Darkside Loyalism

Hume gives two different definitions of Causality.

The run runs:

‘ An object precedent and contiguous to another, and where all the objects s resembling the former are placed in relations of precedency and contiguity to those of the latter’

Or “

A Cause is an object precedent and contigous to another, such that the idea of one forms and idea of the other, and the impression of one, forms a more lively idea of the other’

Hume treats these two definitions as more or less synonymous.  However the last essay developed the detailed difference that exist between the to.

The first assumes that causes are related to something real. Namely the fact that each ‘reality’ (impression and the object it gives, are at once given and occluded, in themselves, and yet (as far as the mind is concerned) the necessary gateway to something else. Moreover in causality this facet gains the extra dimension that this ‘to come’ is open and uncertain. What is there s merely a sing of what will e. it means that will be must occur, and yet does not say way it will be. Causality impacts of the external. On what is not yet  known The cause is then the name for this set up when a regular pattern is established. That is then certain impressions are followed in and by others. It implies an aspect of reality, without ever demanding it. It expresses in one throw the openness of cause (a cause might be causing something else), and the  fact that that openness is bound up in a world. It expresses the fact that causality imposes a direction of vivacity. It forces it (in the name of realty) to be a flow. Each cause then leads to the idea of an effect. That is, each  assumes another to follow, another must follow, and follow hard on. The first cause, as each of these objects is complex and intricate moreover starts with the simple, be it undersood in the object or the  impression, and ends in the complex, albeit expressed within a flow. To be a cause is to have complexities that produce by beign a direction. I is as they area direction that they then allow one, on the next level as it were to codify the complex vivacities in within these thoughts are given, back once again to objects.

The Second methodolod of causing remains in the scope o ideas and impression directly. Ideas and not what is understood at impact on each other. One idea produces the next. Each idea then is only given as it is already racing ahead o think of the next idea.  Once this racing is given then the impression in the once, produces the idea in the other. The past becomes a plundering ground for defining the future. That is in what has happened, and its connection. In the links one can drawn between that past and the present. What was whisper  and subverts the impression in the present. The impression in the present runs along with this subversion. And yet in running along, in transferring they make demands of there own. In the past itself, in its memory, there was of course other ideas(other memories) that are being promoted. Likewise the present will contain dimension not necessarily in the past. The transfer the past demands of the presents vivacity (towards a future), comes the cost of also modifying the idea which was supposed to be simply lying in the past. The bright vivacious element, the element in past, present and future, will each time develop. It will clarify exactly where it is and what it might bring. Causality is less a once and for all , and more a perpetually retelling itself.  Moreover from the perspective of ideas, which treat directly with vivacity, and so lack the tedious demands and pretension of reality, there is really no limit to this process. The past lies available to be told and retold at whim.

The Past thereby becomes neither treacherous domain, or secret hidden in the depth of memory, and only the cautious philosopher can carefully chisel out. On the contrary in becomes a domain to be plundered at will. More importantly, locked into that past 9and measured within the general flow of vivacity) there are no doubt element, or dimension, causes waiting development or causes who subsequently development was occluded at least temporality by some more noisy concern. Now such causes are not repressed so much as silently present an apparent series or set of causes leads to a neat little transfer in the mind. They are  less ‘awaiting discovery’ and more full present, and yet would, if taken in themselves, and splices with other ideas in the present, breed differing possibilities and options. 

The Empiricist problem lies in the gap between these causes. The one poses the world as if it were reality. If the world were reality, and perceptions were the truth of that reality, then, the argument runs this is what that world would need to be. Hence it treats, with tongue moving over to cheek, elements of impressions and the ideas the spawn, as if they were dimension of a reality beyond them. It does this, in spite of the fact that the it also knows that underlying the perception (or merely somewhere else entirely different to them) there is probably a reality a dimension of physical reality, repleat with hidden springs, blind forces and emergent purposes, which can in itself never be thought. The reality one finds in impressions, is unthinkable without being an aspect of this second reality, and yet it is impossible to wonder at what aspect. It is better instead to simple assume that a parallelism exists, and to attempt to navigate that parallelism from within the complexities of perception.

   Hence the first great throw in causaility might be said to run: Simple (impression or object); To multiple the vivacious past and its memories), and then back to simple again (stable inferred futures, now thought of as somehow representing reality). The real world of objects is hen born from the many, as those many are taken to be conveying a certain aspect on the unites that give them.

The alternative tread of takes the simple idea, and is role very seriously. Causality is nothing to do with the real, which has no existence beyond that which the causal gives it in any case. It is the slippage of the simple ideas which really matters. These ideas are taken up the vivacities of the impression, and blending new pasts and new inferred futures from those vivacities. At any one time, as a cause imposes it flows upon a certain series of images, a stable form emerges. Hence an identity is stable and yet only possible as it sit astride myriad simple ideas (and associated impressions which demand (as the lest expression of a flow) a certain continuity to the form they produce . Each one of the simple forms so produces will then dove tail back into complex exchanges of its own, where its own definition or something like its definition will come to the fore. Nor is there anything doctrinal in the nature of this coming forward. The self as it is given with perception is a delusion. And yet that delusion is just what is needed to allow the mind to hold within itself the chaos of it passion. It is moreover one the vital if a human is allows to act morally (as morality the care one takes for ones own welfare are caught up together). The construction, which had no reality beyond its construing, once formed then have legs of its own, and be able to reshape the world it find itself within. Here it is very important to remember that the idea of the self is not an overarching I, so much as merely another idea (akin to a house of a divinity), from which ideas are associated, and feelings bred.

The second great stream of causality runs therefore from the multiple, to simplicity and then back to a very different multiple again, and yet does so without that single or simple reality ever itself holding the whip hand.

However at this point one needs to take so care. It is clear in these examples that the singularities and there multiples that infuse them are incommensurate with one another. The eventual unity that the first chain of causes creates, a unity that looks to a stream of reality that predates is the unity of individual options. The domain of possible futures, is here or there, now or then. It offers then an index for predating the movement that created it. That is, as the future is created, it will look back on the back ideas, and claim that those ideas were being fashioned by the impression that gave them there reality to suppose or create this certain fixed future. Its great cry is then =X, and more ‘I told you So! (Or a least I told you so safely after the event at least…)

The unity of this dimension, this unity which has the right to demand to be(once given) is an anathema to the second great strand of causality. these unites have no right’s to exist as they are beyond there perpetual, and shifting constructions. One cannot then look to an identity and claim it was there all along. Where the created element the singularity constricted as a unity has a presence of its own is always as it is caught up in another exchange: That is as it is already a part in the building of another’s unity-  a unity which demands a certain direction of images(as a fire, blood, or a dying sun involve patches of redness) to be at all. Its own unity, then, in that it rests upon making vivacity vectoral, is available to be taken up into another’s creation as one of the ingredients it simply must assume. Society therefore assumes individuals are present and not bent of self destruction or pride that the self is thinkable as an idea.

  Hence the difference in these unities is summarised by the idea that while in the former case unity is the means by which the object claims rights over the flow of vivacities that created it. In the latter unities are either merely the direct product of a flow of vivacities which are giving a certain idea, or else to those same vivacities as there intensity (and passage) is then taken up in another series, where its exchange is merely assumed to be present. In the second aspect therefore the unity is either after all exchanges are happened, or else before they were ever possible. If reality is at the fore, then unity is merely the premeditating of what it. If vivacities is were reality is suppose, then unity is either what he vivacious constantly makes, or else that position from which it makes its all too generous loans.

Two very deep pitfalls haunt empiricism. the first, which haunts all empirics, falters because it forgets the alternative strand; The second involves, which perhaps is  a peculiar problem for Hume alone, looses sight at times of the difference between these strands.

Empiricism is peppered with philosophers who want is hard to forget its double headed nature. On the one hand one has the believers in hard facts, and deny the possibility of anything other than simple observable process. For such naïve souls, anything else, anything more complex smacks of a world or sky hooks, or barren teleology. In making this claim the irony is of course ht they can only produce there own ;realist; philosophy from the perspective of what has happened. They reach back into time in the name of the result, and find its causes in what was. The sky hooks are the very real hooks that hold there own argument together. The urgency of attacks then launched against cloud compellers (that is every one who steps beyond a world of facts hard or otherwise), related more to there own methodology, than it is to any actual dimension of those other philosophers. That is, what stops the ‘realist; from being a cloud compeller themselves is their believe in the efficacy of perception to produce their realties. They therefore simple assume ht any system that starts from a different place, drops the reality of perception dimension, and yet keeps (as they surely would) the cloud compelling. The idea that this too is really question simple does not cross the minds of such very simple souls, and so the rest of argument unwinds.

The opposite tendency, which dissolves a world into mere complexities is rarer (that is, if one stays within the domain of empiricism at least). Perhaps the best example being that Berekley. What it needs to be remembered in Berekeley’s case reality was effective divided between that whose reality lay in being perceived, and those spirits who acted, willed and perception, which were themselves beyond all and any perception. One inferred the manner and character of human by their the perception and feels they produce. Moreover one infers there actual existence by the presence of their body.  Thence, on the one hand, one infers the being of a human from the being conveyed by their perceptions, a being it nonetheless must remain distinct from. On the other something quite distinct from being, namely character, is inferred from their actions and their property; The former case lies after all perception, the latter before  possible giving. The two are then implicated in one another, and yet distinct. The Presence of the human being (and the signs that give that presence) are something different from the sings that catch one up in thinking their personality. The ultimate reality being God. God was at once that which must be assumed for realty to enfold in the mind at all. God therefore lay before all the being of perceptions. And yet God was also that which must be deduced for all possible percievings. God’s power lay in the unique privelege that his being and character were given in one thrown. Finites character are, and act in differing registers, while God alone is his actions.

Berekly’s argument will however come under a great deal of strain in supposing what he character of this God is, and why he might be supposed, and supposed as Good from his creation. That is, the argument requires a unified god, such as might be being testified by creation, and yet that unity seems to include within it a law as the to nature of that God. For the reproof goes, why should one conclude that God is good –given the chaos of creation. Berekly’s answer is that one knows that God is good only ultimately through the faith that good must eventually arise from bad. And yet, such an appeal rather demures the argument which sought to found a proof for God on creation. As Hume no doubt noted, one might very well be able to empiricially demonstrate that something akin to divinity (perculates all of creation), and yet one can decide whether that perculation involves divine mind, cosmic vegetable or blind force. That is Berekely simply cannot move directly from the facet of God which is produced after the idea of all of creation is allowed (his existence) to a deduction about his character.

Berekely’s move, and appeal to faith attempts to conjoin the three dimension of causality. One the one hand, for finites at least he will accept the divide between before or after, but with God he attempts a complex switch. God is what creation witnesses, but also that which can be pre-read within creation. And yet that pre-reading is only in terms of a purpose, that normally could only be said to pertain  character of a spirit after their being is given. The only way Berekely can think then of stepping beyond this limitation is through faith. That is faith that God is the exception, and that one can for him alone premeditate character, as if it were a material cause. And yet, as Hume would say, these three remain apart. It is clearly one thing to pre-mediate the kind of mind that can be apparently inferred from creation as the divine mind (and yet one cannot know anything of that creator beyond what he reveals- he might be evil therefore). Or again one might look to reality itself, and wonder at what entity is so silently being driven forward (in this case all that one might conclude that is given is some giant vegetable growth). Or again one might wonder at the character of creation (given it could be thought to have a character at all), and all one could see would be blind force (whose stats moreover is highly problematic). What one cannot do is bake to whole together in a Bereklian pie, and hope under the rubric of faith hope the entire lot sorts itself out.

The second option mentioned above is altogether more fraught. The problem lies in that it is all the easy (as Berkely, ad Hume also do) to jump horses from the different unites and diversity and back again, in an axis hat endorses fascism at one extreme (the demand that the unity of the first type of cause is the only possible), an chaos and madness as the other (the demand that he whispered muttering are what give creation). The problems here have been at once beautifully and ably documented b Deleuze and Guattar. In Anti-Oedipus and Thousand Plateaus, and little new needs to be said here (but see separate exegeses).

However there remains a critical key distinction between Deleuze’s always subtle, and often, beautiful arguments and what has been outlined here. Where Deleuze ultimately wants to push his empiricism as far in the direction of  reality as it will go (hence the event is the reality the perception is giving – f it were giving anything); the Humean sceptic doubts one can even make this move. This second sceptical empircism starts with what it feels is the far safer foundation of what is different about impression from ideas, and what follows on from that difference (vivacity not intensity). Moreover this form of sceptical-empiricism (and no superior-empiricism) understands the existence of possibility of he body differently. Where the Deleuzian axis might want the body either to be an organism (and so firmly on the side of the first type of causaility), and the bodt without organs on the side of the more chaotic definition of causality. The humean might insist that the body itself is explored through the curious effect it has upon certain impression, in making impression also resemblance. As a though resembles it at once overspills into other thoughts (a thought that require a resort to biology to be explained): or once again as an impression is caught up in a body, relates to that body alone as it perceived (green in the eyes of a giant, or the budding leave or the green fires of hell, remains just green). One explores therefore the bod, and what it is to have a body not in either dissolving its functions into the perceptions is enables (which allow that body to be pulled toward intensities) r in terms of a reality, whose causal nature is utterly removed from he body itself (it relates to the world of organ).  

On the contrary one explores the body in the only axis that it makes sense to explore it, as it is always, large or micro producing perceptions – that is impression, ideas and their vivacities. The body is then merely to point of pitch (late Deleuze here understands it quite correctly as a sieve, and relates it back to Hue as much as Liebniz) – a point one finds oneself already beginning from (and which is only known is the way it is caught in that giving).

Impression-simple ideas and vivacity then has the advantage over intensity and difference, in that it feels no need as some hidden or ultimately level to reconcile the twin branches of causality. Vivacity needs no consistency beyond itself. It worries it then little (and Hume not at all) that it portrays radically different worlds. Worlds that are not layers of a parallelism or  irreconcilable point in a conflict, and certainly not different substance or yet different states of the same substance. On the contrary they are simply different takes on the same motely old world; different ways to view is reality or better what it means to be perceiving a reality within it, and for it. Hume of course negcioates himself the veritable luxury of a bi-focal and yet non-dualist theory of causality by the ruse of never being actually concerned with the ‘real’ in itself. Once impressions are allowed in their very perceiving of another to be what I real, then the reality one composed of those perception, has ‘reality as long as s vivacities remain communicating with one another.. One simply dos not the need to step beyond this bi-focalism, and attempt to enter the space between the different strands, the different causes, and think he event capable of bridging the gaping chasme between the two.

The problem then Hume has is that on simply account afford to make a mistake at his point. If one chooses the wrong element (and choice is going to be utterly blond, in this most ideal o spaces) one emerges not only not knowing what one has but even worse not knowing what side one is on (and with very little ability to then be able to tell); and it would take a mid as fine and sublte as Deleuze’s to always know. The problem then is that to the attendent error of fascism and madness that attend the this move it adds one other.

By far the deepest, plagues Deleuzian scholarship quite as much as it plagues the world. It is genuinely very hard to precisely locate where Deleuze begins and others end. Philosophers conferences, and whole styles of critique are peppered with tomfool philosophers, who think they are critiquing Deleuze while all the while they borrow so much from him as to be his Ape. Conversely (ironically enough) the same conference are also peppered with often the same tomfools, who have mistake the copy for the original, and think they are talking wisely of the works of Spinoza or Bergson or even Neitzsche when all they are doing is talking (incessantly) of Deleuze.

This by itself is no more than high humour. However there is a very serious point here. It is genuinely rather somethimes to tell where ones self begins and other end. Passions has a habit of bleeding put of their context and being picked up in others (in differing ways). Deleuze of course makes this point a central deimensin to his philosophy what else is becoming?). which is brilliant in itself And yet if one I going to make such an element the central plank of ones thought one needs to take especial care that one knows exactly where and what that becoming is (and how it binds back into the mind). Make a mistake here, and the madenss Deleuze certainly talks of will be before one all in its most malignant form. However Deleuz rather assumes this move, this distinction, which he has actually undermined ought still be self evident. Far better then says the Humean to admit that it these causes ought to be kept apart (so no becoming rat in a man).

Behind Deleuze’s brilliant move lies the deep nub of dark side loyalism. The loyalist and Humean Brightside scepticism share he belief that existence is only understood from the inside of some other dimension, and yet then differ as to where, and what this inside might be. The Deleuzian asks the question, all is bight around me-  but what darkness was necessary for this brightness to emerge? Hw can I be loyal to that darkenss? What slight miracles does it allow? Te Dar being the different itself, within which all creatures of the light thrive. A difference that lies between bodies, binding then up. Or better giving each bright body a focus point, which however lies in the dark itself. Each body is focused, and yet the point of focus moves, weaving in and of differing existences. The Dark focus point then being that minimal twist of the outside upon which we are all hung. It is the twist which leads to perception and therefore existence itself, or as Deleuze has it the noumenon which lies closest to the phenomenon, both inciting and den its own representation.

  For Deleuze the central empiricist claim rests upon the idea that perception are rooted within a reality. That they show something else, something which is. The agent for this showing, (and here Deleuze self consciously follows Kant0 is time. It is within the medium of time, it is by sharing in the time of the events, that this difference is weaved into the lives. The vents can be worked and re-worked, as it is drawn into this life, this empirical self or that. The loyalist will thence for a flicker of thinking step beyond the world of common experience, beyond the world of any one time, and attempt to think the unthinkable point from which difference itself radiates; before then returning to ask the question ‘of what such radiation means, within the world of light.

It is this tumble into the dark that the Brightside sceptic or perhaps fanatic does not continence. For then what matters are not events, and the time needed to think these events, so much as impressions, and their strange intensity. Truth becomes tied to what it is that makes impression different from ideas, and what follows from idea. Instead of the paradox of stepping beyond perception, in order that one might, by speculating on the matter as they are, rediscover the true being; the Brightside insist that essential paradox of perceiving already contains in the vivacious, an element which is given exceeding the idea itself, and which is thence already weaving into the mind strange connections of its own. The Brightsider thence chirpily except the paradox that perceptions appear to rest on a reality that cannot itself ever be given. Or rather, they rest upon a dimension whose giving is save in one instance, is only in the context of how they are caught up in changing another (hidden springs). Here of course the brightsider and darksider hook up in the same thought (late Deleuze understands this point), and yet where for the brighsider this hooking is always it the only truth here, and therefore must be left as a paradox deduced from the inside of perception, for Deleuze it is just this terriority that is the peculiarly hunting ground for the philosophy. Thence parallelism is for the brightsider a release., to allow one to think other more useful things.  A world of hidden springs is no doubt that which is, and therefore ones mind is free to develop and redevelop what it has as its own, its impressions (and their ideas) within that hidden dimension. For Deleuze of course by contrast parallelism is a provocation- a thought needs to be produced to overcome it otherwise necessary assumption (this is the poor of difference, and the peculiarly position of Kant is early Deleuze, and Leibniz in late).

The principles will therefore be for the brightsider, the manners in which a mind is inscribed within the reality of vivacity itself. Having an idea is exploiting the power of the viviacious idea – the power to always given in the demand to also be elsewhere to resonate beyond oneself, and in other manner or direction of thought. Such thought is firmly non-synthetic. Vivacity does not bind creation into nice neat packages (call then bodies or empirical selves, but rather even as it unties perpetually unpicks what it merely conjoins. The principles being the very rules of this re-stitching (or best the directions this repacking must take). The exception mentioned above, is resemblance. Resemblance starting point is really rather different. As one understands an impression to also resemble others, one is not worrying simply about the nature of vivacity (and the reality it forces one to grasp). On the contrary in this case, on becomes aware of those hidden springs within ones own body; springs that allow the body to rework its own nature – even as it creates extra side links between what I sees and everything else. That is, where other principles follow the line of vivacities, ensuring always an ease in their progress, resemblance start within a enigma. On the one level there is a bright point, of the other the dullest of all points (its mere radiation out into everything like this one).

In such cases, the Brightside fanatic follows a slightly different path than normal. In other cases they always follow the paths of light itself, as irradiates across the mind. In the case of resemblance however the challenge is to weave principles stitching together the points of light, with the dull extra world of ideas they illumine. In this question other principles such as identity, and other dimensions, such as passion abound.  The problem being that in both these cases a ay of light is rest discovered, and more fabricated: Either out of other light that appears to be going in the same general direction 9identity) or by organs in the min which a especially designed for such fabrication (passions) . that is in this gap, the mind becomes a light source of its own.

This then leads back to the problem raised in the first of these essays – the problem of how the mind grasps at the complexities of being such a light source, with dissolving either itself, or reality, or the complexity of what it grasps. It is to this point, and to the principles of complexity, the next essay therefore turns.