To be sure, what I like most about both Hayles and Dawkins in this context is their shared notion that humans are compilations, or kludges: assembled actants organized via the often divergent agencies (potencies) of their parts, and defined by complex levels of operation - and thus never truly singular or completely withdrawn from their own influential parts nor the environment in which they subsist. Humans and non-humans are assemblages with distributed agencies expressed in the collaboration of parts and whole, and not individualities cut off from the depth and multiplicity of their inherent animating dynamics.
In relation to information theory, Adam writes:
"A quick thought on Kauffman. As far as I know, Kauffman is using mathematical principles to deepen our understanding of evolutionary mechanisms. I raise this point in connection to Hayles comment that 'we are first and foremost embodied,' a comment which I have no problem with in principle but begs the question: if Kaufmann is right then some how organizational patterns in the universe can be preserved and re-instantiated through the development of different self-organizing systems. In other words, the universe has an organization-preserving capacity (or “memory,” as Whitehead might say) and so we ought to consider what this means for embodied particularity (Whitehead attempts a solution to this, but that’s another story). So, I like where she draws attention to the dynamism between metaphor and constraint but I wonder if she doesn't privilege constraint (a la the British empiricists) when it seems that we do in fact inherent (always contextualized) patterns of information. I say this more as a point for further discussion than out right disagreement."I’m not sure I follow here? No pattern exists independently from the actual material-energetic systems in which they are observed. “Organizational patterns” are abstractions from embodied systems not expressions of them. Mathematics is a patchwork system abstracted models and metaphor which represent physical systems but should never be confused for the actual systems themselves. That is to say, there are no actually existing trans-material organizing impulses or patterns “within” material-energetic systems. Let us not mistake map for territory here. To do so is to accept, however implicitly, a Platonic theory of ideas/essences.
Generally I find information theory to be unhelpful for ontography. The cosmos is not made of ones and zeros but of differential intensities and assemblages of energy and matter. Humans have reified naturally occurring extensive and intensive binary groupings and sets of relations through the use of numbers/symbols – but, again, operationalizing human representations of actual systems does not necessarily entail that the “patterns” we envision are anything other than observed tendencies inherent to onto-specific assemblies.
Moreover, I’m not sure what Adam means by a universal “memory” - unless we want to talk about something like Sheldrake’s morphogenetic resonances, in which case I am not at all convinced. (Can you explain a bit more Adam?)
Adam continues:
“In short, I’m interested in how speculation and empiricism meet in the world. The former generates the capacity for metaphor, hypotheses, mathematics, memory, and imagination; while the latter provides quantification, history, particularity, and embodiment. Of course the one has never existed without the other, and not it’s not even clear to me that the two can be distinguished in anything but an analytic way.”I would argue no clear distinction can be made outside of talking about very specific methodologies (perceptual tools) and discursive practices. All human interpretation involves speculation because our conceptions are inherently limited, iterant and full of différance. That is, our epistemes are intrinsically withdrawn from the objects of our conception. Even “quantification” is abstraction in this sense.
The problem, as I have said many times before, is that humans become enamored and entangled in the partiality of our ‘maps’, to the extent that we tend to misunderstand our abilities and capacity for engaging possibilities inherent to our direct relations with the ‘territory’. The main issue as I see it is that we need to develop more adaptive and less dogmatic speculations within general ecologies of energy-matter, perception and practice in order to cultivate healthier sense-abilities and modes of being. And a fundamental move towards such creative re-groundings and action would be to recognize the fundamental structures of possibility – first through deep phenomenological investigation and then with pragmatic dialogical gestures.
In terms of what Hayles has to offer, embodiment, situatedness, constraint are realities that should never be willfully displaced based simply on the whims of speculative metaphysics but instead integrated into a speculative praxis grounded in perceptual attenuation and practical projects.
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Thanks for this stimulating post! You write:
No pattern exists independently from the actual material-energetic systems in which they are observed. “Organizational patterns” are abstractions from embodied systems bot [sic] expressions of them.
Here are some of my thoughts on that: The question of abstractions can be approached from a number of perspectives, I think. In one sense, abstraction is what happens when one object encounters another (or a collection of objects) and experiences only a derivative of what they really are. In this sense, all inter-objective interactions (including what we normally call translations) are abstractions, along with the creation of various models, representations, etc.. In the case of “organizational patterns” (something I spent years trying to study in various human organisational contexts), it is clear that the actor discerning – and presumably modelling – these patterns is abstracting them from a more complex reality (the various actors, their lived experiences and their interactions).
Having said this, however, I would venture (tentatively, and somewhat following Brian Massumi) that there is another dimension of abstraction that takes place. The place to look for this would require supposing that there are indeed actual organisational patterns – repeated affective tendencies (or 'activation contours') – that constitute the very identity of the 'organisation' itself. Without the repetitive patterning of distinctive interactions, arguably sharing a particular distinctive signature 'the organisation' would not have the coherence required to what it is. A key point here, perhaps, is that this 'organisation' has a 'downwards' or (partial) structuring effect on the bodies that compose it. This very structuring effect is precisely what this 'organisation' is. Perhaps a way of thinking about this is that if the bodies correspond to the material component, then the structuring corresponds to the patterning (repetitiveness/continuity) of the expression of the energetic (i.e. dynamic) component. On the one hand it is incorrect to think of the energetic and the material as separate but on the other hand it is a useful analytical device to acknowledge that there are (at least) two separate modes of being that can be usefully considered here.
I would also add that the partial structuring, the relational component, though it may be very sticky, almost always offers some potential for novelty. The introduction of such novelty within an organisation can disrupt existing patterns with varying consequences, either triggering defence mechanisms (destroy the deviant and correct the deviation) or else absorbing it and adapting in response to it. I think this connects critically with the practice/practical (or performative) question, particularly in thinking through how localised disruptions of an established pattern can produce more distributed (i.e. organisational) responses to that pattern. Ontography then would be a vital part of understanding the organisation including its very real, albeit abstract (in the second sense I propose), defining patterns of affective tonality.
As I suggested, I'm toying with this idea...
Forms can have no cause or effect independently of their realization in and through some actual occasion. But still, form cannot simply be reduced to its material instantiations, either. Forms, in Whitehead's terms, are possibilities of definiteness. They determine (or allow occasions to determine) how an occasion will be characterized. If we dispense with forms as ontologically basic, we have not at all sided with concrete reality over abstraction. On the contrary, without the participation of eternal objects (Whitehead's term for forms in his reformed Platonism), "matter" and "energy" can take on no definite quality. They remain vague abstractions lacking all particularity. To be concrete means less to be material than it does to be some actual occasion with this or that particular shade of definiteness. These shades of definiteness, say the red hue characterizing the sky during yesterday's sunset, are eternal possibilities awaiting and only sometimes gaining temporal realization. In our cosmic neighborhood, matter-energy/space-time participates in specific forms of definiteness constraining what is possible; these can be symbolically expressed via mathematical notation (what Whitehead refers to as the objective species of eternal object). The mathematical symbols refer to relational patterns that are true of the thing-events themselves.
is there any interest in Paul Rabinow's recent pragmatist turn, his anthro of the contemporary?
-dmf
http://openwetware.org/images/7/7a/SB1.0_Rabinow.pdf
http://nigelthrift.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/lifeworld-inc2.pdf
Great link Dirk!
From the Rabinow keynote [source: http://openwetware.org/images/7/7a/SB1.0_Rabinow.pdf]:
"[T]he form of the future is the form of probability that directs a two-sided observation as something more or less probable or more or less improbable, with a distribution of these modalities across everything that is possible. The present can calculate a future that can always turn out otherwise. The present can in this way always assure itself that it calculated correctly, even if things turn out differently. Such a situation does not rule out prognoses. In fact it incessantly demands it. But its only worth lies in the quickness with which it can be corrected and or more commonly simply forgotten. There exists, therefore, only a provisional foresight, whose function is found in the form it provides for a quick adjustment to a reality that comes to be other than what was (then) expected.
It is in such a situation that one finds the modern type of expert, that is someone who, when asked questions he cannot answer, responds but in a mode that can be led back to a mode of respectable uncertainty…What is appropriate is a reflexive acknowledgement that an ecology of (partial and permanent) ignorance is the social and political ecology in which we live, labor and discourse.”
The heart of ethics lies in taking responsibility for the futural consequences of our actions. That is, we have a responsibility to our ignorance.
In 1924 the artist Paul Klee wrote: “Fixed forms are not the height of nature’s creation. It is nature in process that the artist seeks to make visible.”
Positing forms among the temporal rhythms of material association is nothing more than creative projection in my opinion.
“Forms are not merely received, although they are received, they are also, and with equal importance, made.” – Paul Rabinow
Andre, you write:
“The introduction of such novelty within an organisation can disrupt existing patterns with varying consequences, either triggering defence mechanisms (destroy the deviant and correct the deviation) or else absorbing it and adapting in response to it. I think this connects critically with the practice/practical (or performative) question, particularly in thinking through how localised disruptions of an established pattern can produce more distributed (i.e. organisational) responses to that pattern. Ontography then would be a vital part of understanding the organisation including its very real, albeit abstract (in the second sense I propose), defining patterns of affective tonality.”
I think this is for the most part an accurate proposition, but I would want to ground it in a more dynamic materialist frame by saying that pattern detection (perception) and map construction (codification) are important heuristics, but it is actually not the ‘pattern’ of things that we are attempting to disrupt - or amplify as the case may be – but the materiality, substantiality, thingly-ness or ‘flesh’ of the situation we are trying to intervene upon. The only way to generate new regimes of attraction is to change the material composition that 'produces' the arrangement of any particular state of affairs. To change what a ‘body’ (person, institution, village, etc.) can do you must affect the substantial ‘flesh’ of that body.
Andre,
The dogmatic OOO claim that all relations are “translations” is completely unsupported by empirical observation. Different objects have different ways of interacting with others, some of which can be characterized as translational interactions and some of which are much more primitive and direct. Just because our skin only touches an aspect of an object, for example, doesn’t mean that such an encounter was “indirect”, or mediated, but only that we have partial access to that thing. “Translation” is a special kind of mediating relation involving sensible materials, iteration and recursive response which are onto-specific and emergent properties of particular types of objects. Does a rock “translate” its encounter with another rock? Nope. Such encounters are structurally determinate upon the extensive properties of both rocks. The causal relations between rocks are in no way “derivative” and occur regardless of the distribution of affects to the entirety of their assembly.
Likewise with the term “abstraction”. Certain objects, such as animals, have second-order cognitions capable of generating abstractions, as tokenized memories for subsequent deployment. Applying this term so broadly would completely distort the onto-specific and original processes and properties involved in the activity of abstracting. It is the great failure of metaphysical thinking that metaphors and semantics generally can be so liberally distorted.
All compositions are irreducibly and uniquely express-able in the sense that the characteristics of things are onto-specific to their embodied constitutions. That is what makes them a particular substance. And any particular assemblage’s capacity for repetition is a function and expression of their coalesced materiality as it exists in context. There is no ghost in the machine, only more or less dynamic machinery.
You write:
“A key point here, perhaps, is that this 'organisation' has a 'downwards' or (partial) structuring effect on the bodies that compose it. This very structuring effect is precisely what this 'organisation' is.”
That doesn’t make sense to me. Organization is simply the particular arrangement and expressions (activity) of specific entities and association. Why wag the dog on this? A football team, for example, is not some ‘ideal form’ or pattern structuring all the materials (people, fields, buildings, rules, language, objects) involved, but instead is nothing other than those materials contingently situated and actively arranged. Such situated arrangements of actuality are not guided by ‘downwards’, superimposed “organizational patterns”, but rather express themselves according the logic of flesh, or material sufficiency (immanence).
Of course actual assemblies and ecologies can be thought of in terms of their topological distribution and relations, but any topology humans might conjure up would in large measure be based upon the powers inherent to hominid brains, eye-balls and such, and not strictly speaking a complete trace of the ontological structure of any particular situation. Every object, assemblage and/or situation contains within it and about it an incredible amount of diversity and possible ontological folds. These ‘internal’ structures offer a multitude of openings and vulnerabilities with which the life of others can impinge upon them. Hence precarious causation. When we attempt to codify these diversities and transversal associations through diagrams, information theory, maps, models, etc., we reify particular relations and associations at the expense of validating the onto-specific particularity (and flesh-logic) of the objects we observe.
MATT: Forms can have no cause or effect independently of their realization in and through some actual occasion. But still, form cannot simply be reduced to its material instantiations, either. Forms, in Whitehead's terms, are possibilities of definiteness. They determine (or allow occasions to determine) how an occasion will be characterized. If we dispense with forms as ontologically basic, we have not at all sided with concrete reality over abstraction. On the contrary, without the participation of eternal objects (Whitehead's term for forms in his reformed Platonism), "matter" and "energy" can take on no definite quality. They remain vague abstractions lacking all particularity.
MICHAEL: Matt, you are presupposing the function of the term in dispute here (‘form’) prior to explaining why “matter” is incapable of expressing structure of itself. Matter and energy express formal relations via the differential distribution of their primordial properties. That is, energetic-materiality is an expression of primordial activities (the pure difference at the origin of manifestation) that have unfolded temporally and contingently generating a wide range of dynamic associations and intensive differences. And some of these activities and compositions have coalesced into highly complex ‘occasions’. At base, my conception of “matter” only signifies the structural efficacy (tangibility) of these cosmo-historical occasions and assemblages as they continue to evolve. How “matter” actually operates and what it involves is still up for debate, but I would argue that it is without a doubt stranger, more active and self-organizing than has hitherto been assumed.
So it is the self-organizing properties or sufficiency of energy-matter that I would emphasize rather than support archaic formulas that posit ‘form’ being imposed on ‘matter’ from without. Matter is a self-sufficient potency that becomes structured according to the primordial cosmological constraints and intensive differences inherent to particular temporal evolutions. The immanent possibilities of actual occasions, then, are expressions of the morphological capacities inherent to the life-trajectory of particular (cosmological and historical) material realities.
MATT: To be concrete means less to be material than it does to be some actual occasion with this or that particular shade of definiteness. These shades of definiteness, say the red hue characterizing the sky during yesterday's sunset, are eternal possibilities awaiting and only sometimes gaining temporal realization. In our cosmic neighborhood, matter-energy/space-time participates in specific forms of definiteness constraining what is possible; these can be symbolically expressed via mathematical notation (what Whitehead refers to as the objective species of eternal object).
MICHAEL: I have never seen evidence of any of that. Definiteness is not granted by God nor is it imposed by the eternal laws of nature, but is the result and expression of the inherent potency of matter contingently related. “Matter-energy/space-time” does not participate in forms, it is the very ground upon which participation is possible. Sunsets are not “eternal possibilities” but immanent actualities generated through the emergent activities and collaboration of photons, electrons, hydrogen, helium, oxygen, earth, etc., etc., as they are “stacked” into particular living ecologies. World-flesh is self-sufficient complexity.
Michael,
"Unknown" above is actually me, Matt/footnotes2plato, not Adam.
Let me try to clarify a bit more...
Occasions decide which forms will ultimately come to characterize the actual world of their experience. Forms are not 'imposed' upon actual occasions from outside. Much of the character of experience, especially for lower grade occasions like electrons and photons, is decided unconsciously through conformal prehension of past decisions. Physical science concerns itself with the general habits of such low grade occasions. But higher grade occasions like ravens, coyotes, and primates, are not so determined by physical prehensions of past actualities, since they have a heightened experience, through conceptual prehension, of future possibilities. In human occasions of experience, this futural perception reaches its near apogee. In Process and Reality, Whitehead discusses our conceptual prehension of eternal objects in terms of consciousness' capacity for negation--to see the facticity of not only of that grey rock there and to know it could have been otherwise, but to see the whole of the visible universe and know the same. The contingency of nature is not mere chance, but the result of will--will which leans toward more degrees of freedom as moves through the series of natural kingdoms, at first an unconscious flow of emotion, only later rising to the level of the symbolic and intellectual articulation of emotion.
You argue that 'pure difference' is at the base of materiality, but I am uncertain what you mean. Wouldn't its supposed 'purity' already be a sign of contamination by identity? Its the old ("archaic"?) problem of the one and the many, of cosmos and chaos. Plato, you'll remember, did not conceive of form in abstraction from matter, but sought to understand how eternity and time, permanence and process, come to be mixed up into the Living Thing that is the Universe. Eros and metaxy, and not ideal purity, are at the core of the Platonic philosophy, at least as I understand it. The challenge Plato left for philosophy is how to think the in between. Contemporary physics, so far as I understand it, no longer studies nature as substance, but as interlocking processes of formation. This is not all that different from the Schellingian interpretation of Plato's Timaeus, as unpacked by Iain Hamilton Grant.
You write: 'Sunsets are not “eternal possibilities” but immanent actualities generated through the emergent activities and collaboration of photons, electrons, hydrogen, helium, oxygen, earth, etc., etc., as they are “stacked” into particular living ecologies. World-flesh is self-sufficient complexity.'
In my prior post, I wasn't referring to sunsets as eternal possibilities, but to a particular shade of red realized in the sunset. "Red" certainly cannot be explained by reference to the physical bodies you've listed, though I would agree about its ecological origins. "Red" is what Whitehead called a subjective eternal object, capable of realization in any number of actual occasions though not reducible to any one in particular or to all in summation. Qualities like redness, and quantities like the number 17, cannot be explained by reference to materiality, since materiality itself would be meaningless without reference to quality and to quantity (which for Whitehead, unlike Kant, are not categories of the human mind, but forms of definiteness characterizing prehension in general).
Matt, since I posted about this on the main page, I'm going to move our discussion up there, ok.
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