Degrees of Difference and Working Façades

This is cross-posted from NewAPPS (where I’ve been posting for a while, though I may begin posting more here)

John’s nice post has reminded me of the importance of repetitive series for Deleuze (an issue I also discuss here). Picking up on John’s discussion of the perception of colors, series play an important role in attempting to accounting for our use of predicates: in short, Deleuze will often place predicates within the context of a series of predicates – e.g., shades of blue. This pattern is most obvious in Deleuze’s Logic of Sense, where each chapter is titled “First Series of…” “Second Series of…” etc.… But why series?

Two short answers, which I’ll expand on below the fold: 1) a series of differences is precisely what provides, in good Spinozist fashion, the principle of sufficient reason for determinate phenomena; and 2) series in turn provide the metaphysics science needs.

Let us take a simple series of phenomena, E, E, E, E, etc. … Let us also assume there is no difference between the elements of the series. For Deleuze, however, each element, as an identifiable, determinate phenomenon, refers “to an inequality by which it is conditioned.” (DR 222). Thus every extrinsically distinct element presupposes an intensive difference, what Deleuze will call an “intensive quantum” (DI 88), and thus in the series E, E, E, E …, E itself presupposes the intensive quantum e-e’, and the element e presupposes ε-ε’, and so on ad infinitum. Deleuze will call this “state of infinitely doubled difference which resonates to infinity disparity,” which he then adds is “the sufficient reason of all phenomena, the condition of that which appears.” (DR 222; emphasis mine). One can picture this “state of infinitely doubled difference” by way of the graphs of Feigenbaum’s constant where functions approach chaos through period doubling:

Returning to the use of predicates, this difference or disparity that is the “sufficient reason of all phenomena” does not inhere in phenomena as their predicate, nor even as a separate or separable element, but it is rather the particularity of each element taken to the limit, or what Deleuze will call a “concrete universal.” For example, if we take a series of colors such as the several shades of blue one might find on a paint sample card at a hardware store, our tendency is indeed to consider each of these individual colors as a “shade of blue.” In other words, each particular color is differentiated from one another by a matter of degrees from one general color, blue, with these degrees running the spectrum from high to low saturation. Deleuze, however, argues that this is wrong. Following through on Bergson’s discussion of Revaisson (see DI 43), the universal is not an abstract concept distinct from each particular shade of blue, in which case we have an external difference, or a difference between the shades made possible by virtue of a universal that is external to them and of which they are varying degrees or shades. To the contrary, the concrete universal is the infinitely doubled difference that resonates and inheres within each appearing shade. In the case of a particular shade of blue, this concrete universal is “white light,” or it is the infinitely doubled difference (the far right of the above graph) that “makes the difference come out between the shades”; or,

…the different colors are no longer objects under a concept, but nuances or degrees of the concept itself. Degrees of difference itself, and not differences of degree. White light is still a universal, but a concrete universal, which gives us an understanding of the particular because it is the far end of the particular… (DI 43)

One can find further evidence for Deleuze’s metaphysics in Mark Wilson’s essay “Theory Façades,” (which can be gotten here) and in his subsequent book Wandering Significance. Wilson provides numerous examples, and with dizzying detail, to argue that throughout “scientific work” one finds that what is put to work in the effort to provide theoretical directives are “sheets of doctrine that do not truly cohere into unified doctrine in their own rights, but can merely appear as if they do if the qualities of their adjoining edges are not scrutinized scrupulously.” (“TF” p. 273) What may work well at one level and scale may begin to fail at a more detailed and enhanced level of description. As Wilson puts this in Wandering Significance,

…as our everyday descriptive terms become pressed to higher standards of accuracy or performance, as commonly occurs within industry or science, a finer and more perplexing grain of conflicting opinion begins to display itself within our applications of “hardness,” “force” and even “red.” (p. 7)

Put in the Deleuzian terms discussed above, the effort to produce accurate descriptions of phenomena encounters, with the increasing demands of more detailed and nuanced analysis, the substantive multiplicity or concrete universal that is the sufficient reason for the phenomena being described. The result is the failure of descriptive terms as these terms get pushed towards increasing particularity of detail; in short, as they are pushed toward the concrete universal that is “the far end of the particular.” (DI 43). What happens, Wilson argues, in our attempts to maintain “inferential headway” in the face of the difficulties that arise as the level of particularity increases, is that we often find it easier “to decompose the system’s overall behavior into descriptive fragments where the intractable complexities of the full problem become locally reduced to more tractable terms.” (TF pp. 273-4). Wilson offers the example of what happens when we attempt to use applied mathematics to understand the formation of spray on “the surface of a choppy ocean.” (WS p. 210, as are subsequent quotes). If the ocean is modeled as a continuous fluid, the partial differential equations will provide accurate descriptions to a point, but then it fails to track the phenomena for the equations continue “to plot an attached blob that never relinquishes its absurdly elongated umbilical tie to the mother ocean.” To offset this poor description, one solution is to run the model with an already detached blob that then separates from the ocean. This provides for a good description where the continuous model does not, but then the description is poor where the continuous model’s was good. If we combine the two models together, we can overlap them such that it provides a good description for the entire process. While this may be effective at providing an accurate description, Wilson argues that what is going on here is an exercise in “physics avoidance in that we do not directly describe the molecular processes that lead to drop separation, but merely cover the relevant region with an interpolating patch.” In other words, there is a repressed difference or boundary between the two patches that is then mistakenly held to be a unified account of water separation when it is not. Wilson is not arguing that no account of the water separation is possible. His argument is that an adequate account of the boundary where the different patches converge may well entail a complex mathematics beyond our ken at this point. As a result, and due largely to impatience, we are often tempted, Wilson claims, “to pretend as if our façade patchwork provides a wholly adequate descriptive framework solely on its own terms…” (TF 275)

Wilson’s point, however, and this is just what one would expect given the Deleuzian metaphysics and its use of the PSR, is that however detailed and nuanced the theoretical and mathematical description might be, there are underlying differences that subvert them as the level of description pushes to the “far end of the particular.” In other words, substantive multiplicity (or concrete universal) may be the sufficient reason for every phenomena, but it is also the reason our mathematical equations and theories which track phenomena will forever flirt with, and be challenged by the intensive differences that fail to be explicated and hence modeled by their equations. Wilson makes a very similar point in the early pages of Wandering Significance, and one quite in line with reading of Deleuze’s metaphysics offered here. Wilson argues that,

The main consideration that drives the argument of the book is the thesis that the often quirky behaviors of ordinary descriptive predicates derive, not merely from controllable human inattention or carelesseness, but from a basic unwillingness of the physical universe to sit still while we frame its descriptive picture. (WS 11)

Deleuze Studies Conference website is up!

The Fifth International Deleuze Studies Conference in New Orleans now has its own website – http://deleuze2012.com

Deleuze Studies Conference 2012

Now that the Copenhagen conference is finished, and Bent and his team did an excellent job putting on this year’s conference, it’s time to begin thinking about the 2012 conference in New Orleans.

The title/theme of the conference is “Deterritorializing Deleuze,” not Aberrant Monism, as some have come to think since the announcement for the conference in Copenhagen titled it as Aberrant Monism, though this is only my blog where I’ve had a page dedicated to the conference. When I return to the states at the end of the month I’ll launch a website dedicated just to next year’s conference, separating it entirely from my blog.

With the theme of deterritorializing Deleuze, one is left with many ways in which one can write a relevant paper. The point is one of attempting to think Deleuze beyond Deleuze, or to use Deleuze and Deleuzian concepts in ways that are in the spirit of Deleuze (and Guattari let us not forget), and hence engage with Deleuze’s work, while at the same time pushing Deleuze Studies in different directions.

When the new site is up I’ll post a link to it here. In the meantime, if anyone has any questions, feel free to contact me – jbell (at) selu (dot) edu.

“everything can be said”

Over at New APPS I’ve posted on the night Kafka wrote his story, “The Judgment,” which marked a turning point and watershed event in his life as a writer. I use this ‘event’ to contrast my understanding of “Ideas” as multiplicities and concrete universals with Badiou’s understanding of the event. In short, when Kafka refers to ‘everything being said,’ or when upon reading “The Judgment” to his friends and recognizing what he called ‘the indubitability of the story,’ I take this not to mean that he has said, in a clear and determinate manner, everything that can be said; rather, the story contains everything that can be said in the same way that white light, as a concrete universal (and as discussed here), contains every color. This is the indubitability or haecceity of the story. At the same time, however, the possibility of saying everything skates dangerously close to saying nothing, to slipping into chaos or, in an effort to stave off the chaos, slipping into cliché and well-worn formulas. Kafka was well aware of these dangers, as was brought up in the comments to my post.

Continental Connections

I’ve begun a weekly blog post over at New APPS, what I’m calling Continental Connections Thursday. My intention is to write much along the lines of what I’ve written over here at Aberrant Monism (and I will likely do riffs and variations upon what I have written here). I’ll write from my broadly Deleuzo-Humean perspective on issues that connect to concerns of analytic philosophy and beyond. Today’s post is titled White Light/White Heat after the Velvet Underground album of the same name. I take off from a brief discussion of the band, Lou Reed and his fascination with white noise, to explore the Deleuzian notion of a concrete universal (of which Deleuze gives white noise as an example), arguing (however briefly) that despite the nominalist, Humean trajectory of Deleuze’s thought he maintains a healthy Platonism, at least if this is the Platonism of the late dialogues (especially the Philebus). I assume the Humean strand of Deleuze’s thought, which I’ve argued for here and in my published writings, but the Platonism of Deleuze’s thought is not as well addressed, so the post is primarily on Plato for that reason. This most recent post follows another I wrote on the incredulous stare a week or so ago. The traffic over at Newapps is such that I get much more feedback than I do over here, so I’ve decided for the time being to devote most of my blogging energy to Newapps. I’ll still post at Aberrant Monism when I deem it to be too far off the mainstream diet of the blogosphere – which probably will be pretty often. In the meantime, if anyone stumbles upon any of my old posts I’m always open to comments, no matter how long after the post was written.

Deleuze and Analytic Philosophy

My good friend and Camus scholar/political theorist colleague Pete Petrakis has always said that despite my work in continental philosophy he long suspected I was a closet analytic philosopher. I have not vigorously denied these claims, which has no doubt fueled Pete’s suspicions. I did present a paper at the SEP-FEP conference in Dundee in 2006 on Deleuze and analytic philosophy. The paper (which can be had here for those who are interested) led to a nice conversation with John Llewelyn right after the talk and later that night at dinner. I’ve also had long discussions with James Williams about these issues, and James has done some great work connecting Deleuze’s thought to issues and problems that are important within the analytic tradition (especially on Davidson and Lewis). A good example of James’ work, along with others who take up similar themes, can be found in the edited collection of essays, Postanalytic and Metacontinental. With Llewelyn’s and Williams’ encouragement I had long planned to pursue the implications of Deleuzian thought for analytic philosophy but then I got caught up with the Hume book and I put that project aside.

siding with history

For anyone who has followed the philosophy blogs at all for the past week, they already know about the Synthese controversy. For those who don’t know about it (and some of my Scottish friends may not), it was prompted by Brian Leiter’s call to boycott Synthese for editorial misconduct regarding a special issue, Evolution and its Rivals (here is the original post). The papers for this issue were published online but then Barbara Forrest (who is a colleague of mine at Southeastern La. Univ.) was asked by one of the editors-in-chief to make changes to her essay, the “Non-Epistemology of Intelligent Design,” even though her essay had already been accepted and published online. The stated reason for the request was that it was due to “forces beyond the control” of the Editors-in-Chief at Synthese. The reason for the sudden turn around, as it is being widely interpreted, is that Francis Beckwith (or more likely “friends” of Beckwith) lobbied and pressured the editors to get Forrest to make changes. Whether or not the editors caved to this pressure (John Symons, one of the editors, explicitly denies caving though has not directly answered the question whether he and/or the other editors-in-chief were lobbied on behalf of Beckwith), or whether the editors came to agree (on second thought so to speak) with some of the criticisms regarding Forrest’s essay is a subject that has been furiously debated on the blogs (see here and here for instance). Forrest, however, did not make the changes since she felt that it was important to detail the political, institutional, and financial connections between Beckwith and those (such as the Discovery Institute) who had a vested interest in getting intelligent design legitimized, whereas Beckwith himself interpreted Forrest’s essay as an attack on his entire life rather than on his philosophical ideas (see here for Beckwith’s take). There was some discussion of a disclaimer, apparently, but the guest editors and authors claim that they were told the print version of the journal would not have a disclaimer, but when it came out it did have a disclaimer which stated, among other things, that  “some of the papers in this issue employ a tone that may make it hard to distinguish between dispassionate intellectual discussion of other views and disqualification of a targeted author or group.” Now it is hard not to see the disqualified, targeted author as Beckwith, though Larry Laudan in the comments to one of the posts linked above makes the case that he himself is targeted in the essay by Robert Pennock with a tone that justifies the disclaimer (which in turn initiated another round of debate and accusations of Laudan mining quotes inappropriately). Whatever the true, full story is, there is enough here to raise concerns about the conduct of the editors. Most importantly, as Ingo Bragandt and Eric Schliesser point out, Beckwith cites the extraordinary step of the editors choosing to issue a disclaimer as evidence in support of his claim that the substance of Forrest’s article, rather than just its tone, is suspect, and it is this which many feel might be used in an effort to de-legitimize any testimony Professor Forrest might give in the future in a courtroom or before the Louisiana state legislature as she fights to undermine legislation that places the teaching of intelligent design on a par with evolutionary theory in biology classes. As a result of this concern, in addition to the apparent editorial misconduct, a number of petitions have been set forth which range from calling for the editors to disclaim the disclaimer to, most recently, allowing Forrest to rebut Beckwith’s rebuttal.