Rhizomes (w/ beer and shooters....

[d63]

Rhizome 1/29/15:

Song added to mix: Yoshinonori Sunahara’s New World Break (Exo Mix)

Author: James Williams
Book: Gilles Deleuze’s Logic of Sense
Section (starting at page 29: Unfolding the Circle of the Proposition: Denotation, Manifestation, Signification, and Sense

In today’s study at the “library”, I found myself getting a little closer to the Deleuzian sense of “sense”. (And did I just engage in a Deleuzian pun there or what?) But I should start with the growing recognition that with any term you encounter with Deleuze, you will ultimately have to approach it from different angles in order to truly understand it. But then that’s what philosophy is really about, isn’t it? Getting at those understandings that work outside of the capacity of language? The Lacanian Real? That which always transcends the language we use to describe it?

Still, one of the reasons that we have science is because we have to work our way from isolated systems to the whole. It’s all our minds can handle. And we may be able to get at Deleuze’s sense of sense by taking the post and not-post structuralist approach of looking at language and how we extract meaning from it and start with the breakdown of the science of linguistics: Denotation, Manifestation, and Signification. These, however, fail to satisfy Deleuze as an explanation. In order for them to work, they would have to form a circle: a non-linear feedback system (perhaps a disjunctive synthesis (in which the three are interdependent and play off of each other. As Williams puts it:

“Put simply, this means that neither the reference of language (denotation), nor its situation in relation to a speaker or point of writing (manifestation), nor its meaning as decipherable through the position of words in relation to one another (signification) are sufficient bases for understanding how language works.”

In other words, we can’t settle for the dialectical breakdown that the scientific approach offers us without considering the interdependence of the three. And it is the transcendent effect of the three that gets us at Deleuze’s sense of sense. For instance: if I say, as I often do on these boards:

“Love ya, man!”

How would you extract meaning from that? You could take the denotative route of taking me at my word, in which case you would have to depend on signification. But that would put you reading more into it than it really means. The only real way to go about it is turn to manifestation and say:

“D’s clearly drunk again and having a good time.”

Or as William’s writes:

“In other words, there can be no full reference without a manifestation because the set of beliefs and desires associated with the denotation require a manifestation….”

Now the thing that struck me here is that me saying “Love ya, man!” is not that different than any proposition that an analytic could make. Those who cling to the scientific approach may think they’re above their beliefs and desires; but manifestation is always a factor. You still have to look at the sense of sense: for instance, the obvious desire for order involved in the analytic sensibility. This is because no matter how hard we try to get above subconscious factors, we are always beholden to them: the very subconscious factors that hard core materialists insist control us.

But what goes deeper to the heart of the analytic approach is the way the logical fallacy of the ad hominem approach is given license. It is not enough to look what an individual is saying. We have to look at why they are saying it.
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Final thought: it’s always a matter of going somewhere.

[d63]

Rhizome 1/31/15:

Every once in a while, there comes that almost miraculous coincidence that can actually make you consider the possibility of some god-like entity overseeing your process. And such an event recently occurred, when I had started reading Rorty’s Philosophy and Social Hope and found myself confronted with everything Rorty (as a legit spokesman for Pragmatism (was against as he described in the first few chapters I had read. It all just seemed to converge on a string started by one Ercole DiStephanono concerning what he posed as a legitimate concern: heterophobia.

Now the first thing you have to ask yourself is why he would post this on a board committed to pragmatism and the pragmatic truth test (that which works (when the concept does not work in any possible way outside of an extremely exclusive one. For instance, let’s take an informal survey here: how many heterosexuals here have actually experienced the discomfort of Heterophobia? Not me. Now: how many homosexuals have experienced the discomfort of homophobia? And I’m quite sure I’ve encountered thousands of heterosexual males on these boards. And this is the first time I’ve ever heard of such a thing even being an issue.

Of course, Erkel might be trying to exploit a misunderstanding concerning Pragmatism that has propped up the arguments of its opponents: the notion that just because an assertion works for someone, it must necessarily find legitimacy through the pragmatic truth test. But as Rorty points out in the book I’m reading: a religious fanatic could claim that their explanation of the cosmos satisfies the pragmatic truth test because it works for them; but the uses gained from a scientific explanation of the cosmos have worked out a hell of a lot better for us. In other words: it’s not just a matter of whether it works; it’s a matter of what in general works better.

We also have to ask other questions: why is it working? for whom is it working? and why is it working for them? And we can see why Erkal’s argument is working for him (much as his tirade on fascist queers from Hollywood: because it serves as a smokescreen for his own hateful behavior. It’s a little like saying:

“I know I’m an asshole and idiot. But that’s not the problem. It’s that people are picking on me for it.”

Fox News uses it all the time. And I would note here that I had to block Erkal. The first time I have ever had to block anyone. But I get the feeling that I will have to block the other goons that came with him. They always work in packs. It’s the same dynamic (the cult dynamic (that lies behind FOX News: the way individuals with extreme views will withdraw into their own little circles to prop up their perspectives with a kind of “in-crowd” mentality.

And I can’t lose here. Either Erkal’s fellow goons attack me which proves me right by the pragmatic truth test because it worked right here in front of everyone. Or they don’t, in which case I don’t have to deal with their nonsense. In that case, it will have worked for me and screw the true pragmatic truth test!

[d63]

Rhizome 2/2/15:

Song added: Robert Rich and Steve Roach: Love Magick

As much as I like the likes, I would still prefer interaction and participation. Still:

“Dad! Dad! Dad!
^^^this is a crowd chanting your name”

Almost like people lighting their lighters at a rock concert.

“Or perhaps a backyard party? Maybe in the '80’s?”

At the time, RobertTanya Morse, I thought it my manifest destiny to be a rock star. And I have never quite outgrown it in that everything else I have experimented with (poetry, fiction, art, etc. (has always been haunted by an imperative to make a thing rock and roll. Now here I am some 30+ years later in middle age writing about philosophy because it sometimes gives me that experience of strutting on a stage. In a way, it’s pathetic. I know. But that Peter Pan complex will likely follow me to my grave, the very dynamic that might have led me to that grave a lot earlier (via drugs or alcohol or… (I think here of Billy Crudup’s character in Almost Famous: I am a golden god!!! Being someone who has come to appreciate the process as I have, I consider myself goddamn lucky that I didn’t fulfill that destiny. Still, I have to wonder what it would have actually been like.
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Anyway, Raan: went through the essay you offered up. Thanks. But it was at the end of my run at the “library” (and I did order one more draw to finish it (so I feel a little awkward even trying to comment on it –that is since my comprehension of it was spotty at best. The only real advantage I had was that it coincided with a lot of what I’m seeing in my present reading of Rorty’s Philosophy and Social Hope.

But the main phrase that struck me was:

“When we praise a scientist or scholar for the love of Truth what we often have in mind is simply her open-mindedness: her curiosity about opinions different from their own, tolerance for the existence of such opinions, and willingness to modify their own views. When we say that someone loves truth more than self we sometimes mean simply that he or she respects his or her colleagues enough to prefer a view with which they can all, freely and peaceably, come to agree upon to the view he or she herself presently holds. Construed in this way, the love of Truth is simply conversability—a tolerant absence of fanaticism, a willingness to hear the other side.”

I apologize for the opportunism at work here, but this plays into a recent development (via Rorty and Deleuze (in my own thinking concerning the major evolutionary fork in the road we are at. As Rorty suggests, our cultural history has always been one of the brain (in service of the body that carries it (adapting to its environment. This has resulted in two modes of adaption or mind/environment interaction. On one hand, there has always been the competitive model that has always held those evolutionary adaptations in its service. In this case, our baser instincts act as master to our higher (always evolving (cognitive functions.

At the same time, one of those evolutionary adaptations was the cooperative model in which our baser impulses (our self preservation (began to see it in their self interest to look out for things beyond themselves. In this model, there is no master/slave relationship except, perhaps, in inconsequential residual ways: such as a friendly competition. And it was what allowed the various species to live in groups, that being in the individual’s best interest. Of course, the competitive model always pops back up. This is why groups of monkeys can live together while allowing the alpha male to have all the females (think Capitalism here; and equally why such an arrangement can never forever stand: evolution.

But more important to the point, this is what makes pragmatism so important to the evolutionary milestone we face. Should we stick with the competitive model we see with the old Platonic hierarchy, Social Darwinism, the enlightenment insistence on their new god: reason, or Capitalism’s god: the invisible hand, we risk failing to adapt to our environment and self destructing through man-made climate change or the depletion of our natural resources, or our enslavement through Global Capitalism.
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I’m also intrigued, Raan, by the import suggested concerning the concepts of metaphor and imagination. I’ll have to play with them a little more to feel comfortable commenting on them. But I see (or feel (a significance (especially concerning metaphor (I didn’t before. But then the concept of metaphor has popped up in my present reading.

(Baby steps, brother!(

As far as imagination, I think it has developed from and played a very important role in our evolutionary process and adaption. It is what has allowed us to anticipate danger and, thereby, avoid it. So it seems no wonder that the imagination has evolved into Sci-Fi. In fact, it is embedded in our political views since you can hardly be political without talking about some kind of slippery slope, without thinking in terms of what a given social policy might lead to.

When it comes to politics and social policy: we are all Sci-fi writers.
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Metaphorically, we could say that the brain, from the beginning, was always beholden (or destine (to the cooperative model in that it always had to keep its body alive to keep itself alive.

[d63]

Rhizome 2/7/15:

Song added to mix: Drifting -Recoil

“I have emphasized that on my way of understanding it, rationality is a normative concept. The space of reasons is a normative space. I have also registered a methodological commitment … to a pragmatic order of explanation – to accounting for meaning in terms of use; more specifically, to abstracting the inferential relations that articulate conceptual … content from the reasoning practices and inferential processes of discursive practitioners. This is a broadly functionalist explanatory strategy. It is a rationalist (more specifically, inferentialist) functionalism, because conceptual content is understood in terms of its role in reasoning, in the form of inferential role. And it is a normative functionalism, rather than a causal-dispositional functionalism. That is, the roles in question are to be specified in a normative vocabulary of what would commit or entitle one to apply a concept and what else doing that would commit or entitle one to, rather than with what would dispose one to apply that concept or what else doing that would dispose one to do.” Robert Brandom, Reason in Philosophy p.12 –shared by Steven on facebook.com/groups/1385673 … p_activity

“ I wish I understood this” –Steven Orslini

A lot of technical nomenclature flying around here, Steve. So I share your confusion –perhaps more so than you. Sometimes all you can do is start with what you think you understand and keep playing it against the reality of the text itself. For my part, I mainly have to focus on the phrase:“I have emphasized that on my way of understanding it, rationality is a normative concept. The space of reasons is a normative space.”My experience has been that anytime someone uses the term “rationality”, you have to ask two questions: by what criteria is an assertion deemed to be “rational”? And who has the power to enforce that criterion?Of course, I am primarily working from the understanding (that is along w/ the residual influence of Foucault (of the term “Normative” as that which normalizes: that which supports a given status quo via its advocates and makes it seem as if it is the perfectly natural state to be in.
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First of all, at some vague, intuitive level, I see a connection between the above and what I’m about to explore. I can only hope it comes out in the process.

“I am perfectly capable of knowing the difference between right and wrong. We all are. In fact, it has been embedded in us by the evolutionary process that has made us a group oriented species. This is because our self interest (our selfish genes as Dawkin’s put it (have seen it in its interest to look out for the interest of those other objects that occupy our immediate space and act like us. And because of this, we can know the difference between right and wrong at an intuitive level.” –from rhizome 2/7/15, facebook.com/groups/6757450 … 206434117/

Now this would seem to put me in a bit of a pickle given my unequivocal rejection of the Republican platform. And the argument put against me is that I would have to also admit that republicans, as much as I do, know the difference between right and wrong.

And I believe they do. Furthermore, I would argue that it is not matter of intellect. They are as capable of reasoning as anyone else. They’re not dumb. The problem lies in how they use that intellect: the competitive model of seeing their more cognitive functions as being in the service of their baser impulses. I saw this the other day in an episode of Real Time with Bill Maher watching the Wall Street Journal writer, Bret Stephens, among moderates and liberals, attempt to pimp his perspective which sounded like the pro-Capitalist perspective always does in the face of the reality of Capitalism today: like a teenager whose been busted at something and reacts by throwing everything on the table in the hope that something will stick. But then this has been the case with most pro-Capitalists. Note, for instance, the Republican’s sudden switch to being offended by the increasing wealth of the 1% as was recently expressed by Ted Cruz, that is in the context of Obama’s expanding economy. Now think back to FOX New’s response to OWS (the 99%: the snide comments that maybe they should exert their energy on getting a job. The pro-Capitalist position goes wherever the wind takes it and what will work for the moment –which is quite different from the pragmatic sense of “working”.

And I would argue that the reason Pro-Capitalists and Republican engage in the dance they do, and the hysteria of the tea party, is because they know their policies will do real harm, but are too addicted to producer/consumer Capitalism to deal with it. Therefore, like most addicts, they will turn to whatever it takes to rationalize their positions –including to their selves. And this is the source of the compartmentalization you see all over it.

Capitalism is a sickness. And everything about the republican platform and strategy stinks of it.

Note to self: in further rhizome, bring in the the disadvantage that Bret Stephens (and everyone like him (was that he came into a discourse about what is best for society which assumes that the conclusion must be what is best for all parties involved -that is while pimping an ideology that primarily serves his own interests.

[d63]

Rhizome 2/15/15
(in which I respond to points made by Greg on rhizome 2/14/15( facebook.com/groups/6757450 … up_comment:

First of all, Greg, you gave me a lot of rhizomes within rhizomes embedded in other rhizomes here which, in turn, touched off the same in my head. This might take a couple of days or more. And, unfortunately, as of tomorrow, I am on vacation which can mean one of 2 things: either I vacate my life completely and lounge around with Overman (my dog (watching TV; or I end up in a drunken blur in which I terrorize the boards. I mainly bring this up because should it be the latter, I apologize beforehand.

Okay, let’s get to it before it all goes wrong:

“I have a couple of problems with this one D. My attitude toward right-wingers at its most complacent is that they are victims and dupes. I do not find this attitude ideal. But it remains because I have nothing to replace it with.”

The thing is, Greg, I’m pretty much in agreement with a lot (if not everything (you say in your response. Still it would be one thing for you and I to engage in a war rally based on our mental concepts of the other and throw out such terms as “stupid” or “dupes” (terms we can be sure they use in their little war rallies. But it is quite another to interact with people who hold those beliefs (people you’ve formed friendships with and come to care about and who care about you. In that situation, you can no longer rest on the mental concepts you have developed. You have to deal with the reality of the person as a whole. And people are always more complex than their ideologies.

At the same time, we cannot succumb to what Deleuze refers to as the “beautiful soul”. We cannot, given how dangerous and destructive their perspectives actually are, entertain the notion that all perspectives are equal. As you say:

“I believe this because I think there is something that is actually ‘the case’ when it comes to our political situation.”

There are times when I’m making a point about the tactics right-wingers tend to use, then suddenly realize: hey! I do that too. Take for instance: the gotcha moment. But there is a difference. This can be seen in the way that when right-wingers make an argument or use a tactic, and reality fails to support it, they casually change their tactics and act as if the former tactic never existed. You’re right Greg: they think differently than we think: in ways that dance around reality for the sake of protecting their self interest. And failing to actually address reality, they tend to get by through exploiting the language game. And have even become masters at it. This is why they are so dependent on soundbites: “soak the rich”, “tax and spend liberals”, “Job creators”, etc., etc…

Unfortunately, the media that they are so quick to condemn as some kind of liberal conspiracy (the corporate owned media mind you (is only too happy to give license to their control of the language game. Lewis Black, in the movie Man of the Year, makes a telling point here that concerns how pro-capitalist sensibilities have absorbed and exploited the position of the beautiful soul. As it stands now, media is forced to put a sensible person alongside a neo-Nazi and act as if they are starting from an even playing field, as if they are both opinions worthy of being expressed and considered. Of course, in this case, the position of the Neo-Nazi is publically shown to be inferior. But this only deceives us into believing that media is actually working while treating the nonsense of republicans as if it is equal as well. In other words, compared to the reasoning of the neo-nazis, the republican platform is presented as if it is comparatively reasonable. At the same time, the republicans are perfectly free to act as if everything liberals do or think are the products of a mythical extremist left. And the reason they can get away with this is because they have the full support of corporate power which owns the media. There’s a kind of divide and conquer strategy involved in it. But the right–wingers can’t see this. They’re too buried in what is in their interest. Or what they think is. It’s what makes them drones for their corporate masters.

Still, as you point out, they are making choices:

“They are victims and dupes because they have chosen to incarnate views which precede them and represent the ambitions to solidify the power of others.”

And they are bad choices. Between choosing, out of their focus on their immediate self interest, the dismantling of our democracies under global Capitalism and our possible self destruction through man-made climate change, it is clear (from a pragmatic perspective (that there is a spectrum that runs from good to really bad reasoning. This is why, according to Rorty, there is no point in even using such terms as reason. We all use it. Therefore, terms like “reason” or “logic” or even “the scientific method” (since we all create concepts in our own little mental labs and test them against reality (are basically redundant and manipulative. Beyond that, it’s a matter of which reasoning wins in the face of reality.

I personally believe yours and mine do. I am confident in it.

But still, they are often decent people. And we have to look at the imperatives that Deleuze (w/ and w/out Guattarri (imposes on us:

First we have to ask (via Wilhelm Reich (what it is about people that they would seek their own oppression.

Secondly, we have to keep a look out for the forms of fascism that can emerge anywhere, including and most importantly, within ourselves.

That said, there is so much more to say about this, Greg. Thanks for the rhizome enfolded (enfolding rhizomes (within enfolded rhizomes….

It’s just all too much. Still, we have to try.

BTW, Greg: I notice you are from Washington which is north of Oregon: that which Steven Colbert referred to as California’s Canada. How much of a hippy liberal could you be, brother? Actually wish I were there.