I really didn’t want to get drawn into recent debates
surrounding “lava-lampy materialism” because I’ve been both sick
and busy with other things, but given Ivakhiv’s most recent post
I feel compelled to respond (I won’t bother responding to
Vitale’s post because I believe that anyone who describes other
philosophical positions as a “cult” or form of “mysticism” has
undermined all possibility of dialogue and discussion). Before
getting into Ivakhiv’s specific claims, I would like to briefly
outline my problem with what Morton has called “lava lampy
materialism”. I have no problem with process and becoming. That
said, I think many process philosophers tend to commit a basic
fallacy. The argument seems to run that because objects are
produced out of other things, there must be a gooey substrate or
source from which these objects come from. This strikes me as a
fallacy. All that we are entitled to say is that objects are
produced out of other things. The thesis that objects must
therefore arise from an undiffere