**Links to**: [[Line]], [[Linearity]], [[Non-linearity]], [[Continuity]], [[Discontinuity]], [[Contingent computation]], [[Control]], [[Context]], [[Concept]], [[Pattern]], etc. # ⦑A⦒⦑n⦒⦑t⦒⦑i⦒⦑c⦒⦑o⦒⦑n⦒⦑t⦒⦑i⦒⦑n⦒⦑u⦒⦑o⦒⦑u⦒⦑s⦒ In this entry we will explain the methodology of this project, some personal phenomenology, some history, and we will try to write _improvisationally_ (inspired by Gary Peters, see also: [[Improvisation]]), following the line of “as things come”, and not an ordered, pre-structured narrative. ### [[Postulate]]: [[Linearity]] is a particular(ly convenient) vantage point but by no means the only one. Linearity is a memorious myth. >“The rhizome is an anti-genealogy.” (ATP, p. 11). >“All known cognitive agents are collective intelligences, because we are all made of parts; biological agents in particular are not just structurally modular, but made of parts that are themselves agents in important ways. There is no truly monadic, indivisible yet cognitive being: all known minds reside in physical systems composed of components of various complexity and active behavior. However, as human adults, our primary experience is that of a centralized, coherent Self which controls events in a top-down manner. That is also how we formulate models of learning (“the _rat_ learned X”), moral responsibility, decision-making, and valence: at the center is a subject which has agency, serves as the locus of rewards and punishments, possesses (as a single functional unit) memories, exhibits preferences, and takes actions. And yet, under the hood, we find collections of cells which follow low-level rules _via_ distributed, parallel functionality and give rise to emergent system-level dynamics.” (Levin, M. “Technological Approach to Mind Everywhere: An Experimentally-Grounded Framework for Understanding Diverse Bodies and Minds” p. 2). %% big #todo here: the footnotes do not work on the website, see e.g. semi-diagnosed. check other entries for this problem. also, take from this review of Phil of madness: “Wouter Kusters’ ‘Philosophy of Madness’ is difficult to classify. This is probably the point. This enormous work – the full text reaches 738 pages – draws from sources diverse as Plotinus, Sartre, Eastern mysticism, personal testimonies, free associative prose and more; some canonical, some obscure, some empirical, some fictional. It’s difficult, too, among this mass of material, to discern the author’s intentions. Kusters states his explicit intentions quite often, but these statements often contradict each other, remain unfulfilled and unexplained. Gradually, what becomes clear, however – and this is perhaps the overarching theme of the book – is that Kusters’ doesn’t want to be classified.” %% One of B. Pascal’s note fragments on the _Pensées_ is commented upon by [Cormac Gallagher](http://www.lacaninireland.com/web/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Aut_2001-WHAT-DOES-JACQUES-LACAN-SEE-IN-BLAISE-PASCAL-Cormac-Gallagher.pdf): “At a recent exhibition of authors’ manuscripts in the _Bibliotheque Nationale_ in Paris a visitor next to me looked through the glass at the page of Pascal’s work that was being presented and growled: “II ecrit comme un cochon”: ![[cochon pascal.png|300]] ### Anticontinuous: a. writing and method To [[Predicate]] is to predict.^[What is said of a subject in a proposition–i.e.: the _predicate_–must have been thought of in advance, if ever so slightly. **Note**: In the paranoia that this phrase and idea was too ripe for the taking, I found, after searching for it in search-engines, that Peter Osborne employs it to say something similar, about Peirce's logic of inquiry in his book _Philosophy and Cultural Theory_: “Thus, {Peirce citation by Osborne begins}: “To predicate ... [an intellectual] concept of a real or imaginary object is equivalent to declaring that a certain operation, corresponding to the concept, _if_ performed upon that object, _would_ (certainly, or probably, or possibly, according to the mode of predication) be followed by a result of a definite general description. {end Peirce quote in Osborne}” **To predicate is to predict.** This is the relation to the 'absolute object', at the limit of infinite semiosis, that is established by final logical interpretants. (Osborne, _Philosophy and Cultural Theory_, my emphasis in bold, p. 44).] Something is said _of_ something, and the link established between the two elaborates an intuition (i.e. an imagined option) which actualizes itself, however whimsical.^[This is the challenge almost impossible to overcome in "don't think of a white bear". An extended note on this can be found in [[This sentence is not true]].] Contemporary attention is scattered; anticontinuous (Jonathan Crary). This project employs different writing strategies, and therefore demands and offers different reading strategies. What is _wreading_ if not _riting_?^[“Wreading and riting” was the title of a [[WdKA]] class we gave with Sami Hammana, Sanne Koevoets and Inigo Wilkins during the fall of 2022. It became a permanent theme-track of the HP, and was later also taught with Rana Hamadeh and Martina Raponi.] And if writing is–in the practice, behind closed doors–notoriously symptomatic of all kinds of stoppages (i.e. stubborn, eternally-returning, recursive, and undoubtedly anticontinuous in its divine pretensions of fluid flow), then why not let that (_what_?) be so? This piece of writing introduces and encourages the idea that what follows may be read non-linearly. It seems some kind of comfort has been found in the hyperlink: the [[Concept]] is finally true to itself,^[In its eternal postponement of meaning.] it no longer needs to pretend to point to the inauguration of something to come; it can now quite literally just point and be done with it (see also: [[E Pointing]]). Please feel free to be anticontinous (perhaps even [[Coterminous]] with me) and make use of the hyperlink offers made available, let the pointing guide otherwise unavoidable inclinations. You know what you’ll follow. Different [[Choice sequences]] (and slightly different projects) will emerge, depending on how you follow along and how much time you spend on following. As this something which continues to be, _changes_ ([[Hegel]] and [[Movement]]), we might notice how what individuating things do is deviate—or _dividuate_—from the norm. As Paul North puts it: >“...the principle of individuation comes to seem like an epiphenomenon of likeness, as well as an unfortunate disavowal of it. A pattern of traits extending well beyond them in time, place, and thingness, individuals nonetheless insist on their individuality.” > >_Bizarre-privileged objects in the Universe_, p. 39). All we know is deviation, hindered by habit (or [[Difference and Repetition]]). Or habit hindered by habit. Or [[Habit]]. Whatever the case, the singularity of this project is that it lays bare the fact that it is [[Circular]] and does not know exactly where it starts. ### Anticontinuous: b. method Following [[Mattin]], “If Brecht wanted to break the fourth wall ... I am instead interested in breaking the inner fourth wall: the self-perception that we as individuals are stable selves and the belief that we are already subjects with agency.” ([[Social Dissonance]], p. 195). Our belief in the possibility of change is coupled with a sustained hallucination about stability (cf. [[Parmenides]] and [[Heraclitus]]), as we very clearly see in the case [[Illusion]]s. As [[Mattin]] shows through his concepts of “spectral objectivity” (the action-oriented public world of possibilities that we all purportedly have access to and can freely engage in, the ideological open playfield, so to speak) and "phantom subjectivity" (the coherent and stable self; the liberal subject), these transparencies are based on “processes of reification (value production and selfhood), but these produce further Noise that we don't seem to want to acknowledge.” (see also: https://krisis.eu/article/view/38258/35905). This sentence is crucial in a way that Mattin perhaps didn’t intend: “we don't seem to want to acknowledge” is essentially saying “it looks like we are negating aspects of ourselves”—which is certainly the case, as ‘complete’ transparency is impossible. But as he continues: “The reifications arising from spectral objectivity and phantom subjectivity produce a condensation of selfhood, a personification that tries at all costs to avoid exhibiting its porous, fragile, and unstable character.” (pp. 196-7), we need to understand that these are the hallmark unavoidable pitfalls of organisms: an organism that doesn’t _organize_ itself, in necessarily self-contradicting and fragmented ways, does not survive. All organisms possess a self-model, as well as engage in all manners of mimicry: they lie, to themselves and others. We cannot arrive at “transparency.” The stick always bends underwater. Mattin’s argument, while not wanting to, falls prey to the myth of the given. However, I need to say that I agree with almost everything Mattin brings up, but not necessarily with the use of metaphors such as _illusory_, _spectral_ or _phantom_. (See: [[Spectre]], [[Geist]]). The problem is, again, as shown by [[Illusion]]s and the functional nature they share with [[Concept]]s, how ghostly, spectral, phantom things are used _ad nauseam_ throughout philosophy to denote “unreality,” while they are, in fact, the very essence^[ON; being, see note on [[Cicero]], I thank Kyrke for pointing this out to me (OZSW writing retreat 2022).] of everything we are _interested_ in (inter-esse). Continue writing on _Against Method_ (Feyerabend). #todo ### Anticontinuous: c. the _canon_ How to show _others_—superiors and also, even, charitable readers—that the canon is but _one_ option among many? One has to be familiar, eloquent _and_ [[Interest]]ed in the canon, and one has to, moreover, be willing to expound something else. Triple vision is required: the canon, its pitfalls, _and_ the alternative of something else. Also, on continuity and AI: >“As Kate Crawford put it in her recent book, _Atlas of AI_, mug shots and other police data are the “urtext of the current approach to making AI.” Justin Joque, in his forthcoming book _Revolutionary Mathematics_, calls the statistics on which these methods are based “the mathematics of capitalist orthodoxy.” AI systems trap us in a kind of collective solipsism, taking our own judgments and actions and surrounding us with quantitatively warped versions of them, presenting the world to us through a strange lens both tailored to us “personally” and completely alien.” > Leif Weather, “AI Critique 2.0”, _LA Review of Books_, September 1, 2021. #todo %% “Hui’s opening section lays the theoretical groundwork for the rest of the book by outlining two distinct modes of thought regarding technical activity and, by extension, human-nature relations. In Europe, there is a well-established metaphysics of tragedy dating back to the ancient Greeks. Coming to full expression in the work of German Idealists like Schelling and Hegel, this tragic mode is defined by a logic of discontinuity that pervades the European tradition. Whether it be Sophocles’s Creon struggling against fate or Cézanne depicting Mont Saint-Victoire from multiple angles, Western culture is shot through with attempts to assert what Hegel called the “higher right of the Idea against nature.” While running the risk of being reductive in its broad characterizations (Hui even suggests at one point that the US and Europe should be treated as a singular entity where questions of art and philosophy are concerned), the book makes up for such overgeneralizations by highlighting the strengths of a comparative approach to philosophy and art. While Western thinking is defined by a logic of tragic discontinuity, its cultural cosmology structured by narrative tensions, Chinese thought exhibits a logic of oppositional continuity that is identified with the Daoist notion of _xuan_. This dynamic contains opposition, much like tragic thinking in the West, but it ultimately emphasizes continuity and harmony over discontinuity and historical rupture." [[Yuk Hui]] LA Review of books, Art and Cosmotechnics "Prospective readers should be warned that the rapid pace of Hui’s associative thinking can be rather disorienting." %% ### Anticontinuous: d. sick motherfucker See also: [[The Normal and the Pathological]], and comment on Cécile’s comment on Canguilhem: “he is the first one to have said “a patient should be acknowledged for their suffering, *in* their suffering”. How I rejoice in all those who have produced a _a philosophy of and for the sick_. Let us start here: we are all sick. Eternally sick. There’s nothing other than addressing how sick we are, to each other, all the time. Most philosophers, in general, are down with the sickness. The ones who are not are the sickest. But hold up: this is no self-pity nor deterministic embrace, this is a plea for accepting the sickness at such a tacit level that we may no longer need to address it. ¿Por qué escribo en inglës? What I do, with pills, is [[Artificial intelligence]]: I need to constantly check whether I feel my cognitive level is “correct” or not. If I project a counterfactual into the future: does it feel like I am overly pessimistic? Am I really just pessimistic, and do the pills improve it? Does it matter? Maybe this thesis should have been be “A philosophy of endocrinology in a minor key” (partly inspired by Kusters’ _A Philosophy of Madness_). Hormones are in words and words are in hormones. Without succumbing to a deflationary materialism, but accepting that we can say something about the functionality of the human body and its evolution: we know that our feelings sit within our physiology. At the same time, we tend to guide ourselves by distributed, socialized concepts and their imagined intersubjective stability. This stability (to know that sadness means the same for you as it does for me), rests on supposedly shared, common feelings such as joy, regret and resentment. Because you have a face, I have a face. Again, despite their apparently transcendent immateriality, their intellectually dominant conceptuality: concepts are housed by our physiology. My intention with this text is to sketch out some of the lines that can be considered for a philosophy of endocrinology, something that I have rarely seen on paper besides in some of the examples that I will quote (e.g, _A Philosophy of Madness_, _Writing on Drugs_, or _Testo Junkie_). This project started out as as a philosophy artificial intelligence and due to the turns that life takes it ended up becoming rather different because I suddenly became (semi)diagnosed^[The diagnosis remains unclear, a working hypothesis.] with a strange and rare condition. What became of me then was not only another person but specifically a person that on the one hand now has the unfortunate fate of depending on medication for survival, but at the same time—and this is what I’ve often optimistically underlined in conversation—that the replacement of the corticosteroids that my body doesn’t seem to produce provides me with a very specific and very important window from which to understand and the stability or instability of emotions, the drives and motivations that guide our intuitions and our feelings of engagement with reality. Many of the physiological-origin-sources of depression, alienation and the feeling of ‘not belonging’ in reality are incredibly hormone-based. So, this is as much an ongoing exploration, as it is a reflection, as it is a set of guidelines to inspire all those to think about the chemical basis of their state of mind. I don’t seek to reduce the complexity of our social cultural experience to a simple statement of chemical terms, or pretend any kind of a periodic table of emotions.^[During a presentation (Feb 28 2024), Andy Clark jokingly pointed to this idea: ![[andy clark periodic table smaller.png|300]] The pitfalls of this, as reflected upon in [[Score]], are clear.] But the desire is to make ourselves more into xpectators, and accepting of the fact that whenever we may feel challenged demotivated estranged dissociative abstracted from reality there doesn’t necessarily have to be by a logical reason for this it can all just be a simple hormonal fluctuation. I’m not saying something new here, we all know that the vortex of subjectivity is guided by and based precisely on indeterminacy and inexactness, self-fractalization and a move towards the unknown, with a kind of strange dialectic retroactive conversation. Because we have incomplete information about the future we necessarily move towards the unknown. The industrious complex that we build for ourselves as “identity” is nothing but a resilient simulation that pretends to reach into the future. Again, without meaning to sound reductive, it is interesting to think about the fact that we are matryoshka dolls of models within models within models within models each guiding the next and each dependant on the next. Of course the principle of supervenience applies here, but what fascinates me in my current condition of steroid replacement is the fact that the entire world changes depending on the amount of mg of hydrocortisone and fludrocortisone I ingest or don’t. Or, the (possible) madness of subjectivity, as Kusters describes it: “the socially awkward expression of a desire for infinity in a world that defines itself as finite.” (Madness, p. xxii). What continues to fascinate me, because it occurs on a daily basis, is the fact that my self-image; my subjectivity; my sense of identity; a sense of relationship to the world and to other people out there, drastically changes day by day depending on the time of the day and depending on whether my body needs more or less steroids. The even more confusing part, which is also entertaining, is not really being able to decide or allocate a specific weight to a specific identity but actually finding comfort in the one that feels the ‘strongest.’ Constantly threatened by the fear of actually that one being fuelled by an excessive amount of steroids that my body should not be parsing. This is the medical reality that most people who know anything about steroids have come across the fact that corticoteroids, in excess, do terrible damage. Most cells in our body have receptors for steroids, steroids are the key that opens and unravels a whole series of intricate protein-b(l)ending processes. Consume too much and you will be left with a myriad of undesirable side-effects. Consume too little and walk the tight-rope of malaise, listlessness and, at worse, edging death. A lot of the things I will talk about reflect on my experiences but also the experiences of other patients that have been in touch with. I cannot do justice to a comprehensive panorama of everything that this condition entails philosophically but I can try to make an attempt at least for the sake of others finding identification and rest in the grammatization of something ungraspable. Continue reading: [[07 Phenomenology of Sick Spirit]]. %% Looking into madness, sickness in different examples: Kant, Nietzsche, Klossowski on Nietzsche, Deleuze, Artaud, who's the other guy Deleuze wrote about... Etc. #todo ### On the continuity and clarity of thought (self-narration is confabulation) There is a very remarkable thing that is interesting to mention with regard to housing stands against or with or any other formulation that marks our relationship with the universe. Depending on how much cortisol and aldosterone is running through my system I will be a person who has the _religion_ to do one thing or another. And this is not binary of course it’s not yes or no it’s not input output it’s not something that we can talk about as day and night but the difference is a striking as day and night. The main point is to say that the same thing can mean very different things depending on the levels of hormones running through your system. On the one hand a sunny day may look like an invitation to go outside to engage in activities that the weather allows for and to move about unhindered by the thought that it may rain or it may get cold or it may be too windy etc. On the other hand and a sunny day main mean how come I cannot fathom the thought to do anything pleasant, and is the mocking justice of this beautiful day is threatening, exhaustively bright, this disgustingly inviting day outside my window just, basically, wants to kill me. There is also the writing of this text which right now feels like an activity that has a particular type of semantic weight, a particular type of meaning in the world. just the feeling that other people might be interested in Reading even if it's just that basic feeling even if it just means somebody will read these words. At the times I do not feel the way I do right now because of hormonal fluctuations I have an absolute abhorrance about the idea that somebody may read these thoughts and about the fact that I'm actually wasting somebody's time by making them look at these words in front of them. I am ashamed disgusted and deeply estranged from myself as a member of the reading/writing/speaking community. It is a strange situation one in which perhaps because we are biased towards positivity and sharing and wanting to build communities and wanting to be with each other and wanting to simply just communicate, I guess, I choose to think that I should rely more on the Moments during which I feel positively towards the idea of writing and sharing. On the other hand the thought of course always creeps in: what if the real self is the nihilist what if the real self is the one that just thinks putting an end to things might be the better alternative for all. At the risk of this sounding too sappy what I mean to say is perhaps when they say that you should sleep on it and perhaps some they say that you should not make decisions under stressful conditions etc what you should actually think about this not the fact that you cannot rely on yourself but just literally that the fuel of your hormones has run out. #todo Charles mills the racial contract (for medical supervision) Guerrino Mazzola on diagrams crossover Bacon/Deleuze Two questions: critical noise versions mutually exclusive? Reference and Derrida on presence--> reference is also what is left unsaid about it, not an index Sonic episteme robin james [[Stephen Wolfram]] on observer having to assume continuity, min 35 here: https://youtu.be/Lg-xvgPtysY Also look at: https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2021/03/what-is-consciousness-some-new-perspectives-from-our-physics-project/ ----------- backwards vertigo and reverse nostalgia backwards vertigo is the feeling that you get that the time transcurred in "your" lifetime is precipitating back upon you. With everything that has passed, how can it be possible to go on? Reverse nostalgia is the desire for time to have transcurred. The feeling expressed itself the best in my experience during the first year of my loving relationship with my partner. It did not make sense that I loved him so much, so I desired for time to have transcurred for much longer, so my feelings would be adequate. ____________ ## [[Coterminous]] ## Management "a thesis about self-management requires self management" Beun reference endo thesis Learning how to mimic the circadian rhythm of cortisol is like learning to tune an instrument. Before you even knew you knew notes. Notes and dissonances are the textures of experience, and the medication is the way to tune them. Mind you, I do not mean that notes are the preferred state, and neither that dissonances are the 'negative' or unwanted states. They both matter, they are also not opposed in a binary way, they're simply a metaphor for the combination of experiential textures, which is also a metaphor. Managing this ### Hormonal fluctuations and change in perspectives Sitting across my best friend, partner and lover at the dinner table can feel like a) the most valuable thing in the world, two minds becoming one, strategically aligning energies for feeding together ect etc etc. Or it can feel like b) the biggest sadness: we cannot cope, and we need to stop and feed, and we chew and we veer towards each other because we hate ourselves, etc. Or walking with my brother and talking about our complicated childhood: a) a loving experience of siblingship, we help each other, we reinterpret and reintegrate memories, we cleanse the past and change our selves. Or b) the most fucked up thing: why did we have to suffer so much,.is this the worst of all possible worlds? We are still dealing with the backlash of our parents' careless choices, we are trapped in their lingering. Philosophy, same: a) the most.wonderful of activities, b) a paranoid, neurotic strange series of mental acrobatics that is good for nothing other than ego-stroking. [[Predictive processing and metaphysical views of the self]] they suggest on p.61: First, that the self, or an illusion of it, cannot be constant, and must be subject to change; we call this the *mutuability* constraint. Second that the self form part of a convolved multi-layered structure of a hierarchically organized mind; we call this the multi-layered constraint." See Anil Seth on the self and interoception, PP See Fletcher and Frith on schizophrenia and PP "At every moment chaos is still pursuing its work in our mind: concepts, images, feelings are there juxtaposed fortuitously, thrown together pell-mell. In this way, relations that astonish the mind are created: the mind recalls sometlung similar, it feels ajavor, it retains and elaborates both according to its art and its knowledge. - Here is the last small fragment of the world where something new is produced, at least as far as the human eye is concerned. In sum, here again it is a matter of a new chemical combination, which as yet has no parallel in the becoming of the world." [[Nietzsche]], [[Klossowski]] "What does a philosophical existence mean for us today? Isn't it almost a way of withdrawing? A kind of evasion? And for someone who lives that way, apart and in complete simplicity, is it likely that he has indicated the best path to follow for his own knowledge? Would he not have had to experiment with a hundred different ways of living to be authorized to speak of the value of life?" p1 [[Klossowski]] ----------------- ________________ I sent this message to Eden "In my case it's because of this whole health madness, I'm doing a big turn with my research because of the Addison's madness, it's so unreal to change your personality/perspective/feeling of self day by day, hour by hour, because of something as simple/complex as the levels of corticosteroids in your system. Because the illness is rare, this is really understudied, so I'm gonna write about it for my PhD. What is crucial in what I'm discovering is that moods (which are determined by salt, glucose, etc etc, which are determined by steroids) determine your decisions far beyond what you actually imagine to be deciding. Pretty grim for any glimpse of "free will", but hey, I think we're all pretty sure "freedom" as such is an impossible mirage we can only strive for, right? You feel bad, which makes you find a reason why you feel bad, and you think there's a reason, but really you just feel bad. So you might make decisions based on that feeling, which has nothing to do with what you should actually be deciding. Down the line this whole thing is bringing me to a new understanding of "intelligence" (which is basically my research topic for the PhD) and the new turn I'm giving it is by defining it as: the ability to turn complexity into simplicity and vice versa. In my case, when the energies are low, the ability to deal with complexity decreases dramatically, and simplicity is no longer viable in any way (so making decisions becomes really difficult). Anyway, now I'm just ranting away, would need to give you more context, haha. Would love to have a beer over it soon if you want! Really curious to hear about your project too!!🥰" _______ "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — ‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood." p7 [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]] in Self-Reliance. It's also what [[Kanye]] says: "Name one genius who ain't crazy." Life of Pablo and also: "one risks being understood" here: [[Misosophy]], [[Metaphysics]], [[Rest]], [[Real and imaginary]], [[Poetry]], [[Simplicity]] "[[Nietzsche]]'s first works [reveal] an original conception of philosophy and philosophical 'style'. ... Previously philosophy and science, in the desire to speak 'properly' and demonstrate without using images or similes in order to be convincing, repressed metaphor and confined it to the poetic sphere. The philosopher resorted to metaphor only for didactic reasons or as a stopgap, and with great caution. By bestowing highly precise limits on the metaphorical he was able to hide the fact that the conceptual is itself metaphorical. ... [[Nietzsche]] inaugurates a type of philosophy which deliberately uses metaphors, at the risk of being confused with poetry. Such a confusion would not be regrettable in [[Nietzsche]]'s eyes: for the opposition between philosophy and poetry derives from metaphysical thinking; it is based on the ficticious separation of the real and the imaginary, on the no less ficticious separation of the 'faculties'. Philosophy is a form of poetry: speaking in metaphors makes language find its most natural form of expression once more, 'the most accurate, the truest, the simplest' (EH, 'Why I Write Such Excellent Books', Z, 3) means of figurative expression." p. 17-18 [[Sarah Kofman]] in [[Nietzsche and Metaphor]] ________________ "“Causal explanation is first and foremost a form of social interaction. One speaks of giving causal explanations, but not attributions, perceptions, comprehensions, categorizations, or memories. The verb to explain is a three-place predicate: Someone explains something to someone. Causal explanation takes the form of conversation and is thus subject to the rules of conversation.” — Hilton [1990]." found here https://arxiv.org/pdf/1712.00547.pdf ________ %% ### Anticontinuous: periodization and historicity, Zalamea and catastrophe %% Zalamea: After Modernism and Postmodernism, Transmodernism has been advocated as a more faithful coining for our plastic and transient age. Introduced by the Spanish philosopher Rosa María Rodríguez Magda, the term “Transmodernity” – both diachronic and methodological – hopes to reintegrate many awkward postmodern differentials, to balance some supposed breaks with more in-depth sutures, to counter relativism with a topological logic where some “universal relatives” provide invariants beyond the flux of transformations. In many ways, Peirce’s architectonic system of philosophy included already most of the salient features of Transmodernity, a situation which perhaps explains the unusual relevance of Peirce’s thought in the beginning of a new millennium. In fact, Peirce’s system is essentially topological, open to all sorts of continuous transformations (pragmatic maxim, triadic semiotic, classifications of sciences, synechism, etc), and the system is particularly able to represent a bimodal net (Petitot) of both differentials and invariants, providing a full understanding of the TRANS prefix. file:///Users/soniadejager/Downloads/ejpap-971.pdf also metamodernism, and also immediacy Anna Kornbluh One of the virtues of Peircean pragmati(ci)sm, and, in particular of the fully modalized pragmaticist maxim, consists, however, in making possible it to reintegrate anew the multiple in the one, --> relate to Gerald Raunig: there is only multiplicity,. and multiplicity makes multiplicity. “The catastrophe—Benjamin emphatically uses the singular—is not to be understood as a sudden event that brings this world to an end but is to be recognized in the persistent continuity of the “given” (das Gegebene). Both the uneventful catastrophes interwoven with everyday life and the catastrophic events looming on the horizon point to a single catastrophe that repeats itself on a daily basis: the brutal but steadily withdrawing fact that the historical process that produces these catastrophes continues to take its course uninterrupted.” (Vandeputte 2023, p. 60). “The historical task, so Benjamin proposes here for the first time, is to be understood neither as a contribution to its progression nor as a revolutionary completion of its development; the task is to be grasped not as an _aufheben_ but as an _aufhalten_, a bringing to a halt of catastrophic history—or what is described here as the “limitation” (_befristen_) of its duration (GS,4:928). ... The political task is conceived here not as a furthering or completion of world history but as its end: stripped to a bare minimum, without the means to aim at the positive realization of a better world, the task of politics is to put an end to the world as it is given.” (ibid. pp. 61-62). {footnote by Vandeputte: Leaving the obvious differences in content out of consideration, Benjamin’s formulation of the historico-political task resonates in a remarkable way with those of contemporary theorists such as Denise Ferreira da Silva, who describes the ethics at stake in her work as one that “instead of the betterment of the World as we know it aims at its end” (“Toward a Black Feminist Poethics,” 82).} “The political task of realizing an “uncatastrophic order of human relations” {Unger} would thus have to be understood not as a contribution to the course of empirical history but as the task of its interruption. In responding to this task, thought would have to identify the mode and possibility of such interruption in the face of persistent continuity and resistance to transformation.” (ibid. p. 68). ________ Note: this is to be either an appendix or a preamble to the introduction, in the website version of the project, which can be read non-linearly, as opposed to the thesis. %% _________ ### Footnotes