamentally interdependent. I take this insight to be “fundamental ontology” because it puts a finger on the basis of intelligibility.

[j_j]

Another influence on ontocubism is empiriocriticism. I discovered Mach first in an anthology, and this lead me to Avenarius.

The two presuppositions of empiriocriticism are the empiriocritical axiom of the contents of cognition and the axiom of the forms of cognition. The first axiom states that the cognitive contents of all philosophical views of the world are merely modifications of the original assumption that every human being initially assumes himself to be confronted with an environment and with other human beings who make assertions and are dependent on the environment. The second axiom holds that scientific knowledge does not possess any forms and means essentially different from those of prescientific knowledge and that all the forms and means of knowledge in the special sciences are extensions of the prescientific (Kritik der reinen Erfahrung, Vol. I, Preface).
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Especially characteristic of Avenarius’ theory of human cognition was his biological approach. From this biological point of view, every process of knowledge is to be interpreted as a vital function, and only as such can it be understood. Avenarius’ interest was directed chiefly to the pervasive relations of dependency between individuals and their surroundings, and he described these relations in an original terminology involving many symbols.
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The point of departure for his investigations was the “natural” assumption of a “principal coordination” between self and environment, in consequence of which each individual finds himself facing both an environment with various component parts and other individuals who make assertions about this environment which also express a “finding.”
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Avenarius constructed the concept of pure experience and related it to his theory of the natural concept of the world on the basis of his views on the biology and psychology of knowledge. The ideal of a natural concept of the world of pure experience is fulfilled in the complete elimination of metaphysical categories and of dualistic interpretations of reality, by means of his exclusion of introjection. The basic prerequisite for this is first to acknowledge the fundamental equivalence of everything that is encountered and that can be grasped, regardless of whether it is given through external or internal experience. As a consequence of the empiriocritical principal coordination between self and environment, individuals and environment are encountered in the same fashion, without distinction. “With respect to givenness, I and the environment are on completely the same footing. I come to know the environment in exactly the same sense that I come to know myself—as members of a single experience; and in every experience that is realized the two experience-values, the self and the environment, are in principle coordinated to each other and equivalent” (Der menschliche Weltbegriff ).

[Astorre]

I’m simply trying to fit your model into my cognitive framework (the stable patterns of perception available to me through experience), which is why I have so many questions =)

So, for you, a thing isn’t something that “is” in itself, but something that “is given” in interaction with another?

[Astorre]

@j_j

Objects are “systems of faces.” Many facets, many “sides.” More exactly and more generally, objects are systems of their moments. Saussure’s “acoustic image” is a great example of this. The word “mother” is relatively stable and “frozen.” But it only “lives” or “exists” in trillions of fugitive and singular speakings of that same repeatable word. This weird structure is a theme in Plato’s Parmenides. The “idea” is not “more than” its exemplars but what strangely makes the exemplar an exemplar. The concepts of type and token are like left and right, fundamentally interdependent. I take this insight to be “fundamental ontology” because it puts a finger on the basis of intelligibility.

Let me clarify the question. So, is “side”,“edge” a physical property of an “object,” or is it your figurative expression of a thing’s ability to manifest itself in a new way each time?

[j_j]

@Astorre

I’m simply trying to fit your model into my cognitive framework (the stable patterns of perception available to me through experience), which is why I have so many questions =)

I invite your questions ! I hope I didn’t give a contrary impression. This is fun.

@Astorre

So, for you, a thing isn’t something that “is” in itself, but something that “is given” in interaction with another?

As a first approximation, think of a particular tree as the unity of all possible and actual perceptions of that tree.

Traditionally perceptions are discussed as icons in mind-stuff. But for me perceptions are “pieces” of the thing itself. The “consciousness” I call “mine” is, for instance, the “being” or “presence” of a “moment” of that tree. The “being” or “quality” of that so-called perception.

Consciousness is the “perspectival presence” of the world itself. Not some stuff inside subjects.

[j_j]

@Astorre

Let me clarify the question. So, is “side”,“edge” a physical property of an “object,” or is it your figurative expression of a thing’s ability to manifest itself in a new way each time?

A “side” of the object is a “moment” or “piece” or “aspect” of the object. The object is the “open ongoing unity” of its moments. Let me emphasize that the object is “intersubjective” or “interpersonal.” The “substance” of the object is “logical.” It is an “ideal unity” in the sense that we enact it. We take ourselves to be discussing the “same thing,” even though it never shows itself exactly the same way twice. This goes back to Heraclitus. “On those stepping in the same river other and other waters flow.”

Eddington wrote of “two tables.” For me, there is only one table. But we can thematize it as atoms or as where I used to play checkers with grandpa, and so on. The scientific image is not privileged ontologically, though it is of great practical importance.

[j_j]

For context, I see the ontocubism project as just an attempt to carefully lay out what we already take for granted when we talk to others in the world about objects in that world. The weird language is a strategy for circumventing the indirect realism that many philosophical types tend to take for granted.

What is it mean to discuss the same ripe tomato ? What is already in this mundane situation ? The tomato is a perceptual object, with a size, shape, texture, color, taste, and so on.

A particular perception of that tomato is not the tomato. But the real tomato is not hidden behind perceptions. Perceptions are what I have of the tomato itself. But the tomato is not only for me or only now. It endures in time “between” perceivers. And we make noises and marks that are themselves perceptual objects that are “about” that tomato.

I don’t comport myself toward the tomato as I do toward another “person” who can understand ( more or less ) the marks and noises I make. Some objects in the world, like people, are fellow perceivers and discussers. These objects are “conscious.” Somehow they also “have the world.” Or we might say that the world has them. Likewise I don’t have my experience. It has me. Experience is the world falling on me.

[Astorre]

@j_j

Traditionally perceptions are discussed as icons in mind-stuff. But for me perceptions are “pieces” of the thing itself. The “consciousness” I call “mine” is, for instance, the “being” or “presence” of a “moment” of that tree. The “being” or “quality” of that so-called perception.

How do you know that what’s in your consciousness, along the way, has been somewhat distorted by the time it reaches it: sensory defects, interpretational defects? Or are you saying that the image you have (in the form it reached you) is also part of the objective world? Or are you not talking about the objective world at all?

I’m confused…

@j_j

Eddington wrote of “two tables.” For me, there is only one table. But we can thematize it as atoms or as where I used to play checkers with grandpa, and so on. The scientific image is not privileged ontologically, though it is of great practical importance.

So, there is a table, but it is given to everyone differently?

@j_j

A particular perception of that tomato is not the tomato. But the real tomato is not hidden behind perceptions. Perceptions are what I have of the tomato itself. But the tomato is not only for me or only now. It endures in time “between” perceivers. And we make noises and marks that are themselves perceptual objects that are “about” that tomato.

So, there is only one tomato, but each of us sees it from a different perspective?

Does this mean that the tomato is not fully comprehensible?

[Elephant]

@j_j

Note that the metaphor “forum” emphasizes an awareness of fellow “conscious” sign-users who have their own perspectives on the reality or world that they share with me. I can’t see the world through their eyes, but they and I can learn to trade perceptual objects ( signs ) so that we can benefit from the experience of others.

Sorry, I cannot accept your account of perception where you are looking at reality one side at a time and only through your interactions with fellow perceivers that you get to understand the whole picture. Excuse my wording but this is just nonsense. A table is an empirical object. We do not need a transcendent concept of it.
What happens if your population is limited to blind and deaf people? How does your forum look like?

[j_j]

@Astorre

How do you know that what’s in your consciousness, along the way, has been somewhat distorted by the time it reaches it: sensory defects, interpretational defects? Or are you saying that the image you have (in the form it reached you) is also part of the objective world? Or are you not talking about the objective world at all?

I’m confused…

As I see it, there is no “hidden true object” that “sends distorted message” to a place “inside” subjects. The object is the logical-temporal synthesis of all of the ways it shows itself.

No mind, no matter. Just objects in the world, given in “moments” or “pieces.”

@Astorre

So, there is a table, but it is given to everyone differently?

Yes. The physicist may look at it one way now. The painter looks at another way some other time. And so on. We “enact” the unity of the table. I see the “familiar piece of furniture.” But it shows itself in an entirely new “perception.”

@Astorre

So, there is only one tomato, but each of us sees it from a different perspective?

Does this mean that the tomato is not fully comprehensible?

The tomato is “unfinished” and “infinite.” As far as we know, aliens are perceiving it with sense organs we couldn’t understand.

[j_j]

@Elephant

A table is an empirical object. We do not need a transcendent concept of it.

Have you studied phenomenology ? I am completely against the usual understanding of Kant’s “thing in itself.” I’m with Mill and Mach. The object itself is experienced. But it is experience as the object. The “going-beyond” of transcendence in phenomenology is just our awareness that what we perceive is “also for others” and “not only now.” Approximately.

There is no hidden/true (pseudo-)physical world. The genine physical object is ( of course ?) the one given in/as perceptions.

@Elephant

What happens if your population is limited to blind and deaf people? How does your forum look like?

For me the forum includes all sentient creatures. The theory is explicitly transhuman. I was inspired by Voltaire’s early sci-fi and Feuerbach’s understanding of God as a projection of the human species essence. This “God” projected by humans is basically an image of disembodied “human” reason which is not anchored essentially to our particular genetic code. Consider our sci-fi. We have no problems empathizing with Klingons or Hal from 2001.

A. J. Ayer gives a similar but less elaborated phenomenalism in Language, Truth, and Logic. I would trace my own flavor of phenonenalism as something like Mill/Mach \to Feuerbach/Husserl \to Heidegger/Fasching.

I also call this theory dialogical positivism. The point is to be more empirical than the logical positivists who were not sufficiently empirical — and still metaphysical — about language. Basically they sometimes implied that they could control or engulf all possible significance from within the flesh or a particular organism. But signs are perceptual objects whose significance is a function of the perceiver’s physiology and history, etc.

If any math people show up, there’s some of philosophy of math involved also.

[Astorre]

How is all this different from Harman?