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by TerenceBlake

3 days ago

LIVED DIGITAL PHILOSOPHY: an experiment in


pluralism
The ontological and existential underpinnings of AGENT SWARM are described in their generality. Deleuze,
Badiou and Latour are shown to belong to the same movement of immanentising Plato. Objectarians (OOO) and
Unitarians (Laruelle's philosophy of the One) are shown to be its waste products.

Terence Blake
@TPBlake

I have been examining Continental philosophy in terms of five criteria: pluralism, diachronicity,
apophaticism, testability, and democracy.
3 DAYS
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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

These have been my criteria for 40 years. They determined my interest in Feyerabend's
philosophy, which is much more than an epistemology.
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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

On Feyerabend's pluralist, diachronic, empirical, apophatic, democratic "metaphysics" see:


terenceblake.wordpress.com/2016/02/02/fey
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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

These 5 criteria were behind my enthusiasm for Deleuze's philosophy, ever since I began reading
his works in 1978.
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https://storify.com/TerenceBlake/lived-digital-philosophy-an-experiment-in-pluralis

Terence Blake
@TPBlake

I have written much on Deleuze's pluralism, and have always contested his reduction to a
philosopher of difference: terenceblake.wordpress.com/2015/11/03/del
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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

This is why I have never really been a "Deleuzian" or even a "Feyerabendian", as I evaluate their
work from a more general perspective.
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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

This is why I do not think that we are going through a very special period of metaphysical
speculation.
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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

I see the same quest for a pluralist, diachronic, empirical, dialogical metaphysics extending over
two centuries.
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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

Developments like object-oriented ontology, speculative realism and scientism are pitiful little
regressions in this more general movement.
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https://storify.com/TerenceBlake/lived-digital-philosophy-an-experiment-in-pluralis

Terence Blake
@TPBlake

Since the beginning pluralism has been criticised for being a form of relativism, and this critique
has been partly justified.
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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

Pluralists like Feyerabend and Deleuze have struggled to find some way to keep the pluralism
without the relativism.
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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

This quest for a non-relativist, or realist, pluralism is the motive force of much contemporary
Continental philosophy.
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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

Latour, Stiegler, Laruelle, even Badiou are all working on this task, under different names: Latour's
"empirical metaphysics", Badiou's
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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

"immanence of Truths", Stiegler's "pharmacology" and "organology", Laruelle's "non-standard


philosophy".
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https://storify.com/TerenceBlake/lived-digital-philosophy-an-experiment-in-pluralis

Terence Blake
@TPBlake

Mostly people specialise in one or other of these philosophies without seeing the connections.
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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

Recently there have been attempts to find connections between these figures in terms of the
vacuous concept of "Continental naturalism".
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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

One sees long-winded demonstrations aimed at establishing that for example Stiegler is a
"naturalist". This is no news.
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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

Naturalism is the default position of all these figures, and yet they see it not as a solution but as the
source of many problems.
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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

Naturalism is one name for immanence (if we exclude a scientistic acception). But it is no use
repeating "immanence" as a mantra without
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https://storify.com/TerenceBlake/lived-digital-philosophy-an-experiment-in-pluralis

Terence Blake
@TPBlake

seeing the problems it poses, in particular relativism. This is why a certain "Deleuzian" style is a
danger to thought.
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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

Both Badiou and Laruelle, even if they are wrong about Deleuze (and I think they are never fully
wrong) are right about deleuzian doxa.
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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

Some people have made careers out of writing about Deleuze from the perspective of the history
of philosophy, however groovy they try to
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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

make it sound. I eagerly await the anthology DELEUZE AND WHOLEMEAL SPAGHETTI to
complete my collection.
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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

I make an exception for those who are trying to engage with Deleuze in their lives. But scholars will
be scholars.
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https://storify.com/TerenceBlake/lived-digital-philosophy-an-experiment-in-pluralis

Terence Blake
@TPBlake

Deleuze's last word was probably not immanence, but "re-injection" (if one can say that he had a
single "last word").
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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

We see a similar movement in Latour's @AIMEproject when on the basis of his immanent ontology
he re-injects "mini-transcendences".
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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

Badiou's idea is that our default position today is immanence, called by him "democratic
materialism". He describes this as the thesis that
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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

there are only bodies and languages. He re-injects mini-transcendence by adding except that there
are truths.
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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

"Mini-transcendence" is not at all transcendence as opposed to immanence, but is another name


for pluralism as the avoidance of the
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https://storify.com/TerenceBlake/lived-digital-philosophy-an-experiment-in-pluralis

Terence Blake
@TPBlake

relativist interpretation of immanence.


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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

Badiou recently has stated that he recognises in Deleuze's notion of "sense" this same concept of
immanent truth.
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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

Is Badiou a naturalist? Yes and no, the same as for Deleuze.


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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

Laruelle's idea of the One is a similar attempt at re-injection of mini-transcendence. However he


writes in a deliberately obfuscating style
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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

Laruelle has chosen among his English representatives some very intellectually dubious characters
and deserves every misreading he receives.
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Giovanni Fanfoni
@GiovanniFanfoni

@TPBlake When Deleuze and Guattari talk about a concept as the product of an "absolute
overflight, at infinite speed"....
@TPBlake 3 DAYS
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https://storify.com/TerenceBlake/lived-digital-philosophy-an-experiment-in-pluralis

Terence Blake
@TPBlake

This movement can be seen not only in philosophy but in all the culture. I have argued that it
underlies Neal Stephenson's novel ANATHEM.
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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

In ANATHEM the world of Platonic ideas is given a science fiction treatment, immanentised (as in
Badiou and Deleuze), but also pluralised.
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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

ANATHEM provides us with a vista not only of multiple empirical causal worlds, but also of multiple
noetic Platonic worlds.
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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

ANATHEM comes closest to those who advocate loosening up or pluralising Badiou by giving
category theory primacy over set theory
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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

although it follows also the path of the quantum described by Laruelle:


terenceblake.wordpress.com/2015/11/14/imm
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https://storify.com/TerenceBlake/lived-digital-philosophy-an-experiment-in-pluralis

Terence Blake
@TPBlake

It is in this more general context that I would like to talk of Rocco Gangle's book: "DIAGRAMMATIC
IMMANENCE Category Theory and Philosophy"
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Gangle's book "develops an immanent ontology of relations based on the dynamics of formal
diagrams". pic.twitter.com/911P8A5Vdm
TERENCE BLAKE @TPBLAKE 3 DAYS
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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

Feyerabend incited us "Let's make more movies": douban.com/note/294954520/. Gangle's similar


message is "Let's make more diagrams".
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https://storify.com/TerenceBlake/lived-digital-philosophy-an-experiment-in-pluralis

Terence Blake
@TPBlake

The first theme of my blog is the articulation of a mode of thinking that is pluralist, diachronici,
empirical, apophatic, and democratic.
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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

The second theme is an examination of contemporary Continental philosophy as embodying rival,


but similar, metaphysical research programmes.
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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

Deleuze, Badiou, and Latour have no problem with this terminology. Laruelle implies that he is not
doing "metaphysics". But this is true
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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

only by definitional fiat.


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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

In terms of the Popperian definition of a MRP as combining both testable and untestable
hypotheses in a heuristically evolving program.
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https://storify.com/TerenceBlake/lived-digital-philosophy-an-experiment-in-pluralis

Terence Blake
@TPBlake

It is shocking to see so-called philosophers of a Laruellean bent blithely repeating that Laruelle is
"outside" philosophy whereas Deleuze
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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

or Badiou isn't.
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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

Laruelle whatever he may claim is doing very much the same thing as these others and sometimes
simply repeating them in more obscure terms
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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

A third theme of my blog is individuation. Philosophy is not just abstract thought, but involves real
encounters.
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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

On my blog I have recounted my enthusiasms and my chagrins, the existential intensities of


philosophising in a digital milieu.
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https://storify.com/TerenceBlake/lived-digital-philosophy-an-experiment-in-pluralis

Terence Blake
@TPBlake

Today we have many university professors talking about "Digital Humanities". This is a potentially
contradictory situation as their training
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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

their major expression, and, above all, their paycheck come from the non-digital academy.
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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

My philosophical production has been almost entirely digitally constructed.


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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

This is what the Laruelleans and the Obectarians have not forgiven me: I am not their colleague,
so they have done everything in their power
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Erratum: objectarians

Terence Blake
@TPBlake

to consign me to silence. This, independently of anything I can say or do to confirm it, shows up
their total conformism.
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https://storify.com/TerenceBlake/lived-digital-philosophy-an-experiment-in-pluralis

Terence Blake
@TPBlake

Thus digitality and what it means to be a "digital philosopher", and not a philosopher of the digital,
constitute a fourth theme of my blog.
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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

Philosophy can be done on twitter, on facebook, on blogs, despite what some thinkers try to tell us.
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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

Lived digitality is not the same as academics mouthing off about code and algorithms as if that
somehow made them beyond Deleuze & Foucault.
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Terence Blake
@TPBlake

Usually they are lagging far behind, such is the misplaced concreteness of their thinking.
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https://storify.com/TerenceBlake/lived-digital-philosophy-an-experiment-in-pluralis

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