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comments on Informational Ontology: The Meaning of Gilbert Simondon’s Concept of Individuation (2013)

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Photo of a Romanesco from the journal where the paper is published

I've been looking around at some of the secondary sources on Simondon.  This paper, by Andrew Iliadis, seems like a reasonable short summary of things that could be relevant for our work here.  The main idea is a contrast between Simondon's notion of information as that which gives rise to form -- information "as" reality in other words -- and the simplified perspective from e.g. Shannon where the problem is how to move a "message" from one point to another, leaving aside how that message will be interpreted once it arrives.  Shannon said:
Frequently the messages have meaning; that is they refer to or are correlated according to some system with certain physical or conceptual entities.  These semantic aspects of communication are irrelevant to the engineering problem.
In contrast to this, Simondon deals with issues of morpho-genesis.  It seems to me that in this way of looking at things any fixed idea of semantics would (still) play second fiddle, since what is normally referred to as meaning would just be aggregate or derivative properties of form.  For example, a hill with a certain slope might be referred to as "steep".

Simondon did a lot of work using the term "technics", which could be a useful view on the third-term It that "mediates" the I-Thou relation.   Actually, Simondon's view is that communication is a mutual adjustment of different entities (similar to G. H. Mead); I'm not sure if "techics" per se are always involved in this adjustment or if that can happen in other ways.  Here's an extended quote from Iliadis:
Simondon offers us a new methodology from which to conduct inquiries related to communication as an empirical endeavor. An individuative methodology would seek to proceed by articulating instances of the modulation of communicative processes themselves, rather than in the simple “transmission” of meaning or data between pre-given, already individuated entities. For example, whether we are talking about empirical evidence in doctor-patient health communication or the analysis of vast quantities of data in social network analysis, an individuative methodology would seek to measure, uncover or understand those communicative structures that modulate in the act of communication and that perpetuate by virtue of an individuative flexibility. What variable characteristics of the formal “consultation” setting are responsible for trends that develop in interpersonal communication? How do reflective properties inherent in the visibility of a wiki edit history potentially alter future edits? These are the structural qualities of modulation that an individuative methodology would seek to uncover.
That certainly sounds familiar, and we might label some of the modulating activities or operations as phatic.  The same scenarios -- the consulting room, the social network, the wiki -- seem likely to arise as case studies of phatics we have or will encounter in a literature search on phatics.  Our discussion of the various "phatic functions" might give some initial idea of the "structural qualities" of the modulations discussed above.

It seems worth considering the idea of normal everyday communication as being within the technical realm, but one would have to dig further into Simondon's work to know whether he thought of it that way.

Comments

  1. SemiophrenicOctober 27, 2015 at 5:07 AM

    >how that message will be interpreted once it arrives.
    Pragmatics.

    >These semantic aspects of communication are irrelevant to the engineering problem.
    Jakobson frequently berated communication engineers and even some linguists (like Martin Joos) for ignoring semantics.

    >articulating instances of the modulation of communicative processes themselves
    metacommunication?

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  2. aridedNovember 2, 2015 at 3:43 PM

    I read another more extensive summary of Simondon's thinking -- probably just the right length (at 78 pages) to be detailed without being overwhelming. This is "Gilbert Simondon and the Philosophy of the Transindividual" by Muriel Combes. It was an eye-opening read, though I'm still digesting it, I'd say that Simondon provides a really clear way to think about existence in a relational way.

    To begin with, in his lexicon information isn't something that is sent in a message, but is the process whereby things take form. As such, it is typically ongoing or open-ended. Thinking this way, to the comments above I would say "yes" to pragmatics, but I would hesitate (as you did) about metacommunication. Metacommunication would only be part of the modulation of communication process, albeit an interesting part that we should give more attention to, particularly in the Jakobson sense of the metalingual function (which is sort of a twin to the phatic function).

    For Simondon, everything is coming into being as a relation. And that's not a relation between terms, as in logic, but a relation between entities that are in some kind of tension. It seems to me that metacommunication would only be one 'phase' of this relation. Another phase might be the emotional experience of doubt or whatever else we might see as leading to the urge to communicate in the first place.

    'Phase' is an important keyword for Simondon, and I hope we can connect it to the etymology of 'phatic'. I'm intrigued by the idea that phatic functions might be those which serve to move a conversation or relationship from one phase to another. "Hello" and "goodbye" accomplish that; perhaps we can see this in a more emotionally poignant way in negotiations about the "status" of a relationship, viz. "dating" or "broken up".

    Anyway, that's a speculative addition on my part, and I'd need to work it out a bit more. What's more clear though is that Simondon's idea of things coming into being through relating is compatible with the idea of 'phatics' that I was so eager about in my thesis. Hopefully I'll be able to say more about this soon! Another useful point is that he seems to have an idea of ethics that could be used in part 6 of our working outline where it asks "Can phatics itself help answer these questions?" I'll have to say more about that in another post.

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