Graham Harman

This article claims that the familiar distinction between “first-person” and “third-person” perspectives is not a very strong distinction, given that both are perspectives. Quite apart from any perspective we might take on things there are the things themselves, in what the author calls their “zero-person” reality. Appealing to an unorthodox reading of Brentano, Husserl, and Heidegger, the author makes a lengthy critique of David Chalmers for remaining a reductionist in the physical realm even as he opposes reductionism for minds. In closing, the article defends a “polypsychism” instead of “panpsychism,” since many objects are conscious but by no means all of them.

The article begins from Stephen Hawking's well-known claim that philosophy is dead, and considers several other quotations in which philosophy is either belittled or subordinated outright to the natural sciences. This subordination requires a downward reductionism that is paralleled by the upward reductionism of the linguistic turn and social constructionist theories. Rather than undermining or overmining mid-sized individual entities, philosophy must deal with objects on their own terms. This suggests a possible tactical alliance between philosophy and the arts