The Interfact by Gabriel Yoran - new open access book from Open Humanities Press

Open Humanities Press is pleased to announce the publication of The Interfact: On Structure and Compatibility in Object-Oriented Ontology by Gabriel Yoran

Like all Open Humanities Press books, The Interfact is available to download for free:

http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/the-interfact/

Objects in object-oriented ontology (OOO) are mysterious and inexhaustible entities. But since OOO grants ontological priority to objects, it should have an easy time referring to objects. But this is not the case.

In The Interfact, Yoran researches the question of how OOO refers to an object’s haecceity, its ‘thisness.’ He starts with an investigation into OOO’s eponymous practice, object-oriented programming (OOP) and identifies not just a plethora of parallels, but finds OOP’s concept of interfaces (as structured ways of object confrontation in time) a promising tool to describe both the rift between all objects and their relative stability.

Yoran then extends Harman’s fourfold diagrams to reflect the linkages between fourfolds, revealing that objects necessarily are parts of other objects. This phenomenon, which he calls out-of-phase objects, reveals links to Simondon’s notion of compatibilisation.

Yoran argues that objects are necessarily integrated into a fabric of interconnected fourfolds as well as component-compound relations. This structure solves the problem of object identification, by recognizing the object-fourfolds as overlaps, a mutually stabilizing structure which allows for reproducible object confrontation in time, or facts.

'The complexity of the ideas in this book are challenging to the intellect, just as the argument itself represents a worthy challenge to some well-regarded philosophical positions. One of the most exciting things about this argument is that it takes seriously the ways in which object-oriented programming can inform object-oriented philosophy, and vice-versa, demonstrating significant, practical connections between the two.'

 - Noah Roderick, author of The Being of Analogy

The Interfact is published in our New Metaphysics series, which is edited by Graham, Harman and Bruno Latour:

http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/series/new-metaphysics/

Author Bio

Gabriel Yoran received his PhD on Speculative Realism at the European Graduate School. Previously, he studied Social and Economic Communications at the Berlin University of the Arts. He is co-founder of several digital companies (Steady, Steganos, aka-aki) and works at the intersection of computer science and philosophy. He contributed “Applied Metaphysics – Objects in Object-Oriented Ontology and Object-Oriented Programming” to the Interface Critique Journal and “Interface kaputt – Cyborgism and Object-Oriented Philosophy” to the volume Interface Critique, published at Kadmos. For more information on his work see yoran.com