Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 11:42:19
From: Stephen Arnott <sarnott-AT-metz.une.edu.au>
Subject: Notes on Relations


This is way too simplistic, but perhaps it's one limited way to look at it.
How do we reconcile Deleuze and Whitehead on relations, if we in fact want to?


Deleuze insists and never gives up insisting that _all_ relations are
external to their terms. He discovers this initially in Hume's empiricism,
and is delighted to find such a staunch anti-essentialism. It is not clear
from Deleuze's essay on Hume from where precisely he extracts this logic of
relations. The key passage seems to be from _A Treatise of Human Nature_
and concerns Hume's atomism. 

"Whatever is distinct, is distinguishable; and whatever is distinguishable,
is separable by the thought or imagination. All perceptions are distinct.
They are, therefore, distinguishable, and separate, and may be conceived as
separately existent, and may exist separately, without any contradiction or
absurdity" (634).

Deleuze never considers a real problem associated with such a logic, the
problem which physics calls one of 'simple position'. In fact we can never
speak of isolated entities and it is an abstraction to consider terms while
excluding their relations. Whitehead criticises the doctrine of external
relations on these grounds, and this is extended by some of the more recent
proponents of process metaphysics such as Nicholas Rescher.

	The question seems to boil down to whether an anti-essentialist philosophy
_has_ to insist on the externality of relations. Deleuze seems to think so,
but Whitehead clearly does not. If we compare external with internal
relations it can be useful to utilize the analogies of external with
contingent and internal with necessary. By holding that all relations are
external to their terms one is insisting on the contigent composition of
all assembled or aggregated entities, objects, ideas, groups, societies,
etc. The elements which a specific object brings together are contingently
arranged and could have been and could still be otherwise. This is not to
suggest that certain determining factors are not at work in these processes
of composition, and so we should not think that determinations are purely
arbitrary. As Deleuze is often at pains to show, there is always a
genealogy or geology to be revealed. We might think that this presents a
problem for Deleuze in his analyses of Spinoza, for how is he to reconcile
this essential unformed, undetermined element in the face of Spinoza's
well-known determinism. He solves this by locating the determinism in the
realm of encounters, which are always determined by the affects of the
subjects of these encounters. The relations which constitute these subjects
are, however, never fully determined and remain external and contingent.
	Whitehead, like Deleuze, is an anti-essentialist, and would, I think
countenance the view that the concrescence and prehensive processes which
constitute complex actual entities are contingent in the sense that we have
elaborated above. If there is an apparent disparity between Deleuze's
position and Whitehead's, in that the latter explicitly admits internal
relations into his system, I think that it is in the end only apparent and
we might account for it in the following way. For Whitehead, relations are
only internal when conceptualized retrospectively. For example, if we
consider a complex entity like a zebra, the relations which compose the
molecular elements necessary to the constitution of a zebra are internal,
but only to the extent that if they were otherwise then we would not
observe a zebra. The composition of elements and relations specific to a
zebra are internal, or essential, to that creature, only retrospectively.
Perhaps we might say then that relations considered in this fashion are
rationally, or logically internal, but metaphysically, or ontologically
external. They are logically necessary for the conceptualization of the
zebra, but ontologically contingent in the sense that the emergence or
concrescence of the zebra still contains an element of chance in that the
relations pertinent to the zebra are never fully determined.

One of the key observations Deleuze makes about relations is that if
internal relations are altered then the terms they relate are altered also.
Whereas, in the context of external relation, their alteration does not
indicate a change in their terms, but it still must indicate a change in
the complex entity which they aggregate. We might recall Deleuze and
Guattari's account of a philosophical concept from What is Philosophy? Each
concept is composed of what they call 'intensive ordinates' which are
related externally and which may be borrowed from other concepts, created
and added to other ordinates, subtracted, reordered and so on. However,
each concept maintains a consistency while its necessary ordinates remain
related. Likewise with any aggregated entity.

There is, however, a more serious problem, which is concerned with
causality. we cannot simply talk about elements that are related
synchronically, We must also consider actual entities which are related
diachronically, by means of causation. Whitehead, it is clear, does not
adhere to a Humean model of causality, but instead insists on the
importance of induction for the perpetuation of concrescence through time.
Hume (and Deleuze) would reject this resolutely - for Hume causality is
never a matter of induction, but always a principle of _custom_ or _habit_.
Deleuze too never allows for any necessary connection between causes and
their effects. I cannot discuss this any further here, but I suspect that
we might also resolve this difficulty by means of the method we empolyed to
dispense with the synchronic difficulty. Whitehead's philosophy seems to
admit an element of rationalism which is banished by Deleuze.

Having said this, Deleuze's philosophy does seem to implicitly admit
internal realtions as they are understood by Whitehead. Take, for example,
Deleuze's Spinozost definition of a body. He defines a body only by what it
can do, not by its organism, or in other words the specific arrangement of
its organs. It is defined by its capacity to affect (i.e. to produce
effects which affect other bodies and which therefore 'flavour' the types
of encounter this body can experience) and its capacity to be affected
(i.e. the ways in which the effects produced by other bodies affect it).
The body thus possesses characteristics which are essential to its
categorization, though still retrospectively in the manner of Whitehead.
Deleuze often citeds the example of a tick, a creature consisting of just
three affects: sensitivity to light, heat, and touch. These affects
_condition_ the life of the tick, map out its possibilities and
limitations, constitute, in other words, its essential nature and reveal
its internal relations, its consciousness or subjectivity in Whitehead's
terms. So while Deleuze explicitly insists that all relations are external
to their terms, internal relations of the Whitehead type are still evident
in his empiricism.



Steve