When one talks about a magnifying glass and looks at a magnifying glass while under the impression that the magnifying glass itself is the object of interest, they have misunderstood what a magnifying glass is, and how to use it. So too with norms, models, frames, etc — Leontiskos

Yes, but human perception is neither a lens nor a camera.
It is not designed for observation but for guided action.

This central concern of the enactive position stands in contradistinction to the received view that perception is fundamentally the truthful reconstruction of a portion of the physical world through a registering of existing environmental information. In the enactive approach reality is not a given: it is perceiver-dependent, not because the perceiver “constructs” it as he or she pleases, but because what counts as a relevant world is inseparable from the structure of theperceiver.

A classical illustration of the perceptual guidance of action is the study of Richard Held and Alan Hein, who raised kittens in the dark and exposed them to lightonly under controlled conditions. A first group of animals was allowed to move around normally, but they were harnessed to a simple carriage and basket that contained the second group of animals. The two groups, therefore, shared the same visual experience, but the second group was entirely passive. When the animals were released after a few weeks of this treatment, the first group of kittens behaved normally, but those who had been carried around behaved as if they were blind: they bumped into objects and fell over edges. This beautiful study illustrates the – enactive – view that objects are seen not by the visual extraction of features, but rather by the visual guidance of action. Similar results have been obtained under various other circumstances and studied even at the level of the single cell.

If the reader feels that this example is fine for cats, but irrelevant for humans, let us consider another case. Paul Bach y Rita designed a video camera for blind persons that can stimulate multiple points on the skin by electrically activated vibration. Thus images formed with the camera were translated into patterned tactile sensations – with the following results. Patterns projected onto the skin had no “visual” content if the subject remained motionless.

However, if the subject directed the camera by moving his head, hands, or body for a few hours, a remarkable transformation occurred. The tactile sensations became visual perceptions, the patterns of vibration on the skin were not felt but seen as images projected into the space being explored by the bodily directed “gaze” of the video camera. Thus in order to experience “real objects out there,” it was enough for the person to actively direct the camera. This experience is an excellent example of the perceiver-dependent nature of what otherwise seems an internal representation of a perceiver-independent world of features.

Cognitive science is waking up to the full importance of the realization that perception does not consist in the recovery of a pre-given world, but rather in the perceptual guidance of action in a world that is inseparable from our sensorimotor capacities, and that “higher” cognitive structures also emerge from recurrent patterns of perceptually guided action. Thus cognition consists not of representations but of embodied action. Thus we can say that the world we know is not pre-given; it is, rather, enacted through our history of structural coupling, and the temporal hinges that articulate enaction are rooted in the number of alternative microworlds that are activated in every situation. These alternatives are the source of both common sense and creativity in cognition.

Thus it seems more and more compelling to look at knowledge – to understand understanding – in a manner that can only be called post-Cartesian: that is knowledge
appears more and more as being built from small domains composed of microworlds and microidentities. Behavioral repertoires vary throughout the animal kingdom, but what all living cognitive beings seem to have in common is know- how constituted on the basis of the concrete. Thus what we call general and abstract are aggregates of readiness-for-action.( Francisco Varela, Ethical Know-how)

Yes, but human perception is neither a lens nor a camera. — Joshs

Looks like you need to try reading that post again.

Looks like you need to try reading that post again — Leontiskos

You claimed that a model or norm implies something true and pre-existing in the external world on which it is based. The quote I included argues that perception and cognition are not models or representations of a pre-existing world, they enact a world through guided action.

- Yeah, you rolled in your schtick. Model/norm != perception.

↪Joshs - Yeah, you rolled in your schtick. Model/norm != perception — Leontiskos

And what is your schtick? How would you characterize the role of perception?

- Not every thread is about perception. For example, this thread is not about perception.

one can hold the individuating conditions for a given assemblage fixed and give an account of how it works as an assemblage. In the same way as you don't need to know the history of pool cues to describe a pool cue striking a ball.

Another way of putting it is that assemblages, once they're up and running, are often created and sustained through internalised networks rather than the ones which partook to their genesis. — fdrake

It looks like you place strong emphasis on the synchronic aspect of the assemblage, where all its workings and functioning are fully realized in the present moment. No doubt, this perspective allows for interesting research. However, an exclusive focus on the synchronic dimension may obscure various political and ethical implications. Assemblages permeate all domains of contemporary life, and individuals involved can become completely consumed by the intensity of their assemblages' directed activities.Elaborating on this tendency, Deleuze equates the internal relations of assemblages with relations of power. For him, assemblage theory becomes an inquiry into the genesis of current power relations, how they evolve, and potentially a theory of practice regarding how to exercise or resist power.

↪Joshs - Not every thread is about perception. For example, this thread is not about perception. — Leontiskos

Would you say it is about cognition?

- The OP is about two related approaches to philosophical issues, the "Model Building Style" and the "Deflationary Style." It says nothing at all about perception or cognition.

Yes, but human perception is neither a lens nor a camera.

I have seen enactivists use the metaphor of "lenses" as opposed to "images," as a counter to representationalism. They employ the lens metaphor pretty much to make the same point Leo is making.

Of course, a lens is something you actively use. The photographer isn't passive.

What would you like out of a theory of truth telling? — fdrake

I think the problem is that there is no truth-telling occurring. You are allergic to the word: — Leontiskos

Why is it that our culture is so often allergic to the idea of truth? I think it's because it can't be bought. It doesn't fit neatly in a model. And if we are the masters with our hammers, then if truth doesn't want to play ball and act like a nail, so much the worse for truth! Truth is a pain in the ass. Let it be banished!

Truth is what judges the Model Builder's model. In this case, to the model builder who wants to model only behavior, truth says, "This isn't up to grade. Your model handles quacks but it doesn't handle ducks. Back to the drawing board." The model builder might appeal to norms, or social constructions, or all sorts of other things, but all these courts of appeal defer to the Court of Truth, whether they like it or not.

Truth is a pain in the ass. Let it be banished! — Leontiskos

Did you have an account of truth you wanted to share?

It looks like you place strong emphasis on the synchronic aspect of the assemblage, where all its workings and functioning are fully realized in the present moment. No doubt, this perspective allows for interesting research. However, an exclusive focus on the synchronic dimension may obscure various political and ethical implications. Assemblages permeate all domains of contemporary life, and individuals involved can become completely consumed by the intensity of their assemblages' directed activities.Elaborating on this tendency, Deleuze equates the internal relations of assemblages with relations of power. For him, assemblage theory becomes an inquiry into the genesis of current power relations, how they evolve, and potentially a theory of practice regarding how to exercise or resist power. — Number2018

I was under the impression that, as far as assemblages are concerned, one man's synchronic is another's diachronic. Like you could form a history of maths, as an assemblage, as a history of theorems and proofs and arguments. Or you could form a history of maths, as an assemblage, as a history of institutions and geographies. The first guides the second and the second guides the first.
Or if you wanted to do a history of violence in the political north, you might be able to do it from the perspective of lead in paint.

If you want it in jargon, the same assemblage can be territorialised in multiple ways and have its {the} body without organs face multiple strata. I think, for historical reasons, people strongly emphasise the socius' mediating role on assemblages, even though nature plays an expansive role in that mediation. I see that as a loss of flexibility in the theory due to its usual emphasis.

Edit: "New Materialism" wise, I think this latter emphasis is why you can lump Deleuze in with the "correlationist" stereotype, if you read him as another philosopher of total social mediation.

Yes, but human perception is neither a lens nor a camera.
It is not designed for observation but for guided action. — Joshs

Then how do you know which action to perform if you haven't observed the current situation, or know that your action succeeded if you don't make an observation?

Isn't observing an action? Isn't your attention a guided observation?

It seems to me that you cannot separate observations from actions - they are part of the same feedback loop.

One might ask, "Which came first, the action or the observation?". I would say that natural selection acts on one's actions and observations (senses) (another type of action) evolved to guide one's other actions in more meaningful ways.

If you want it in jargon, the same assemblage can be territorialised in multiple ways and have its {the} body without organs face multiple strata. I think, for historical reasons, people strongly emphasise the socius' mediating role on assemblages, even though nature plays an expansive role in that mediation. I see that as a loss of flexibility in the theory due to its usual emphasis.

Edit: "New Materialism" wise, I think this latter emphasis is why you can lump Deleuze in with the "correlationist" stereotype, if you read him as another philosopher of total social mediation. — fdrake

It depends on which brand of New Materialism you prefer.
For ‘negative’ new materialists like Graham Harman (Object Oriented Ontology) and Quentin Meillassoux (Speculative Realism) nature can be thought independently of the sociois, since matter is independent of or withdrawn from thought. By contrast, in the performative new materialism of Karen Barad and Vicky Kirby, nature and the social, ontology and epistemology are inherently co-implicated and mutually constituting. This is consistent with Deleuze’s account, which does not split nature off from the psychic or the social.(“… the plane of consistency knows nothing of the difference between the artificial and the natural.”)

“Every abstract machine is linked to other abstract machines, not only because they are inseparably political, economic, scientific, artistic, ecological, cosmic—perceptive, affective, active, thinking, physical, and semiotic—but because their various types are as intertwined as their operations are convergent. Mechanosphere.” (ATP)

"New Materialism" wise, I think this latter emphasis is why you can lump Deleuze in with the "correlationist" stereotype, if you read him as another philosopher of total social mediation. — fdrake

Not quite. Meillassoux explicitly says in After Finitude that Deleuze is neither a weak correlationist nor a strong correlationist, his philosophy is instead "subjective metaphysics".

It depends on which brand of New Materialism you prefer.
For ‘negative’ new materialists like Graham Harman (Object Oriented Ontology) and Quentin Meillassoux (Speculative Realism) nature can be thought independently of the sociois, since matter is independent of or withdrawn from thought. — Joshs

Graham Harman is not a materialist, @Joshs, nor is Object Oriented Ontology a kind of materialism. Harman is against materialism. He has an article (which is a really good read, BTW, even if I don't agree with it) called I Am Also of the Opinion that Materialism Must Be Destroyed. He has been an immaterialist ever since his first book, Tool-Being.

Graham Harman is not a materialist, Joshs, nor is Object Oriented Ontology a kind of materialism. Harman is against materialism. He has an article (which is a really good read, BTW, even if I don't agree with it) called I Am Also of the Opinion that Materialism Must Be Destroyed. He has been an immaterialist ever since his first book, Tool-Being. — Arcane Sandwich

I was drawing from the paper ‘ WHAT IS NEW MATERIALISM?’ by Christopher N. Gamble, Joshua S. Hanan & Thomas Nail

The second strand of negative new materialism is “object-oriented ontology” (OOO) – a term Graham Harman coined that defines a theoretical commitment to thinking the real beyond the human experience of matter. “What is real in the cosmos,” he asserts, “are forms wrapped inside forms, not durable specks of material that reduce everything else to derivative status. If this is ‘materialism,' then it is the first materialism in history to deny the existence of matter.” For Harman, the essence of beings is to withdraw from all the objects that compose it and think it. As such, being is never something anthropocentric, experienced, or relational but is something absolutely and non-relationally “withdrawn” from everything else, as though it were comple-tely “vacuum sealed.” As it happens, this essen-tialist view of identity as something radically self-contained is in fact perfectly captured by the three discrete, individually circumscribed circles, zeros, or “O's” that have become the theory's standard iconic shorthand. This view also leads Harman to affirm what he calls “a new sort of ‘formalism.'

Timothy Morton similarly argues against “some kind of substrate, or some kind of unformed matter”78 in favor of essential forms that infinitely exceed the human domain of meaning-making. For example, Morton describes “hyperobjects” such as global warming as “real entities whose primordial reality is withdrawn from humans.” For him, as for Harman and Tristan Garcia, “objects” ultimately refer to an infinitely hidden essence that never even partially reveals itself in any relation.“

I was drawing from the paper ‘ WHAT IS NEW MATERIALISM?’ by Christopher N. Gamble, Joshua S. Hanan & Thomas Nail — Joshs

Are those authors arguing that Object Oriented Philosophy is materialist? That would be a convoluted thing to argue, I suppose. Harman is explicit about his immaterialism.

Are those authors arguing that Object Oriented Philosophy is materialist? That would be a convoluted thing to argue, I suppose. Harman is explicit about his immaterialism. — Arcane Sandwich

I think what is important to the authors is that Harman, like the others they discuss in the paper, break away from a subject and language-centered ontology in favor of one that does not slight the agential power of non-human objects.

Meillassoux explicitly says in After Finitude that Deleuze is neither a weak correlationist nor a strong correlationist, his philosophy is instead "subjective metaphysics". — Arcane Sandwich

Yes. I don't think Deleuze is a correlationist. I do however think he gets interpreted as one. People tend to use his theory, I think, to highlight the social mediation of everything.

I think what is important to the authors is that Harman, like the others they discuss in the paper, break away from a subject and language-centered ontology in favor of one that does not slight the agential power of non-human objects. — Joshs

That's fair. I just wouldn't lump him in with materialists, and I say that as a materialist as well as fan of Harman's work.

Yes. I don't think Deleuze is a correlationist. I do however think he gets interpreted as one. People tend to use his theory, I think, to highlight the social mediation of everything. — fdrake

That's fair. I think that the most interesting part about Deleuze is what his ontology has to say about inorganic objects such as stones. But, then again, I like object-oriented ontologies more than subject-oriented ontologies.

I'll just quote something that Meillassoux says about Deleuze in After Finitude, which might be of some relevance to the OP:

This second metaphysical strategy, which we evoked very briefly in Chapter 1, consists in absolutizing the correlation itself. Its basic line of argument may be summarized as follows: it was claimed that the Kantian notion of the thing-in-itself was not only unknowable, but also unthinkable. But if so, then it seems that the wisest course is simply to abolish any such notion of the in-itself. Accordingly, it will be maintained that the notion of the in-itself is devoid of truth because it is unthinkable, and that it should be abolished so that only the relation between subject and object remains, or some other correlation deemed to be more fundamental. A metaphysics of this type may select from among various forms of subjectivity, but it is invariably characterized by the fact that it hypostatizes some mental, sentient, or vital term: representation in the Leibnizian monad; Schelling's Nature, or the objective subject-object; Hegelian Mind; Schopenhauer's Will; the Will (or Wills) to Power in Nietzsche; perception loaded with memory in Bergson; Deleuze's Life, etc. Even in those cases where the vitalist hypostatization of the correlation (as in Nietzsche or Deleuze) is explicitly identified with a critique of 'the subject' or of 'metaphysics', it shares with speculative idealism the same twofold decision which ensures its irreducibility to naive realism or some variant of transcendental idealism:
1. Nothing can be unless it is some form of relation-to-the-world (consequently, the Epicurean atom, which has neither intelligence, nor will, nor life, is impossible).
2. The previous proposition must be understood in an absolute sense, rather than as merely relative to our knowledge.
The primacy of the unseparated has become so powerful that in the modern era, even speculative materialism seems to have been dominated by these anti-rationalist doctrines of life and will, to the detriment of a 'materialism of matter' which takes seriously the possibility that there is nothing living or willing in the inorganic realm. Thus, the rivalry between the metaphysics of Life and the metaphysics of Mind masks an underlying agreement which both have inherited from transcendentalism - anything that is totally a-subjective cannot be. — Quentin Meillassoux

I think ↪Number2018 might agree that this is what Deleuze-Guattari refer to as the molar dimension, which they argue is a surface effect of processes within molecular assemblages.

It is only at the submicroscopic level of desiring-machines that there exists a functionalism—machinic arrangements, an engineering of desire; for it is only there that functioning and formation, use and assembly, product and production merge. All molar functionalism is false, since the organic or social machines are not formed in the same way they function, and the technical machines are not assembled in the same way they are used, but imply precisely the specific conditions that separate their own production from their distinct product. Only what is not produced in the same way it functions has a meaning, and also a purpose, an intention. The desiring-machines on the contrary represent nothing, signify nothing, mean nothing, and are exactly what one makes of them, what is made with them, what they make in themselves.”(AO) — Joshs

It is a good quote. But one might get the impression that the molar level lacks autonomy and primarily reflects the derivative effects generated by the molecular level. Differently, molar formations do possess their own regime, and they react back upon the molecular forces from which they emerge. They attempt to organize and suppress what exists on the molecular level. As a result, the non-representative desiring machines begin to form reactive structures. Yet, without some kind of causal relation between the two levels, all of this may remain at an exclusively descriptive level.

there are many different kinds of assemblage theory, and I’m not suggesting you’re obliged to stick religiously to Deleuze. — Joshs

I agree. There are interesting frameworks in systems theory and the enactivist approach. For example, Shaun Gallagher has recently attempted to expand enactivist theory by developing a concept of the assemblage of a self. In this view, the self as an assemblage is a network of recursive relations that holds together the constitutive processes. As Gallagher explains, “What we call self consists of a complex pattern of specific factors or processes (bodily processes, experiences, affective states, behaviors, actions, and so forth). A self-pattern operates as a complex system that emerges from dynamical interactions of constituent processes. Within the self-pattern there is no element that operates as a controlling agent, there is no self within a self-pattern. A self, of the sort that you are and that I am, just is a pattern.” (Gallagher, The Self and Its Disorders, p. 16). This task seems to present serious challenges. The paradoxical notion of the selfless self must incorporate several heterogeneous elements. The most difficult part is to relevantly determine the process of the appropriate synthesis, and it could be compared to the obscurity of D & G’s notion of the conjunctive synthesis producing “the subject as a residuum alongside the machine, as an appendix, with no fixed identity, forever decentered” (AO, p. 20)

But one might get the impression that the molar level lacks autonomy and primarily reflects the derivative effects generated by the molecular level. Differently, molar formations do possess their own regime, and they react back upon the molecular forces from which they emerge. They attempt to organize and suppress what exists on the molecular level. As a result, the non-representative desiring machines begin to form reactive structures. Yet, without some kind of causal relation between the two levels, all of this may remain at an exclusively descriptive level. — Number2018

Yes, the actual and the virtual communicate and affect each other as heterogeneities. And yet notice how Deleuze characterizes the molar as ‘false’, as a distorted surface effect , an external envelope, as hiding that which gives rise to it, which is its principle. So yes the molar has its autonomy, but it’s the autonomy of an illusion.

In accordance with Heidegger's ontological intuition, difference must be articulation and connection in itself; it must relate different to different without any mediation whatsoever by the identical, the similar, the analogous or the opposed. There must be a differenciation of difference, an in-itself which is like a differenciator, by virtue of which the different is gathered all at once rather than represented on condition of a prior resemblance, identity, analogy or opposition. As for these latter instances, since they cease to be conditions, they become no more than effects of the primary difference and its differenciation, overall or surface effects which characterise the distorted world of representation, and express the manner in which the in-itself of difference hides itself by giving rise to that which covers it.

The two repetitions are not independent. One is the singular subject, the interiority and the heart of the other, the depths of the other. The other is only the external envelope, the abstract effect. The repetition of dissymmetry is hidden within symmetrical ensembles or effects; a repetition of distinctive points underneath that of ordinary points; and everywhere the Other in the repetition of the Same. This is the secret, the most ... profound repetition: it alone provides the principle of the other one, the reason for the blockage of concepts.” “ The material sense results from this other, as if secreted by it like a shell.”

“What it comes down to is that we cannot content our­selves with a dualism or summary opposition between the strata and the destratified plane of consistency. The strata themselves are animated and defined by relative speeds of deterritorialization; moreover, absolute
deterritorialization is there from the beginning, and the strata are spin­offs, thickenings on a plane of consistency that is everywhere, always pri­mary and always immanent.”

It would help if you noted which text the quoted passage is taken from.

I was under the impression that, as far as assemblages are concerned, one man's synchronic is another's diachronic. Like you could form a history of maths, as an assemblage, as a history of theorems and proofs and arguments. Or you could form a history of maths, as an assemblage, as a history of institutions and geographies. The first guides the second and the second guides the first.
Or if you wanted to do a history of violence in the political north, you might be able to do it from the perspective of lead in paint. — fdrake

I support and share your emphasis on the synchronic dimension of an assemblage. I would even like to broaden this perspective by considering your example. When one is solving a math problem or developing a new theory, they do not consciously attend to the history of theorems, proofs, and arguments. Similarly, when catching a ball, a basketball player does not recall the rules of the game or make strategic evaluations about the state of play. Only a young student or an inefficient mathematician would intentionally turn to the scope of utilizable, ‘historical’ knowledge while solving a problem. Most often, it is applied unconsciously, as in the Bourdieu's theory of practical sense. Also, when writing a paper on the history of mathematics, one remains entirely within the synchronic dimension of a different assemblage. In general, due to the intensity of our synchronic experiences, history primarily plays a pedagogical role. Who remembers the events of Brexit or the Covid pandemic today?Deleuze and Guattari also place strong emphasis on the flattening of the assemblage, the making it one- dimensional: “An assemblage flattens all its dimensions onto a single plane of consistency” (A Thousand Plateaus, p. 90). The project of A Thousand Plateaus engages history in a singular manner of leaping from one plateau to another. In this way, D&G develop their own historical method. Nevertheless, all the intensities of their plateaus are located at the surface of the body without organs of their project.

If you want it in jargon, the same assemblage can be territorialised in multiple ways and have its {the} body without organs face multiple strata. I — fdrake

Any process of new territorialization is inseparable from deterritorialization. Currently, we are likely experiencing an accelerating process of overall deterritorialization. As a result, the assemblage cannot be territorialized again while remaining the same. The prevailing deterritorialization leads to the evolving development of the assemblage’s body without organs, which opens directly to the de-stratified components of the plane of consistency. Take, for example, the second Trump presidency. Does it represent the territorialization of the same assemblage as it was in his election in 2016?

I think, for historical reasons, people strongly emphasise the socius' mediating role on assemblages, even though nature plays an expansive role in that mediation. — fdrake

Today, the socius increasingly territorializes within the technological and informational self-organizing intensities. And they play a critical role in the 'mediation'.

"New Materialism" wise, I think this latter emphasis is why you can lump Deleuze in with the "correlationist" stereotype, if you read him as another philosopher of total social mediation. — fdrake

It is impossible to situate Deleuze within the "correlationist" stereotype. He conceived assemblages as including active inorganic, organic, technological, and informational non-human components.
“The forces within man enter into a relation with forces from the outside, those of silicon which supersedes carbon, or genetic components which supersede the organism, or a-grammaticalities which supersede the signifier” (Deleuze, 2006, p.109)

He conceived assemblages as including active inorganic, organic, technological, and informational non-human components. — Number2018

Oh yes! And it is a great irony that the meticulous inhumanity of Deleuze's metaphysics gets used to imbue the universe with human affect and structures with human discourse.

It is impossible to situate Deleuze within the "correlationist" stereotype — Number2018

Yes. I don't think Deleuze is a correlationist. — fdrake

Who says correlationism is a bad thing? Answer: folks like Harman and Meillassoux. You may be aware that Meillassoux has been accused of positing an ontological dualism between matter and thought, and Harman has been called a rational subjectivist. In arguing against what they perceive as the subjective idealism of ‘correlationism’ they succumb to their own strains of dualistic idealism, and this prevents them from understanding that there are other ways of thinking a correlation among elements of the world besides one which assumes a transcendent subjectivity. Deleuze gives us a correlationism (connections, conjunctions, resonances, series, consistencies, diagrams, surveys) produced by non-oppositional, non-hierarchical differences-in-themselves. This is not to say that Deleuzian assemblages don’t represent a kind of idealism (the virtual is ‘real without being actual, ideal without being abstract’), but it is of a quite different sort than that which reifies subjectivity.

He conceived assemblages as including active inorganic, organic, technological, and informational non-human components.
“The forces within man enter into a relation with forces from the outside, those of silicon which supersedes carbon, or genetic components which supersede the organism, or a-grammaticalities which supersede the signifier” (Deleuze, 2006, p. — Number2018

Yes, but wouldn’t these components lose their characteristics as stratified forms as they are plugged into planes of consistency, and wouldn’t this plane of consistency integrate this outside into its own pre-personal diagrammatic order?

But how can one still identify and name things if they have lost the strata that qualified them, if they have gone into absolute deterritorialization?...Now there is no hint in all of this of a chaotic white night or an undifferentiated black night. There are rules, rules of "plan(n)ing," of
diagramming, as we will see later on, or elsewhere. The abstract machine is not random; the continuities, emissions and combinations, and conjunctions do not occur in just any fashion.”
(ATP)