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"Deleuze's work is characterized by his emphasis on difference and multiplicity, which he saw as fundamental to understanding the world. He developed a philosop
by zvmaz 3y ago
"Deleuze's work is characterized by his emphasis on difference and multiplicity, which he saw as fundamental to understanding the world. He developed a philosophy of becoming, which emphasizes the importance of change and transformation."
Vacuous.
Reminds me of David Stove's "What is wrong with our thoughts" [1].
[1] https://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/wrongthoughts.html https://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/wrongthoughts.html
- tomtomistaken 3y agoCheck out all the parts available on Philosophize This!. In particular, parts 4[1] and 5[2] talk about flows and difference. [1] https://www.philosophizethis.org/podcast/deleuze-flows https://www.philosophizethis.org/podcast/deleuze-flows [2] https://www.philosophizethis.org/podcast/deleuze-difference https://www.philosophizethis.org/podcast/deleuze-difference
- gexaha 3y agoDo you consider Whitehead's philosophy also vacuous?
- dlkf 3y agoMotte (principia) and bailey (process philosophy).
- mannykannot 3y agoI'm not sure this would be entirely fair to Whitehead unless he tried to pass off the latter as being justified by the former.
- dlkf 3y agoI’m not accusing Whitehead of the fallacy, I’m talking about the parent post. Parent is suggesting that if we don’t take Deleuze seriously, we should also not take Whitehead seriously. (Despite Whitehead being a fav of the analytic crowd.) But the Deleuze comparison, to the extent that it makes any sense, only applies to the later Whitehead. We don’t have to reject the Pricipia. The obvious position is that Deleuze is not-even-wrong, process philosophy is not-even-wrong, and the principia is merely wrong (which is amazing in philosophy.)
- gexaha 3y agoyeah, sorry for not being more specific, I meant "process philosophy"
- cyber_kinetist 3y agoI have heard that Deleuze’s works highly derive from Whitehead’s process philosophy (along with influences of Bergson and Nietzsche). Which was pretty unexpected to me, since I’ve previously known Whitehead as a mathematician who tried creating a foundation of modern mathematics with Bertrand Russell (writing the book Principia Mathematica together). So I wouldn’t have expected that he’s actually one of the more foundational people behind continental philosophy, which has a (mis-understood) image of being illogical and vacuous! Anyways, should read Process and Reality someday, since my interest in panpsychism is growing… (And which might be more useful than reading Deleuze/Guattari since they’re just too cryptic)
- CiteXieAlAlyEtc 3y agothe most underrated comment on this thread; i cackled out loud, thank you. Shaviro's "Without Criteria" which discusses this connection was an absolute delight.
- bangkoksbest 3y agoThe Stove essay (in truth it's a prolonged rant) supposedly extols the virtues of empirical thinking, and you invoked it to back up the sense you had that the description of Deleuze's philosophy is vacuous... And yet... Difference and multiplicity are core to empirical data and scientific & engineering modelling. To make a measurement you assume there is a scale to measure difference. To have a variable is to assume that something can vary. To be a cause is to assume something can make a difference. To have a process is to assume a system that can change and transform. There's nothing vacuous about this.
- mrkeen 3y ago> To have a variable is to assume that something can vary. Tautology. > To be a cause is to assume something can make a difference. Tautology. > To have a process is to assume a system that can change and transform. Tautology. Vacuous is exactly how I'd describe the above. The only statement with potential depth is: > To make a measurement you assume there is a scale to measure difference. This invokes quantum mechanics a little. But if those are Deleuze's words, he's a bit late to the party. That stuff was being quantified and mathematically modelled decades before.
- beepbooptheory 3y agoThis is very strange.. Those are not what tautologies are. In order for something to be tautological, you need to be working within some formal system of proof. Proposing definitions to terms could never be tautological. I think you just want to say "I know that already!" Also, Deleuze would love this comment, precisely because of your confusion in the term. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Sense https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Sense
- bangkoksbest 3y agoTo be fair, I did intentionally write them in a style to mimic propositional logical statements (which are tautologies) but you are correct that they're not in a formal system so they can't actually be tautologies.
- asplake 3y agoMultiplicity, because relationships become important. Difference, because that drives emergence. Becoming, because when you're dealing with the emergent (eg social structures), how they come into being is essential to understanding them.
- leschak 3y agodeleuze was actually pretty well read in the natural sciences of his times, especially physics. even if you find this short snippet vacuous-sounding, he is actually one of the few philosophers whose metaphors about impenetrable parts of reality are grounded.
- keiferski 3y agoThese words have specific meanings in Deleuze’s philosophy. They aren’t that complicated. Your comment is tantamount to someone that doesn’t speak German saying “vacuous” when they come across a word like Geist. Lazy and uninformed.
- specialist 3y agoI know almost nothing about philosophy and exactly nothing about Deleuze. I do know the ancient philosophers cared a lot about change. So I assume Deleuze's notions wrt change are serious too, and not just some self-help new age crap.