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Machines, Virtual and Attractors:

Levi Bryant’s Machine-Oriented
Ontology and Substances as
Powers.

Yuri Di Liberto

Pages: 112–132
Università degli Studi di Palermo
yuridiliberto@yahoo.it

Keywords: Machine, Substance, Singularity, Virtual, Actual, Attractor, Object-Oriented Ontology,

Machine-Oriented Ontology, Speculative Realism, Powers

Abstract

One of the developments in recent literature on speculative realism has been Levi Bryant’s
work on MOO (Machine-Oriented ontology), which is a particular type of the more general
Object-Oriented philosophy. Given that in Bryant’s account the ultimate entities of a world
are machines (in Deleuze’s terms) and that, more importantly, machines are defined by their
powers and what he calls “virtual proper being”, I will try to draw some philosophical conse-
quences about the key notions of virtual, machine, and their relationship to that of attractor.
I’ll try to suggest that these very notions are crucial for a realist and speculative account of what
there is. More specifically, the concept of ‘virtual’ could be explained via that of ‘attractor’. I
will thus conclude that both Bryant’s and DeLanda’s accounts point to the idea of a substance
conceived as something intrinsically dynamic.

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1 From objects to machines

“They whir, they buzz, they spin, and rumble. A world is a fabric of ma-
chines.”

Levi Bryant1

After the very beginning of the speculative turn we have witnessed a prolif-
eration of different approaches to speculation itself. Object-oriented ontologies
(‘OOO’ from now on) are a special case among other realist accounts. Since telling
the whole story about the birth of OOO might take too much space, I will fol-
low Peter Wolfendale’s way of presenting it, as he finds in the opening lines of
Harman’s The Quadruple Object the manifesto of it. Here is the quotation:

Instead of beginning with radical doubt, we start from naiveté. What philos-
ophy shares with the lives of scientists, bankers, and animals is that all are
concerned with objects. The exact meaning of “object” will be developed in
what follows, and must include those entities that are neither physical nor
even real. Along with diamonds, rope, and neutrons, objects may include
armies, monsters, square circles, and leagues of real and fictious nations. All
such objects must be accounted for by ontology, not merely denounced or
reduced to despicable nullities. Yet despite repeated claims by both friends
and critics of my work, I have never held that all objects are “equally real”.
For it is false that dragons have autonomous reality in the same manner as a
telephone pole. My point is not that all objects are equally real, but that they
are equally objects. It is only in a wider theory that accounts for the real and
the unreal alike that pixies, nymphs, and utopias must be treated in the same
terms as sailboats and atoms.2

This statement gives the general premises of all OOO. The work of Levi Bryant’s
Machine-oriented Ontology (‘MOO’ from now on) has been the one of defining
the notion of object in a Deleuzian fashion. Namely, in Bryant’s ontology, all
objects are machines. The very definition of ‘machine’, in his own words, is this:

A machine is a system of operations that perform transformations on inputs

thereby producing outputs.3

Just for the sake of precision, we can formalize this last crucial definition with
a short formula, which is not found in Bryant’s own work, but it’s a good way of
underlining the key aspects of an object-machine:
M := [S(p1 , p2 , p(. . . ) , pn )]/I = O
1
Bryant [2014 37]
2
Harman [2011 5], quoted in Wolfendale [2014 211-212]
3
Bryant [2014 38]

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We can define a machine ‘M’ as a set or system ‘S’ of operations ‘p’ that, given
a particular input ‘I’, transforms it into a particular output ‘O’4 . We may find this
way of speaking about ontology (objects qua machines) a really difficult one, but
this is due to some prejudices about the very nature of machines.
First of all, Bryant argues, not all machines are rigid machines: a car, a bottle, a
computer, a rock, and so on, all are rigid machines. However, since we define things
by their powers (to do operations on inputs), things like abstract institutions (like
insurance companies) are also machines, respecting the basic plea of flat ontologies
(or their so called ‘liberalism’). This last point brings us also to the key point that
the very relation a machine is able to perform with a specific input is “egotistic”
or, in a way of saying that Bryant’s borrows from Maturana and Varela’s theory of
autopoietic systems: machines are structurally open to very specific types of inputs
or flows5 . For example, bureaucracy-machines are open to forms. This means that
to communicate with an institution always means to fill in some documents (as
in the case of the object ‘insurance company’). Secondly, not all machines are
designed. This means both that not all things need human effort in order to exist
and also that matter is itself an active agent. As Bryant says:
The inventor of the clock did not intend for it to striate every aspect of life,
yet when the clock came into existence and became widely available, daily
routines and social relations took on a very different structure. Non-human
machines or materials contribute to design as much as our own intentions
and plans.6

That is to say: non-human machines have powers of their own. Matter has itself
constraints that apply to designers or form-creation procedures. Thirdly, machines
don’t have a purpose or a use. Contrary to what we might expect both from
our common knowledge of the term ‘machine’ and from the way Bryant defines a
machine, machines do not have intrinsic uses but are, as the Author says, put to a
use. For example, the purpose of the mice is not to be eaten by the cat, but for the
cat, the mice could be put to the use of ‘food’. There’s nothing intrinsic to the fork
that makes it a thing to eat food, but in my hands it may be used for this specific
goal.
This very last point about machines brings us to the concept of operational clo-
sure and to that of “pluripotency”. Namely, as it’s found in the biological concept
of pluripotent cell, a machine has a finite set of possible becomings: I could use the
fork to eat or as a weapon to hurt somebody. An example could be at hand:
Within the submarine the sonar ping will take on a particular meaning,
telling the submariner to turn left, right, up, or down so as to avoid the
4
Bryant often uses Category Theory as a way to formalize the “shape” of a machine way of
functioning, but he also finds this formula well suited for the task [personal conversation]
5
Bryant [2014 54]
6
Bryant [2014 22]

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obstacle. By contrast, the machine that the sonar bounced off –a shark, blue
whale, underwater mountain or canyon, other submarine, etc. – is oblivious
to the meaning the submarine attributes to it.7

This just means that the shark outside the submarine becomes interpreted by
the machine itself as a very specific type of input. Put in other words, the input is
sensitive to the internal shape of the machine itself (in Bryant’s conceptual frame-
work, relations within the machine are called endo-relations, the external ones are,
instead, exo-relations).
What does it mean, then, to conceive objects as machines? First of all, we must
say that Bryant’s position is not just a way of being bizarre for the sake of being
so, but it’s a philosophical path that tries to go beyond the traditional ontological
impasse about the nature of substance and its properties. In order to do so, we
must underline, once again, that machines are defined rather by their powers than
by their properties. Powers are basically what a machine is able to do. Given the
formula sketched above, we say that the set of all powers of a machine is a finite
virtual set of states (this implies all the three properties of structural openness, op-
erational closure, and pluripotentiality). It is important here to add that machines,
as Bryant says, are split between their powers (virtual) and their local manifestation
(actual). This very distinction is crucial in that it allows us to say that a machine
is defined by powers that may or may not be actualized/manifested. In order to
proceed further, a key quotation is worth here:

Within the framework proposed here, entities are individuated not by their
qualities, but rather by their powers.8

In Bryant’s account, as we will see, objects are not just set of properties (which
is to say: static properties), but rather sets of possible patterns of interaction or, as
he puts it, generative mechanisms9 . This ontological operation is meant to overcome
an idea of objecthood by which in order to account for the ontology of things we
must list their properties, properties conceived as a-temporal entities. In Bryant’s
theory we can both account for the basic plea of realism, namely, the independence-
from-observer statement, and about the process-like and “timely” way in which
properties emerge.

2 Virtual powers and actual manifestations

What is at stake with MOO and all the notions it implies is the way by which
we can conceive the nature of substance. The argument is quite a simple and tra-
ditional: qualities of things change. As I see myself in the mirror, I see that my
7
Bryant [2014 57]
8
Bryant [2014 83], my italics.
9
Bryant [2011a 88]

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hair grows day by day, my skin might change color during the summer, and so on.
So the basic conclusion to be borrowed is that, since qualities change, substance is
not more than a bare substratum, leading to the unlikely hypothesis that all things
are basically identical (since differences are only superficial). This leads to a philo-
sophical conundrum which has been reestablished from the very beginning of the
speculative realism movement. In Meillassoux’s After Finitude we find a defense
of the Cartesian distinction between primary qualities and secondary ones. Thus
Meillassoux’s way of developing the independence-from-observer thesis (in his case
independence from mankind tout court) leads him to the philosophical thesis that
the properties of the object in itself are mathematical ones (length, movement,
etc.), as opposed to the secondary ones which are phenomenal and thus dependent
on the observer.10
We also find this philosophical tension in Bryant, but where Meillassoux speaks
of a mathematical being beneath phenomena, Bryant speaks about powers (properties-
qua-doings). Let’s focus again on the concept of power:

The virtual proper being of an object is what makes an object properly an ob-
ject. It is that which constitutes an object as a difference engine or generative
mechanism. However, no one nor any other thing ever encounters an ob-
ject qua its virtual proper being, for the substance of an object is perpetually
withdrawn or in excess of any of its manifestations. Rather, the virtual proper
being of an object can only ever be inferred from its local manifestations in
the world. 11

Here we find a key point which, as I argue, configures a strange oscillation in

Bryant’s works. The substance that is “perpetually withdrawn or in excess of any
of its manifestations”, which Bryant is talking about, is basically the set of virtual
powers as operations. Powers are always exceeding manifestation. In this way we
can’t really say if Bryant is redefining the concept of substance or just getting rid
of it. In other words, are we saying that the concept of substance must be thrown
away and substituted with that of power (or set of powers)?
However, the ‘excess’ of substance over manifestations is basically due to the
fact that a given manifestation is a local point in a bigger virtual set of powers
that we can (although Bryant is not clear as to how we can) infer from the local
manifestation itself. Thus, overcoming Locke’s idea of the “bare substratum”:

My thesis is that the substantiality of objects is not a bare substratum, but

rather an absolutely individual system or organization of powers. Powers are
the capacities of an object or what it can do. The powers of an object are
never something that is directly manifested in the world. And if this is so,
then this is because the qualities of an object are only ever local manifestations
10
Meillassoux [2012 15]
11
Bryant [2011a 88]

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of the object’s power. That is, the domain of power possessed by an object is
always greater than any local manifestation or actualization of an object. For
this reason, following DeLanda, I distinguish between the phase space of an
object and the powers of an object.12

Another crucial point is that qualities (as local-actual manifestation) are not
intended to be necessarily given to a subject. In this way Bryant follows much of
the so called post-humanist plea of new realism, also found in Latour:

[. . . ] no science of the social can even begin if the question of who and what
participates in the action is not first of all thoroughly explored, even though
it might mean letting elements in which, for lack of a better term, we would
call non-humans.13

Or, As Bryant says:

The universe could be a universe in which no sentient beings of any sort exist
and manifestation would continue to take place. [. . . ] Manifestation is an
ontological predicate, not an epistemological predicate.14

That is to say, manifestation is real even if there’s no one to see it. So what
about the “blueness” of the blue coffee mug? In Bryant’s account it is misleading
to say that it is blue, therefore, one must say that it blues or it is blueing.
If it is inaccurate to suggest that the mug is blue, then this is because the mug
is a variety of different colors as a function of the exo-relations with light the mug
enters into. As I look at the mug under the warm light of my desktop lamp, it
is now a very dark, deep, flat blue. Now I open the shade to my office window,
allowing sunlight to stream in. The mug becomes a brilliant, bright, shiny blue.15
Therefore, a given property is just a point an object manifests (actualizes) in
a set of points that we can call, following non-linear dynamics, a phase space. As
we have just seen from the theoretical implications of MOO and the concept of
substantiality we sketched, a local set of machines (entities with both a virtual
part and an actual part) is a set of semi-stable processes of actualization. The last
quotation about the coffee mug basically says that the apparent static property
of being blue of the mug is actually a stable state of relations between the mug
surface, lights and (why not) the observer eyes and brain. The notion of phase
space as a subset of the set of powers (in which blueing is just a member of this set)
surreptitiously brings us toward an encounter between the notion of attractor and
all the implications of it for OOO, especially if we look at how Bryant proceeds in
The Democracy of Objects:
12
Bryant [2011a 89]
13
Latour [2005 72]
14
Bryant [2011a 88]
15
Bryant [2011a 90]

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The mug tends to have a relatively stable spatial or extensional structure be-
cause it exists within a stable regime of attraction or set of exo-relations. Change
the temperature or gravity of the mug’s exo-relations and the extension or
spatial shape of the mug will also change.16

This passage is crucial for our purpose, since it basically says that the set of
external relations of the machine to other machines is “responsible” for its prop-
erties, in this way forming what Bryant calls an “ecology of machines” (always
pointing to the fact that this could be also a “lifeless” ecology, since sentient ma-
chines are just one type of machine). Another important thing to notice is that in
this properties-as-doings account, time is not optional: since properties are semi-
stable (attractor-like) actual manifestations in a given set of exo-related machines,
they are not static entities, but they constitutively need time. Put in another way:
qualities are processes (Bryant himself is often referring to Whitehead’s process
ontology).
However, problems here arise. We already said that we could find an inner
tension in Bryant’s corpus, namely: either we dismiss the concept of substance by
saying that all we can find out there is just exo-relations (like the sun light hitting
the mug and my eyes so that I perceive the experience of blueing) or we redefine
the concept of substance in other ways. Bryant takes this last path, but he does so
in a very peculiar way. We find that a sui generis or ‘new’ concept of substance is
crucial to a realist ontology (as OOO wants to be), but which one?
Here Bryant finds at least two possible philosophical enemies: We want to
avoid Locke’s argument on the emptiness of substance (given that all there is are
just relations, and if you take qualities qua relations away, there remains nothing
as a substance) because this would imply once again some form of no-relations-
no-reality anti-realism, and plus we need to defend ourselves from a revival of Pla-
tonism. This latter point will deserve much more attention as we proceed. What
about the first one? Let’s read Bryant’s own words:

In other words, in thinking objects as nothing but networks of relations, the

object itself effectively evaporates. However, here evaporation is not simply a
phase transition from a liquid state to a gaseous state, but is rather a complete
annihilation of all objects. [. . . ] In an ironic twist, relational ontologies,
motivated, in part, by the aim of avoiding the bare substratum problem for-
mulated by Locke, end up in exactly the same place.17

The main difficulty of thinking about relationships between objects, and there-
fore the possibility or impossibility of causation is mainly resolved by Bryant with
the concept of operational closure we already mentioned. Basically, in Bryant’s on-
tology, to say that one object relates to another in “machine-specific” ways (as in
16
Bryant [2011a 91], my italics.
17
Bryant [2011b 271]

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the case of the submarine’s radar) doesn’t mean that real objects do not relate at all.
This point becomes more evident if we read Bryant’s plea for a renewal of materi-
alism in the starting pages of Onto-Cartograpy. In Bryant’s ontology, materialism
just means: There’s no action at a distance. As in Latour, for Bryant objects act as
mediators and not just passive intermediaries, but this doesn’t imply there’s no real
causation between objects.18 This point will be clearer as long as we examine more
accurately the second one, the problem of Platonism, by examining the notion of
power.
In order to avoid the classic Platonist move by doubling the world into an
ideal and a concrete version of it, in Difference and Repetition Deleuze says that the
‘virtual’ is just a part of the object. In this way, objects are split entities in that they
have a virtual and an actual part.
The virtual must be also defined as an integral part of the real objects –as if the
object had a part of itself in the virtual and it submerged in it as in an objective
dimension.

[. . . ]
The virtual is completely determined.
[. . . ]
Each object is twofold, without the two halves resembling each other, being
one the virtual image, and the other one the actual image, therefore odd dif-
ferent halves.19

Moreover, the virtual is a notion Deleuze often opposes to that of possibility.

While the virtual is real, as the actual, the possible is opposed to the real in that
it is just another non-real state of affairs an object can occupy within a given set
of possible states. Therefore, another crucial difference must follow. When I say
that I could be playing the piano instead of writing (it is possible for me to do
so) I’m opposing a state of affairs which is real (the fact that I’m writing) with a
state of affairs which is not (me playing the piano). Given that, the real and the
possible are not really different, as one is just the denied version of the other; put
in other words: there’s no essential difference between ten possible dollars and ten
real dollars. On the contrary, the virtual is not opposed to the real in that it is not
a determinate actualization, but rather the condition of the actualization’s proper
possibility20 . In other words, while the possible reminds us of a static and absent
state of affairs, the virtual reminds us of generativeness. Yet at the same time we
read that the virtual is completely determined. What we need here is to account
for the difference between virtual and actual (which is not a difference between
18
For a clear examination of this problem see https://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2015/03/11/

some-differences-between-object-oriented-philosophy-and-onticology/
19
Deleuze [2007 271] (my translation from italian), my italics.
20
Antonello [2011 75]

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possible and real), for the determinacy of the virtual and for its property of being
generative.
Since the very notion of attractor, or the one of singularity (which DeLanda
treats as same entities), will be discussed in the next paragraph, we will underline
here once again the fact that in Bryant’s account machines/things are defined by
their powers, and that powers are a part of the object (a virtual part). But we
also noticed that powers are virtual in that their ontology doesn’t imply actual
manifestation. Therefore, the fact that the virtual is fully determined and it’s a part
of the object and the fact that powers are determined but nonetheless irreducible to
actual manifestations (though we can, as Bryant noted, do a bottom-up inferential
process from actual to virtual), both push us, along with Bryant’s argument, to
conclude that powers belong to the endo-relations of an object but are exercised through
exo-relations.
Bryant, by reading Molnar’s study on the ontology of powers21 , outlined some
key features of powers. First, powers have directedness in that they produce partic-
ular outputs when exercised: plants, for example, produce oxygen out of carbon
dioxide through operations of photosynthesis.22
They are (as already mentioned) virtual: they are always capable of producing
more manifestations than they happen to produce at any particular point in time.
Powers are independent from their manifestations. They are also objective in that,
even if we suppress the power of a machine as a result of a presence or absence of
another machine, we can say, for example, that paper doesn’t lose his capacity to
burn if there’s no fire near it. Therefore (while it may sounds contrary to what we
said previously), powers are also actual in the sense that they really belong to the
machine itself. Since Bryant clearly says that powers may be “elicited” or “muted”
by virtue of other machines, we want to add that powers are intrinsically relational
or, in other words, they depend on exo-relations.
Some of these features are crucial in that they underline what we said before:
powers have both a virtual aspect and they are nonetheless actual features of the
object. The fact that powers are both belonging to the machine itself (actual be-
longing) and they are there even if they are not manifested, is well explained by
Molnar, whose argument has the precise task of defending the theory of powers
from what he calls ‘Megaric Actualism’.
Megaric Actualism is the thesis which states that unmanifesting powers do not
exist. Put in another way, for a Megaric Actualist a thing has a power to f at time
t if and only if that thing is exercising the power to f at t. As Molnar says:

Megarians believed that there are powers, but they are coeval with their exer-
21
Molnar [2009]
22
Bryant [2014 41]

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cise.23

Against this idea Molnar shows two objections. The first one is that powers
can be acquired and powers can be lost.
It takes years of effort to learn how to play the violin well. According to MA
[Megaric Actualism], as I have interpreted it, the skill of playing the violin is a
genuine intrinsic property of the violinist. Actualists have to say that violinists
lose their skill every time they stop playing and regain it instantly every time they
start.24
If we had to accept that powers are only actual manifestations, we would there-
fore allow all these kind of absurdities. The second objection to Megaric Actualism
goes as follows:

Take a sighted person who, at time t, is in the dark, or one who is asleep at t,
and, on the other hand, a blind person. They have it in common that neither
exercises the power of sight at t, while the difference between them is that
one has that power at t but the other lacks it.25

Once again, if we are skeptics about unmanifesting dispostitions (virtual pow-

ers) we are forced to jump to the more bizarre conclusions. In this last case we see
how important it is to notice that not only powers are intrinsic features of objects
(like the capacity to see of the man with sight) although they could be, as Bryant
says, dormant, but also that powers depend both on the exo-relations of the object
and, much more, on its endo-relations (i.e. internal structure).

3 DeLanda’s attractors and discrete entities

Here we examine the concept of attractor (DeLanda’s singularities) as it sheds
light to a philosophical conundrum Bryant sees between his own flat ontology
and DeLanda’s morphogenetic account of discrete entities. However, we would
like to point out to the fact that the two types of ontology are not contradictory.
Moreover, although they do share common concepts and philosophical means,
Bryant underlines how his own account is different from DeLanda’s one.
Our task is now to show how this incompatibility is more apparent than real.
In order to do so, we first have to shed light to the key concept of attractor, since
it is a crucial notion both for DeLanda and for Bryant. In particular, DeLanda
interprets (as Bryant does) Deleuze’s singularities as attractors.
Since we’re trying to develop a philosophical argument and not a mathematical
one, in defining the concept of attractor we’ll sketch a very simple definition. Let’s
23
Molnar [2009 95]
24
Molnar [2009 95]
25
Molnar [2009 96]

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take a very simple mathematical function:

T (x) = x2

Given the points inside the interval -1 < x < 1, we can say that 0 is an attractor
for the function T26 . This basically means that if we substitute x with a number
between -1 and 1 (-1 and 1 not included) we generate orbits (series of numbers) that
tend to 0. In this case, we’re looking at a fixed point attractor, meaning that the
function tends to a single point (‘0’), but there are well studied examples of more
complex attractors (though they are of no interest here). One key feature to be
noticed here is that of iteration. If we take, for example, the ‘x’ to stand for 0,50
(which is a number of the interval -1 < x < 1) we see that x2 will be 0,25, a number
slightly closer to the attractor 0, and if we proceed further, putting our result 0,25
as the argument of our function T, we obtain 0,0625, which is even closer to 0, and
so on. Another key element to be noticed here is the concept of basin of attraction.
We say that the interval -1 < x < 1 is the basin of attraction of 0 for the function
T(x) = x2 . This last point means that we can generate orbits that tend to 0 only if
our x has a starting value that lies within the basin of attraction. Indeed, if we take
x to be -1, x2 would be +1, going away from 0.
In this very simple sketch of the concept of attractor some features are worth
noticing. Attractors make sense only if we speak of dynamical (rather than static)
systems. In this last sense, we need activity as iteration in order to have attractors.
Strongly connected to this is the fact that orbits are (indeed) tendencies. These key
features of the concept of attractor (basin, tendency-iteration, starting condition)
are also the ones we find in both DeLanda and Bryant, though they may differ to
some extent. Another crucial point to notice is that attractors are never actual,
meaning that they are points toward which the function tends, though it never
reaches them. Put in other words, they are not trajectories:

This means that unlike trajectories, which represent the actual states of ob-
jects in the world, attractors are never actualized, since no point of a trajectory
ever reaches the attractor itself. It is in this sense that singularities represent
only the long-term tendencies of a system never its actual states. Despite their
lack of actuality, attractors are nevertheless real and have definite effects on
actual entities.27

Given this brief insight into the notion of attractor, we roughly say that the
basin of attraction, given its implications with the concept of tendency, is virtual.
It is also important to notice that DeLanda and Bryant share a process-based way of
seeing at entities and that both are trying to go beyond the philosophical positing
26
This example can be found in Devaney [1990 61]
27
DeLanda [2013 23], second and third italics mine.

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of essences or substances. DeLanda’s underlining of the concept of singularity-

as-attractor is meant to overcome, as Bryant does with his concept of power, the
postulation of essences as static and atemporal entities. For example, if we were to
listen to an essentialist account about the definition of human being, we would get
a definition of human being as “rational animal”. Rather, if we follow DeLanda and
Deleuze ontologies, we find that species are defined by the morphogenetic process
that gave rise to them, in this particular case meaning that we define species as
differentiation processes and not as immanent instances of transcendent essences.
A classic example of singularity (i.e. attractor) is given by the behavior of water
at different temperatures. If we increase the temperature of water until it’s 100° we
will see it boiling. Or, as we decrease its temperature, we’ll see it becoming ice at
0°. This two points (0° and 100°) are points in which a change in extensive quality
(i.e. degrees) becomes a change in intensive quality (water suddenly becomes ice)
or, put more simply, quantity changes become changes in quality.
In DeLanda’s terms, the discreteness or ‘object-hood’ of things is conceived
as a structured intensive space. This means that DeLanda conceives space as a
“manifold”, a geometrical space of possible states (spaces of possibilities or phase
space). Properties, in DeLanda’s ontology, are the result of an undergoing process
that gives birth to them and their fixity is better understood as stability, which he
calls asymptotic stability, following Prigogine’s work on complexity theory. The
key point to notice here is that DeLanda sees discreteness of objects as a product
of a morphogenetic account of space. In DeLanda’s work too, of course, we find a
distinction between virtual and possible, as Clark Bailey explains, when speaking
about the difference between virtual and actual as found in DeLanda:

What we normally refer to as the “real” system, that is, some physical system
in a particular state, with its parts disposed in a certain manner, as well as
other possible states this system could occupy at some other time, all line up
on the same side of our metaphysical divide – the actual. On the other hand,
the virtual refers to something qualitatively different. It is not an actual or
even a possible state of the system, but a structure of these possibilities;28

However, things become clearer as we think of DeLanda’s way of conceiving

the virtual along with the critique made by Bryant.
[. . . ] DeLanda endorses the Deleuzian thesis that the virtual is composed of
monistic continuum of singularities that is then cut up into discrete entities with
qualities. [. . . ] I argued that this position is incoherent and that the virtual must
instead be strictly conceived as a part of discrete entities such that each object has
its own virtual dimension.29
28
Bailey [2010 303]
29
Bryant [2011a 112]

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Bryant here acknowledges the different meaning virtual has in his own account
and in DeLanda’s one. The problem is: Where do we “put” the virtual?
For Bryant, DeLanda’s virtual space becomes even more unsustainable when
DeLanda tries to account for an ontology exclusively made of unique and singular
individuals, while maintaining the virtual as something that is “on the back” of
these discrete entities as their generative historical and morphogenetic condition
of existence. The main difference lies in the fact that for Bryant, as we saw earlier,
the virtual is part of the object. Put in another way, for DeLanda the virtual is
external or behind and beneath (as in Bailey’s quotation), for Bryant it is internal.
This is the key point of their apparent incompatibility.
In formulating his ontology as a flat ontology, DeLanda’s thesis seems to work
against his prior claim that the being of beings is to be conceived in terms of their
morphogenetic processes.30
It is this very contradiction as noted by Bryant that we want to avoid. We
already saw that for DeLanda (as in the simple example of ‘T(x) = x2 ’) singularities
define tendencies in the phase space and that attractors, for Bryant, are temporarily
stable states (the blueing of the coffee mug). We here need to quote Bryant once
again:

[. . . ]in contrast to DeLanda, [. . . ] I want to argue that attractors are not

states of an object or substance, but rather are what in substances preside over
the genesis of actualized states or local manifestations. In this respect, the
attractors of a substance constitute what Harman, following Zubiri, refers to
as the notes or the most intimate reality of the object. They are the generative
mechanisms within an object that preside over the events or qualities of which
the object is capable.31

Here Bryant is identifying attractors with the endo-structure of the object.

Later on, Bryant states it clearly that actualization is a matter of “entering into exo-
relations with other objects”, meaning that properties are elicited by the relations
of the object with its surroundings.
[. . . ] the distinction between virtual proper being and local manifestation
teaches us that objects are plastic. As a function of the exo-relations objects enter
into with other objects, the attractors defining the virtual space of a substance can
be activated in a variety of different ways, actualizing objects in a variety of different
ways at the level of local manifestation.32
This last point gives us a precious hint. Since for Bryant actualization is a
function of the (contingent) set of exo-relations and that when we speak of the
blueness of the coffee mug we are speaking about a stable and attractor-like state of
30
Bryant [2011a 113]
31
Bryant [2011a 113]
32
Bryant [2011a 114] second italics mine.

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affairs, we could very easily think of this very set of things (the objects exo-related
to the coffee mug and the coffee mug itself) as an actualized state of affairs elicited
by an attractor (singularity). The point is that we could think both virtual as a large
morphogenetic feature of the phase space (as in DeLanda) and as the endo-relations
of an object, going beyond this apparent contradiction between a morphogenetic
ontology and a flat one.
We think that if Bryant is willing to maintain that static properties are just
stable (temporal) states of exo-related objects, then there’s no need to withdraw any
morphogenetic account of space structuring. In other words, what are DeLanda’s
morphogenetic spaces if not the “larger” version of Bryant’s virtual proper beings?
We could very well think of the whole situation of ‘coffee mug’ + ‘gravity’ +
‘sun’ + ‘light’ etc. as an actualized (or, stable and always ongoing actualization)
situation of virtual proper beings. In this scenario each of the term in the situ-
ation respects the basic plea of having its own powers (respecting the internalist
approach of Bryant) but at the same time we are giving a “large-scale” account of
an actualizing situation.
If in this situation something suddenly changes, we would probably see an-
other blue of the coffee mug (given that we are inside this scenario as observers).
If the mug is melted because of the heat we would say that it loses its capacity to
actualize color when exo-related with light. Here some questions about the no-
tion of identity may arise since, as we noticed earlier, things can lose their powers.
However, we’ll limit ourselves to a brief hint during the concluding paragraph con-
cerning identity of substances, since in Bryant’s account the notion of substance is
redefined as the set of virtual powers available to a particular endo-structure.
Going back to our main problem, we will say that if Bryant denies the ex-
ternalist approach of DeLanda, he could very easily fall into contradiction with
himself. Bryant defined a given property (however stable it may be) as an actual
manifestation which is (as quoted above) a function of the relations the object is
having with other objects (exo-relations). In the example of the coffee mug, it’s
clear that the blueing of the coffee mug is one of its own powers, it depends on its
endo-structure, but it’s also clear that it is a function of all the elements involved in
the production of that particular blue, so it is the system of things as a whole that
gives rise to particular properties. In other words, it’s the whole system which is
constituted by virtual-actual dynamics. If we were to deny this large scale way of
seeing at properties we would force ourselves to say either that the blueing is on
the side of the object or on the side of the exo-relations eliciting it, in this latter
case suggesting that to be blue is a static property and not at all some kind of doing
or, rather, that the blue of the mug doesn’t exist at all (it is just an “extrapolation”
made by the objects to which the mug is exo-related). Plus, if virtual is just on the
object and not in the large scale system itself, which is made up of other objects,

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we don’t know where the whole process of “blueing” begins.

All this disappears if we say that virtual is both a part of the object and part
of the large scale system in which the object is embedded, giving virtual a much
broader place.
DeLanda and Bryant do share that the virtual is generative and must not be
confused with a possible (alternative) state of the object. In DeLanda’s work, basi-
cally, virtual is not to be confused with the set of possible states of the object but
it’s rather the historical force behind the development of these very sets of possible
states. We argue that Bryant’s ontology is also well suited for accepting this last
meaning of virtual.
Virtual as the force behind or beneath the historical development of things
(DeLanda) just means that, though powers are dependent on the endo-structure of
an object (Bryant), given the system of exo-relation in which they are embedded
they will tend to be elicited more or less in the same way (tendencies).
The whole question about whether we have to posit an inner virtual or an
external one is directly connected to the problem of thinking about the space to
which things themselves belong. Even if we put Bryant, DeLanda and others,
in the same philosophical movement (which would be a realist one), some theo-
retical tensions may arise. We’re talking about the one between a conception of
‘the space of things’ as a punctiform landscape with things characterized mainly by
their discreteness and individuality, and a flowform kind of space characterized by
a monist continuum that is then cut up into discrete entities. If we now trans-
late the previous comparison between DeLanda and Bryant into these new terms
we would say that the positioning (by Bryant) of the virtual as an inner feature
allows him to maintain a punctiform kind of space with discrete entities being con-
stituted both by their virtual as by their real parts. In DeLanda, conversely, by
positioning the virtual as a historical tendency of things, we have a flowform kind
of space in which discrete entities arise as processes passing through critical points
(singularities). Harman, when speaking about Latour’s actant-ontology (which is
a punctiform type of ontology), synthesizes this tension in clear terms:

These positions [Harman is referring to these philosophies of the virtual] try

to enjoy the best of both worlds, defining a unified realm beneath experience
that is not completely unified. Instead of a total lump-world, it is one animated
in advance by different ‘pre-individual’ zones that prevent the world from be-
ing purely homogeneous. This position has the following supposed benefits:
it prevents things from being overdetermined by their current actuality (an
admirable object-oriented gesture), while also slyly bridging the gap between
things without doing the required work (a merely ‘radical’ move in the sense
that must be rejected). For istance,33
33
Harman [2009 160]

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DeLanda, of course, is one of these ‘pre-individual’ thinkers, while certainly

Latour isn’t, since things (actants) in Latour’s ontology are cut off from one an-
other 34 .
An object-oriented ontologist may be worried that positing a pre-individual
realm of (monist) zones means to undermine things as individual things. Indeed,
Harman reminds us that DeLanda

[. . . ] wants the world to be both heterogeneous and not yet parceled out into
individuals. In this way, specific realities lead to a sort of halfhearted existence
somewhere between one and many.35

This type of flowform-with-emergence kind of space is certainly rejected by

other relational ontologies, like Latour’s one:
In Latour’s metaphysics, even if a candle is nothing but its set of relations with
other things it is still a specific individual set of relations different from those that
assemble to give us an apricot. For Latour there are no pre-individual or virtual
apricots- only actual apricots, defined entirely by their relations with other ac-
tants.36
This crucial passages from Harman’s study on the metaphysics of Latour sheds
light on our comparison between DeLanda and Bryant. It is surely the case that
Bryant’s ontology endorses both the fact that things are clusters of relations and
that they are individual things not reducible to their relations (i.e. exo-relations).
In this way Bryant’s position seems to be way nearer to Latour’s. Nonetheless we
think that it is possible to conceive both punctiform spaces (Bryant, Latour, etc.)
qua relational ontologies together with “flowform” spaces (DeLanda).
If we consider virtual not to have a substantial meaning, then we should be able
to go beyond this impasse. Plus, it seems that DeLanda is endorsing a relational
ontology in that he acknowledges a difference between affects (things relating to
things) and singularities (pre-individual and virtual zones).

[. . . ]Deleuze proposes to replace laws with the twin concepts of “singular-

ities” and “affects”. The first concept refers to the immanent tendencies of
material systems, such as the tendency of water to become ice or steam at
certain critical points of temperature.
[. . . ]
Affects are not tendencies but capacities: the capacities of material entities to
affect and be affected by one another. Unlike properties, which are always
actual, both tendencies and capacities are only virtual or potential, until they
are actually exercised or manifested.37
34
Harman [2009 161]
35
Harman [2009 160]
36
Harman [2009 161]
37
DeLanda [2010 326]

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For example, the knife’s capacity to cut is elicited when it is coupled with
something to be cut, but the fact that the knife is sharp or not is an actual property.
It is its capacity to cut that is a matter of relating to things to be cut. We can thus
consider the pre-individual not to stand for any substantial space but rather for
the function of the exo-relations things have with other things. For DeLanda this
immanent tendencies are best described by attractors/singularities, which is not to
say that there is a monist continuum that someone has to cut up, but rather that
this landscape of related things-plus-time elicits tendencies. Like in the blueing of
Bryant’s coffee mug, this particular activity of the blueing is a function of things
coupled (exo-related): light+gravity+brain+eyes+etc.
In other words, DeLanda’s ‘pre-individual’ zones are basically virtual history.
We think therefore that DeLanda’s account allows us to conceive clusters of re-
lations as specific features of specific entities. To say that there’s a science of the
virtual that stays behind actuality it is not to undermine the fact that things are very
specific (i.e. individual) generative mechanisms, as in the case of cutting knives or
blueing mugs.
When the mug is blueing we can say, then, that there’s an ongoing process
of actualization of a particular state of affairs. We think that to give an account
of the tendencies of DeLanda’s material systems in terms of virtual history in no
way undermines the fact that: a) things are independent individuals and b) ontol-
ogy should be relational. We are trying to suggest that when DeLanda is speaking
about tendencies in material systems he’s not strictly referring to given objects with
material boundaries. In this sense, objecthood is the very result of an intensive sci-
ence which studies how things emerge from other things, whether they are colors,
steam, societies, etc.

4 Conclusion: Toward dynamic substances?

Molnar’s objection to Megaric Actualism is crucial in that it points out to the
fact of the unlikelihood of a pan-actualistic ontology, namely, an ontology of actual
manifestations without any virtual power; or put in another way: a world of static
entities with static properties. We tried instead to develop Bryant’s ontology as it
creates room for the concept of the virtual. The capacity to lose or acquire powers
is problematic only if we think that identity is a matter of discrete states, but it be-
comes completely different if we think of identities as always temporal and spatial
processes, or as actualization processes. A dead man can’t breathe, he basically lost
this power, we say nonetheless that that’s a man. We’re not defining men through
their powers to breathe, but we see that ‘breathing’ is in some way or another more
defining than other powers (it is more “essential” among other powers, though in
degree). This is the way in which, following the example of water states (solid, liq-

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uid, gas) made by DeLanda, we find the opposition between Bryant and DeLanda
more apparent than real. The opposition between a morphogenetic type of space
structuring, as in DeLanda’s reading of Deleuze, and the flat ontology of MOO
in which singularities are “within” the object is not really an ‘aut aut’ opposition.
Rather we tried to think about both of them as symmetric ontologies. Let’s take
once again the example of water. Once it reaches the singularity of 0° degrees, it
becomes ice. This fact means that water lost some of its powers as a liquid thing
and gained powers as it became ice. I cannot drink ice, but I could, perhaps, break
my neighbors’ windows by throwing pieces of it. When a lake’s surface becomes
ice it eventually allows animals to use this new ‘ground’ as a shortcut to go from
one side to the other. This places us once again on the side of Bryant when he says
that virtual proper being is identified with endo-relations (internal structure of wa-
ter), but at the same time we’re respecting DeLanda’s point that space is structured
through a “discretization” of the continuum of the manifold into discrete entities-
singularities (water is multiple in that its properties range inside a spectrum).
Nonetheless, this qualitative change (i.e. intensive) doesn’t alter the way we
conceive water. Water is water. A dead rabbit is a rabbit and doesn’t transform
suddenly into something else once it stops breathing, though now it may gain the
power to be manure for the soil.
In other words, we’re just suggesting that if we follow Bryant’s MOO to its
philosophical conclusions, we will see that substances are as much dynamic things
as the always changing plane of properties/qualities. Saying that substances are
dynamic entities implies that objects or assemblages of objects/machines have al-
ways a foot on the virtual and a foot on the actual. Objects are temporal two-faced
entities. Once again, the concept of multiplicity DeLanda is speaking about (as
the place in which phase transitions happen) doesn’t place us in an aut aut situ-
ation with a “punctuated” flat ontology. Discreteness of the objects/machines is
not contrasted by the morphogenetic idea that there’s a continuum of quantitative
accretions/decretions leading to threshold phenomena or singularities, given that
we are respecting the basic requirement of MOO which tells us to identify objects
by their powers and that we think about actualization as a large scale thing about
objects exo-related to one another.
As a conclusion which doesn’t pretend to be definitive at all, we can say that it
is possible to conceive substances as dynamic entities, respecting Bryant’s plea for
materialism and proposing an intrinsically dynamic idea of reality which is made
out of processes.
Bryant himself hints this conclusion:

[. . . ] local essences refer to qualities that emerge as a function of structured

entanglements of objects in a particular local arrangement. If these essences
must be referred to as local, then this is precisely because they are dependent

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on highly specific entanglements of objects that don’t exist in other situa-

tions. If, nonetheless, these local manifestations are still essences, then this is
because within these entanglements these qualitative productions are real and
inevitable local manifestations.38

This is a philosophical inquiry in which much other work should be done.

Here we can just underline the fact that even in Bryant’s ontology we can find this
“dynamization” of the inner side of the object, since even local essences depend
on the entanglements of objects in a particular local arrangement (another way of
speaking about exo-relations).

38
https://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2010/05/06/relationism-and-objects/

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Web references:
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