Comments

  • Ontology of Time
    And it is neither a brief interval between the past and future nor a fleeting absence of being.
    — Number2018
    Isn't it just a mental state? The ability to tell the difference between past, present and future using different type of mental operations in human mind i.e. memory, consciousness and imagination?

    Thus, the present moment's reality is shaped by a virtual time, existing as neither what is no longer nor what is not yet, but as the difference between past and future.
    — Number2018
    Virtual time? Remember when you were a baby and child? You couldn't have known what time is about. As you grew older, you learn about it, read about it, and think about. You have a concept of time. But the nature of time itself is still abstract. When you get older, they say time feels going a lot faster than when you were younger. What does it tell you? Isn't time just a mental state?
    Corvus

    Time cannot be solely attributed to the primordial activity of mental faculties or the outcomes of the learning process. Such a position would inevitably reaffirm the primacy of a transcendental subject behind an individual’s time-related actions. Instead, we can refer to a temporality shaped by the rhythmic practices of society. Individual time-related orientations emerge not through reading, learning, or understanding but through shared collective experiences. A baby’s or child’s entire life is organized according to the temporal structures of their immediate environment. Later, as an adult and member of an organization or institution, one’s sense of time is primarily affected by the organization’s structure of time. Thus, the present moment becomes an operational time of activity, guided by organizational memory and oriented toward an uncertain future of a newly redefined accomplishment. In this sense, the present moment's reality is shaped by a virtual time horizons of the past and future.
  • Ontology of Time
    Space and objects co-exist momentarily; they are co-present. However, for us, the present time is shaped by the current virtual time horizons of the past and future.
    — Number2018

    What do you mean by "the current virtual time horizon"?
    Corvus

    There is a paradoxical co-existence of time. On one hand, only the present moment truly exists. However, the nature of the present moment differs from that of spatial locations and objects. The moment vanishes as soon as it emerges and cannot be carried into the next one. It is an event that ceases the instant it appears. And it is neither a brief interval between the past and future nor a fleeting absence of being. Thus, the present moment's reality is shaped by a virtual time, existing as neither what is no longer nor what is not yet, but as the difference between past and future.
  • Laclau's Theory of Populism

    I’m referring to a situation where a system of values becomes the foundation for large-scale political struggle.
    — Number2018

    I don't see why the "digital medium" gives every system of values a populist mode of expression. For example, when the incumbent uses that same digital media to promote the reigning values, what is at stake is not poplism.
    Leontiskos

    Formally, you are correct, as the incumbent should have defended the status quo. However, let’s reconsider Reno’s lecture. Doesn’t his thesis—'we are on the cusp of a new era marked by a conservative consensus, transitioning from a liberalism of open, or liquid society, to a period of permanency and normalcy'—align perfectly with a populist mode of expression? The affectively charged statement suggests that, for Reno (and many others), we have been experiencing a long-term, accelerating deviation from a state of equilibrium. Yet it’s impossible to simply halt this sentiment and its causes. As a result, in the last U.S. elections, both parties were contending for control over the accelerating dynamic of change. The shared digital medium significantly amplifies the image of the moment’s decisiveness that also manifested in Reno's thesis. For example, in this context, Musk spoke of the 'last free elections,' while Democrats warned of the end of democracy after Trump’s win. In this situation, the opposing value systems became a springboard for the further re-enforcement of the will to power.

    Trump has touted tariffs for a long time, so I don't see this as "the logic taking on a dynamic of its own." Tariffs are basically a simplistic approach to the "America first" mentality that is inevitably bound up with MAGA.Leontiskos

    Perhaps you are not aware that, alongside imposing 25% tariffs on Canada, Trump repeatedly suggested that Canada could become the 51st state. After the recent episodes of imposing and delaying tariffs, most Canadians believe there is a serious threat to the country's sovereignty. Does this also 'inevitably tie in with MAGA'?

    If populism requires a shift from pre-election promises to post-election actions, then it's not so clear that it fits Trump, because he has a surprising tendency to fulfill his promises. Or at least to try. And maybe that's a problem with Laclau: populism can function fine even when the signifier is not empty. Sometimes the people know what they want, and there isn't a great deal of ambiguity in the signifier. Sometimes the desired change has a clear direction.Leontiskos

    Laclau’s theory seeks to address a decisive yet transitory moment in the intrusion of the political. It may be incorrect to attribute to his notion of populism a universal explanatory capacity. But what can be the relevant analytical model for describing the current events in the U.S.? I understand and largely share your position regarding USAID in the thread 'The Mask Plutocracy.' However, could you elaborate on the significance of these events, beyond merely stating that Trump’s voters approve of what has been done so far or that it all aligns with the MAGA spirit? Doesn’t this statement tautologically highlight the ambiguity of the slogan? While people may intuitively know what they want, there is still considerable uncertainty about the consequences of their actions. Likely, the latest events make sense in the U.S., but on the international stage the extraordinarily of some of Trump’s team’s agendas and interventions has become the subject of fearful interpretations and can trigger a chain of unforeseen reactions.
  • Ontology of Time
    Time doesn't exist. Only space and objects exist.Corvus

    Space and objects co-exist momentarily; they are co-present. However, for us, the present time is shaped by the current virtual time horizons of the past and future. Without this distinction, the present would cease to be the present, becoming instead merely the intensely experienced flow of life.
  • Laclau's Theory of Populism
    The dictates of this medium inevitably transform any system of values into a populist mode of expression.
    — Number2018

    But why? If for Laclau (as also for Reno) populism is a revolutionary desire for change from the status quo, then why must any system of values be transformed into a populist mode of expression?
    Leontiskos

    I’m referring to a situation where a system of values becomes the foundation for large-scale political struggle. There is a threshold that separates academic or pedagogical exposition from entering the contemporary digital arena, where opposing parties face off. The rules of engagement within this medium shape how the encounter is framed, prompting both parties to rely on affective appeals and present themselves as advocating for urgent change from the status quo.

    and Trump’s second administration can serve as an experimental setting for this. So far, MAGA seems to function as a façade for the vast concentration of executive power, which is where it reveals its affinity with the enactment of a 'liberalism of open, liquid society.'
    — Number2018

    Well first, can a empty signifier function as a façade? And if not, then it seems that MAGA must be more than an empty signifier. But perhaps you are not claiming that it is MAGA per se that is the empty signifier?
    Leontiskos

    Laclau’s concept of the empty signifier refers to a vague and transient, yet potent and dynamic, sense of solidarity. Who can explicate the precise meaning of MAGA? Its significance has likely fluctuated over time, and even its primary interpreter, Trump himself, would likely define it differently today than he did before the elections.

    for the sake of argument let's say that MAGA is all about concentrating executive power. Still, what does that concentration have in common with "the enactment of a 'liberalism of open, liquid society'"? Trump seems to be using the power of the executive to do just the opposite, and all concentrations of power seem to have a conservative bent (in the sense that they want to maintain that power - they want permanence qua power).Leontiskos

    MAGA is not just about concentrating executive power. But the logic behind its implementation takes on a dynamic of its own, one that eludes pre-existing discursive or ideological frameworks. Take, for example, the latest executive orders on tariffs that the Trump administration is set to impose on Canada and Mexico. These policies go far beyond simply reversing the course of the previous administration. While you are correct about the conservative bent, no one can accurately predict its consequences in today’s environment.
  • Laclau's Theory of Populism


    I would like to elaborate on the point that
    his points about conservatism and progressivism being relative and non-ideological (and populism being neither inherently left nor right). That is, conservatism values permanence and progressivism values change, and apart from that core the doctrines are all historically contingent. Thus a doctrine will not ultimately be a sign of conservatism or progressivism,Leontiskos

    I believe Nietzsche’s style of value critique can help us understand the affinity between 'conservatism' and 'progressivism' as Reno defines them. He could clearly articulate the two different sentiments behind both systems of values. However, to become political platforms, both must manifest within the same global digital medium, adhering to its structural fields, temporalities, and rules of engagement. The dictates of this medium inevitably transform any system of values into a populist mode of expression. At this point, Laclau’s concept of the empty signifier and the formation of political subjects remains highly relevant. Moreover, once in power, there is a phase of implementation, and Trump’s second administration can serve as an experimental setting for this. So far, MAGA seems to function as a façade for the vast concentration of executive power, which is where it reveals its affinity with the enactment of a 'liberalism of open, liquid society.'
  • Laclau's Theory of Populism


    Thank you for sharing such an interesting lecture. At the 49-minute mark, Reno presents his thesis that 'we are on the cusp of a new era marked by a conservative consensus, and we are transitioning from a liberalism of open, or liquid society, toward a period of permanency and normalcy.' Does this thesis apply to the beginning of Trump's second presidency? The broad scope of executive orders and policy changes has been framed as an effort to implement the MAGA slogan and fulfill campaign promises. However, the plurality and complexity of the social, economic, and political agendas make it difficult to predict their long-term impact. Further, a clear trend toward the concentration of executive power is evident. It would be misleading to evaluate this phenomenon solely through the lens of certain interpretations of Trump's first administration, such as viewing it as a quasi-fascist authoritarian regime, a catalyst for chaos, or merely a populist movement. Instead, the growing consolidation of power is rooted in reversing the entire course of the previous administration while continuing its path for implementing far-reaching, emergency-style policies.
  • Power / Will
    Power, as a will to power, is not that which the will wants, but that which wants in the will (Dionysus himself). The will to power is the differential element from which derive the forces at work, as weIl as their respective quality in a complex whole. (Deleuze on Nietzsche)

    Nietzsche is a philosopher of power who managed to conceive of power without relying on political theory. Foucault, rather than Deleuze, has become his most consistent follower. However, Foucault extends far beyond Nietzsche’s philosophy of power. While Nietzsche grounds morals and institutions in the practices of distinguished groups or individuals, Foucault ultimately removes the psychological aspect from his approach. As a result, conscious intentions and schemes become derivatives of impersonal strategies. The issues of origin, implicit meaning, or explicit intentionality are replaced with relations of forces that manifest on the surface of events. Foucault deconstructs the notions of the subject and its social status. Thus, neither individual subjects nor the masses influence the course of history: subjects emerge simultaneously with the relationships between forces that arise between them and are defined by these relationships.
  • Power / Will
    Did Nietzsche give out clear reference or explanation on Will to Power?Corvus

    Many believe they know what will and what power are, and accordingly interpret the title 'Will to Power.' One needs to stop linking the concepts of 'will' and 'goal.' The will to power is not a will that has power as its goal, which strives for power. This will does not aim at anything. If there are goals present, they are set by the will; they are at its service and cannot be external to it. It does not strive for any goal; it itself is eternal becoming. This becoming is struggle. Nietzsche: 'Willing in general is equivalent to the desire to become stronger, the desire for growth – and the desire to have the means for it.'
  • On religion and suffering
    But surely the brain couldn’t perform these tricks
    of condensation, assimilation and categorization if the patterns it construes dont reflect the way the world really is? It could do this in fantasy, but when one attempted to predict the course of actual events on the basis of these mapped out patterns, one’s attempts would be invalidated unless they accorded with the actual flow of events.
    Joshs

    Can it be also applied to the experience of a movie viewer? Does this experience amount to a flow of images and perceptions, harmoniously coordinated by a unified perspective of integral representation?
  • Behavior and being
    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. Ifdrake

    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)
  • Behavior and being
    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)
  • Behavior and being
    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.
  • Behavior and being
    Some assemblages behave as if there is a relevant concept of sufficient cause - pool cue strikes ball, ball goes into table pocket. Eating a lethal dose of cyanide is sufficient to kill you. Things like that. The changes propagate in each case, but to the extent an assemblage can be split into distinct entities with relations, it makes sense to see the state of one relation propagating into others given a change.fdrake

    I agree that various types of causality can be relevantly applied within different assemblages. Moreover, some causal relations can even be universally applicable. However, let’s consider your example: "Eating a lethal dose of cyanide is sufficient to kill you." There are four heterogeneous elements: ‘eating,’ ‘a lethal (sufficient) dose,’ ‘cyanide,’ and ‘killing.’ One could start by asking about factors that brought these elements together. Following Durkheim, one might invoke the concept of anomie, which designates a state of degradation of the social fabric that leads to an increase in suicidal deaths. Alternatively, one could turn to the death of Socrates and examine the practices of execution in ancient Greece. In either case, the inevitable conclusion would be that the extraordinary encounter of political-social forces is necessary to assemble these disparate components.This is also true for your other examples, such as the needle-heroin-addict-socius or the pool cue-strikes-ball-goes-into-table-pocket assemblages. Moreover, what distinguishes an assemblage from a mere occasional aggregate, is a pattern of recurrence, a regularity of appearances. Therefore, it makes sense to determine a kind of causal relation that is ultimately responsible for the temporal durability of the assemblage.

    The immanent cause is realized, integrated, and distinguished by its effect. In this way there is a correlation or mutual superposition between cause and effect, between abstract machine and concrete assemblages
    — Number2018

    I read that as less a statement of arbitrary, recursive mediation and more a statement that assemblage-level laws {abstract machines, things like physical laws} are coextensive with the behaviour of their components {concrete assemblages}. It's roughly a way of saying a law of nature says nothing more than what things already do and can do.
    fdrake

    It’s likely that I didn’t fully elaborate on Deleuze’s notion of immanent cause and its relevance to assemblage theory. Deleuze defines this concept in his monograph on Foucault, where he explores several concrete Foucault's assemblages such as prisons, schools, or workshops, but always within the broader framework of his philosophy of immanence and difference.Let’s consider again your examples of the needle-heroin-addict-socius and the pool cue-strikes-ball-goes-into-table-pocket assemblages. In both, it is possible to distinguish between two heterogeneous and distinguishable conjunctions, in terms of Deleuze, two ‘lines of differentiation.’ The first line consists of socially recognizable and articulable activities or outcomes. In the case of the pool example, it could represent ways of obtaining leisure, socializing, or maintaining social status. The second line involves bodily and psychic intermingling—integrated blocks of primarily ritualized or automized practices, in Bourdieu sense.In ancient Greece, for instance, it would have been impossible to inject a dose of heroin in the way we do today, meaning that the needle-heroin-addict-socius assemblage could not have emerged.There is no direct causal or hierarchical relation between these two 'lines'. According to Deleuze, a type of socius should emerge to establish and sustain their connection. He refers to the cause of this singular coherence as the abstract machine, which coexists with the social.
    "The diagram or abstract machine is the map of relations between forces, a map of destiny, or
    intensity, which proceeds by primary non-localizable relations and at every moment passes through every point, 'or rather in every relation from one point to another." (Deleuze, “Foucault’, p32)
    Here, the ‘point’ represents a concrete assemblage. For it to consistently reappear, the discernible planes of the assemblage must be doubled and reinforced by a set of primarily imperceptible social relations.
  • Behavior and being
    Gallagher’s model of body schema and body image is drawn from Merleau-Ponty’s corporeal intersubjectivity, whereas Deleuze is informed by Nietzsche’s critique of causality.Joshs
    What should matter is how a particular theory functions, rather than the historical associations that can be made with it.
    The elements of an assemblage for Deleuze, the partial objects of desiring machines which are the basis of sense, are affective drives. By contrast, Gallagher and other enactivists partially separate the affective and the conceptual aspects of assemblages.Joshs
    Indeed, at a ‘molecular’ level, D&G’s philosophy of desire considers a field of heterogeneous drives, flows, and partial objects. Desire, in this sense, is a machine—an assemblage of disparate parts that functions coherently. However, from the outset, this libidinal regime is inseparable from the socius, meaning that libido directly invests the field of molar, socio-political production. As Deleuze and Guattari write, “Affects and drives form part of the infrastructure itself” (D&G, AO, p. 53). Therefore, the notion of desiring machine is later giving way to the concept of abstract machine, which designates a link between these two different levels.
  • Behavior and being
    So there's enough normative character to do things with, but the nature of what can be done using those norms is not totally determined by their current state of expression - only what may be expressed with them fully determines their expression {given the current state of the assemblage}. Which is basically a tautology, but no one knows the scope of those rules without knowing all the theorems. An appeal to potential development, there, is an assemblage concept that ↪Number2018 referenced, organisation in accordance with some abstract machine."

    The explicit articulation of a system of norms or rules prescribing concrete conduct or behavior for people in a concrete assemblage has a complex and ambiguous relationship with what people actually do. Let’s return to your case of the needle-heroin-addict-socius assemblage. There are different degrees of conscious adherence to the rules, ranging from the complete automation of the addicts to the high degree of awareness in the social and medical staff involved. Yet, while acting, even the involved professionals do not explicitly follow a system of rules. Similarly, when playing, professional basketball players do not consciously attend to the system of the game’s rules.Shaun Gallagher notes that “When the fielder is trying to catch the baseball, she is not performing tests or sampling the environment. The brain is not located in the center, conducting tests along the radii; it is on the circumference, one station amongst other stations involved in the loop thatalso navigates through the body and environment and forms the whole” (Gallagher, "Enactivist Interventions", p. 19). Gallagher’s enactivist approach aligns closely with the framework of assemblage theory. Thus, apparent rules are situated within the environment, which possesses its own organization, and where discursive, social, and normative components constitute the clearly expressible and articulable system.On the other hand, Gallagher’s concept of the ‘body’ refers to an integration of disparate but interconnected patterns of physical and psychic states, perceptions, reactions, and behaviors. The conscious self-orientation, ‘the brain’, is just one component of the larger complex that constitutes the game’s assemblage. It primarily follows the vectors of alignment between the two planes, which can be referred to as the abstract machine of the game’s assemblage. Similarly, in your example of the needle-heroin-addict-socius assemblage, the conscious participation follows "one station amongst other stations involved in the navigation on the loop."
    fdrake
  • Behavior and being
    The way I prefer to approach causality in assemblages - and this might be my own brainfarts - is that causality in an assemblage is equivalent to the behaviour of a change propagation through connected parts. Like if you had the needle-heroin-addict-socius assemblage, if you had shitty heroin instead of good heroin it could propagate changes into needle behaviour {up the dose} addict behaviour {inject the higher dose, craving} and social stuff {complain at the dealer, buy more...}. And it's appropriate to think of that as a cause.

    Though I agree that the causal order can be tangled in assemblages - if you're considering addict-heroin-socius-needle as an assemblage, it doesn't have any unique event ordering. You could have a change in addict propagating to heroin-socius-needle, then back to addict, or a change in socius propagating to addict-heroin-needle.
    fdrake
    I understand causality in assemblages differently. Thus, your description could be seen as a successive derivation, like the synaptic transmission of nerve impulses—a modulated propagation of the impulse through various mediums. It is certainly a form of indirect causality, of the input-output type, which regularly appears in your assemblage. It looks similar to De Landa’s perspective on causality in assemblages.I would consider your case of causality within the context of Deleuze’s notion of immanent cause. As Deleuze explains, “The immanent cause is realized, integrated, and distinguished by its effect. In this way there is a correlation or mutual superposition between cause and effect, between abstract machine and concrete assemblages” (Deleuze, Foucault, p. 32).First, the needle-heroin-addict-socius complex is an aggregation of heterogeneous elements. But what makes it a concrete assemblage? Bluntly, it is repetition—a coherent reappearance of the key elements, accompanied by derivative modulations, much like what you just described. Each disparate element has its own history, its own developmental tendency, and belongs to an autonomous field of knowledge and practice far greater than the individual components in your example. The historical and contingent overlap of these fields creates a virtual prerequisite potential for the assemblage. We typically take this virtual constellation for granted, but each of its implicit components is critically important for the existence of the assemblage.Imagine, for instance, that needles are no longer used in medicine, and thus will no longer be produced. Or that a medication is invented to prevent heroin use. In either case, the immanent cause would act as the whole interplay of relations that gives rise to the identity of the concrete assemblage. Conversely, the coherence of needle-heroin-addict-socius assemblage would affect the prerequisite constellation of presupposed factors.Moreover, without concrete assemblages, we cannot distinguish the fluid and variable conjunction of the generative state. In both directions, there is no direct causal interaction between the two planes. There are only indirect, mediated effects and implications. Immanent cause designates the autonomous organization of a system of implicit operative conditions, which acquires a temporal mode of self-sustaining autopoiesis. The abstract machine operates as a reciprocal feedback loop that maintains the relational unity of the two planes of heterogeneous multiplicity.By emphasizing the singularity of a concrete assemblage, the notion of immanent cause also marks the development of Deleuze’s philosophy of individuation, especially concerning the relation between the virtual and the actual.
  • Behavior and being
    The coherence and unity of the assemblage do not stem from an underlying, intelligible principle but from the regularity in the dispersion of the system of discursive elements themselves.
    — Number2018

    Yes. An assemblage doesn't have to make sense at all does it? It just has to work together. A "law" is a durable regularity. Some are so durable that they appear immutable, and may as well be.
    fdrake

    There are lots of things with lots of structures. Assemblage is a generic term for such a structure. Any particular assemblage will have a structure. Even if assemblages in general have no general laws.fdrake

    One likely needs an assemblage when confronted with situations that defy sense. When something impossible, improbable, or unbearable occurs, one can no longer rely on traditional ethical criteria of judgment or the innate "good nature" of reason itself. How can philosophy proceed when the principle of universal rationality bear upon or compatible with extraneous and heterogeneous elements? New ethical questions arise concerning action and life within a totality, and these became pressing concerns for thinkers like Adorno, Blanchot, and Levinas. For Foucault and Deleuze, these issues were central, forming the driving forces behind their development of assemblage theory.
    The classical Frankfurt School’s solution was that the systematic progression of rational utility calculations required an increasing repression of the spontaneity of inner nature. Abstract, impersonal forms of domination seemed to take precedence over the agency and freedom of a self-identical subject. Even Habermas’s shift from instrumental reason to communicative reason implicitly remained within the traditional vision of a totalizing state of future reconciliation. But how, then, can one assemble a multiplicity from disparate agentive instances—parts that have no connection to the Dominating Whole, whether it is a lost whole or a virtual one yet to come?Deleuze and Guattari's solution is that the Whole becomes related to its parts only as a complex of interconnected processes and relations—only through a set of sheer differences. It operates like a machine, but unlike a mechanism, it lacks a predefined or intentional design. It sustains itself and maintains its consistency through the regular reiteration of divergent elements, which do not follow a direct causal order. The consistency that emerges is not the result of predetermined design but of the free interplay of parts. Regularity in dispersion thus gives way to the relation between the concrete assemblage and abstract machine. The abstract machine, in this context,serves as the primordial function substituting the absent whole. It acts as an unrepresentable diagram for assembling heterogeneous elements, maintaining a complex coordination without imposing a fixed structure.Take, for example, walking down the street: one’s behavior is automatically involved in navigating terrain, making one’s way to a destination, admiring sights, avoiding traffic, waiting at traffic lights, and so on. Who is orchestrating this set of disparate capacities? Similarly, who is in charge when one is driving a car or browsing the internet? An abstract machine becomes recognizable just through its apparent effects within a concrete assemblage. There are clear political and ethical implications in closing the gaps between instinct and intelligence, between thought and action, and in the automatic, habitual, and instinctual nature of internalized thought. The assemblage theory can offer a means of understanding how agency and structure, spontaneity and regularity, are dynamically interwoven, revealing a new approach to thinking about action, ethics, and the complexities of human existence. “Abstract machines operate within concrete assemblages. They draw the cutting edges of decoding. They make the assemblage open onto something else, assemblages of another type, the molecular, the cosmic.They constitute becomings." (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987, p.510)
  • Behavior and being
    Here is a difficulty in that case: for us to be able to “say anything true about anything,” there must be at least something that “stays the same” across this ceaseless change. Otherwise, our words would mean something different on each occasion, and whatever we referred to would constantly be passing out of being. If, as Heraclitus says, we “cannot step twice into the same river,” then it also seems we cannot speak of the same river twice either.Count Timothy von Icarus

    ↪Number2018

    This approach eliminates the need for an external, transcendent organizing principle, suggesting that the system's organization emerges from within.

    What would be an example of such a philosophy?
    Count Timothy von Icarus

    Foucault's philosophy of language provides a compelling example of this idea. Let me begin with @frank quote:
    There's an interesting idea that the relationship between the parts and whole can be an unfolding evolution, like the way each of the words in this sentence takes on meaning relative to the purpose of the whole, but the sentence rolls on without restrictions beyond the imperative to make some kind of sense, and even the author may not know how it ends until it does. Sentences that are used to try to convey this idea are usually long and drawn outfrank
    The assumed, precise meaning of each word in this context evolves throughout the unfolding sentence. @franknoted that "the purpose of the whole" implicitly guides the flow of the event, yet "even the author may not know how it ends until it does." Foucault offers a detailed conceptual framework for understanding the immanent principles that organize our discursive practices. According to this framework, the coherence of a discursive construction, a 'statement,' does not arise from the logical consistency of its elements nor the a priori presence of a transcendental subject. Instead, he introduced the concept of 'regularity in dispersion.'
    But how can dispersion itself serve as a principle of unity? Let's explore this thread. It is in a state of continuous unfolding, but is there an explicit rule governing its development? We might assume that our understanding of the thread's progression—its unfolding meaning, and the role of each post, —is not predetermined. Also, there is always the risk of the discussion's ceasing, becoming dull or unproductive. The precarity and unpredictability of the process expresses the dimension of 'dispersion.' At the same time, we reiterate our philosophical positions, knowledge, understandings. There is an evident repetition—the constancy of references, styles, themes, and vocabularies. It can be referred to a manifestation of 'regularity.' All in all, depending on the overall unfolding context of the thread, the meaning of our posts may shift. The modification of the evolving whole of a 'statement' and the continuous reconfiguration of its parts mutually influence one another. The coherence and unity of the assemblage do not stem from an underlying, intelligible principle but from the regularity in the dispersion of the system of discursive elements themselves.
  • Behavior and being
    There's an interesting idea that the relationship between the parts and whole can be an unfolding evolution, like the way each of the words in this sentence takes on meaning relative to the purpose of the whole, but the sentence rolls on without restrictions beyond the imperative to make some kind of sense, and even the author may not know how it ends until it does. Sentences that are used to try to convey this idea are usually long and drawn outfrank

    Yes, it is interesting. Deleuze developed the concept of an open whole. It refers to a dynamic and ever-evolving whole, where the parts are interconnected in a "rhizomatic" manner. The free and continuous interaction of various processes drives the unfolding of their relationships. This approach eliminates the need for an external, transcendent organizing principle, suggesting that the system's organization emerges from within.
  • Behavior and being
    A pre-given whole necessarily subjects all agents and relationships to the effects of its unity.
    — Number2018

    What are the effects of its unity?
    frank

    The pre-given whole exists prior to the emergence of its parts. The consistency and stability of its unity prevent the development or recombination of the parts, as such changes would threaten its very existence.
  • Behavior and being
    I imagine you don't need assemblages as a vocabulary to do work like the above. No physical scientist or mathematician I've met has cared about or even been aware of assemblage theory. Social scientists are sometimes though. So why use it?fdrake

    The assemblage theory helps to emphasize a social entity's contingent and constructivist nature. It allows us to conceive of it not as a unified whole governed by a single determinative principle. A pre-given whole necessarily subjects all agents and relationships to the effects of its unity. In contrast, a social entity can be seen as an assemblage of institutions, forms of organization, practices, and agents which do not follow a single, consistent logic. Thus, assemblage theory offers an alternative to the logic of unity, highlighting the interaction of its heterogeneous components.
  • Laclau's Theory of Populism
    Before 2016 you had oligarchy on both sides of the U.S. aisle. In 2016 we had democracy/populism rising up from both left and right (Sanders and Trump). Trump toppled the oligarchic GOP primaries; Sanders was not able to do so, although he came close in 2020. Biden was the DNC oligarchy's answer to Sanders, for the DNC used its oligarchic resources to dramatically reshape the race after Sanders began winning in 2020. Harris was the DNC oligarchy's answer to Biden's poor debate performance. Harris' candidacy was expressly oligarchic rather than democratic, as she was an unelected candidate.Leontiskos

    It is a relevant brief account of recent U.S. history. I would just add that what you refer to as ‘oligarchy’ is likely an extremely complex agglomeration of political, bureaucratic, and corporate groups and forces. We do not know its exact structure and mechanisms, but it seems reasonable to assume that the ‘oligarchy’ progressively augmented its power and its detachment from the ‘demos.’ Otherwise, it is impossible to fully understand its chain of unprecedented missteps and risky strategies that led to Trump’s victory.

    There are lots of things Trump voters were voting against, but I think much of it was tied up with the unabashed oligarchy of the DNC (which is now also bound up with progressive theories which are out of step with the demos). It sounds like Laclau sees populism as a quasi-revolutionary movement borne out of frustration with the status quo. That makes sense and I think it is reflected in the 2024 U.S. elections (as well as recent elections in Germany, Canada, France, and elsewhere).

    (But with that said, it isn't necessarily revolutionary to elect the elected candidate over the unelected candidate in a democracy. Populism and democracy seem to very much go hand in hand in this case.)
    Leontiskos

    Your understanding of Laclau’s theory is quite similar to mine. He provides an elaborate conceptual framework for understanding the rare and precarious events of democratic eruptions.It is a valuable contribution to the discussion of our political realities, avoiding partisan clichés, stereotypes of mundane language, and biased media coverage. Another challenge is the incredible speed with which the political landscape shifts and the rapid alteration of related narratives. Who remembers Brexit or the COVID pandemic today? It is also quite frustrating to observe the reflections and commentaries of most of
    pundits and academics. Many of them seriously argued that Trump’s election marked the revival of Nazism in the U.S. or he constituted a genuine threat to democracy. So, I believe that Laclau does not sufficiently elaborate on the affective component of the populist process of 'constructing internal frontiers and identifying institutionalized 'others.' His book was published 20 years ago, and he could not have predicted the ubiquitous spread of the 'woke' attitudes and the overflow of various aspects of populist phenomena.
  • Laclau's Theory of Populism
    And because then the party leadership just put Kamala as the new candidate annoyed the voters. Remember that Americans do believe in the strange theater called "Primaries" and don't like the party leadership just selecting the candidate. In a multiparty system this isn't a problem as people just select between parties and don't care shit about the internal selection of the party candidates. But in a system where there are only two parties (or so Americans believe), it's very important.ssu

    Trump administration will look like a mess,ssu

    Trump will continue things like wanting to buy Greenland from Denmark and other crazy tweets. Hence it's really hard then to see "long term policies" when the media focus is on what Trump has said and wanted today.ssu

    You make a good point. The media will undoubtedly portray Trump’s administration as a chaotic mess of incoherent policies. Nevertheless, I believe that before the elections Trump could clearly articulate his goals in three major policy areas: immigration, the economy, and culture. This focus on concrete policies resonated with large groups of voters and was at least as important as the absence of democratic primaries or Biden’s mental condition. Therefore, the fate of MAGA will not be determined by the media’s coverage. What matters to Trump’s base is neither the media’s framing nor Trump’s bombastic tweets. What matters is the tangible and consistent implementation of his key policies.
  • Laclau's Theory of Populism
    Trump has no political ideology. It's telling that Trump himself didn't last time think that "drain the swamp" rhetoric would go anywhere, but he can read his audience and notice how it sank to his base. Otherwise when looking at it objectively, the whole 'MAGA' thing is a mess. Isolationism and then wanting Greenland and the Panama Canal? How do those to fit together ideologically? Even more logical would be "KAG", hence "Keep America Great" as the US hasn't yet lost it's Superpower status.ssu

    This is just an example of how people will desperately cling to the politician promising better times as they had before and turn away from the ones trying to make a realist effort on how to something when the change is permanent.ssu

    Do you think that 'the whole 'MAGA' thing is a mess,'? If you think so, does your second quote explain why Trump won the popular vote and became the second Republican to do so since 1988?
  • Laclau's Theory of Populism
    @Leontiskos@Count Timothy von Icarus
    The concept of the ‘empty signifier’ carries a clear paradoxical implication. It stems from Laclau’s ontological position in formulating his political theory. He argues that any social or political identity can only be defined within the relational framework of a given social or political system. Identities are temporarily constituted and articulated; they have no inherent essence or transcendental model. A subject’s identity can only be defined in relation to what it is not. Therefore, the ontological question of constitutive difference must be addressed. For Laclau, this is a matter of ceaseless practice and articulation. “From the beginning of modern times, the reproduction of the different social areas takes place in permanently changing conditions, and they are constantly requiring the construction of a new system of differences. Hence the area of articulatory practises is immensely broadened”. (Laclau, ‘Antagonism and hegemony,’ pg. 126) Like the ‘empty signifier,’ the process of ‘constructing a new system of differences’ is a paradoxical but not self-refuting notion. To construct such a system, one must be able to operate within a conceivable form of universalism, which is necessarily in tension with the presupposed plurality and particularity of social forces and actors. Also, one must entertain a principle of universally valid rationality, at the same time tacitly acknowledging something irrational. This situation requires moving beyond classical two-valued logic, as, for example, George Spencer-Brown did.
  • Laclau's Theory of Populism
    If mainstream political parties react to the wishes of the population, populism doesn't take over. Yet the reaction has to be swift and decisive, not just empty promises.ssu

    Could you provide an example from recent Western history where mainstream political parties responded to the wishes of the population? Could the most recent U.S. elections serve as such an example?
  • Laclau's Theory of Populism

    Laclau’s project is an attempt to rethink contemporary spontaneous political movements and collective action. It is likely impossible to directly link his theory to any specific historical political movement labeled as ‘populist.’ However, it could be interesting to apply it to the most recent U.S. elections. Can this be done without resorting to partisan clichés and stereotypes? Rather than asking what the slogan 'MAGA' means to Trump’s voters, it might be more insightful to explore how the slogan 'MAGA' functions. What do you think?
  • The Mind-Created World


    Deleuze changes his strong emphasis on Eternal Return and the privilege of the virtual.
    “Nietzsche’s aphorisms shatter the linear unity of knowledge, only to invoke the cyclic unity of the eternal return. This is much as to say that the fascicular system does not really break with dualism, with complementarity between subject and object…unity is thwarted in the object, while a new type of unity triumphs in the subject”. (‘A thousand plateaus’, pg.6)
    To avoid a strong opposition between virtual and actual modes of difference, Deleuze moves toward the phenomena of consolidation. While focusing on describing singular assemblages, he offers a much more elaborated approach to a complex mode of interdependence between the actual and the virtual. Now, he designates the phenomena of becoming a line of flight. At the same time, the actualized individuation and the tendency to organization are expressed through the concepts of the molecular and molar lines. Together, they compose an ‘open whole,’ which is indeed a paradoxical concept. However, the emergence of something qualitatively new cannot be explained exclusively by the means of logical, dialectical or semiotic transition. This obstacle makes any totality simultaneously impossible and necessary, a place of an irretrievable fullness. Deleuze theorizes reality in terms of eventuality and discontinuity. He follows the principle that the nature of elements does not predetermine them to enter one type of arrangement rather than another. Therefore, totality, an open whole, should be conceptualized afresh, depending on a considered problematic field. There is not the same transcendental-empirical synthesis, that Deleuze applies again and again. This vision sets in motion the productivity of the creative construction of Deleuzian philosophy.
  • The Mind-Created World
    physical things are measurable in various ways, but consciousness is not. In what physical terms can we discuss consciousness?Patterner

    You can only measure dimensions and weight of something which is presumed to remain qualitatively the same over the course of the quantitative measuring and weighing. Any calculation of differences in degree presupposes no difference in kind during the process. Otherwise one is dealing with a new thing and has to start over again. The world doesn’t consist of objects with attributes and properties which remain qualitatively the same from one moment to the next. We invented the concept of object as a qualitatively self-same thing so that we could then proceed to perform calculative measurements.Joshs

    Nathan Widder offers an interesting account of overcoming the gap between physical things and consciousness. He considers Deleuze’s interpretation of Nietzsche.

    “While mechanism correctly locates knowledge in quantity, through its uncritical assumption
    of unity (the atom), it reduces quality directly to quantity and establishes an absolute division
    between knowledge (what can be ‘objectively’ quantified) and value (the ‘subjective’
    interpretation or assessment of this ‘objective’ reality). Units enable counting and calculation,
    but they also abstract away constitutive relations. Thus on a concrete level where no unities
    or things pre-exist their relations, quantity cannot be a number but only a relation. As
    Deleuze declares: ‘Quantity itself is therefore inseparable from difference in quantity’. This
    difference in quantity is intensive, an ordinal relation of more or less. Nietzsche calls it an
    ‘order of rank’, which is also an order of power, of strength and weakness. As an intensive
    difference, it cannot be measured along a fixed numerical scale that could reduce difference
    between forces to equality: as Deleuze maintains, ‘to dream of two equal forces…is coarse
    and approximate dream, a statistical dream in which the living is submerged but which
    chemistry dispels’. Difference in quantity thereby designates a fundamental heterogeneity
    within force relations. However, although the world of forces is one of differences in quantity that are only later organized into unities, Nietzsche maintains that this quantitative difference is never
    experienced as such, but instead is felt in terms of quality. ‘Our “knowing” limits itself to establishing quantities; but we cannot help feeling these differences in quantity as qualities…we sense bigness and smallness in relation to the conditions of our existence…with regard to making possible our existence we sense even relations between magnitudes as qualities’” (Widder, ‘From duration to eternal return’)

    This quote means that our values are inseparable from our qualitative evaluations of relations of forces. On the other hand, relations of forces and their evaluations are embedded within our procedures of quantitative measurements. While qualities remain heterogeneous to quantities, they are not merely subjective interpretations of an objectively independent reality. They compose an integral part of the perspective plane of the will to power.
  • Post-truth
    I argue that all formations of empirical truth are and always have been socially constructed according to forms of meaning and value which change from era to era. This doesn’t mean that truth is ‘fake’, but that what you would call bias, distortion and prejudice are necessarily built into what it means to produce truth., that its meaning is contextually and social situated

    What is different about the contemporary era compared with previous periods of history is not that it is Post Truth, but that a growing number of people are only now recognizing in our highly polarized times what has always been the case, but was until recently denied in favor of a ‘God’s eye’ view of truth, the inextricable relation between socially formed practices and the determination of truth.
    Joshs

    Here is a correct point of an extremely high level of polarization in the contemporary political community. Opposed parties always try to transform their particular interests into a universal, truthful articulation. However, paradoxically, nowadays, the dimension of truth is not primarily based on rationally organized discourses or representations of sets of values but on the relying on an affective factor. Collective social emotions have been amplified, echo-chambered, and structured by social and mass media. Post Truth era means that political discourses express primarily the self-referentiality and authenticity of a political subject of affect. As a result,
    the opposing parties systematically attribute each other the status of an evil Other so that civil discourse becomes ultimately impossible.
  • Autism and Language
    The arbitrariness of the sign, per Saussure, refers to the conventional nature of the linkage between the signifier and the signified, iirc. But there are some famous studies suggesting that might be overstated a bit (bouba/kiki for starters).

    Is it not language unless the meaning relation is conventional rather than natural? The traditional answer is obviously "yes" but I'm not so sure. Especially if you wonder how language could get started in the first place.

    If it's not absolutely essential, then what's the relation here? Is it the other way? That is, conventional meanings as a subset of linguistic meaning?
    Srap Tasmaner

    The relation between the signifier and signified has become an object of a rigorous research and critique in some postmodernist theories of language. They discover the insufficient and even illusionary character of the conventional appearance of linguistic meanings. Instead, they emphasize the critical role of organizations of power, indirectly entertaining coercion and enforcement. For example, a gender theorist, Judith Butler, frames her project as an attempt to negotiate and relax the linguistically shaped ‘assignment of gender’ at an early age. “An utterance brings what it states into being (illocutionary) or makes a set of events happen consequently (perlocutionary)… A diffuse and complicated set of discursive and institutional powers comes with primary inscriptions and interpellations of others. In the case of gender, they affect us in uncontrollable ways, animating and structuring our responsiveness.” (Butler ‘Notes toward a performative theory of assembly,’ p. 29) In a more general manner, some thinkers assert that language entertains an essential link between implicit and coercive norms and an overall processes of socialization and identification.
  • Vervaeke-Henriques 'Transcendent Naturalism'
    It comes back to the issue of identity. Same kind is not identical kind. The same only continues to be itself slightly differently from one moment to the next. Iterability produces
    "an imperceptible difference. This exit from the identical into the same remains very slight, weighs nothing itself...". “It is not necessary to imagine the death of the sender or of the receiver, to put the shopping list in one's pocket, or even to raise the pen above the paper in order to interrupt oneself for a moment. The break intervenes from the moment that there is a mark, at once. It is iterability itself, ..passing between the re- of the repeated and the re- of the repeating, traversing and transforming repetition.”“Pure repetition, were it to change neither thing nor sign, carries with it an unlimited power of perversion and subversion. (Derrida)
    Joshs

    Derrida wants to say here that the old ontological metaphysics, built around the notion of ‘presence’, is over. It means that the present that eludes our consciousness is the other, always unknown side of what sustains ‘pure repetition’. The significant part of whatever we are doing now, at this present time, is completely absent from what we can see or feel. Yet, it is not clear how the absolute break, ‘pure repetition’ is related to iterability. But what is the process of the production of the same? It should not be simply attributed to iterability, mark, or differance. The identical is not the ultimate gap designating one of these, but the structure of operative recursive connections, maintaining temporal stability of persistent self-reference.
  • Quantifier Variance, Ontological Pluralism, and Other Fun Stuff

    Overall, I share your position, and you developed a high-quality argument. I want to add a few remarks.

    There may be a giant hole in this argument. I gestured at the evidence that infants have a concept of object permanence, later acquire object identity, later still recognize other minds, and so on. That's all infra-linguistic, so aren't these very studies evidence that we have such concepts and that they are among the metaphysical assumptions I would place in our unconscious brains?Srap Tasmaner
    You could strengthen your argument by emphasizing the role of the social environment in infants’ acquiring patterns of permanence. The features of psychological development could be attributed to the historical but most stable factors of a child’s socio-communicative medium.

    Another way I could put it is this: if there are invariants in the models our brains use, something we might call artifacts of those models, then those would in some sense be our "metaphysical assumptions." But I think there's a whole separate set of invariants at work in our linguistic communication with one another, and they need not be based on how our brains are modeling our bodies and environments; they are what we've landed on as the structure of our communication, and I think by and large the structure of our introspective thought reflects that structure, not the modeling our brains are doing below the level of our awareness. Our metaphysical assumptions, if there are such things, are probably no more accessible to us than they are to non-linguistic beings. There do seem to be a whole host of assumptions underlying our speech and our conscious thought, but no reason to think they are the "assumptions" of our unconscious modeling.Srap Tasmaner

    What do you mean by writing, ‘the structure of our introspective thought reflects the structure of our communication’? It looks closely to Searle’s explanation of the relation between sets of socio-behavioural, potentially linguistically articulated codes and blocks of ‘know-how,’ built into domains of our institutionalized milieu: “There is a set of dispositions that are sensitive and responsive to the specific content of the constitutive rules… The ‘Background’ is the set of “nonintentional or pre-intentional capacities, abilities, dispositions, and tendencies that enable intentional states to function. There is a parallelism between the functional structure of the Background and the intentional structure of the social phenomena to which the Background capacities relate”. (Searle, ‘The Construction of Social Reality’, pg. 143)
    So, no unconscious modelling is built into the infrastructures of our brains or conscious thought. Yet, there is still a problem explaining the nature of Searle’s ‘parallelism’ or your thesis that ‘the structure of our introspective thought reflects the structure of our communication.’ Is there an utterly isomorphic relation? Do we rely entirely on the existence of self-sufficient processes built into a socio-technological system that functions independently of the personal motives of the participants? If so, we could explain inherent to ourselves identical repetitions, but the phenomenon of conscious intentionality becomes the secondary effect of the institutional practices conditioned by the ‘Background.’
  • Quantifier Variance, Ontological Pluralism, and Other Fun Stuff
    there is quite definitely no great body of everyday discussion of whether certain kinds of things exist, nothing anywhere approaching the discussions of right & wrong, of politics, of aesthetics, even of whether you have enough evidence to conclude that your boyfriend is cheating on you. (Austin was fond of reading legal opinions, and thought philosophers were ignoring a great body of practical reasoning.) Ontology, as we here think of it, is a game that only philosophers play.Srap Tasmaner

    Sartre asserts that our everyday decisions sustain a two-level ontology. On the lower level, there is a domain of personal matters and choices, so that we ensure particular parcels of social reality. On the upper level, a personal intention resonates with the existence of a global aspects of collective projects. So, people regularly affirm that certain kinds of things and states of things exist. Some portions of the real world become objective facts that are only facts based on human decision and agreement. This kind of reality comes into existence in the performance of intentionality by humans, and it continues to exist only as far as the intentionality maintains it.

    "If, moreover, existence precedes essence and we will to exist at the same time as we fashion our image, that image is valid for all and for the entire epoch in which we find ourselves. Our responsibility is thus much greater than we had supposed, for it concerns mankind as a whole. If I am a worker, for instance, I may choose to join a Christian rather than a Communist trade union. And if, by that membership, I choose to signify that resignation is, after all, the attitude that best becomes a man, that man’s kingdom is not upon this earth, I do not commit myself alone to that view. Resignation is my will for everyone, and my action is, in consequence, a commitment on behalf of all mankind. Or if, to take a more personal case, I decide to marry and to have children, even though this decision proceeds simply from my situation, from my passion or my desire, I am thereby committing not only myself, but humanity as a whole, to the practice of monogamy. I am thus responsible for myself and for all men, and I am creating a certain image of man as I would have him to be. In fashioning myself I fashion man."
    (Sartre, ' Existentialism and Humanism')
  • Habermas and rationality: Who's being "unreasonable"?

    Thank you for interesting questions.
    - Could you give an example of how a person would resort to standard explanatory schemes concerning their intentions?

    - How does the issue of necessary statements arise in this context?
    J
    Often, one could resort to exposing her intentions during an interview or responding to a personal or professional conflict or misconduct. For Habermas, the primary example of communication coordination is a psychoanalytical dialogue during which participants reach a shared understanding of the common semantic content. He assumes that the asymmetrical inception may establish a symmetrical dialogue where a person and analyst have the same interpretation of the client’s background. Yet, it could be shown that psychoanalysis operates as the framework that imposes a set of boundaries and conditions, pre-given in advance. The participants recognize one another in their proper roles while their statements establish certain points. Seemingly natural and spontaneous, the dialogue is structured to constitute the normative character of the Other, her acts and statements.

    - T/F is certainly one way of deciding a verification question, but why must the verifying procedure remain at this level? Why would the procedure be (necessarily) dogmatic?J

    In a more exact sense, the verifying procedure can proceed at two different levels: “Every speech-act-immanent obligation can be made good at two levels: immediately, in the context of the utterance, through indicating a corresponding normative context, or in discourse or in subsequent actions. If the immediate justification does not dispel an ad hoc doubt, we pass to the level of discourse where the subject of discursive examination is the validity of the underlying norm.” (Habermas “Communication and the Evolution of Society”p 67) So, when the ‘underlying norm’ is not immediately apparent, one needs to proceed to the more complicated process of exposing the inherent normative nature.

    I agree that Habermas is searching for transcendental conditions. Are you placing this in opposition to a particular understanding of performativity?J

    Habermas’s project is about creating universal pragmatics as a development of the philosophy of performativity and a foundation for a general theory of society. He views his philosophy as opposing the radical critique of Reason in contemporary poststructuralism. He argues that Nietzsche, Derrida, and Foucault are exclusively focused on the role of power, and they cannot escape the ‘performative contradiction’ involved in using Reason to criticize Reason. Emphasizing the role of “the normative content that has to be acquired and justified from the rational potential inherent in everyday practice,” Habermas separates the theory of performativity from diagnosing an entanglement of forces that inheres in any seemingly settled state.
  • Habermas and rationality: Who's being "unreasonable"?
    The stance may be incorporated within endless performative recontextualizations so that Habermas's requirement of the clear cognitive commitment to communication cannot be univocally verified.
    — Number2018

    Excellent point. Does it damage Habermas's theory? It may well, if we insist on understanding "clear cognitive commitment" as being the same as having an intention, and bring to bear some of the standard puzzles about intention.
    J

    No, it is not about having an obvious intention. ‘Clear cognitive commitment’ means that the speaker and her hearer, involved in the speech act, can offer a socially justified account of their communicative action. The intention should have the possibility of making it public, transparent,
    and defendable: “the illocutionary force with which the speaker carries out his speech act and influences the hearer can be understood only on the basis of a reciprocal recognition of validity claims.”

    the performative nature of the participants' illocutionary force remains opaque and undetermined not just in the discussed examples but in most non-normative social situations.
    — Number2018

    Why do you say this? Again, I may not be understanding clearly, but I would have said that "opaque" is much too strong, "undetermined" usually not the case, and that in general we "read" each other's illocutionary stances very well. The question I see being raised is more along the lines of, "But doesn't Habermas assume intention as trumping performance?" How we then go on to determine intention is a separate and, I'm saying, generally easier question. Could you say more?
    J

    The point I defend here is that even if "in general, we "read" each other's illocutionary stances very well," in most cases, we cannot accurately account for our performative situations. When asked about our or other intentions, we usually quickly resort to standard explanatory schemes. Habermas himself admits the necessity of covering the gap. "In order to make necessary statements, we need to change our perspective…We need a theoretically constituted perspective." Yet, the rationality of verifying procedure remains at the level of the logical-positivist constative utterance. In fact, Habermas's commitment to communication verification requirements means resorting to the dogmatic question of reference or constative truth.
  • Habermas and rationality: Who's being "unreasonable"?
    We encounter the dictator and the free-rider in actual life, not merely as philosophical possibilities. We've gotten so used to hearing both these stances expressed (with varying degrees of subtlety, presumably) that we "understand them completely," but we need to ask whether this is really the case. Are we simply assuming their rationality -- a kind of "familiarity breeds plausibility" situation?J

    I appreciate your patience and trying to understand my posts. Again, I would like to clarify the relation between the two given stances and Habermas's theory of communicative action. Supposedly, there is a performative contradiction between the content
    of each stance and the communicated statement made by the acting individual. Accordingly, if the contents are accurate, the participants were not fully committed to the rationality of communicative action. Reciprocally, if individuals involved are truly committed, they should not be referred to their situations. This situation constitutes a false dilemma. Because for Habermas, the claim for rationality is non-separatable from the binding force of reciprocal recognition of validity claims: "With their illocutionary acts, speaker and hearer raise validity claims and demand they be recognized. But this recognition need not follow irrationally, since the validity claims have a cognitive character and can be checked" (Habermas, 'Communication and the Evolution of Society,' p 63). Both stances do not satisfy this description of communicative action. One cannot demand recognition of the validity of her egoistic, self-selfish intentions. Yet, on the other hand, both cases could point out the essential flaw of Habermas's theory itself. It can be traced back to one Derrida vs. Searle debate aspect. For Searle, any language usage is precluded by the communication of intended meanings. On the contrary, for Derrida, communication is carried along not by clear subjective intentions but by impersonal performative forces. Let's say that your first 'dictator' stance is proclaimed by an actor playing her role. Or was it stated during a political debate, or was it just a joke? The stance may be incorporated within endless performative recontextualizations so that Habermas's requirement of the clear cognitive commitment to communication cannot be univocally verified. Further, the performative nature of the participants' illocutionary force remains opaque and undetermined not just in the discussed examples but in most non-normative social situations.
  • Habermas and rationality: Who's being "unreasonable"?
    Where I'm going with this is: Can we turn away from this modern problematic, which certainly raises all the doubts you cite, and find something in the more basic concept of communicative action that would be transcendental in Habermas's sense that it would remain in any background of any "common lifeworld"? In other words, perhaps we can find a way of showing that a commitment to intersubjectivity transcends the (temporary, contingent) modern, and is built in to the structure of communicative action itself.J

    Of course, we can. Indubitably, the notion of communicative action expresses a reality of double enactment inherent to any speech act. One is acted upon by one’s social situation and simultaneously effectuates its complexity. Habermas tries to overcome the contingency and temporality of our social interactions. So, he erects an impressive transcendental scheme supposedly embedded within any articulable communication. Yet, we should not take ‘a commitment to intersubjectivity’, ‘achieving a mutual understanding,’ and ‘sharing a common lifeworld’s horizon’ as a set of ultimate transcendental conditions. What should be explained should not be granted the status of ultimate presuppositions. What exactly makes us understand each other? Is there an innate social faculty? Our sociality does not necessarily express itself in conformity, consensus, or coordination.

    Concerning the dictator and the free rider: I'm not sure what you mean. You ask what makes these stances "understandable and articulable." Do you mean by us, as samples of ethical stances that may or may not be rational? Or do you mean within Habermasian communicative action, as samples of stances that cannot be argued because they are performative contradictions? If you could say more about that, I could better understand your further point about embedded practices that separate normal from abnormal.J

    I will clarify what I meant. Both stances are applied here in a double sense: as theoretical constructions and as examples of our daily pragmatical encounters. Therefore, both domains inform each other and create a shortcut; they are overloaded with our habitual experience. This situation makes the stances completely understandable but raises questions about the grounds of our social expositions. Further exploration may reveal conditions utterly incompatible with the universalist perspective on lifeworld. Thus, one’s articulated stance or understanding may be driven by the motivation to avoid some intervention of putting back on the ‘right track.’ There are so many hidden practices for preventing dissensus. Their ‘rationality’ eludes Habermas’s definitions of rational and irrational.
  • Habermas and rationality: Who's being "unreasonable"?
    Now Habermas asserts that, within rationality, (at least) two stances create performative contradictions. One is (borrowing from Rawls) the “first-person dictator” stance, in which I claim that trying to get my own way, as far as possible, is a perfectly rational position. The second is the familiar “free rider” stance, in which I claim that there is nothing contrary to reason in my letting everyone else do some necessary task that is difficult or tedious and requires near-total communal participation; my absence won’t be noticed, and I’ll get the benefit of the results.

    Let’s be clear that the question is not about whether such stances produce violations of the ethical norms that most of us abide by. Rather, we’re asking, “Are such stances irrational, given the commitments to communicative action that Habermas advocates (which view rationality as more than strategic)? Would it be irrational to argue for them within Habermasian dialogue?”
    J

    It is possible to argue that both stances do not allow for rendering them irrational within Habermas’s theory of communicative action. A commitment to intersubjectivity implies that “speakers and hearers straightforwardly achieve a mutual understanding about something in the world, they move within the horizon of their common lifeworld; this remains in the background of the participants – as an intuitively known, unproblematic, unanalyzable, holistic background” (Habermas ‘The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity,’ p 298). Behind the theoretical Habermasian verification procedure lies the presupposition that an individual taking a stance and her audience aspire to achieve a mutual understanding. However, what makes the ‘first person-dictator and free-rider stances’ understandable and articulable positions? Perhaps it is not the result of a shared communal life’s horizon but an effect of an embedded practice of separating normal from abnormal, further manifesting a presence of normalizing judgment. In any case, we cannot rely today on the assumption of ‘an intuitively known, unproblematic, unanalyzable, holistic background’ of the participants in socially relevant communication.
×
We use cookies and similar methods to recognize visitors and remember their preferences.