In the final Whitehead panel at SLSA this weekend, my colleague Hugh Crawford made an interesting observation about object-oriented ontology during his talk on trees.

Specifically, he noted that most interest in OOO focuses on "objects" and "ontology." But another helpful perspective can be gained from attending to "orientation." He spent much of his talk discussing the project his honors English class has undertaken to construct a Thoreau house using only materials and tools of the 19th century, pointing out how various devices and materials "orient" one toward particular attitudes and ways of use.

This seems to me a useful observation, and dovetails with some of the solutions I've been proposing for object perception, including those I proposed in my SLSA keynote. Orientations, after all, are also things.