Dakryn's Batshit Theory of the Week

[Einherjar86]

Hey Ein, I remember a while back in another thread you talking about aspects of horror intrinsic to reality or something along those lines. Is there anything you can recommend like an article or a book that expands on the subject?

Ah this is your quote, I'm looking for something to flesh out this idea - "Horror is an objective fact, not a subjective experience. It does not correspond to any specific object, but inheres in the very formal relationship between consciousness and the world."

I was basically referring to the parallax shift that occurs in the very nature of subject/object relations. When we observe the external world (if we're being critical), we understand that this relationship is mediated. Since there is no such thing as a constant subject (in the sense that the subject always remains fixed in a stable location), but rather all perceiving subjects are always shifting in some way, this creates a consistent and continual parallax shift between subject and object. Beyond merely an epistemological disjunction between subject and object, this continual moving establishes an ontological priority of unstable mediation. The world is always partially out of focus, to put it one way.

Horror, even in its use toward generic conventions, does not originally correspond to an emotional response. Horror signifies this gap between viewing subjects and viewed objects, and derives from the failed total correspondence between world and vision. As Lovecraft originally said, the greatest fear is fear of the unknown. The horror doesn't come from the emotional response (i.e. "fear"), but from the ontological priority of the relationship (i.e. "the unknown").

Horror is merely the concern over the incapacity of the human mind to "correlate its contents," to quote Lovecraft again.

Eugene Thacker writes about this in his book In the Dust of This Planet: the Horror of Philosophy Pt. I; you will also find elements of it in Reza Negarestani's Cyclonopedia (although this book is a bitch of a read), and in Ray Brassier's Nihil Unbound, which offers what is probably the most thoughtful and logically calculated explication of the intrinsic nature of horror as the relationship between bodies and the world. It pursues the logic of instrumental and Enlightenment reason to the point at which it dismantles itself, revealing the thinking subject as nothing more than a thoughtless object:

[The] thanatosis of enlightenment marks that point at which the transcendental subject of cognition is expropriated and "objective knowledge" switches from expressing the subject's knowledge of the object to the object's knowledge of itself and of the subject that thinks it knows it. [...] In fact, as we will see in subsequent chapters, in anatomizing consciousness and life, the thanatosis of enlightenment not only dismembers the vital unity of being; more fundamentally, it objectifies the subject in such a way as to sunder the putative reciprocity between mind and world. It dispossesses the subject of thought.

So to put it in fewer words, horror lies at the logical conclusion of enlightenment thought, if we pursue that thought to its utter end and resist the urge to demarcate ourselves, as sensitive subjects, out of the realm of consequence. Horror is the ontological priority of the always-elusive object world, and the subject that is always-already objectivized.

EDIT: since the semester is over, I celebrated by composing a new piece for my SF blog. It's been a while since I posted there:

http://roadsidepicnictalks.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-interstices-of-intervening.html

 

[Dak]

Fear of the unknown is not necessarily a certainty, or if it is or is merely present in a particular case, not equal (although, or maybe perhaps because, it is impossible to measure exactly). Arguments about the relation and perception of subjects and objects do not "solve" this.

 

[Einherjar86]

Horror doesn't derive from fear. I already said that.

 

[Dak]

Horror doesn't derive from fear. I already said that.

Concern vs fear is a pretty vague distinction. When does concern become fear, and v.v.? Additionally, this redefining of the concept (or at a minimum, the word) seems to lack a why.

 

[Einherjar86]

Concern vs fear is a pretty vague distinction. When does concern become fear, and v.v.? Additionally, this redefining of the concept (or at a minimum, the word) seems to lack a why.

Please show me where I say "concern" in this explanation:

So to put it in fewer words, horror lies at the logical conclusion of enlightenment thought, if we pursue that thought to its utter end and resist the urge to demarcate ourselves, as sensitive subjects, out of the realm of consequence. Horror is the ontological priority of the always-elusive object world, and the subject that is always-already objectivized.

Furthermore, words do not stick like glue to any designated objects, so I can use "horror" to talk about this distinction if I so choose. You want a "why"? It's because horror, if we're speaking of it generically, is always related to the division/gap/fissure/what-have-you that exists ontologically between subject and object. This is the source of what we call "horror"; not the subject's resultant emotional response.

If we observe Ann Radcliffe's distinction between terror and horror, terror is the emotional aspect, the fear you want to identify: terror derives from anxiety over not knowing something, an anticipation of something unknown.

Horror is the very instantiation of the unknown, the lack of correspondence between subject and object.

And finally, the original definition of horror had nothing to do with emotion.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, horror originally designated a ruggedness, or roughness, of appearance; a material quality, something substantive.

 

[Dak]

Please show me where I say "concern" in this explanation:

You used it earlier:

Horror is merely the concern over the incapacity of the human mind to "correlate its contents," to quote Lovecraft again.

Furthermore, words do not stick like glue to any designated objects, so I can use "horror" to talk about this distinction if I so choose. You want a "why"? It's because horror, if we're speaking of it generically, is always related to the division/gap/fissure/what-have-you that exists ontologically between subject and object. This is the source of what we call "horror"; not the subject's resultant emotional response.

If we observe Ann Radcliffe's distinction between terror and horror, terror is the emotional aspect, the fear you want to identify: terror derives from anxiety over not knowing something, an anticipation of something unknown.

Horror is the very instantiation of the unknown, the lack of correspondence between subject and object.

And finally, the original definition of horror had nothing to do with emotion.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, horror originally designated a ruggedness, or roughness, of appearance; a material quality, something substantive.

I understand that words do and that we can shift them. But this explanation doesn't provide a why for investigating horror. If horror is the instantiation of the unknown, it would appear that it presents a permanent epistemological gap, as it is literally nothing.

 

[Einherjar86]

You used it earlier:

Ah. Well, it is a philosophical concern; if we're discussing philosophy, then it stands to reason there is a legitimate concern. Otherwise, I could shorten that to simply say that horror is the incapacity of the mind to correlate its contents.

I understand that words do and that we can shift them. But this explanation doesn't provide a why for investigating horror. If horror is the instantiation of the unknown, it would appear that it presents a permanent epistemological gap, as it is literally nothing.

Yes! But that gap is a something.

EDIT: to be honest, I think you should be more concerned with horror, Dak. Especially since it's an economic concept, in the way I'm conceiving it.

Take Radcliffe's generic distinction between terror and horror again, and let's represent a certain spectrum in this sense:

Horror = Trauma; Terror = anxiety/anticipation

Terror results in anxiety and fear, because it signifies the anticipation of some kind of future violence or struggle, or (potentially) horrifying appearance; but terror always derives from the individual's response to the circumstances at hand. So, as you said, terror might vary among individuals. Not everyone is terrified by sitting alone in the dark.

Horror, on the other hand, is more closely related to trauma. Trauma is the imminent and immediate breach of physical and/or psychic security. Trauma occurs because the individual has no time to prepare; there is no moment of terror, or at least no adequate amount of terror. So, for instance, receiving the news that a loved one has passed unexpectedly, or a plane crashes into your office on the 95th floor of the World Trade Center. With trauma, the individual psyche has no time or capacity to process the event, which has already happened before the mind even begins any attempt to process. This moment is horrific in an objective sense because we're talking about something that ontologically escapes conscious apprehension. Not an epistemological gap; not something that could be recovered. There exists a fundamental parallax gap that has consequences in the material realm.

Trauma and horror are economic due to the fact that they demand some form of material response; a transaction, so to speak. Horror demands the transaction between mind and world because it consists in an objective fissure between these two points (for lack of a better word).

Trauma demands the transaction between organism and event, in that trauma victims generate a massive amount of psychic energy in order to combat the explosive shock of the original traumatic event.

 

[Dak]

Yes! But that gap is a something.

EDIT: to be honest, I think you should be more concerned with horror, Dak. Especially since it's an economic concept, in the way I'm conceiving it.

Take Radcliffe's generic distinction between terror and horror again, and let's represent a certain spectrum in this sense:

Horror = Trauma; Terror = anxiety/anticipation

Terror results in anxiety and fear, because it signifies the anticipation of some kind of future violence or struggle, or (potentially) horrifying appearance; but terror always derives from the individual's response to the circumstances at hand. So, as you said, terror might vary among individuals. Not everyone is terrified by sitting alone in the dark.

Horror, on the other hand, is more closely related to trauma. Trauma is the imminent and immediate breach of physical and/or psychic security. Trauma occurs because the individual has no time to prepare; there is no moment of terror, or at least no adequate amount of terror. So, for instance, receiving the news that a loved one has passed unexpectedly, or a plane crashes into your office on the 95th floor of the World Trade Center. With trauma, the individual psyche has no time or capacity to process the event, which has already happened before the mind even begins any attempt to process. This moment is horrific in an objective sense because we're talking about something that ontologically escapes conscious apprehension. Not an epistemological gap; not something that could be recovered. There exists a fundamental parallax gap that has consequences in the material realm.

Trauma and horror are economic due to the fact that they demand some form of material response; a transaction, so to speak. Horror demands the transaction between mind and world because it consists in an objective fissure between these two points (for lack of a better word).

Trauma demands the transaction between organism and event, in that trauma victims generate a massive amount of psychic energy in order to combat the explosive shock of the original traumatic event.

I think you might be confusing stress and trauma in this explanation, and responses to stress vary both immediately and residually(You actually have an excellent resource for finding the standing explanations of stress responses if you still have my paper I sent). Unless you die immediately, there is time to process and assess the situation. So we have a traumatic experience (not everything is traumatic to different subjects (or to the same degree), although objects of a kind share physical trauma), and then we have a stress response based on a two step appraisal (also subjective). I also don't see it as "economic" in the same way as I don't see finding new uses for milk cartons a "hack". Of course, until death, physical and mental processes of some sort never cease, so in that sense everything is always economic. But that is a useless sort of definition.

If horror is that thing that eludes our view, like the shadow that disappears when we whirl to look at it, then this is something else entirely. But this isn't even Lovecraftian, and if we don't care that something is forever just outside our view (as opposed to some other response, even terror), then the problem of horror is easily solvable by ignoring it - a reasonable treatment, since we cannot bring it into view. Even if we could, we could not, for then it would no longer be horror. This is my reason for wanting a why. Horror is the Outside. It is always the Outside. What else is there to say?

 

[Einherjar86]

I think you might be confusing stress and trauma in this explanation, and responses to stress vary both immediately and residually(You actually have an excellent resource for finding the standing explanations of stress responses if you still have my paper I sent). Unless you die immediately, there is time to process and assess the situation. So we have a traumatic experience (not everything is traumatic to different subjects (or to the same degree), although objects of a kind share physical trauma), and then we have a stress response based on a two step appraisal (also subjective). I also don't see it as "economic" in the same way as I don't see finding new uses for milk cartons a "hack". Of course, until death, physical and mental processes of some sort never cease, so in that sense everything is always economic. But that is a useless sort of definition.

I mean trauma; not stress, trauma. Even if you survive, there is NOT necessarily time to process the situation. How could you possibly say that? Listen what people always say when they try and describe a traumatic event: "I had no idea what was going on"; or "I saw the blood before I felt the pain", etc. Freud is actually the one who described trauma as an economic concept, and he means in what can be understood as a thermodynamic sense: every action demands an equal and opposite reaction. Trauma is one such occasion/event.

If horror is that thing that eludes our view, like the shadow that disappears when we whirl to look at it, then this is something else entirely. But this isn't even Lovecraftian, and if we don't care that something is forever just outside our view (as opposed to some other response, even terror), then the problem of horror is easily solvable by ignoring it - a reasonable treatment, since we cannot bring it into view. Even if we could, we could not, for then it would no longer be horror. This is my reason for wanting a why. Horror is the Outside. It is always the Outside. What else is there to say?

You don't seem to be getting it, and that's fine; but the point is that it has nothing to do with caring about something being outside your scope. The horror is that the Outside is always-already bound up with our perception in a way that we don't (or, at least, you don't) want to admit. The thing that eludes your perception isn't simply due to the object's obfuscation, but because of the very rudiments of your perceptive apparatus. Go back and read my original post. The horror isn't simply "outside"; it's the gap that occurs because of our modes of perception.

So, philosophically, horror is an important concept because it signifies something about our subjectivity that is as-yet-undeclared or undiscovered. Part of this goes back to the old question about how a system could possible form an objective map of itself. Horror is that fundamental condition of perception and phenomenology that effects such a divide between inside and outside.

What grounds do you have to say it isn't Lovecraftian? I can't even imagine why someone would say that. This is exactly what Lovecraft writes about in his best fiction. I don't even understand why you would write that.

 

[Dak]

I mean trauma; not stress, trauma. Even if you survive, there is NOT necessarily time to process the situation. How could you possibly say that? Listen what people always say when they try and describe a traumatic event: "I had no idea what was going on"; or "I saw the blood before I felt the pain", etc. Freud is actually the one who described trauma as an economic concept, and he means in what can be understood as a thermodynamic sense: every action demands an equal and opposite reaction. Trauma is one such occasion/event.

So are you speaking of physical trauma or the subjective experience?

The thing that eludes your perception isn't simply due to the object's obfuscation, but because of the very rudiments of your perceptive apparatus. Go back and read my original post. The horror isn't simply "outside"; it's the gap that occurs because of our modes of perception.

So it is outside perception correct? How much more Outside can you get? Calling it a gap doesn't appear to change this.

What grounds do you have to say it isn't Lovecraftian? I can't even imagine why someone would say that. This is exactly what Lovecraft writes about in his best fiction. I don't even understand why you would write that.

My interpretation of Lovecraft is that he writes well of The Thing That Should Not Be. That appears entirely different.

 

[Einherjar86]

So are you speaking of physical trauma or the subjective experience?

Physical trauma; in this sense, there is no conscious experience of the traumatic event. It bypasses consciousness.

So it is outside perception correct? How much more Outside can you get? Calling it a gap doesn't appear to change this.

Except that the gap is part of perception, Dak. That's what I keep saying. If it were just an object somewhere "out there," it would have no bearing on philosophy of mind, neuroscience, or cognitive science. But in the case of horror, I'm saying that it locates itself in the very gap that is produced by the observing apparatus, i.e. conscious perception. I'm saying it holds considerable weight for the studies of the mind and brain sciences!

My interpretation of Lovecraft is that he writes well of The Thing That Should Not Be. That appears entirely different.

You could argue that it is, but I find that to be a regressive take on Lovecraft. My opinion, and the opinion of certain contemporary scholarship on Lovecraft, is that Lovecraft reveals the parallax of the material relationship between observing mind and observed matter. The first line from "The Call of Cthulhu" is:

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents."

If Lovecraft pushed this critical revelation a bit further, then he would have realized that it is fundamental inability of the mind to correlate its contents that gives rise to The Thing That Should Not Be. If there are "horrific" and unknown objects (and bear in mind, these do subsist without recourse to human thought), they cannot exhibit their unknown-ness in and of themselves. There are not actually any objects in existence that are necessarily unknown to human thought. Rather, it is a fundamental condition of our relationship to the world via perception that gives birth to horror in all shapes and forms.

 

[Jimmy... Dead.]

 

[Einherjar86]

Fuckin' Rick Roderick, how old is that video?

If we really want to adapt Hegel for 21st-century modernity, we should be figuring out how to reconcile dialectics with feedback loops.

 

[Jimmy... Dead.]

Yeah, he's really great. I think it's from the 80s. He's really the only person I listen to or read that makes me feel unbiased (although this is probably impossible) and able to consider various perspectives. Plus he's a bit of a comedian and doesn't mind getting dark. The last minute of that video made me laugh. I like when he gets angry.

I have no idea what you mean in that second sentence

 

[Jimmy... Dead.]

Here's another talk I revisit often just to keep my head straight and break from that "default setting."

 

[Einherjar86]

Yeah, that's a great commencement speech.

 

[Dak]

Except that the gap is part of perception, Dak. That's what I keep saying. If it were just an object somewhere "out there," it would have no bearing on philosophy of mind, neuroscience, or cognitive science. But in the case of horror, I'm saying that it locates itself in the very gap that is produced by the observing apparatus, i.e. conscious perception. I'm saying it holds considerable weight for the studies of the mind and brain sciences!

I'm not sure how much weight this holds. If we analogize it to the hole in our vision caused by the optic disc, we can acknowledge it, we compensate for it both physically and mentally without any conscious effort, but this doesn't actually allow us to access the missing input or undo it. It is permanently inaccessible and on the whole of minor importance, if of any importance at all on any sort of scale larger than itself.

There are not actually any objects in existence that are necessarily unknown to human thought.

So we are talking about thought rather than perception? Regardless, all unknown objects are necessarily unknown, even if all objects are not, and both of these statements appear to be true by definition but without any significance.

I don't have any problem acknowledging shifts depending on the observer and the observed. I just don't see what this has to do with horror, specifically if we have defined it out of reach. The label also takes on the appearance of redundancy with "the unknown".

 

[Einherjar86]

I'm not sure how much weight this holds. If we analogize it to the hole in our vision caused by the optic disc, we can acknowledge it, we compensate for it both physically and mentally without any conscious effort, but this doesn't actually allow us to access the missing input or undo it. It is permanently inaccessible and on the whole of minor importance, if of any importance at all on any sort of scale larger than itself.

This sounds so hopeless. "If we can't know something, oh well; let's move on..."

It's kind of disappointing.

So we are talking about thought rather than perception? Regardless, all unknown objects are necessarily unknown, even if all objects are not, and both of these statements appear to be true by definition but without any significance.

There is nothing that inheres in the world that firmly states: "Humans should not know this."

The old mantra "There are some things humans weren't mean to know" is an illusion and a joke; we can push our knowledge to any territory, but this doesn't mean we expose objects in their entirety. Every new object introduces something new about the way we perceive, think, know, etc. All of the above. You're making unimportant distinctions in order to make an unimportant point.

I don't have any problem acknowledging shifts depending on the observer and the observed. I just don't see what this has to do with horror, specifically if we have defined it out of reach. The label also takes on the appearance of redundancy with "the unknown".

Well, that's probably due to your lack of reading the necessary material in the field. Horror is something more specific than a psychological/affective reaction, which is the only way you're familiar with it.

 

[Dak]

This sounds so hopeless. "If we can't know something, oh well; let's move on..."

It's kind of disappointing.

Why hopeless? My arms won't allow me to fly (although it doesn't stop us from flying). I think the Wright Brothers were much less disappointing than Icarus (granted, wax and feathers aren't the best analogy for an innate flying ability but I think it illustrates the point). We do have to accept our limitations before we can move forward productively, and the disappointment or hopelessness of such admittals is subjective. I counter that it can equally be seen as a victory.

There is nothing that inheres in the world that firmly states: "Humans should not know this."

I think this is something else all together. Can/can not vs should/should not are different.

The old mantra "There are some things humans weren't mean to know" is an illusion and a joke; we can push our knowledge to any territory, but this doesn't mean we expose objects in their entirety. Every new object introduces something new about the way we perceive, think, know, etc. All of the above.

But I haven't thought this to be the discussion in general and certainly not the source of any disagreement about horror. I don't see anything here that warrants any real disagreement, except that it should be pointed out that not only do we not expose objects in their entirety, we can expect that there are always objects which we cannot expose at all.

Well, that's probably due to your lack of reading the necessary material in the field. Horror is something more specific than a psychological/affective reaction, which is the only way you're familiar with it.

Well that is the limit with my familiarity with it, but I want to reiterate that I don't see anything to differentiate this non-terror understanding of "horror" from "the unknown" (the unknown object in the Outside, if not the Outside itself).

 

[Einherjar86]

Why hopeless? My arms won't allow me to fly (although it doesn't stop us from flying). I think the Wright Brothers were much less disappointing than Icarus (granted, wax and feathers aren't the best analogy for an innate flying ability but I think it illustrates the point). We do have to accept our limitations before we can move forward productively, and the disappointment or hopelessness of such admittals is subjective. I counter that it can equally be seen as a victory.

This is not an intellectual contribution to this discussion at all. Your arms won't allow you to fly; and so this inspires new technological modes of doing so. We cannot see radio waves, so we develop other means of doing so. We intuit and create in order to account for things that we cannot know in an immediate sensory way.

You are trying to simply write off the possibility of making any technological headway when trying to understand certain phenomena that perhaps elude us. You're being exactly the opposite of an engaged and eager intellectual, as I understand it. Philosophy informs technology, and vice versa. Just simply dismissing the unknown as contitutively unknowable affords us nothing.

I think this is something else all together. Can/can not vs should/should not are different.

Of course, but necessity applies to the "should" category. "Can" is contingent upon material circumstances; there's nothing necessary or inherent about it. "Should" entails something necessary about the object in question.

But I haven't thought this to be the discussion in general and certainly not the source of any disagreement about horror. I don't see anything here that warrants any real disagreement, except that it should be pointed out that not only do we not expose objects in their entirety, we can expect that there are always objects which we cannot expose at all.

We disagree on the importance of those things we don't know. You would rather dismiss things we "can't" know as things we eternally cannot know. This seems to be your position. I understand your conservative appeal to some sense of normality in order to function at all in the real world, but this is a poor philosophical position if we're seriously considering the consequences and/or possibilities of something.

Well that is the limit with my familiarity with it, but I want to reiterate that I don't see anything to differentiate this non-terror understanding of "horror" from "the unknown" (the unknown object in the Outside, if not the Outside itself).

The terroristic, or emotional, aspect of horror derives from the notion of the unknown and the Outside. Without these material notions, there is no horror. I'm tracing horror back to this very foundational concept.