On virtuality.

[anthropo-eccentricism]

What follows are some notes of mine concerning the being of objects. Against Whitehead, I find unpalatable the claim that change entails a death and a corresponding rebirth. I believe objects can and do change. I believe identity refers always back to the genus of a process while remaining underdetermined by any one description of that process--a concept for another post, perhaps. In any case: here are some thoughts on virtuality.

It seems rather fashionable today to denounce the distinction between being and doing, to reduce the being of an object to its effects, to its actions or qualities. This conception finds its most common articulation in the refrain, familiar now to several domains of thought, that a thing just is what it does, that it is nothing but what we can observe of it, that it is wholly reducible to the effects registered. The mug that sits to my left, on this account, is therefore nothing but a particular articulation of blue ceramic. This thesis produces an all too common image of the world: wholly actual. Objects are the way they are actualized, and nothing besides. But this ignores a fundamental fact of our world, that no object exists in isolation. All is relational; and yet, as Deleuze well knew: objects precede their relations, even when they come into being at one and the same time. What I want to preserve is therefore the capacity for an object to change, the hidden power to become-otherwise, a capacity completely unrealized, insubstantial and unobservable. In short: I want to claim that objects are more than their effects. Granted, my mug's qualities seem relatively static. But that's only because its network of relations remain static. Were the temperature in my room to rise significantly enough, the mug would melt, or crack, changing shape. In different lighting, the mug changes colour. In changing its shape, do we speak as if the mug ceased to exist in facilitating the coming-to-be of an entirely new object? Do we speak as if what was once a mug stopped, and what is now something distinct started? And where are we to draw the lines between such a passing-away and such a coming-to-be? If all is actual, then changes in the actual-thing must entail changes in the very being of that thing. Instead, if we maintain the thesis that objects contain a system of virtual powers, capacities to act that persist unactualized, then we can find the words with which to describe the changing of the mug. The mug is currently blue--that is, it currently blues--and yet, given a different network of intensities, a different relationship of temperature and lighting, the mug can actualize its virtual capacity to brown, or its virtual capacity to spatially articulate itself otherwise. Hidden within any given object is a volcanic potential to become, to act, to change, to differ, to be. Objects are therefore perpetually withdrawn and always in excess of their locally manifested qualities. The object is not a set of properties but rather a system of powers. An object is not reducible to its qualities; rather, its qualities are something it does--for, under different conditions, it could and does do otherwise.

Objects are comprised both of qualities actualized in a given dimension of relatedness, as well as powers that remain virtual and dormant. Further, since an object is only ever encountered within a network of relations, and since the object can never manifest all or even most of its virtual capacities within a given set of relations (what would it mean for the mug to remain cylindrical and simultaneously become-square, or red and blue--as verbs--at one and the same time?), it follows that we can only encounter other objects--and, indeed, each other as well--partially and peripherally. It should be noted that this isn't just one more expression of perspectivism. The latter conceives of the being of an object as a sum of its potential perspectives. And while I do maintain that we can only familiarize ourselves with an object by coming to know its capacities to act differently, by experimenting with difference, I don't think this process can ever exhaust itself. The virtual being of an object is potentially infinite, as relations proliferate endlessly. There's no end to what an object can do, because there's no end to what relations it can enter into. Local manifestations of an object's virtual capacities are less like properties and more like unique events performed by that object. The mug blues, but it might later brown, it now articulates itself cylindrically, but it might later become-square. These powers-become-actual are more like performances that shift and fluctuate with the environment, and less like fixed properties that the mug does or doesn't possess. Pace Spinoza, Deleuze tells us that we still don't know what a body can do. The task is to experiment, to assemble differently, to alter the terms of one's relations. If the object is perpetually withdrawn, the task is to let it uncoil itself in as many different circumstances as possible. This is the only way to come to know the capacity of a body more comprehensively. But, as Nietzsche understood only all too well: the imperative is to remove the goal and affirm the process. We can never know precisely, comprehensively, and exhaustively what a body can do. But we can know better.

The object is more virtual than actual. It has no essence, no ideal form or identity. Its powers to act exceed its local manifestations. Even if its powers are finite, the relations within which they become-actual remain infinite and therefore the object is always in excess of what we (can) know about it. To sum: an object is both actual and virtual. Its actual is the set of properties that it manifests within a given network of relations at a given time. Its virtual is the system of volcanic powers that remain dormant and withdrawn, in excess of what it can manifest within any one set of relations. Water, for example, cannot actualize its power to become ice in a warm room.

This thesis also does away with another popular ontological position: relationism. An object is not its relations because an object is not only its actual, it is also its virtual, its power-to-be. Phenomenology doesn't fare any better: the given can never map accurately onto the territory of being because the given only provides what's actual or manifest at a given time, and not what is possible. And even here, talk of possibility and potential misleads us. If qualities are virtual manifestations that become-actual within a novel set of relations, then they are unique performances, events that emerge as they are actualized, not beforehand.

[matty]

The only problem I have with this, and with a lot of Speculative Realism, is the reification of the object. From a Deleuzian p-o-v, I do not see why the thing you refer to as the object, virtually-speaking, is any different from what a Whiteheadian would call relations, or, better yet, an event. Particularly as for Deleuze the virtual had to be viewed as entirely neutral, pre-individual - it is neither potentiality nor possibility. However, I am prepared to concede that there are some issues in terms of the relation between the virtual and the actual for Deleuze which I do not fully understand, and which have been confused further by Badiou's criticisms in this regard: in effect, was Deleuze a true immanentist, a philosopher of univocality (my instinct is yes) or was he in fact too inconsistent (what I roughly take to be Badiou's position).

[anthropo-eccentricism]

No matter the reading we give Deleuze, he remains a thinker of immanence. But I do find a tension in his thought, a sort of hesitation to commit completely to one type of monism at the risk of denigrating the other. This might be, after all, against Badiou, purposive. Deleuze is well-known for lending himself to divergent interpretations. In any case, there's a sort of tension between monism understood as a single (virtual) being that is broken up into disparate entities in the process of actualization, and monism understood as a single type of being, whether actual or virtual. It is the latter reading that I favour. And yes, as you've pointed out, this commits me to having to depart from Deleuze whenever he calls the virtual the pre-individual, the undifferentiated continuum, and so on. However, he also speaks of the virtual as belonging to actual objects, which lends itself well to my position. Now, perhaps I've done nothing but reiterate Badiou's criticisms. In any case.

From a Deleuzian p-o-v, I do not see why the thing you refer to as the object, virtually-speaking, is any different from what a Whiteheadian would call relations, or, better yet, an event.

The thing I refer to as the object, virtually-speaking, is always-already a counterpart, always-already a reference to, the object, actually-speaking. They are two sides of the same coin, if you will---a coin that ceaselessly flips. Now, why is this different from the Whiteheadian's relations? Because, as I understand it, an object, for Whitehead, just is the way it relates to other objects, it just is the way it "prehends" the objects with which it relates. I may, of course, be wrong---for I'm extremely poorly versed in Whitehead---but this is precisely the view that an introduction of the virtual seeks to move away from. If an object is nothing but its prehensions, then it is wholly actual---it possesses no virtually dormant capacities. So, on my account: the object is all its prehensions, it is all its relations, as well as its unactualized powers to do otherwise, to differentiate itself further. This is the turning point, really. What does it mean to speak as if the virtual differentiates itself in the process of actualization? Does this commit one to the thesis that the virtual remains preindividual and neutral? No, I don't think so. I think the virtual is always the virtual of an object. We flirt dangerously with some form of Platonism if we hold that the virtual hovers over and above every actualization, that it precedes and subsists them. By individuating the virtual, I think we can hold onto a wholly immanent view, while preserving the capacities of objects to do and be otherwise than they are within any one given network of relations.

The only problem I have with this, and with a lot of Speculative Realism, is the reification of the object.

Yes, no doubt, the locus of my post is the reification of the object. I take this to be a strong point. Recall Deleuze: an object is always external to its relations. Which means it is more than, it is other than; even if it does not precede its relations, it is not exhausted by them. Here again I find support for my thesis in Deleuze. What I want to ask is why you find this to be a weak point, or why this constitutes a problem for you. What is it about objects that trouble you?

[James S Saint]

So If by whatever means, every molecule of a dog gets altered to become that of a rabbit, then it is still a dog, that merely behaves like a rabbit?

I have to disagree with the essence of the OP.

What something does on the most essential level, defines what it is.
What it was prior to any change, is irrelevant to rationality other than to propose the hope or threat of potential change.

[anthropo-eccentricism]

So If by whatever means, every molecule of a dog gets altered to become that of a rabbit, then it is still a dog, that merely behaves like a rabbit?

At which stage do you locate the shift from doghood to rabbithood? How do you define such a shift, in what precisely do you locate the locus of such a shift---in genetics, in behaviour, in appearance? Your questions do not seem to me critical. You are aware, of course, of the historicity of every living entity. All things are historical, all things have emerged out of a process of change, and all things continue to change---it is only a question of relative duration. What could it possibly mean to speak of something essentially, if not to refer only to an outdated picture of nature wherein difference is deviant and norms (or, better, Platonic forms) precede their actualized instantiations in the world around us? Make yourself intelligible if you are to feign criticism.

What something does on the most essential level, defines what it is.

I appreciate your contrary assertion. Here, let me try my hand at it: the shape of the trajectory of a thing's movement of becoming defines what it is. Also, what is it you mean by the phrase "essential level"?

What it was prior to any change, is irrelevant to rationality other than to propose the hope or threat of potential change.

How are we to understand a thing as it is prior to any change? Things are pervaded by change, they emerge through a process of perpetual change, and they develop by means of differentiation---both from themselves and from their environments. There is no anterior to the process of difference; this is the lesson we can take from Darwin. There is no form against which we can measure a development of deviation. The form is itself only a probabilistic norm that presides over a genus of perpetual difference. Nature is all simulacra; there is no original to its copies.

[James S Saint]

Make yourself intelligible if you are to feign criticism.

If the rat doesn't understand you, you need to be more "intelligible".

What something does on the most essential level, defines what it is.

I appreciate your contrary assertion. Here, let me try my hand at it: the shape of the trajectory of a thing's movement of becoming defines what it is.

I wouldn't disagree with that.

Also, what is it you mean by the phrase "essential level"?

You don't know what "essential" means?
Hell, no wonder you need assistance with intelligence.

At which stage do you locate the shift from doghood to rabbithood?

Irrelevant.
That is merely an issue of epistemology and semantics, having nothing to do with what something is, but rather what we are to call it.

It seems rather fashionable today to denounce the distinction between being and doing, to reduce the being of an object to its effects

Yes it seems fashionable to be accurate on that account. Be glad that they are willing to be accurate on at least something.

it is nothing but what we can observe of it

Now that is a totally different issue for those of us who can actually be intelligent rather than merely "feign criticism".

The presumption of blind empiricism is provably fallacious with any staged magic trick. But that position has nothing to do with the assertion that "what something is, is what is does". The saying wasn't and isn't, "what something is, is merely what it appears to be" - perceptivism.

All is relational

Not really, but even if so, "relational to what"? To other relations?
Or relational to what something else IS?
Or is that thought too complicated to follow?

The reality is that all existence is determined ONLY by the ability to affect, to alter something else, to DO something.

If something can truly DO nothing whatsoever, it doesn't exist. If you disagree, just try to tell us of something that exists and yet has absolutely no properties involving the potential to do anything.

Platonic entities exists ONLY in their own realm once called "the divine", "ideal", or "conceptual", separate from the physical. And in that realm, they do not change or DO anything. But that realm is necessarily separate from physical existence which is entirely and only the changing, the doing. Thus if something is said to exist physically, it only gains that status by virtue of its ability or potential to cause change, to DO something.

One of the reasons that so many people agree with that stance is that Science also agrees with it. "If it causes absolutely no effect whatsoever, then it doesn't exist."

[anthropo-eccentricism]

At which stage do you locate the shift from doghood to rabbithood?

Irrelevant.
That is merely an issue of epistemology and semantics, having nothing to do with what something is, but rather what we are to call it.

You can't be serious. You want to argue that one thing is a dog, and after a process of change, it is a rabbit---and you shrug off the responsibility of locating a locus for such a change (is it genetics, is it behaviour, is it appearance?---you've ignored this question), as well as for locating a stage after which the dog is now a rabbit. This isn't a respectable position, this is a substanceless assertion. You seem to hold onto the belief that there are essences that underlie changing entities. But you refuse to provide reason for such a position. And note the following.

You don't know what "essential" means?
Hell, no wonder you need assistance with intelligence.

I've come to expect nothing but good faith from you.

If the rat doesn't understand you, you need to be more "intelligible".

I like this. Who is the rat in our exchange?

Platonic entities exists ONLY in their own realm once called "the divine" or "ideal", separate from the physical. And in that realm, they do not change or DO anything. But that realm is necessarily separate from physical existence which is entirely and only the changing, the doing.

Let's conclude our conversation on this note. If you want to cling to a belief in Platonic essences, then I can rather easily make sense of the rest of your post. But I won't waste my time in further response.

[James S Saint]

You can't be serious.

Just try me.

You want to argue that one thing is a dog, and after a process of change, it is a rabbit---and you shrug off the responsibility of locating a locus for such a change

You asked at what point it becomes labeled differently. I don't really care what point someone wants to change the NAME of it.

(is it genetics, is it behaviour, is it appearance?---you've ignored this question),

The definition of it was the entire issue and exactly what I addressed. Try to keep up.

This isn't a respectable position

Awww.. well paint me unrespectable.

You seem to hold onto the belief that there are essences that underlie changing entities.

That coming from a guy who can't figure out what "essence" means.... so then such a statement means what exactly?

But you refuse to provide reason for such a position.

No. But you DO seem to refuse to read or comprehend what you do not want to believe.
Typical.
There is a psychological cause for that if you are ever interested in fixing it.

Who is the rat in our exchange?

Who is the one claiming that the human needs to be more intelligible?

Personally, I always thought that communication was a two-way street with "stop-look-and listen" signs on both ends.
But maybe that's just me.

If you want to cling to a belief in Platonic essences, then I can rather easily make sense of the rest of your post.

Typical. You are the one actually supporting Platonic existences and doesn't even recognize it.

If you are going to point out how wrong everyone these days is (which is normally pretty easy to do), I would suggest starting with yourself.
But that's just advice, easily ignored with the rest of the posts.

[anthropo-eccentricism]

The way you decontextualize and reterritorialize the fragmentary assertions to which you respond is psychologically fascinating.

[Typist]

That is merely an issue of epistemology and semantics, having nothing to do with what something is, but rather what we are to call it.

I cast my vote with James. Reality is one thing, and the divisions suggested by definitions are inventions of the human mind. Useful in many ways, but with a price tag of creating a distorted image of reality.

Other than that my review would be, too much fancy wordage. If something can't be said in every day plain language, it probably doesn't merit being said.

[anthropo-eccentricism]

Other than that my review would be, too much fancy wordage. If something can't be said in every day plain language, it probably doesn't merit being said.

Herd-mentality, nothing more.

In any case, matty---as you're the first and only to contribute anything positive to this thread---I do have a further question for you: how is it that the virtual, understood as a preindividual, undifferentiated continuum, comes to differentiate itself in the process of actualization? Why does the individual exist at all? What do actualizations, what does concrete difference add to the preindividual continuum? Is there an agency that instigates the process? In short: explain for me the philosophic advantage gained by conceptualizing the virtual as a preindividual topography. This is by no means a new problematic; the same questions plagued Plato's conception of the forms: why do they instantiate themselves at all; what is to be gained by copying themselves?

[Typist]

how is it that the virtual, understood as a preindividual, undifferentiated continuum, comes to differentiate itself in the process of actualization? Why does the individual exist at all? What do actualizations, what does concrete difference add to the preindividual continuum? Is there an agency that instigates the process? In short: explain for me the philosophic advantage gained by conceptualizing the virtual as a preindividual topography. This is by no means a new problematic; the same questions plagued Plato's conception of the forms: why do they instantiate themselves at all; what is to be gained by copying themselves?

[anthropo-eccentricism]

I cast my vote with James. Reality is one thing, and the divisions suggested by definitions are inventions of the human mind. Useful in many ways, but with a price tag of creating a distorted image of reality.

Let me dumb it down for you. Without the virtual, you are confined to the thesis that objects are wholly actual, a thesis familiar to those of the Whiteheadian ilk. Now, what this means is that when an object changes, there must come a stage after which the object that once was ceases to exist, a stage after which a perfectly and entirely new object comes to be. Can you see the way you've undermined your own attempt at a criticism? You want to say: the reality is X, regardless of how we cut it up and label it. I want to say: the reality is X, and it is by introducing the concept of the virtual that I hope to account for it. Without the virtual, you really must account for actual (non-definitional) divisions in the process of change. What I want is for you (and James) to go ahead and account for them. To this, you respond: mere semantics. And I'm the intellectually dishonest one? Hilarious. Now, both of you, kindly play elsewhere if you've nothing more to contribute.

Further, I find your condescension mostly comedic, but partly depressing. As is the case with James: I'm fascinated psychologically, but philosophically, I just can't bring myself to care.

[Typist]

Let me dumb it down for you.

Speaking clearly is not dumbing down, but communicating with a larger audience.

Without the virtual, you are confined to the thesis that objects are wholly actual, a thesis familiar to those of the Whiteheadian ilk. Now, what this means is that when an object changes, there must come a stage after which the object that once was ceases to exist, a stage after which a perfectly and entirely new object comes to be. Can you see the way you've undermined your own attempt at a criticism?

I can see curing you of fancy talk is going to be a bigger project than I originally realized.

You want to say: the reality is X, regardless of how we cut it up and label it.

Almost. The reality is not X, X being some identifier, label, concept, definition etc. Reality just is. James gets this, and perhaps can say it in a way that will work better for you.

I want to say: the reality is X, and it is by introducing the concept of the virtual that I hope to account for it.

There's no need to account for it. It just is whether you account for it or not. But if it entertains you, please proceed.

Without the virtual, you really must account for actual (non-definitional) divisions in the process of change.

Divisions are an invention of the human mind. To put it another way, a bias introduced by the nature of the tool being used to conduct the observation. As a scientist, you are obligated to understand the primary tool you are using, and account for it's characteristics and limitations. As example, if you have a pink filter installed on the end of your telescope, you need to know that, so that you don't start thinking all of reality is pink.

Thought is inherently divisive, that's it's nature, like water is wet. Thus, everything we observe with thought will appear to be divided.

As example, the function of nouns is to divide, such as "tree" from "not tree". But if we look at tree in the real world, we can see that the dividing lines are arbitrary. As example, if we could see the gas exchanges the tree is conducting with our eyes, we would draw the boundary of "tree" in a different place.

What I want is for you (and James) to go ahead and account for them. To this, you respond: mere semantics.

Semantics aren't mere, but they are semantics, not the real world. Thought and language attempt to create an accurate conceptual image of the real world, but they do not succeed because the equipment being used is limited.

Further, I find your condescension mostly comedic, but partly depressing. As is the case with James: I'm fascinated psychologically, but philosophically, I just can't bring myself to care.

Yes, we know, you're going to repeat this over and over in every post. That's ok, I don't mind, and doubt James does either. Keep chanting the mantra until you feel better, no problem.

[Only_Humean]

It seems to me that both sides here are arguing that we apply thought and language to parcel up reality into objects, and that the other side is saying the opposite. I'm not sure where the disagreement comes in.

[matty]

In any case, there's a sort of tension between monism understood as a single (virtual) being that is broken up into disparate entities in the process of actualization, and monism understood as a single type of being, whether actual or virtual. It is the latter reading that I favour.

I think the crucial thing here is that the monism that Deleuze affirms is difference. Only the being in the phrase "being is becoming" is univocal. I think that Badiou accepts this, but that he feels that the determination of becoming needs to be more rigorous, hence his mathematical ontology. Of course, Deleuze's concept of "difference-in-itself" is enigmatic, and I am not convinced that I properly understand all of its implications, but I am convinced that it has to remain preindividual (not undifferentiated). James Williams describes virtual differences as "intensities", which to me speaks to the Whiteheadian concept of relations.

The thing I refer to as the object, virtually-speaking, is always-already a counterpart, always-already a reference to, the object, actually-speaking. They are two sides of the same coin, if you will---a coin that ceaselessly flips. Now, why is this different from the Whiteheadian's relations? Because, as I understand it, an object, for Whitehead, just is the way it relates to other objects, it just is the way it "prehends" the objects with which it relates. I may, of course, be wrong---for I'm extremely poorly versed in Whitehead---but this is precisely the view that an introduction of the virtual seeks to move away from. If an object is nothing but its prehensions, then it is wholly actual---it possesses no virtually dormant capacities.

I think the coin analogy is quite apropos. I remember reading something (not sure whether by Deleuze himself or by a commentator) with regard to his interpretation of intuition in Bergson as a complementary ascending and descending movement that your description evokes. As for Whitehead, however, I think you are wrong because I don't think he took the object to be real at all - rather, the object is our reification of relations, forces, events. In that respect, the object is wholly actual, and I think this agrees with Deleuze, for whom the virtual is not made up of “dormant capacities” (i.e. possibilities) but of pure differences (i.e. intensities).

We flirt dangerously with some form of Platonism if we hold that the virtual hovers over and above every actualization, that it precedes and subsists them. By individuating the virtual, I think we can hold onto a wholly immanent view, while preserving the capacities of objects to do and be otherwise than they are within any one given network of relations.

Indeed we do “flirt dangerously with …Platonism”, as James Brusseau’s fine analysis of Deleuze recognises. Your rejection of that confirms for me that you are following Badiou in this regard, seeking to renovate an Aristotleian, categorical interpretation of being to some degree. To put it another way, for you the virtual is expressed by the fact that your mug has shifted from one form to another, whereas for me the virtual is expressed in the process of change itself (although it must of course be recognised that this is an analytical rather than an ontological difference between our two positions).

What is it about objects that trouble you?

I think I’ve addressed this in the foregoing, but just to say briefly that I think the semantic distinction between the actual object and virtual intensities is an important one to be made for the sake of clarity; I think it is more effective than talking about the actual object and the virtual object.

how is it that the virtual, understood as a preindividual, undifferentiated continuum, comes to differentiate itself in the process of actualization? Why does the individual exist at all? What do actualizations, what does concrete difference add to the preindividual continuum? Is there an agency that instigates the process? In short: explain for me the philosophic advantage gained by conceptualizing the virtual as a preindividual topography. This is by no means a new problematic; the same questions plagued Plato's conception of the forms: why do they instantiate themselves at all; what is to be gained by copying themselves?

I think this is an excellent question, and one I accept as being the most potentially devastating for Deleuze’s metaphysics. The short answer is that I am not entirely clear on the process by which actualisations arise from a “preindividual continuum” (continuum sounds wrong: plane of immanence would be more faithful to Deleuze), although I would suggest Deleuze’s brief essay on Simondon as the best place to start ("the individual is not just a result, but an environment of individuation ... on this view, individuation is no longer coextensive with being; it must represent a moment, which is neither all of being nor its first moment"). I would also say that there is no “agency”, as such, but rather that the virtual intensities should be seen as tendencies (becoming-x, or rather becoming-dx) that crystallise (find expression) in actual forms.

However, I remain open to re-education in this regard and appreciate the prompt to go away and read some of the discussion, particularly around Deleuze’s relation to Whitehead, more extensively – “prehension”, particularly, is a concept I have long been aware of without really getting my head around.

[anthropo-eccentricism]

As for Whitehead, however, I think you are wrong because I don't think he took the object to be real at all - rather, the object is our reification of relations, forces, events. In that respect, the object is wholly actual, and I think this agrees with Deleuze, for whom the virtual is not made up of “dormant capacities” (i.e. possibilities) but of pure differences (i.e. intensities).

First, I appreciate the comprehensive reply. I think I may be confused about the Deleuzian individual: absolutely singular, wholly concrete, and yet---never fully actualized, always in the process of differentiating. Does this sound correct? I'm inclined to understand Deleuze's individual in the same way you've described Whitehead's: a reification of an open-ended process of the expression of virtual intensities/differences, or, for Whitehad, of relations and prehensions. This seems to be corroborated by the line you've picked out of Deleuze's piece on Simondon. I also like your explanation of individuation as the locus of a tendency to crystallize. This coheres with what I take to be the basin of attraction of any problematic field, problematic in the D&R sense. My pool-table isn't leveled properly, so balls have a tendency to settle near the far left corner. The pool-table as problematic field, the far left corner is its basin of attraction. Does this sound anything like what you're getting at with your invocation of the agency-less tendencies to become-x of virtual intensities? Now, you write that the resultant crystallization is an "actual form." Is this form a reification as it is for Whitehead, is it only a snapshot of a process of "actual forming" (of virtual intensities), a "moment" of being-as-becoming?

All that said, I think I need to better understand Deleuze's concept of difference. Is there anything in the secondary literature you might recommend me? I'm currently slogging through Difference & Repetition---a great read, but by no means an easy one.

[matty]

I think I may be confused about the Deleuzian individual: absolutely singular, wholly concrete, and yet---never fully actualized, always in the process of differentiating. Does this sound correct?

Not "absolutely" and not "wholly". With your mug, you'd expect some kind of intervention to make it change significantly but change still happens on varying degrees of scale: some matter has more entropy than other matter, you could say; some forces are more powerful than others, to get Nietzschean about it.

I'm inclined to understand Deleuze's individual in the same way you've described Whitehead's: a reification of an open-ended process of the expression of virtual intensities/differences, or, for Whitehad, of relations and prehensions.

Sort of. The danger, of course, is that we end up back in simple Platonism, talking about the real and the ideal. For Deleuze, however, both the virtual and the actual are real, and, moreover, as you have pointed out, they are different sides of the same coin. To describe an individual we need to explain its genesis, its formation (Smith and Protevi's SEP article suggests we could replace Difference & Repetition with Structure & Genesis). Of course, in order to describe something we have to abstract from the process of formation, even if only briefly, hence the reification. (This was Derrida's argument as well, by the way.)

This coheres with what I take to be the basin of attraction of any problematic field, problematic in the D&R sense. My pool-table isn't leveled properly, so balls have a tendency to settle near the far left corner. The pool-table as problematic field, the far left corner is its basin of attraction. Does this sound anything like what you're getting at with your invocation of the agency-less tendencies to become-x of virtual intensities?

Yes, absolutely.

Now, you write that the resultant crystallization is an "actual form." Is this form a reification as it is for Whitehead, is it only a snapshot of a process of "actual forming" (of virtual intensities), a "moment" of being-as-becoming?

I am tempted to say that, yes, it is a reification, but this might not do justice to the way that Deleuze rehabilitated the Platonist concept of the simulacrum. Unfortunately, it might take me several hours of additional reading to provide a solid explanation of why that's an issue for me! Briefly, I would say that crystallisation and actualisation are rough synonyms in this respect - that is, when taken as a process rather than an outcome.

All that said, I think I need to better understand Deleuze's concept of difference. Is there anything in the secondary literature you might recommend me? I'm currently slogging through Difference & Repetition---a great read, but by no means an easy one.

I strongly recommend James Williams's Critical Introduction to D&R, which is helpful as a companion piece. Also, John Protevi has some very useful course materials available on his website. Keith Ansell Pearson's Germinal Life is excellent for linking this with Bergson, and has some stuff on Simondon as well. With regard to SR, you should really check out Levi Bryant's Difference & Givenness (he has also made his most recent book, The Democracy of Objects, available online). Finally, on the Derrida and Deleuze link check Len Lawlor's essay 'A Near Total Affinity' in the journal Angelaki (5, 2: 2000).

[matty]

Was just going over some of Levi Bryant's posts at Larval Subjects and came across this one (http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/201 ... ithdrawal/), which I thought was quite pertinent. Withdrawal is another of those concepts I need to understand better - it sounds too Kantian to me at the moment...

[anthropo-eccentricism]

Withdrawal is another of those concepts I need to understand better - it sounds too Kantian to me at the moment...

This (that is, Levi's post) is basically what I was trying to express with my original post. I had also stolen the mug example from Levi's Democracy of Objects, a relatively easy-going read that I've been jamming around with the past few weeks. I think he sometimes oversimplifies: he sets the whole book against anti-realism, and yet---the critique proper is nothing more than a gloss and a strawman. In any case: I'm with him entirely when it comes to virtuality.

I'll see if I can help you make sense of the concept. Please do continue to point out the weak-spots in my account. If it makes sense to speak of the object as withdrawn, then that is because we can only ever access it in its actuality, and because its virtual powers will never be fully or finally exhausted in what Levi calls its "local manifestations." It becomes-actual within two networks of relation which form a sort of horizontal/vertical nexus. Following Deleuze, we can speak of the objects endo-relations, the relations between its own parts---its genetics, for example---as well as the relations it enters into with other objects, its exo-relations. Even if we can fully and finally come to know the former---arguable, to say the least---we can never fully and finally come to know the latter, and since the object is always located at an intersection of the two, we are left to conclude that the object withdraws from us, in at least some respect. But I don't think this is Kantian in the least. Recall the way Bergson, in Matter and Memory, makes a similar argument: objects encounter each other only in terms of their possibility of affecting each other. The way I like to imagine this is by way of a bat's echolocational vision. The bat casts waves of sound across its environment and only registers the objects that occupy its field in terms of the way those objects reflect its sound-waves. There will necessarily always remain a hither-side of every object; and, similarly if antithetically, if the bat's images are wholly virtual, then what remains "withdrawn" is an actual, so to speak. This is a far-cry from the hard dichotomy of the Kantians. You may be right, however, inasmuch as Harman's distinction between sensual and real invokes something of a phenomena/noumena distinction. For this reason, I prefer to speak of one and the same object in terms of its actuality and its virtuality; the two are inseparable and the former is constantly in the process of translating the latter. This is perhaps why Deleuze refers to the individual as a field of individuation.

As I've said earlier, I don't like to refer to the virtual as a set of dormant capacities per se, because that calls to mind a system of what Levi, following one of his heroes, refers to as "pre-hatted rabbits." Rather, I think an object's virtual are a set of powers that are only ever translated and manifested in terms of events and actions on the part of the object. The mug isn't blue, it blues. I take this to be something like what Deleuze wants to say, that the virtual is actualized and translated or made-different in the process. It isn't as if the mug has the virtual capacity to be brown that is manifested in a certain situation, but rather that the brown is an actual-translation of its virtual power. Thus, it isn't that objects retain an inner kernel of truth that we can never access, but rather that objects are always more than themselves, that they always exceed any given local manifestation to which we have access at a given time. Far from denigrating them, as I believe happens with the Kantian distinction (as we are consequently forced to infinitely privilege the subject), I think this actually elevates them, lets them breathe and flourish and multiply. It doesn't confine or limit them, but rather gives them the room within which they might open up.

[matty]

I've just been reading Shaviro and Harman's little exchange in The Speculative Turn and wondering whether we simply fall into the dichotomies described. Ultimately, I'm not so sure, because I'm now starting to think that it doesn't matter whether we call what withdraws relational or objective, it remains pretty much the same thing. However, I do think Harman may be onto something with his distinction between Whitehead-Latour and Bergson-Deleuze. He also asks the same question as you did above:

...for such thinkers as Bergson and Deleuze, for whom becoming is what is primarily real, ... discrete individual entities are derivative of [a] more primal flux or flow. This position ... cannot explain how such a primary becoming could ever be broken up into independent zones or districts, let alone full-blown individuals.

I still think a neo-Nietzschean answer addressing forces would be the most effective - Deleuzian intensities, or Deleuzo-Guattarian de-/re-territorialisations.

Anyway, onto Meillassoux's contribution, then back to Levi!

[Typist]

[Typist]

[Typist]

pre·teen·tious

(priˈteenCHəs)

pre·teen·tious is a subset of the class pre·ten·tious

Adjective: Attempts by pre-puberty adolescents to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture, etc., than is actually possessed.

[anthropo-eccentricism]

Anyway, onto Meillassoux's contribution, then back to Levi!

Thanks for the links. I've yet to delve into The Speculative Turn, but I'm sure I'll get to it soon. Glossing the Meillassoux article, one of his formulations of the thesis of withdrawal caught my eye: he says, on page 70, that far from confining us to the Kantian thing-in-itself, the task of thinking withdrawal "will be a question of grasping that being is nothing that transcends the appearance – that being is more, perhaps, but not essentially other, than the appearance." More but not essentially other---I like that quite a bit. It also accords rather nicely with Heidegger-Derrida's critique of the metaphysics of presence. If objects are always more than themselves, and if this excess is itself real although virtual, then the being of an object can no longer correspond to its presence. For the metaphysicians of presence, the excess of an object does not constitute a primordial aspect of that object itself, but rather emerges as a result of our faculties of representation. The terms of the problematic are consequently shifted in the direction of the subject who's said to produce the withdrawal that he is then tasked with overcoming. Everything happens as if presence were primary and the subject were both cause of withdrawal as well as its only victim. We can see now how quickly misguided such an account can become.

Ultimately, I'm not so sure, because I'm now starting to think that it doesn't matter whether we call what withdraws relational or objective, it remains pretty much the same thing.

With Meillassoux's formulation in mind, I think SR gives us the words we need to articulate withdrawal without sliding into a hopeless distinction between phenomena and noumena. And yet, I'm still not completely satisfied.

Regarding the Nietzschean response to how becoming is individualized, I want to ask: is this individualization always individualization-for-a-subject, even if universal-subject (i.e., Nietzsche's falsification)? Because then we've just retraced our steps backward to the correlationism that speculative realism initially set out to dissolve. I think Bergson might be indispensable here inasmuch as he's able to formulate the way objects actively interpret each other without a recourse to consciousness. All he needs is the ubiquity of action, which, however, relegates the world of non-living things to undifferentiated flux. There is no reason why a stone ought to be able to distinguish between a toad and a skyscraper. Again: I'm undecided as to how satisfying I find an answer like this one.