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January 12, 2005
Empiricism and Delirium
Deleuze on Hume (Desert Islands):
"[I]f it is true that the principles of association determine the mind by imposing on it a nature to discipline its delirium or fictions of the imagination, conversely the imagination uses those same principles to pass off its fictions and fantasies as real...the imagination forges fictive causal chains, illegitimate rules, simulacra of belief...It is no longer on the path of science that we go beyond experience, confirmed by Nature itself and a corresponding calculation; we go beyond it always and everywhere in our delirium, which dreams up a counter-nature and ensures the fusion of anything whatsoever. The imagination uses the principles of association to redirect these principles themselves, giving them an illegitimate extension...We're not threatened by error. It's much worse: we're swimming in delirium."
John Nash (fictionalised version): "Like a diet for the mind: I choose not to indulge certain appetites, like my appetite for patterns."
Posted by robin at January 12, 2005 11:08 AM