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Naxos 12:40 on noviembre 25, 2009 | 0 | # |

Hi Steve, I like your posts because they are making a huge difference in respect with the things that Levi & Harmen are trying to embrace for their objectual sake. I have not read any Whitehead and as a bourdieuan i´m rejecting Latour´s preconceived impostures. But your whiteheadian point of view makes a lot of sense to me if i take it in respect with Gregory Bateson´s work, which is also very interesting and profound speaking about processes and differences. For example, like i have said elsewhere: regarding to what Levi constantly refrains about “a difference that makes a difference”, which is a phrase that is meant to be endorsed to Bateson as well, and that is becoming pretty popular in online culture, this difference that makes a difference is of course not an object but, in Bateson´s view: “a bit of information”. Here the idea of ‘a bit’ is referring to a minimal data that passes through a circuit of differenciation that leads to different processes given between systems and their assemblages. So regarding to this notion, we only can have access in our experience to the correspondent idea of things and objects, not merely to the things and objects themselves. In other words, we can only have access to their proper “transformations, impacts and forces” as Bateson puts it, and only experiment the difference that passes through this circuit of differenciation.

Bateson`s deutero-learning points out to the different levels of experiencing environments so to get adapted not by taking into account the objects itself and their problems, but their ‘class’ or their ‘type’. In this respect, he follows Alfred Korzybski´s views on the relation between abstractions and language, where all we can understand is deferred from reality because the latter is always indirect to itself: to this point, the class or type of problems that we experiment through the different environments is always more in ‘quantity’ than the class or the type of problems that we have already learnt, and this is how the differential circuit gets into differential patterns and intensities that are meant to be ‘equalized’ -i like to say, ‘ionized’- so to be embodied in our experience.

To my mind there is no way that recognition may be determinant because the impacts and the forces or events that imply the process are always in their course despite the translation that is meant in things or in objects. Processes do not have as their main objective the recognition of the difference that they make because this difference is already eventual ans is already happening. Any recognition or translation would be, if so, an effect or mere consequence of the process that occurs to form, deform, and transform objectual entities so to animate them as a fact. So considering this batesionian point of view, there could be not any sort of causation. So to endorse the question that objects do encounter each other in a very direct way, i dig that this encounter should be understood as a collutio, an eventual collision of differences that affects ‘the being’ of those objects in their transformational-differential process, but this is never to signify that this encounter would not affect the cognitive relation that we have about them even if we do not have access to their objectual existence.

Comentado por Naxos en:

Problems of Translation

November 25, 2009 at 11:30 am
Naxos 21:55 on septiembre 24, 2009 | 0 | # |

Just as a final thought i would like to say that Bateson`s thought keeps on pointing out to the question that those things that are unknown could be known if we learn how to know them, or if we learn how to unlearn the things that we have already learnt about them. I don`t know if this is worth to say that he is agnostic, i guess not. To my mind, the fact that we cannot access to objects or to entities just as they are (or to their *being*) and the fact that we can only access to their transformations instead, if so, it is a condition of knowledge and not its limit. Thanks for the great conversation

Comentado por Naxos en:

Object-Reality Interdependence

24 September 2009 @ 9:53 pm
Naxos 17:19 on septiembre 24, 2009 | 0 | # |

Hi John

I don`t like to label the thought of a thinker because for me it can only trouble the understanding of his work. It is useful for other kind of practical questions that for me are somehow unnecessary. So I will not be or pretend to be the one to say rightfully anything about that matter, as my way of appropriation is already coined with a different intention and approximation. This consideration is not something personal, it is just the way thought is meant to be deterritorialized, so labeling or trending an author is related to another kind of movement that it presents for me as a regression and therefore I am not willing to exercise. I just want to make this very clear and straight, while there is no intention to be harsh or to dismiss your worries.

What i can say is that in the case of Bateson the problem implied was really never solved for him: he tried to give response to it using Jung`s insights regarding to the pleroma/creatura question. This question leaded him to think such problem, but he never took a concrete standpoint, so for him the problem was not solved. But this is not to say, of course, that he did not solved because of his incompetence, all the contrary: we can take for sure that if he did not solved this matters was either because we don`t have the way to solve them, or because they are not *meant* to be solved (this might be like saying that the problem is deeply related with *meant*). By non taking a standpoint Bateson is given the proper sense to the question, so far: that this problem is the hugest asylum ignorantie of all times for human intelligence, and mostly for scientists. With his non standpoint he suggested that non of the scientific realities that we know so far would solve it. So he gave a lot of anecdotal winks to think that the problem is still not well put, that we *really* don`t have the ways to put it well, and to formulate it in the proper sense.

One of this anecdotal winks is related to his experience with LSD. He said that he experienced LSD just once but personally i find this hard to believe (that`s my very personal and intimate hunch). The important issue to this matter is that he did admitted that he used it once, and to my mind this admission needs to be taken as a complement or a wink to the unsolved problems that we are speaking here. The anecdote is that when he took LSD, while seeing a carnationand hallucinated on it -i cant remember the details, sorry- he said to the person that was with him something like: “This is trivial”. We can say that what ever he was experimenting then was just the way he thought that thought would access to objects and entities without any *real* codification, this is, the way that thought would access to their transformations, impacts and forces (so, if it is trivial is because we can access to them just as they present to our experiencie as patterns and flowing differences). Once again, there is no reason to think that he was naive to this question.

Hope this will help.

cheers

Comentado por Naxos en:

Object-Reality Interdependence

24 September 2009 @ 5:18 am
Naxos 02:46 on septiembre 24, 2009 | 0 | # |

Your welcome!

I would like just to extend what I can understand about Bateson`s views as they are very interesting to this matters, although they are still very rigidly posed regarding to theory of systems and cybernetics. First of all, i have to make the clarification that, as i remind it, when Bateson says that a difference that makes a difference is a bit of information, he is referring to a “bit” more like a particle or a minimum of data that passes through the circuit, this is, as a flow of differenciation given between systems in the middle of their assemblage. This is to say that, while it may be needed a receiver to traduce such minimum data, the impacts and the forces or events that imply the process will remain on their course (this is like saying that the systems do not have, as their primary goal, the reception of the differences that they produce, as these differences are already “happening”). The receiver would be more like the mere consequence of an effect through the process. So information is not meant to be transmitted as such, it just happens right through the interjection of systems. The fact that there may be entities to receive this information in order to codify and be qualified by their own difference and by their own given difference, is something that has less to do with the process: its just the effect of the process, as this process is simply occurring and forming, deforming, and transforming such entities as the matter of fact that animates their own materiality. So the information resulted must be seen as a part of the existence of such entities, as it is meant to in-form their existence, but not as part of the dynamics of the system that incidentally produce the process that differenciates them as such. Entities may also not be pretty aware of such transformations, as they are inserted in the environment (the system) that gives sense to their differenciations and that leads them also to “be” a part of such a system (this does not mean that the system would crash without them, as all systems are always a part of other systems that are bigger and therefore capable to contend any differenciation or pattern).

What happens in between these dynamic-system-insertions, is what Bateson calls a “mind” or a “mentality”. Just to bring here one of his examples: he says, for instance, that a computer can be a mentality while it is inserted in the intellectual system of a biological system that is inserted in an environmental system of a climate system that is inserted in a planetary system of a solar system inserted in the cosmological system of a universal system of systems (and, all these systems are processing the differenciations of such a mentality, as they are also capable to contend, in respect to their different levels or circuits, the information that such mentality needs to exist). Of course this is very batesonian LOL. (btw, in his book Chaosmosis, Guattari refers to Bateson as one of the first deterritorialized thinkers to think the notion of deterrorialization, although his cybernetics insights were still very anthopocentric).

So, trying to respond to your question, I think that it can only be meaningful to speak of information from the point of view of the receiver, but the receiver is fully dependent of the process where it is inserted as an entity. Information is the difference that makes a difference that happens between the systems where the entity that receives and bolds such difference is inserted. So there is no intentionality here: if an entity is up to interfere with its process, or would pretend to change the system produced by it, it will only interrupt it or block it, in the sense that its own intentionality would be against it, though without bringing any substantial change into the system, and without changing the transformations impacts and forces that give sense to what in fact the entity “really is” through the process implied by such system. What it may change is the reception and codification of the information that is traduced in respect of their own process of differenciation. I guess that this (in)differentiation is what we may call “volition”. We can say that volition and its subsequent interference always would double-bind the process of differenciation and would block the flows of the differential circuit. This actually happens because volition and the double bind situations that it implies, are also a component of the way humans biological systems learn, or to say, of the way the have learnt to learn.

But at the end of the his life, Bateson gave a final definition of a double bind situation, and this definition resolves what clinically is still known as a sort of schizophrenic process: he stated that the double bind situation is related to the way that human biological systems are meant to learn to unlearn what they have learnt, and this points out to take learnship into a further level of experiencie to experiencie the surrounding enviroments where they are inserted in as such. This should be taken so far as the heart of his ecological take, of his ecology of the mind. Of course, this shall be something of interest to everyone, even to Dejan

Comentado por Naxos en:

Object-Reality Interdependence

24 September 2009 @ 2:45 am
Naxos 05:52 on septiembre 23, 2009 | 0 | # |

Great. Following Gregory Bateson, “a difference that makes a difference” is not an object: regarding to his views “a difference that makes a difference is a bit of information”. So this is to say that we can`t have access to things themselves, we can only have access to their correspondent idea, to the idea of their idea, i.e. to their proper transformations, impacts and forces, and therefore, to the differences that pass through a differential circuit of differenciation. As far as i understand Bateson`s deutero-learnship, this circuit leads to different levels of experiencing environments, as we can get adapted to them only by taking into account not objects and their problems, but their “class” or type. To this matter Bateson follows Korzybski, in the sense that all we can experience and understand is deferred from its reality as language is always indirect to its own self. The class or type of problems that it may present to our experience and that are meant to be experimented through different environments, are always “more” than the class or the type of problems that we have already learnt. This means that the differential circuit would always get into differential patterns and to differential intensities to be equalized & ionized meanwhile they are embodied through experience.

Those were my two cents to the question

cheers

Comentado por Naxos en:

Object-Reality Interdependence

23 September 2009 @ 5:43 am
Naxos 09:22 on septiembre 21, 2009 | 0 | # |

oh come on, I really can`t match where Foucault holds in such terms what you have asserted, and I feel I have to do so in order to follow closely your presumptions. But if you are going to say that I am trolling this conversation, you can always go back and read my extended comment that i bothered to write as a sign of my good will into the question.

Comentado por Naxos en:

Eliminativism

September 21, 09:21 am
Naxos 00:35 on marzo 7, 2007 | 2 | # |

Daniel, me pregunto si has leído algo de la antropología comunicativa de Gregory Bateson. Creo que lo que dices apunta mucho por ahí, y debo decir que desde que asimilé la obra de Bateson entiendo muy duramente la cuestión comunicativa, es decir, desde una riqueza mucho más empírica que la que ofrece muchos modelos comunicacionales.Y es bien interesante ver que la obra batesioniana, si uno tiene la fortuna de leerla en su recorrido, siempre ha estado apuntando hacia algo más que la comunicación, sobre todo en el sentido “ganancial” al que aludes al final. Ello se puede leer claramente en sus trabajos finales, sobre todo, los recopilados en Pasos hacia una ecología de la mente (hablando de los verdes, siempre que oigo la palabra ecología no puedo dejar de pensar ni en la mente ni en la comunicación en el sentido batesionianos). Lo que nutre mucho del enfoque de Bateson es que él nunca dejó de pensar desde la experiencia.

El problema con todos los demás modelos viene de que la experiencia es intratable académicamente hablando, y de que tratarla implica un trabajo de vida. Como sea lo de Bateson es formidable: es un enfoque que permite ir lejos con el pensamiento: si uno no quiere ir muy lejos pues simplemente no llegará muy lejos con ese enfoque. Hace mucho colgué unos textos sobre él, el principal se llama la cibernética del sí mismo, por si quieres leerlo.

Muchos saludos

Comentado por Naxos en:

Recepción satisfactoria y descripción

mar 6 2007 11:34pm
Naxos 14:24 on febrero 18, 2007 | 1 | # |

Hola Patricio, muy interesante tema y también algunos de los comentarios. Quiero recomendarte un post que publiqué hace tiempo y que refiere a la idea batesoniana de cibernética del sí mismo (puedes hallarlo en el tank de Inmanencia). Te lo recomiendo, ya que es muy interesante la idea sistémica de Bateson respecto a la experiencia humana. También quiero acotar que a mi entender no es prudente esencializar a la individualidad como si hubiéramos nacido con ésta o como si fuera ella un rasgo natural de nuestra fisiología. Nada de eso: la individualidad es perfectamente histórica, es el legado de una política del derecho pensada para la modernidad desde Hobbes, y que hace “eje” con las ideas “psi” de Freud, con el consumismo, con las políticas nacionales, con la guerras, y con tantas cosas que se fueron sedimentando en la historia moderna -sedimentación que es a la vez una subjetivación que nos ha moldeado-. Haciendo crítica a la modernidad, Hölderlin diría en un poema que la individualidad es como la tumba que arrastramos en vida. Y bueno, respecto a Bourdieu, hay que tener cuidado de no hablar de identidad sino de habitus: el habitus rompe con la subjetividad psicologista y con la objetividad antropocéntrica y nos habla de un sistema disposicional engendrado e incorporado -estratificación de la experiencia- que funciona sistemáticamente respecto a las estructuras objetivas de la historia y que se activa en diversos campos de acción.

Muchos saludos

Comentado por Naxos en:

Stand alone complex: autonomía y complejidad

18 de febrero 2007 1:23pm

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