Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1999 10:34:15 -0500
From: "B. Metcalf" <bmetcalf-AT-ultranet.com>
Subject: Re: Notes on Relations



Steve,

I agree with what I take to be your point.  There has to be some kind of
internality if Deleuze's constructivism is to be more than contingent
relativism.  Deleuze can't see JUST external relations.  I think both
Deleuze and Whitehead account for a kind of internality at a level beneath
extension.  For Deleuze, there are two forms of repetition (which is
difference without a concept).  In one case, difference is only external to
the concept.  In the other case, the difference is internal to the Idea.
Individualtion has an *internal* resonance in the coupling between the two
heterogeneous series.  

However, we must be careful not to call this intensive internality
'internal relations', because the internality of Ideas are differentiated
but not differenciated.  Species do not resemble the differential relations
which are actualised in them, and organic parts do not resemble the
distinctive points which correspond to the relations.  Since, as you point
out, Deleuze does not see any necessary inductive connection---or, as I
look at it, no resemblance between the differentiated Idea and the
differenciated which it does not resemble---Deleuze cannot be said to see
any Internal Relations.  Whitehead's concrescences are inductive through
time, so he does see Internal Relations at the level of extension.

Beth
  

>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    
>
>