[-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 10 / is there a will to create / the social beyond the mechanisim?

[Julian Oliver]

Hi,

..on Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 09:33:12AM +0100, Simon Biggs wrote:
> I am using agency in a sense that some might find contentious as I am
> considering it as an ontological phenomena in a context where individuals,
> whether human or animal, alive or inert, physical or virtual, are not where
> agency is located. Rather, I am entertaining the idea that agency is of (or
> is) the relationships between things (whatever those things might be). In
> this respect I am proposing a folding of agency and creativity into one
> thing which might be considered somewhat like a dark matter which binds
> everything together. 

Isn't this also the trajectory that Bergson takes ('Matter and Memory',
'Creative evolution', quasi-objects) and even the rather enigmatic Serres?
Cybernetics touches on this also, at its more abstract extents.

> The units that are bound within this prima materia (for
> want of a better term) might then be considered rather like quantum
> phenomena - the closer you look the more you realise there is nothing there
> and that it is the phenomena around the unit that give it its apparent
> properties. The subsequent question, of course, is what is the unit (here I
> include people)? Clearly there is something there - but what?

Intention. A 'will of things' one could say. 

In the case of quantum physics it is evidence of perception as a productive
subjectivity, an old idea in philosophy and folklore. Bergson's take is that
matter is so deeply bound to the perception of it - alongside actions around and
with it - that Matter, Time and Mind must be considered part of the same
creative, generating system. 

This may appear to depend on consciousness too much to satisfy your question.
His answer might be that in order to consider matter independent from agency,
from consciousness, we become immediately dependent on such abstractions as The
Universe, the very idea of matter, linear time or Numbers, none of which exist
in themselves, of course.

Cheers,

-- 
Julian Oliver
home: New Zealand
based: Berlin, Germany 
currently: Berlin, Germany 
about: http://julianoliver.com