Object, Reduction, and Emergence: An Object-Oriented View

Abstract

Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) is a contemporary form of realism concerned with the investigation of “objects” broadly construed. It may be characterised in terms of a metaphysical pluralism to the extent that it recognises infinitely many different kinds of emergent entities, and this fact in turn leads to a number of questions concerning the nature of objects and emergence in OOO: what is the precise meaning of an emergent entity in OOO? How has emergence been denied throughout the history of Western thought? Is there a specific object-oriented account of emergence? What is the causal mechanism which provides the conditions of possibility for the generation of emergent entities? In this article, I aim to answer all these questions by constructing the first extensive account of real emergence in the context of Object-Oriented Ontology, and I also seek to tie this analysis to the notion of “vicarious” or indirect causation.

Towards an Object-Oriented Organization Theory: The Role of Entrepreneurial Objects in Organizational Emergence

“…For instance, it is not impossible to imagine the assassination of Franz Ferdinand including no gun at all but instead a grenade, which is what almost happened in actuality. Understanding events as objects (Young, 2021) enables us to consider their uniqueness and intractability to any fundamental source or specific combination (Baranovas, 2020). OOO defiantly defends "things" over "process," showing how the latter constantly undermines the former through notions of potentiality and virtuality, movement and perpetual change.…”

“…An underlying palette of matter combined with particular actions does not detract from the reality of objects (Harman, 2013); and neither can things in OOO be reduced to their sociopolitical contexts or sociomaterial relations (Harman, 2018). Objects are reduceable neither to their material constitution nor to their activities (Young, 2021).…”

“…In this mode of thinking emergence is an instance of something coming to exist that is not merely the sum of its parts (Morton, 2011(Morton, , 2018. Our tentative theory is based on object-oriented ontology (henceforth OOO; see Harman, 2018, for a general introduction to OOO; and see Young, 2021, for a treatise on emergence from an OOO perspective), which proposes an innovative shift towards treating everything that exists as an object, including phenomena previously thought to be represented best through a strong process ontology, such as events and activities (Cloutier & Langley, 2020). In the OOO view, no change occurs unless something is capable of changing, or of being an agent for change.…”