The passive synthesis is meant to capture the way the world structures itself in a way that our conscious human mind can later grab onto. This synthesis of time is a contraction of unrelated instants made possible when two instants are generally, or habitually, repeated. There's a circularity here because the repetition leads to the contraction, but the contraction is the basis for our ability to define a repetition. I think what we're essentially saying is that the object repeated, and the subject receptive to this repetition are produced at the same moment, through one movement. Repetition is literally the cause of itself. It is, as Deleuze says, "for-itself", in the sense that repetition produces repetition as a self-fulfilling prophecy.
All of this sounds ridiculously abstract, and I think it may help to kinda jump ahead in the story and relate it to the circularity at the heart of Darwinism. The "theory" of evolution is not a theory at all, but, in the ordinary sense of the term, a tautology. Who survives? The fittest. Who are the fittest? Well, the ones who survive and reproduce. Without an independent theory of why these organisms are the fittest, we just have a circular reference error.
[Sidebar: Some folks try to avoid this tautological aspect by thinking of evolution as a theory of why we see such amazing diversity in the natural world. As in -- Q: Why are there so many different species of finch? A: Evolution by natural selection. The theory talks extensively about how things make identical copies of themselves, and about how we'll find lots of the ones who are good at this, and none of the ones who are bad at it. But when you ask the theory to tell you why there are so many different kinds of copiers, and why the kinds change over time, it just says "variation", or its molecular counterpart "mutation". Which means that the exchange is more accurately -- Q: What's your theory for why there are so many different kinds of finch? A: Chance. Hard to call that a theory, no?]
Nevertheless, while it's not exactly a theory, Darwinism still brings up an interesting thought. It suggests to us that the forms we see in the world didn't drop from the sky. Instead, it claims that they were produced by the world, and adapt to changes in it. In fact, it leads us to think about a giant co-evolutionary system where there really are only distinctions of spatial and temporal scale between organisms and environment. The world is stable enough that this particular piece of it is able to make a copy of itself. Or, said differently, the repetition of some aspect of the environment that we usually call "stable identity over time" allows for another repetition that we usually call "an organism". But we know that there is an organism because it itself is a repetition in the environment, that allows for another repetition, etc ... ad infinitum. Basically, reproduction actually defines what an organism is. The fly floating in your soup of amino acids is identified as that bundle of amino acids that keep reappearing. There's no "fly form" existing out there apart from that repetition. Darwinism suggests that organisms stitch time together the same way we were talking about last time with the passive synthesis. Or, to put it more precisely, it's not that organisms do this stitching so much as that they are this connection or contraction. The tautology of Darwinism starts to dissolve when you look at it as a theory of how the units that are to be repeated get formed to begin with. These fully defined and separated organisms or genes shouldn't be the starting point for the theory, but the endpoint.
It might seem like a stretch to invoke Darwin here to aid in interpreting Deleuze's passive synthesis. Let me produce some quotes to make it more plausible.
... perceptual syntheses refer back to organic syntheses which are like the sensibility of the senses; they refer back to a primary sensibility that we are. We are made of contracted water, earth, light and air - not merely prior to the recognition or representation of these, but prior to their being sensed. Every organism, in its receptive and perceptual elements, but also in its viscera, is a sum of contractions, of retentions and expectations. At the level of this primary vital sensibility, the lived present constitutes a past and a future in time. Need is the manner in which this future appears, as the organic form of expectation. The retained past appears in the form of cellular heredity.
Remember that the goal was to get something between the pure flux of the material world, and the recognizing, representing, and counting human mind. The logical candidate for this is clearly our organic body. The idea is that this body already is a passive synthesis of elements that exploits a repetition (in the world) to create a repetition (of itself).
Passive synthesis ... it constitutes our habit of living, our expectation that 'it' will continue, that one of the two elements will appear after the other, thereby assuring the perpetuation of our case.
There are a few other quotes that may help flesh out this idea, but to be useful, we need to keep in mind that: passive synthesis = contraction = habit = contemplation. The last two terms in that equation may appear strange. Remember the problem though. We're looking for something below the level of our minds that would explain how they attach to the world in a way stable enough for us to recognize a repetition. When we call this stable attachment "habit" we don't mean our habits, as in our habits of thought or action. We mean nature's habits. Organisms are like passive habits of nature itself. These operate below the level of a fully formed mind, but constitute exactly the kind of proto-mind we're looking for. That's why Deleuze is going to call them "contemplations".
A soul must be attributed to the heart, to the muscles, nerves and cells, but a contemplative soul whose entire function is to contract a habit. This is no mystical or barbarous hypothesis. On the contrary, habit here manifests its full generality: it concerns not only the sensory-motor habits that we have (psychologically), but also, before these, the primary habits that we are; the
thousands of passive syntheses of which we are organically composed.
No one has shown better than Samuel Butler that there is no continuity apart from that of habit, and that we have no other continuities apart from those of our thousands of component habits, which form within us so many superstitious and contemplative selves, so many claimants and satisfactions: 'for even the corn in the fields grows upon a superstitious basis as to its own existence, and only turns the earth and moisture into wheat through the conceit of its own ability to do so, without which faith it were powerless ...' What we call wheat is a contraction of the earth and humidity, and this contraction is both a contemplation and the auto-satisfaction of that contemplation.
You can really see the circularity at work in that quote. Wheat simply is the possibility of certain elements combining to constitute a thing, which makes an actual thing ... called wheat. Lather, rinse, repeat, as the shampoo used to instruct.
What we call wheat is a contraction of the earth and humidity, and this contraction is both a contemplation and the auto-satisfaction of that contemplation. By its existence alone, the lily of the field sings the glory of the heavens, the goddesses and gods - in other words, the elements that it contemplates in contracting. What organism is not made of elements and cases of repetition, of contemplated and contracted water, nitrogen, carbon, chlorides and sulphates, thereby intertwining all the habits of
which it is composed?
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Hopefully, we have some idea now of what Deleuze has in mind by the passive synthesis of habit. We should be wrapping up. But then wait, what's with the title of the post? Unfortunately, it's a long story. As my loyal readers are doubtless aware, throughout my reading of Difference and Repetition, I have had Whitehead's philosophy in the back of my mind. Particularly the version of it expounded by Isabelle Stengers in her Thinking with Whitehead. In discussions with my esteemed colleague from Tejas (the artist formerly known as Hobitronix), I once used the term "foothold" to describe something like the passive synthesis that structures the world enough for us to recognize objects in it. I have an experience of a building at time T1 and another experience of a building at time T2. Do I just completely invent the idea that these are "the same" building? If I don't, then doesn't that indicate that there is some real structure in the world that I'm grabbing onto for this recognition? In a temporally atomized world, that structure, "the building", is actually a stitch in time that connects two atomic experiences. This is the problem of Cleopatra's Needle I wrote about a while back. I think the current discussion of the passive synthesis helps illuminate the same territory with different terms. It seems that the world must provide us some foothold that allows us to grab onto it. Or some place for our minds to stand in it in order for them to operate effectively.
The mixing of the metaphors you may have noticed in those last two sentences turns out to be fortuitous. This is where the thrill of the wind in our hair and the bugs in our teeth as we're live blogging really hits the fan! Because you don't use a foothold to grab onto stuff. You stand on a foothold in order to grab onto an object. As a sort of shorthand, I remembered the term "foothold" as Whitehead's description of this problem of how there needs some sort of connection between moments in order for there to be an an object for us to grasp. Going back over it though, I've realized that this was wrong, albeit in a useful way. In fact, foothold and object are distinct, but form an inseparable pair. Basically, for recognition, we need an object to recognize, and we need a place for US to do the recognizing from. We need a foothold in the world that supports our subjective stance, and we need objects out there to grasp.
I'd like to explore this corrected definition of foothold as Whitehead used it in The Concept of Nature. It requires a little background and introduces a new set of terms, but I think it may help us understand Deleuze better. Also, FPiPE is deeply committed to boring readers stiff with over-complete responses to their requests! So here we go.
Whitehead starts from what seems a simple empiricist position -- "nature is what we are aware of in perception". The seeming simplicity of this starting point is illusory though, because Stengers spends many many pages distinguishing it from, "nature is what we perceive".
If Whitehead had written "nature is what we perceive," a version seemingly close to the initial statement, what would have followed was almost automatic. What do you perceive? A grey stone. What does what you perceive authorize? The affirmation that "this stone is grey." In contrast, the question "what are you aware of in the perception of this stone you call grey?" blocks the pedagogical series of explanations. A contrast insinuates itself, between the words immediately available for saying "what" we perceive, and the question, open for its part, of what we are aware of "in perception." An indefinite constellation of components becomes perceptible, which "that stone is grey" -- that statement apparently so simple and transparent -- had skipped.
What we are aware of in perception at a given moment might be just a grey blob in the visual field, or the fact that said blob is rapidly approaching our head and we should duck, or that we're discussing this stone with another stoner ... the list goes on and on. The point is that a world filled with objects is not the only thing we are aware of in perception.
Thus language habitually sets before the mind a misleading abstract of the indefinite complexity of the fact of self-awareness (CN, 108). (I'm leaving the reference numbers and italics on her quotes from Whitehead, so you can distinguish who's who).
Of course, by the same token this is not to say the we are not aware of objects. The goal here is not to relegate objects to the status of illusion, and to say that we are only really aware of bare visual sensations like grey blobs. In perception we're aware of all kinds of things, at all different levels. Whitehead's definition of nature is refreshingly expansive. If you're aware of it, if it's having some impact on your perception, it's nature. Fundamentally, I think this means that there can be no such thing as illusions, in a deep sense. Everything that you are aware of is a real part of nature. Sure, what you are aware of might be a totally lousy guide to action, but that constitutes an additional fact about a real experience, not a refutation of the existence of the experience.
[ . . . ] everything perceived is in nature. We may not pick and choose. For us the red glow of the sunset should be as much part of nature as are the molecules and electric waves by which men of science would explain the phenomenon (CN, 29).
I really like this broad-minded version of empiricism. The simple empiricist claims that we should base our view of the world on "data". That's fine as far as it goes, but begs the question of what exactly we are given. The full range of "data" we actually get can't be confined either to simple sensory impressions, nor fancy theoretical constructs like electrons. The goal is to come up with a concept of nature broad enough so that all of our experiences can be called "natural". Stengers characterizes this as a philosophy of resisting the dogmatic claims of specialized knowledge of all types -- scientific, psychological, mystical, etc ... The problem is not that any of these are wrong, and that we need to adjudicate which one should constitute the base data that we build a world on. The problem is just that they are all partial. When one or another type of knowledge tries to claim that it provides the uniquely correct description of base reality it ends up splitting a single nature we are aware of in perception into categories.
To the positive definition of the problem -- the construction of a concept of nature such that everything we are aware of in perception belongs to it -- there thus corresponds a negative definition, the determined rejection of any theory that makes "nature bifurcate." And nature "bifurcates" as soon as, in one way or another, the mind is called to the rescue, qua responsible for "psychic additions," to explain the difference between what we are aware of and what is supposed to belong to nature.
The theory of psychic additions would treat the greenness [of grass] as a psychic addition furnished by the perceiving mind, and would leave to nature merely the molecules and the radiant energy which influence the mind towards that perception [ . . . IWhat I am essentially protesting against is the bifurcation of nature into two systems of reality, which, in so far as they are real, are real in different senses [ . . . I Thus there would be two natures, one is the conjecture and the other is the dream. Another way of phrasing this theory [ . . . I is to bifurcate nature into two divisions, namely into the nature apprehended in awareness and the nature which is the cause of awareness. The nature which is the fact apprehended in awareness holds within it the greenness of the trees, the song of the birds, the warmth of the sun, the hardness of the chairs, and the feel of the velvet. The nature which is the cause of awareness is the conjectured system of molecules and electrons which so affects the mind as to produce the awareness of apparent nature (CN, 29-31).
We're all familiar with this modern bifurcation of nature. Science tells us that, "Nature is a stupid business, bereft of sounds, odors and colors; it is only matter in a hurry, without end and without meaning (SMW, 54)." However, since we are undoubtedly aware of all these qualitative factors in our perception, we will have to find a place for them in Whitehead's concept of nature. His definition of nature precludes either of the typical scientific moves made to address this problem -- either to say that nature is composed of two substances, matter and mind (dualism), or simply to say that mind and qualities are not real (simple materialism). Both approaches bifurcate nature, the first explicitly, and the second implicitly, by saying that some experiences are real and others mere illusion.
Stengers points out throughout her book that Whitehead always proceeds as a mathematician; first he defines the scope of the problem, then he proceeds to construct a solution. So, if the problem is, "what concept of nature would cover everything we are aware of in perception?" the solution will be, "a nature that is composed of events".
What we discern is the specific character of a place through a period of time. This is what I mean by an "event." We discern some specific character of an event. But in discerning an event we are also aware of its significance as a relatum in the structure of events (CN, 52).
First of all, the point will be to exhibit what is declared by these events that happen "at the same time," that is, "now."
These are the events which share the immediacy of the immediately present discerned events. These are the events whose characters together with those of the discerned events comprise all nature present for discernment. They form the complete general fact which is all nature now present as disclosed in that sense-awareness. It is in this second classification of events that the differentiation of space from time takes its origin. The germ of space is to be found in the mutual relations of events within the immediate general fact which is all nature now discernible, namely within the one event which is the totality of present nature. The relations of other events to this totality of nature form the texture of time. The unity of this general present fact is expressed by the concept of simultaneity (CN, 52-53).
You can probably see that an event is the original name for what I've been calling the temporal atom. So far, I've been a bit vague about the term, implying that it refers to something like: "the entire state of the universe at a given instant". As if this were specified as: proton A at location (x,y,z) and proton B at location (a,b,c) and etc ... at instantaneous time T. Since it was just a device to motivate the deconstruction of identity over time, this image was fine. Now we have to be a little more precise though, since we know that protons are only one of the things in nature, and thus can't be its ultimate building blocks.
Whitehead's definition of event makes it into something closer to, "the whole world right now from a given point of view". Since the problem starts with what we are aware of in perception, the event must be like a sort of "atom of perception". It's not the state of a material universe. In fact, it's closer to thought than matter. At this point in Whitehead's philosophy, the point of view that defines an event is explicitly human; it's our perception in question here. Later, his definition of event will broaden to accommodate non-human, and even non-organic perception, turning it into something similar to Leibniz's monad. But for now, what he means by event is basically everything we are aware of in one moment of our awareness. Each moment that our awareness shifts would constitute a new event. The event arises and passes, but it is always presented to us as "now".
It is an exhibition of the process of nature that each duration happens and passes. The process of nature can also be termed the passage of nature (CN, 54).
We should pause to appreciate a few odd things about Whitehead's definition of the event. I've called this "temporal atomism" because each event has a unity and is unique, but actually, these are very strange atoms. First off, they are more like thoughts than they are like things. They are tied to perception and take place "through a period of time", as a process; they have a sort of thickness to them. You might think of them as mental atoms of a certain size (or "duration" as Whitehead terms it). They are actually not quite what we would normally call thoughts though, because these events are not in a mind, but in nature. In perception, we are aware of events. It's not that we, or our awareness, are the event. Whitehead is here taking the fact of our mental awareness for granted, and asking what features nature has to have to support that awareness. Second, unlike separate physical atoms, events are inherently tied together and relate to one another in some structure. Even one moment of awareness includes an awful lot of stuff, a significant chunk of which we would call unconscious. In fact, one of Whitehead's big aims here is to dig under our conscious awareness and make sure that we attribute everything we are aware of in perception to nature.
It is because of this habit of letting constant factors slip from consciousness that we constantly fall into the error of thinking of the sense awareness of a particular factor in nature as being a two-termed relation between the mind and the factor. For example, I perceive a green leaf. Language in this statement suppresses all reference to any factors other than the percipient mind and the green leaf and the relation of sense awareness. It discards the obvious inevitable factors which are essential elements in the perception. I am here, the leaf is there; and the event here and the event which is the life of the leaf there are both embedded in a totality of nature which is now, and within this totality there are other discriminated factors which it is irrelevant to mention (CN, 108).Not only does experience include the "now" as a constant factor, but also the "here."
And now, mirabile dictu, I come to my point. Because the "here" and "now" that we usually neglect to mention are none other than the footholds that need to exist in nature to support a mind, and the "there" accounts for the objects we grab onto. The whole connection to Deleuze's passive synthesis becomes apparent when you see that here and there and now are factors in nature that seem a lot like what we usually attribute to mind, but that operate beneath it and allow for our representative consciousness. Events come and go, arise and cease, but there are factors that are repeated in them. We don't create these factors, but without them there would be no us.
Experience, for Whitehead, is always situated and always includes a locus standi, or a perspective, or viewpoint. And he is bold enough to call this point of view "event here," included in what we are aware of.
This locus standi in nature is what is represented in thought by the concept of "here" namely of an "event here." This is the concept of a definite factor in nature. This factor is an event in nature which is the focus in nature for that act of awareness, and the other events are perceived as referred to it. This event is part of the associated duration. I call it the "percipient event." This event is not the mind, that is to say, not the percipient. It is that in nature from which the mind perceives (CN, 107).
The event that provides you with a point of view belongs to the great impersonal web of events. Your standpoint testifies to the whole of nature, is connected to the whole of nature, even if it takes on the particular meaning that is required by the interpretation of perception as yours. This interpretation may be specious, but that does not make it illusory. But what we "know instinctively" is not that our consciousness possesses a point of view, but rather that the "here" of this viewpoint is ours.
Our "percipient event" is that event included in our observational present which we distinguish as being in some peculiar way our stand point for perception. It is roughly speaking that event which is our bodily life within the present duration [ . . . ] The distant situation of a perceived object is merely known to us as signified by our bodily state, i.e., by our percipient event [ . . . ] In the course of evolution those animals have survived whose sense-awareness is concentrated on those significations of their bodily states which are on the average important for their welfare. The whole world of events is signified, but there are some which exact the death penalty for inattention (CN 187-188).
Interesting how evolution comes up in this context for Whitehead as it did for Deleuze.
The complete foothold of the mind in nature is represented by the pair of events, namely, the present duration which marks the "when" of awareness and the percipient event which marks the "where" of awareness and the "how" of awareness (CN, 107). Here, "foothold" does not designate the act of taking hold but what the mind, or knowledge, requires from nature, what it needs to be offered by nature if its operations are not to be illusory, if the trust that leads us to speak of a knowledge about nature is to be confirmed. And insofar as what nature "offers" articulates a pair of events as "constant" factors, the mind's foothold in nature does not found any judgment that goes beyond the concrete fact: "there has been a foothold." Hence the image of the mountain climber evoked by the term Whitehead chooses: "foothold." The mountaineer's climb depends, and counts, on a ledge found by her hand or foot. If the vertical wall were completely smooth, there would be no mountain-climber: the mountain-climber's mode of existence requires that of the ledge that offers her a foothold.
Well, so, that was a lot of Whitehead. I think the reason that I was drawn to put them together here is that they seem to be solving the same problem in similar ways. Both start with an atomized series of "nows" flashing past and wonder how any of those moments can illustrate something more permanent, something that would go beyond the current event which appears and is gone. Their goal is to avoid enclosing everything interesting about the order of the world, the connections between events, in the mysteries human mind. Whitehead's here and now are like a contraction or a slice or a node in a vast network of events. They constitute stability in a whirlwind world, "factors in nature without passage". Without this order in the world, how would the mind invent it?
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