I had the good fortune to read Ian Bogost's Whitehead paper, which argued that process philosophy was in danger of not accounting for causality, only skimming along the phenomenal surface of events. Bogost suggests that if we think processes as procedures (which I imagine as algorithm-like operations with definite steps) we might get closer to causality. I can see how it will be important for Realist Magic. As are the following thoughts, composed rather impressionistically.
Somewhere in his description of processes he uses the phrase "firehose materialism"--which I can't help hearing as the cousin of my "lava lamp materialism." (See Harman's post on this.) My lava lamps have to do with a certain aesthetics that I think process philosophy finds attractive. But they also have to do with atomism and causality. Here's a little bit why.
Now I'd prefer a lava lamp to a firehose in my living room. But I think they are identical in at least one respect.
Consider water flowing through the hose. At time t1 the water will be at hose point a. At time t2 the water will be at hose point b.
It seems elementary that time is an external framework relative to the water flow, on this view. The hose, on this analogy, is time, an the water travels through it in a decisive direction.
Time is external to the process.
Process philosophy fails to account for the one thing that makes it attractive to people--getting away from the static. For every process we need a static frame (hose, lamp) in which the process can take place.
The gush of water, then, is an atomic unit of process. Sure it's not a little ball, but it has a temporal front and a back and it moves relative to a static container. Same thing with my lava lamp: it's a blob, not a ball, but it's consistently itself relative to a static container and a linear time sequence.
The very thing that seems to be the case--we build Einstein-like temporality into our ontology--is the one thing that's missing.
If you really want to do an Einstein time has to occur on the inside of an object. And that's where Harman's work comes in.
1 comments:
Hi Tim -
It's not clear to me if you're saying that "firehose metaphysics" requires "a static frame (hose, lamp) in which the process can take place," or that Whitehead's process philosophy requires that frame (and fails to acknowledge it?). Of course if Bogost's firehose image accurately captures the entirety of Whitehead, then the two are the same. But doesn't that remain to be proven? (His paper is new and hasn't convinced the dozens, or hundreds, of Whitehead scholars just yet...)
"If you really want to do an Einstein time has to occur on the inside of an object."
I completely agree! (That's why I find the firehose image a poor analogy.)
Post a Comment