Postmodernism isn't vague. Just needlessly obscure sometimes. The lack of structure is its insight. Things stand on their own rather than being pre-defined by something else. Structure is an expression, not a constraint. The "inability to pin it down" has nothing to do with what it's saying (or not saying), but rather the desire of people to reduce the world to a structure, just as you are doing here.

Often what people want is not answers, but the illusion of solution to problems or fears, a structure which supposedly reveals what will be, such that we can say particular outcomes are guaranteed or some sort of horrible problem is avoided.

Above all, post-modernism says the world is messy, sometimes horrible and frequently containing unavoidable problems of horrors. It's a complexity which the lovers of structure cannot stand.

This ties into the "vagueness vs crisp." For the lover of structure, the crisp is the enemy. If the world is full of discrete states, then they stand on their own. There is no particular instance of logical structure required to make them so. The appeal of the "vague" world is to those who want it to be empty without a particular concept of structure. It forms the idea thing necessary confirm to that structure or are else impossible.

But I am extremely wary of Craig Venter and his ilk. — Wayfarer

And the biosemiotic crowd were the loud critics of Venter and genecentrism.

I mean that's why folk like Salthe and Pattee are practically invisible. Society is not set up to fund and honour those who explain why its most grandiose technological dreams are doomed to ecological failure.

Whereas the kind of approach I'm pursuing, is not actually trying to create an alternative or competing model, but to cultivate a different cognitve mode, or way-of-being. — Wayfarer

It would be great if we could all be happy and just get along. But as you know, my pan-semiotic view is that humans are secretly driven by the desire of fossil fuel to entropify. And you can't fix what you can't properly diagnose.

You live in Australia. Which country has better education? Which country is worse at greening its politics? So how the hell do you plan to cultivate a better collective mindset when it is coal-mining putting most of the dollars in your pocket?

Sad but true. The overturning of the successful introduction of a working carbon tax for blatantly political reasons is the most shameful episode in Australian political history.

Often what people want is not answers, but the illusion of solution to problems or fears... — TheWillowOfDarkness

Yep. Pomo in a nutshell.

It's a complexity which the lovers of structure cannot stand. — TheWillowOfDarkness

As usual, you are talking about someone else and not me.

My brand of structuralism is about accounting for the emergence of complex structure. So it is triadic in that it involves the hierarchical process of possibility encountering necessity and resulting in actuality. The messy real world in fact is an expression of simple needs that explain "everything".

What could be more chaotic than chaos? And yet what do we now know that has simpler generative rules?

So the wheel has turned again (while philosophy hasn't been watching) and the time reads "post-post-structuralism".

Thanks, that was exactly the type of answer I was hoping for, gonna digest.

In this respect, I'd read "eternal return" quite literally here. Selection always returns. No matter what is (or is not) a difference is defined. Expression of form is necessary. I'd say it's almost a combination of the two you are asking about: that which selects (eternal return-- "nothing") and that selection is necessary. — TheWillowOfDarkness

What you say doesn't really make sense. You claim that immanence denies the possibility that form may act to select. OK, form cannot select. So, what selects then? Your answer, form is necessary, and "nothing" selects. How is selection important if nothing selects? Why not just dismiss selection as an incoherent concept of transcendentalists?

Yep. Pomo in a nutshell. — apokrisis

No, that's the argument of those who desire the simple structure. Yours. The position unwilling to see, for example, harm and suffering inflicted upon the world. One which takes instances where some part of the world is damaged, destroyed or dismissed and quotes it as "pragmatic" or the "rule of nature."

It's an unwillingness to admit the world's own responsibility in defining itself, an inability to see how presence of the world amounts to one outcome occurring over any other. Instead of being honest--e.g. "this part of the word has a terrible impact on some people, but we must accept that to achieve an ethical outcome," you treat it as some inevitability of nature, which has nothing to do with how us or the world behaves.

What could be more chaotic than chaos? And yet what do we now know that has simpler generative rules?

So the wheel has turned again (while philosophy hasn't been watching) and the time reads "post-post-structuralism".

The rules down't affect the chaos. Rules are an expression of chaos-- these particular states follow this rule... until the states change or disappear. Those rules are a guarantee of nothing. Not a constraint, but a creation of chaos. At any time they might alter to something different. Chaos (which we might call "vagueness" ) produces expressions of form and rules (states of the world which work (or do not work) to various concepts of rules we have).

In other words, you do it backwards. You take what is only logical and never exists (vagueness) and say it's what they world is prior rules. With the other hand, you take what does exist (things which express form) and equate them with only the logic (form, semiotics, crispness), as if presence in the world was defined by logical concepts rather than states of existence.

The wheel has certainly turned from "post-modernism" in the sense of "no such things as truth, (though it's debatable how much that was actually position, as opposed to a strawman)" but philosophy is not bilnd to it. A lot of it found within post-modernism itself, which is really about many truths handled in terms of themselves.

My impression is that it speaks about selection in similar terms as the transcendentalists, as some sort of force acting to create, to show what immanence means in those terms. What's the ground? (under my reading) Nothing. It's actually giving an answer in terms of that question, rather than just claiming its incoherent.

It a bit like answering the question "What causes God?" Yes, we can say that such a notion is incoherent. But saying "nothing" is also truthful.

How is selection important if nothing selects? Why not just dismiss selection as an incoherent concept of transcendentalists? — Metaphysician Undercover

Well, because selection is important. It's means differences between things. Without out, there could not even be absence, for it would amount to a difference. An absence of selection is incoherent.

Here we can see the nihilism of idealism too. Why is selection only important if something selects? How is difference not important is it is just selected? Does being selected by nothing somehow mean a selection hasn't occurred?

That's why we not ought to say selection is an incoherent concept of transcendentalists. It would amount to denying any difference in the world, assuming "selection" is used as it has been in this thread.

I think that there is a question concerning the relationship between these two. In the op it is said that metaphysics selects the field, and ontology operates within that field. But when you refer to Deleuze, the inverse is implied, that the ontological, eternal return necessitates selection. However, you also said "it's the eternal return that 'selects' what returns, and of course what returns is 'difference'". Now, there seems to be some ambiguity in your posts, could you clarify one thing for me? Do you think that the eternal return actually selects, or does the eternal return necessitate selection? — Metaphysician Undercover

I think I know what you're getting at, and part of the complexity here is that Deleuze ontologizes the selective principle. That is: if every metaphysics implies a selection, Deleuze's whole objection to the history of metaphysics is that it never sufficiently justifies it's particular 'method' of selection. Why Being and not-Being in Parmenides? Why model and simulacrum in Plato? Why converging and diverging series (best of all 'possible worlds') in Leibniz? How to positively discriminate between these differing, 'selective' claims to reality? Deleuze's solution here is to make selection a principle of reality: reality just is that which selects.

So in this sense you're right: metaphysics and ontology run together in Deleuze, and in so doing, he immanentizes metaphysics. Metaphysics no longer becomes an arbitrary imposition of a rule of selection onto reality (from the outside, as it were) but is rendered 'ontological' to begin with. So part of the complexity of Deleuze is this running together of metaphysics, ontology, and even epistemology and ethics, which is kind of what happens when you stick to the thesis of 'univocity', in which being is "said in a single and same sense of everything of which it is said" (think of Spinoza here, who is the principle inspiration, and whose principle work of metaphysics is given the title of the Ethics).

The question of exactly how to make sense of all this remains however, and this entire account remains abstract and incomplete without an account of the subject of selection: if being is what is selects, what is selected for? Deleuze's answer is: difference. While the whole first half of D&R sets up this 'problem' of selection and it's immanentization, the second half (chapters 4 and 5) will go on to provide the account of difference which works to complete the full picture. I won't go into that, but hopefully this kind of schematic overview gives a taste of whats at issue in all of this rather abstract theorization.

First, I'm not even sure it makes much sense to talk about specific or generic difference for Aristotle---as mentioned, this seems to be a Porphyrian element extrinsic to the way Aristotle himself thought. — Nagase

But Aristotle does employ the genus-species distinction, specifically in relation to difference, in book Delta of the Metaphysics:

"We call contraries (1) those attributes that differ in genus, which cannot belong at the same time to the same subject, (2) the most different of the things in the same genus, (3) the most different of the attributes in the same receptive material, (4) the most different of the things that fall under the same capacity, (5) the things whose difference is greatest either absolutely or in genus or in species.

...Things are said to be other in species if they are of the same genus but are not subordinate the one to the other, or if, while being in the same genus they have a difference, or if they have a contrariety in their substance; and contraries are other than one another in species (either all contraries or those which are so called in the [5] primary sense), and so are those things whose formulae differ in the infima species of the genus (e.g. man and horse are indivisible in genus, but their formulae are different), or which being in the same substance have a difference. ‘The same in species’ is used correspondingly." (Book Δ, 10).

And in book Zeta: "Nothing, then, which is not a species of a genus will have an essence--only species will have it, for these are thought to imply not merely that the subject participates in the attribute and has it as an affection, or has it by accident; but for everything else as well, if it has a name, there be a formula of its meaning--viz. that this attribute belongs to this subject; or instead of a simple formula we shall be able to give a more accurate one; but there will be no definition nor essence" (Book Z, 4).

These are certainly not extrinsic formulations imposed upon Aristotle from the outside.

Hierarchy theory, non-linear dynamics, statistical mechanics, etc, are all mathematical enterprises. But to use the elephant analogy, that's still talking at the level of trunks, tails and legs. It is not yet a maths of pan-semiosis, a maths that captures the essential generative seed in fully abstract or universalising fashion.

And maybe, like all theories of everything, we can never get there. It's a mirage, an impossible dream. I'm perfectly willing to listen to and respond to rational arguments in that direction. But then in my own lifetime all I've seen is a rollercoaster of scientific thought heading in this direction.

But say we do come up with the theory of everything, do feel the whole elephant, all we're doing is describing the world we find ourselves in. Fine, it's a good start, but we will not be in the position to answer the philosophical questions about our existence, the mechanisms of our existence, the extent to which what we can come up with, or understand (this theory of everything) is perceiving, or tabulating the basis of our existence. Not to mention any of the purposes of an intelligent creator involved in this circus, or any of the things or beings behind the veil of our predicament.

We are still as blind as my cat is to what I think and talk about. My cat might be highly intelligent, she seems so at times, she might know every inch of the house, the garden and local area. She might know of every mouse, vole and bird, their habits etc to the nth degree. But she is still oblivious to the intellectual world I live in and always will be. It is an utter impossibility for her to know this aspect of her world and the extent to which it is subtly controlling and manipulating her life and circumstances. She is securely veiled from participating in my intellectual world.

Perhaps we will at some point start to pay some heed to what may be behind our veils and start to ponder the bigger picture.

Perhaps we will at some point start to pay some heed to what may be behind our veils and start to ponder the bigger picture. — Punshhh

Yep. If God exists, my metaphysics is utterly screwed.

Not necessarily, perhaps if by God we mean a bearded sky daddy( or conceptions normally provided by religion) but otherwise, for more sophisticated concepts, I cant see how it would be. Your kind of metaphysics might well be on message.

My cat, if she knew some of what I do and how much she is dependent on and under my control. Might run away thinking that I might put a bell collar on her. Or that I was free to give her unlimited treats ,fresh fish and meat, rather than her cat biscuits, she might go on hunger strike. Unless she is privy to my rationale(purpose) for my behaviour, she might find it all unintelligible, pie in the sky. She might not realise that my purpose is actually to give her food and shelter, freedom friendship and a privelidged(relatively) lifestyle and wouldn't dream of doing any less.

Provided she were to continue as she is now(her behaviour), in her ignorance, once she was privy to my world, I would happily give her that capacity(if it were in my control). But I know that without considerable tutoring, if atall possible(due to her evolutionary inheritance), she wouldn't, she would probably become uncontrollable, derranged. So I wouldn't do it if it were possible to do so.

So it is fortunate that she is veiled to those realities at this stage in her(and her species's) development.

Just draw the parallel with humans.

Not necessarily — Punshhh

You're being kind. But of course it would mean that my position was complete nonsense. And worse still, according to your pet-keeping God metaphysics, I've been actively fooled about the nature of existence for the old fool's twisted pleasure.

The cats not stupid, in a way, perhaps mostly subconsciously, she does know what's going on, I've clocked that. More so, as multicellular organisms, we are in a complex symbiotic relationship..., which allows perhaps for a little breathing space for my mind to have all its pie in the sky intellectual life, or the cat to have a daydream about mice, or that when I go off in my car, Im going of to catch giant mice, grind them into buiscits and bring them home.

She might be wrong, it might all be nonsense and I do something weird instead of catching giant mice. But she hasn't been fooled and it doesn't harm her and my continuing symbiotic relationship. No harm done.

Perhaps we all of us on this site are hopelessly wrong, I don't see a problem. We are probably making some progress and at the end of the day, what purpose is being right meant to achieve? If we knew the actual truth of it all, we might all shoot ourselves in the head, or go on strike(go off message).

Your characterisation of my position is accurate enough here. But I don't see the problem.

Surely a model by definition is going to be an atemporal truth? The map is not the territory, and all that....

I guess this is my sticking point - maybe I'm not thinking about it the right way - but if we're talking about a theory of everything (or something that aspires to approach, even if asympototically, such a theory) then the map/territory distinction gets a little weird. If the territory the map covers is everything, then the map has to include itself - the map become a part of the territory. That's what makes me a little wary of all theories of everything, this kind of recursive implosion. But, again, I'm open to the idea that I'm thinking about this the wrong way - I'm just not sure how else to think about it.

Edit: So I did a google search and found and read Pattee's (quite-followable!) "The Physics of Symbols: Bridging the Epistemic Cut." His summary of Van Neumann captures a similar idea nicely: "The most convincing general argument for this irreducible complementarity of dynamical laws and measurement function comes again from von Neumann (1955, p. 352). He calls the system being measured, S, and the measuring device, M, that must provide the initial conditions for the dynamic laws of S. Since the non-integrable constraint, M, is also a physical system obeying the same laws as S, we may try a unified description by considering the combined physical system (S + M). But then we will need a new measuring device, M', to provide the initial conditions for the larger system (S + M). This leads to an infinite regress; but the main point is that even though any constraint like a measuring device, M, can in principle be described by more detailed universal laws, the fact is that if you choose to do so you will lose the function of M as a measuring device. This demonstrates that laws cannot describe the pragmatic function of measurement even if they can correctly and completely describe the detailed dynamics of the measuring constraints.'

Is there any comparison between Deleuze's take on eternal return and Kierkegaard's repetition?

Yep. If God exists, my metaphysics is utterly screwed. — apokrisis

Not sure if you're being sarcastic, but how does the existence of God disqualify your system? If anything, God is meant to act as a unifying role, bringing all the pieces of a metaphysical system together.

If the territory the map covers is everything, then the map has to include itself - the map become a part of the territory. That's what makes me a little wary of all theories of everything, this kind of recursive implosion. — csalisbury

You will first note of course that Pattee is saying the map is an atemporal truth. It is the rate independent information or model used to constrain the rate dependent dynamics, ie: the world of material possibility.

And then why does the map have to include itself? Semiotics is expressedly about a modelling relation. It is irreducibly triadic in that regard. That is its major distinction from other more simplistic and familiar metaphysical frameworks.

So what semiotics talks about is the functional wholeness of a relation between map and territory.

You also have to respect the shift from epistemology to ontology. So if we are talking about ontic strength semiosis - as biosemiosis and pansemiosis do - then the map is actually in a relation that is adaptively making the world. It is not just a description (to be interpreted by a transcendent mind) but the act of interpretance itself by which a world is achieving crisp and stable existence.

You could think of the map more as a blueprint - an encoding of formal and final cause along the lines of a genome. It describes the landscape as it is meant to be.

So selfhood becomes the entire production - just as it is in standard biology. Selfhood is immanent in the modelling relation. And selfhood is only even possible due to there being the kind of semiotic epistemic cut that Pattee, following von Neumann, describes.

A scientific or metaphysical theory of everything would then - in the semiotic view - have that same character. It would be a "map" of the modelling relation, or sign relation, itself. It would be a representation of the fundamental algorithm of self-organisation if you like. So it would be speaking about physical existence in terms of emergent selfhood or universal individuation.

You fear the recursive implosion after I have advertised the advantages of what is in fact a recursive explosion - the open ended generativeness of a fundamental relation. But perhaps you can see that is not an issue now. Simplicity can beget complexity, but simplicity can't get simpler if it is already as simple as it is possible to get.

To use another analogy, a circle can be distorted in all sorts of ways to make more complicated shapes. But you can't get simpler than a perfect circle. So a circle doesn't suffer a recursive implosion. It instead emerges as the crisp asymptotic limit on any implosion.

how does the existence of God disqualify your system? — darthbarracuda

My system - being all about material self-organisation - says there is no God. So His existence would be a terminal fact.

That's one of the advantages of my semiotic physicalism. It's not wishy washy on such matters like conventional physicalism.

Yes I thought it was a joke. If gods exists nothing would change, or be any different. Apo's metaphysics would be equally valid, the only difference that there could be is that it would be evident that it's explanatory power would be limited to our kind of world. So what's new?

It can't make that claim, that there is no God.

But where did all this material self-organization originally come from? Do you accept the necessity of a first cause?

Do you accept the necessity of a first cause? — darthbarracuda

For fuck's sake. Why would I accept the very thing that shows a mechanical model of causality is fatally flawed?

(And God-talk is of course all about pretending to have fixed the problem with incoherent hand waving and incantation.)

Yet Aristotle posited the Prime Mover...

If gods exists nothing would change, or be any different. — Punshhh

So could God have made circles simpler. Or even more complex?

And remember that in semiotic metaphysics, that which does not make a difference does not exist. So either your God has to make a difference or talk about him is meaningless noise.

Yet Aristotle posited the Prime Mover... — darthbarracuda

And that didn't work out so well, did it? Modern physics finds itself dealing with the inverse issue of how to regulate the inherent dynamism (or indeterminacy!) of existence.

The problem is not starting "movement". It is stopping it. Regulating it. Structuring it.

As I said, earlier it depends on what conception of God one is considering, namely one provided by religion, or something more subtle. The more subtle analysis has to reconcile the world we find with the presence of this God, which we can't claim is not present. Or realise that this world is what we would find if such a God is present. Of course we can't determine this yay or nay philosophically. So what does it matter?

So we can't know what difference is or isn't made, we can't claim that circles are universal. But this Is not to conclude that squircles exist as well. It's apophatic in nature.

So if there is a God present, it is the God of semiosis. Although I agree you would be quite justified to ignore it as existing.

In actual fact, speculation about a purported first cause is still alive and well in the form of arguments about the fine-tuned universe. That is not 'hand-waving and incantation'; at this point in history, the argument takes the form of whether there is any further explanation available for the Higgs mass, etc, which appears to be 'un-natural'. In fact it's more a matter of 'hand wringing' on the part of theoretical physicists, than 'hand waving' on the part of natural theology. X-)

But surely if something must be stopped, it must have begun before. Unless it is just a brute fact that something is the case, which sounds suspiciously like a first cause.