Somers-Hall, (Ch.3), Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition, ‘Chapter 3. The Image of Thought’, summary

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[The following is summary. All boldface, underlining, and bracketed commentary are my own. Proofreading is incomplete, so please forgive my typos and other distracting mistakes. Somers-Hall is abbreviated SH and Difference and Repetition as DR.]

Summary of

Henry Somers-Hall

Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition:
An Edinburgh Philosophical Guide

Chapter 3. The Image of Thought

 

Very brief summary:

Philosophy so far has failed to think about the intensive and differential basis of the world, because it has been using a representational model of thinking that cannot deal with this non-representational level of reality. Deleuze characterizes this traditional image of thought by discussing its eight “postulates”: 1) good sense (reason alone is adequate for thinking), 2) common sense (the faculties cooperatively deal with a common object), 3) recognition (thereby they recognize an object), 4) representation (its means and product are representational, since it has the four features of representation, namely, identity, analogy, opposition, and resemblance), 5) error (as misrecognition), 6) proposition (propositions bear truth), 7) solutions (problems are understood in terms of possible solutions in propositional form), 8) knowledge (as being propositional rather than the learning process). For Deleuze, in order to think about the intensive grounds, our faculties need to operate discordantly while having objects that differ in kind. Kant’s sublime experiences are partly like this, since the faculties have different objects that do not conform to one another. Also Plato’s experiences of inconsistency involve sense data of an imperfect idea and a mental recollection of a pure Idea, which differ in kind. But Kant thinks that reason finally supplies a representation, and Plato traces the origins of thinking to another realm of Ideas rather than to the immediate intensive situation.



Brief summary: 
One of the reasons that philosophy has not thought about the intensive grounds of the world and of ourselves is because it has been using a faulty conception of what philosophical thinking should be. Deleuze characterizes this traditional “image of thought” on the basis of its eight “postulates:” 1) good sense: reason is thought to be adequate for the task of philosophical thinking, 2) common sense: our faculties including reason cooperate to recognize a common object, 3) recognition: common sense processes the data, and by means of good sense we can recognize the thing by forming a proper judgment of what it is, 4) representation: what we come to recognize and as well our means of arriving at that recognition has the four problematic features of representation, namely, a) identity (there is one self-same object that receives determinations), b) analogy (it is recognized when the intuitive and conceptual contents are analogous to each other), c) opposition (we select the object’s determinations partly by knowing what are the opposing determinations), d) resemblance (the selected determinations resemble one another). 5) error: misrecognition is the source of error. 6) proposition: the locus of truth is the proposition and not sense, 7) solutions: the problem is understood in terms of possible solutions, and 8) knowledge: knowledge is taken to be propositional solutions rather than the process of learning while struggling within the problem. These postulates show how traditional philosophy has placed thinking on a level of representation that misses the underlying problems and significances that thinking should attend to. For this, Deleuze thinks that all the faculties should work discordantly, each having objects that differ in kind. Kant’s sublime experience at first creates such a situation, but it is rectified by the reason which supplies the needed idea. Plato’s discussion of the experience of inconsistent properties also seems at first to satisfy Deleuze’s requirement. Here the sense faculties are dealing with for example imperfect equality among sense givens, while the understanding is recalling something that differs in kind, namely the experience of the pure Idea of perfect equality. Yet unlike Plato, Deleuze thinks the Idea should be immanent to the intensive situation and not found in a separate realm of Ideas.

Summary

(3.1 Introduction) Deleuze is critical of the traditional image of thought, because the foundations of thinking cannot be found within the structure of judgment. (3.2 Feuerbach and the Postulate of the Principle) There are eight postulates of the dogmatic image of thought. 1) good sense: rational thought is adequate for thinking. Descartes’s method of doubt for example leads us to a basic act of reason, the ‘I think’, which can be a stable and reliable basis for all other thinking. Hegel also begins with thought itself. Feuerbach criticizes this notion, since the methodologies assume things other than rational thought, for example, the assumption that the philosopher is speaking the truth, which is required for understanding what they say in the first place. Instead, Feuerbach thinks that philosophical thinking must go outside itself and have an encounter with pure sensuous intuition. Deleuze also wants such an encounter, but instead with the transcendental ground for the passive synthesis of sensuous intuition. (3.3 Descartes and the Postulates of Common Sense and Recognition) 2) The second postulate is common sense. There are two meanings for common here: a) all our faculties cooperate to recognize a common object, and b) all people in common have such faculties that work this way. In cases of misrecognition, our reason might incorrectly judge the organized givens of our faculties as something it really is not. (3.4 Kant and the Postulate of Representation) 3) The third postulate of recognition. By means of the common sense operation of the faculties, we may recognize the object. 4) The fourth postulate is of representation. The faculties recognize the object under the form of a representation, which means it has the four problematic qualities of representation: a) identity: it is a self-same entity to which its determinations are predicated, b) analogy: the object’s determinations are grasped as belonging to the object by means of an analogy between their intuitive and their conceptual manifestations, c) opposition: the object’s determinations are selected in part by knowing which ones are opposed to those, and d) resemblance: the determinations are selected also on the basis of their resemblance to one another in their shared belonging to a common object. Kant’s model of recognition shows all the first four postulates. (3.5 Plato and the Encounter) Deleuze would prefer instead that each faculty’s object be different in kind and that all faculties worked discordantly. Plato might have a model that would satisfy Deleuze. For Plato, we have faculties for our sense experience and faculties for our conceptual thinking. Sense experience can give contradictory properties of the same object, as when two things appear as equal in size under certain conditions and not equal under others. Plato thinks this experience causes us to recall a prior experience of the Idea of pure equality that we had before our bodies were born. Thus in such experiences our faculties have objects that differ in kind, since the senses are dealing with impressions of imperfect equality and our minds with a pure Idea of perfect equality. But really they are not different in kind, since both the bodily experience of imperfect equality and the experience of the Idea of pure equality are both the same sort of experience, only with the prior one being better. Also, his model has the four problematic properties of representational thought, since the Idea is self-same (identity), the objects have opposing properties (opposition), our knowledge of things is analogous to our knowledge of ideas (analogy), and the sense experience resembles and thus recalls the pure experience (resemblance). (3.6 The Kantian Sublime and the Discordant Relation of the Faculties) In Kant’s mathematical sublime, there is a discord of the faculties. They cannot agree on what what the object is, since it is too great to be processed, and yet they are forced to come to some conclusion about it. The reason then supplies the Idea of totality. Deleuze is not satisfied, since he would prefer that the Idea come from the discord itself and not from one faculty, especially not from the reason. (3.7 Descartes on the Postulate of the Negative or Error) 5) The fifth postulate of error, which is the notion that error results simply from misrecognition. Descartes sees error as happening when the faculties together process a common object, but the reason fails to make the proper judgment about what it is and in that way misrecognizes it. For Kant, we want a total system of knowledge. But for him, all knowledge needs both concepts and intuitions from sense experience. However, many things we need to know cannot be experienced, like the temporal origin of the world. So reason supplies concepts without the necessary intuitions, in order to have a more complete system of knowledge. On the one hand, this makes us think that we can have knowledge without intuition, while on the other hand, this is not true. Thus Kant calls it the transcendental illusion, and this for him is error. (3.8 The Postulate of the Proposition) 6) The sixth postulate of the proposition or of the logical function. A sentence has both a sense and a denotation. Its designation is the true objective state of affairs it refers to. Its sense is subjective belief, which is not dependent on truth and falsity, since a proposition can make sense even if it is false. Sense is broader than denotation, since it refers to possible states of affairs (either that it is or is not raining), but denotation can only refer to one state of affairs, the true one. But still the tendency in philosophy has been to give denotation the primary status, and then sense is understood in terms of how it can take propositional form. This leads to a number of problems. One is that sense is broader and thus more fundamental than the proposition, so we cannot make the proposition the ground for sense. The second problem comes when we try to explicate the sense of a proposition in propositional form. It only produces a new proposition, which will have a new sense. This regress could terminate in a fundamental proposition like Descartes’ cogito, which has problems that we already noted. Or the regress might be infinite and thus fail to find a solid ground. (3.9 The Postulate of Modality or Solutions) 7) The seventh postulate is of solutions or modality. Under this view, problems are understood propositionally and in terms of their possibility of being solved. So for example, a referendum deals with a problem, but it is understood as a possible policy change that is formulated as a proposition that takes the form of a questions, like “Yes or no, should this possible change be made?” But such an understanding of problems as propositions only tells us what conditions them, since we try to know, under what conditions can it be solved? But such a focus on solutions cannot help us know what generates the problems, and thus it is not adequate for a model of thinking the grounds of reality. (3.10 Conclusion: The Postulate of Knowledge) 8) The eighth postulate is of knowledge. It regards knowledge as being constituted of propositional solutions to problems expressed in propositional form. For Deleuze, what is more important for knowledge is the process of learning, which for him is the active engagement with the problems when we are still trying to grasp them and solve them.

Citations from:

Somers-Hall, Henry. Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition. An Edinburgh Philosophical Guide. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University, 2013.

Or if otherwise noted:

DR:
Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton, New York: Columbia University Press, 1994/London: Continuum, 2004.

 

 

 

 

Somers-Hall, (1.1), Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition, ‘1.1 Introduction [to DR’s 1st Chapter]’, summary

by Corry Shores
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Henry Somers-Hall

Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition.
An Edinburgh Philosophical Guide

Part 1
A Guide to the Text

 

 

Chapter 1. Difference in Itself

1.1 Introduction (28–30/36–8)

Summary

Brief summary:

We are seeking a more profound notion of difference than what we normally ascribe to it. We operate as though there is a world to which our judgments make differentiations and determinations. We say, ‘this is an x’, and in this way we use the subject-predicate structure to designate things in an otherwise undifferentiated world. But in fact, using such representations will not suffice to explain the grounds of our representational system, which is subrepresentational.

 

 

Summary

The first chapter begins with the notion of the absence of difference (indifference), and Deleuze aims here to show how representation tries to tame difference. Deleuze gives two examples of indifference: 1) The undifferentiated abyss into which everything dissolves, and 2) The white nothingness on which are scattered unconnected determinations (21-22). In the first case, a lack of difference makes everything seem indistinguishable and seemingly be identical. In the second case, the lack of difference prevents things from forming determinate relations with one another. Deleuze then explains two main ways of understanding difference: either as secondarily imposed on an indifferent world or instead as something which emerges immanently on its own accord (22).

Then Deleuze returns to the idea of representation. It is a matter of asking ‘what is it?’. The sought answer would take the form ‘it is x’, which takes the structure of a judgment with its subject and its predication. In the undifferentiated abyss, one of the conditions has not been met [since either the things in the abyss cannot be pulled apart into distinct subjects or those subjects are distinct but the predications which distinguish them are not]. Thus judgment is impossible and so is representation and as well “thinking is suspended” (22).

By examining this undifferentiated abyss which receives determining judgments we see “the central problem of representation” (22d). Representation in a sense is descriptive of what comes about, but it cannot account for how things do come about. There must be some subrepresentational level to which representation imposes its forms but to which representation is inadequate to express in its originality.

The first of these possibilities, the abyss, brings us to the central problem of representation. While representation is able to qualify forms and subjects (‘this square is red’), it is unable to account for the genesis of form itself. Form simply has to be imposed on something fundamentally non-representational; something that simply cannot be captured within the formal structures of judgement. Such an abyss is in a literal | sense unthinkable. This is the dialectic of representation which operates in the opening of Chapter 1. If form, and with it the structure of the world of subjects and properties, emerge from an abyss, and if this emergence cannot be explained in terms of representation, how can it be explained? The difference between the formless abyss and form must be something that falls outside of representation. Difference is therefore Deleuze’s name for this process of the emergence of form, which cannot be captured within the structure of the already formed.
(22-23)

But representation should want to be grounded, however it cannot think its own (subrepresentational) ground. When trying to represent these grounds, we resort to concepts of identity, analogy, opposition, and resemblance. But Deleuze shows in this chapter why these attempts fail.

In the process, he will make the claim that underlying representation is a structure that is different in kind from it. Underneath the represented world of subjects and properties is a differential field of intensity. (23)

SH then outlines the structure of Deleuze’s argument. First Deleuze looks at Aristotle’s theory of species and genera, which is “a paradigm case of representation;” next Deleuze shows what is wrong with this theory; third, he gives an alternative conception; fourth, he argues that “Leibniz and Hegel’s attempts to save representation fail;” and finally, he shows that Plato, although a founder of representation, also hints at an “alternative ontology” (23).

 

 

Somers-Hall, Henry. Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition. An Edinburgh Philosophical Guide. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University, 2013.

Andy Clark. 8.2 of Being There, “What is this Thing Called Representation?,” summary

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Andy Clark

Being There:

Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again

Ch.8

Being, Computing, Representing

Part 8.2
What is this Thing Called Representation?

Brief Summary:

There is a view in cognitive science that believes ‘thinking’ systems such as brains and thinking machines have internal representations that correlate with the external world but are also processed without the direct causal influence of external factors.

Summary

Clark will discuss “internal representations”. Cognitive scientists often refer to them as being housed by brains and computer models. The concept helped bridge connectionism and classical artificial intelligence. Both camps agreed there are such internal representational systems, however they disagreed on the precise nature of them. (142d) The classicists thought mental contents were “tokened as strings of symbols that could be read, copied, and moved by some kind of inner central processing unit” (143a); they believe then in a “chunky symbolic” inner economy of mental contents. Connectionists however “believed in a much more implicit style of internal representation: one that replaced strings of chunky, manipulable symbols with complex numerical vectors and basic operations of pattern recognition and pattern transformation” (144a)

Both views see mental contents as internal representations. Haugeland lists the criteria for an internal representational system. [Quoting Clark:]

(1) It must coordinate its behaviors with environmental features that are not always "reliably present to the system."

(2) It copes with such cases by having something else (in place of a signal directly received from the environment) "stand in" and guide bahavior in its stead.

(3) That "something else" is part of a more general representational scheme that allows the standing in to occur systematically and allows for a variety of related representational states (see Haugeland 1991, p. 62). [144b]

Now consider plants that track the sun with their leaves. The sun’s changing position itself guides the leaves’ motion. So because the plant system is controlled by an environmental feature that is reliably present to the system [perhaps, to the system’s behavior], it would not satisfy the first criterion. [Consider instead a solar panel programmed to turn with the sun’s position. It need not even ‘see’ where the sun is. It can be programmed according to astronomical predictions of its position. These coordinates ‘stand-in’ for the direct control of the sun’s actual position on the plant leaf movement.] Point two says that instead of the environmental feature, something else stands-in for it and guides the system’s behavior. [Now consider how before eating, we see the food, and our stomach produces gastric juices, then in their place comes food. In a way,] our gastric juices stand-in for the food, and in that way represent the future presence of food. However, the third criterion says that the something else that stands-in must be a part of a larger representational system, and the gastric juice does not. [Yet the sun’s coordinates fit within a larger system of geometrical representations.] Clark thinks that the role of the decouplability of the inner and outer states in determining behavior is overplayed. (144c.d)

But consider the way that the neurons in a rat’s brain process coded signals for which way the head is pointed. The system uses a general representational scheme, but Clark wonders if really this part of the system can function even if it were decoupled from “the continuous stream of proprioceptive signals from the rat’s body.” (145)

A strict application of Haugeland’s criteria will not help us understand the flows of information in such neuronal systems that come from the body. (145)

So Haugheland’s criteria is a bit too restrictive; nonetheless we still need a way to constrain the applicability of the concept of internal representation. For, we need to rule out simple cases of environmental control over the system’s behavior. Also, internal complexity in a system is also alone not enough to qualify as inner representation. In addition, a correlation between an inner state and some environmental parameter is insufficient for inner representation [recall the gastric juice example]. “It is thus important that the system uses the correlations in a way that suggests that the system of inner states has the function of carrying specific types of information.”  (146a)

So the fact that the tides correlate with the moon’s position does not mean that either represents the other; for, the correlation was neither designed nor evolved for the purpose of carrying information about the other’s variations. On the other hand, the neuronal activity in the rat’s brain does seem to have the purpose of carrying information about the head’s position. (146b.c)

So what will qualify an inner state as a representation will have to do with the role it plays in the system.

It may be a static structure or a temporally extended process. It may be local or highly distributed. It may be very accurate or woefully inaccurate. What counts is that it is supposed to carry a certain type of information and that its role relative to other inner systems and relative to the production of behavior is precisely to bear such information. (146cd)

So Clark proposes that we

call a processing story representationalist if it depicts whole systems of identifiable inner states (local or distributed) or processes (temporal sequences of such states) as having the function of bearing specific types of information about external or bodily states of affairs. (147a, boldface mine)

Consider such adaptive hook-ups as the sunflower tracking the sun’s position, or a robot seeking light. Clark thinks there is little to gain by calling such adaptive hook-ups representational.

Representation talk gets its foothold, I suggest, when we confront inner states that, in addition, exhibit a systematic kind of coordination with a whole space of environmental contingencies. In such cases it is illuminating to think of the inner states as a kind of code that can express the various possibilities and which is effectively "read" by other inner systems that need to be informed about the features being tracked. Adaptive hookup thus phases gradually into genuine internal representation as the hookup's complexity and systematicity increase. At the far end of this continuum we find Haugeland's creatures that can deploy the inner codes in the total absence of their target environmental features. Such creatures are the most obvious representers of their world, and are the ones able to engage in complex imaginings, off-line reflection, and counterfactual reasoning. Problems that require such capacities for their solution are representation hungry, in that they seem to cry out for the use of inner systemic features as stand-ins for external states of affairs. (147bc)

Those who like dynamic systems theory tend toward rejecting information-processing accounts “that identify specific inner states or processes as playing specific content-bearing roles.” (148b) They thus might endorse this radical thesis:

Thesis of Radical Embodied Cognition  Structured, symbolic, representational, and computational views of cognition are mistaken. Embodied cognition is best studied by means of noncomputational and nonrepresentational ideas and explanatory schemes involving, e.g., the tools of Dynamical Systems theory. (148c)

Many scientists already hold this view. (49a)

But Clark thinks such a strong reaction is unwarranted, and he will explain why in the following sections. (49b)

Andy Clark. Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again. Cambridge, Massachusetts/London: MIT, 1997.

Running-Off Representations, para 50, Supplementary B1 to: On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time

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[The following is summary.]

Running-Off Representations

Edmund Husserl

On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time

B: Supplementary Texts

I "On the Introduction of the Essential Distinction between 'Fresh' Memory and 'Full' Recollection and about the Change in Content and Differences in Apprehension in the Consciousness of Time"

No. 7

Intuition, Evidence of Being-Past – Mere Represenation of Being-Past.

Apparent Necessity of Assuming a Change of Content in Primary Memory

Paragraph 50

Husserl wonders now about prior experiences. He considers two possible ways that we might treat them. He wonders how much we treat them as having passed (being-past), and how much is their pastness not evident to us. Also he wants to know how and why we might not have an intuition of a past experience.

To pursue his inquiry, he distinguishes 1) the representation of the past and 2) the experience of the past.

Consider this example first. We hear a melody, it runs-off and ends. We wait a bit. Then we recall it. We call to mind how it transpired and ran-off. But the melody is not actually running off right now. We only represent its running-off. But when we are hearing it, we intuit it, and thus we are not at that moment representing it.

we must make a distinction between representation of the past and experience of the past. I represent the past event as past and also believe in the being-past of the event, but I do not experience its passing and its being-just-past – I do not intuit these. A melody I recall may also run its course in memory. But the running-off is here only re-presentative [repräsentativ]. The melody is not actually running off now, and I do not even have an intuition of a running-off that has already occurred. In memory, the running-off that appears is re-presentative; in intuition, it is not re-presentative. (162d)

[Directory of other entries in this series.]

Husserl, Edmund. On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893-1917).Vol 4 ofEdmund Husserl: Collected Works. Ed. Rudolf Bernet. Trans. John Barnett Brough. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991.