Season 3: Making All Things New

This season will be focussed on how we can reinterpret our inheritance to make it new through the practice of interpretation. Nothing that is given to us from the past can be received without interpretation. The practice of interpretation is called "Hermeneutics" after the Greek messenger god Hermes. Interpretation can close, but only retroactively since the present is always open to a reinterpretation of the past, which means to change one's relation to the past, and thus, change the relations of the past. Closing on a particular interpretation is to determine or objectify, but every determination or realization of possibility actuates more open possibility. AN Whitehead explained that each "Actual Occasion," which was something like a spatiotemporal slice or droplet of experience was comprised of an intention for novel experience or novel affect, which was often embodied in the body of the creature or "Superject" that chose what to ingress into an Actual Occasion, the "physical pole," which were the concrescences ingressed from the past, and the "mental pole," or open virtuality of the actualized possibility that was yet to be fully realized. Interpretation is possible because of the incomplete determination the mental pole. This incomplete determination allowed the Superject access to actuate possibility through the process of conceptualization, which might be thought of as making what has already beed determined or concresced less determinate or as intervening in the causal chain by determining the incomplete determination of its causal necessity. Determination is a retroactive closure that is always reopened in the present by the mental pole's access to virtuality and the Superject's intention for novel affect, concepts, and experience.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Welcome back to Failure is Freedom. We are now moving into the hermeneutical section of this project, which is really the point of the whole project. It's a project about interpretation. So hermeneutics is the study of interpretation. And in the last season, season two, we basically adambrated how interpretation is our freedom within being. Or rather, it is the non-being aspect of being that gives us the space or the openness, uh, the space-time to determine some indeterminacy about determinate being. So that if we had just being all in one place, which is Hegel's notion of being in itself, we would just have this singularity that was all just smashed in on itself, and there could be no relationality. There's no space-time, there's no way for being to spread out so that it doesn't have to be itself, so to speak. It can spread out and become multiple, become different from itself, or become other than itself. And this is where the key dialectic of the one and the many, or of the self and the other, becomes so instructive as to how the dialectic of becoming takes place. Being doesn't become itself. It would either stay itself or it would become other than itself. But the point here is that this process of becoming is what being is. It is a process which will switch us to process philosophy, but also it is this process of becoming that offers the freedom of interpretation. So we have a determinate being becoming indeterminate so that it can be determined freely by a determiner of some kind. You might call this determiner uh a selector of some kind, or you might call this determiner uh an interpreter of some kind. But whether this determiner be a simple principle, in which case it has no degrees of freedom, it just is operating according to blind laws or blind principles, something like the selector of natural selection, or whether it be an actual subject or the way we think about a subject as having some uh participatory place uh in the becoming of being, so that the way in which the subject copulates percepts with percepts uh and copulates percepts with concepts and concepts with concepts is being's participation uh in its own becoming, so that being's becoming other than itself is a participatory process of differentiation, renewal of making new, or of making singular, which is the process of individuation through differentiation, continual creation of new affects, new concepts in the mode of Deleuze's desiring production, in which being is excessive because it is always exceeding itself. It is always exceeding whatever intentional conceptualization can be given, so it is always exceeding itself as an A for A identification or equality. Uh being's becoming is never equal to itself. It is always spilling over itself in much the manner of Plutinus's one, uh exceeds itself and becomes the many. But what is clear uh in being's becoming is that what precedes uh this uh becoming is the desire uh that there be. So the desire uh that underlies uh all of being, which is something like Deleuze's desiring production or the sort of will in Schopenhauer's will and representation or Nietzsche's will to power, which is the intention that there be many intentions. My uh preferred way of framing uh this intention before the intentions, uh, this kind of one intention that precedes all other intentions, which is just that there be uh multiple intentions or that there be multiplicity difference uh and a continual flow of new intensities, including new affects and even new concepts and new ways of being in the world, new ways of apprehending the world, new ways of interpreting the world. Jean-Luc Marion puts very oddly, and it sounds very strange when one first hears it, but he puts God's love before God. So we could think of this as putting the intention that there be before any of the particular beings. When love uh is the ground of intention, so the intention before intention, or what um Marion calls the God before God, or uh the God uh before being or before existence, this means that love loves being into uh existence, that love uh loves even God's being uh in whatever sense uh God uh participates or has being uh into existence. So even loving this uh creative principle that we associate uh with God uh into existence. So there is before creation uh the desire to create, which is the love of God that precedes uh God the creator. Everything that is has been loved into existence, including what we call God or associate with uh God. Love, not God, is the first uh principle, is the uh causeless cause or the uncaused cause, the unmoved mover, the ground uh of all being. So that you could maybe say that, as Marion does, that God uh without being or without existence um is love, uh, is the first um uncaused thing that just is we might consider like a raw fact, except it's not a fact, it's not a thing. Uh it's the ground of all facts and all things. What uh Meister Eckhart famously called uh the groundless ground, or just sometimes the groundless, and uh Eckhart's way of saying it the unground or ungrund. So that uh Pseudodionys' uh supersaturated darkness uh is the supersaturation of love. It is the intention that is too saturated to stay uh an intention, to stay internal, to say turned in on itself, to stay in itself, like uh Hegel's being in itself. And so it uh has to, because it can't contain itself, extend its intention uh and becomes uh res extension. And of course, the extension of its intention is to become other than itself in the process of becoming, which is becoming uh oneself as another, differently put or just put in reverse, but meaning the same thing. So there is one correction uh to, and it's an essential correction to uh pseudodionys or plutinus's um supersaturation that becomes too saturated to contain itself so that it becomes uh extended or exceeds itself as the multiplicity that is creation, um, is that it is emanation in some sense, but this is not a emanation that uh devalues or is devalued the further it gets away from uh its original unground or its original oneness, uh, its original uh supersaturated oneness. So that Plotinus being a Neoplatonist and having taught a number of other neoplatonists, including uh Pseudodionysus's teacher, Proclus, teaches that this emanation from the one is a kind of falling, uh, what we would think about as uh falling uh into uh sin or into uh something like decadence, uh, that kind of falling. So the kind of um uh world of tears and the veil of illusion that um Plato imagines uh we live in now uh because we are far away from uh the ideal realm of the forms, or what might have been thought of in Christian contexts as God's mind. So this is materiality or the flesh uh as fallenness, as somehow um needing to be uh perfected uh because it is imperfect, or a bastardization of an original that um no longer resembles or resembles in a very weak way the Imago Dei, the Imago Dei, the image of God within whatever creation or bit of creation uh reflects the Imago Dei, has been uh severely damaged. So the uh journey uh back to the one, so of the multiple, of the difference, uh back to some sort of a oneness is a journey back uh to some original uh unfallen perfect uh state. But once you enter any kind of process philosophy philosophy in which being is uh becoming, not a becoming perfect, but a becoming imperfect, or you could say uh a becoming perfect through imperfection. The confusion that uh some folks have around uh Hegelian dialectics, uh and this is a confusion that can certainly be chalked up to Hegel's writing and the way in which uh Hegel's ideas were taken up by people, is that the historical process uh of being is a dialectical process of becoming uh somehow perfect or uh becoming somehow a final perfect uh state uh of being, whether it be a kind of perfect government or a perfect uh way of life or just some final um state, so that you know people uh kind of rebelled against uh Hegel's idea that there was ever uh some kind of endpoint like this. Um and some of this can be cleared up a little bit by understanding Hegel's notion uh of the absolute. So the absolute, um, for example, something like absolute knowing isn't total knowledge. Uh, it is a knowledge that includes what can't be known, or that includes uh this process of knowing uh that is always asymptotically approaching uh some sort of total state, but never arriving, uh, even to the point where in the approaching, the total uh is increased so that there will never be an arrival because whatever it would mean uh for there to be uh absolute knowing, uh if that were to be a total or all knowledge, uh that is actually continually increasing. There is uh at each uh step along beings becoming more uh being created so that as more being is created, uh there is more novelty to know. But um each uh becoming, each uh knowing creates more to know. And this is the sense in which interpretation um is always going to be a sort of open process of conceptualization or of making the world new so that we are seeing being always through a different light, so that determinate being, so this is Hegel's dialectic of the absolute, which is uh being determinate being becoming indeterminate through uh its internal relation uh to the non-being that is uh already within it, uh, and the being that is already within non-being, which is the supersaturation of non-being, or the supersaturated void, supersaturated darkness, supersaturated uh one uh that is always overspilling itself in this constant uh asymmetrical relation in which there is not a synthesis uh of being into non-being. There is not a complete one-to-one relation between them, uh, but the relation is always a productive contradiction that cannot be resolved because there is so much excess produced by this becoming, by the relation of being to non-being, which is being's becoming, uh, by unbecoming, uh, by becoming other. This is the sense in which uh the Hegelian negation, so being negated by non-being, um, does not reduce uh being to a zero. Uh it produces a remainder so that we have this um becoming uh as this processual flow uh that is an active uh remainder of the process uh of negation. So the double negation in math results uh in a zero, uh in a zeroing out, so that you get two negations uh cancel each other out. But here you get two negations uh with a negative remainder that is a productive remainder that will continue uh to negate uh being into a becoming uh so that there is no finality. So that this is a very different notion of absolute than most folks are uh than most folks are used to. And that uh again, you know, it's it's difficult to get this from Hegel sometimes, especially since so many of his followers came to believe in some ultimate end to history, uh, where just history became a repetition of some uh final state or some final perfection. Becoming will always be active because there will always be a need uh to interpret uh being, uh, because uh being is becoming indeterminate. Uh and so that whenever we make an interpretation of uh indeterminate being, uh, our interpretation uh is going to be uh determinate in some regard, but there's going to be a remainder, so that this remainder is a remainder of irreducible ambiguity of what cannot be interpreted. But it is the irreducibleness of this ambiguity that allows there to be a kind of dialectical community of interpreters, so that the relations that are created by communities of interpreters is the creative principle of the universe, is what makes the universe uh continually renewable or continual process of renewal. So Alfred North Whitehead can offer us a good way into this understanding of where, in any what he calls actual occasion, uh a selector or an interpreter or for Whitehead, a superjet, uh, has some actual degrees of freedom with which to choose to ingress difference uh into the world, uh the difference of differentiated individuated being. Now, in uh evolutionary biology, it is the principle of natural selection, which is not a selector, but a principle, uh, the principles uh of survival and reproduction, or more commonly put, nowadays niche construction. But for Whitehead, um this selector, this superjet, um, is not blind, uh, is not a blind principle as it is in evolutionary biology. And a matter of fact, um this uh superjet uh is a prehensive uh principle or a prehensive subject, which means that it is something that is able to feel um enough so that it can select according to a feeling. So it's not blindly selecting uh for just simply survival uh and reproduction, it is actually uh selecting according to affect. Uh, it is feeling uh its selections, it is feeling its possibilities, and it is ingressing or congressing um new uh being, uh new determinate being uh into the world according to uh its sense uh of the world or a sense of how it wants its uh position uh in um the world or in the universe, uh, wants its niche uh to feel, uh wants to uh feel uh itself uh in relation uh to all the other relations uh of um a particular biome or of a particular uh place in the universe. Whitehead is famously a pan-experientialist, so that the superjet uh is choosing uh, you know, with some relative degrees of freedom. Some superjets have more, uh, some have less, depending on the complexity of uh it its capacity for uh feeling. Um it's but it's choosing according to feeling or according to uh desire for uh experience, in particular uh for um novel experience. Now the superjet is a term that's used to kind of avoid some of the baggage of a subject because there's such an assumption with subject that you're usually talking about a humanist subject or a human-like subject. But Whitehead wants to open up subjectivity, I guess you could say, uh, so that other things besides uh the normal things that we consider subjects can have subjective aims. But the superjet is a kind of like uh concressed um subject or uh concressed uh selector that selects according to uh feeling, um selects uh some subjective uh aim. And it is usually for some kind of uh novel uh affect or uh novel concept, if it is of a higher order novel concept, but if it's of a lower order, uh again, these terms are all uh relative and have a lot of baggage baggage, but just like less complexity is going to still uh be selecting according to uh feeling. When modern scientific observers look at all of the complexification or the process of complexification within the universe, they see no degrees of freedom in terms of creativity or a selector that can choose according to principles other than survival and reproduction. Um, so that survival and reproduction uh is the ground, and then any other, I don't know, choice or degrees of. Freedom left after that are just the result of having survived and reproduced, um, so that once all the basic needs are met, um the possibility that there are arbitrary possibilities, in other words, possibilities that don't uh affect whether you survive or whether you reproduce, they're just sort of like two choices that uh have the same difference so that there really is no um effect on either survival or reproduction, um, so that you know, niche construction contains some uh arbitrary choices, but that's not really freedom. It's kind of like um if somebody were ordering at a restaurant between, you know, fries like the um regular shaped, kind of like long fries versus like the waffle fries or whatever, um, there really isn't much of a difference to uh recommend one above the other. So it'd be almost impossible to like say that the choice really mattered, but that's not really freedom. In terms of niche construction, uh you're also not in the uh classic evolutionary biological um notion, you're not making any choices. It's like you're not deciding, uh, well, I'd rather, you know, occupy this niche rather than another one, and you're not making other choices about it in terms of uh, well, I'd rather live a long life or I'd rather live a shorter lifespan or or whatever in terms of how the organisms uh within your niche uh function, and you're not making decisions like, you know, how you are gonna mate or if you're gonna even mate or if you're gonna reproduce asexually or or whatever. Those decisions are made um basically in a kind of mathematical way by um the principle uh of natural selection, so that things are gonna fill in uh where there is advantage or where there is uh opportunity, so that this is a sort of blind selector. So there is not a blind selector, however, uh in Whitehead's notion again. So Whitehead uh is going to say that the selector, the superjet, or you know, what we could call the subject uh within the situation, not necessarily a human subject, but whatever it is, it could be something very simple, but it's still making decisions about what to uh ingress into an actual occasion uh based on uh prehension or based on this feeling that is before uh anything else. It's just the basis or the ground upon which uh whatever uh decisions are being made, whatever choices are being chosen, um, it is the ground upon which those things are ultimately uh decided. So that in a classical uh version of evolutionary biology, no decisions are actually being made. And again, the natural selector is not really a selector, but just a principle. And so when the hypothetical scientific observer looks uh at all of the complexity uh of the universe, well, both its uh simplicity, it's sort of in-between uh simple and complexity, and then this true complexity that um has emerged out of this principle of natural selection. Natural selection selects uh what there is, and so what there is is a display of uh incredible uh complexity in some regions or in some instances, uh, according to the uh clumpy dispersal of entropy. But the process philosopher or uh in particular the process theologian um thinks that there has to be something that underlies um natural selection itself, uh, so that natural selection uh becomes uh not a ground uh but a principle that is employed by uh a ground uh that is beyond that ground. And and this is the ground uh that is um the desire that there be something uh at all, rather, or that there be something rather than nothing. Which is sort of just like asking, okay, so why should there be natural selection? Which is not really a question for uh scientific evolutionary biology. It's just is. It's just uh a principle that sort of like um is given. Um but um the process thinker wants to know um from where does this principle come? There seems to be some sort of value uh that underlies uh this principle that there should be uh and not only that there should be, but that there should be uh complexity. And so that just saying that the complexification of the universe um as a process um is from this uh natural selector, which is basically just the interaction of matter, energy, uh plus space-time according uh to the natural laws, the uh obnoxious process thinker is then gonna say, okay, so then why should there be uh any of that? And then, you know, it's just a raw fact for uh the uh evolutionary biologist. And what's more uh for the process thinker is that natural selection is not a sufficient principle to explain all the complexity. I mean, again, this is very simply put, but there is just this wonderment about like how complexity ever arose if the deciding principles uh for um what there is is just uh survival and reproduction, because again, it would seem a lot simpler to reproduce uh or to survive uh for very incredibly uh simple things, um, so that it would be much more difficult to reproduce and survive uh if there are much more complex things. And so uh the principle uh of natural selection uh isn't uh uh sufficient, so it doesn't meet the criteria of necessary and sufficient in order to describe everything that is, or in order to describe the uh extremely complex uh universe that we see before us that includes uh uh complex uh systems of life and of the um complexification uh of the interactions among uh living things and biomes, especially uh the complexity of niche construction within the uh interactions uh of life uh in a given biome, but also uh in the bodies uh of those things, of the relations of parts to whole uh and holes to holes in these uh biomes and within the bodies uh of the uh interacting superjets, so that we have to ask the question like, how could this ever come? Complexity uh could never have arisen from the simplicity of the imperative to survive uh and reproduce alone. Uh, but I am very aware that this is what you know folks like uh Richard Dawkins do. They uh explain how matter energy plus space-time plus the natural laws um you know produce the complexity uh that we see now in the universe uh without any actual intention or without any um selection in the sense of considering options. There is just the blind compulsion uh to um complexify uh that happens uh via chance uh plus the um determinations of the past. But Whitehead has a formulation in which the superjects, which are the products of the past, uh, are able to actually make a choice according to a principle beyond natural selection. So, how does the superjet uh do this? And so the superjet is like the individuated body, perhaps, of a creature, uh the end product of this process of uh creative evolution, which means a inclusive or a participatory kind of evolution, so that we are not outside of the principle of natural selection, but it is one of the uh tools which the superjet um can employ uh as part of its decision-making process. And so the Superjet's subjective aim, you could say, or its internal drive, is to concress or to ingress various uh things into factors into an actual occasion that they are aiming at some sort of individuation or self-realization that is reflective of the value for newness or difference. This is very much like Deleuze's idea uh of desiring production, in which this sort of animating principle uh of the universe that underlies everything is this intention uh for difference or intention for newness, so that what is ingressed uh into an actual occasion is ingressed through this uh feeling, uh feeling out the universe, uh prehension, um, and feeling what is going to be um you know novel or what is going to be interesting because it's different and new, or uh this compulsion to create, basically, uh is what animates um everything and all the complexification, the processes of complexification that you see uh throughout the universe. But it also includes um the past. And so there isn't necessarily a destructive desire to um you know only have complexification, but also to preserve uh some of the simpler or simplicities uh of the past. So each actual occasion is something like a droplet or a time, a spatio-temporal time slice uh of experience. Uh, because remember, in this pan-experientialism of Whitehead, this is um experience uh desiring more uh experience or novel experience. And the part where uh the part of the um actual occasion or the component of the actual occasion uh that contains this uh desire is the uh superjet. So the the superjet is desiring um production. And so what is um in an actual occasion is the superjet. Plus, I mean, this is very generally, there's a lot more going on here than um we have time for right now. But um let's just kind of tick off what we got happening in an actual occasion or the components that are available for uh choice that uh allow one to be a selector or allow the superjet uh not just a human being, but uh other types of creations, other types of bodies, other types of systems of relations, perhaps even other types of uh Deleuzian uh machinic assemblages and their uh intention for difference or their intention for becoming new or uh of creation. So you have what Deleuze would call a physical pole and the mental pole uh within any actual occasion. And again, the mental pole is not exclusive uh to human being uh and to the type of thought and concepts that human beings use. Uh the mental pole is the virtual aspect. Again, with Deleuge, you can think of how any physical materialization uh has uh nonetheless virtuality or ways in which its um determinations can become uh more indeterminate type possibility spaces, so that you can um always interface with some other object in a open or in a creative manner, no matter how uh close the possibility uh of an object, an object here considered as a possibility space uh might be. And so I should say two things about uh realization in Whitehead and in Deleuze. Uh first of all, for Deleuze, um you can have realization uh in the mental pole so that you can have uh concrete or concrescence, I guess, so to speak, although he wouldn't use that term, uh around ideas. But again, those ideas are never completely closed, and every time you realize something in the conceptual space, uh it's still open, or you could even say that it actuates uh more new possibility. So now what is being ingressed uh for Whitehead uh into the uh possibility space uh of the mental pole are what are called eternal ideas or even eternal objects. Uh sort of like Plato's uh realm of the eternal forms, uh, but even these are open and more like uh habits rather than um fixed laws or anything like that. But these ideas are nonetheless necessary in order to ingress uh the new or the uh uh or new possibility into the actual occasion, because you can think of them as things like uh color or things like form. You know, a lot of the things that you're gonna get in like the Kantian a priori categories or whatever. So to understand how these things uh interact with determinate being, uh you have to think about the other pole that the mental pole is interacting with, which is the physical pole. So this is the inheritance of the past or the forms or the ideas uh of the past. And these things have a causal influence, uh, that's why they're determined and determinate uh of the actual occasion. However, they are not entirely uh determinant of the actual occasion. We don't just ingress the past uh in a blind way that we don't have any opportunity to intervene in it. And this is where Whitehead and the hermeneutics uh that I want to go at um kind of interface so that this is where we can interpret determinate being uh so that it becomes uh indeterminate uh and can be uh redetermined, I guess, uh in some new form or new kind of way. This is uh you know, Deleuzian concept uh creation or the creation uh of the world through new concepts and new affects, new ways of feeling. Affects here would especially be uh important for Whitehead so that an actual occasion can ingress uh these forms in order to produce not only new concepts, but primarily in some sense, because we're talking about feeling uh the world through experience uh or through these uh moments of experience, that we're primarily really talking about uh new affects here, new uh experiences uh of the you know material physicality uh of the world and you know the feeling that that produces, or the feeling that you know new configurations uh of you know material uh relations uh produces these affects. But the uh superject, inasmuch as it is choosing, it's choosing according to an underlying uh principle, which is for the new. Um it is looking for new affect, it is looking for new concepts, new ideas, new ways of being in the world, but still uh preserving uh the old concretized or concressed forms. Uh a kind of silly, perhaps stupid example, uh you could think about pants. So there's all kinds of um eternal uh ideas uh that you know one would use to uh conceive or to ingress uh pants uh into an actual occasion. So there would be, you know, perhaps color is a part of that, form is a part of that, um, the relation or the feeling uh of pants on a body, uh the relation and the feeling of the temperature that you know various you know textures of pants create, the textures and their effect on the skin and all these kinds of like basic ideas that arise out of very basic perceptual uh affectations. So you can have this ingressed form, and pants themselves would not be like in some platonic, you know, mind of God eternal form uh realm, uh, but the textures and the color and the number and all of these uh quality and quantity uh relations and modes uh would be. But the uh concressed form uh of pants might be brought into an actual occasion. So this is a historically uh concessed or concretized uh form, you know, that has uh arisen out of a particular desire uh that has something to do with natural selection. We know that they originally emerged uh in colder climates so that you know human beings could spread out into areas that they weren't normally accustomed to, so they kind of enabled these new experiences of areas of the world that had been you know barred to human beings until you know they could uh manufacture or uh produce pants. Um so there is this relation to natural selection without a doubt. But notice what is primary. What is primary is the new feeling, the new experience. That's what's guiding the production of pants. Uh it's not just you know survival into these cold climes. Uh what is being pursued uh is this new way of being or this new experience, that of the uh northern uh human being or the northern uh climate. And so pants still have this survival function for those of us who live in northern climates, and they have more of an uh aesthetic function for those uh who don't really need it. They might even be uh detrimental in some ways because you don't get airflow uh to you know all the regions that you'd like to if you're wearing pants in a very hot, humid place, and you know, you'd be better off going to some kind of loose skirt or whatever. But the idea here again is that there are um experiences that one uh wants to have for any variety of reasons, uh, but that those reasons uh often have to do with uh the culture that one is born into, so that this is what other people do. They're often related to um the uh climate that one lives in. Uh but sometimes they're disconnected from those things for various reasons and ways, and they might even just be real easy to see that you know, this person is uh bringing pants into the actual occasion because um they want to um, you know, just feel what it feels like to wear pants and to see themselves and how they look when they wear pants or whatever. But notice that you don't need to, you know, totally disconnect from uh natural selection and the needs of natural selection to understand that what's uh driving uh even or underlying even uh natural selection is this desire uh for uh experience, this desire uh for being in a sense, which of course, for a process philosopher being anti-substance would be becoming uh as opposed to mere being. But notice even in uh northern climates where pants may be much more necessary for the sake of warmth, they're never strictly necessary. They're always uh some element of the uh decorative or the aesthetic about them. Or you can even imagine that perhaps there's some other uh type of garment that would protect you know the human being's naked flesh uh when it's cold out. Uh but you know, pants for various contingent reasons have been uh settled upon, except when you have uh you know people groups who for whatever reason decide that uh sexual difference needs to be marked uh with dresses instead of with pants or whatever, even in northern climes, and then you get uh improvisations such as long stockings and uh multiply layered uh long dresses uh that offer uh a greater degree of protection. But because of the mental pull or uh the virtual possibility space uh within any actual occasion, uh you're gonna get um uh variation uh that uh is you know not uh purely necessary, even though pants themselves are uh perhaps in some sense purely necessary uh for that kind of an environment. Uh-huh. The point is that determinate uh uh determinacy, uh the determinations of environment, the determinations of the interaction between the body, uh uh specifically in this case, the human body and the environment, are not totally determinate. So you might think of the difference between uh uh actual possibility, which is kind of like a can possibility. It's like, yeah, there's these other possible things, but uh there's really only one choice uh versus um an open sort of a possibility space uh where there's more uh degrees of freedom uh that you can choose. And it's not the arbitrary degrees of freedom that I was talking about before, where it's not really uh a free choice, which is kind of like uh the cho the choice between Coke or Pepsi or between uh regular French fries or waffle French fries. Uh you know, those are just you know pretty much the same thing, uh although there is, you know, some I guess aesthetic difference or whatever. But actual uh degrees of freedom to determine uh uh a totally new way of being in the world. But it doesn't have to be that extreme. Uh so let's just talk about like more of a in-between case where you know something new uh comes into culture. Uh I oftentimes think of uh a shaman going into like the uh liminal space within sort of an animistic uh hunter-gatherer uh type of religiosity and coming back with a a new way of dancing. And uh dancing is a great example of something that is a sort of uh unnecessary, not strictly determined uh movement. And then of course, you know, if you're a uh material uh evolutionary biologist, you're gonna say, oh, it's related to uh survival and reproduction, in particular reproduction because it attracts a mate and all this other kind of stuff. Uh we know that, you know, there is something more going on there than simple necessity, uh, you know, even if it's the necessity uh for reproduction or for uh a mate. Um what else is going on there? Well, we think about this causally, and you could just ask a very simple question like did um the need uh to pass on one's uh genes, did this selfish gene uh cause a dance? And so again, uh uh the materialist, the um evolutionary biologist could say no, uh dance is an emergence, so that emergence is this sort of like magical thing that is evoked uh whenever the causal chain uh gets a little fuzzy, uh especially around uh any uh notion of a complexity. So like basically the way complexity is understood uh by a materialist is that it is this thing that um creates stuff that can't be traced back to the next level down uh when you're doing some kind of a material reduction, the next level down would be like, you know, the factors that you can causally count for uh that produced this other thing. So that no, when you go down to the level of genes or when you go down to the level of cells or you know, atoms or whatever, you know, how far down you decide to go, uh chemistry or whatever, like it can't explain, so your chemistry can't explain um dance. Uh-huh. But there wasn't anything that you know was injected into your biochemistry uh in order to produce dance. It was just the complex interaction of uh biochemical uh um components uh that eventually through various levels of emergence created this phenomenon of dance. For Whitehead to not evoke um any kind of magical uh emergence in like the uh amazing but untraceable, you know, material uh causal chain through complexity. You have to have uh an account of causality in which causality is not uh completely determinate uh as it is in material causality, uh and that is because Whitehead has not only uh determinate uh being, which is that uh physical pole or that already realized, concretized, concrest um form of the past, um you're also going to have to have that mental pole or that virtuality. Um these are not uh notice they're poles, so they're not this is more like a dual aspect monism. This is not, you know, body and mind split kind of a thing. This is not Cartesian uh dualism or whatever uh criticism you know folks want to throw at a theory that actually has a place uh for uh mind and uh and for intention um other than just an intention that just uh in the material telling arises out of material interactions and doesn't really do anything. Uh the intention uh really does do something in Whitehead because uh it prehends uh the experience. It and and in and in that prehension it makes a choice about you know, given its facticity, given uh all the concrete forms that it has inherited, uh how is it going to uh differentiate uh uh a new uh individuation, a new uh concrescence of you know that uh inheritance. So whatever we inherit from the past, and this is the break in the causal chain for Whitehead, and this is where our interpretation of being, our interpretation of uh determinate being that opens it up to indeterminacy and then some kind of redetermination um in concrescence really uh matters because we're talking about uh a factor here that is able to kind of uh step out of the purely physicality, uh uh the pure physicality uh of the actual occasion, the the pure inheritance, the uh the inherited determinant being uh and is able to um access uh uh degrees of freedom or degrees of um possibility, uh a possibility space that is not completely realized already or completely even actualized already, but is also um open still for uh interpretation. So this should uh bring us to a close now uh where we're talking about this uh concrescence of what is it? Well it's a selection, it's uh making a choice based on uh prehensive um experience around uh the desire for uh novelty or according to the desire for new or more uh experience, more different. So that this moment uh of selection is nothing more so like what is realization? I mean, this is a big issue in uh uh Deleuze. What is the difference between virtuality and actuality? Uh-huh. So that you know, for Whitehead, what the difference is uh is that one uh uh form has been concressed. So uh like the Superjack has concressed uh all the possibilities, uh realized one of them, which means that it has um concressed on a determinate uh form or on a determinate object of some kind. But this is uh done just like it is in Hegel uh retroactively through uh a kind of nitroglychite, which is like once that thing is uh concressed, then there is uh it can be brought into the actual occasion uh but it has you know a certain um form that appears as if whole, solid, complete, uh objective, however you want to put it, uh so that when you bring it into the next uh actual occasion um it is determinate, but because uh you're in a new actual occasion uh after it has been realized or concressed or whatever, um it's now got virtuality again because it's got this uh reintroduction of the mental pole. So you could think of uh concrescence as closing uh on the possibilities of the mental pole. So in this kind of retroactive way, the thing then uh concresses or becomes a concrete form of some kind. Um and then you know that's again like Hegel's idea of uh concrete universality, and then you see the uh particular um concrescence or whatever that's been realized by um a past now mental pull, but now you're bringing it into a new sort of uh actual occasion where there is a a new opportunity because there's a new sort of uh possibility space. This is sort of like how whenever you realize anything, you're um actualizing new possibility so that there is new, you know, uh there's a new mental pole basically where you can choose again. So part of what you're choosing is um which of these concretized or compressed forms you're going to bring into the actual occasion. And then part of what you're choosing is like how or what new relation you're going to enter into, which is the mental pole of the uh actual occasion. But notice again, like you're um the mental pole in a sense. The superject is what you know brings that into the actual occasion. Um it's kind of like the superject brings this uh mind of God where all these uh possibilities uh of you know forms are, where color and form and number and all these kind of uh highly abstract eternal ideas are. So that you could have uh a form like that you ingress, like a pants, uh that's got all of this history of concrescence uh from the pants, and you can uh use the mental pole, the eternal uh ideas, and you can uh use color, for example, and you know, decide that you know your pants are gonna be uh purple instead, and now you have a new experience uh of pants that you have uh ingressed into the world, even though it's not terribly new or whatever, but uh it is not unconsequential. So, you know, if you uh walk around with uh purple pants, it's actually saying something new, it's a new experience uh in the um culture that isn't used to folks who uh wear purple pants on a regular basis. So that again the interpretation of pants or the reinterpretation of pants uh offers some degrees of freedom, and then also people interpreting you in your purple pants uh offer some degrees of freedom to them uh around pants and and around culture and other things like that. Uh or probably especially uh affective uh experience of you know the color purple coupled with uh a common form, uh pants or whatever. So the uh desire uh of the universe or the desire that the uh universe that is uh at base, uh metaphysically, ontologically, the most real uh uh thing is experience. Uh and the experience uh is us uh in this case. We are the superjet, we are the thing that is uh experiencing and choosing based on the experience. But there are all kinds of superjets that are possible, and Whitehead doesn't even know you know how many different things have this possible uh uh experience um in which you know you have this uh um uh presence of a um choice. You have the possibility uh uh that is given by the inheritance uh uh of the uh congressed forms of the past uh plus the mental pole uh of virtuality or of open possibility uh to ingress anew. Uh and all of this uh is based on the um interpretation uh uh that is given um these degrees of freedom that are given uh by the mental pole of an actual occasion uh and that are inherent uh to these units uh these actual occasions uh of experience. So there are uh more or less uh degrees of freedom, more or less uh possibilities, more or less uh um virtuality mentality uh that is given by any um actual occasion. So there are going to be some interpretations that are just uh not possible or else just straight up nonsensical. Uh and then there are gonna be, you know, some interpretations uh that are kind of like already given that are kind of limiting uh the possibility of other interpretations or at least attempt to. But there is never a complete closure. Uh there is always some level of freedom. You can imagine even somebody, uh this is sort of Sartrean sounding, but somebody, you know, locked up in a prison or whatever, um, they still have some uh degrees of freedom because they still have some uh mental pole within that uh actual occasion that they can um cultivate um new possibilities and new ways of being uh locked up or whatever. I know that sounds really uh patronizing and perhaps uh a bit offensive, uh, but this is um gonna be something that we're gonna have to think about um because there are, you know, clearly situations in which you know freedom is so limited as to say that uh it is non-existent. And there's a lot of folks that want to argue that in here in late capitalism and the total uh expansion and dominance of neoliberal liberalism and consumer culture, that there are no longer any actual choices, but only the illusion uh of choices. And so this is exactly where we're going and what we have to think about. Uh next time we're gonna start with um the art of interpretation that was given to us uh when uh textuality uh became a part of human culture. So we're gonna look back at some of the ways in which people can interpret uh texts, inherited texts, especially scriptural texts, uh religious uh texts, uh in an open way, so that even though things that seem to be closed and have some, you know, fixed set of expectations and rules or whatever, um, there wouldn't be any need for any of them uh if they weren't you know possible to transgress or impossible to reinterpret at any rate. Um so uh looking forward to talking to