affectivity

allagmatic

associated milieu

dephasing

epistemology

first information

form

perception

preception

preindividual

subject

nationality

French

occupation / innovator as

philosopher

innovator in the field of

individuation

philosophy

university teacher

psychologist

teacher

is a relation between an individualized being and the preindividual milieu.

from 'fractology': This term designates a relation between an individualized being and the pre-individual milieu... it is thus heterogeneous to individualized reality. This is why Simondon claims that affectivity, more than perception, indicates a spirituality that is greater than the individualized being (the Sublime) because perception is merely the functions of the structures interior to this being (L'Individuation psychique et collective, p. 108-hereafter cited as IPC). Simondon writes that affectivity is the ground of emotion, as perception is the ground of action (107). (https://fractalontology.wordpress.com/2007/11/28/a-short-list-of-gilbert-simondons-vocabulary/

Allagmatic The Greek word allagma can mean change or vicissitude, but it can also mean that which can be given or taken in exchange, which more genuinely captures the idea of energy exchange in Simondon's usage. . . . 'The true principle of individuation can neither be sought in what exist before the individuation occurs, nor in what remains after the individuation is accomplished... it is the system of energy that is individuating insofar as it realizes in the individual this internal resonance of the matter taking form and a mediation between orders of magnitude. The principle of individuation is the single way in which the internal resonance of this matter is established taking this form. The principle of individuation is an operation. With the result that a being is itself, different from all the others... it is neither its matter nor its form, but it is the operation by which its matter took form in a certain system of internal resonance. The principle of individuation of brick is not the clay, nor the mold: this heap of clay and this mold will leave other bricks than this one, each one having its own haecceity, but it is the operation by which the clay, at a given time, in an energy system which included the finest details of the mold as the smallest components of this wet dirt took form, under such pressure, thus left again, thus diffused, thus self-actualized: a moment ago when the energy was thoroughly transmitted in all directions from each molecule to all the others, from the clay to the walls and the walls to the clay: the principle of individuation is the operation that carries out an energy exchange between the matter and the form, until the unity leads to a state of equilibrium. One could say that the principle of individuation is the common allagmatic operation of the matter and form through the actualization of potential energy. This energy is energy of a system... it can produce effects in all the points of the system in an equal way, it is available and is communicated. This operation rests on the singularity or the singularities of the concrete here and now... it envelops them and amplifies them' (L'individu et sa genese physico-biologique, 44-hereafter cited as IGB). . . . Simondon will also define the allagmatic as 'the theory of operations' (IGB, 263), complementary to the theory of structures that the sciences elaborate. On the same page, Simondon will define an operation as 'a conversion of a structure into another structure.

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is, in social organizations, completely active, and matter is fully passive.

7. Form This is the standard abstraction that dominates the hylemoprhic (form-matter) model. Simondon shows how this model comes from a disposition in social organizations to conceive of form as completely active, and matter as fully passive. These two abstractions (matter-form) cannot get to the heart of the process in the operation, which requires potential energy to actualize its products.

is a mode of engagement with the world done so as to retrieve useful information about its orientation (such that a subject can be oriented in a situation, a world).

In this sense, perception is really about a mode of engaging with the world so as to retrieve useful information about its orientation. More importantly, Simondon argues that information, through perception, allows the subject to be oriented in a situation, a world. (net)

is not something that seizes upon an already existant form, it seizes upon its orientation.

He will write in section 2 of this chapter that perception does not seize upon a pre-established form, but instead seizes upon its orientation in an ensemble. (net)

is that in us which is incompatible with itself insofar as it involves a troubled mediating function between action and perception (the exterior world) and emotion and affect (the interior world).

Subject -Simondon writes in chapter two of IPC: . . . 'The problem of the individual is that of perceptive worlds, but the problem of the subject is that of the heterogeneity between perceptive worlds and the affective world, between the individual and the preindividual... this problem is that of the subject in as much as it exist: the subject is individual and other than individual... it is incompatible with itself The subject can only coincide with itself in the individuation of the collective, because the individuated being and the preindividual being that are in it cannot coincide directly: there is a disparation between perceptions and affectivity ' (108). . . .In a certain sense, the subject is situated on the surface between the dimensions of perception (related to action and associated with collectivity) and affectivity (or, the realm of emotivity and that which is interior to the individual). Thus, Simondon raises the question of the problematic of the unity of action and emotion in relation to the individual and the collective as the same problematic of the subject.

Gilbert Simondon

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Gilbert Simondon