Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1999 20:50:11 -0500 (EST)
From: Inna Runova Semetsky <irs5-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: Re: Notes on Relations


Lovely that we returned to external relations that I lost any hope to
discuss further. Meanwhile I found the most clear and concise account re
relations external to their terms in his Essays Critical and clinical on
Whitman - much less abstract than usual and a clear affirmation of
non-philosophy existing in a positive relation to philosophy.
Inna. 

On Thu, 28 Jan 1999, Stephen Arnott wrote:

> 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    
> 
> 
>