Don't Mess with Mr. In-Between

Heidegger puts it slightly differently than I do in Ecology without Nature, but basically it's very much the same argument. To argue for a “between” such as an “ambience” or Nature that somehow accommodates subjects and objects, is already to have decided some things about said subjects and objects in advance, namely that they are reified “objective presence.”

Now if you're a fan of OOO withdrawal you just can't do that. In fact, the OOO solution is that what is called the “between” such as “environment” is really another object.

This is why I've long been suspicious of approaches that claim to solve the subject–object dualism by positing a special adhesive that exists “between” them, or a special restaurant (nice ambience, nice music) in which they might finally hit it off and have sex.