**Links to**: [[Repression]], [[05 Prediction]], [[Hume]], [[Kant]], [[Freud]], [[Lacan]], [[Deleuze]], [[Guattari]], [[Herbert Marcuse]], [[Psychoanalysis]], [[Capitalism]], [[Desire and Capital]], [[Postcapitalist Desire]]. [[Desideratum]]: _that_ thing which is desired. [[Depression]]. [[Interest]], [[Style]], [[Drive]], [[Ethics]], [[Attention]]. ### [[Postulate]]/[[Question]]: What (do) we _want_(?) ### desire (n.): literally _of/from the stars_. Desire (n.): a sideral effect. >“to wish or long for, express a wish to obtain,” c. 1200, _desiren_, from Old French _desirrer_ (12c.) “wish, desire, long for,” from Latin _desiderare_ “long for, wish for; demand, expect,” the original sense perhaps being “await what the stars will bring,” from the phrase _de sidere_ “from the stars,” from _sidus_ (genitive _sideris_) “heavenly body, star, constellation.” (**See also**: [[Consider]]). >“All style reiterates a primary writing, that of the ‘drives’. Thus it is as vain to seek to impose a canonical model on writing as it is futile to seek to legislate universally in morality: **each _must_ do only what he _can_**.” **[[Sarah Kofman]]** in [[Nietzsche and Metaphor]], pp. 2-3, translator notes he chose “drives” for the French “instincts”, in light of Freudian _Triebe_. (My emphasis in bold). >“... if desire is repressed, it is because every position of desire, no matter how small, is capable of calling into question the established order of a society... ” **Deleuze and Guattari**, _Anti-Oedipus_ (quote added by Ryan to the _Desire and Capital_ website). >1) You never desire a thing, always an ensemble, which one constructs. >2) The unconscious is not a theater, it functions more like a factory, a machine. >3) Delirium is not about your mom or dad, you go delirious over the world, over everything. It’s not a family matter. >4) Desire establishes itself and forms assemblages, it’s not reducible to your mom or dad. **Deleuze** in the ABC. >“To reclaim a real political agency means first of all accepting our insertion at the level of desire in the remorseless meat-grinder of Capital.” **M. Fisher**, Capitalist Realism, 2009. >“Neither a desire nor an aversion, therefore, results from a cognition of those things that are entirely indifferent to me.” **Otabe, T**. paraphrasing Baumgarten, 2020. >Elija entre la ignorancia o la indeferencia: “no sé, ni me importa.” **Chiste**. >In the _Phenomenology of Spirit_, Hegel: “self-consciousness is desire itself” finding its “satisfaction” in another self-consciousness. **R. Pippin.** As _interesselosigkeit_ is impossible, even in a state of attentional-dissolution ([[Meditation]], [[So-called altered states]], [[Psychosis]], etc.): all is **desire** (because all is [[Bias]], [[Vantagepointillism]], inclination, positionality, etc.). %% #todo _Below are only notes._ ### Please note the following notes: Difference between _desire_ and _pleasure_ in Deleuze: pleasure is the end of desire, desire goes on and on and on. Because we are _coupled_, disinterest is impossible. There is always a tendency (prediction). See: [[10 Bias, or Falling into Place]], [[06 Principle of Sufficient Interest]], [[Principle of indifference]] and [[Interest]]. Enjoyment is not pleasure? (Brassier). Labor of enjoyment in Samo Tomisic’s work. Marcuse and one-dimensionality, Eros, desire. - what is freedom without domination? - domination of conditions: nature - REFUSE TO LOSE - collective refusal? How when all desires are askew? - ______________ ### The Kantian [[Sublime]]: and the "“power of desire”." __________ ### [[Attention]]: SEP entry on attention "It is more controversial to claim, as the advocates of this theory do, that “attention is nothing but precision optimization in hierarchical inference.” (Hohwy, 1014, p.244, citing Feldman & Friston, 2010). Ransom _et al_. have suggested that, by taking attention _always_ to be precision optimization, this theory struggles to account for certain forms of voluntary attention (Ransom _et al_. 2017). Clark has suggested that this challenge can be met if the sources of voluntary attention are identified with beliefs, rather than desires (Clark, 2017)." _________ ### [[Speculation]] and desire Desire is, in many ways, a condition composed of speculative mechanics. Desire _predicts_, to higher and lesser self-conscious degrees, possible situations it is interested in and inclined towards (see also: [[10 Bias, or Falling into Place]]). If the subject, by definition, has desire (Desire is innate and pre-exists: desiring machines, machinic unconscious)responding to "it's not all lack", but it can also be lack..) and if from many desiring subjects we observe regulative invisible hands emerging, can we say this desire to be speculative? It is only a side effect--an undesirable one, most often: climate disaster, inequality, etc.--it is by no means a collective decision. And if the collective speculative subject required for a large-scale response to large-scale critical demands does yet not exist[^1], how are we to frame one in terms of speculation and desire? >"In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations." [[Social Dissonance]]: "TC’s basic de«nition of programmatism runs as follows: ‘[P]rogramme would entail what is commonly understood as “autonomous organisation”. The proletariat can only be revolutionary by recognising itself as a class, and it recognises itself as such in every con¿ict and even more so in a context where its existence as a class is the situation that it has to confront in the reproduction of capital.’ Théorie Communiste, ‘Self-organisation is the «rst act of revolution it then becomes an obstacle which the revolution has to overcome’, . ‘" p. 56 footnote, check the context again. (Chapter 1, [[Communist Manifesto]], Marx and Engels, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm, retrieved 12 October 2022). [[Desire]] and [[Speculation]]. The concept of [[Interest]] (and [[Class interest]]) offers an interesting possibility. As [[Deleuze]] says in "Intellectuals and power" ....... In the meritocratic, liberalist condition, we work against our [[Interest]]. But let us here deal with speculation and desire first. [[Speculation]] might be considered as something of an entirely different nature to that of desire. Albeit in unconscious concealment, occluded sometimes, desire as a fundamental condition ought to be transparent, immediate: desire _is_. "Desire implies want; it is the appetite of the mind, and as natural as hunger to the body.”[^2] On the other hand, speculation can be thought of as incomplete and partial: not transparent. It is a matter of abductive capacity and predictive accuracy, as well as a degree of disbelief: one must be open to a null hypothesis and also to a possible high level of surprise. It is interesting, at least for me, that their etymological roots in fact denote what could be read as crossed meanings: _desire_ being that which is wished of the stars rings closer to divination, and therefore speculation, than what speculation points to: the act of looking in a mirror, which, without its cultural association to divination practices, might actually resonate as being closer to the transparency of an [[Identity]] transformation. What is closer to the original if not a [[Mirror]] image? Desire is concealing, while speculation is revealing. But the opposite can also be true. (See also: [[A mirror, not a picture]], [[Reflection]], [[Schein]]). ### Reasons and Desires "Turning to meta-ethics, a vibrant debate exists over the relation of desires to reasons to act. According to one tradition, typically called ‘Humean’ or ‘Neo-Humean’, the existence of reasons to act depends on the existence of desires possessed by the agent who would act. Thus, my reason to drink hot chocolate depends on my desires, and likewise my reason to help a stranger depends on my desires, according to the Humean. Some have taken Humeanism to claim that reasons are identical to the having of desires (so that my reason to drink hot chocolate is the fact that I desire to drink hot chocolate) while others have taken Humeanism to claim that reasons are (typically) non-desire states of affairs that are reasons in virtue of their relations to desires (so that my reason to drink hot chocolate is that it tastes a certain way, but that it tastes a certain way is only a reason to drink hot chocolate because I desire to experience such tastes). Though related, these two positions have substantially different implications, as Mark Schroeder has argued (Schroeder 2007). Humeans have defended their position in several ways, but contemporary debate has focused in large part on an argument developed by Bernard Williams. Williams argues that only Humeanism can explain the relation between reasons and motivation: if one has a reason to act, then one can act for that reason, Williams holds. But this is only guaranteed if having a reason to act involves having a desire. Hence reasons to act depend on the existence of desires (Williams 1981). Taking a somewhat different approach, Mark Schroeder argues that, when properly formulated, Humeanism simply fits best with our range of intuitions about what reasons there are to act and the ways in which these reasons are or are not contingent on facts about our psychologies (Schroeder 2007). Attacks on the Humean position have often been motivated by moral considerations: one does not need to have any desires whatsoever (not desires properly so-called, at any rate) in order to have a reason to do what is moral, according to some anti-Humeans, and so this particular reason to act, at least, is not in any way dependent upon desires (e.g., Schueler 1995). A more fundamental attack has been launched by Christine Korsgaard, who argues that, if it is true that there is a reason to act on one's desires, then this is a fundamental evaluative fact—and so there is no reason to be skeptical about parallel fundamental evaluative facts that entail there are reasons independent of one's desires (Korsgaard 1997). .... ### Praiseworthiness and Desires Within moral psychology, desire features prominently in a debate over the conditions for moral praiseworthiness and blameworthiness. According to a familiar Kantian doctrine, a person is only praiseworthy for doing the right thing if the person acts only from the motive of duty, and not from an “inclination” (a desire) to do the right thing (Kant 1964). Thus, if the right thing to do is to support microlending in Africa, and I do so, then I am praiseworthy only if I have acted out of my intellectual grasp of the fact that supporting microlending is my duty. If have acted out of a desire to feel good about myself, or even a desire to be kind or to work for justice, then I am not praiseworthy for doing the right thing. The thesis has also been defended by contemporary Kantians (e.g., Herman 1993, chapter 1). Opposing the familiar Kantian doctrine is work by Nomy Arpaly, who argues that praiseworthiness in fact requires acting on certain desires—namely, desires for what is in fact good (Arpaly 2002; see also Arpaly and Schroeder 2014). In Arpaly's view, acting rightly from a sense of duty is compatible with acting rightly in a way that is not praiseworthy at all, if one's view of duty is sufficiently mistaken that one ends up doing the right thing only by accident. Thus, if the right thing to do is to support microlending in Africa, and I do so, then I am praiseworthy according to Arpaly only if I have acted out of a desire to be kind (if that is the content of morality) or a desire to do what is just (if that is the content of morality). Between the contrasting views of Kant and Arpaly are the views of a number of virtue ethicists, Aristotle (perhaps) among them, who hold that a desire to do what is right and knowledge of the right are both required for an otherwise appropriate act to be praiseworthy (e.g., Aristotle 1999, Hursthouse 1999)." ## Wiki: "Deleuze and Guattari oppose the Freudian conception of the unconscious as a representational "theater", instead favoring a productive "factory" model: desire is not an imaginary force based on lack, but a real, productive force. They describe the machinic nature of desire as a kind of "desiring-machine" that functions as a circuit breaker in a larger "circuit" of various other machines to which it is connected. Meanwhile, the desiring-machine is also producing a flow of desire from itself. Deleuze and Guattari conceptualize a multi-functional universe composed of such machines all connected to each other: "There are no desiring-machines that exist outside the social machines that they form on a large scale; and no social machines without the desiring machines that inhabit them on a small scale."[1] Desiring-production is explosive: "there is no desiring-machine capable of being assembled without demolishing entire social sectors". The concept of desiring-production is part of Deleuze and Guattari's more general appropriation of Friedrich Nietzsche's formulation of the will to power. In both concepts, a pleasurable force of appropriation of what is outside oneself, incorporating into oneself what is other than oneself, characterizes the essential process of all life. Similarly, a kind of reverse force of "forgetting" in Nietzsche and the body without organs in Deleuze and Guattari disavows the will to power and desiring-production, attempting to realize the ideal of a hermetic subject. Thenceforth, while very interested by Wilhelm Reich's fundamental question—why did the masses desire fascism?—they criticized his dualist theory leading to a rational social reality on one side, and an irrational desire reality on the other side. Anti-Œdipus was thus an attempt to think beyond Freudo-Marxism; and Deleuze and Guattari tried to do for Freud what Marx had done for Adam Smith. " ## Sonia: Schopenhauer's WILL TO LIVE, to Nietszche's Will to power, to D&G's desire # Desire (motivation: prediction) only works when your hormones are aligned. _______ __________ ### [[Deleuze]] "Writing in 1977, Gilles Deleuze offers the most succinct summary of how such a desire functions, explicitly in contrast to Foucauldian “pleasure”: [T]here is no subject of desire, and no object either. The objectivity of desire itself is only its flows. There is never enough desire. Desire is the system of a-signifying signs out of which unconscious flows are produced in a social-historical field. Every unfolding of desire, in whatever place it may occur, such as a family or a school in the neighbourhood, tests the established order and sends shock waves through the social field as a whole. Desire is revolutionary because it is always seeking more connections. (Deleuze 2006, 81)." From krisis Acid Communism text. ______ ### [[Predictive processing]] "Part II of Surfing Uncertainty includes Chapters 4–7, which are the philosoph- ically richest. The focus is on action, and the claim Clark puts forward is that PP is the ideal explanatory partner for embodied theories of cognition. Relying on many case studies and concepts from machine learning, computational neuroscience and embodied cognitive science, Clark tries to work out how PP might reconfigure tra- ditional puzzles about mind. Among other issues, he explores whether there is room for desire and reward in PP’s account of action (Chapter 4), how we grasp the intentions of others by simulating them (Chapter 5), how we should understand the representations posited by PP (Chapter 6), and how PP explains emotion and psychiatric disorders like schizophrenia and autism, and even helps us make progress towards a solution to the hard problem’ of consciousness (Chapter 7)" Matteo Colombo review of [[Surfing Uncertainty]]. _______ ### Footnotes [^1]: The "required subject—a collective subject—does not exist, yet the crisis, like all the other global crises we're now facing, demands that it be constructed” ([[Mark Fisher]], [[Capitalist Realism]] 2009, 66). [^2]: In Capital Vol. 1, Part I: Commodities and Money, [[Marx]] says "The nature of such wants, whether, for instance, they spring from the stomach or from fancy, makes no difference" and after this quotes Barbon, “Desire implies want, it is the appetite of the mind, and as natural as hunger to the body... The greatest number (of things) have their value from supplying the wants of the mind.” Nicholas Barbon: “A Discourse Concerning Coining the New Money Lighter. In Answer to Mr. Locke’s Considerations”, London, 1696, pp. 2, 3. Retrieved from: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm 12 October 2022. %% > In [[Sven Lütticken]]'s “Shine and Schein” e-flux article, 2015: > ![[Pasted image 20221020135608.png|400]]   ### Footnotes