Deleuze 1990

Deleuze, Gilles. Logic of Sense. Trans. by Mark Lester with Charles Stivale. Ed. by Constantin V. Boundas. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1990.

First Series of Paradoxes of Pure Becoming

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introduces peculiarity to paradoxes

• any phrase of becoming is pointing in two directions at once:

to say that Alice becomes larger is to say that she is becoming smaller than she will be

• it IS just a verbal game, but a verbal game we can't think around
• we don't have any capability of thinking of the world OUTSIDE this game

"SENSE" --> wants to connect to a directionality; we talk about things as having "sense" when they point in one direction for comparison or change

-- "Good sense affirms that in all things there is a determinable sense or direction (sens); but paradox is the affirmation of both sense or directions at the same time."

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connects this to Plato, who helps us see these events of becoming

• Plato and Socrates as founding a defense of the life of the mind, "philosophy" as a discipline
• quotes from Philebus and Parmenides, aporetic dialogues (dialogues in which paradoxes presented are not resolved) --> Plato acknowledges problems but doesn't deal with them

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suggests Plato was aware that strange events of becoming have connection to language

• paradoxes resist theory of Forms; is there a Form for hotter, colder? verbs? -- hotter is something that an individual JUDGES; how does that match the theory of Forms?

• see Sophist 235-6
• see pg 256 in Deleuze
• perhaps act as two languages; or two dimensions in language in general, only one of which Plato focused on
• true proportions of the object, but don't correspond to what we see
• Plato distinguishing betwee true objects and claimants, false reproductions (philosopher vs. sophist)

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Lewis Carroll helps us see these paradoxes

• paradox of pure becoming goes in two directions at once;
• Deleuze wants to call this paradox of infinite identity: identity as sameness, but infinite in that it continues/persists in sameness
• Sorites paradox: when does a pile of pebbles become a heap? --> a heap is a LINGUISTIC thing, at which language assigns limits;
• but language also transcends limits "and restores them to the infinite equivalence of an unlimited becoming" (3)
• "infinite equivalence" -- "hotter" & "colder" are equivalent in some sense, but at the same time cannot be

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undercuts common sense

• "infinite identity" vs. "personal identity"
• infinitives vs. substantives

Second Series of Paradoxes of Surface Effects

moves to a new dualism:

Stoic distinction between bodies and events

• Stoics are trying to reconfigure the field in which things can be thought

broken down into three parts, four paragraphs each

1-4: moves from Platonic dualism to Stoic dualism; 5-8: drawing out implications of Stoic dualism for philosophy (9-12: echo of that in Lewis Carroll)

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straight reading of Stoicism

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STOICS: distinction bw bodies (para 1) and events (para 2) implications for understanding of matter, causality, time

1) materialism: Stoics claim that all that exist are bodies; bodies that we see are mixtures of elements; Deleuze says we can refer to a particular arrangement of bodies (state of affairs) overall State of Affairs is arrangement of bodies as a whole

2) causality: when we say body A has causal relationship with body B; can only talk about causes, not effects;

3) time: from the point of view of bodies, there is only one present; from a divine perspective, there is only one present; time as unwinding of a rope (Cicero) -- Cicero's notion of fate == Deleuze's use of the term Destiny -- events have different relationship to time

---

Stoic map of reality;

distinction between existence [BODIES] and subsistence [EVENTS]; ex. Mickey Mouse / centaurs / etc. have different form of Being than real person; Mickey Mouse has no body; someone with a body can dress up as Mickey Mouse, but it isn't Mickey Mouse

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effects, events don't exist but SUBSIST or INHERE; they're verbs, INFINITIVES

not just INDICATED by verbs, but ARE verbs -- pure verbs, which we don't speak in, vs. conjugated verbs

series of presents; only the present exists in time only the past and future SUBSIST, dividing time simultaneously

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event is being cut; there are bodies involved (person, knife) -- but cutting is event this is INCORPOREAL

effects don't happen bw bodies -- you can say a body is cut, but the being cut is not a body

void is not a body, and a sayable is not a body; Deleuze is primary interested in incorporals that are "sayables"

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more summary of points he's made above

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what difference does this make for how philosophy operates?

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if causes are only happening in the realm of bodies, you can't have effects in that register; causes only concern events, and events are not bodies;

freedom -- Stoics preserve freedom in both registers (events and bodies), in the realm of bodies: thru co-fatedness, con-causality; in the realm of events: by not assigning causes

in Homeric epics, there is certain fated events, but many paths to that one fate; Stoics say no, there must be a chain of causes; this leads to understanding that all things are fatalistically determined

see Cicero, "On fate" -- Chryssipus argues that this kind of fatalism can be remedied by splitting events into simple vs. complex; complex events are "co-fated": two things must be fated together for it to happen -- nexus of causalities allows you to act like there's freedom, even though everythign is fated; con-fatality

[this is different from the Atomists, w/clinamen or "swerve"]

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Stoics have category "something", biggest genus , with "bodies" as subspecies

reversing Platonism (see appendix)

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important dualism in Plato is not form and image, but form and copy;

for the Stoics, this no longer matters -- Stoics "discovered surface effects" (7), recovering common sense from Platonism;

the things that Plato wanted to attribute to Ideas all migrate into events in Stoic philosophy; stripping apart Plato and porting them to a different register

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"becoming unlimited"

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paradoxes of Stoics, entirely new way of thinking about paradoxes

"Paradox appears as a dismissal of depth, a display of events at the surface, and a deployment of language along this limit." (9)

many critics say these paradoxes are NONSENSE by changing the REFERENT; Deleuze interested in peculiarity of language in paradox

there are dialectics of events, but not of bodies -- bodies just proliferate in materiality; there's no pressure on the world to solve this paradox (the way there is in Hegel); maintains separation between bodies and effects -- affirmation of the nonrepresentational

Third Series of the Proposition

use the previous dualisms outlined to get to the question of sense

four distinct parts:

1) summary of what Deleuze claims are three different relations within a proposition

DENOTATION:

• (a) relates to: "an external state of affairs"
• (b) functions through: "association of the wordss themselves with particular images which out to 'represent' the state of affairs"
• (c) expressed by: "formal particulars" (13) such as "it" and "that"
• (d) values: "true and false"; dealt with as true or false expressions

MANIFESTATION:

• (a) relates to: "the person who speaks and expresses himself"; "presented as a statement of desires and beliefs"

desires --> wanting a pony; doesn't really mean pony is there beliefs --> wanting causes something to happen

• (b) functions through: "causal inferences, not associations."
• (c) expressed by: manifesters, "I","you","tomorrow"
• (d) values: "veracity and illusion"

if we didn't have something like manifestation, there would just be isolated individuals saying things (denotations); only understand articulartions through part of a whole, sense of a whole -- have to understand others as saying something in approaching the world as a whole

SIGNIFICATION:

• (a) relates to: "universal or general concepts, and of syntactic connections to the implications of the concept"
• (b) functions through: demonstrations
• (c) expressed by: premises and conclusions
• (d) values: condition of truth vs. absurdity; possibility for error

2) arguing/asserting that we need to add a fourth dimension/perspective, sense

-- from standpoint of speech: manifestation is primary (speech vs. language -- Saussurian distinction)

-- from the standpoint of language (considered as a system): signification is primary and provides basisf or manifestation no proposition has its meaning independently; don't just denote something, but can only denote in relation to other propositions if you understand language as a system, there are going to be some terms that are taken to ground the system (even tho they don't necessarily) --> e.g. God, world, "language"

-- then undercuts this solution: can't even see signification as primary; [possible third perspective: denotation as primary?] signification itself requires denotation; has to be a link back to the world at some point signification doesn't make any committment to states of affairs (purely formal); but if signification is primary, it's not clear how the link back to denotation operates how to tie signification back into the world?

-- have to add a FOURTH dimension/perspective movement from signification to manifestation to denotation carries us in a circle; not going to be able to point to or outline its structure the way we could with the other three; "sense" cannot make language impossible -- has to still allow for everything we see in language; can we have a language that resists all three other dimensions not a NECESSARY condition of possibility, but nothing in our experience that precludes or disprove it -- a false proposition still has SENSE --

"Sense is the fourth dimension of the proposition." (19)

transcending the three dimensions of denotation, manifestation, signification even as it is the "fourth dimension"

pg: 20 example of Mobius strip; --> connects it to empiricism

TRANSCENDENTAL --> interested in "conditions of possibility"

"transcendental empiricism"; transcendental, not Idealism, but still about discovering conditions of possibility

3) discussion of philosophers who have recognized this dimension (stoics, phenomenology)

trying to create a lineage people who recognized this, even though they might not have recognized it

4) concludes with claim that stoic "event" is equivalent to what he's calling sense

can't think of sense as something that has its own existence outside the proposition surface linking to state of affairs

Fourth Series of Dualities

outlines a series of dualities that he claims develop, that we need to take into account to talk about the fourth dimension of the proposition

duality of causes/effects

ingestion of food -- mixing of one kind of body into another kind of body speaking -- gaffe/stuttering -- crossing the duality

speaking of food -- using language to refer to bodies [gaffe] eating words -- bodies dominate language [stuttering]

stuttering: lateral movement; saying the same syllable repeated; moving out along a line contrasts with gaffe, which is deep play on meaning, a vertical move

bodies rising to the surface; surface rising to the bodies

verbal hallucinations, language disorders

joining dualities; not to produce monism, tho

duality of bodies/language

sense is attributed to states of affairs, but not to the same proposition that stated it; not circular; doesn't manifest states of affair and doesn't signify them

leads to a kind of Ur-duality;

transcendental: outlining conditions of possibility

Fifth Series of Sense

third chapter he's outlined paradoxes (First and Second Series) begins by saying that these sense paradoxes are "now internal" (28)

for Deleuze, paradox undercuts both GOOD sense (unidirectionality) and COMMON sense (fixed identity)

1) paradox of regress

always speaking WITHIN sense; can never state sense directly, except as the object of another proposition, whose sense, in turn, i cannot state; "I thus enter into the infinite regress of that which is presupposed." (28)

"I never state the sense of what I'm saying." (28)

[switching back and forth between meaning and naming]

2) paradox of sterile division

to avoid the regress, must "fix the proposition, to immobilize it, just long enough to extract from it its sense -- the thin film at the limit of things and words." (31)

this is a peculiar act, though; you've only got "a neutralized double of the proposition" (31)

sterile --> only an effect, never a cause --> doesn't bring about an event in the world

sterility not necessarily a bad thing; stopping the infinite regress forces us to recognize the sterility -- > REVEALS sterility, doesn't render sterile

these two paradoxes"represent the essential forms of stuttering"

3) paradox of neutrality

terms used to describe different forms of the proposition:

-quality: affirmation or negation; sense as sterile; sense as "God-to be" --> neither affirmed nor negated [d'Autrecourt's medieval paradox]

-quantity: term "man" has the same sense no matter what quantity is being discussed

-relation: sense always the same in inverse relations; pointing in both directions at once

-modality

--> in Kant, become judgments of propositions; taking terms from scholastic philosophy

sense doesn't allow itself to be parsed into any of these forms of the proposition

4) paradox of the absurd

"their denotation ... cannot at all be fulfilled", nor do they have a signification

why is manifestation absent?

Sixth Series on Serialization

serial form is essentially multi-serial (37)

"the serial form thus refers to already described paradoxes of duality" --> can always look at two series in many different ways; these variations are "degrees of freedom in the organization of heterogeneous series" --> duality is always there, either between events and states of affairs (outside the series), between propositions and denoted objects (at the surface of the series), or between expressions and denotations within the proposition

two simultaneous series: never equal --> on is signifier, other is signified signifier: "any sign which presents in itself an aspect of sense" signified: "that which serves as the correlative to this aspect of sense" --> "what is signified therefore is never sense itself" (37)

signified as concept; signified as "any thing which may be defined on the basis of the distinction that a certain aspect of sense establishes with this thing" (37)

signifier as EVENT, signified as state of affairs;

signifier as "sole dimension of expression", since "sense as expressed does not exist outside of the expression" (38); signified is the proposition "insofar as sense ... is distinguished from it"

in two series, one is always signifier, the other signified

three characteristics permit specifying the relation and distribution of series: 1) terms of series in "perpetual relative displacement" in relation to the other --> "essential lack of correspondence" --> "double sliding of one series over or under the other" (40) 2) this disequilibrium "must itself be oriented" --> "blurred excess of signifier" 3) paradoxical case of an element that can't be reducible to either series or its relation --> it "circulates without end in both series" --> "it is the mirror" (40)

Seventh Series of Esoteric Words

Contracting Words

type of synthesis: connection (metonymy?)

Circulating Words

type of syntehsis: conjunction (metaphor?)

Portmanteau Words

type of synthesis: disjunction (irony?

Eight Series of Structure

Robinson's paradox:

"Robinson, on his desert island, could reconstruct an analogue of society only by giving himself, all at once, all the rules and laws which are reciprocally implicated, even when they still have no objects" (49) --> yet conquest of nature is "progressive, partial, and advances step by step"

society gives all its rules at once, but the conquest of nature, on which society is founded, is only achieved "progressively, from one source of energy to another" (49)

Revolutions made possible by this disequilibrium, "this gap between the two series, which solicits realignments of the economic and political totality in relation to the parts of the technical progress" (49)

minimal conditions for STRUCTURE:

1) at least two heterogeneous series, signifying and signified

2) each series constituted by relation between each other

--> to these relations, there are "very particular events, that is, singularities which are assignable within the structure"

"sense is not to be confused with signification; it is rather what is attributed in such a way that it determines both the signifier and the signified as such" (51)

no structure without series, without relations bw the terms of series, or w/o singular points corresponding to these relations; "there is no structure without the empty square, which makes everything function"

Ninth Series of the Problematic

[less argumentative structure than other series]

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--> singularities

singularity is NEUTRAL, not ORDINARY point of inflection, as in mathematics [point where line changes from concavity to convexity] point of qualitative change

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--> Peguy

influence on Deleuze and Latour's thought

events vs. Event (53)

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going back to Second Series (pg 5)

--> distinction bw unlimited Aion and Chronos; taking it from Stoics

--> distinction between EVENT [ideals] and STATES OF AFFAIRS [accidents]

"To reverse Platonism is first and foremost to remove essences and to substitute events in their place, as jets of singularities." (53)

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"MODE of the event" --> modalities: something that could be the case, something that must be the case; // apodictic, asotoric, problematic

wants to expand the notion of what "problematic" means --> think about it in terms of math: problems as setting out conditions for something -- series of steps taken in order to produce solutions

Proclus: theorematic vs. problematic

problem as condition of possibility -- field of a problem [leaf itself] solutions as accidents [seeing the leaf]

"problem always finds the solution it merits, according to the conditions which determine it as a problem" (54)

we think of problematic as subjective knowledge [apodictic, asotoric, problematic] -- it's an empirical moment that allows us to determine its truth by checking against states of affairs BUT problematic is "both an objective category of knowledge and a perfectly objectie kind of being" (54)

knowledge as both subjective and objective: something OBJECTIVE in our SUBJECTIVE knowing

Kant first to notice problematic as "very object of the Idea" --> phenomenon, how the world is sensed and structured; --> noumenon, problematic proposition that might exist; no way of knowing whether it is or isn't true; have to take it as problematic and stick with that to make our experience make sense --> i.e., certain things have to be kept as problematic [e.g. God's existence] in order t ounderstand how experience is possible: a PERPETUAL CONDITION rather than FLEETING UNCERTAINTY

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"relation between mathematics and man"

EITHER --> you can quantify/measure human properties [the way social scientists do] -- problematizing human events -- the writing of human history; --> "The Tangled Tale"; allegories, anthropomorphizing; humans incarnating mathematical problems; humans as bearers of math OR --> developing as various human eents the conditions of a problem -- writing of some kinds of literature, using characters in order to develop conditions of a problem --> "The Dynamics of a Par-ti-cle"; math as bearing some human qualities; not proper to humans any more than it is proper to math

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aleatory point

esoteric words

portmanteau

problem: defines a series question: defines conjunction of a multiple series

Tenth Series of the Ideal Game

playing a game requires: 1) preexisting rules 2) the rules form hypotheses of chance 3) these hypotheses organize the game 4) the consequences of how the hypotheses play out equate with victory or defeat

thus the characteristics of a game are: 1) CATEGORICAL RULES 2) DISTRIBUTING HYPTHOSES 3) FIXED AND NUMERICALLY DISTINCT DISTRIBUTIONS 4) THE ENSUING RESULTS.

limiting the role of chance

not recovering community; things that flee community

1) qualitative forms of a single cast 2) aleatory point, in ta time greater than the maximum of continuous thinkable time eternity --> where do you want to set the boundaries?

on break that is happening; the abstract turning point at which everything changes --> only one abstract point that keeps getting displaced --> one ideal Event --> point where everythign changes

games 'retain chance only at certain points, leaving the remainder to the mechanical development of consequences or to skill" (59)

Kantian sublime -- thinkable but not quite imaginable

IDEAL GAME: negation of all four things; no rules; everything changes at each point; no winner, no loser; no responsibility

not like Pascal's wager or Leibniz's best of all possible worlds can't come up with an example from philosophy -- has to go to Lewis Carroll or Borges

AFFIRMATION OF CHANCE: Nietzsche

AION -- CHRONOS

Sorites paradox;

when does a group of marbles become a heap?

Chronos: the bodies rather than the expressions; literally speaking, no point at which marbles become a heap; no point in trying to determine when it becomes a heap; analog; breaking apart of Hegel --> separate out quantitative and qualitative levels -- deals with the realization of the event; determining weights, setting boundaries of what makes a heap example of death: can be measured by cell reproduction, heartbeat, etc. "It is in this sense that events are signs."

Aion: our description of that -- products of language; incorporeal; internal infinitive would be to make a heap out of something; digital; flip of a switch -- suddenly becomes heap example of death: flip into death -- loss of thought, no measurement of point

ideal event, pure event: any point at which something changes

sensation -- human sensorium understood in terms of chronos, but don't make qualitative distinctions; perception qualitative distinguishes

novella ex. on 63: followed up in novella chapter of ATP

"living present" --> BECOMING present

big-E "Event"

there's only ever one break, but the break moves; each break is a distribution or emphasis

only one point -- aleatory point -- pure event

Aion -- only ever incorporal -- SENSE Chronos -- only ever corporal -- UNINTERESTED MOVEMENT OF BODIES; no meaning attributed to it yet