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The Interfact: On Structure and Compatibility in Object-Oriented Ontology
Object-oriented ontology (OOO) asks us to suspend our modern preconceptions and treat epistemic processes as something that happens not just when human thought meets the world, but even when objects meet each other. Such confrontations between object and object produce new, stable, and emer- gent objects that fully deserve to be called real. But does OOO go too far in treating objects as self-enclosed units, without full acceptance of the relational side of their being? Laying new emphasis on the way that objects support each other, Gabriel Yoran introduces his challenging notion of "the interfact."
144 pages, Paperback
Published September 23, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 24, 2024
An interesting book about object oriented ontologies (OOO) and the associated metaphysical arguments about a world comprised of interlocking objects in a flat set of relationships that does not value human agency any more than object agency. This volume is a bit downstream of Graham Harman's founding work on OOO but it does spend a fair amount of time rehearsing those arguments, quite at the expense of its own readability. Nevertheless, there are some good takeaways.
I appreciated the author's attempt to related OOO to object oriented programming (OOP). As I take it, there are two key imports from OOP to OOO. One is that objects can have inherent properties that define potential, standing relationships between them. Things like message passing, class characteristics, and inheritance. The other is that the interface through which one gains access to computing objects presumes a logic of interaction that defines the potential for objects to combine. I found these comparisons helpful but a little understated and overshadowed by arguments in other chapters.
Many of the chapters were devoted to close textual engagement with OOO arguments from across a number of Harman's texts, to an extent at times that this book seemed to be more concerned with parsing the complex terminology of OOO and finding cracks or ambiguities in the OOO justification to stake a claim for the interfact that is revealed in the closing chapters.
The interfact, itself, is an interesting and worthwhile concept. It posits, following OOO, that objects are things in themselves that exist apart from our thinking about them. And in their "things in themselves" form they entail the totality of all possible enactments of those objects and ways of relating them to other objects. I prefer to think of that quality as something like "potential," but okay. Yoran adds the possibility that individual objects are things in themselves but they also exist as parts of other standing configurations of objects. He borrows the term "mesh" to reference this standing relationship but the sense is that these are necessary relationships that allow objects to exist. These meshes bind objects together in a logic of interrelationships that is true of the local cosmology or rather parallel cosmologies of objects. We view these objects through an interface from which we perceive their potentials for combination and meaning. The interface-mediated access presents "interfacts" about those objects, if I am understanding the argument well enough. Here too, the OOP analogy is helpful but frustratingly absent from this part of the book.
I am not convinced that the conclusion warranted a full book-length treatment for the payoff seems somewhat meager and brief by comparison to the long trek through a thicket of critique needed to arrive here. But, I do see how this OOP model of objects interferes with a flat ontology of objects that Harman and Latour want to promote. Yoran reminds us of the interface as a point of access and as logic portal that demands objects to be organized into standing relationships.
For my purposes, the book is a good bridge for thinking about the parliament of objects in OOO and Actor Network Theory as it possibly relates to objects made out of data. Data objects, perhaps unlike material objects are more definitively articulated and inscribed with specific potential for combining with other objects. This allows space for bias to creep in and to inscribe the objects and cement those biases into the very nature of those objects, which is held steady by the interface through which we access them
I appreciated the author's attempt to related OOO to object oriented programming (OOP). As I take it, there are two key imports from OOP to OOO. One is that objects can have inherent properties that define potential, standing relationships between them. Things like message passing, class characteristics, and inheritance. The other is that the interface through which one gains access to computing objects presumes a logic of interaction that defines the potential for objects to combine. I found these comparisons helpful but a little understated and overshadowed by arguments in other chapters.
Many of the chapters were devoted to close textual engagement with OOO arguments from across a number of Harman's texts, to an extent at times that this book seemed to be more concerned with parsing the complex terminology of OOO and finding cracks or ambiguities in the OOO justification to stake a claim for the interfact that is revealed in the closing chapters.
The interfact, itself, is an interesting and worthwhile concept. It posits, following OOO, that objects are things in themselves that exist apart from our thinking about them. And in their "things in themselves" form they entail the totality of all possible enactments of those objects and ways of relating them to other objects. I prefer to think of that quality as something like "potential," but okay. Yoran adds the possibility that individual objects are things in themselves but they also exist as parts of other standing configurations of objects. He borrows the term "mesh" to reference this standing relationship but the sense is that these are necessary relationships that allow objects to exist. These meshes bind objects together in a logic of interrelationships that is true of the local cosmology or rather parallel cosmologies of objects. We view these objects through an interface from which we perceive their potentials for combination and meaning. The interface-mediated access presents "interfacts" about those objects, if I am understanding the argument well enough. Here too, the OOP analogy is helpful but frustratingly absent from this part of the book.
I am not convinced that the conclusion warranted a full book-length treatment for the payoff seems somewhat meager and brief by comparison to the long trek through a thicket of critique needed to arrive here. But, I do see how this OOP model of objects interferes with a flat ontology of objects that Harman and Latour want to promote. Yoran reminds us of the interface as a point of access and as logic portal that demands objects to be organized into standing relationships.
For my purposes, the book is a good bridge for thinking about the parliament of objects in OOO and Actor Network Theory as it possibly relates to objects made out of data. Data objects, perhaps unlike material objects are more definitively articulated and inscribed with specific potential for combining with other objects. This allows space for bias to creep in and to inscribe the objects and cement those biases into the very nature of those objects, which is held steady by the interface through which we access them
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February 28, 2023The Interfact: On Structure and Compatibility in Object-Oriented Ontology by Gabriel Yoran (2021)
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews