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
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
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
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
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
Time doesn't exist. Only space and objects exist. — Corvus
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
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
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
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
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)
Did Nietzsche give out clear reference or explanation on Will to Power? — Corvus
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
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
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
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
"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
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
there are many different kinds of assemblage theory, and I’m not suggesting you’re obliged to stick religiously to Deleuze. — Joshs
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
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
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
What should matter is how a particular theory functions, rather than the historical associations that can be made with it.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
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.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
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
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.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
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
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
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.'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 out — frank
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 out — frank
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.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
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
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
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.- 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
- 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
I agree that Habermas is searching for transcendental conditions. Are you placing this in opposition to a particular understanding of performativity? — J
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
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
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
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
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
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