The Logic of Gilles Deleuze

Basic Principles

Corry Shores

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781350185548
• eBook ISBN: 9781350062276
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Aesthetics in Philosophy

French philosopher Gilles Deleuze wrote two 'logic' books: Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation and The Logic of Sense. However, in neither of these books nor in any other works does Deleuze articulate in a formal way the features of the logic he employs. He certainly does not use classical logic. And the best options for the non-classical logic that he may be implementing are: fuzzy, intuitionist, and many-valued. These are applicable to his concepts of heterogeneous composition and becoming, affirmative synthetic disjunction, and powers of the false. In The Logic of Gilles Deleuze: Basic Principles, Corry Shores examines the applicability of three non-classical logics to Deleuze's philosophy, by building from the philosophical and logical writings of Graham Priest, the world's leading proponent of dialetheism. Through so doing, Shores argues that Deleuze's logic is best understood as a dialetheic, paraconsistent, many-valued logic.

Part One

Dis-Composition and Dis-Identification

1

Becoming Dialetheic: The Logic of Change

Introduction

The first main sort of non-classical logic we will examine is many-valued logics in the context of certain paradoxes of becoming, change, and movement. We will begin with Henri Bergson’s philosophy of change and motion and then examine Bertrand Russell’s critique of it, along with his proposal for a “mathematical” explanation of movement. This will set us up for Graham Priest’s dialetheic account of motion, which will illustrate for us the many-valued logics we are considering. And finally, we will see that Gilles Deleuze’s “paradox of becoming” is more or less suited to such a many-valued logic. Our aim here is twofold. In the first place, we will draw out from Bergson’s conception of becoming certain properties that hold for Deleuze’s becoming as well. And in the second place, these discussions will provide us with an intuitive illustration for reasoning that uses many-valued logics.

Method and Philosophy in Bergson and Russell

As we enter into the critiques Russell levels at Bergson’s conception of motion and change, we will notice that much of this disagreement comes from their taking opposite approaches to philosophical thinking itself.¹ Both express a dissatisfaction with how philosophy was conducted up to their times, and both think that philosophical thinking should strive for precision. But they differ on the best methodologies for properly attaining precise conceptions. And, as we will see, this distinction can influence whether we conclude that motion and change are composed ultimately of motions and changes or of fixed positions and states. To clarify the difference between Bergson’s and Russell’s views on philosophical thinking, we will briefly compare their ideas in talks they give on the issue, namely, ones collected in Bergson’s The Creative Mind and in Russell’s Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy.

Russell’s Philosophical Types

Russell divides philosophy into three trends, of which only the third is satisfactory for him. The first is the classical tradition, which has not yet caught up to contemporary standards of modern science. Like pre-Socratic philosophers, they hold that by means of thinking alone they can give accounts of the real world, and the failure of this approach is seen from the fact that some believed they could prove, using just their reasoning, such far-fetched claims as: all reality is one, the world of sense is mere illusion, there is no such thing as change, and so on. And they were so trusting of reason that they thought no contrary observations should challenge their conclusions. This trend continued from Ancient Greece through the Middle ages, then featured prominently in the thinking of Kant and Hegel, and is still found in the thinking of Russell’s contemporaries, for instance, with F.H. Bradley, despite the success of the sciences, which suggest a much different picture of the world.² Russell rejects this style of philosophy, because he believes we should rely also on empirical findings.³

Russell’s second trend of philosophical thinking is “evolutionism,” under which he classifies not only Darwin and Spencer, but also (perhaps oddly) Nietzsche and Bergson. In contrast to the “classical tradition,” evolutionist thinkers believe strongly in the power of science, especially biology, to provide us with knowledge.⁴ And at a certain point in this trend’s history, it cast aside a teleological assumption of a fixed end to evolutionary developments. According to Russell, for Bergson this is because such an assumption places limits on “the absolute dominion of change,” which itself calls for evolutionary variation over time to be channeled in no particular direction.⁵

Russell’s third kind of philosophy is “logical atomism,” which is the one he here advocates.⁶ Russell says that philosophy should, like with the classical tradition, use logical reasoning to analyze “familiar but complex things” to “help us to understand the general aspects of the world,” but he holds that this thinking should be connected to the sciences, especially mathematics, physics, and psychology, by providing them with fruitful hypotheses.⁷ One particular way philosophy can make such a contribution, Russell says, is in the analysis of space and time in order to provide a reconstruction of these conceptions. However, he clarifies, “I do not think the reconstruction required is on Bergsonian lines, nor do I think that his rejection of logic can be anything but harmful.” Russell claims, rather, that he will adopt “the method of independent inquiry, starting from what, in a pre-philosophic stage, appear to be facts, and keeping always as close to these initial data as the requirements of consistency permit.”⁸ However, as we will see, Russell’s account of motion and change might in fact place him to some degree in the “classical” camp. Yet, before we further clarify Russell’s methodology and findings regarding space and time, let us switch for a moment to Bergson’s approach to philosophy.

Bergson’s Intuitional Philosophy

In Bergson’s assessment of contemporary philosophical thinking, he finds that it lacks precision whenever it is disconnected from the reality it is meant to account for, and this happens when it is too formalistic and abstract:

What philosophy has lacked most of all is precision. Philosophical systems are not cut to the measure of the reality in which we live; they are too wide for reality. Examine any one of them, chosen as you see fit, and you will see that it could apply equally well to a world in which neither plants nor animals have existence, only men, and in which men would quite possibly do without eating and drinking, where they would neither sleep nor dream nor let their minds wander […]. The fact is that a self-contained system is an assemblage of conceptions so abstract, and consequently so vast, that it might contain, aside from the real, all that is possible and even impossible.⁹

The sort of philosophy Bergson is after, then, is one that is in direct touch with the immediate, real world: “The only explanation we should accept as satisfactory is one which fits tightly to its object, with no space between them, no crevice in which any other explanation might equally well be lodged; one which fits the object only and to which alone the object lends itself.”¹⁰ Although science allows for such precision, philosophy is not always so capable of it, and philosophy has so far been especially inept at studying real duration, which “eludes mathematical treatment.”¹¹ In order for philosophy to adequately think of such matters in a way that is tied directly to their reality, it should employ “intuition.” By means of it, we may obtain

a truly intuitive metaphysics, which would follow the undulations of the real! True, it would not embrace in a single sweep the totality of things; but for each thing it would give an explanation which would fit it exactly, and it alone. It would not begin by defining or describing the systematic unity of the world: who knows if the world is actually one? Experience alone can say, and unity, if it exists, will appear at the end of the search as a result; it is impossible to posit it at the start as a principle. Furthermore, it will be a rich, full unity, the unity of a continuity, the unity of our reality, and not that abstract and empty unity, which has come from one supreme generalization, and which could just as well be that of any possible world whatsoever.¹²

Bergson’s Intuition of Duration

We thus need to understand what “intuition” is for Bergson. It is specifically the awareness of what is in your mind’s immediate, present “grasp”: “Intuition […] is the direct vision of the mind by the mind” with “nothing intervening”; it is “all consciousness, but immediate consciousness, a vision which is scarcely distinguishable from the object seen, a knowledge which is contact and even coincidence.”¹³ And when the mind turns its direct inner “vision” upon itself, what does it then intuit within its immediate grasp? Bergson says that it views the continual flux of real duration, which is moving that very same mental grasping itself. In this flux of consciousness, “there is no feeling, no idea, no volition which is not undergoing change at every moment: if a mental state ceased to vary, its duration would cease to flow.” Thus the mind’s “state,” were it so, is at any time “itself nothing but change.”¹⁴

So, in other words, philosophical thinking should begin with intuitive givenness, which is always fundamentally an awareness of “the indivisible and therefore substantial continuity of the flow of inner life,” “the uninterrupted prolongation of the past into a present which is already blending into the future.”¹⁵ Thus, “pure intuition […] is that of an undivided continuity,”¹⁶ and by means of this intuition, we come to grasp “all change, all movement, as being absolutely indivisible.”¹⁷

Bergson provides a test to demonstrate one way we know intuitively that change and movement are indivisible, and this is a crucial determination to make when comparing him with Russell. Bergson writes: “I have my hand at point A. I move it over to point B, traversing the interval AB, I say that this movement from A to B is by nature simple.”¹⁸ Now, we could very well at least try to conceive of this movement as admitting of divisions. For instance, while our hands are still in motion, we might think that we could stop them at the halfway point in order to divide it into two. But then, Bergson notes, this would only then compose two distinct movements with an interval between them: from point A to mid-point C, [pause], then from C to endpoint B. Yet still, we often conceptually divide motion without needing the object to stop at each division; we rather “mark off” certain places the object passes through along its trajectory. Even this, for Bergson, misconstrues the real composition of the movement.

At bottom, the illusion arises from this, that the movement, once effected, has laid along its course a motionless trajectory on which we can count as many immobilities as we will. From this we conclude that the movement, whilst being effected, lays at each instant beneath it a position with which it coincides. We do not see that the trajectory is created in one stroke, although a certain time is required for it; and that though we can divide at will the trajectory once created, we cannot divide its creation, which is an act in progress and not a thing. To suppose that the moving body is at a point of its course is to cut the course in two by a snip of the scissors at this point, and to substitute two trajectories for the single trajectory which we were first considering.¹⁹

Here now comes his controversial claim.

Bergson says that the only way our hand’s movement from A to B could occupy any point in the space that we mark off would be for it to stop its motion at that point. While it is moving, it can only ever pass through fixed positions. It can never occupy any location if indeed it is still in motion. In other words, the movement, while it is actually in effect, can only at best be found between the endpoints bounding spatial intervals while never in fact being at any one position. So our hand is indeed at starting point A before the motion begins, and it is at endpoint B when it ends. But while moving between them, it is never at any intervening points. It is rather just passing through them. True, the space the movement crosses has static locations, but the movement itself was never static, and thus by placing the movement into strict correspondences with such spatial determinations, we are fundamentally misconceiving the motion. In fact, we are not even conceiving the movement at all. We are only at best thinking about just the space alone that it passed through.

How could th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents 
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations for Classical Texts
• Introduction: The Logic of Magic and the Magic of Logic
• Part I: Dis-Composition and Dis-Identification
• Part II: Logic of Otherness: Negation, or Disjunction?
• Part III: Falsity
• Notes
• References
• Index
• Imprint