Cathexis and meaning

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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More Spinoza:

P2, Prop. XVI - The idea of every mode, in which the human body is affected by external bodies, must involve the nature of the human body, and also the nature of the external body.
Corollary I – Hence it follows, first, that the human mind perceives the nature of a variety of bodies, together with the nature of its own.
Corollary II – It follows, secondly, that the ideas, which we have of external bodies, indicate rather the constitution of our own body than the nature of external bodies.

Since for Spinoza one of the primary sources of the confused or inadequate idea, is the fusion of the idea of the extended state within the human body, let’s call it “e”, with the idea of the extended state outside the human body that causes “e”, let’s call it “c”. So in this way, when we have the idea of external object “c”, we have fused the ideas of “e” and “c”. C = e + c. This is fundamentally confused.

Because our perception of any external object is fused to our bodily state, would not Freud’s basic concept of Cathexis come into play in all perception? Cathexis in Greek means “to occupy”, to “encamp”. Is the “problem” with using language in an apparently transparent way is that “things” are always invested with our bodily states? Using a word to denote the thing only adds one more layer of lamentation. The bodily states implied in a spoken word would also be invested in that word itself. So a tree, that “thing” to which the word “tree” supposedly corresponds in the word tree is actually a fusion of a generalization of the bodily states that trees have produced in our body, and the bodily states that arise in the enunciation of the word, and the resulting composite assumed to be the tree itself. Our bodily states in cathexis encamp upon each and every object in the world in such a way that the world itself becomes a living and bodily thing, and extension of us, literally.

Due to the visceral affects of language and perception the attempt to scrub the object clean through the use of words in a highly restricted sense seems to me to be moving in a direction that is perhaps as faulty as it is impossible. Rather would not the better direction be to embrace the physicality of perception and languaging and to be in-the-world, realizing that it through the union of the body to the object that meaning arises. Searching for the bodily nuances of harmony and coherence in the idea and the word may be more productive than those that pursue an impossible mathematics of perception assume. Words become things, ideas become extended things, and resonance Truth.

The mystery of intention may be that the definition of a term is not only reliant upon the variety of beliefs held within a single mind’s holism of meanings, but also upon the historic series of cathexes, the bodily state investments in all knowledge, beyond their denotative states.

Dunamis

2

no, the thing in itself remains elusive… then again, for baruch, it has no point… all is god…

“Except God no substance can be granted or conceived. … Everything, I say, is in God, and all things which are made, are made by the laws of the infinite nature of God, and necessarily follows from the necessity of his essence.” (Spinoza, Ethics)

-Imp

3

Imp,

“no, the thing in itself remains elusive… then again, for baruch, it has no point… all is god…”

I suppose that is my point. Instead of trying to subtract all affects from the object’s effect in order to apprehend it, by abstracting it, because all bodies are one body, it would be through a bodily union with the thing, a physical resonance through language and perception that apprehension would be most direct. The physicality of the idea.

Dunamis

4

Dunamis, this is quite possibly the most interesting post I have ever read on this site. Thank you.
I have no disagreement. I don’t understand this well enough to disagree, though I have a feeling even if I ever do understand it completely, I won’t disagree. I do have some questions though.

What might this be like? Isn’t language necessarily an abstraction? or would this sort of language perhaps be… mm… non-word based perhaps? er I think I might be taking this in the wrong direction.
Please say more about this… or if you have any recommended books or other readings… I’ve haven’t read any Spinoza, but would like to know where to begin.
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quibbles,

"a physical resonance through language

What might this be like?"

What I have in mind is that language, although we treat it as an abstraction is not just that. It is a materiality. One of Spinoza’s principles is that anything that occurs in thought, occurs in extension. They are parallel, but one does not cause the other. Resonance through language would be the apprehension of the material affects of the word, and the connectivity it brings between us and our perception. The closest thing I can think of is the Greek word “poiesis”, from which we get our word “poetry”. Poiesis means “making, creating, fashioning”. The word fashions a material world, it connects us in a material sense, as does perception. Instead of trying to purge the material element -which can never be purged anyway- out from the word and perception, use it rather as a bridge across which meaning marches - which is the way that it happens anyway. This affect of both language and perception is actually that which allows poetry to produce such potent meanings that transpierce abstractions, yet retain clarity. The idea of resonance would simply be, having become aware of the physical connection between all things (words, their objects and our bodies), to explore their connections in a sensational sense, to find physical resonance intentionally. I actually assume that this is what is already occurring, even within the most abstract of ambitions, but it can also be done with focus. The process of idea forming is the also that of the forming of bodies.

Dunamis

6

Well said.

‘occurs in extension’?

Hmm, interesting phrasing. ‘forming of bodies’… perhaps I’m looking too into this, but this seems to both summarize and expand on the preceding sentences… please say more.

Oh, and this might be a stretch, but might you relate this to Buber’s I and Thou? Not to say that the ideas are the same, or even similar, but just wondering how you might respond. This has more to do, perhaps, with your first post than your second.

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quibbles,

"The process of idea forming is the also that of the forming of bodies.

Hmm, interesting phrasing. ‘forming of bodies’… perhaps I’m looking too into this, but this seems to both summarize and expand on the preceding sentences… please say more."

I’m not sure which direction you would like me to say more in. This does summarize and expand in a manner. But to get into the implications might be a little abstract. Perhaps it would suffice to say that I take bodies to be formed of repetitions in both time and space, recursivities. Because ideas entail physical effects, the forming of an idea entails a degree of repetition, a resonance. A tone perhaps would be an interesting analogy here because it is composed of a physical dimension and an ideational one as well. I suppose that one can say that if an idea has been formed it is only formed to the degree that it is in physical, not just abstract resonance with the world. The material knowing of objects, both through their extended affects upon our body and the extended affects of words upon our bodies, coupled with the Spinoza contention that we are all bodies and minds contained by a single body and mind, means that an awareness of the physical dimension of ideas would bring to light their bodily presence and affect.

Dunamis

8

Quotes taken from:

bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Cult/CultSamp.htm

This is a damn good paper. It is explaining the origins and use of Hermeneutics through Gadamer and Heidegger (although they didn’t actually create the field). I am seeing that so far it is an attempt at a deconstruction of epistemological objectivity concerning human ethical and moral Truths, while retaining some method, or form, of universalism or ‘holism’ in Truth.

I interpret this movement as a reconciliation between ethical relativism and objectivism. A new kind of ‘inter-subjectivity’ which creates its own dynamic objectivity through semiotic, historical and cultural activity. Out of this comes a re-establishment of epistemologically independent Truth; references to Hegel’s concept of the Geist, Heidegger’s concept of the Dasein, and Gadamer’s concept of the Bildung-- and a “non-foundationalist and non-teleological theory of culture.”

It designs itself.

Truely remarkable.

I think this is a point where much of Pragmatist’s and Dunamis’s ideas can be bridged. I also see points of reflection in Spinoza’s thoughts as well.

I find similiar effects in Dunamis with: “Because ideas entail physical effects, the forming of an idea entails a degree of repetition, a resonance.”

This, I think, is the mechanics of such a hermeneutic as it lays its own foundation for cultural development through repetition and organization. This is to say that ethical truths and activities do conform to some amount of objectivity though it does so by resonating, not by revealing. The operative is historical which is to say that ethics aren’t discovered, they are created. ‘Ideas’ create effects as much as they are effected. In this sense we can say that ethics is a ‘body’ consisting of both historical material contexts and free improvisation of the idea. Viewed from a distance the two have the same extension.

The paper appears to be reaching toward a kind of monism, escaping the “Cartesian anxiety” of the previous centuries.

I think it deserves some investigation.

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Dunamis writes

This was the value of ancient language. It was more objective. In the ancient Hebrew for example, each letter has an objective sound and meaning. The Qabala is based upon the deeper meanings and interactions of these letters in the ancient Hebrew producing the deeper harmonies.

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detrop,

" This is to say that ethical truths and activities do conform to some amount of objectivity though it does so by resonating, not by revealing. The operative is historical which is to say that ethics aren’t discovered, they are created. ‘Ideas’ create effects as much as they are effected. In this sense we can say that ethics is a ‘body’ consisting of both historical material contexts and free improvisation of the idea. Viewed from a distance the two have the same extension."

What if an “ethics”, but I what I would prefer to call a knowledge, were considered not so much as representational of objective facts, but by metaphor, an anatomy in the presence of facts, subject to the conditions of its adequacy to an environment in situ. The evolution of social “truth” then becomes entirely non-teleological, and not one of relative transparency, in the sense that organisms are not really superior to each other, but rather sufficient or non-sufficient to their own preservation. If the physicality of ideas web together to produce a body, then the genealogy of the body, not its accuracy, becomes a focus. Ideas augment the human body - literally- on a physical level.

Dunamis

11

Nick,

“This was the value of ancient language. It was more objective.”

I’m not sure that “objective” is the way that I would put it, but I’m sure that that is what you mean. Having studied Greek a bit I can definitely say that it feels more physical, more presenting in a manner.

Dunamis

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Dunamis, I did mean objective. Granted I do not know Hebrew but from what I’ve read as in the following, my guess is that there have been those that understood far more than given credit for and found means for its expression.

psyche.com/psyche/txt/powers_of_genesis.html

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Nick,

I know you meant objective. I just did not agree. There is an element to this Kabbalahist thinking with which I would agree though, that language is somehow constitutive.

Dunamis

14

I think I see what you are getting at. Somehow you are saying that a collection of subjective orientations equals one general objective situation. At least that’s what I make of it.

If you take a whole and divide it up into parts, with each part part performing a unique task, it will appear as if original truths are being experienced by each part in its own orientation. What we call ‘relative’ truths are these instances when particulars find themselves ‘in the midsts of’ an another part, in the presence of another ‘individual,’ but each individual experiences the same conscription and is among others within the whole. In ‘situation’ only the personal subjective orientation can be experienced, however it can be realized rationally that this does not create the possibility for subjective Truth.

Six, half-dozen or the other. Everything is knowledge and can be thought about. Ethics, on the other hand, is an exercise in material conditions, it is not just an idea in the head…it is happening with immediate effects. I want to make sure that you do not try to grant immunity to Ethics by some ontological hocus-pocus. It is a very real , and dare I say Pragmatic, process in human existence.

Sorry, I can’t do it. The process of Ethics will always reveal objective facts regarding the quality of sentient life, the standard capacities for pain and pleasure, the universal pursuit of happiness both physically and psychologically, and the most efficient systems for the propagation of a species under the principles of Utilitarianism.

Ethics quite literally represents the objective facts concerning the premise; the function of the organism in a group. It is a fact that the organism behaves, it is an objective truth that the organism seeks to expand its power and influence. The study which organizes and conducts this process for the rational creature, at least, is Ethics. Oh yes, Mr. Dunamis, it is what we call:

“dis is how we do it”

Yes, this is a lengthy way to say the obvious. We would not say that human morality has teleological foundations, but we would say that human morality does indeed design itself along the way. The locus point is that the process of morality is objective, even in involving particular orientations that appear to be in coercion.

A philosophical word-disagreement, or a phsyical affliction, between two particulars is an empirical contingency, morality is still happening. The objective categories which evidence this must be the psycho-intentional products of consciousness, not the ‘body-and-its-effects,’ while allowing at the same time that morality be a materially based science. Its a bit of a trick. If you got any ideas let me know.

Again, I agree, but I have to say as well that part of this sufficiency always involves the Other, so there are necessary exchanges between persons which bind them together, making the quest for preservation a ‘family affair.’

The old measure of the superior man is aesthetic, and only that. Even Nietzsche admitted that while the stronger types prevail it wasn’t necessary in the first place for there to be this ideal. ‘The last man standing’ was, ironically, the rotten egg, alone and great. What now? He’s won, there’s nothing left to do but die. Is this what’s it all about?

Is this greatness, living alone on icy mountains?

No. Making babies and loving people is greater.

We got to preserve everyone because everyone should want to make babies and love people.

Peace, brother.

15

detrop,

“Ethics quite literally represents the objective facts concerning the premise; the function of the organism in a group. It is a fact that the organism behaves, it is an objective truth that the organism seeks to expand its power and influence.”

What I suppose I am not communicating clearly is that language, ideas, abstractions are all augmentations of the body of the organism, due to the cathexis involved in perception and representation. Just as an organism has evolved with an anatomy of limbs and antennae, so too it has evolved with an anatomy of ideation. Meaning is a physical sensation.

Dunamis

16

This is what Spinoza summarizes as:
“The concept of dog does not bark.”

Its resonances for me are as follows:
Since “we still don’t know what the body is capable of…”, our only chances to know our body are the “encounters” with external bodies, when they inflict transformations on us…

This means that, if we want to define a dog, or rather construct its existence, that would be from a plurality of perspectives.

Yet, Spinoza warns us at his
ON THE IMPROVEMENT of the Understanding:

"…Let us now pass on to the fictions concerned with essences only, or with some reality or existence simultaneously. Of these we must specially observe that in proportion as the mind’s understanding is smaller, and its experience multiplex, so will its power of coining fictions be larger, whereas as its understanding increases, its capacity for entertaining fictitious ideas becomes less. For instance, in the same way as we are unable, while we are thinking, to feign that we are thinking or not thinking, so, also, when we know the nature of body we cannot imagine an infinite fly; or, when we know the nature of the soul, we cannot imagine it as square, though anything may be expressed verbally. But, as we said above, the less men know of nature the more easily can they coin fictitious ideas, such as trees speaking, men instantly changed into stones, or into fountains, ghosts appearing in mirrors, something issuing from nothing, even gods changed into beasts and men, and infinite other absurdities of the same kind. "

Related to these, I would go into Peirce’s discussion of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness…

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Ill.,

"Since “we still don’t know what the body is capable of…”, our only chances to know our body are the “encounters” with external bodies, when they inflict transformations on us… "

Yes. I think that knowledge is “gained” by entering into assembleges with other bodies/ideas. To “know” anything is to be in assemblege, and yes to be transformed. This flows into the idea that knowledge is a kind of assimilation wherein the body “known” is appropriated, but also “we” too are changed.

This means that, if we want to define a dog, or rather construct its existence, that would be from a plurality of perspectives.

The plurality of perspectives I do believe is achieved through the complexity of assembleges that incorperate the bodies to be known. The greater the effects in diversity, the greater the perspective.

Thanks for your very nice thoughts and references.

Dunamis

18

Would this idea have implications for the much-maligned practice of conformity? Specifically is conformity no longer just a submission of the individual but also the formation of different meta-bodies? These meta-bodies must continually refresh themselves by reconfiguring new individual bodies to work harmoniously with the larger body. While simultaneously, individuals become the originating nexus for new meta-bodies.

We can see the beginnings of this process in simple biological life. Though the harmonious building of cooperative meta-bodies from previously independent bodies you get a new organism. This was the formation of the first eukaryotic cells.

Only now communication is not dependant on the kinds of chemical exchanges that were the only method available then. We can now communication through symbols. Effective transmission requires the mutual transformation of body states. Measuring effective communication can be difficult.

Participating in this website, for instance, we all engage in a process of mutual transformation. Yet the significance of that transformation on our ‘individual’ bodies varies. The individual is insufficient. The human body is not a complete body it is not an independent body. It is a locus in a larger body which can ultimately only be the totality.

The praise for the individual is not that every human being can become self-sufficient but only that certain individuals can function as the organizing principle in new meta-bodies. Without the subsequent formation of meta-bodies through the process of conformity the individual means nothing.

19

Xander,

“Specifically is conformity no longer just a submission of the individual but also the formation of different meta-bodies? These meta-bodies must continually refresh themselves by reconfiguring new individual bodies to work harmoniously with the larger body. While simultaneously, individuals become the originating nexus for new meta-bodies.”

I think this is of very great consequence and in fact points to the political dimension of Spinoza’s thinking. The physical solidarity implied in thought also is a political solidarity, or in some ways it can be said that the political more than any other category marries the ostensible ideational and extensional into one identifiable form as such. With Spinoza we are all meta-bodies within one body. I think you say it very nicely. The question is, is it more meaningful to say that we are all meta-bodies within one body, or that we are all meta-bodies amid other meta-bodies, simply seeking to form one body. A big and even subtle question. :slight_smile:

Dunamis

20

Instead of ‘conformity’, may be we should call it a “negotiation” which is always already there “necessarily” among bodies within the social…The concept of “necessity” has a key role in Spinoza’s thinking.

About Xander’s comment: “The individual is insufficient. The human body is not a complete body it is not an independent body.”

Spinoza says that if a stone projected through the air had consciousness, it would imagine it was flying of its own will.

What does he mean?

He gives a similar example of the blind man… In Blyenberg letters:
“…We say, for example, that a blind man is deprived of sight, because we readily imagine him as seeing, or else because we compare him with others who can see, or compare his present condition with his past condition when he could see; when we regard the man in this way, comparing his nature either with the nature of others or with his own past nature, we affirm that sight belongs to his nature, and therefore assert that he has been deprived of it. But when we are considering the nature and decree of God, we cannot affirm privation of sight in the case of the aforesaid man any more than in the case of a stone; for at the actual time sight lies no more within the scope of the man than of the stone; since there belongs to man and forms part of his nature only that which is granted to him by the understanding and will of God. Hence it follows that God is no more the cause of a blind man not seeing, than he is of a stone not seeing.”

I would like to add to this Deleuze’s commentaire:

“Spinoza says to us: the blind man is deprived of nothing! Why? He is as perfect as he can be according to the affections that he has. He is deprived of (privé de) visual images, to be blind is to be deprived of visual images; that means that he doesn’t see, but neither does the stone see. And he says: there is no difference between the blind man and the stone from this point of view, namely: the one like the other doesn’t have visual images. So it is just as stupid, says Spinoza, it is just as stupid to say that the blind man is deprived of sight as it is to say: the stone is deprived of sight. And the blind man, then? He is as perfect as he can be, according to what? You see even so, Spinoza doesn’t say to us: according to his power (puissance); he says that the blind man is as perfect as he can be according to the affections of his power, that is according to the images of which he is capable. According to the images of things of which he is capable, which are the true affections of his power. So it would be entirely the same thing as saying: the stone doesn’t have sight, and to say: the blind man doesn’t have sight.”

…Thus, I would refrain any juridico-political sense of the “body” in Spinoza, in that terms, which is more akin to Hobbes, “Leviathan” as a meta-body. There has always been a similar misunderstanding about the Nietchzean “will to power” as well. Nietchze never says “I want power”…rather goes for a search to find out “what is it in my power?”…which is the “conatus” in Spinoza.

Things get difficult here…The “conatus” of Spinoza is not about human beings as “subjects”. Let’s say that it is this or that activity of our body.

Descartes is too easily criticized for his Cartesianism, and rightly so, yet he gave us not only the definition of humans (like Aristotle before him) but also a definition of a definition:

I doubt (necessarily) I think (necessarily) I exist (necessarily)…

In human beings, Descartes showed us that these three happen in one act, like a thunderbolt… Spinoza knew very well what to get from and what to leave aside at Descartes’ philosophy…Spinoza was not interested in the essential, substantial agent: “the human being” who realizes the act of thinking…He was interested in the “act of thinking” itself as the activity that “defines” and also which is in the power of we, humans…“as long as”, “to the extent that” we exercise it on our behalves…

So, with Spinoza, we will say that “thinking” (with a “conatus” of its own) is in our power. If we go back to …if a stone projected through the air had “consciousness”…it would imagine it was flying of its own will.

I think, Spinoza thought about “consciousness”, just like Heraclitus thought about “private wisdom” as an illusion which make us think as if the power of our actions are in us, like a seperate entity, like in a “vacuum”…rather he believed our acts are an extension of a body/mind continuum… invested in the social, in this world, which is “common” to us all.

It is through this “commonness”, we “necessarily” negotiate…In Middle Ages, Law was all the way down a jurisprudential matter…constantly negotiating bodies as they move on…

I should here stop “necessarily” :slight_smile:

“All is One, One is in the Other, and these are three people…”
(from Godard’s “Old Place”)