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I've been thinking a lot about this particular session, hence (at least in part) my tardy posting about it.  I'm among those who "resisted the activity" of seeing the world "from the perspective of an inanimate object."  And found myself wondering what was wrong with me (perhaps another reason why it has take me some time to comment).  I thought I was all in favor of "dislocation" but somehow this particular version of it didn't ... grab me?  What was going on?  Am I less in favor of dislocation than I think I am?  Only in favor of dislocation when I get to define the terms of the dislocation?   Just a wet blanket?  Or .... ?

Having had a little time to think, I'd prefer at least for the present to think the answer is ... Or.  And that the session, and my struggles with it, may some useful light on our collective enterprise of making sense of evolving systems.

I realized I'm skeptical of "object oriented ontology" not because I resist dislocation but because I value it, not because I want to glorify human perspectives but because I want to challenge them.  And for me both are better done from a different starting point:  the idea that ontologies and perspectives exist only in a subset of  "objects," those whose internal organization gives them the capacity to have ontologies and perspectives.  Bats (in addition to humans and ...) may well have ontologies and perspectives, and so the disloaction of trying to think like a bat (cf Thomas Nagel, What is it like to be a bat?) seems promising to me.  But clocks (my own choice of "object") and many other things probably don't.  For me, there is plenty of  generative "dislocation" simply in recognizing that many things lack ontologies/perspectives, that much of the universe gets along perfectly well without things that seem so central to our own lives

I enjoyed hearing what others thought the world might look like to a clock or belly button or sun.   But I also couldn't help but think the exercise involved imposing a  human perspective on non-human things rather than challenging a human perspective.  I'm glad that people enjoyed it, and pleased that some people saw it as a way to move beyond their own particular perspectives, but .... for me the more intriguing dislocation is to decline to impute familiar human characteristics, including ontologies and perspectives, to things that may well not have them. 

Could I be wrong?  Could it actually be the case that clocks and belly buttons (another of my object choices given the assignment) and suns (see The physical and the spiritual: how to get through the veil) actually have ontologies/perspectives?  Of course.  Is there a "spirit" in all things, animate and inanimate?  Certainly, if one defines "spirit" appropriately.  And perhaps pantheism is for some people a good way to achieve dislocation, to challenge presumptions about how things are.  What interests me though is not what is similar about all things but rather what distinctive differences there are among things.  What seriously challenges human perspectives in general isn't endowing everything with the same properties humans have but rather noticing the restricted distribution and role of familiar human properties in a larger universe of which humans are a small part.

And this, in turn, not only challenges any presumption of human superiority but raises (for me at least) some intriguing new questions.  Yes, the human perspective is arbitrary rather than "transcendent".  Yes, there are  alternate perspectives/ontologies (probably including those of bats), as well as ways of being that don't have perspective/ontologies at all.  Maybe the point isn't just that the human ontology/perpective is limited but rather that there is something limited/challengeable  about perspectives/ontologies in general?  And maybe while limited in many ways, having perspectives/ontologies is also useful in some ways?  Both would be consistent with thinking of perspectives/ontologies as ontologies/perspectives as recent emergent capabilities, present in of some but not all entities.

In short, I'm happy to have "dislocations" call attention to the limitations of particular ontologies/perspectives.   What I find problematic is the notion that there is, in "object orienting ontology," a  way out of the trap of possessing ontologies/perspectives.  To go one step further, I don't think it is in fact a trap that can or should be escaped. Creating and recognizing "ontologies and perspectives" is a tool that gives us the wherewithal to conceive new "ontologies/perspectives."  Rather than trying to get beyond "ontologies and perspectives," or trying to extend them to all entities, I'm inclined to celebrate them as an evolved characteristic that gives those in possession of it a distinctive role in the evolutionary process, an ability to speed up the exploration of possible forms of existence by switching from one set of ontologies/perspectives to another.

Was I a "set blanket" in this conversation?  Yes, I was, and I apologize for that. People should use whatever exercises help them find new ontologies/perspectives.  I hope its clear though that I wasn't a wet blanket either out of spite or a resistance to dislocation.   What was on my mind, and remains on my mind, is the role that having ontologies/perspectives plays in an evolutionary process for which having them is an exception rather than the rule.  And the notion that ontologies/perspectives, used to create dislocations and hence new ontologies/perspectives, are a late-comer but one that can play an increasing and useful role in that process.