02/18/2014

Unknown unknowns and Deleuze's virtual

Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know that we know.  There are known unknowns; that is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know.  But there are also unknown unknowns – there are things we do not know we don't know.—  Donald Rumsfeld [wikipedia]

A great philosopher creates new concepts: these concepts simultaneously surpass the dualities of ordinary thought and give things a new truth, a new distribution, a new way of dividing up the world.--Deleuze

But the virtual is not the same thing as the possible--Deleuze

We must understand that the virtual is not something actual but is for that no less a mode of being,--Deleuze

There are three general ways of thinking about the possible: (i) we take the present world as kind of a baseline, from which we project alternatives; (ii) we create a maximally plural list of 'worlds' available to, say, an omniscient being, and distinguish among these; (iii) we treat the possible as a species of quantitative probability ranging from impossible (zero probability) to necessity (probability 1) [and lots of permutations of these three].  There are, of course, ways to treat (ii) and (iii) as intimately related; and it is possible to recover (i) as a special case of (ii). 

Now, Rumsfeldian unknown unknowns do not contradict any of the three approaches to probability sketched above.  Even so, none of these three approaches is especially useful to help us think about unknown unknowns.  For, in practice, it's our imaginations and the features of our formal machinery that constrain what enters the list of the (metaphysically/logically) possible.  Logical analysis may be useful to make transparent hidden assumptions about the possible, it will not reveal an unknown unknown--genuine epistemic or metaphysical uncertainty is hard to model in it.  For, all three ways of thinking about the possible have a kind of this-world bias built into them; to say this informally, while it's easy to prove the existence of God in some modal logics, it's actually pretty hard, despite the presence of monsters, to get really crazy; that is, the possible always has some resemblance to the actual. 

One attractive feature of Deleuze's concept of the virtual is that it is a category of being that (while real) is not actual [nor abstract], yet self-consciously a conceptualization that is an alternative to the possible.  In their very helpful article, Daniel Smith and John Protevi, interpret the virtual as a "genetic condition."  Given Deleuze's incessant talk of the way or process by which the virtual is actualized, this makes sense.  But I found it more helpful to think of the virtual as -- to adapt a term from A.N. Prior, the logician (recall this and this; see also this nice SEP piece) -- the determinable.  To be clear, by this I do not mean any particular determinable.* 

For, while Deleuze's virtual has some structure (including relations and singularities [although these relations and singularities have no morphism with actual relations and singularities]), it is also rather permissive in some ways.  In particular, the virtual contains not just compossibles, but also in-compossibles. 

Now, one final thought here.  Deleuze's virtual is embedded in a theory of truth in which truth applies to things (see the epigraph above).  It is, thus, akin to 'metaphysical identity theories of truth' (recall), and not at all like Tarski's classical approach toward truth.  So, while Deleuze is certainly "naturalistic" in some non-trivial sense, his is an approach that is a philosophical alternative to scientific naturalism; it is an alternative not because Deleuze is anti-scientific, but rather because (a) his theory of truth is not useful in the sciences and (b) the virtual's actualizations (whatever these might be--and I have said nothing about that --) are not exhausted by mathematics nor science. 

For one duty of the philosopher in an age in which science is an authoritative alternative to philosophy, is to offer "a theory of systems" [that] "show how the movement of scientific concepts participates in a dialectic that surpasses them."  Now in a future post I hope to say more about Deleuze's notion of participation (and its siblings incarnation, and actualization).  But one way to think of the project is that science treats of the possible and philosophy introduces utopian concepts (recall) that can put us on the trace of the unknown unknowns.** 

*I am capturing Deleuze thought that "The Idea in itself [the virtual--ES], or the thing in Idea, is not at all differentiated, since it lacks the necessary qualities and parts.  But it is fully and completely differential, since it has at its disposal the relations and singularities that will be actualized, without resemblance, in the qualities and parts." 

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Dear professor Schliesser,

How would you respond to the thought that the possible has to have something (some logical form) in common with the actual in order for us to be able to coherently think about it at all?  This seems to me to be Wittgensteins thought when he says in the Tractatus: "Es ist offenbar, daβ auch eine von der wirklichen noch so verschieden gedachte Welt Etwas - Eine Form - mit der wirklichen gemein haben muβ" (2.022).  Would this be compatible with Deleuze, or is it exactly this line of thought that he's trying to overcome (überwinden, we could say)? 

I'm not really sure if this is even a good question to ask Deleuze (is there a logic of the virtual?  Do we need one?),  but that in itself might also help me to understand him better. 

Wim, I think we should take seriously Deleuze's attempt to think an alternative to the possible (or the variety of ways in which we commonly think about the possible).  So, yes, I take Deleuze to be agreeing with Wittgenstein that the possible must have some commonality with the actual.  But that for a variety of purposes we may well need a concept (the virtual) that allows us to think about alternatives that cannot (to use a metaphor) be made visible with a logic founded on similarity. 

Deleuze can allow that there are (a) subsets or regions of the virtual or (b) ways of its actualization that may be temporarily subject of a logic.  But I am also pretty sure that on his view this need not last (the logic can be surpassed).