Entanglements:
Journal of Posthumanities
E-ISSN: 3107-488X

(Article) ‐ Volume 2, Issue 2 (Open Issue)
Retrieving Bryant's pan-mechanist machine ontology: Entanglement, function, and "mechanism in general"
Authored By — Eamon Reid

Abstract

Between publishing The Democracy of Objects and Onto-Cartography, Levi Bryant introduced the notion of pan-mechanism or "mechanism in general". Since these publications, powers-based and dispositionalist ontologies have been gaining traction in the Continental tradition. The machine ontologies of Bryant, Kleinherenbrink, and Ardoline use powers and dispositions to explain what machines do. Machines possess dispositional properties that allow them to affect and be affected in distinctive ways. This ontology is both non-anthropocentric and post-human as machinic operations occur (or fail to occur) even if humans are not around to experience them. I argue that retrieving panmechanism allows us to talk about interconnection and interrelation without undermining the machinic individualities of humans and nonhumans. Pan-mechanism also facilitates inter-philosophical dialogue between substantialist and relationist philosophies. Panmechanism describes the general fact that the machinic functions aim at producing the new and maintaining machinic identities. Often, we may know or infer some of the machines involved in an instance of production, but we may not know all the machines involved in the act of generation. Pan-mechanism is then grounded in a pan-machinism. I argue that Bryant's ontology can be seen as a hybrid two-dimensional one that is simultaneously relationist about interactions and is substantialist regarding machines. I argue that this two-dimensional metaphysics is worth retrieving, for it can serve as a metamethodological guide for our investigations into the world qua "mechanosphere".

Keywords

Levi Bryant, Machine-oriented Ontology, Pan-mechanism, Panmachinism, Dispositionalism, Entanglement, The Mechanosphere.

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