Exploring the self sealed Systems.
1)it is of course the great temptation of thought – to produce a system in which every eventuallity can effectively be covered. Thought is littered with the examples, from Thales (everything is really water, all things are merely personification of it) through the mysteries of the good, and causality( knowledge is illumined by the good, and the only actual causes are final and formal not efficient or material ), through o psychoanalysis or evolutionary genetics. There is nothing the mind likes more than to develop a sealed, system within which all subsequent change is caught as a crystal.
2) Take that most modern of example – the so called selfish gene hypothesis. The problem with such an explaination is that it is so worded that it has to be true. To achive this goal it I founded upon to deep truism. A) that ‘successful’ genes are the ones that dominate in population: this is hardly a surprise as suggest for Gens is defined by such domination. B) that genes encode proteins, and proteins do things, and therefore a gene in a sense does something (or rather orchestrates something):Again no surprise here;, as his is again how one defines a gene . A causal connection is then opened up between these to elements, such that one simply asserts that given Genes do thing, and that ones survive in differing numbers, then the former must influence is some way that latter – it must ‘cause’ it (no matter how that cause is understood).
3) This far might appear logical enough, and strictly speaking no doubt it is. And yet there is concealed here rather a large concession. It is necessary even in the most direct of causal connection that the genetic element is removed from the eventual selected feature by a very great number of interconnection (genes do nothing, as DNA in inert, it is protiens and RNA that matter…); and the distance of this remoteness can be as remote of one likes. From which it follows that if a genes does well (that is has more copies of itself in the next generation) one can say it must of acted to cause this result (in some way). If it does badly, one cn follow the chain of effects up until one finds, at some point another genetic cause precluding the effects of the said gene. Everything can, if one looks hard enough be reduce to a genetic cause.
4) The rational for this being that only genes survive as hey are to the next generation. This is of course true in itself, and yet not where the argument really lies. In any argument about evolution surely what matters is not that thing survive (which failing universal catastrophe is never in question) – nor even is that only some element survive (this again is true ,as Darwin and his elephant calculation showed, but is not enough to of itself produce evolution: One could imagine chance or God, leading to only certian choices going through the system). What matters is interactions in the real world condition both the two former points: that is that that the interaction of living creatures in some ways act to ensure that only certain elements of those living creatures (call it their genes if you must) survive.
5)A genetic take on evolution is therefore missing at just the point that evolution itself works. That is the level of real interactions. The result is that one can off course explain the entire system of evolution in terms of genes. The theory is designed so one can – and yet that changes nothing or does not to ones explaination. It is not explaining what matters (or allowing one to really understand why it matters) .
6)The correct response to such arguments is therefore so what? – the point is?
7) And yet daft as they are, they tell one something rather interesting about how one grasps at a world that is not oneself. This was after all the redeeming feature of the genetic eye model. It was a real (if not a serious) attempt to understand a process in which humans are caught, fro a non human angle. It was a real attempt to grasp the way that nature makes us all others to ourselves; and its more or less hopeless naivity cuts deep into one of the problems with the perceptive or in the seventeenth century usage of the word, objective) intellection (as opposed to formal thought)
8)It was Spinoza, who pehaps pin points this dilemma best.,- in the proposition toward the end of the fist part of Ethics. Here, he suggest that the world of finite objective (that is perceptive) nature is bound up in terms of a necessary- and yet highly complete series of before and afters.
9)To start as a finite mind which looks onto and perceives the world, s to start in a world oddly pitched in relation to that another it grasps at. One the one hand as it understand anything it operates in a domain what follows on fro that which it grasps. That is it only grasps at a world as it is caught within a world of pure effects. O do not see a table, or a ping pong ball, because they are there – but because at some point there is a causal agent (call it a chair) which acts is a certain way upon light, which then acts upon my body in another way which then…) all perception however innocent is therefore removed from me by a chasme of causes – as it is a finite thing.
10)To look upon the world, to attempt to view it, is therefore, as one understands that world in terms of objective (that is perceptive) essence, and t be lost in a maze of causes this actively pull one apart from reality of that thought. Now spinoza can make this move (and make it some extremely) because at another level (that of common notions) he can throw out connections between the perceived world o table and chairs, and the perceiver themselves. He has therefore a totally different method for returning us to our own world (the world where tables and chairs are not connected to us by a gulf of cause).
11) And yet this point is, that if one makes starts a theory not from this link which has it is a common notion is always defined in the hussel and bussel of the active world- world where it makes sense to claim that the intellect and the Will are one.
12)A world which is then distinct from the world of simple anothered centered’ perception. The minute ones sets up another centered one automatically allows for a gap to open up between perception of this another, ay ever causal effect: One is necessarily after an effect.
13) And yet in perceiving – is grasping at another Spinoza says one is also a cause (albeit as causes cause). That is the act of thinking, or grasping will make every act of perceiving itself causal. Each perception, as it is understood to apply to others than myself is therefore also always a cause- and thereby runs before some subsequent perceives affect.
14) To Percive as a finite- that is to form a viewpoint on the world which centers around ones ability to grabs how that world (including oneself) is changes – is to be pitched in a world of the before and after. Each finite perception is at once after another perception (and caught up as the sense that perception is a cause in me) but is also itself a cause (and thus far alone can be said to be a Will).
15) However Spinoza of course rejects that this distinction itself makes any real sense either for God (who as he is Infinite knows no before or after, and so cannot distinguish his will fro his ability to perceive, but always gives then in the single throw), or ultimately for humans as they understand themselves adequately.
16)Moreover Spinoza subsequently develops the these that while formal thinking is itself always creative, and always open, objective thinking (which ultimately belong to causes nature) both arises as an effect of formal thought, and yet will naturally be, even as an effect adequate to understanding the entire world. The Idea of God (God’s own grasping of his formal existence from his objective) is therefore a sealed system I its own right (and one markedly different from formal reality).
17) It is this idea which grasps in a single throw all attributes .- and so is creative where an attribute is merely continual and therefore not utterly powerful) – and is so even though it must in actual formal existence be bound up to the causal chains of the attribute itself (and so it no creative where the attribute itself is).
18) Objective reason therefore has its own creative powers, - powers which operate from within a single attribute (hat of thought) but according to a totally different rhythm of their own.
19)The implicate here is very clear. It is very easy for an system of perception to mistake itself, and its own creative power (to wield the objective power of God, to establish new intert connections between aspects of thought).
20) However Spinoza places here a very important caveat. This is a power he clearly in part allows to humans to two respects. On the one hand humans (as all modes) are doubled up in thought. They naturally contain within a single mode the thought of a thought (consciousness) and the thought of a thought of thought (self consciousness). Bt also he allows for the idea that humans can it moving to extend their objective power of perception, also extend the formal power to be (5/1)
21) That is in the special circumstances of a mode which sees a particular (and individual) union of objective and formal essence in the same idea 2/11) – it follows that humans can challenge themselves in perception, to create and allow new formal thoughts .
22)This last argument matters as it allows Spinoza to articulate the connections and difference between will and understanding which are all too real for finite creatures. Looking a the world beyond them humans are bound up in the world of causes. They are then given that world only in terms of things done with, and yet are given b an agency (the power of objective thought) which clearly extends beyond these things done, and could (as God’s intellect) encompasses all of creation. There is perceiving therefore a natural imbalance between actual reality and he apparent power of perception .
23) This imbalance creates confusion in our minds, as we naturally confuse the power of God’s formal existence with this power of objective thought to be able to encompass the world. The naturally assume then that God’s will contains everything albeit potentially.
24) From which we then claim as this potentiality appears apriori to our own perception of the thing, and is indeed in us as something eternal (and therefore free) ( 1/21 ) – while what happens it clearly bound up in the world of caused creation. It is then only natural, given these imbalances tt we suppose the idea itself cold predate the formal reality that it is a perception of, and that god could have willed things otherwise.
25) this move is however for Spinoza a clear mistake as it simply fails to grasp the complexities of the differences between objective and formal reason and how God is in his formal capacities actually producing the idea of himself, and doing it as he is produce the formal world (2/3).
26)Moreover humans are inclined to make such a mistake, as their exists a clear imbalance between the their respective powers. Before an idea happens within them, they have no power over it (and only an awareness of Gods infinite capacity to create thought in them). Once it has been created within them, however- they are aware not just f the idea itself, but also of their own actions in relation to that idea, a second dimensions which is all the more important as this awareness of their own reactions (that is what the idea means to them) is where they are, as individual conscious.
27) Humans are therefore in being aware of their own ideas, are aware of their own strivings to act- an awareness which come stumbles into the mind after the mind itself has been already determined to think (by elements beyond itself) in a certain mind.
28)Each mind is therefore is naturally aware of itself as cause, and it peculiarly power to be a cause, than it is aware of the cause for those powers. It will therefore experience itself as a cause, and suppose itself a Will. Moreover it will naturally see this cause in terms of what it wants – that is in terms of its own teleology and not as that will links back to formal causes.
29) It s then only naturally to understand both oneself and God in terms of final and objective causes, and miss the power and important of efficient and formal ones.
30) However this is not quite Spinoza’s last word here. He is clear that the power of objective thought (the order and connection of ideas) it itself creative in the human mind (5/1). That is if one can layout new way to perceive the world, which could be to a degree false, then these ways have a real effect of what we are – on our powers and abilities.
31) The game then becomes how one developes such perceptions, and therefore powers. At this pint the power of God to produce objective thought, s surely critical.
32) This power is the one that frees any formal essence up from its formal context- as it allows that mind to include within its conscious thoughts other elements other movement, whose formal cause is only inscribed (and so not present), and yet to include these others as if they were present (2/17-18).
33) The role of the idea of God is therefore to articulate a world where the written (that is what is inscribed in memory or the soft pieces of the brain) is as, it exists within the human mind (and across God as he has very many ideas) one and the same as reality (albeit often weaker and more confused).
34)The oddity of what is supposed needs to be fully stated here. Humans have desire- but more important gain a glimmer of the ability to rewrite what they by supposing themselves to be caught up within elements beyond them;
35) The first of these elements is as the idea of God pitched beyond every individual existence. It articulates these existence one to the other from within the system (and therefore as a system of perceptions) – and allows what would otherwise be a stale chain of causes to be itself at other level creative – and creative of existence far beyond itself.
36) Without light and the electricity of the mind the written would be squiggels on the page: But does not mean writing is light and electricity, but is rather pitched as the idea of God takes up squiggles, light and power into something else.
37)At the end point of this exchange there is a random element- which matters because somehow it is different – and external to the system. For Spinoza it is the squishy parts of the brain, for Genetics random lengths of an inert chemical for writing the brush strokes. These then exist as alien to the system which is taking them up.
38)Now this matter as it is this alienity tht allows the mind to take up these dimension, through the idea of Go as create powers. That is the fact that these element (Deleuze would call them events, but not Spinoza for whom they are before the event itself) are different from the element which takes them up, allows the mind to rethrow where and what it is. Allows the mind, who is capable of deploying them, to re-give itself (through the idea of God).
39) The individual therefore becomes more powerful by supposing the existence of element beyond it, which in a sense cause it (in some way).
40)This idea then of course has its own creative power. that is whether these elements are causes or not is almost (well it is absolutely) beside the point. What matters is that the mind, in supposing writing to be a cause, gains an extra dimension to its on powers,.
41)There is a very clear paradox here. The mind gains power in allowing at another level itself to be powerless: And does so just as that other element is utterly different (in itself) from the mind itself.
42) That is if the cause was too direct the power gained would be lesser (and that element would not be moved without effecting the real time/life of the individual involved directly and absolutely.
43) One needs an element safely removed from the mind itself, in order that one can manipulate it freely, and without immediate and direct consequences.
44)Moreover Spinoza will impose a clear condition of ones ability to think the domain of the idea of God, divorces from individual elements. This idea he says is only in God (and therefore only available to man) as he has an idea of very many things (2/19).
45)That is what these very many separate ideas create actively, is a body (be it an individual or knowledge for whatever). The unit of this individual is then the property of thing in or of creation. I is rather as it is in God s an idea (ht is as it is contained within the idea of God) pitched across myriad separate individuals – the property of one.
46) Amongst these individuals he idea exist to Go as long as those individuals are creating together an orchestrate system. In case Spinoza directly considers this individual is the living body as such, but the same logic can easily apply to any system within the living body (and Spinoza more to less explicitly allows this – as this certainly is the point of common notion, but also the other individuals that are also in the body, and only communicating elements of what they are to it)
47)elements which then compose the human – or element so it, as that idea eventually ends up in human consciousness, will then involve systems of inter related elements which hook together to produce something which the human themselves can take up, and become more powerful through thinking.
48)However there are two rather critical dimensions (for Spinoza at least) that are missing in this argument.
49)A) each such idea will not itself be adequate as it is in the human mind, and yet will at every turn be supported by adequate ideas. For the idea to be adequate the respective powers of humanity and the element it is supposing beyond itself would nee to merge. Language would therefore need to become flexible, or genetics allow directly for the fact that humans is carefully behaving otherwise could make the gene itself behave differently.
50) That is one would have to loose the element that posit human powerlessness as a condition for rendering the human powerful. Or better we surrender that power to another element removed from ones own immediate existence (and therefore mass producible…).
51)The aim of this error is therefore to allow us to challenge ourselves through an error (in imagination) and make us otherwise than we were – and not to direct engage with that being.
52)And yet this move is then made all the more complex as there is a deep affinity (amounting to reason if not common notions between consciousness (which is given in us as God contains many ideas) and these elements (which are also so given).
53)Not only will tend to think of then as if they were conscious (while, sometime somewhat desperately claiming we are not), but also we will feel as we know that we are in ourselves, no desire to as further questions about what might be. The pattern of many ideas of other and ourselves are taken together – and allow us to reinforce our view open ourselves (and the demands that follow on from that viewpoint) and do so without an serious attempt to challenge that nature.
54)Or to put it another way – we have a temptation to attempt to form an idea which as it relates to the objective idea of God is true (and so follows the course of reason) and yet is not strictly true for formal existence (in that it extends over much the power of an element of that creation,).
55)B) There is a real limit of the ability of such a system to think of the new. Both I) In terms of the body itself. The Body is always in peril from outside forces, that will make God suddenly drop the idea of the body itself, and think of other things (the body dies). Without any formal mode of and it itself this idea lacks its own right to exist.
56)II) But also the body as it is a body does not include the idea of these different elements. On the contrary all that pertains to that idea is what is communicated across each element and which are in the mind as affects).
57)The system that allows for the body will, as it allow for the body itself be a closed one (or one oddly open). What is fixed in it is a certain proportion of motion and rest, or a series of ratios – which cannot of themsevles be opened, and yet which are in themselves very vulnerable to the open.
58) Now of course Spinoza will exploit these element to form adequate idea themselves, which will, as they always involve other allow the body to remake what it is in thinking (that is rethrow exactly what the ratios themselves do). They therefore operate from within the realm of affects (the results of bodily inter-communications) to make a body otherwise.
59) Not so these systems which allow the body a power only in imagination (that is only as it allow itself is thinking them to wok out ways that it could be changed). The idea itself is uncreative (as it is imagination) even though it subsequently leads to a dimension which is creative and powerful.
60)The result of this is that when this idea is carried over into a one -body systems, these systems come with the flaw that they are closed (more or less).
61) That is the system works and can be thought to work so long as the elements within it behave according to certain ways: a language is systematised as a system of grunts (whose advent is unknown) or genes as a system of chemicals and them alone.
62) Now unlike the body (which is tied to a specific idea, a certain individual) there is nothing stopping such systems expanding – in the sense hat they can allow other elements of their own nature. That is other grunts and other random chemicals. And yet the system remains only allowed to contain that which it has (genes is genes, not beans, and Grunts are grunt or squiggles is squiggles).
63)There is a point then when such system necessarily leave the path of reason – and become caught up in themselves alone (and so removed from the rich world of affective life itself).
64)Moreover as already remarked, this point is indeed necessary for these ideas to be isolated as treated as element for the mind to powerful with (heir distance from me matters – they cannot therefore be caught up in straight forward affects).
65)That is they are only powerful as they are distinct from a living system, and yet able to curiously caught up in that system – and felt to curiously be able to speak to it.
66) These elements, be they genetics or phonetics or cybernetics therefore have the oddest of viral existence; at once apart from life and yet within it: its Master as apart, but then only a master as involved within- as they allow something else to also be a master (in using them).
67)The Virius here is essentially an embodiment of this position on. an element in itself not alive (a mere length of chemicals) and yet which in life, operates as if it were alive.
68) An element which is also moreover utterly useful t live (and living objects use or rather adapt from the viral ability to change DNA around. that is an element which has at times rendered life powerful or allowed it more power, as it has at other times rendered it powerless.
69)In short sealed systems are powerful, in being sealed they are caught up in themselves, and kept distinct from that which elsewhere on another level – the world of affects (where live is led) they allow change to happen: Their very powerless powerfulness renders us therefore powerful or at least gives us a dream of hope – a hope that necessarily throws up as its consequence such oddities as the ‘selfish gene’.