10 theses on the digital

8/10/2019 10 Theses on the Digital

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10 theses on the digital

Despite being the subject of much discussion these days the digital doesn’t often appear

in the writing of the philosophers ,except perhaps when it arrives unwillingly under

another name, the world of business has accepted it as has the popular culture consumer

society, medicine, and industrial engineering,..But is there ontology of digital or even

philosophy of it?

So my goal is not so much to answer this question but to draw up a map for what I think

is necessary to answer this question, in another word an outline for future writing on

philosophy and digitality.

The goal then is not so much to produce a philosophy of the digital or even a

digitization of philosophy the former achieving at best kind of formalism for new media

and the latter enlisting or promoting a new method for doing philosophy, not so much

these things as an exploration in which digitality and philosophy are addressed together

as two conditions both in parallel as they diverge and differentiate themselves but also

in series and concurrently as they emerge and intermediate.

So this process pays attention the conceptual requirement of the digital and by contrasts

the analogue and the strictures it grants to philosophy without trying to reduce one to

the other.

There are many ways to define the digital and the analogue the digital is online theanalogue is offline the digital is new the analogue is old, the digital means 0 and 1 the

analogue means continuous variation the digital means the discreet the analogue means

the integrated the digital means the digits the fingers and toes the analogue means

proportions, ratios and correspondences.

But I will not define the term in precisely this way I will define them essentially as the

difference between broken and smooth and the difference between discreet points and

continuous curves. But even this I think forestalls the question because by saying

discreet points we have not explained anything because we haven’t explained how they

become discreet in the first place. So for me the digital is perhaps something even more

fundamental. It’s the basic distinction that allows us to make any distinction at all.

The digital is the capacity to divide things and make distinctions between them. Thus

perhaps not so much 0 and 1 but 1 and 2. So how to define the digital exactly?

Thesis number one: the digital means the one dividing the one into two

The heart of the digital lies in metaphysics, most importantly in mid is dialectics thedigital arrives in western philosophy then with Socrates and Plato for this is the time



when dialectical metaphysics experiences its most complete original expression.

Consider the famous axiom from the Parmenides third fragment “the same to think and

to be”. There is nothing digital in that the one has not divided into two in fact the

opposite is the case sameness permeate the categories of being and thinking, the axiom

of Parmenides could be easily rewritten as to think and to be are one. Yet with Socrates

and Plato philosophy embarks on a grand multi millennium journey the one divides into

two as Socrates warns us in the Phaedra’s the truth of man’s sincerity can be

externalized into the physic objects called hypomanata and this is the basic question of

media, such processes of externalization are at root digital, for the extend the one

beyond its own bounds, thereby branching the one splitting it alienating it, it depart of

the one into the external object. This is the operation of the digital the making discreet

of the hitherto fluid, the hitherto whole, the hitherto integral and the making discrete can

come via separation individuation, exteriorization, extension or alienation any process

produces or maintain differences between two or more elements can be labeled digital

and this is why the dialectical metaphysics of Socrates and plato is so important to the

history of the digital for it establishes for the first time the basic categorization of

digitization essence alienated into instants, speech grammatized to writing idea

extended into a matter, memory exteriorized into media authentic life separated from

the unauthentic life.

Hegel and Marx also are a key entry into any philosophical survey of digitality, the

same philosophical fuel propelled plato is evident here as well. In the very heart of

Hegel phenomenology which considers the foundation of being in the alienation within

being an elemental cleaving that cannot be overcome or perhaps only overcome at the

expense of a new cleaving and this is what I think we can even just call Hegel

principles, whatever is given is also riven, whatever is given as part of being is always

already given over to elemental riveness an elemental distinction which for Hegel and

its most important student Marx act as a kind of engine moving thing forward. it draws

an arrow on time and calls it history. In Marx Hegel principles is rewritten as something

as class struggle, all being is being is in struggle, being in antagonism. Or in a

contemporary figure like Alan Badiou Hegel principles are rewritten as what he calls

the theory of points in which a social whole is decomposed in two poles tow points

against which the subject is compelled to take a position. So admittedly we’ve only

barely scratched the surface in this kind of overture I’m giving here of digitality in philosophy.

But I kind want to summarize many of these trends first by offering you two distinct but

related fields the first being differential being and the second dialectical being.

Differential being refers to the condition in which being is founded on a basic division

of difference, such difference is often construed in terms of the self and other, I and thou

or being and existing, this basic division of difference is not that something that

achieves any lasting syntheses, but rather sustains itself in difference as such, it

responds to the riveness of the one by perpetuating the riveness in kind of never ending

twoness, of being and existing and I think here we find figures like Plato, Kant,



Heidegger, and many others. Dialectical being in the other hand who also digital and

hence also fueled by sustenance of separation between things refers to the condition in

which being is founded on basic negation so it’s similar to difference but instead of

being affirmative it’s negative, a negation formed form something and it’s opposite.

Hence dialectical being means not so much an everlasting towness god and man, but

inexhaustible negation via reflection or opposition. It responses to the elemental

riveness of the one by reiterating the cleavage into a new found negation both the

ongoing negation of the one itself but also of all subsequent products of the riveness of

the one so here I think we find people like Hegel Marx we can even say Badiou and

others.

Thesis number two: the analogue means the two coming together as one

The analogue makes itself evident via two key modes which maybe at the end are

themselves are one and I think these two modes are basically the two different poles ofimminence either if you will kind of imminence of the total plane of being or the

imminence of the individual person or object, either imminence in its infinity or

imminence in it finitude. So under the first condition being is understood as continuous

in its imminence we might call this the imminence of everything which is to say a mode

of pure multiplicity in which radically singular and heterogamous entities occupy a

purely material existence this is a Deluzian kind of Deluzian mode, there is no essence

no soul no species to this entities they are all internally caused assembling and

reassembling according to forces of flux and attraction entities are imminent they

remain within themselves even as they intensify and dissipate according to their own

characteristics and vicissitudes there are no sets here there are no complex aggregates

maybe not even a society or bodies or if they are they are body without organs, there are

only multiplicities or assemblages and so here I think as I said we find the great thinker

of material imminence, radical materialism people like Spinoza and perhaps most

famously recently Deleuze, in parallel of imminence of everything lies the imminence

of something the first type is called continuous being the second we can call generic

being, under the second condition being is understood as generic in its imminence

because the something in question remains within in itself it has no cause to go outside

of itself it refrains from forming relations, it is therefore quite literally a something no

more and no less because there is no more can be attributed to it and I think that todaythe most sophisticated theory of generic being would be that of François laruelle but of

course we can find traces of it in the work of Agamben even Badiou, Deleuze,

Anthonio Negri and Micheal Hardt perhaps using different vocabulary using this term

the whatever so think these are the basic ways in which the analogical exhibit itself in

philosophy either as a continuous being or a generic being, because in both instances the

two come together as one, for the former continuous being it’s the twone ss of entities

that returns to a base line continuous oness Deleuze calls this univocal being the

univocity of being but the second the generic being it’s the breakdown of the twoness

into a kind of generic commonality so the oness is now the common the undistinguished

nature of being, being as undistinguished now I think what is perhaps the most difficult



relations not only apparently based on fundamental twones is ultimately a kind of

imminence it remains within for the apparent twones is dissolved o

deterritorialized into

a continuous on generic identity underline substrate for the analogue is thus

heterogeneity the wasp and the orchid are heterogeneous to each other yet they come

together as identity which we understand not simply of a collection of different things

but as pure difference and the irony about differences that once difference becomes so

pure it becomes as Deleuze says smooth , the digital by contrast is defined as the one

dividing to into two, it’s thus the universe of separation of alienation distinction division

and making discreet multiplicity of standardized atoms proliferate in massively parallel

relations therefore it’s common for these relations to be non linear in nature emerging at

of a homogeneous substrate, these multiplicities and I think of multiplicities as a sort of

a continuation of the rule of two …two, three, four , and in a certain point we achieve

multiplicities are themselves transcendental because they accomplish persistent

expression of being across the extension of space through time and in relation both to

themselves and to other things and this is why I said at the beginning that the two most

basic forms of digitality are difference and dialectics the former exhibits the

transcendental simply as mediation through the different layers of the metaphysical

cosmos, while the latter through the persistence and transformation of entities as they

whether the mutations of negation and contradiction, the analogue is an enemy to the

transcendental and to use the language of Deleuze is something like a virtualization yet

by contrast the digital is an actualization because it’s constantly trying to solve the

virtual to territorialize it back into a discrete thing…right so you can think of the

transcendental almost as a kind of solving the virtual ok … so let me take a little bit of

intermetion now from philosophy and relate this a bit to our contemporary mediaculture because there is two ways we can think about how digitality holds sway in our

contemporary digital media and we may call this two modes flat digitality and deep

digitality.

Thesis five: flat digitality is from multiplexing of the object

The best way to think about this I think actually the windows desktop we can think

directly in terms of own contemporary media system think about the way the media

system turn screens into grids think about when you see a security guards a video feed

often time you see composite of multiple videos within on image these are cellular

grids, think about the way in which digital videos in compressed in a way in which the

digital video codec produce complicated grids of cellular spaces think of more

prosaically of bit map image itself a kind of grid of pixels a grid of mathematical values

or of course the computer desktop with its parallel and overlapping windows think even

of computer games and the use of the heads up display which often will involve

complicated spatial segmentation think about television broadcast of sport with all the

statistical information text moving across of the bottom of the screen inset videos within

another videos even the use the split screen all these are no longer images per se theyare aggregation of cells which combine and work together to create so kind of whole so



it’s kind of flat digitality or spatial digitality, we might say that a good emblematic

touchstone of flat digitality is the famous panoptic on prison where each inmate cell is a

pixel in a jumbotron image all under the watchful eye of the guard who is ideally a

single person occupying a single Euclidean point…the photographic touchstone would

be the telephoto lens which as you know compresses the world into a flat scope a flat

image where the peripheral vision is boxed out and all relations within the image are

reduced to cellular planer relations one behind another.

Thesis six: deep digitality is from multiplexing of the subject

So instead of a single point of view scanning a multiplicity of image feed, deep

digitality is a question of multiplicity or even inspires to be an infinity of point of view

flanking and flooding the world so there are not so much screen grid screen matrixes but

the matrixes of the subject matrixes of visions the best example I think the insect eye

the grid the multiplicity of points you can consider cctv the deployed across cities think

of the virtual camera used in computer modeling think of a multiple data points

involved what we call data mining think of the fly through mode in cad software think

about crowd sourcing sworns that converge on a target those are sentences of the

multiplexing of the subject…again the image that has suffered because these are all no

longer images I don’t think in our traditional sense not the collage of flat digitality ,

deep digitality is para photographic something more like sculpture or theater than

anything else I think or even like music with its pension for multiple voices multiple

subjects so now panopticon is reversed think of reverse panopticon in which amultiplicities of watchers all collaborate to convene upon on a singular point I think

something like wilkipidea would be a perfect example of this there is one point on

image one data center being if you will attacked by a multiplicity of subjects and

sometime you will hear people say like our cybernetic universe is a vast panopticon but

in fact, that fact that exactly reversed the cybernetic world maybe controlling and it

maybe audiace but panopticon it’s not, so our cells now subjective not objective in

another word within deep digitality the subject is cellular wherein with flat digitality the

object is cellular, the object is now a Euclidean point while the subjective point of view

have been metastasized into a multiplicity with this produces I think is a curvature of

space, space must now bend recede and therefore goes deep in splitting from one to two

deep digitality reintegrates the world into a rendered universe now viewable from all

sides modeled from all angels predictable under all variable conditions…so I have been

talking a lot about the number one and two and suggesting that these are necessary to

the definition of digital and analogue. again the digital means the one divides into two

and then quite often the two into the three and therefore into the many the analogue

means that the two again its only symbolically the two could also be three or the many

integrates to one and so I think you should also not believe people who say that the zero

that the digital is about zero and one because in fact I think the digital is ultimately a

question of one and two but still it remains for us to think in much greater detail aboutthe one and ultimately if we have time for it to talk about little bit more about the



two…deleuze certainly even more recently the work of francoais laruell have brought

back the question of the one into philosophy with some urgency this is a quote “it

should be taken quite seriously that the one is a number” wrote alain badiou in his work

being and event only partially in jest I think..the one is a number and as a number it has

something to say how things are that things are one or are not or a multiplicities which

is to say are more than one and from another angle that whatever is is as one that to utter

exist as permanities does in his poem means implicitly to cry exist as one, the one is a

number but its not simply a number the one is also a term of art typically bridged in

discussion about on ontology which is to say its pertain to think like being identity

multiplicity origin the real the virtual but it would be hasty to assume that the one itself

is a question of ontology even if it is mentioned in these discussions it would be hasty to

assume that the one is a synonym for being In fact as we will see the one can be

understood in quite different terms I think, that the one stands apart from being perhaps

even the one prevents being that thesis seven

Thesis seven: The one is imaginable only through the waning of being

Thesis eight: philosophy is rooted in grand illusion

the illusion is vividly evident in philosophy’s most emblematic mode metaphysics

which suggest that the ultimate task of philosophy is guard over grand division but what

is this division it’s the division into two of things like being in English its hard for us to

differentiate them but we usually say being with a capital B and beings or entities with a

lower case the division between essence and instance the division between life and the

living the pure and the practical foundation and logic genesis and structure metaphysicand physic and so on so to do philosophy it means consciously or unconsciously to

assent to the fact that the universe is structured in this way it means to ascend to these

particular condition of philosophy to live means to mediate through the grand illusion

and to live means to assume that the illusion was made to be grasped by us that the

special mode of being is ours or mine as heidegear says to live philosophically means to

live in a world by us and for us .. so to get down brass task what is philosophy and a list

of few things that I think help define what we may just call the standard model of

philosophy …so first the architecture of metaphysics as defined via the primordial

distinction as I have said so far between being and being between object and relation between mind and body as Badiou puts it philosophy means three things “what is to be

understood by being what is thinking and how the essential identity of thinking and

being realized itself “ this is the standard model permenaties put philosophy on this

course and its scarcely diverted many years since in her fantastic book on heidegear

irrigaray phrases it like this “the proposition at the origin of metaphysics to be to think

the same and earlier metaphysic always supposes in some manner a solid crust in which

to raise instruction the architecture of metaphysics is therefore requires a fundamental

distinction between ground and construction or between materiality and the relations

formed above or on top of it so there are some of the ways you can think about the

standard model :



god-man

essence-instance

relation-object

mind body

perhaps we can list some of many symptoms or this ground it’s object body entity

existing entities extension thing matter substance likewise we can list some of many

synonym for the forming of relations thought information reason media language the

notion that these two columns of terms have anything to do with one another indeed as

hidegear argue that naturally belong to one another as a structure of appropriation or

belonging that is the philosophical gesture par excellence that is the standard model of

philosophy and again the question is not argue over priority of any of these pairs right

the point is that these pairs are proposed as pairs we can also mention what sometimes

called the ontological principle or the principle of sufficient reason these two principles

which are similar appear in work of a number of different philosopher my personal

favorite iteration is the version in whitehead where he says no actual entity then no

reason so entity and reason must be related its similar to the previously itemized

architecture of metaphysics in that requires something like an object relations pair or an

object relation dualism you could say the actual entity plays of the role of the object

while reason plays the role of the reason where in coupling them whitehead asserts that

one cannot an be exist without the other and indeed that the condition of the world one

in which these two things are teammates last I will just mention what’s now calledcorralionist principle I mentioned metaphysics the principle sufficient reason and now

the corrolationsit principle …now will not entirely identical with these two previous

things the principle of corrolationism shares a similar spirit and axiomaticlly posits this

exact same what we call the standard model francoais laruell states the corralaitionist

principle elegantly and love this because he uses the language of media he says the real

is communicational the communicational is real right u can have just reality without it

been communicated its kind of basic phenomenological claim what this means is that

philosophy assumes that the real is something can be grasped can be communicated

beyond itself into receiving mind which would be us or the investigating philosophers

recently quiten mellasoux and others have reiterated this theme decrying what they see

as the human subjects monomaniacal insistence on remaining soul gate keeper of thereal so given all these this kind of overview of this structure I think its possible to

conclude the thesis nine..

Thesis nine: philosophy is the digitization of the real: the one divining in

two

Because as we saw in the standard model its predicated on the one divided into two inshort the grand illusion of the standard model its that being is split being as we saw with

hegel’s principle being is simply a contracted way of saying being riven the grand

illusion of the standard model is the state in which exist a riven being placed in

conjugation with itself as being riven in another word being given and being riven arethe same thing and again I think the phenomenologist would agree with this , so I think



it’s easy to agree with micheal henry when he observes that” for hegel the concept is

nothing other than the very fact of alienating oneself the process of alienation as such”

if the concept is process of alienation as such then one can say about relations,

information, language, or thought they are all the process of alienation as such for they

all depend on a fundamental digitization between things. for relation it’s a digitization

between whatever two terms are brought into relation for information the digitization between discernible forms for language the digitization between represented and

representation, for thought the digitization between thinker and whatever is being

thought about and likewise I think its easy to agree with kant on his basic description of

philosophy quote “there can be nothing more desirable to a philosopher than to be able

to derive the scattered multiplicity of the concepts or the principles which had occurred

to him in concrete use and to unite everything in this way in one cognition he has

attained a system”, so I think what kant Is calling here system is the conjugation of the

pure and the discrete the universal and the scattered multiplicities and again I don’t

think the issue is quibble over the details it doesn’t matter I don’t think so much

whether we can defend kant’s system or not the point here is the architecture itself a

system internally split or internally variegated according to the law of two so this then isthe basic architecture of the standard model of philosophy as digital it’s the primordial

coming to the conclusion so first came the one dividing in two and the two integrating

into one defined respectively as the digital and the analogue this in turn prompted us to

think about of the one and its role in philosophy not so much maybe in a traditional

sense of the one as first cause or the one as absolute reality but rather as imminence as a

condition of pure imminence but if the one is purely and radically imminent the

existence of the world as being given must be explained right because if the one we

purely imminent never going outside of itself how can anything be given to the world

thus metaphysics arrives as a digitization of the one and this is what I’m calling the

standard model or the grand illusion of this world that things belong together that

minds belong together with bodies that entities have relations that things are combined

with own rational for being so where do I stand with all of this digital or analogue

following the footsteps of deleuze or laruell I think I will through my lot with the one

but of course this is not so easy as we were talking about, because in distinction has

always posed a profound threat imminence is always the greatest heresy.

Thesis number ten: imminence is always the greatest heresy

And this is how I will just end here because philosophy is predicated on oriented toward

the structure of being as distinction because of the tradition is so old because the digital being is so profound the in distinction of being, the in distinction as one poses a

profound threat it catalyses a great violence against philosophy as Eugene tacker writes

the primordial one is supernatural horror the horror of the one never the world for us but

even the world in itself the primordial one is the world without us quote “the world

without us is the subtraction of the human from the world writes egine” the world

without us lies is a nebulous zone that is at once impersonal and horrific this is why the

in distinction of the one is so terrifying , I think terrifying because it’s real of course

both lacan and baudrillard and people in that vein understood the basic terrifying aspect

of the real and I think were why is to integrate the terror of the real into our ontological

system just as the one is radical imminence it’s also radical terror because it overturns

apple cart of being riven which of course I should put to rest the idea that philosophyimminence is secretly some form of Buddhism, I think deleuze was on to something

10 theses on the digital

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