Saturday, December 29, 2012

Morton's book on hyperobjects

Just checking Morton's blog it appears he'll have a new book in 2013, Hyperobjects. I'm looking forward to it. I'm guessing though that his shentong is going to metaphysicalize hyperobjects in ways I've already explored in IPS OOO thread. For example, from this Morton post:

"Hyperobjects are nonlocal: they do not manifest at a specific time and place but rather are stretched out in such a way as to challenge the idea that a thing must occupy a specific place and time."

In the same post he notes HOs cannot be perceived directly and that they create their own time. Hence they do exist in a specific time and space, albeit self-generated, but the fact that we cannot perceive it is not evidence of its non-locality, only of our inability to locate it in our limited space-time frame of reference. His first claim to non-locality smacks of a shentong prejudice that implies some kind of transcendent realm and/or consciousness as foundation for the whole shebang. Granted my thesis is not evidenced by this comments in the referenced post on HOs but garnered from my criticisms in the thread on how he mixes his shentong with his OOO.


As to Morton's shentong view, see his essay on Hegel and Buddhism. And his blog post on the subject. See the extended IPS discussion on hyperobjects that began on p. 81 and ran for several pages, nothing how Bryant and Morton differ on this. And my relating Morton's shentong to his view on HOs. E.g., the following post from p. 84:

“Morton and Bryant's views don't merge completely. So one question is this: Do hyperobjects not have boundaries that define their autonomy like smaller objects? Granted they are non-local in comparison to smaller, more local appearing objects. And yet examples like climate, class or capitalism still have their own boundaries. They still have a part-whole mereology, even if that mereology is strange, where the boundary defines the whole object within its endo-structure. So why is there an exception for Morton, with no boundary here?”

And from p. 86:

“Morton's 'the particle doesn't truly exist' seems to contradict Bryant's firm statement in the absolute singularity of the smaller-scale object. It is but an implicated relation to the hyperobject, the latter being 'really only one substance modulated in different ways."'Bryant is particularly (pun intended) critical of that sort of monistic goo. Hence you also get Bryant's disagreement about non-locality being 'in time,' whereas for Morton it transcends time with simultaneous communication across space-time since they really aren't two distinct particles but of one thing.”

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