Object-Oriented Ontology: Closing The Gap Between Knowledge And Reality? Background and Outline Objectives Perception Immanuel Kant had famously distinguished The research seeks to engage critically with OOO. the noumenon (the thing-in-itself) from the Thereby it hopes to identify and close the gap be- phenomenon (what humans know or per- tween the knower and the known; between the knowl- ceive). Humans have no direct access to edge and reality. This will be contrasted with the ma- Reality the noumenon; epistemic access is only to terialistic school of Indian Philosophy (Charvaka). the phenomenon. Harman’s Object-Orient- ed Ontology (OOO) returns autonomy to the Research Questions noumenon. Harman prefers the word object, What is reality, really? which is to be understood in a wide sense, How does the view that humans are no more spe- that is anything that cannot be reduced to cial or important than the non-human objects we constituent parts or to effects on other things. perceive change the way we understand the world? OOO finds that the best access to objects, What are the philosophical underpinnings if objects while allowing objects to be themselves, is function independently of human subjectivity? through an aesthetic approach. He argues https://images.app.goo.gl/Sbpk3YrnRrdvaSGw8 that all objects must be given equal atten- Method https://images.app.goo.gl/PG75z6CEgUDWTKFT7 tion, whether they be human, non-human, Metaphysical Speculation, Speculative Ontology, natural, cultural, real or fictional. This phi- Analytical Ontology, Transcendental Metaphysics. losophy poses the problem of detecting the Analysis of Positions, Theories, from various philos- Supervisor: gap between knowledge and reality. Modern ophers. Ao. Univ.-Prof. Dr. Christian Kanzian epistemological theories have mostly con- Institut für Christliche Philosophie cerned what appears directly to the human Literature mind than what exists independent of our mind. In contrast to this, Harman presents a Harman, Graham. Object-oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything. Pelican Books. London 2018. new way of understanding reality. Gabriel, Markus. Fields of Sense: A New Realist Ontology. Edinburgh University Press. 2015. Shimmy Joseph Vayalil, [email protected] .