STRANGE LOOPS, VICARIOUS CAUSATION, AND MORE-THAN-HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS: TOWARD A POST-ANTHROPOCENTRIC SYNTHESIS OF HARMAN AND HOFSTADTER.

This essay conjectures a novel intersection of Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) and Douglas Hofstadter’s inquiries into human cognition. Prompted by Harman’s use of metaphor and Hofstadter’s exploration of analogy, the essay explores the origins and implications of these linguistic dev...

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Publicado en:Cosmos & History Vol. 21; no. 2; pp. 436 - 461
Autor principal: Bower, Richard
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Ashton & Rafferty 2025
Materias:
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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        Consciousness
        Ontology
        Anthropocentrism
        Cognition
        Analogy
        Meillassoux, Quentin, 1967-
        Metaphor
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          Consciousness
          Ontology
          Anthropocentrism
          Cognition
          Analogy
          Meillassoux, Quentin, 1967-
          Metaphor
      keyword:
        Douglas Hofstadter
        Object-Oriented Ontology
        Polypsychism
        Post-Anthropocentric
        Vicarious Causation
      ab: This essay conjectures a novel intersection of Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) and Douglas Hofstadter’s inquiries into human cognition. Prompted by Harman’s use of metaphor and Hofstadter’s exploration of analogy, the essay explores the origins and implications of these linguistic devices as distinct depictions of ontology and consciousness: metaphor as necessitated by the ontological withdrawal of objects, and loops of analogous perception as the intrinsic foundation of cognition. This intersection affords a subsequent contestation of Hofstadter’s depiction of human consciousness and identity against Harman’s unresolved depictions of speculative polypsychism as a necessity of post-anthropocentric ontologies. Drawing on Quentin Meillassoux’s break from correlationism, Jane Bennett’s thingpower, and Ian Bogost’s alien phenomenology, we argue that Gödelian incompleteness exemplifies the irreducible withdrawal of objects. Ultimately, the implication of analogy and metaphor in both Hofstadter’s and Harman’s work is conjectured as an irresolvable limitation of anthropocentric representation, leading to the novel translation of Gödel’s ‘Incompleteness Theorem’ (via Hofstadter) as a possible realisation of the withdrawn unknowability of objects advocated in Harman’s OOO.
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