What are the key takeaways from this The Partially Examined Life episode?

Key insights include: **Promiscuous Ontology:** Harman argues for a flat ontology where entities include not just physical objects but also organizations like the Dutch East India Company, fictional characters like Sherlock Holmes, and momentary events like airplane collisions. This challenges physicalism by demonstrating that real objects need not be material, spatial, or permanent to qualify as genuine entities in the world.; **Four False Assumptions:** Harman identifies physicalism (everything is material), smallism (only basic particles are real), antifictionalism (only real things exist), and literalism (everything can be stated propositionally) as flawed assumptions in scientific reductionism. He contends that emergent properties at macro levels possess unique characteristics irreducible to their components, even when those properties are predictable from micro-level analysis.; **Kantian Withdrawal:** Objects-in-themselves remain permanently inaccessible to direct perception or knowledge, creating what Harman calls withdrawal. Humans only access sensory objects, simplified representations that function like fictions compared to the complex real objects. This applies equally to all interactions, including between non-human objects like billiard balls, eliminating traditional causality and requiring occasionalism where objects never truly touch.

How long is this episode of The Partially Examined Life?

This episode is 50 minutes long. SignalCast provides an AI-generated summary so you can get the key insights in about 3 minutes.

The Partially Examined Life

Ep. 384: Graham Harman's Object-Oriented Ontology (Part One)

January 26, 2026

50 min episode · 2 min read

Episode

50 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

Relationships, Software Development, Crypto & Web3

AI-Generated Summary

Published Jan 26, 2026

Key Takeaways

✓Promiscuous Ontology: Harman argues for a flat ontology where entities include not just physical objects but also organizations like the Dutch East India Company, fictional characters like Sherlock Holmes, and momentary events like airplane collisions. This challenges physicalism by demonstrating that real objects need not be material, spatial, or permanent to qualify as genuine entities in the world.
✓Four False Assumptions: Harman identifies physicalism (everything is material), smallism (only basic particles are real), antifictionalism (only real things exist), and literalism (everything can be stated propositionally) as flawed assumptions in scientific reductionism. He contends that emergent properties at macro levels possess unique characteristics irreducible to their components, even when those properties are predictable from micro-level analysis.
✓Kantian Withdrawal: Objects-in-themselves remain permanently inaccessible to direct perception or knowledge, creating what Harman calls withdrawal. Humans only access sensory objects, simplified representations that function like fictions compared to the complex real objects. This applies equally to all interactions, including between non-human objects like billiard balls, eliminating traditional causality and requiring occasionalism where objects never truly touch.
✓Aesthetic Access: Harman proposes metaphor and aesthetic experience provide indirect access to real objects that literal propositional language cannot capture. This approach draws on Kant's third critique and romantic philosophy, suggesting humans substitute themselves as things-in-themselves to gain oblique knowledge of other withdrawn objects. Scientific definitions using universals inherently fail to capture concrete individual things.
✓Undermining and Overmining: Harman rejects both undermining (reducing objects to smaller components like atoms) and overmining (reducing objects to their relations or effects). He positions his theory against both materialist reductionism and idealist approaches, maintaining that mid-sized objects like tables possess genuine reality irreducible to either their constituent parts or their functional relationships with other entities.

What It Covers

The Partially Examined Life examines Graham Harman's Object-Oriented Ontology, exploring his argument that real objects exist independently but remain inaccessible to direct knowledge. The discussion covers Harman's rejection of reductionism, his Kantian framework distinguishing real versus sensory objects, and his claim that metaphor and aesthetics provide indirect access to things-in-themselves.

Key Questions Answered

•Promiscuous Ontology: Harman argues for a flat ontology where entities include not just physical objects but also organizations like the Dutch East India Company, fictional characters like Sherlock Holmes, and momentary events like airplane collisions. This challenges physicalism by demonstrating that real objects need not be material, spatial, or permanent to qualify as genuine entities in the world.
•Four False Assumptions: Harman identifies physicalism (everything is material), smallism (only basic particles are real), antifictionalism (only real things exist), and literalism (everything can be stated propositionally) as flawed assumptions in scientific reductionism. He contends that emergent properties at macro levels possess unique characteristics irreducible to their components, even when those properties are predictable from micro-level analysis.
•Kantian Withdrawal: Objects-in-themselves remain permanently inaccessible to direct perception or knowledge, creating what Harman calls withdrawal. Humans only access sensory objects, simplified representations that function like fictions compared to the complex real objects. This applies equally to all interactions, including between non-human objects like billiard balls, eliminating traditional causality and requiring occasionalism where objects never truly touch.
•Aesthetic Access: Harman proposes metaphor and aesthetic experience provide indirect access to real objects that literal propositional language cannot capture. This approach draws on Kant's third critique and romantic philosophy, suggesting humans substitute themselves as things-in-themselves to gain oblique knowledge of other withdrawn objects. Scientific definitions using universals inherently fail to capture concrete individual things.
•Undermining and Overmining: Harman rejects both undermining (reducing objects to smaller components like atoms) and overmining (reducing objects to their relations or effects). He positions his theory against both materialist reductionism and idealist approaches, maintaining that mid-sized objects like tables possess genuine reality irreducible to either their constituent parts or their functional relationships with other entities.

Notable Moment

The hosts express frustration when Harman claims all experienced objects are merely fictions, with Dylan objecting that simplified models differ fundamentally from fictions because models enable practical decisions about reality. The discussion reveals tension between Harman's provocative language and his actual Kantian position that appearances, while not things-in-themselves, still provide reliable contingent truths about the world.

Know someone who'd find this useful?

Episode Transcript

You're listening to the Partially Examined Life, a podcast by some guys who at one point set on doing philosophy for a living, but then thought better of it. Our question for episode 384 is, what is there? And we read the introduction plus chapters one, two, and four of Grant Harmon's 2018 book, Object Oriented Ontology, A New Theory of Everything. For more information about the text and the podcast, please see partiallyexaminelife.com. This is Mark Nitzenmaier, autographically self presenting in Madison, Wisconsin. This is Seth Paskin mediated locally in Austin, Texas. This is Wes Allwan, a mid to large sized object who is not reducible to his parts or his whereabouts in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This is Dylan Casey pentamining in Madison, Wisconsin. Pentamining? What is this? Right. There's dual mining, undermining, over mining. Pentamining. I said pentamining. Oh, okay. Okay. I bullshitted Biden as well. There's no entrographic chart. There's no entrographic self presentation. That is pure nonsense. There's some, interesting terminology in here. This this man who went to Saint John's. Right? Yeah. He's a, senior when I was a freshman. Yes. He's, what we could have been doing. Did you get some kind of when somebody, you know, that we went to grad school with or something like, yeah. I could have been mean? In that direction. He'd been much recommended to us. No. I'm pretty happy where I am, but I did notice reading his I had forgot he went to Saint John's, and I think I told you guys. I just saw all the typical Saint John's tropes and references. And I'm like, okay. This guy goes to Saint John's. And then looked at his Wikipedia pages or went to Saint John's. Yeah. And we are scheduled to actually speak to him next episode about his newest book, but we wanted first to cover his more famous book, which, you know, is quite recent. It's one of the most recent books that we've done. It's but he's been thinking about this. I think this really goes all the way back to his first book, February tool being Heidegger and the metaphysics of objects. So that should tell a little bit about where he's coming from. But I thought just with his presentation, at least he given that he's gonna be writing some pretty bizarre stuff, it's admirably clear. This is, you know, so this is his umpteenth presentation of this topic, and he really tries to make it accessible to new philosophy readers. And even though there's lots of sort of little secondary literature on Bruno Latour and Jose Ortega y Gasset and several other people. It's usually presented in a way that you don't have to know anything about them. It was only when he got to I don't know. I dispute some of his readings, let's put it that way, when he's talking about Husserl and Heidegger. Yeah. Any initial reactions, summaries? I think he would say he's a continental philosopher. Right? …

Get the full transcript (9,285 words) + summary by email — free

One-time email with the complete transcript and AI summary of this episode. No account needed.

One email, no spam. We’ll also show you what SignalCast does.

Browse all The Partially Examined Life transcripts →