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

[Simon Biggs]

Hi Julian

Yes, all your points are of interest. I hadn't thought of the Serres
connection, but clearly as this is to do with the autopoeitic then
cybernetics is part of the mix, particularly that of Maturana and Varela.

Bergson's view is echoed during the modern era by Heissenberg, who was less
caught up with questions of consciousness as a philosophical problem (not
that the problem goes away) but engaged it similarly as a factor in
evaluating phenomena.

More broadly, you could place this whole debate within a phenomenological
frame, although it would create some anomalies.

Best

Simon


Simon Biggs
s.biggs at eca.ac.uk  simon at littlepig.org.uk
Skype: simonbiggsuk
http://www.littlepig.org.uk/

Research Professor  edinburgh college of art
http://www.eca.ac.uk/
Creative Interdisciplinary Research into CoLlaborative Environments
http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/
Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice
http://www.elmcip.net/
Centre for Film, Performance and Media Arts
http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/film-performance-media-arts


> From: Julian Oliver <julian at julianoliver.com>
> Reply-To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2010 11:46:58 +0200
> To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 10 / is there a will to
> create / the social beyond the mechanisim?
> 
> 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
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> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
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