• Streetlight
    9.1k
    Becoming is a particularly hard thought to think. So hard, in fact, that at almost every point is it subordinated instead to 'Being'. This is particularly the case when becoming is thought of as simply another word for 'change'. But to think becoming as change is to more or less forget the specificity of becoming altogether. Why? Because to assert the primacy of becoming is precisely to assert what we might call becoming without terms. That is, it's not that one 'thing' becomes another 'thing'. Thinking of Becoming in this way just reverts back to thinking in terms of Being (becoming here is subordinate to 'things', which are primary). If becoming has any cogency at all, it must not be thought of as occurring between two terms, but as a concept self-sufficient unto itself.

    Consider Deleuze: "[in Becoming] There is no terminus from which you set out, none which you arrive at or which you ought to arrive at. Nor are there two terms which are exchanged. The question ‘What are you becoming?’ is particularly stupid. For as someone becomes, what he is becoming changes as much as he does himself."

    To properly understand this, one needs to turn to the question of relation, which is inseparable from the question of becoming. This is because relations, like becoming, always stand outside the identity of any one thing. For example, while the predicate 'blue' might belong to the subject 'sky', the relation "taller than" does not necessarily 'belong' to the subject Peter. Peter might be taller than Paul, but shorter than Mary. In this case, "taller than" does not properly 'belong' to the concept of Peter (there is nothing 'intrinsically' "taller than" about Peter). The relation stands outside of it's terms.

    Relations then, belong not to being, but to becoming. Here is the philosopher Daniel Smith, writing on the topic: "If properties belong to something solid, relations are far more fragile, and are inseparable from a perpetual becoming... If relations are external to their terms and do not depend on them, if relation is the domain of becoming (if every relation envelops or implies change), then one might say that, at the limit, or at a deeper level, there are not even terms, but only packets of variable relations. What we call a term in itself is only a packet of relations." (Daniel Smith, The New).

    One way to understand the scope of these claims is to recognize in them some of the central principles of empiricism. Whereas rationalism staked it's claim in grasping the world from the point of view of a concept which could be analytically decomposed into exhaustive predicates (e.g. the concept triangle, with it's three sides and interior angles adding up to 180 degrees, etc), empiricism begins not from concepts, but from a kind of exploration of the world that begins instead in relations. Insofar as relations escape the 'solidity' of the concept (of the 'thing'), it's to relations which empiricism looks to kick-start it's philosophical program.

    Whether or not one agrees with the perspective above, I think it's important to at least recognize the strangeness and the specificity of the notion of becoming. To respect, as it were, the singularity of becoming to at least give it a fair hearing, whatever one may make of the idea.
  • apokrisis
    6.8k
    If becoming has any cogency at all, it must not be thought of as occurring between two terms, but as a concept self-sufficient unto itself.StreetlightX

    But what justifies that when any one term can only have cogent definiteness or counterfactuality in terms of its "other"? You have to be able to say with certainty what your term is not otherwise your term is merely vague in not admitting to the principle of non-contradiction.

    Self sufficient terms are a dangerous pipe dream. Metaphysics is done with dichotomies for good reason.

    Consider Deleuze: "[in Becoming] There is no terminus from which you set out, none which you arrive at or which you ought to arrive at. Nor are there two terms which are exchanged. The question ‘What are you becoming?’ is particularly stupid. For as someone becomes, what he is becoming changes as much as he does himself."StreetlightX

    And so this is particularly wrong headed.

    Becoming can best be defined in terms of symmetry breaking - pure dichotomisation. So what gets lef behind is the initial absolute lack of distinction - the symmetry of a pure and unbroken potential.

    And what becoming arrives at is the equilibrium limit. The division that is the symmetry broken as much as it can possibly be. You have two complementary aspects of reality standing in orthogonal or asymmetric relation - as "far apart" as they can logically be. Like chance and necessity, matter and form, flux and stasis, discrete and continuous, etc, etc.

    . This is because relations, like becoming, always stand outside the identity of any one thing. For example, while the predicate 'blue' might belong to the subject 'sky', the relation "taller than" does not necessarily 'belong' to the subject PeterStreetlightX

    Predicate logic is for reasoning about individuated particulars. Metaphysical generality needs dialectical logic. So while relations might seem extrinsic extras floating above individuated particulars, if you are really talking about becoming in a metaphysically general sense, relations instead have to intrinsic. It is the action and reaction involved in symmetry breaking which organises what eventually emerges as the being.

    So taller than is a relation that makes sense only in the context of its antithesis, shorter than. Peter has no "height" to speak of unless there is already - intrinsically - a reasoned point of comparison.

    One way to understand the scope of these claims is to recognize in them some of the central principles of empiricism.StreetlightX

    Frankly you lost me with that leap. I see no connection with what came before.

    Probably the mistake is trying to drive a definite wedge between rationalism and empiricism when clearly they are locked into a mutually definitional relation as theory and measurement, or generalised symmetry and particular symmetry breaking.

    A Platonically idea triangle is defined by it maximal possible symmetry. Every real material triangle can thus be measured by its approach towards this ideal limit. The ideal defines also the complementary thing of some particular lack of symmetry.

    So again, yeah nah, nothing is adding up. Becoming is of vital Metaphysical import. But symmetry breaking and a logic of vagueness is still the way to go.
  • Streetlight
    9.1k
    But what justifies that when any one term can only have cogent definiteness or counterfactuality in terms of its "other"?apokrisis

    But this is just a warmed-over Kantianism that gets everything back to front. As if the world cares about the definteness of terms. Nah mate, its you who's wearing your knickers on your head. The whole edifice - generality, symmetry-breaking, vagueness, dichotomies and dialectics - are so many backward projections that compensate for an inability to think the singular.
  • apokrisis
    6.8k
    compentaste for an inability to think the singular.StreetlightX

    And yet the whole wonderful edifice of science arose based on metaphysical dialectics. Curious.
  • Streetlight
    9.1k
    Not at all curious - it isn't science's job to think the singular - it is methodologically bound to ignore it! - and no one with a taste for philosophy would expect it to. All the more reason not to confuse the two.
  • apokrisis
    6.8k
    Huh? Metaphysics discovered the dichotomies through rational argument and then science cashed the relationships out empirically - while continuing also to refine the categories.

    So what branch of metaphysics successfully deals in the singular? Your OP was founded on dichotomies - being~becoming, relations~relata, rational~empirical, probably a few more. So in what sense is any philosophy ever not framing itself dichotomistically? Even singular is opposed to multiplicity so as to make sense. 8-)
  • Streetlight
    9.1k
    Medium <> Message. Again the Kantian conflation.
  • apokrisis
    6.8k
    So you don't recognise this as a distinction between syntax and semantics?

    A new syntactical medium - one with fewer constraints/more dimensionality - opens up also more expressive possibilities.

    Hence McLuhan makes my usual point that dichotomistic relations are mutual. For singular or reductionist thinkers, that might be surprising. The relation might be thought to be strictly one way (from the message wanting to be expressed, to the constraint thus exerted to form the suitable medium).

    That was a little too easy. Give us another.
  • Mongrel
    3k
    For Hegel, becoming is primal. Too mystical?
  • apokrisis
    6.8k
    So for Hegel, becoming is elemental and not derived? Yet being is then derived and not elemental?

    How are we to understand his thesis precisely. Is the contrast with antithesis our best avenue?
  • Streetlight
    9.1k
    So you don't recognise this as a distinction between syntax and semantics?apokrisis

    It isn't though. Maybe one day it'll hit you that your pre-fab Apospeak isn't applicable here. Maybe one day you'll even respond to the singularity of the discussion, but it's no surprise that one committed to modelling reality after the image of thought is incapable of novelty in thought. Deleuze understood the dangers and inadequacies of exactly your approach better than anyone, and it's unfortunate that his warnings are less heeded than they should be:

    "Of what use is a dialectic that believes itself to be reunited with the real when it compensates for the inadequacy of a concept that is too broad or too general by invoking the opposite concept, which is no less broad and general? The concrete will never be attained by combining the inadequacy of one concept with the inadequacy of its opposite. The singular will never be attained by correcting a generality with another generality.... the dialectic [is] a false movement, that is, a move­ment of the abstract concept, which goes from one opposite to the other only by means of imprecision."

    How better to capture the poverty of your entire thought process? And as for the conjunction of 'singular and reductionist thinkers...' - well, that's just embarrassing.
  • unenlightened
    8.7k
    the singularity of the discussionStreetlightX

    Love that phrase! I'll be stealing it as a substitute for 'the truth is a pathless land.'

    One drops one's immutable and entirely correct vision into the thread, and it doesn't even fall apart, but sinks without trace, because it cannot respond or relate. Oh, the horror; if this is a new and singular discussion, I will have to think again!
  • Streetlight
    9.1k
    The only thinking is thinking again, thinking otherwise : ) Everything else is doxa.
  • Terrapin Station
    13.8k


    On my view being and becoming are the same thing. Being is becoming. Becoming is being. So it's not that one is primary, it's that they're the same thing. The mistake is to assume that there are static things. Static things are simply an abstraction we perform.

    Because of this, relations aren't "separate from their terms." Their "terms" are always becoming in the first place.

    Also, properties (which aren't something that things (or "terms") have, but which is what they are/what they are like) are always relative and relational.

    Also, I don't buy the idea of anything "properly belonging" or not to any concept. There are no real essences, no real essential versus accidental properties. There are simply individual (person) necessary and sufficient criteria for calling some x an F. (Keeping in mind of course that any x is dynamic--it's becoming).
  • Metaphysician Undercover
    12.3k
    To properly understand this, one needs to turn to the question of relation, which is inseparable from the question of becoming. This is because relations, like becoming, always stand outside the identity of any one thing. For example, while the predicate 'blue' might belong to the subject 'sky', the relation "taller than" does not necessarily 'belong' to the subject Peter. Peter might be taller than Paul, but shorter than Mary. In this case, "taller than" does not properly 'belong' to the concept of Peter (there is nothing 'intrinsically' "taller than" about Peter). The relation stands outside of it's terms.StreetlightX

    This is the foundation of relativity theory, which itself is fundamental to modern physics. Motion is not the property of an object, it is the relation between objects. In physics, this get's extended into the concept of energy, so that energy, strictly speaking, cannot be claimed to be the property of any particular object.

    Becoming is a particularly hard thought to think. So hard, in fact, that at almost every point is it subordinated instead to 'Being'. This is particularly the case when becoming is thought of as simply another word for 'change'. But to think becoming as change is to more or less forget the specificity of becoming altogether. Why? Because to assert the primacy of becoming is precisely to assert what we might call becoming without terms.StreetlightX

    To assert the primacy of becoming may be a useful thought experiment to help one separate the concepts which are based in becoming, from the concepts based in being, but ultimately, to maintain and assert this, in an absolute sense, I believe, is to render the world unintelligible. Simply stated, this is because we must establish the existence of things first, before we can establish a relationship between things. So an understanding of things (being) is necessarily prior to an understanding of relations between things (becoming). To propose primacy of the relation, as a premise, is to propose an illogical, or self-contradicting premise, which if excepted will render the world as unintelligible.

    As evidence, you will see this in the unintelligibility of apokrisis' metaphysics, with symmetry-breaking claimed as fundamental, but no approach to the symmetry itself, which logically must be prior to symmetry-breaking. All philosophies which claim the primacy of becoming (process philosophy) face this problem. The process ontologist must either accept that the universe is fundamentally unintelligible, or do as Whitehead does, and insert unintelligible aspects (e.g. prehension, concrescence) into the universe, in order to bring the universe into intelligibility. To propose that the universe is fundamentally unintelligible, I would argue, is expressly unphilosophical. So this "primacy of becoming" may be a useful exercise, to aid in understanding what is really the case, but I believe it is a dead end philosophy because it is unacceptable as an ontology.

    How does Deleuze deal with this problem?
  • Terrapin Station
    13.8k
    So an understanding of things (being) is necessarily prior to an understanding of relations between things (becoming).Metaphysician Undercover

    Relations aren't the same thing as becoming. Imagine that there are two static things, A and B, situated in space. From reference point r, A is to the left of B. That's a relation, but it's not becoming.
  • Metaphysician Undercover
    12.3k
    Perhaps a relation is not necessarily a becoming, but a becoming is necessarily a relation.
  • Metaphysician Undercover
    12.3k
    So the issue I brought, is how can becoming be primary, or prior, if it is a relation, and if a relation requires necessarily, things (beings) which are related?
  • Terrapin Station
    13.8k


    I don't think the idea of having one "thing" be primary makes much sense anyway. I don't get the desire for that.
  • Metaphysician Undercover
    12.3k
    When two distinct things, separable in analysis, are believed to be co-dependent, i.e. one is not prior to the other, then an infinite regress of existence of those two things is implied, rendering their existence unintelligible, unless we refer to a third thing, which is the cause of those two things coming into existence in their co-dependence. That third thing would then be prior to the two.
  • Terrapin Station
    13.8k


    If you're worried about historical "coming into existence" positing something as primary doesn't solve anything. You still have the problem of that thing coming into existence or you need to posit it as always existing.
  • Cavacava
    2.4k


    Do you think sense datum can be classified as becomings, in the genesis (the genealogical relationship between causes and effects)of a perception, the process whereby something non-conceptual and unintelligible becomes conceptual, intelligible. How the substantial becomes intelligible.
  • Metaphysician Undercover
    12.3k
    If you're worried about historical "coming into existence" positing something as primary doesn't solve anything. You still have the problem of that thing coming into existence or you need to posit it as always existing.Terrapin Station

    Correct, but you are one step along, in the long process of understanding. Learning is an extremely long process. Finding out that I came from my parents is just one step in determining where I came from. But it wouldn't make sense to say that, because I still must learn where my parents came from, there is no point in learning that I came from my parents.
  • Terrapin Station
    13.8k
    but you are one step along, in the long process of understanding.Metaphysician Undercover

    There's no reason to believe that you are though. Again there's no reason to believe that one thing is primary over another. Believing that one thing is primary doesn't at all solve the problem that you either have an infinite regress historically or that something "came from nothing," so that doesn't work as an argumentative justification for positing something as primary.
  • Metaphysician Undercover
    12.3k
    There's no reason to believe that you are though. Again there's no reason to believe that o be thing is primary over anither.Terrapin Station

    You don't see a reason to believe that your parents are prior (primary) to yourself?
  • Terrapin Station
    13.8k


    If for anything, something preceded something else, then for everything, something must have preceded something else.

    Is that true?
  • Metaphysician Undercover
    12.3k
    Very good, you've demonstrated the point nicely. There is a veritable futility in describing the world in terms of relations (becoming). It produces the unintelligibility of infinite regress. Once this is fully grasped, we can move on toward describing the world in terms of being, "what is".
  • Terrapin Station
    13.8k


    Haha--ignore the question and pretend that I agreed with you. Nice tactic.
  • Metaphysician Undercover
    12.3k
    As I said, defining the world in terms of relations is a useful thought exercise, but when you try to produce absolutes, fundamental principles, from relations (becoming) you render the world unintelligible, as you have demonstrated in your example.
  • aletheist
    1.5k
    So an understanding of things (being) is necessarily prior to an understanding of relations between things (becoming).Metaphysician Undercover

    Not necessarily prior, since identity is a relation. There is also the Christian concept of God as Trinity, such that Being and relations are both necessary and eternal. In any case, my view (contra @apokrisis) is that Peirce's final cosmology requires the reality of God as Ens necessarium.
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