Frames /sing


Massumi’s Cognitive Doubling, Spinoza’s Numerical Affectivity


Numericity of Connections







Spinoza Does Not Double



Parables for the Virtual, 32







4 responses to “Massumi’s Cognitive Doubling, Spinoza’s Numerical Affectivity

  1. Josh W January 2, 2010 at 5:47 pm

    So are you saying that the brain repeats outside events inside itself, and the relationship between these repetitions is our mind? Ok I missed out some bits in the interest of making the sentence less convoluted, so I’ll add them back here:

    These repetitions are not exact, because they can be adjusted by coinciding with other repetitions (or other relationships I don’t get yet).

    And we can repeat internal events too, making a repetition of the combined event, that doesn’t need to coincide with either of the two original event repititions (in other words we make magenta light from an overlap of red and blue light, but in Spinoza’s mind model the mind can just repeat the equivalent of magenta by itself after it has been produced the first time).

    If this is right, I suppose it begs the question of how this combination correlates with the real world; if someone mentally repeats an experience of blue light and an experience of red light, will it produce an experience of magenta, or will the brain interact them wrongly? If it can, how does that gluing become improved?

    • kvond January 2, 2010 at 7:41 pm

      Honestly I can’t keep track of what specifically you are referring to. Are you referring to Massumi’s assertion, or my Spinozist correction of his appeal to Spinoza? Spinoza has very little direct assertion of “repetion” as a principle, and certainly not one that explains perception.

      • Josh W January 4, 2010 at 11:19 pm

        Well as your critique seems to be based on his deviation from the model you agree with Spinoza about, all those layers are sort of tied together in the quote, which I reworked according to my own understanding to see if it still fitted.

        The first three paragraphs are me trying to make sense of the Spinoza quote you made given your criticisms of Massumi and what you’ve previously said about Spinoza:

        I got the impression before that from Spinoza’s point of view, if you perceive something, it is to some degree present; our perception of an object is our participation in it’s structure, or something like that.

        If that is the case, then memory and thought must be the partial recreation of the object because it is perceived again in some recognisable form! The dynamic abstraction seems to be like chopping off part of an object, the bit that faces us, so it can have a life of it’s own inside our head.

        I suppose there are other ways of working with it, (like the idea that imagination is in fact a non-local link) but I have a feeling that they collapse functionally into the same kind of idea, so their probably not worth pursuing, certainly not here.

        Of course, if I’ve misunderstood how he sees perception, then my inferences will be way off!

  2. kvond January 5, 2010 at 10:52 am



    Kvond: I’m trying to twist Spinoza’s position to accomodate your description, and perhaps it can be done, but part of the problem is that you are beginning from a basic subject/object dyad, something that Spinoza is working to upend (along with, preventively, much of the Idealist tradition that followes). For Spinoza our perception of any object in the world is not of that object at all. It is an Idea we have of our own body being in a certain state. When I see that dog over there, I am not seeing that dog, but rather am seeing (ideationally expressing) myself in a certain state. That’s a sloppy way of putting it, but he is very radical on this. My ideas about things in the world are only ideas of my own body being x or y. Our imaginary relations (our phenomenology, etc), though, are combined with the degree-of-adequacy of our ideas, which produces the effects of better or worse perceptions, thoughts, notions, etc. But there is no “recreation” of the object (although you could alter your description and say that there is), because ultimately for Spinoza there is no “object” in the first place; which is to say, the “object” and “you” are both expressions of Substance – you are both distinct, but not separate. One way of understanding this is that the way that you and the object do connect in the more adequate perceptions and ideas we have, is through our (self) perception of mutual ideas, what he calls “common notions”, which are kind of like looking through the very structure of the Universe (of which you yourself are an expression), to some other part of the universe (of which it itself is an expression). An obvious, or general way of exemplifying this might be, you and other things are necessarily “extended”, so when you percieve something as having extensional qualities, you are doing so through the very Idea of extension. One is not really “recreating” the object. This being said, there is very little emphasis, or even description that allows us to say that one object (apart from perception) even remains the same object over time. He has only expressed general thoughts on this, likely because he does not regard it as an important problem, given that there is only ONE same that matters, Substance, and all continuity is seen through this.

    As far as “chopping off” part of an object in abstraction, one could argue this, as Spinoza both is at pains to say that all of our knowledge is shot through with imaginary effects, but also even that mathematics and other seemingly rational forms of knowledge are imaginary. One can say, yes, this is kind of chopping off, but because the object itself isn’t the point, what Spinoza sees is both a constant paricipation with and mutual expression of, the self and its objects. They are of one fabric. But are one fabric under the vision that all of our being and understanding is limited. It is a quite different picture than those which read objects and subjects as primary, and subjects as selecting out features which deprive them of real knowledge.

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