Dear Paul,
Sorry for misrepresenting your question. :(
Science is interesting but does not exhaust everything.
Agreed. The science that seems best positioned to give an account for the
experiential phenomena (e.g. qualia?) is neurology. Yet neurology has made
little in-roads in this regard. Stimulating a particular brain cell, for
example, might cause *Ode to Joy* to "play" on the private stereo set of the
brain, but what is that music "made of"?; why is it experienced as "sound"
when, for e.g., a computer can play the CD quite adequately without needing
anything like qualia (as far as we know)? I agree, science does not exhaust
everything. However, primatology (in particular), it seems to me, can give a
fairly adequate explanation of the origin of nation states, and even why a
nation state might have a name like "America". That depends, of course, on
what you think is "adequate" that is what you are demanding?
I suspect that nobody is really particularly interested in what primatology
would say about the origin of nation states or even the social purpose of
nonsense, and yes it is going to be "reductionist" (of course). But I would
like to mention just two things that I think might be pertinent,
specifically:
1. The formation through grooming and exploitation through violence of
"alliances" by chimps, esp. but not exclusively, males. Explaining why a
territory might, once you get the language centres of homo sapiens, be given
a name will be no problem whatsoever. It is not hard to draw analogies
between Frans de Waal's *Chimpanzee Politics* and a work like Jean Bodin's
account of the origin of states in *Six Books of the Commonwealth* or the
way the protagonists work in the Chinese classic *Days of Spring and
Autumn*.
2. The patch of white fur on the ass of the juvenile chimp which is a
display that primatologists agree means(?) "only playing". The white bum
flash does not always work by the way.
And if we shadows have offended
Think but this and all is mended
[...]
And this weak and idle theme
No more yielding but a dream
Just playing. "No more yielding but a dream" means nonsense. Shakespeare
displays the white bum fur. The social advantage here should be easy to see
and it should be easy to see how white bum fur genes get into the genepool
and easy to see how they get selected for, etc. The first purpose of Puck's
epilogue is to allow the playmakers to formally submit to the judgement of
their betters and so hope to better avoid any punishment resulting from the
playful display that has just finished. It's a dog rolling over. And it is
very clever too. It is beautiful poetry. It is encoded, furthermore, not
merely in genes (e.g. the white bum) though humans might be genetically
predisposed etc (we know the drill) but very much in "cultural" codes (and
practices yada yada). Even so, Shakespeare here overtly associates
"nonsense" with the escape of "play" from "serious" political concerns (e.g.
the subversion of the state). To quote Uncle Frank "it's just a load of
nothing, so what can it mean?" [sic]. A Darwinian account of "sense" would,
I suspect, begin with the question of what social advantage the nonsense
maker is garnering. And I think it might, in the end, prove more difficult
to account, in Darwinian terms, for why adult chimps do not have the white
bum fur ... though perhaps - it has already been suggested - the white bum
fur also has some effect as to preventing the "rape" of juveniles?
Rather, what I was interested in seeing addressed is whether Deleuze falls
into a dualism or analogical conception of being in treating sense as
immaterial.
I remember that we agreed, once upon a time, that there was some kind of
"quasi-dualism" in *Bergsonism*; why not also in *LoS*? And I think we
further agreed, after some Ayerish resistance on my part, that this was not
a "fall" or "failure" but rather an egagement with part of the "everything"
that has not been - and really is very unlikely to be - accounted for by a
philosphy like "steady state materialism" (mind is brain functions) or an
approach like neurology or atomic physics ... or at least not in a way that
is satisfying to certain existential demands? So I also {still) agree about
the qualitative/quantatative concern of *LoS* which is also there in
*Bergsonism*:
This would account for why Deleuze is so occupied with questions of
difference (difference becomes a problem in a univocal conception of being
as immanence) and also why he's so concerned with questions about
individuation (we need to account for why, at least, things seem to be
numerically distinct or why being seems populated by diversity rather than
difference at the level of the given).
It is my feeling that many astrophysicists would say that they were
providing an "adequate" account of precisely that. When you say "we" you
mean "you and others like you who have some outstanding existential demand.
Personally I think I share some of that demand. I think the question is
interesting. It is, I think, a "sublime" question.
Why sense? Because there is meaning. Why immaterial? Because meaning does
not seem to be the sort of thing that can be accounted for reductively.
I think that, if they ever thought about it, the "sense"[x] of "nonsense"[y]
(i.e. x and y both have the same "sense") would again be sought through the
idea of play. In play chimps practice, test, explore, etc. When you say
"meaning does not seem to be the sort of thing that can be accounted for
reductively" you are speaking in a way that is disciplinarily incommensurate
with something like primatology. Ultimately the kernel of Darwin's vision is
utterly reductive. Yet the exploration of that simplistic vision incurs
incredible conceptual complexities of both an a priori and empirical sort.
These probematics are in no way inferior to the problematics of a book like
LoS, nor (in my opinion) vice versa. Lovelock's pursuit of the question of
how the evolution of the dimethyl sulfide production systems of certain
phytoplankton came about might be a case in point. Even Lovelock admits that
it is hard to explain in Darwinian terms ... and the explanation he finds,
which is sufficient in my opinion, implies that land life as-we-know-it is
the result of a biproduct. It turns out that dimethyl sulfide helps the
plankton resist the effects of dehydration. As a biproduct it transfers
sulfur to the land in the necessary quantities (from the point of view of
land life whose survival does not appear to have any direct relevance to the
survival of these phytoplankton [sulfur is abundant and easy to get in the
ocean but hard to get on land]) ... at no stage does Lovelock require the
help of Bergson or Deleueze and, frankly, neither Bergson nor Deleuze could
ever have accounted for the evolution of the sulfer cycle in such a
beautifully reductive way. Lovelock has no use for anything like elan vital,
and Gaia has nothing to do with any sort of spiritus mundi or "will" of that
register. Diversity of life, for Lovelock, is the result of copying errors,
not the result of anything we might demand in satisfaction of "our"
existential questions as you have specified. On the other hand, there simply
is is no burining inadequacy in Lovelock's account of the evolution of the
sulfur cycle. Indeed the thing he must strive to do is to avoid the
insertion of anything like what you will later call "the effects of meaning"
into the description. The main criticism of Lovelock, indeed, has been that
he fails to do just that. In my opinion these criticisms are unfounded -
though appropriate to many of the popularisers of Gaia whom you might meet
and who talk about Gaia as though it were some sort of "wisdom of the
organism".
One need only do an experiment with a foreign language with which they are
not familiar to see the point. One can very well discover the phonological
oppositions belonging to a foreign language, but will they have come to
understand the language as a result of that? Sure, they'll be able to
produce well formed semantic units, but they'll have no idea as to what
these units mean or what sense they have. They will have attained the
exterior of language without the interior of language or language as a
meaningful experience.
Yes. Like a computer?
At some point (and this despite the fact that there's a profound
structuralist inspiration throughout Deleuze's LoS) it seems that the
structuralist always sneaks the phenomenon of sense in the back door without
really accounting for it.
Yes. I think that's true also. At least in cases of so-called high
structuralism. I would consider that an unfair assessment of any
structuralist account that included the application of something like
pleasure and pain and I'm not sure, in the end, that the social purpose of
sense or even nonsense cannot be "adequately" accounted for in hard-nosed
Darwinian terms. The "painfulness of pain", the "redness of red", and so on,
fine. Neither the "structuralist" approach of someone like Levi Strauss nor
the Darwinian approach of someone like Dawkins will ever, in my opinion,
give an account for those sorts of things. I do agree. But I think the
"effects of meaning" here are not behaviors they are existential ... um ...
experiences. Does it remain possible, do you think, that in this
conversation you are the only one having these experiences and that I am
just some twitter machine yet to pass the Turing test? I do think that we
are all having these "effects of meaning" and I also think chimps are too. I
have my doubts about computers. What about soldier crabs? Does "sense" apply
to the exchange of plasmids by microbes? Does it apply to DNA? If so, I
think it would have to apply to all twitter machines and computers and
perhaps even mechanical systems such as the sulfur cycle or chemical
valency. Or does "sense" grow proportionally to something like
"consciousness of intent"? Sorry for butting in here, this (with what
follows) is a great argument. :)
Sense is real (quid facti) though non-existent and non-material (it cannot
be found in any of the elements making up language) and thus, quid juris,
deserves to be talked about in its own right if we're to account for how
language becomes animate and becomes able to produce effects of meaning.
I think you have given a perfectly adequate answer to your own question as
to what problem(s) in "materialism" *LoS* responds to. And I want to again
emphasize that I also think that *LoS* is a "worthwhile" book and that I
want to thank you, Paul, and everybody else who has been writing about it
rather than passing over it's concerns in silence.
:) Chris
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