Uploaded January 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
On Harman's Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything (2018). What counts as an entity in the world? Harman includes not just physical objects, but fictional objects, "sensual objects," and even events, which you might have thought were the alternative to objects.
With this promiscuous ontology comes a strange theory of causality whereby no real object touches another real object, and an epistemology that involves us having no knowledge of real objects at all, though Harman's theory art gives us a back-door to make up for this deficiency, and philosophy itself ends up sharing in these properties of art.
This discussion continues with youtu.be/cS2rrHI-3KI. Get more at partiallyexaminedlife.com. Visit partiallyexaminedlife.com/support to get ad-free episodes and tons of bonus discussion.
On Harman's Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything (2018). What counts as an entity in the world? Harman includes not just physical objects, but fictional objects, "sensual objects," and even events, which you might have thought were the alternative to objects.
With this promiscuous ontology comes a strange theory of causality whereby no real object touches another real object, and an epistemology that involves us having no knowledge of real objects at all, though Harman's theory art gives us a back-door to make up for this deficiency, and philosophy itself ends up sharing in these properties of art.
This discussion continues with youtu.be/cS2rrHI-3KI. Get more at partiallyexaminedlife.com. Visit partiallyexaminedlife.com/support to get ad-free episodes and tons of bonus discussion.
