When one talks about a magnifying glass and looks at a magnifying glass while under the impression that the magnifying glass itself is the object of interest, they have misunderstood what a magnifying glass is, and how to use it. So too with norms, models, frames, etc — Leontiskos

Yes, but human perception is neither a lens nor a camera.
It is not designed for observation but for guided action.

This central concern of the enactive position stands in contradistinction to the received view that perception is fundamentally the truthful reconstruction of a portion of the physical world through a registering of existing environmental information. In the enactive approach reality is not a given: it is perceiver-dependent, not because the perceiver “constructs” it as he or she pleases, but because what counts as a relevant world is inseparable from the structure of theperceiver.

A classical illustration of the perceptual guidance of action is the study of Richard Held and Alan Hein, who raised kittens in the dark and exposed them to lightonly under controlled conditions. A first group of animals was allowed to move around normally, but they were harnessed to a simple carriage and basket that contained the second group of animals. The two groups, therefore, shared the same visual experience, but the second group was entirely passive. When the animals were released after a few weeks of this treatment, the first group of kittens behaved normally, but those who had been carried around behaved as if they were blind: they bumped into objects and fell over edges. This beautiful study illustrates the – enactive – view that objects are seen not by the visual extraction of features, but rather by the visual guidance of action. Similar results have been obtained under various other circumstances and studied even at the level of the single cell.

If the reader feels that this example is fine for cats, but irrelevant for humans, let us consider another case. Paul Bach y Rita designed a video camera for blind persons that can stimulate multiple points on the skin by electrically activated vibration. Thus images formed with the camera were translated into patterned tactile sensations – with the following results. Patterns projected onto the skin had no “visual” content if the subject remained motionless.

However, if the subject directed the camera by moving his head, hands, or body for a few hours, a remarkable transformation occurred. The tactile sensations became visual perceptions, the patterns of vibration on the skin were not felt but seen as images projected into the space being explored by the bodily directed “gaze” of the video camera. Thus in order to experience “real objects out there,” it was enough for the person to actively direct the camera. This experience is an excellent example of the perceiver-dependent nature of what otherwise seems an internal representation of a perceiver-independent world of features.

Cognitive science is waking up to the full importance of the realization that perception does not consist in the recovery of a pre-given world, but rather in the perceptual guidance of action in a world that is inseparable from our sensorimotor capacities, and that “higher” cognitive structures also emerge from recurrent patterns of perceptually guided action. Thus cognition consists not of representations but of embodied action. Thus we can say that the world we know is not pre-given; it is, rather, enacted through our history of structural coupling, and the temporal hinges that articulate enaction are rooted in the number of alternative microworlds that are activated in every situation. These alternatives are the source of both common sense and creativity in cognition.

Thus it seems more and more compelling to look at knowledge – to understand understanding – in a manner that can only be called post-Cartesian: that is knowledge
appears more and more as being built from small domains composed of microworlds and microidentities. Behavioral repertoires vary throughout the animal kingdom, but what all living cognitive beings seem to have in common is know- how constituted on the basis of the concrete. Thus what we call general and abstract are aggregates of readiness-for-action.( Francisco Varela, Ethical Know-how)

Yes, but human perception is neither a lens nor a camera. — Joshs

Looks like you need to try reading that post again.

Looks like you need to try reading that post again — Leontiskos

You claimed that a model or norm implies something true and pre-existing in the external world on which it is based. The quote I included argues that perception and cognition are not models or representations of a pre-existing world, they enact a world through guided action.

- Yeah, you rolled in your schtick. Model/norm != perception.

↪Joshs - Yeah, you rolled in your schtick. Model/norm != perception — Leontiskos

And what is your schtick? How would you characterize the role of perception?

- Not every thread is about perception. For example, this thread is not about perception.

one can hold the individuating conditions for a given assemblage fixed and give an account of how it works as an assemblage. In the same way as you don't need to know the history of pool cues to describe a pool cue striking a ball.

Another way of putting it is that assemblages, once they're up and running, are often created and sustained through internalised networks rather than the ones which partook to their genesis. — fdrake

It looks like you place strong emphasis on the synchronic aspect of the assemblage, where all its workings and functioning are fully realized in the present moment. No doubt, this perspective allows for interesting research. However, an exclusive focus on the synchronic dimension may obscure various political and ethical implications. Assemblages permeate all domains of contemporary life, and individuals involved can become completely consumed by the intensity of their assemblages' directed activities.Elaborating on this tendency, Deleuze equates the internal relations of assemblages with relations of power. For him, assemblage theory becomes an inquiry into the genesis of current power relations, how they evolve, and potentially a theory of practice regarding how to exercise or resist power.

↪Joshs - Not every thread is about perception. For example, this thread is not about perception. — Leontiskos

Would you say it is about cognition?

- The OP is about two related approaches to philosophical issues, the "Model Building Style" and the "Deflationary Style." It says nothing at all about perception or cognition.

Yes, but human perception is neither a lens nor a camera.

I have seen enactivists use the metaphor of "lenses" as opposed to "images," as a counter to representationalism. They employ the lens metaphor pretty much to make the same point Leo is making.

Of course, a lens is something you actively use. The photographer isn't passive.

What would you like out of a theory of truth telling? — fdrake

I think the problem is that there is no truth-telling occurring. You are allergic to the word: — Leontiskos

Why is it that our culture is so often allergic to the idea of truth? I think it's because it can't be bought. It doesn't fit neatly in a model. And if we are the masters with our hammers, then if truth doesn't want to play ball and act like a nail, so much the worse for truth! Truth is a pain in the ass. Let it be banished!

Truth is what judges the Model Builder's model. In this case, to the model builder who wants to model only behavior, truth says, "This isn't up to grade. Your model handles quacks but it doesn't handle ducks. Back to the drawing board." The model builder might appeal to norms, or social constructions, or all sorts of other things, but all these courts of appeal defer to the Court of Truth, whether they like it or not.

Truth is a pain in the ass. Let it be banished! — Leontiskos

Did you have an account of truth you wanted to share?

It looks like you place strong emphasis on the synchronic aspect of the assemblage, where all its workings and functioning are fully realized in the present moment. No doubt, this perspective allows for interesting research. However, an exclusive focus on the synchronic dimension may obscure various political and ethical implications. Assemblages permeate all domains of contemporary life, and individuals involved can become completely consumed by the intensity of their assemblages' directed activities.Elaborating on this tendency, Deleuze equates the internal relations of assemblages with relations of power. For him, assemblage theory becomes an inquiry into the genesis of current power relations, how they evolve, and potentially a theory of practice regarding how to exercise or resist power. — Number2018

I was under the impression that, as far as assemblages are concerned, one man's synchronic is another's diachronic. Like you could form a history of maths, as an assemblage, as a history of theorems and proofs and arguments. Or you could form a history of maths, as an assemblage, as a history of institutions and geographies. The first guides the second and the second guides the first.
Or if you wanted to do a history of violence in the political north, you might be able to do it from the perspective of lead in paint.

If you want it in jargon, the same assemblage can be territorialised in multiple ways and have its {the} body without organs face multiple strata. I think, for historical reasons, people strongly emphasise the socius' mediating role on assemblages, even though nature plays an expansive role in that mediation. I see that as a loss of flexibility in the theory due to its usual emphasis.

Edit: "New Materialism" wise, I think this latter emphasis is why you can lump Deleuze in with the "correlationist" stereotype, if you read him as another philosopher of total social mediation.

Yes, but human perception is neither a lens nor a camera.
It is not designed for observation but for guided action. — Joshs

Then how do you know which action to perform if you haven't observed the current situation, or know that your action succeeded if you don't make an observation?

Isn't observing an action? Isn't your attention a guided observation?

It seems to me that you cannot separate observations from actions - they are part of the same feedback loop.

One might ask, "Which came first, the action or the observation?". I would say that natural selection acts on one's actions and observations (senses) (another type of action) evolved to guide one's other actions in more meaningful ways.

If you want it in jargon, the same assemblage can be territorialised in multiple ways and have its {the} body without organs face multiple strata. I think, for historical reasons, people strongly emphasise the socius' mediating role on assemblages, even though nature plays an expansive role in that mediation. I see that as a loss of flexibility in the theory due to its usual emphasis.

Edit: "New Materialism" wise, I think this latter emphasis is why you can lump Deleuze in with the "correlationist" stereotype, if you read him as another philosopher of total social mediation. — fdrake

It depends on which brand of New Materialism you prefer.
For ‘negative’ new materialists like Graham Harman (Object Oriented Ontology) and Quentin Meillassoux (Speculative Realism) nature can be thought independently of the sociois, since matter is independent of or withdrawn from thought. By contrast, in the performative new materialism of Karen Barad and Vicky Kirby, nature and the social, ontology and epistemology are inherently co-implicated and mutually constituting. This is consistent with Deleuze’s account, which does not split nature off from the psychic or the social.(“… the plane of consistency knows nothing of the difference between the artificial and the natural.”)

“Every abstract machine is linked to other abstract machines, not only because they are inseparably political, economic, scientific, artistic, ecological, cosmic—perceptive, affective, active, thinking, physical, and semiotic—but because their various types are as intertwined as their operations are convergent. Mechanosphere.” (ATP)

"New Materialism" wise, I think this latter emphasis is why you can lump Deleuze in with the "correlationist" stereotype, if you read him as another philosopher of total social mediation. — fdrake

Not quite. Meillassoux explicitly says in After Finitude that Deleuze is neither a weak correlationist nor a strong correlationist, his philosophy is instead "subjective metaphysics".

It depends on which brand of New Materialism you prefer.
For ‘negative’ new materialists like Graham Harman (Object Oriented Ontology) and Quentin Meillassoux (Speculative Realism) nature can be thought independently of the sociois, since matter is independent of or withdrawn from thought. — Joshs

Graham Harman is not a materialist, @Joshs, nor is Object Oriented Ontology a kind of materialism. Harman is against materialism. He has an article (which is a really good read, BTW, even if I don't agree with it) called I Am Also of the Opinion that Materialism Must Be Destroyed. He has been an immaterialist ever since his first book, Tool-Being.

Graham Harman is not a materialist, Joshs, nor is Object Oriented Ontology a kind of materialism. Harman is against materialism. He has an article (which is a really good read, BTW, even if I don't agree with it) called I Am Also of the Opinion that Materialism Must Be Destroyed. He has been an immaterialist ever since his first book, Tool-Being. — Arcane Sandwich

I was drawing from the paper ‘ WHAT IS NEW MATERIALISM?’ by Christopher N. Gamble, Joshua S. Hanan & Thomas Nail

The second strand of negative new materialism is “object-oriented ontology” (OOO) – a term Graham Harman coined that defines a theoretical commitment to thinking the real beyond the human experience of matter. “What is real in the cosmos,” he asserts, “are forms wrapped inside forms, not durable specks of material that reduce everything else to derivative status. If this is ‘materialism,' then it is the first materialism in history to deny the existence of matter.” For Harman, the essence of beings is to withdraw from all the objects that compose it and think it. As such, being is never something anthropocentric, experienced, or relational but is something absolutely and non-relationally “withdrawn” from everything else, as though it were comple-tely “vacuum sealed.” As it happens, this essen-tialist view of identity as something radically self-contained is in fact perfectly captured by the three discrete, individually circumscribed circles, zeros, or “O's” that have become the theory's standard iconic shorthand. This view also leads Harman to affirm what he calls “a new sort of ‘formalism.'

Timothy Morton similarly argues against “some kind of substrate, or some kind of unformed matter”78 in favor of essential forms that infinitely exceed the human domain of meaning-making. For example, Morton describes “hyperobjects” such as global warming as “real entities whose primordial reality is withdrawn from humans.” For him, as for Harman and Tristan Garcia, “objects” ultimately refer to an infinitely hidden essence that never even partially reveals itself in any relation.“

I was drawing from the paper ‘ WHAT IS NEW MATERIALISM?’ by Christopher N. Gamble, Joshua S. Hanan & Thomas Nail — Joshs

Are those authors arguing that Object Oriented Philosophy is materialist? That would be a convoluted thing to argue, I suppose. Harman is explicit about his immaterialism.

Are those authors arguing that Object Oriented Philosophy is materialist? That would be a convoluted thing to argue, I suppose. Harman is explicit about his immaterialism. — Arcane Sandwich

I think what is important to the authors is that Harman, like the others they discuss in the paper, break away from a subject and language-centered ontology in favor of one that does not slight the agential power of non-human objects.

Meillassoux explicitly says in After Finitude that Deleuze is neither a weak correlationist nor a strong correlationist, his philosophy is instead "subjective metaphysics". — Arcane Sandwich

Yes. I don't think Deleuze is a correlationist. I do however think he gets interpreted as one. People tend to use his theory, I think, to highlight the social mediation of everything.

I think what is important to the authors is that Harman, like the others they discuss in the paper, break away from a subject and language-centered ontology in favor of one that does not slight the agential power of non-human objects. — Joshs

That's fair. I just wouldn't lump him in with materialists, and I say that as a materialist as well as fan of Harman's work.

Yes. I don't think Deleuze is a correlationist. I do however think he gets interpreted as one. People tend to use his theory, I think, to highlight the social mediation of everything. — fdrake

That's fair. I think that the most interesting part about Deleuze is what his ontology has to say about inorganic objects such as stones. But, then again, I like object-oriented ontologies more than subject-oriented ontologies.

I'll just quote something that Meillassoux says about Deleuze in After Finitude, which might be of some relevance to the OP:

This second metaphysical strategy, which we evoked very briefly in Chapter 1, consists in absolutizing the correlation itself. Its basic line of argument may be summarized as follows: it was claimed that the Kantian notion of the thing-in-itself was not only unknowable, but also unthinkable. But if so, then it seems that the wisest course is simply to abolish any such notion of the in-itself. Accordingly, it will be maintained that the notion of the in-itself is devoid of truth because it is unthinkable, and that it should be abolished so that only the relation between subject and object remains, or some other correlation deemed to be more fundamental. A metaphysics of this type may select from among various forms of subjectivity, but it is invariably characterized by the fact that it hypostatizes some mental, sentient, or vital term: representation in the Leibnizian monad; Schelling's Nature, or the objective subject-object; Hegelian Mind; Schopenhauer's Will; the Will (or Wills) to Power in Nietzsche; perception loaded with memory in Bergson; Deleuze's Life, etc. Even in those cases where the vitalist hypostatization of the correlation (as in Nietzsche or Deleuze) is explicitly identified with a critique of 'the subject' or of 'metaphysics', it shares with speculative idealism the same twofold decision which ensures its irreducibility to naive realism or some variant of transcendental idealism:
1. Nothing can be unless it is some form of relation-to-the-world (consequently, the Epicurean atom, which has neither intelligence, nor will, nor life, is impossible).
2. The previous proposition must be understood in an absolute sense, rather than as merely relative to our knowledge.
The primacy of the unseparated has become so powerful that in the modern era, even speculative materialism seems to have been dominated by these anti-rationalist doctrines of life and will, to the detriment of a 'materialism of matter' which takes seriously the possibility that there is nothing living or willing in the inorganic realm. Thus, the rivalry between the metaphysics of Life and the metaphysics of Mind masks an underlying agreement which both have inherited from transcendentalism - anything that is totally a-subjective cannot be. — Quentin Meillassoux