Plane of Obscurity

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Articles from Computational Culture

The Plane of Obscurity Simulation and Philosophy2011-09-13 11:09:56 matthew

Review of, Manual DeLanda, Philosophy and Simulation, the emergence of syntheticreasonLondon, Continuum, 2011ISBN 1441170286240 Pages

Manual DeLanda has been best known as a significant figure in the introduction ofthe works of Gilles Deleuze to the English speaking world with numerous examplesof scientific phenomenon. Such an approach presents Deleuze as a scientificallyinformed philosopher who also used science and technology as a pivot to carry outa revolution within the field of French philosophy, as well as extending the philosophyof Deleuze to a broader range of areas that exceed Deleuzes own endeavours.Four years after the publication ofA New Philosophy of Society, Manual DeLandahas returned with a new title, Philosophy and SimulationThe emergence ofsynthetic reason, in which the name Gilles Deleuze only appears in the bibliographyof the appendix. Shall we expect a new philosophy on the way, one not shadowed bythe name Deleuze? A name nevertheless adds power to the history of philosophy, inDeleuzes own words, the name of the father.

In search of synthetic reason

In this new title, DeLanda proposes a philosophy of emergence by defending whathe calls synthetic reason, one that cannot be reduced to deduction and itsprinciples, one that exceeds both the linear, simple mechanisms and the logicaloperation of the human brain, one that can better be thought by computation andmathematical models. The book, in its modest words, according to DeLanda, is tostudy the various mechanisms of emergence and its ontological status throughcomputer simulations. Yet the and in the title also gives an ambiguous position tosimulation in a philosophical text such as this. The book consists of elevenchapters on different phenomenon of emergence including chemistry, geneticalgorithms, neural networks, economies, language, society, accompanied withexamples of computer simulation. It finishes with an appendix to associate thisambitious work with what he has developed elsewhere: the theory of assemblage.The philosophical goal is to unfold an emergent materialist world view that finallydoes justice to the creative powers of matter and energy, but, interestingly, throughcomputer simulations.

The first question that must be justified is what is the relation between emergenceand simulation? That question is immediately followed with another one: what is the
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position of philosophy in such an assemblage? DeLanda recognizes that simulationcannot be fully responsible for ensuring the legitimacy of the concept of emergence;in fact, simulation is always a reproduction of an epistemological understanding.Simulation for DeLanda is a tool that opens up a philosophy that can be visualizedand imagined through the topological figures and the constant reconfiguration ofdata within the simulated environment. Simulation demonstrates and confirmsDeLandas early writings on the creative force of matter, which formed what one

might call a scientifically informed transcendental empiricism. In this respect,DeLanda remains loyal to his Deleuzian method of philosophy, as stated in Questque la Philosophie by Deleuze and Guattari: Philosophy is a constructivism, and theconstruction has two complementary aspects that are different in nature: to createthe concepts and to trace a plane[1]. Philosophers establish a plane according totheir contemporary situation and project the image of thought to the diagrammaticinfinity. In this book, DeLanda creates the concepts of synthetic reasons and furtherdevelops that of the abstract structure of the assemblage, it also seems to me thathe was trying to extend a plane that goes beyond the previous conception of

transcendental empiricism, but this yet remains obscure in this ambitious work.

To elaborate this ambiguity, I propose here to see two conceptions oftranscendental empiricism. The first conception is what DeLanda emphasizedmany times in the book, the distinction between the subjective and the objective, thesensual and the actual, the function and the limitations. To illustrate with an exampleproposed by DeLanda himself, in its early explanation, the contraction of thestomach was considered to be part of the mechanism by which hunger motivatesfood seeking behaviour. In an experiment to test this hypothesis, despite the

stomach of a rat being removed, food seeking behaviour did not cease. DeLandahence proposes that this corresponds to a subjective gradient that can bedissipated by habituation, there is an objective gradient, a concentration ofexcitation substances in the neural substrate[2]. In the case of the rat, the objectivegradient is for example the concentrations of glucose in its blood stream. Theseobjective gradients, which possess different limits and thresholds, also present thesingularities that are by default. These singularities are not limited to the biological,but also occur in chemical reactions, neural networks, etc; for example the discreteenergy levels of an electron, the energy for activating the attractors within neural

networks, the formation of rocks through different stratifications, etc. The field oftranscendence that are presented by the singularities that governs the thresholds inthese cases, composes the structure of the space of possibilities for thephenomenon of emergence. Such universal singularities create a field oftranscendence that governs the ontological structure and the general expression ofmatter, for example the specific combination of molecules (H2O) and ions(CaCl2)give rise to particular properties. Yet the transcendental field doesnt account for thefreedom of the empirical field, the empirical and the transcendental are alwaysalready situated on the same plane, that allows the emergence of the expressions

which exceeds the transcendental structure, hence every crystal has its ownexpression, that is to say each of them is singular, as is every cat.

Computer simulations of emergence operate exactly under this principle. In order torun a simulation of cellular automata, one must specify the conditions, the functions,


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the number of parameters, etc. (This also poses secondary conditions toemergence, that is to say every simulation is always already a limitation ofperception under the condition that it can be expressed by computers).Emergences, seen as the repetition of patterns which are determined by suchsingularities, are in fact recursive functions[3]. To give a quick definition of recursion,it is when a function calls itself until certain thresholds are reached or an externalforce modifies the current conditions. Computer software in this sense, is the best

demonstration of a transcendental empiricism in the Deleuzian sense. But here wemust take one step further, if emergence follows a computational and mathematicalmodel, then how can one still account for the discrepancy, and moreover, theartefacts of simulation themselves. It seems to me that DeLanda has literallysucceeded in bringing different emergent phenomenon together through the lens ofsimulations, but that the potential of the project doesnt yet seem to be welldeveloped, as if the plane is not yet extended and remains to be discovered.However it is also the obscurity of the plane itself, that demands the attentions of thenext generation philosophers to address computational culture, or more precisely,

computational objects themselves.

We have to approach this from the second sense of transcendental empiricism. Itis imposed not only by the transcendental singularities, but also artificialsingularities, that is, the simulations themselves. What are these apparatus thatallow us to peep into the process of emergence (another structure of the space ofpossibilities)? What are their effects on the perception of emergence themselves? Infact, computer simulations must be further generalized within the broader set ofcomputational objects and repositioned here. In other words, one must recognize

that computer simulations are not only used in laboratories that try to visualize andaid control over experiments, but are also present more and more in video games,or in data visualizations, of, for example, the simulation of the growth of socialnetworks, the increase in complexity between Twitter status updates, etc. Suchsimulations present themselves not only as mechanisms of control, or spectacles,but also become functions that are integrated into everyday life existing in the formof a visualized knowledge.

The word simulation that follows after philosophy and seems to entail DeLandasstrategy as well as his ignorance: on one hand simulation becomes a synonym ofsuch a philosophy; on the other hand simulation hasnt really been addressed. I wasimpressed that in this book, DeLanda becomes a scientist rather than aphilosopher. Or if necessary, a philosopher who seems to ignore the effects ofthese objects of simulations, and the synthetic reason becomes a force thatappears to be purely technical. By saying this, one doesnt need to go back to thethesis of Jean Baudrillard and consider society as pure simulation, but rather onecan trace the plane by integrating these technical objects into it, in a manner relatedto what has been done by Gilbert Simondon and the Simondon-inspired Deleuze. Ifwe can justify what has been called synthetic reason here, it stands in an obscureposition that seems to be under-addressed in the discipline of philosophy. Syntheticreasons are not purely theoretical, that is to say they are not simply hypotheses thatcan easily be accused of being mysterious entities such as life force and lanvital, as with the previous generation philosophers of emergence[4]; on the other


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hand, they are not actual since what is simulated is only an isomorphism but notreality itself. What accounts for the reality brought forth by the simulations and whatare the relations between the principles of simulations and the transformationsimposed? That is to consider a plane on which the simulations themselves becomeattractors and create a new topography which is not reflected on the screen. Whatremains at stake, as unquestioned, in DeLandas work, is not the ontological statusof emergence, but rather that of the computer simulations.

Reality and Simulation

DeLanda, in my view, did a brilliant job in opening up the philosophical investigationconcerning simulation by illustrating with different examples in different scientificdisciplines. He rightly points out the significance of computer simulation and itsimportance in contemporary culture, and it seems to me he is trying to integratethese images on the screens into his thought image, but, at least in this book,simulation is rendered solely as the justification of the hypothesis of the synthetic

processes. When DeLanda is addressing the computational process of simulation,he still speaks within the field of computing, without reinserting simulation back intoreality, that is to say to extend the plane of consistency.

Computational simulations have been often seen as tools, imitations, since theirbirth, while their transforming power imposed on reality is often overlooked. Thediscrepancy between the real and the hypothesis also poses a question betweentruth and untruth. In AI, the simulation of human language, of robotic movement hadbeen criticized as untrue, for example, as we can see in work by Hubert Dreyfus,

such as, What Computers Cant do? and further in, What Computers Still Cant Do,in which he considers that simulations based on formal rules follow a mistakenmethod towards understanding humans and nature. For example, Dreyfus mockedHerbert Simons 1957 prediction that AI would win the world chess championship in10 years time[5]. In this case, the simulation that corresponds to Simons predictionwas not realized until 1997, when the IBM chess computer Deep Blue beat the worldchampion Garry Kasparov. The 30 years delay confirms neither the truth nor untruthof this statement, but already constitutes a world which demands a new plane. Agenuine philosophical thought is one that integrates the oppositions into a plane of

consistency.On one hand, the reinsertion of computational objects and their synthetic conceptsinto the plane of consistency is apparently lacking in this book. On the other,philosophy, through simulation, is constructing a new reality that eliminates the gapbetween simulation and emergence. This is exemplified by the chapter on multi-agent systems and language. In fact, this discussion seems to be one of thestrangest of the book. DeLanda proposes to understand the formalization oflanguage through a simulation process of grammatification. Grammatification

according to DeLanda is a process that can break down a set of monolithicsentences into recursively, recombinable components[6]. For example, how bybreaking a sentence like FullMoonCauseLowTide into smaller component likeCause (FullMoon, LowTide), and finally a context free logical form Cause(x, y). HereDeLanda seems to concur with what has been discussed in computational


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linguistics and the formal logic of language. On top of that, DeLanda proposes hisown model to understand such process in terms of what he calls biological evolutionand cultural evolution. The formal is the passing down of genetic capacity to detectthe patterns of word occurrence; the latter transforms customary patterns intoobligatory constraints on word-choice behaviour[7]. Within such a simulation of theemergence of primitive language, one encounters again an approximation of thelast centurys anthropological research, which takes symbolic logic over other forms

of logic, although this time it appears on the computer screen.

What do these simulations tell us if they are not already within the unexamined limitof the computational machines? This way to look at the emergence of primitivelanguages seems to fundamentally ignore all other technical apparatus involved inthe simulation and re-establish logical form as the ultimate pursuit of language. Or,in fact, is this a limitation of simulation itself? Does there exist an emergencephenomenon that cannot be simulated by a Turing machine? For example, whenthis emergence process involves a non-stop looping or recursion? The equivalence

between philosophy and simulation seems to be quite clear here, especially theinvisible attempt to axiomatize both nature and culture. But is a philosophy as suchsimply one that imposes an ontological structure through some visual impressionsand logical operations? In other words, isnt such work merely reinforcingepistemological understanding as well as transforming it into an ontological one?

By the end of the book, DeLanda goes back to the theory of assemblage andsketches the relations between the discourse on emergence and simulation. In thispart, DeLanda puts simulation aside, and fits the image projected through the lens of

simulation into the theory of assemblage as it concerns singularities, codings andidentities. Every phonemenon of emergence can be explained, or at least thoughtthrough, by an assemblage accompanied with internal dynamics ofreterritorialization and deterritorialization. The metaphysical understanding ofmateriality as a topological graph compounded of both a transcendental andempirical field is plausible, it restores a vitalism to matter: including both a dead catand an electron, but it nevertheless remains an older project, one that DeLandaalready outlined in his previous works, such as Intensive Science and VirtualPhilosophy.

Where are the computational objects of simulations? In the last two pages,DeLanda attempts to philosophize a Turing machine, that is the assemblage madeout of operators and data[8], but this remains too general if not already a form ofcommon sense. After all, the numerous examples seem unable to express thephilosophical ambitions well. DeLanda may already point to the plane which isbrought about by simulations and visualizations. They finally lead to thereconfiguration of the topological figure of transcendental empiricism. But in thisbook, it remains obscure, and in certain sense it discloses the crisis of ametaphysics that always overlooks its apparatus of seeing, like a short-sighted man

always forgets the fact that he is looking the world through his glasses.


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References:

De Landa, Manuel,A New Philosophy of Society : assemblage theory and socialcomplexity, London : Continuum, 2006

De Landa, Manuel, Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, London : Continuum,2004

Deleuze, Gilles & Guattari, Flix, Quest-ce que la Philosophie?, Paris: Les ditionde Minuit, 2005

Dreyfus, Herbert, What Computers Still Cant Do : a critique of artificial reason,Cambridge, Mass. : MIT, c1992

Wolfram, Stephen, Cellular Automata as Simple Self-Organizing Systems, 1982,http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/articles/ca/82-cellular/

Bio:

Yuk Hui, recently obtained his PhD from the Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths,University of London with a thesis titled On the Existence of Digital Objects. He istrained in computer science, philosophy and cultural theory, and was a researcherin the Metadata Project funded by the Leverhulme Trust.

[1] Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Quest ce que la philosophie, 38

[2] DeLanda, Philosophy and Simulation, 100

[3] Stephen Wolfram, Cellular Automata as Simple Self-Organizing Systems, 1982,http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/articles/ca/82-cellular/

[4] Philosophy and Simulation, 2[5] Hubert Dreyfus, What Computers Cant Do: A Critique of Artificial Reason (NewYork: Harper & Row,1979), 69

[6] Philosophy and Simulation, 154



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Plane of Obscurity

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