Biogrammatic Vir(Ac)tuality. Note Quote.

In Foucault’s most famous example, the prison acts as the confluence of content (prisoners) and expression (law, penal code) (Gilles Deleuze, Sean Hand-Foucault). Informal Diagrams are proliferate. As abstract machines they contain the transversal vectors that cut across a panoply of features (such as institutions, classes, persons, economic formation, etc), mapping from point to relational point, the generalized features of power economies. The disciplinary diagram explored by Foucault, imposes “a particular conduct upon a particular human multiplicity”. The imposition of force upon force affects and effectuates the felt experience of a life, a living. Deleuze has called the abstract machine “pure matter/function” in which relations between forces are nonetheless very real.

[…] the diagram acts as a non-unifying immanent cause that is co-extensive with the whole social field: the abstract machine is like the cause of the concrete assemblages that execute its relations; and these relations between forces take place ‘not above’ but within the very tissue of the assemblages they produce.

The processual conjunction of content and expression; the cutting edge of deterritorialization:

The relations of power and resistance between theory and practice resonate – becoming-form; diagrammatics as praxis, integrates and differentiates the immanent cause and quasi-cause of the actualized occasions of research/creation. What do we mean by immanent cause? It is a cause which is realized, integrated and distinguished in its effect. Or rather, the immanent cause is realized, integrated and distinguished by its effect. In this way there is a correlation or mutual presupposition between cause and effect, between abstract machine and concrete assemblages

Memory is the real name of the relation to oneself, or the affect of self by self […] Time becomes a subject because it is the folding of the outside…forces every present into forgetting but preserves the whole of the past within memory: forgetting is the impossibiltiy of return and memory is the necessity of renewal.

The figure on the left is Henri Bergson’s diagram of an infinitely contracted past that directly intersects with the body at point S – a mobile, sensorimotor present where memory is closest to action. Plane P represents the actual present; plane of contact with objects. The AB segments represent repetitive compressions of memory. As memory contracts it gets closer to action. In it’s more expanded forms it is closer to dreams. The figure on the right extrapolates from Bergson’s memory model to describe the Biogrammatic ontological vector of the Diagram as it moves from abstract (informal) machine in the most expanded form “A” through the cone “tissue” to the phase-shifting (formal), arriving at the Strata of the P plane to become artefact. The ontological vector passes through the stratified, through the interval of difference created in the phase shift (the same phase shift that separates and folds content and expression to move vertically, transversally, back through to the abstract diagram.)

A spatio-temporal-material contracting-expanding of the abstract machine is the processual thinking-feeling-articulating of the diagram becoming-cartographic; synaesthetic conceptual mapping. A play of forces, a series of relays, affecting a tendency toward an inflection of the informal diagram becoming-form. The inflected diagram/biogram folds and unfolds perception, appearances; rides in the gap of becoming between content and expression; intuitively transduces the actualizing (thinking, drawing, marking, erasing) of matter-movement, of expressivity-movement. “To follow the flow of matter… is intuition in action.” A processual stage that prehends the process of the virtual actualizing;

the creative construction of a new reality. The biogrammatic stage of the diagrammatic is paradoxically double in that it is both the actualizing of the abstract machine (contraction) and the recursive counter-actualization of the formal diagram (détournement); virtual and actual.

It is the event-dimension of potential – that is the effective dimension of the interrelating of elements, of their belonging to each other. That belonging is a dynamic corporeal “abstraction” – the “drawing off” (transductive conversion) of the corporeal into its dynamism (yielding the event) […] In direct channeling. That is, in a directional channeling: ontological vector. The transductive conversion is an ontological vector that in-gathers a heterogeneity of substantial elements along with the already-constituted abstractions of language (“meaning”) and delivers them together to change. (Brian Massumi Parables for the Virtual Movement, Affect, Sensation)

Skin is the space of the body the BwO that is interior and exterior. Interstitial matter of the space of the body.

The material markings and traces of a diagrammatic process, a ‘capturing’ becoming-form. A diagrammatic capturing involves a transductive process between a biogrammatic form of content and a form of expression. The formal diagram is thus an individuating phase-shift as Simondon would have it, always out-of-phase with itself. A becoming-form that inhabits the gap, the difference, between the wave phase of the biogrammatic that synaesthetically draws off the intermix of substance and language in the event-dimension and the drawing of wave phase in which partial capture is formalized. The phase shift difference never acquires a vectorial intention. A pre-decisive, pre-emptive drawing of phase-shifting with a “drawing off” the biogram.

If effects realize something this is because the relations between forces or power relations, are merely virtual, potential, unstable vanishing and molecular, and define only possibilities of interaction so long as they do not enter a macroscopic whole capable of giving form to their fluid manner and diffuse function. But realization is equally an integration, a collection of progressive integrations that are initially local and then become or tend to become global, aligning, homogenizing and summarizing relations between forces: here law is the integration of illegalisms.

 

Abstract Expressions of Time’s Modalities. Thought of the Day 21.0

According to Gregory Bateson,

What we mean by information — the elementary unit of information — is a difference which makes a difference, and it is able to make a difference because the neural pathways along which it travels and is continually transformed are themselves provided with energy. The pathways are ready to be triggered. We may even say that the question is already implicit in them.

In other words, we always need to know some second order logic, and presuppose a second order of “order” (cybernetics) usually shared within a distinct community, to realize what a certain claim, hypothesis or theory means. In Koichiro Matsuno’s opinion Bateson’s phrase

must be a prototypical example of second-order logic in that the difference appearing both in the subject and predicate can accept quantification. Most statements framed in second-order logic are not decidable. In order to make them decidable or meaningful, some qualifier needs to be used. A popular example of such a qualifier is a subjective observer. However, the point is that the subjective observer is not limited to Alice or Bob in the QBist parlance.

This is what is necessitated in order understand the different viewpoints in logic of mathematicians, physicists and philosophers in the dispute about the existence of time. An essential aspect of David Bohm‘s “implicate order” can be seen in the grammatical formulation of theses such as the law of motion:

While it is legitimate in its own light, the physical law of motion alone framed in eternal time referable in the present tense, whether in classical or quantum mechanics, is not competent enough to address how the now could be experienced. … Measurement differs from the physical law of motion as much as the now in experience differs from the present tense in description. The watershed separating between measurement and the law of motion is in the distinction between the now and the present tense. Measurement is thus subjective and agential in making a punctuation at the moment of now. (Matsuno)

The distinction between experiencing and capturing experience of time in terms of language is made explicit in Heidegger’s Being and Time. 

… by passing away constantly, time remains as time. To remain means: not to disappear, thus, to presence. Thus time is determined by a kind of Being. How, then, is Being supposed to be determined by time?

Koichiro Matsuno’s comment on this is:

Time passing away is an abstraction from accepting the distinction of the grammatical tenses, while time remaining as time refers to the temporality of the durable now prior to the abstraction of the tenses.

Therefore, when trying to understand the “local logics/phenomenologies” of the individual disciplines (mathematics physics, philosophy, etc., including their fields), one should be aware of the fact that the capabilities of our scientific language are not limitless:

…the now of the present moment is movable and dynamic in updating the present perfect tense in the present progressive tense. That is to say, the now is prior and all of the grammatical tenses including the ubiquitous present tense are the abstract derivatives from the durable now. (Matsuno)

This presupposes the adequacy of mathematical abstractions specifically invented or adopted and elaborated for the expression of more sophisticated modalities of time’s now than those currently used in such formalisms as temporal logic.

Knowledge Within and Without: The Upanishadic Tradition (1)

All perceptible matter comes from a primary substance, or tenuity beyond conception, filling all space, the akasha or luminiferous ether, which is acted upon by the life giving Prana or creative force, calling into existence, in never-ending cycles all things and phenomena – Nikola Tesla

Teilhard de Chardin:

In the eyes of the physicist, nothing exists legitimately, at least up to now, except the without of things. The same intellectual attitude is still permissible in the bacteriologist, whose cultures (apart from substantial difficulties) are treated as laboratory reagents. But it is still more difficult in the realm of plants. It tends to become a gamble in the case of a biologist studying the behavior of insects or coelenterates. It seems merely futile with regard to the vertebrates. Finally, it breaks down completely with man, in whom the existence of a within can no longer be evaded, because it is a subject of a direct intuition and the substance of all knowledge. It is impossible to deny that, deep within ourselves, “an interior” appears at the heart of beings, as it were seen through a rent. This is enough to ensure that, in one degree or another, this “interior” should obtrude itself as existing everywhere in nature from all time. Since the stuff of the universe has an inner aspect at one point of itself, there is necessarily a double to its structure, that is to say in every region of space and time-in the same way for instance, as it is granular: co-extensive with their Without, there is a Within to things.

Both Indian thought and modern scientific thought accept a fundamental unity behind the world of variety. That basic unitary reality evolves into all that we see around us in the world. This view is a few thousand years old in India; We find it in the Samkhyan and Vedantic schools of Indian thought; and they expound it very much on the lines followed by modern thought. In his address to the Chicago Parliament of Religions in 1893, Vivekananda said:

All science is bound to come to this conclusion in the long run, Manifestation and not creation, is the word of science today, and the Hindu is only glad that what he has been cherishing in his bosom for ages is going to be taught in more forcible language, and with further light from the latest conclusions of science.

The Samkhyan school uses two terms to represent Nature or Pradhana: Prakrti denoting Nature in its unmodified state, and Vikrti denoting nature in its modified state. The Vedanta similarly speaks of Brahman as the inactive state, and Maya or Shakti as the active state of one and the same primordial non-dual reality. But the Brahman of the Vedanta is the unity of both the spiritual and the non-spiritual, the non-physical and the physical aspects of the universe.

So as the first answer to the question, ‘What is the world?’ we get this child’s answer in his growing knowledge of the discrete entities and events of the outer world and their inter-connections. The second answer is the product of scientific thought, which gives us the knowledge of the one behind the many. All the entities and events of the world are but the modifications or evolutions of one primordial basis reality, be it nature, space- time or cosmic dust.

Although modern scientific thought does not yet have a place for any spiritual reality or principle, scientists like Chardin and Julian Huxley are trying to find a proper place for the experience of the spiritual in the scientific picture of the universe. When this is achieved, the scientific picture, which is close to Vedanta already, will become closer still, and the synthesis of the knowledge of the ‘without’ and the ‘within’ of things will give us the total view of the universe. This is wisdom according to Vedanta, whereas all partial views are just pieces of knowledge or information only.

The Upanishads deal with this ‘within’ of things. Theirs in fact, is the most outstanding contribution on this subject in the human cultural legacy. They term this aspect of reality of things pratyak chaitanya or pratyak atman or pratyak tattva; and they contain the fascinating account of the stages by which the human mind rose from crude beginnings to clear, wholly spiritual heights in the realization of this reality.

How does the world look when we view it from the outside? We seek an answer from the physical sciences. How does it look when we view from the inside? We seek an answer from the non-physical sciences, including the science of religion. And philosophy, as understood in the Upanishadic tradition, is the synthesis of these two answers: Brahmavidyā is Sarvavidyāpratishthā, as the Mundaka Upanishad puts it.

क्षेत्रक्षेत्रज्ञयोर्ज्ञानं यत्तज्ज्ञानम् मतं मम

kṣetrakṣetrajñayorjñānaṃ yattajjñānam mataṃ mama

“The unified knowledge of the ‘without’ and the ‘within’ of things is true knowledge according to Me, as Krishna says in the Gita” (Bhagavad-Gita chapter 13, 2nd Shloka).

From this total viewpoint there is neither inside nor outside; they are relative concepts depending upon some sort of a reference point, e.g.the body; as such, they move within the framework of relativity. Reality knows neither ‘inside’ nor ‘outside’; it is ever full. But these relative concepts are helpful in our approach to the understanding of the total reality.

Thus we find that our knowledge of the manifold of experience the idam, also involves something else, namely, the unity behind the manifold. This unity behind the manifold, which is not perceptible to the senses, is indicated by the term adah meaning ‘that’, indicating something far away, unlike the ‘this’ of the sense experience. ‘This’ is the correlative of ‘that’; ‘this’ is the changeable aspect of reality; ‘that’ is its unchangeable aspect. If ‘this’ refers to something given in sense experience, ‘that’ refers to something transcendental, beyond the experience of the senses. To say ‘this’ therefore also implies at the same time something that is beyond ‘this’. This is an effect as such, it is visible and palpable; and behind it lies the cause, the invisible and the impalpable. Adah, ‘that’, represents the invisible behind the visible, the transcendental behind the empirical, a something that is beyond time and space. In religion this something is called ‘God’. In philosophy it is called tat or adah, That, Brahman, the ultimate Reality, the cause, the ground, and the goal of the universe.

So this verse first tells us that beyond and behind the manifested universe is the reality of Brahman, which is the fullness of pure Being; it then tells us about this world of becoming which, being nothing but Brahman, is also the ‘Full’. From the view of total Reality, it is all ‘fullness’ everywhere, in space-time as well as beyond space-time. Then the verse adds:

पूर्णस्य पूर्णमादाय पूर्णमेवाशिष्यते

pūrṇasya pūrṇamādāya pūrṇamevāśiṣyate

‘From the Fullness of Brahman has come the fullness of the universe, leaving alone Fullness as the remainder.’

What, then, is the point of view or level from which the sentiments of this verse proceed? It is that of the total Reality, the Absolute and the Infinite, in which as we have read earlier, the ‘within’ and the ‘without’ of things merge. The Upanishads call it as ocean of Sachchidānanda, the unity of absolute existence, absolute awareness, and absolute bliss. Itself beyond all distinctions of time and space, it yet manifests itself through all such distinctions. To the purified vision of the Upanishadic sages, this whole universe appeared as the fullness of Being, which was, which is, which shall ever be. In the Bhagavad-Gita (VII. 26) Krshna says:

वेदाहं समतीतानि वर्तमानानि चार्जुन ।
भविष्याणि च भूतानि मां तु वेद न कश्चन ॥

vedāhaṃ samatītāni vartamānāni cārjuna |
bhaviṣyāṇi ca bhūtāni māṃ tu veda na kaścana ||

‘I, O Arjuna, know the beings that are of the past, that are of the present, and that are to come in future; but Me no one knows.’

That fullness of the true Me, says Krshna, is beyond all these limited categories, such as space and time, cause and effect, and substance and attribute.