as soon as we concentrate on the toothbrush as a toothbrush, as soon it becomes visible again, it ceases to be functional

That's rubbish too. I can use a toothbrush and think about it qua toothbrush at one and the same time. Honestly, what junk! What a shaky, creaky scaffolding to build anything on!

I have been to a few seminars run by Fisher, and keep up with his K-punk blog, and I also read you. The technical language is off putting if you don't understand it, but one would never claim that maths should use words because numbers are too confusing. I

I actually see a lot of similarities between you and K-punk, but maybe that is just because you are next to him on my rss feeds...

I see a lot of similarities between me and Jonathan Meese.

out there, your friends, the squirrels.

you can't argue with that.

But don't forget that there is always one squirrel in each multiplicity with a minimum guaranteed degree of existence. I don't just say that in an anecdotal way. It follows of necessity. Can you tell me why? Anyone?

Perhaps subjective sentience is always indivisibly singular – and “one” object is always a projection of such singular sentience(s) (not that we can’t multitask – but I think a life, not a physical object, is “one”: we will forever be able to divide objects into smaller and smaller “atoms” and wider and wider contexts (relativity), but like Protagoras said, “Squirrels are the measure of all things.”

Isn't "oneness" as necessary for life itself as a diverse ecological context? Why... not?

This “speculative realism,” which opposes itself to “correlationism” (which I understand to be an anthropomorphication of objective reality—this seems akin to the “correspondence/coherence” dichotomy in epistemology as well)—this “speculative realism” seems to me to rely too heavily on “physics” for its examples, rather than biology. True there may be some continuum between physics and biology, but the “fact of foci” (re: self-organizing systems—that bodies are unified—that there may be something besides structure to life—that it’s not all about the machine-network) – the “fact of foci” suggest that, even if we should not anthropomorphise reality, how could we divorce it from foci which just MAY be dependent on something a-mechanical, something a-structural, in life. Such a “pre-life” (beyond pre-human) reality would be completely de-centered, utterly incomprehensible, and just possibly chaos.

Niggling about whether the example of a toothbrush works or not is really beside the point, as is the blustering about impenetrable language. The point is that speculative realism threatens to overturn the relativistic non-metaphysical worldview that has been prevalent in philosophy since Kant, and in society in general since postmodernism (and seems to be more or less your worldview as well). But it does so not by slipping back into modernism or scientism but by moving onto something else, a sort of "weird realism". If you can get past your prejudices about language and abstraction, you might find something interesting there, Momus.

Niggling about whether the example of a toothbrush works or not is really beside the point, as is the blustering about impenetrable language.

I'm happy about the brave new world stretching out beyond the impasse of relativism and all, but wishing or asserting don't make it so. If this proud dawn can only happen if people are persuaded by examples like the toothbrush -- and it seems that's the condition of its acceptance -- then it's hardly "niggling" or "blustering" to point out that these examples don't even begin to work. Of course, if we're just proposing "weird realism", why even try to persuade by supposedly-credible examples? Why not just say "It's weird, and doesn't work, but at least it's new!"

Although a fan of Heidegger (esp. through Derrida), I think I agree with Momus: how many times do we need to recast clichés to break them into consciousness with obscure writing styles? (The broken tool thing also being a metaphor for Heidegger’s de-familiarizing style: as if we’re all sleepwalking until hit over the head with a club of the unfamiliar—Heidegger seems to believe “we’re” not really conscious simply because what is called “procedural” knowledge is not always verbally explicit: AS IF words are more conscious than actions—another prejudice of 20th century thinking).

Although sometimes guilty of the same, I (of course) prefer my “ultra contemporary” approach:

http://tr.im/styletaste

heidegger blown to pieces in 2 sentences! congratulations momus