« Posts tagged kant

Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation

August 31, 2015 / posted in dialectics, images of being-human, rational choice theory and homo economicus, reviews, Theory / No Comments

Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second FoundationFoundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Although this book would deal with understanding human society through the indeterminacy of human quanta, the specter of psychohistory (and the second foundation) presents a Newtonian ideal by which the observer (second foundation) is able to erase its existence perfectly, “eat its own non-existence” so that we are left with perfect knowledge of the workings of humankind.

I found the journey of reading this to be exhilarating — even though that there is mathematical expression of society, knowledge, unconscious and human zeitgeist as one logical coherency to be a dubious idea. Nonetheless, this aesthetic has long been sought after. In modern times that we can start with Thomas Hobbes, as Phillip Ball does, in Critical Mass and understand that statistics was first developed to hide the inconsistencies of experimentation in physics. So we return back to the Kantian norms of finding the hidden logic of reality, one that is somehow suprasensibly suspended beyond our everyday material reality but governs those relations completely.

There is much to find interesting, despite the conservative nature of the story. Asimov is a very imaginative writer.

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Order Out of Chaos: Man’s New Dialogue with Nature

August 31, 2015 / posted in agential realism, dialectics, reviews, Theory / No Comments

Order Out of Chaos: Man's New Dialogue with NatureOrder Out of Chaos: Man’s New Dialogue with Nature by Ilya Prigogine
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The authors’ enthusiasm comes out quite strongly. Congruent with their Kantian world view, they combine disparate fields of study in order to assemble “noumena causa” by which order can be achieved regardless of expression… this is a search for the pure logic of material relations found through the a priori field of mathematics. Thus this book jumps onto the bandwagon of the 20th century in order to disassemble time in order to bring order. This order must be of a symmetrical nature since equivalence of energy-matter difference has to be held in order for the true substantive relations of the universe to be beholden. Thus, they introduce theoretical energy to preserve this symmetry and “reverse time”. Because once the orders are established as purely reflexive one way or another way, the organizing relations hold and the arrow of time, which seems arbitrary, can truly be arbitrary.

Hidden in this view are the author’s interesting mix of philosophy, art and humanity into the material reality as a function of time/entropy… we are to find our place as a logical coherency with everything else. I am not sure they achieve this, although they dance around the role of the observer. I found some of their attempts to place human beings/observers in their schema a little confusing. Their attempt to include EVERYTHING at the end as long as it seemed to address what they were saying chaotic. Their attempt to order chaos leads to chaos! In the end though, this view is again complicated by their acknowledgement that the world remains a mystery, one that is distorted by endless renewals of paradigms and experimentations… they stick with the Kant here, by supposing a suprasensible order that we cannot understand… and then claiming that human beings have a place in that order that we cannot comprehend due to our finite limitations.

Their energy is infectious, bright and idealistic. Their conclusions are suspect because I am not sure what they are. Their exploration of science and math is interesting but it took them a long time to get going. It would have been better if they were able to make a clearer statement with less than a muddled statement with more.

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The Romantic Manifesto

August 21, 2015 / posted in Business, dialectics, images of being-human, rational choice theory and homo economicus, reviews, Theory / No Comments

The Romantic ManifestoThe Romantic Manifesto by Ayn Rand
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book more clearly explains Ayn Rand’s position than any other book of hers I’ve read in the past.

Rand is often hotly contested; but it’s not enough to say that something nonsensical or stupid because to truly understand something we should be able to explain what it is or why something is dismissed. Not only that but we should also be able to explain how a view is (in)valid. In a sense, Rand often fails to explain what is detestable in others, resorting to words like “evil” or “irrational” to carry an emotional weight in her argument.

(Un)surprisingly though, there is much in here that is admirable. After all, anyone who can inspire and move people like she does must say something somewhere that is correct.

What is interesting is that there is much basis for similarity between herself and other thinker’s conclusions she would dismiss as they argue from a very similar basis. As hinted before, I do believe that she is a bad reader of Kant, for example.

She is correct, that Kant is the root of what she detests in modernism, but Kant’s concept of will, reason and pragmatics leads him to very nearly the same structure that Rand poses. Kant sees reason as being a tool for will finally, because Kant dismisses “pure reason” as being inherently undecidable. Rand doesn’t see things this way. She believes will is a tool for pure reason because “a=a”; that functionality is purpose therefore a consistency in reason will work itself out if we have the will to do so. This last point of reason and will being only positive is perhaps the biggest flaw for her philosophy.

In this way Rand is actually alot like Heidigger. Both Heidigger and Rand believe that language is reasonable, and non-contradictory in-itself. Both believe that ironing out consistency in languaged reason will result in successful and fulfilling lives.

This makes them both throwbacks to early modernism, towards a kind of Cartesian truth-value. This signifies a break because it is Kant who provides the initial break in his critique of pure reason that demonstrated a gap inherent within things-in-themselves and a gap within our relationship with those things. The gap with our relationship with those things formulates a basis for science and for existentialism. Unfortunately not many understand that the split also echos within reason itself, so that reasoning through sheer consistency will undeniably lead to contradiction.

Given a post-Kantian view, of which society has progressed towards, there can be no point of view from which the world will be stable, without consistency, because the world is not consistent in a human fashion. It is this last point which Rand seems unwilling to grasp resorting instead to calling all that is thought to be rational (including Classism) as subjective and arbitrary. She is correct. All views are inherently subjective and arbitrary, including her own. What makes Kant non-arbitrary though, is that he grounds human behavior and a will to maxims in his critique of practical reason that is in the supersensible. This gives up reasoning in this world as a coherency in favor of a faith, which is what makes Kant still a christian philosopher.

Rand of course, cannot stand this. From her assumption that functionality in the world is purpose, and that making one into a functional person will result in purpose she proves remarkably consistent in her assessment of the arts throughout this small book. What makes her irritating to read however, is that she is unable to express herself beyond calling positions she dislikes evil or irrational. It is in her style to insist on a singular view that is ultimately arbitrary… without providing a neutral grounds to assess what is meaningful we cannot help but judge everything else as being arbitrary to something else. Rand does seem unable to explain herself philosophically — hence she does so artistically to give us feelings of purposefulness.

Unfortunately for her, if the adherence to will as a resolution of being in existentialism is irrational then her art/philosophy in which characters will themselves to a resolution of function and purpose must also be equally irrational.

Calling something philosophy or rational doesn’t make it rational if you cannot provide a cogent basis from which to assess everything else including your own work. After all, if continual self insistence is adequate than it should be equally adequate for anything and everything else as well…and given a modernist aesthetic in which there can only be one truth and language can only mean one thing this last “equally adequation” would be inherently unacceptable!

But I doubt that Rand has the ability to express why language should be a seamless and complete consistency (a=a) with reality other than “it is”

Still, despite my disagreement and all the holes I’ve just poked at her work, I do admire the clarity with which this book is written. After all, without this clarity I would have had a harder time finding the conflicts inherent in her own writing.

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On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason

August 21, 2015 / posted in dialectics, images of being-human, reviews, Theory, Universal non-all / No Comments

On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient ReasonOn the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason by Arthur Schopenhauer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Schopenhauer finds it necessary to rescue noumena causa from Kant by calibrating our human experience to these four grounds of causation. These four grounds for Schopenhauer arise naturally due to different cuts in reasoning’s consistency. Admittedly these grounds are somewhat arbitrary, but he is unable to find much connection between these grounds except for their ability to highlight concepts. In this Schopenhauer is very much a follower of Kant.

I, too, do sometimes find Kant to be too airy. But that conceptual distant is necessary to highlight principle “noumenonal” connection between disparate phenomenon. Schopenhauer can be thought of as being a half step so as to try and bring Kant back. In the process Schopenhauer seems to find the most objectional point being Kant’s misuse of the term “ground”. Ground here is another way of denoting various cuts, “levels” of rationality for Schopenhauer, so by no means is four the only way to arrange these levels, as we can provide a multitude of differing reasons, each of which Kant would most likely state as being chimeral and undecidable in isolation.

What is of interest though, is that like Kant, Schopenhauer calibrates human action to will (desire). Unlike Kant, Schopenhauer seems to find that will is more radically aligned to create objects as well, not just through the platitudes of a noumenon as a morality but also existentially. Schopenhauer seems to find that the actual physical world is created through repetition of various consistencies like a wheelbarrow traveling the same ground in the same way as to make a rut… this dissolving of the phenomenal eliminates the thing-in-itself from view as an independence of human will. As a result, Schopenhauer requires another ground (having eliminated Kant’s ground) thus, Schopenhauer finds everything as emerging from reason as a geometry of which causation is but a mode of extension.

In some ways, Schopenhauer is like Descartes in seeing everything as a consistency constituted through a rational mentality. This is an interesting move which eventually finds its full expression with Husserl (perhaps independently of Schopenhauer) but the move to remap all in terms of rationality is perhaps too much, and allows Schopenhauer far too much freedom to disregard the world as excessive chimera, when in fact it becomes more likely that Schopenhauer falls prey to chimera himself. How else can he claim that his fourfold root is the actual calibration of that is an optimization of understanding?

He can’t. He can only show us how this view is possible, not that it is all encompassing above all other views, in part because he can’t really evaluate other views except through a neutral term, which he then goes forth and questions, as there can be no real ground as any one thing requires another thing.

In this Schopenhauer is correct, all is connected through conception and rationalization — but rather than end up with a Liebnizian monad or a Deleuzian rhizome, he reverts to a loose Kantian model of mid-modernism reasoning that cannot recognize that radical groundlessness that Schopenhauer is courting except to insist on it in terms of zero (void) or infinity (all).

What would help Schopenhauer in this, to find a quantized view of all through all else, is for him to give up the very instrument he cannot give up; to grasp that unlike Kant’s insistence on a faculty of pure reason there are in fact an indeterminate number of reason(ing)s… that reason may be sufficient but it is not the only One.

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Critique of Practical Reason

August 13, 2015 / posted in reviews, Theory, Universal non-all / No Comments

Critique of Practical Reason Critique of Practical Reason by Immanuel Kant
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is surprisingly small. But I suppose its interplay between pure (speculative) reason and pure practical reason must be given its own book… the context of this exchange was given already in Critique of Pure Reason. In a sense, the first critique is a book criticizing the useless illusions of metaphysics. This second critique is a book criticizing the pointless misdirection of inductive, empirical (practical) reason. Thus, this book is to encourage the mix of two.

Between the untouchable and impossible ethics non-empirical law, and the completely contingent and blind non-ethics of pragmatic desire, we have the space carved by Kant as the space allotted to pure practical reason — the space that constitutes free will.

This conjecture encapsulates Kant’s system, how he finds a place for the application of reason (consistency) given the contingencies and inexplicable events arising from nature. In a sense, he unhinges the metaphysics of presence from the mental world and from the physical world, to spin it off into the suprasensible. (In way, perhaps ironically, this is also the conclusion of Badiou’s Being and Event II, in which Badiou was quick to criticize Kant for not pursuing his particular methodology, even though the final conclusion is in some ways so very much the same.)

I see why he chose to write this as a second book rather than including it in his first. In many ways though, this is merely crossing the “t” of the first book.

We’ll see what he has to say in his third critique.

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The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe

July 19, 2015 / posted in dialectics, images of being-human, manifesto, reviews, Theory, Universal non-all / No Comments

The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the UniverseThe Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe by Roger Penrose
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In this amazing book, Roger Penrose looks for a very fundamental issue.

He is looking for a single metric to describe everything.

This is not a unit of reality, however, although this is how he poses the issue.

The problem with selecting a metric, as he shows us over and over, lies in how different metrics arise from localizations on various manifolds. As these metrics are extended beyond the localization, the very structure of these metrics will threaten to buckle. In many instances, the metrics (and their attendant relationships) will no longer be applicable. What this means, in the Kantian (and Badiouian sense) is that these relationships’s applicability will become “undecidable”. In some extreme cases, the relationships may even break down. For instance, black holes are a problem because the expressed relationships that emerge from physics experiments prove to be untenable in black holes (and the big bang) as these relationships decohere and infinities and zeros pop out everywhere.

This search for a metric leads Penrose to reject string theory as a viable relationship form. Each dimension is an extension of the 3 + 1 dimensions of space and time. For instance, gravity is a dimension, weak force is a dimension. Each dimension is an independent mathematical vector of a different “inertial” influence. Additionally, the mathematics of string theory, as well as other theories, proves to be too illusionary. As with post-structural critiques of modernism, Penrose points out that the consistency of string theory relies on theoretical supplements/signs that are attached onto the positions of various types in order to maintain coherency. For instance, superpartners, which have no physical correlative. In other words, the mathematical proliferation of dimensions as well as its immanent affects proves to be unweldly to Penrose because the coherence of the relationships are maintained by theoretical enforcement rather than any direct correlation of math and physical experimentation.

If Penrose was familiar with Badiou, Kant and Derrida, he would be able to recognize that the undecideability of supersymmetry and string theory result from these theoretical supplements. The supplements provide the missing pieces to cohere the theory, so physical experiments prove to be incomplete in their testing. As Penrose points out, string theorists in failing to find superpartners can always push the calibration of their theory to include these partners, just at higher energy levels, which can always lie beyond the ability of technology to generate.

In this sense, it seems to me that string theory and supersymmetry are antinomies of the Kantian variety. Penrose falls fault to this when he theorizes that Quantum Field Theory can be modified (rather than the Einstein’s general relativity) by changing the cut off metric. This is in line with all his discussions to “renormalize” the math so as to remove the variance accumulated by extending localized relations from beyond the area of origin on the manifold. We can always enforce a consistency of a given domain in two ways.

1. To provide a “superpartner” to supplement the terms, to keep phenomenon visible to one another within the domain, as a motion of immanence, as Derrida suggests.

Or.

2. To encapsulate a domain by limiting its identity to its other. From there, we can radically reduce the other to zero, thereby hiding the limitations of a domain, as with Moffe & Laulau with their Hegemony or as with Badiou with a basic atomic “cut” to center the domain as with Being and Event II.

Both of these strategies amount to the same kind of forced coherency by mapping a domain rigidly.

Penrose does offer his own favorite solution; his Twistor theory, which removes the need for extra dimensions beyond 3 + 1. Additionally, he considers this theory by collapsing all the different vector differences held cosmically in string theory into immanent relations that are founded on the very “knots” of space, so that the pre-space twistors contain the information that wider “vibrations” are meant to express. Both theories are incompatible in this regard because of their huge difference in scale.

And while Penrose admits that twistor theory adds nothing physically; that it’s just another way of viewing a situation mathematically, he also realizes the need for us to see things differently than we have.

It is this adherence to a particular view that causes all the problems in the first place. If you look at how these different views are constructed, you’ll see the mathematicians switch from one domain to another through various class equivalences whenever it suits them. When they need to express vectors they will jump to a manifold model, or a more generic (abstract) deformation of an algebra. In other words, we lack enough views. So we supplement the one we have in an attempt to normalize them.

Curiousier still is Penrose’s tiny discussion of consciousness in which he attempts to “renormalize” consciousness in terms of objective reduction. He theorizes that the waveform reduction that collapses due to quantum gravity may be at the seat of consciousness’s ability to complexly surject different sensory views into coherency. This suggestion is of the same kind as his forced synthesis of twistor theory. The satisfaction of trying to find a single metric, a single complex knot of relations that cannot be unraveled but contains all the “moves” is like a physicist trapped on a chess board recognizing the orthogonal formation of board, or as in Futurama the Professor discovering the smallest unit that constitutes the universe is the pixel.

In a real way, Penrose seeks to calibrate physics to the mathematical domain. He doesn’t want beautiful math that doesn’t apply, that is in excess of physics. This is why he creates that chart twice, in which the mathematical is the Truth of which the entirety of the physical is mapped; although mentality is generated from the physical and mathematical/Truth is generated from that.

The Platonic ideologue he insists on lies on the equivalence of function, on the purity of the sameness of process from point to point of the same type. Never-mind that the subatomic particles we find today are largely generated from artificial means. Penrose would assume as sameness of process that forces a universalization, but that is the way metaphysics and science both work, to equate different phenomenon as being identical based on narrow definitions of rational equivalence. This may work in some areas, but as we see, all relations are born locally, within a limited scope. Their extension cosmically creates the basis for which we start to see a degradation of relation qua variance (pollution, or various forces of form-fitting). After all, we can have no irrationality without first being able to posit a rational sheet of complete consistency.

Nonetheless, although this is a lengthy book it is still beautifully written. I wonder who Penrose’s audience is, for he approaches much mathematical complexity in such a short time, talking about basic principles like polynomials and trigonometry before jumping into Lagrangian manifolds and so on. Still, if you hunger for complexity and abstraction, here it is. Much of his explanations of very complex concepts are very clear, although at times we could use more handholding. His pictures are also very interesting and complement his point nicely.

Well worth the effort to read.

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The Philosophy of History

July 18, 2015 / posted in dialectics, reviews, Theory / No Comments

The Philosophy of HistoryThe Philosophy of History by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Hegel did his best to calibrate his philosophy to humankind. In doing so he adopts a Rousseauian sense geography influencing culture and culture itself arising out of a necessity of universality as individuals attain self awareness through the signal of the abstract greater Good that Christianity is formulated around.

This “Reality that is not sensuous” is both a rejection and a correction of Kantian transcendental philosophy, in which Hegel bridges the suture. While he talks about the raw material of geography providing the initial context for how culture of different peoples arises, he jumps this to the final point of Abstraction, in which the elevation of “Form into Universality”: where “Objective Spirit attains manifestation”. This is in a way, a literal reconciliation of the self with his soul, the soul with Truth of the State.

We can read this almost sideways and get a better sense that attaining selfhood within the European framework is only possible within European self-awareness because of its tautological nature. If we were to accept that there are different rationalities, we would need to discard Hegel’s theory completely. But as the Modernist that he is, he never considers this possibility, subjugating/mapping all rationality within the metaphysical container of Rationality. If we were to consider each self within their respective culture as needing to understand its individuality within that context as an expression of its rightful Will, we could destroy the hierarchical of Hegel’s motion. But this is a difference of modernism and post-structuralism, wherein in modernism the correct context is unspoken and assumed to be evidently correct throughout.

Interesting book. Definitely interesting ideas. Racist ideas, but Hegel was working within his own time expressing his structures with the available ideas of that era. This doesn’t mean what he did is useless but it does mean we should understand the limits of what he produced and be sensitive to the possible value his ideas still have as we would sometimes assume them.

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Deleuze: The Clamor of Being

June 26, 2015 / posted in dialectics, images of being-human, reviews, Theory, Universal non-all / No Comments

Deleuze: The Clamor of BeingDeleuze: The Clamor of Being by Alain Badiou
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’ve read this book three times. As long as I’ve been reading post-structuralism, I have pursued an understanding of Deleuze’s work. But only on this last round have I really begun to grasp Badiou’s own work.

Badiou here, presents a Deleuze that is in some respects barely recognizable. Nonetheless, he is able to pull through Deleuze’s rhetorical structure in order to present how he and Deleuze differ and are the same. The obvious difference is their approaches. Badiou takes formalism to be standing on its own, that all is reducable to formalism. Deleuze would understand that content and form are the same; that a given content formulates form but that formulation is only one aspect of the virtuality of that content (this reading is available from Difference and Repetition). This is one way to specify their difference but we can talk about it geometrically.

Said another way this difference is in terms of boundaries. For example, Badiou understands events as being incompossible in terms of time. For Deleuze however, each event also is an absolute reference (a static segment) but the boundaries of that event coexist through their incompossibility. Badiou would negate all the relations that do not appear within the scope of a given event. Badiou would seal that event as an infinite extension that forms a transcendental. So for Badiou, a world qua transcendental is sealed as a complete and consistent entity. While Deleuze has this structure available as well, as seen through incompossibility, his “worlds” are not sealed. His worlds qua folds are in fact, intermixing with each, influencing one another. Given where you are locally, certain relations within the virtual become available, and you experience them in their actuality.

In this sense, what Badiou calls “logic” would be concepts that are always present for Deleuze, although they may be inexpressed. This reading is available for Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, as Kant understood that concepts are only guidelines. The difference is that Kant also took his concepts seriously and tried to ground these ideas in terms of a non-idea, the thing-in-itself. He nailed the transcendental conception down and in this manner both Deleuze and Badiou would avoid Kantian noumenal/phenomenal split because it suggests a singular logic rather than a multiplicity/multitude. A thing-in-itself traps Kant within one world.

So while both Deleuze and Badiou are interested in multiple/mutiplicity the difference in their world/folds lies in how open or closed they believe those relations to be. For Badiou there is less interaction within these worlds than Deleuze. Deleuze would think the substance-relations at their contingency, in a sense, sacrificing consistency for a recognition of the virtual completeness. This is also why Badiou’s book Logics of Worlds: Being and Event II begins to recognize the need for a Deleuzeian “leakiness” between worlds, although for Badiou, the transcendental remains the limit of a worldly domain, even though he recognizes the (in)existence of relations from world to world. So from the view of a given transcendental, a certain relation may not be available.

In this sense, Badiou’s Logic presents many tiny ones, all of which share the same structure of the One. Badiou claims that the One does not exist. And certainly not as a logic nor as an ontological content — though Badiou would insist that each one amounts to the same One in terms of an empty formalism, which is why he can talk about each world’s structure by invoking any given world.

I used to be confused as to why Badiou saw Deleuze as being a philosopher who primarily invokes the univocity of the One, when that seemed to somewhat antithetical to Deleuze’s multiplicities. I see the answer now though, for Deleuze through elan vital talks about a second order of conception. By understanding Deleuzian formalism as being a kind of monad, a form that carries with it seeds of content, Badiou would read Deleuze as necessarily needing a One in order to meld a common domain. In terms of transcendental logics, it is impossible to have phenomenon within a given interaction without there being a whole, a common domain that specifies the absolute infinite totality. Because Deleuze would speak from the interstice between domain logics, Badiou assumes that Deleuze necessarily invokes a univocal One.

I am not certain how Deleuze would respond to this, but let me try. The passages that Badiou references do suggest that Deleuze may agree, although I think that Deleuze would understand the formalism of conception within the virtual as being a derivable non-world that is material process on its own, a vitality that continued chaotic mix of originary essences that contain the seeds of their own localized differentiation. Concepts here are tactical, differenciations (events) always derived from the particularity of the atoms involved.

I do not think that Deleuze would agree to an infinite extension of conception that Badiou would insist on in order to create a transcendental completeness qua world. I do believe that the insistence of a Deleuzian One is possible but gives up too much. Badiou would seek to be rid of Kantian noumenal nonsense, as an academic “left over” of Kant’s conception, when Badiou himself would posit a many worlds of “complete” consistency, a very heavy conception of infinite extension of each brand of logic. For Deleuze this is probably too much; infinite extension is not necessary when we only need to deal with tactical, localized differenciations that arise on their own. This is of course, where territorializing machines and abstract assemblages interact, in the space of many plateaus that would constantly overcode. In these there is no need of One because there is no need to guarantee that machinic assemblages are compatible with each other or that any given assemblage can interact with every other one, because they are not, and they do not need to.

In this sense, Deleuze’s philosophy is on a second order of conception, about the differences and processes inherent within concepts themselves as they self generate. Badiou seems to recognize this when he understands that for Deleuze there is no chance of chance — that Deleuzian concepts like the fold only operate as a way of interiorizing the exterior; the becoming of concepts through their own vitalism. Yet Badiou would want to extend this as another kind of ontology. This is also where I find Deleuze and Badiou differ at their very root; in terms how central they see formalism.

For Badiou class equivalence would mean ontological equivalence. After all, Badiou as a formalist understands content as only being wholly derived from form. For Deleuze, class equivalence is too controlling. He would reject formalist equivalence as he would reject Kant’s transcendental structure as a chimera. Any kind of formalism only captures one kind of plateau/consistency in logic. After all, the entire book Anti-Oedipus is an attempt to get away from the control of metaphysical consistency in psychoanalysis and social structure/planning. Thus, Badiou’s move to equate one rhetorical form with another is a falsity that Badiou himself imposes but reads onto Deleuze. As Badiou later on notes, the eternal return is not a return of the same, it cannot be. But what is it a return of?

Badiou accepts that each Event cannot be the same Event even if it meta-functionally works in a similar fashion as the last. And so it is with eternal returns; that each return is a return of pure difference. Thus, for Deleuze, such a “return” may not mean entirely different worlds, it does mean different slices (folds) that can interact but also may be varying degrees of incompossible with each other in terms of immanence, even as some interact, colliding and recoding one another. In a way, Badiou approaches Deleuzian understanding as he starts to shed the strict boundaries of his transcendental qua worlds and allow them to interact in the non-space inbetween plateaus.

Over all this book is still a good book. Badiou goes very far in grasping and concisely stating Deleuze’s words and thoughts. Badiou seeks to refract on Deleuze the way Deleuze through free and indirect speech refracted on other thinkers. Though I think in this reading there is still too much Badiou, that the torsion of a barely recognizable Deleuze is due mostly to Badiou’s appropriation of Deleuzean concepts but attempting to guide and understand Deleuze in terms of a Badiouian formalism.

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Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge

June 18, 2015 / posted in agential realism, images of being-human, manifesto, reviews, rhizomatic architecture, Theory / No Comments

Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge by Paul Karl Feyerabend
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Feyerabend writes a difficult book here, but one which is necessary. Taking a radically different perspective on the aesthetics of what theory is, Feyerabend attack one of the scared cows of science and mathematics — that of consistency.

In some ways, Feyerabend could have raised objections more metaphysically — that ideas have at their germination roots outside of a given domain — that culture plays a role in utilizing domains in one area to influence another — that science is a socially generated practice, on that mistakes methodology for reality — but in other ways, Feyerabend does well by sticking very close to his topic. His use of Galileo as an example is of interest, since he returns to it often but it is in his later chapters that his critique really stands out.

Basically Feyerabend shows us that knowledge is always procedural. Knowledge and theory are generated through processes of agency. By attempting to manipulate or influence a specific phenomenon, we generate procedures to gain access to that phenomenon. This requires that we calibrate our actions to an appropriate cut. Nonetheless, any cut we calibrate to is simultaneously a distortion of the very object of study, because it casts it in a certain relationship. Thus

Expressing it differently, we may say that the assumption of a single coherent world-view that underlies all of science is either a metaphysical hypothesis trying to anticipate a future unity, or a pedagogical fake; or it is an attempt to show, by a judicious up-and downgrading of disciplines, that a synthesis has already been achieved. This is how fans of uniformity proceeded in the past (cf. Plato’s lists of subjects in Chapter vii of his Republic), these are the ways that are still being used today. A more realistic account, however, would be that ‘[t]here is no simple “scientific” map of reality–or if there were, it would be much too complicated and unwieldy to be grasped or used by anyone. But there are many different maps of reality, from a variety of scientific viewpoints’

One should be quick to realize that Feyerabend is not against science at all; in fact he encourages it in his “irresponible” and “anarchist” ways. What Feyerabend is objecting to is the imagined consistency/consensus of science, a “sacred cow” of science all the more because science doesn’t need such a “petit object a” in order to function. One of the underlying criticisms that Feyerabend levels is that all social institutions (including science) are in fact first and foremost, social institutions. We understand this to be even more true when we realize that the academic/scientific community often operates as a ranking system more than as a theory generating procedure; that grants and individuals are awarded more for position than they are for work. That the entire procedure of science is one of self promotion (through the modality of whatever science they are using) more than anything else.

In some ways, Feyerabend does well to criticize past methods in order to highlight inconsistencies in how they are aestheticized and presented. But this of course, will stop no one, because past procedures are in the past. After all, aren’t we better now?

I cannot stop praising his book, because there is so much in here. I appreciate the clarity and freshness with which Feyeraband approaches this topic. On a more abstract level, one that I think Feyerabend would appreciate, is that we should approach all polemics and theories understanding that they are generated through the auspices of their own consistency and meaning. We often reject theories and ideas just like we reject people — they either don’t make the cut due to some personal inclination, or they are competitors for the same social capital. Often, these are the same thing. I whole heartedly agree with Feyerabend. With the lack of any “true” authority, one that “naturally” supersedes whatever authority we could imagine here on Earth (as there is none like that), we ought to utilize any theory that allows us to increase our agency. Should we not desire any particular agency, we should embrace any idea for what it is worth, at the time that we need it. Of course, some ideas will become undecideable should the foundation for that idea be incommensurable with our own foundation. But that is not a fault of that idea. This is merely the fault of our own localization. Sometimes, a question simply isn’t available from a given point of view because its context is not available.

This is of course, in a big way, where Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason steps in, and it is at this point that Feyerabend stops short. He doesn’t wish to get into the logistics of what is reasonable. He only wishes that we set ourselves free of the chains by which we adhere to an image of what good science ought to look like so that we can do better science. And for that, I find that there is a resonance with martial arts, or with music or any other technicality/agency. We must learn the basics to define what the modality is. From that point on, mastery begins when we start to release ourselves from technique in order to be more appropriate to whatever situation we find ourselves in, simply because technique is a pedagogical tool, and its rigid organization will make certain acts impossible because they are incommensurable with that technique.

Ultimately, consistency is how we make sense of a localization for the purposes of ordinance (organization). We must never mistake the map for the territory since the territory is always changing as our desires/designs and agential relations change — so we too change.

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The Paradox of Subjectivity: The Self in the Transcendental Tradition

June 18, 2015 / posted in dialectics, images of being-human, reviews, Theory / No Comments

The Paradox of Subjectivity: The Self in the Transcendental TraditionThe Paradox of Subjectivity: The Self in the Transcendental Tradition by David Carr
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Carr presents us with an interesting puzzle, that speaks about the role of self in the transcendental tradition. In some sense, it’s not a puzzle at all. Kantian scholars often look to the point of “subjectivity” as central to Kant’s critique in inquiry. This is not so. If you read Critique of Pure Reason closely, you will see that Kants main critique is about reason itself; the way in which reason works to supplement understanding, often extending understanding beyond the bounds of what is “reasonable” for reason to speculate on.

Carr shows us at first, the bumbling that rises from the transcendental tradition. He starts off with Heidegger in order to critique him, going through Husserl and then ending later on with Kant. About halfway through we get a glimpse that the two “selves” empirical and transcendental have in fact no bearing within the tradition as a kind of truth. Rather these two points are bracketed speculations. Towards the end then, Carr, goes against the tradition of scholars that wish to push Husserl and Kant into “metaphysical” speculation, tentatively stating that

Both philosophers recognized, I think, that their transcendental procedure did not authorize the transition to metaphysical claims

And this is so! The paradox is rightly present because the scholars that follow misread and wished to pursue their own agenda of subjectivity. In this sense, this already short book, could be even shorter, as the paradox lies wholly within trying to make a round hole squared. For what Carr sets out to do, he does it quite well. Not an easy book to read, because of its heavy terminology, but it is in fact still an introductory book, although it serves as an introduction to a very complex topic.

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