Brian Cantwell Smith

An extremely smart and, to use one of the author's favorite words, feisty account of an objectless ontology that purports to chart a middle course between constructionism and realism. The basic argument, which draws on computer science, physics, and both analytic and continental philosophy, is that the universe is in permanent flux and that there are no ontologically prior distinctions that can be drawn in it, but that distinct objects are nonetheless wrestled out of the "flex and slop" of being. The message is one of human pluralism out of metaphysical monism, in which computation emerges as a gradualistic process which illustrates how registration and interaction are separate from representation, which he takes as belonging to the purely human side of things.

I found this book after watching Cantwell Smith's excellent lecture on computation providing a middle groundwork between the discursive realm of Heidegger and co, and the mechanistic realm respresented by Pascal.… (más)