File spoon-archives/deleuze-guattari.archive/deleuze-guattari_1996/96-08-12.171, message 136


Date: Fri, 02 Aug 1996 19:45:28 +0100
From: "Steve.Devos" <steve.devos-AT-dial.pipex.com>
Subject: Re: Machining theo-logics 


Greg J. Seigworth wrote:
> 
> Hmm ... interesting, Steve: in the post following the post where you
> attempt to provide further support for your argument that belief (and
> faith) are 'dangerous irrelevances,' you quote from Deleuze's _Empiricism
> and Subjectivity_.  A book where Deleuze begins, in the preface to the
> English-language edition, by listing Hume's most essential and creative
> accomplishments: first among them--establishing "the concept of belief and
> put[ting] it in the place of knowledge" (p.ix).  In fact, _E&S_ (re)writes
> a theory of the subject in terms of belief and invention (& anticipation),
> putting experience and experiment into a spin-cycle, wondering at what
> frequency reason and imagination resonate, etc.  Though Deleuze says that
> Hume has 'laicized belief,' neither of them is ready to throw out the
> divine with the dishwater.  In the paragraph following your quote (which
> actually isn't all that damning: Deleuze is just, more or less, ruling out
> those [established?] religions that reign in all flights of fancy and
> leaps of pure imagination), Deleuze--through Hume's essays "On the
> Immortality of the Soul" and "The Essay on Miracles"--finds a place for
> belief in something divine (narrow though it may be but impossibly wide at
> the same time).  But I'm not quoting: pp.76-77 for those with the book
> handy and are so inclined.  Anyway ... I was trying to figure out how you
> reconcile your apparent hostility toward the concept of belief with your
> reading of _Empiricism and Subjectivity_?
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Greg
> 
> (who is currently working on a list of post-Enlightenment atrocities to
> lend force to whatever argument I'm making.  They're seeming so popular
> recently; I figure the longest list wins.  Damn!  Wouldn't you know it?  I
> cannot find my copy of J.G. Ballard's _Atrocity Exhibition_ when I'd like
> to throw a witty quote in somewhere.)

Greg:
The point at which the conjunction of Hume and Deleuze becomes interesting is in 
the moment when empiricism appears - `He asked about the conditions which 
legitimate belief, and on the basis of this investigation sketched out a theory 
of probabilities....' What interests me is the notion of probabilities and 
relations.

Cause and anti-cause:
Hume argued that cause is a constant conjunction. For example to state that X  
caused Y is not to state that X  from some internal state or power brought about 
the state Y. It is rather to say that events or objects of  type X are regularly 
followed by  events or objects of type Y. Humes argument  can be found in 
hundreds of  places, but it's better if  we read it in some historical context.

Hume is not actually responsible for the argument about the constant-conjunction 
attitude to causation, Newton was almost certainly unintentionally. The most 
important scientific discovery of Hume's day was Newton's theory of gravitation. 
Prior to Newton's discovery progressive scientists thought the world should be 
understood in terms of  mechanical forces and causes. But gravity does not fit 
within this `paradigm'  because it operates at a distence.  It was because of  
this that Leibnitz rejected Newton's theory of gravitation; a blatently 
reactionary  response in favour of occultism.  But the empirical and positivist 
 perspective became dominant.  As a result we learned to think that laws of 
gravity (nature) are regularities that can be said to describe  what happens in 
the universe.  From this it was decided that all causal laws are simply 
regularities.  For empiricists  the result of this was that we don't have to 
look for causes in nature but rather for probablity, regularity etc.... Laws of 
nature within the empirical frame of mind do not describe what must happen in 
the universe, but rather what does happen.  A scientist (a philosopher ?) as a 
result tries to find universal statements - theories, laws which cover events 
and objects as special cases.  The description and explanation of an event is 
something which can be derived from a general regularity - causes don't enter 
into it of course probabilty does - hence the interest in Deleuze's Hume text.

Is that clearer ? 

Theoretical entities - (beliefs) from black holes to gods.....

I believe  that an opposition to, (or at least a general intellectual caution 
around),  theoretical entities  is synonomous with this perspective.  Hume for 
example does not deny that the world is run by hidden causes, he suggests that 
they are nothing to do with us.  Out of curiousity we may look for fundemental 
particles but physics will not succeed, for fundemental causes will forever 
remain cloaked in obscurity....  In contemporary terms he's wrong but still its 
an interesting perspective.... What Deleuze typically does is to suggest that 
theories should be taken, almost literally, as experiments (see Dialogues p54 
-59 for example). To extend the discussion I'd suggest you need two additional 
concepts - acceptence and  empirical adequacy  -  science after all aims to give 
us a literally true version of  what the world is like - the acceptence of a 
scientific theory involves some kind of belief that it is true according to the 
evidence and that the theories have to be empirically adequate to be accepted as 
`true'. 

To explain this with some examples - both Hawking's and Penrose's theories about 
Black holes appear acceptable and indeed appear to be empirically adequate but 
as yet we have no  evidence that confirms either as being correct - to believe 
in either of them is consequently ridiculous.  Another example - an atomic 
accelerator 1000 light years long is needed to prove superstring theory,  almost 
impossible to imagine.  But there is no need to believe that all good theories 
are true nor do you have to believe that the entities that are proposed are real 
-  you have to be able to consider that the theories are empirically adequate - 
 in other words what a theory proposes about what is observable is true and 
makes sense. Theories are events and objects for prediction, research and 
passion, acceptence proposes a level of commitment and interpretation for 
example.....

I suppose you can argue that Aquinas with his `five ways'  attempts to 
theoretically prove the existence of some god or other but it scarcely stands 
as a contemporary proof,  indeed  its less acceptable  than the arguments about 
the base cosmology of the universe - big bang, inflation, steady state etc....

To conclude:
An empirical position is i'd suggest  anti-metaphysical, in that the proposal of 
the empricial adequacy of a theory is a good deal less acceptable that the 
argument for truth and that the acceptence of it, releases us from metaphysics. 
Pro-observation and anti-causal in that explanation does not necessarily lead to 
truth -  for example Baudrillard's theorisation of  the gulf war may be 
theoretically adequate but it doesn't help the people directly involved much. A 
scientifc example is of course the old story of Newton being unable to explain 
gravity - science as a result is not a matter of explanation. 

this is far too long - sorry - and i hope this is at least mostly coherent....

oh and thanks to Bas Van Fraassen for empirical adequacy....


steve.devos



   

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