'A reckoning for our species': the philosopher prophet of the Anthropocene
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
This strategy of employing familiar language in unfamiliar contexts gives the appearance of being radical but may not be quite that. It strikes me as being largely a reversal of Skinnerian behaviorism: the behaviorists said that human beings are nothing special because they're just like animals and plants, responding to stimuli in law-governed ways; now the object-oriented ontologists say that human beings are nothing special because animals and plants (and hammers and black holes) all possess the traits of consciousness and desire that we have traditionally believed to be distinctive to us. The goal of the philosophical redescription seems to be the same: to dethrone humanity, to get us to stop thinking of ourselves as sitting at the pinnacle of the Great Chain of Being.
It's hard for me to take Morton too seriously because our ( by which I mean his and mine ) Metaphysics are so diametrically opposed. Hyperobjects are so ontologically complex as to give the feeling they have been invented solely to justify the philosopher's pre-existing beliefs ( though in fairness, you can write that about a lot of things ).
Reminds me of a bit from the Jargon File's chapter on "Anthropomorphization" (http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/anthropomorphization.html):
"Almost all hackers subscribe to the mechanistic, materialistic ontology of science (this is in practice true even of most of the minority with contrary religious theories). In this view, people are biological machines — consciousness is an interesting and valuable epiphenomenon, but mind is implemented in machinery which is not fundamentally different in information-processing capacity from computers.
"Hackers tend to take this a step further and argue that the difference between a substrate of CHON atoms and water and a substrate of silicon and metal is a relatively unimportant one; what matters, what makes a thing ‘alive’, is information and richness of pattern. This is animism from the flip side; it implies that humans and computers and dolphins and rocks are all machines exhibiting a continuum of modes of ‘consciousness’ according to their information-processing capacity.
"Because hackers accept that a human machine can have intentions, it is therefore easy for them to ascribe consciousness and intention to other complex patterned systems such as computers. If consciousness is mechanical, it is neither more or less absurd to say that 'The program wants to go into an infinite loop' than it is to say that 'I want to go eat some chocolate' — and even defensible to say that 'The stone, once dropped, wants to move towards the center of the earth'."
Why do people come up with things like this?
Wait, there's a wiki on complexity theory? Computational complexity or the complex systems kind?
I don't find the term as obscure as a I find it offensive: it just sounds wrong. But yeah, there are plenty of terms like that in any field, whether they be obscure or just irksome.
I don't think you give enough credit to the potential importance of eloquent memes and the building of new religions of sorts, in pursuit of making the more complex truths about our world and humanity (which hopefully can inform desired common futures) more palletable to a sizeable majority. (My underlying assumption is that we are emotional machines that sometimes engage in rational thought, and not vice versa.)
Pure rationalism won't get us to the future we deserve. We need to treat our packages of beliefs almost as we do the most widely-used open source projects -- shiny surfaces, perhaps built collaboratively, that package up a more meticulously considered core, rooted in something that tends toward a more just world -- a surface thing that is perhaps a little more superficial and concealing of it's unique working, but can be interrogated and dissected by those who care to dive in. The rest can just consume it and have a shallow affinity for the beautiful packaging, and that's ok. The point is that we together build the core carefully, we can all interrogate it to understand why it does what it does, and why it points us in certain directions without asking us to go all the way down the rabbit hole, and that those who care to question its tenets can dig deeper into them.
So in this analogy, might Morton just we working on the pretty UI, that's trying to package up the underlying architecture in a way (if not with 100% fidelity) that can at least be more socially transformative ? It's this line of thinking that makes me feel your criticism to be, while not untrue, then at least somewhat counterproductive to the sorts of action/memes that I believe will be most effective in the world.
Someone who values the best version of the currently knowable truth would have one perspective.
Someone who values human life over freedom has another.
Others value believing in something palatable for a majority of others (clothes, social status, etc.)
Most of what we look at is our projection. Parents believe in things like the future. Others are content for their moment, without wishing for that.
It's impossible to escape our initial and very personal biases to describe these things.
IMO the best we can do is to reveal consistencies we can act upon. For me that is enough.
David Harvey speaks about us being able to stave off the inequality wreaked by automation and outsourcing of work by the expansion of consumer credit in the 80s. Now, household debt AND public debt are at all-time highs, the borrowing spree has ended.
Similarly we have been able to stave off the malthusian trap for decades, we've been destroying biodiversity and turning the world into monoculture and farms. We've had a population explosion and have been releasing entropy and heat on the earth even faster than that.
Will the bill come due? Or will we find ways to capture the carbon and put it underground?
This is one of the scariest reads:
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist...
What am I missing?
I don't understand the appeal/utility/whatever of Morton's odd original contributions (hyperobjects, conscious boulders). It doesn't refute popular misconceptions of a nature-human gulf any better than plain physicalism. It's also not a very appealing basis for Team Humanities propaganda (as you style it) -- who's going to make a Hyperobjects Coloring Book?
Morton's philosophy reminds me of those old herbal remedies that turned out to contain one active herb plus a bunch of superfluous materials and preparation rituals. There's a bit of something valuable in what he says but you can find it purer and simpler elsewhere. Of course even today some people deliberately seek out remedies made with a bunch of superfluous ritual and inactive ingredients, because they like complication for its own sake. Maybe that personality type forms the core of Morton's fans.
If you don't have a good map for the different levels on which kinds of things can be said to operate, then it's intellectually trivial to lay your noodly appendage across a few, and name whatever comes out some combination of latin-greek roots.
I'm all for redirecting and expanding perceptions of what is meaningful and what is moral, but it seems that there are a lot of different flavours for the same thing: 'x category definition leads to y outcome'. What determines the momentum of this claim relates to timing and status, fools gold for prescience.
If we are to take any insight from whatever thing that 'hyperobjects' points to, then it should be the notion that the material consequences of our actions are entwined with our state of mind at the point of consequence. Every experience I have of action informs the kind and timing of future actions. Whatever is held to be more essential of these (action|conception) to some phenomena prescribes what kind 'really matters'. In Morton's world this is hyper-objects - in my world, evolutionary essentialism.
Non-departmental 'philosophy' (edit: I mean 'non-canonical') unfortunately often seems to lead to, 'we started with these popular categories and their features, applied some functions, now we have something different, guess we didn't need those other categories since we retained features. We promise this is unique and cool. And that we definitely retained those features. We fail to mention possibility of knock-down responses, or look for analogues in other fields since we want some money and fame. We hope you get the experience of intellectualism without the effort. Buy my book.'
It's not impressive to take strands of popular rationality and make knots.
Is civilization different from nature? Is it doomed to be destructive, or can it create something new and better?
Many people I've met lately are intellectual materialists, and they are pretty pessimistic about the future.
I have to say though that I'm on the side of civilization. We've got problems, but I think we'll get our act together over the next few centuries.
If we discover another epoch-making asteroid on a trajectory that intersects with Earth, I'd prefer that someone exploit the hell out of it with science instead of standing in solidarity in "ignorance" with the minerals.
According to data surrounding the channeled scablands[0] in Washington state, the earth has been through at least 19 severe cooling periods in the past 2 million years, the approximate time homo sapian and our very close evolutionary ancestors have survived and, in our case at least, thrived beyond all possible expectation.
All this with mostly just the barest bits of technology...fire, sharpened flints etc etc. These cooling events have been massive in scope; Manhattan Island was under 2 miles of ice and glaciers came all the way down to north Georgia.
In other words, we are really good at dealing with a changing environment no matter what the cause could be.
As I read the article, this "philosopher prophet" seems to be nothing of the kind, unless you consider a religious-type zeal for a silly and pretentious prediction of the total destruction of the earth's ecosystem some sort of deep insight.
That's utterly preposterous. Ice core samples[1] of greenhouse gases (you know, actual data points not so-far-very-inaccurate computer models) show we seem to be right on cycle basically and show little scientific basis for the hysterics that this man is being genuflected for in the article.
Of course we should all be concerned about keeping a cleaner environment...who the fuck is for dirty water and air?
Others say the blame for the despoliation of the Earth
should be laid at the feet not of humanity in general, but
of (predominantly white, western and male) capitalism.
Aren't these the same "white men" who basically gave us the industrial revolution, anti-biotics and vaccines that have saved 100's of millions, and a global economy tied to the WWW that is lifting 100's of thousands out of poverty daily?
More to the point...would this be the same capitalism that is responsible in the US for an over 12% reduction in CO2 over the past 10 years?[2]
Yes I know..all this just becomes political in nature and I certainly am not going to change any minds here or anywhere, really. I just can't for the life of my understand why so many people feel the need to underestimate humanity's abilities to fix and deal with pretty much anything the environment throws at us.
Besides a huge meteor impact of course.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channeled_Scablands [1] http://cdiac.ornl.gov/images/air_bubbles_historical.jpg [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms8714#results
After all it is also Capitalism that is giving us the tools to fight global warming and pollution - solar and battery technology, wind, tidal, hydroelectricity, biodegradable plastics, highly efficient self-driving electric vehicles - getting rid of Capitalism isn't going to make all our problems go away with it. Capitalism is at it's core about individual ownership, freedom and responsibility. These are not bad things.
There's a classic Chomsky linguistics example of a cool valid line of English that no matter how cool it looks is none the less complete nonsense. Thats what you're up against arguing with the Humanities tribe "Your argument makes no scientific or logical sense" "Who cares its beautiful and inspirational and I'm not on tribe Science so it doesn't matter"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures
Unfortunately as the two cultures become more mutually incomprehensible, cultural "islands" are polarizing such that large cultural groups literally cannot talk to each other anymore.
Its interesting watching the two cultures as they exceed escape velocity from each other. We have science and economics unconcerned with the morals, ethics and humanities of what they do, with team humanity running our propaganda institutions (education, media) totally unconcerned with their ideas accelerating separation from our increasingly scientific real world.
The Anthropocene epoch has little to do with the climate change issues that you're focusing on. Of course temperature variation and the like will be captured in the geological record. However, what's far more relevant is the abundance of man-made materials like plastics and radioactive isotopes.
Is it premature? Of course, we're naming a geological epoch that's barely even begun. One could argue that we're anticipating history. Is it political? Only inasmuch as any conversation about the future of the planet is political. Is it inaccurate? The evidence that humans have profoundly affected the future of this planet is overwhelming. And I think it would be quite radical to suggest that we won't continue to affect the planet in the future.
You also mention that humans have survived many drastic events, not sure what purpose bringing that up is, the problem is that we are facing a potentially huge humanitarian and economic crisis which we can potentially avoid. The knowledge that previous events didn't destroy the species does little to alleviate that fear.
Timothy Morton wants humanity to give up some
of its core beliefs, from the fantasy that we
can control the planet to the notion that we
are ‘above’ other beings.