Manuel DeLanda. Materialism, Experience and Philosophy. 2008 5/12

[anujdasgupta]

Would you agree that - this constant strive fro 'development' sounds so much like a modernist project, except ofcourse now the parameter for change being the Fostering-Of-Variety?

[anujdasgupta]

And in context (as stated above) of the Development thru the Fostering-Of-Variety, is there any way we can place Heidegger's Letting-Be (more preceisely, 'Releasement' or the German "GelassenHeit") in it?

What about Letting-Be not as against, but in relation to, or even making way for the Variety to be? Would it then be a 'constant' development OR a puncuated development? (Ref: look at nature, at Fractal patterns.. aint their dev. punctuated?)

[anujdasgupta]

making a difference sounds so darn like the "what USE is it", something which is more Wittgensteinain than Deluzian!

So so DeLanda puts, therez this Wittgensteinain meaning and therez this Descriptive Meaning (kinda like Russel's description theory)

[AAGMach]

Making a 'difference' is not about USE, though it may be useful. The 'same' may also be useful or not, but it does not make a 'difference', it is not creative. Because something is of use does not mean (signify) that it has meaning (significance); does not signify that it produces difference (significance); does not mean that it is important or relevant.

[anujdasgupta]

from asking the meaning of a thing, lemme ask, what does that thing mean 'to you'?

what use u see of it, or how it makes u feel. But when the question turns from meaning to significance, immediately a sense of objectivity is presented, as in, what THE meaning of that thing?

Besides, the two ways meaning can be looked at (as I showed above), what other ways do u see?

[AAGMach]

The significance I refer to is that difference catalyzes development. For something to be significant, for me/DeLanda as I understand him, it must add to the heterogeneous mixture of reality, and so add to it's richness, and development. Then you may ask, are all produced differences and the development they catalyze 'good'? Yes, some directly insofar as they increase abilities to act/express/recognize, and those that are bad insofar as they then catalyze good to respond to/counteract them.

[anujdasgupta]

But then again, for any qs. of 'good' to make any sense in the world, that 'good' has to be qualified for whom or for what purpose! So the qs. of the 'development' being god or bad is of no significance, atleast not of prime significance, but then as u put it, might I as, y is Variety so desired/preferred here? Shouldn't the qs. at times be abt Maintaining that variety rather than always Adding to it?

[AAGMach]

For whom/for what purpose. Utilitarian? Anthropocentric?

In truth I haven't worked out for myself why variety is preferred... and so cannot adequately articulate it here. This is what I am tackling in my graduate studies. At this point I can really only say that I Feel it is right.

How is variety maintained without adding to it? Does not variety maintained become the same?

Without development there is stagnation, which chaos theory shows leads to death, and so in the end a loss of variety.

[christopheclugston]

Variety exists in nature because of its evolutionary power. If you have moe variety you have more chance of survival--remember that all things are tied to the reality that the menaing of life is self survival first and species popagation second--

[christopheclugston]

thus variety allows self survival which leads to a stronger gnetic traits pool that will give sounder off spring that will in turn carry forward the variety gene which in some cases wlil mutaqte. Any cerebral meta talk about the under lying reality of why has to be grounded in evolutionary science to obtain the Gestalt

[coreolis7]

@christopheclugston

Why is it that Scientism always thinks itself the measure of all things? There was meaning before Darwin., and there will be after. Someday we will outgrow our insecure fetishes for materialism. Perhaps variety exists because life is whimsical. Only playfulness explains the million varieties of beetles.

[christopheclugston]

@coreolis7 So you are proposing against intellectual faculties. That seems to be the stance of those that don't have an academic foundation in the relevant fields. Spouting that anti intellectual stance has dis-validated what I said (based on research) exactly how?

[coreolis7]

@coreolis7 Don't you agree that science too will evolve? Do you consider Gould and Lewontin no improvement over Darwin? Evolutionary biology has a lot to explain, a lot to learn. BTW whats anti-intellectual about "play?" If it often turns out to be the most practical and efficient approach to problem- solving, that would explain why Nature favors it so often as a "strategy."

[0neironaut]

what about "meaninging" in its existential sense, life-significance, the communication of sensibility or narrative? i think this is the most important "meaning of meaning", the overarching category to which all other "meanings of meaning" attempt to address and articulate!

[GodlessXVIII]

That's significance (the second meaning), attached to your existence or some such. Funny that you ask this, since he pretty much used that as an example of the second meaning of meaning.

If I'm not misunderstanding you, that is. You seem to be edging close to some sort of platonic Form of meaning, which you'd be hard-pressed to find validated among deleuzians.