Lol Great Job

Later today I'll be posting a more analytical note about a possible project.

But right now i just want to share this funny comic.

LOL.

Great stuff.

Experimental Living

I recently finished Manuel DeLanda's A Thousand Years Of Nonlinear History. DeLanda has two main arguments. One addresses the role of nonlinear dynamics in historical writing. The other pertains to the relationship between philosophical idealism and materialism. The bulk of the book is dedicated to linear accounts of three major aspects of human history: urban, biological, and linguistic. But there are significant portions dedicated to the discussion of philosophical concepts informing the historical narrative.

I'm still having a hard time thinking about the book as a whole. That short paragraph above was really hard to write, and I don't think I did a very good job of saying anything. But I'm working on it.

But I'll say that DeLanda's approach is to view human history as a process akin to natural processes, that is, as flows and transformations of matter-energy, the most basic stuff in the universe. He thus compares the development to human civilization to the flows of lava and magma, claiming in both instances there are nonlinear dynamics that are engaging in a similar 'sorting process'. In other words, both rock cycles and urban processes involve processes of homogenization and heterogenization. DeLanda uses Deleuze and Guattari's concept of the 'abstract machine' or 'engineering diagram' to show that it is not merely a metaphorical comparison between rocks and society: he is claiming that the same nonlinear dynamics are supporting both of these sorting processes.

He does that for cities, bodies, germs and other biological phenomena, and the development of languages. Really interesting stuff. Hard to understand a lot of the scientific stuff. But it's pretty cool.

I will also say that I'm very satisfied with the way he ended the book. He does a good job of explaining the philosophical implications of his materialist history. Spoiler alert. At the very end of the book he says that this type of view of life as a temporary form of flowing matter-energy leads us to an 'experimental' attitude, one in which we are to creatively choose: "our world is governed not only by nonlinear dynamics, which makes detailed prediction and control impossible, but also by nonlinear combinatorics, which implies that the number of possible mixtures of meshwork and hierarchy, of command and market, of centralization and decentralization, are immense and that we simply cannot predict what the emergent properties of these myriad combinations will be. Thus the call for a more experimental attitude toward reality and for an increased awareness of the potential for self-organization inherent in even the humblest forms of matter-energy" (273). Home run here for me.

I'm really into this idea of experimental living or life as an art form.

Good job, DeLanda.

Seems like pretty cool stuff. I'm trying to process it all in. It is clashing a little bit with my thinking about Collingwood and history. These are radically different philosophies of history that I'm dealing with. So I need to start working on the synthesis of Collingwood's more idealist philosophy of history with DeLanda's hard materialism.

I think it can be done. DeLanda leaves that window open several times in the book. Plus, I think Clausewitz will be helpful. There was an article written on nonlinearity in Clausewitzian theory. DeLanda, Clausewitz, Collingwood, I can see a sort of thing.

I also have an idea for a new project. But it would be like, a most serious, most long term project. Like magnum opus shit or something.

I'll be writing about that some time soon. I'll have to see.

2012. My Agenda. My 2012 Agenda.

Take the GRE and apply to graduate school!

Once 2011 was gone I knew that I was ready to fling myself forward into this new year. I'm feeling excited. I'm ready to do it! At least I think I'm ready for it.

I'm becoming more and more comfortable with the idea of applying primarily to history programs with the intention pursuing military history.

I told someone the other day of my plan to get a history degree and eventually do some kind of philosophy. I still believe that is my plan. I still don't know if I can pull that off. But I do think that there is a lot for me to do in that line of thinking. I can see ways that military history would take me into my deepest philosophical interests.

So what is it that I want to accomplish philosophically by pursuing military history?

I don't quite know. So let me spitball some things really quick for you. These are my hunches.

At this point, R.G. Collingwood is the thinker I feel most committed to. I admire his plain-spoken style, the breadth of his interests, his faith in the use of reason, and his hope that civilization could learn to engage in "the self-conscious creation of its own historical life." There is a lot of hope in Collingwood. A lot of love. A lot of passion for thinking. He is right at the intersection of all the disciplines I want to think about: philosophy of mind, history, economics and Marxism, aesthetics, politics, education. He wore many hats, and I like that.

But there are two major convictions that are essential to Collingwood's mature work: historical knowledge is the only form of knowledge, and history and philosophy need to be synthesized into a new form of knowledge.

These are the central claims that I need to extrapolate out of Collingwood. The former is quite clear. In The Idea Of History Collingwood unequivocally asserts that there is no knowledge beyond historical knowledge: "Without some knowledge of himself, his knowledge of other things is imperfect: for to know something without knowing that one knows it is only a half-knowing, and to know that one knows is to know oneself." This type of self-knowledge, knowledge of "mind itself" can only be attained "by the methods of history" (209). Why is this the case? I won't go into this right now. But I will refer you to a wonderful essay by Michel Foucault titled 'What Is Enlightenment?',  and to a book by Ian Hacking called Historical Ontology. The perspective that emerges from those two writings is one that must be applied to Collingwood, is already implied (if not explicitly asserted) in Collingwood's work.

And as for this second claim, that history and philosophy must be synthesized into a new discipline. This is something that will take me a lot of work. Thankfully, Collingwood already took huge steps. He was preparing to "expound in detail his theory of history as well as to clear up the problems of method and to show how what have hitherto been regarded as philosophy and history might now be synthesized in a new study transcending and incorporating both" (TNL, xxi). Indeed, David Boucher believes TNL is one of such studies. Foucault, too, made some big steps in that process. I know I'll need help from a whole range of folks. Definitely people like DeLanda, Zizek, Deleuze, Hacking, Oksalla, Carr, so on. But I am fascinated by this synthesis of history and philosophy.

Those questions aside, I want to ask, What does the Collingwoodian project culminate in? Remember we are dealing with an author who never produced what he considered an authoritative statement of his thought. We have to interrogate his claims about the importance of historical knowledge, about the relationship between history and philosophy. And what I want to know the most, what is political in these claims?

Because The Idea Of History has political notes at times. He says certain things about historical thinking and progress, about revolutionaries needing to be historians. But the real political implications of his historical philosophy were not yet worked out.

Which is why The New Leviathan is such an interesting book. It is Collingwood's attempt to understand what modes of thinking had led Europe into World War II. He thus begins the book by using both historical and philosophical references to identify the general characteristics of the modern European mind. After this historical diagnosis, Collingwood develops his definition of civilization, which he defines as a process of instilling in the youth the habit of using dialectical thinking to reduce the amount of force in relationship. By dialectical thinking Collingwood means attempting at all times to turn instances of non-agreement into agreement. For the dialectical thinker there are no disagreements, only non-agreement. Disagreement is a quality of eristical thinking and is not in the nature of civility.

I'm beginning to grasp what is going on in TNL and I'm finding it quite compelling. What it is really about is the necessity of educating the children to become functioning members of a civilization and not just a community or society. Collingwood's definition of civilization is a simple but essential ideal to strive for.

Collingwood obviously would not have stopped thinking about history throughout the writing of TNL. In fact, TNL itself contains numerous historical references and original histories of European thought. So how does all of his historical thinking tie into TNL? Collingwood is also tough because he rarely references his own work, and if so, only in passing. So I feel like I really need to push at him and ask about the relationship between TNL and his other work.

This is really the thing I'm trying to ask in the larger writing project I'm still working on. I am preparing to write about the historical element of his thought. In particular, the political elements in his historical work. In particular, I want to know how his claim that historical thinking is always 'the re-enactment of past thought'. Collingwood's notion of the re-enactment of thought is a precursor to modern simulation theory of mind.

Theory of mind assumes that human beings are essentially minded creatures. We are not just automatons or a mere natural process, we live in a social world where people think, people makes decisions, people have minds. Our minds, however, are isolated: we never have direct access to any mind other than our own. So how do we understand each other's minds? Simulation theory argues that we understand another person by simulating their thoughts in our own mind, by putting ourselves in their shoes. Empathy and extended forms of imaginative empathy are the primary means by which we understand another mind. There mind, however, draws on other faculties to understand others. For example, we can rely on linguistic categorization, mental modeling, of tacit theoretical inference. In short, sure, we can empathize with people, but we can also write them off by categorizing (theorizing) them into something insignificant.

Collingwood's notion of re-enactment is remarkably similar to simulation theory. He, too, argues that knowledge of mind can only be attained by rethinking the thoughts of another person. We don't truly understand someone's thoughts unless we rethink, re-enact, simulate their thoughts for ourselves.

So what could potentially be political about this epistemological claim about minds? Well, recently I wrote about 'the historical collision of thought'. I don't know if I like that writing. It was fun. But I feel like I'm in the same position with this question. I asked myself at the end of that writing what the political implications of something like this are. Ah, and now I know what to say. Clausewitz.

Carl von Clausewitz is someone who can very much help me think about how Collingwood's historical thought, and in particular the notion of re-enactment, might be politically relevant. Clausewitz leads me to believe that the politics of Collingwood's historical thought would ultimately be pedagogical. That is to say that Collingwood's thought would best be used to educate a ruling elite. His thought would possess some relevance in higher political education. Let me tell you a little bit about Clausewitz so that this makes sense.

Clausewitz's problem (at the beginning of the nineteenth century) was how to educate the Prussian political elite so as to make them more intuitively decisive. Clausewitz believed that political thinkers had to make decisions intuitively, that the situations they were dealing with far too complex to be handled with logic. He claimed that "Rapid and correct appraisal [of political situations] clearly calls for the intuition of a genius."  He agreed with Napoleon's claim that "Newton himself would quail before the algebraic problems [political decision] could pose" (On War, 708). The task, then, is to improve a person's ability to make quick decisions in the face of uncertainty and danger. In short, to cultivate an attitude of political confidence and intuition.

Clausewitz also believed that intuition could only be improved through experience. But finding experience in war is very difficult. You might die, wars don't happen that often, getting experience with them is just tough. Clausewitz, however, believes that there is an alternative way of gaining experience with decision making in war: historical study. Because Clausewitz thought to study history deeply meant to enter the mind of a past decision maker, explore their potential thought processes, to imagine alternative courses of action, to contemplate as fully as possible the dilemma's that a past decision maker was grappling with. Some have said that Clausewitz is really talking about a process like Collingwood's re-enactment.

So this is where we can so a potential political benefit in Collingwood's notion of re-enactment. Furthermore, TNL culminates in the idea that civilization is a process of educating the ruling elite and the citizenry so that they can engage in the dialectical process that civilization is. Civilization perpetuates itself through education. But Collingwood never talks about how re-enactment might be a pedagogical tool for the ruling elite. Wouldn't he have thought that the ruling elite would be enrich by historical study? That their minds, too, could be expanded by the process of re-enacting past thoughts? He hints at this idea when he says that a thinker from the past can provide us with "a permanent addition to political ideas" (TIOH, 218). In other words, exposure to historical ideas will prompt questions in our minds about the present that may have not arisen otherwise. Historical knowledge would give us a certain attitude towards the present.

And it is really the definition of this attitude that I am after. I'm trying to elaborate a way of living, an approach to language and people, an attitude of empathy and compassion. But somehow I want this attitude to be taught to political and military elites. I'm not alone in this. I know of a writer who says that military education at its best is analogous to both aesthetic and zen pedagogy.

This is the precise intersection at which I am working. Aesthetics, history, politics and war, zen (sloppily), and education. All such vague lines of thinking. I've read more than one book about all those things. Some much more than that. But I don't feel up to the task of really feeling set about these things.

I've developed certain ideas about this attitude, like the idea of 'metaphysical mindfulness'. But that phrase is cumbersome and relies on a very precise definition of metaphysics, namely, the one Collingwood puts forth in his Essay On Metaphysics. So I need a better term. I've also worked on this idea of the aesthetics of existence. That is the current project. To conceptualize this attitude as essentially aesthetic, and to use zen as an analogous concept. But I'm not sure exactly how to do that. All I can say for now is that I'm on some kind of project to understand how to cultivate the habit of behaving civilly to everyone. How to get in a position to teach people to cultivate the habits necessary to really strive for civilization in the Collingwoodian sense of the term. How to define and embody a certain attitude towards existence and language that is simultaneously aesthetic and mindful. How to embrace the past and the present and attain a historical-philosophical ethos.

My agenda for this year is to continue to work hard on these ideas. To complete the AZI project. And to apply to graduate school. And a bunch of other fun stuff, duh! But I intend to move forward with being serious about thinking and trying to do it for a living.

I Have A Problem. This Is A Problem

This is a problem.

Much of thinking is about problems.

This is about the problem of thinking.

Thinking is always directed towards a problem.

Thinking itself is a huge problem.

Intentionality is about problems.

Do you see the problem?

Because all I see is problems.

The word problem enters my vocabulary.

A lot.

And I don't think that this is a problem.

Because problems are everywhere except in my references to problems.

This is a problem.

Memory And The Imagination

This is a brief note. But it is something I've been thinking about for a little while not.

The best reference I can make is to Nicholas Carr's chapter on memory in his book The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains. In that chapter, he responds to claims that the internet has made memory obsolete because we can look up anything at any moment.

Carr claims that this is false because it misunderstands that practical benefits of human memory, namely, the relationship between memory and creativity. He cites an author who says something about how building a great memory of other writers is different from pure recording because memories mix in your mind and create a unique combination, a nectar of your own mind.

When I read something, I don't read it independently of all the other things I have read. My understanding from other books melds and blends with this new book. My memory of those books mingles with my forming memories of this new book. I then come up with something new, I take something away from the book that wasn't in the book because I have managed to combine my reading of that book with prior learning.

How am I to conceptualize this process? Why is memory so important?

I think Collingwood's theory of the imagination can help with these questions.

Collingwood defines the imagination as the space between raw sensations and ideas. In that space we can consciously manipulate traces of sensation, re-experience them, recombine them, and come up with something new. Every passing feeling leaves a trace, an echo, of itself. By using consciousness we can focus on an emotional trace, imagine it more firmly in our minds, and transform it into an idea, a clearly held image.

Collingwood claims that memory is merely a property of the imagination: "it is probable that what we call remembering an emotion is never anything but thus focusing our attention on the traces it has left in our present feeling. The same is perhaps true of recalling a colour, or sound, or scent. Memory, in this sense of a somewhat ambiguous word, is perhaps only fresh attention to the traces of a sensuous-emotional experience which has not yet entirely passed away" (The Principles Of Art, 211).

Thus we can see the relationship between memory, imagination, and creativity. Not really. I haven't explained it entirely.

I also wanted to talk about Zizek's claim that freedom is inherently retroactive and how Collingwood's work on the imagination also helps illuminate that idea. I first read about it in In Defense Of Lost Causes, which was published in 2006. I then watched a lecture of his from 2009 where he referred to it. In both cases he cannot explain this idea very clearly. Put most succinctly, freedom is inherently retroactive because every true act 'retroactively creates the conditions for its own possibility'. He likes to use Kafka as an example. He talked on both occasions about how authors before Kafka like Proust or someone else were seen as Kafka's predecessors. But before Kafka those people weren't somehow inevitably leading to Kafka. It is Kafka's choices and actions that make them his predecessors. This somehow means that Kafka retroactively created the conditions of his own possibility.

The only way I have been able to think about this is with Collingwood's ideas about the imagination. What I take Zizek to mean is that what we take in, our raw experiences, are a huge variety of traces that we can choose or not to choose to seize upon. That our experiences are always deterministic in some ways, we only experience what we are exposed to, especially as children. But through the use of consciousness and the imagination we can seize on our experiences and recombine them in certain ways to make new decisions. Why is this a retroactive creation of the conditions of possibility of that action? Because I could potentially have traces in my mind that could lead to fruitful new ideas, but I could fail to cease on those possibilities through lack of imaginative exertion. But if I do seize on a combination of traces, it is only through my will, my consciousness and imagination that I have coalesced those traces into a clear idea. Thus somehow, through will retroactively creating the conditions of possibility for that thought or action.

I don't know if that makes sense.

But like I said I'm struggling for ways to think about Zizek's claim that freedom is inherently retroactive. His examples aren't entirely clear and he seemed at a loss on how to express it in his 2009 lecture. So far Collingwood's theory of the imagination is the only thing helping me.

I hope to write more on this issue of retroactive freedom.

Questions and Answers

What are you doing when you say something? Anything at all. What is a proposition?

If you are Collingwood, any proposition is the answer to a question.

Because every proposition is an answer to a question. Question and answer are strictly corollary. There cannot be one without the other.

I don't know what to make of this claim.

I know I read someone who said that it was a shame that Collingwood was never able to systematically develop this idea of 'question and answer logic'. He only devoted a single chapter to it in An Autobiography and a dozen pages or less in An Essay On Metaphysics. 


This is a claim I've been casually trying to work out in my own experience. When someone asserts something, I wonder, is there a question that necessarily underlies their statement? Can I indeed identify an implicit question to their statements? Do I believe that that question is constitutive of the statement? Or is it possible that their statement exists independently of the question that I suspect to be constitutive of their statement?

A good example of what I'm getting at is the application of contemporary concepts to history. One might be tempted, for example, to say that many ancient Greeks were homosexual. The application of the term 'homosexual', however, would not account for the quality of the Greek experience. They would not have classified themselves in that way and therefore would not have thought the same things about their experiences and therefore would not have any experience that could be called 'homosexual'. What the term homosexual does, however, is give us a rational framework that appears to fit a certain type of behavior. Even if that rationality is incorrect, it is still appealing because it appears logical.

Similarly, I could be applying a rational framework (a question) that does not necessarily apply to a situation (an answer). I could be supposing that a question is constitutive of a proposition even if that hypothetical question (or even the issue of questions themselves) did not account for the existence of that proposition.

These aren't good examples and this writing probably isn't clear or precise.

But its late and I'm tired.

All you need to know is that Collingwood's notion of question and answer logic is a concern of mine that will eventually get my attention. It's in the background right now. But if someone is reading this, do me a favor, try to reflect on the things you say. Are they always answering a question? If it seems so, is that question imaginary? Or is it actually constitutive of the statement?

Also, ask your self, Do any of these questions matter?

Lol. Probably not, bro.

But I like the way thinking feels.

The Social Pupil

What does the pupil of your eye do?

It expands when it wants to take in more light. It contracts when it wants to take in less light.

I wish to be the dilated social eye.
I want to always let you in.
You and your light,
Your words and their mind.

Because the mind, too, dialates and contracts.
It lets in more or less degrees of the other.
Sometimes it readily takes minds in.
But it also reduces minds, minimizes their intake.

If you manage to pay attention
Minds are bright.
Every interaction is like
An optometry appointment.

All the light is painfully clean.
The streets and their numbers
Are novel and nonsensical.
Gas behemoths are a blurry green.

But I am money bound
Using that beep
To take that ride
To encounter another frown.

Another disinterested soul
Trudging through this mess.
Waiting to die
Just like me.