<nettime> Without causes and truths, without facts and others.

[Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>]

Without causes and truths, without facts and others.


(continuation of a philosophical thread)

Events without causes: Flying saucers. Dwarf citings. Alien abductions.
Hurricanes and other chaotic phenomena. Cryptozoological species sight-
ings. Britney Spears. Serial killings. Sniper fire. Or what is a cause. Or
is it? Or the epistemology and ontology of causes. Or linkages and ghosts.

Events without truth: Battle casualties. Enumerations from one or another
side. Enumerations from witnesses. From engaged witnesses. From embedded
witnesses. From satellites. From a distance. Abu Gharayb. Redactions.
Contradictions. Disintegrations. Censorings. Or what is a truth. Or the
epistemology and ontology of truths. Or Being and beings, Truth and
truths. Or separations and presences.

Or none or all of these.

Let me explain.

1 There are events without causes. Or one might think of reverse engin-
eering of an event backwards into a chaotic cloud. Imagine chaos all the
way down. Dwarves were cited in late medieval Germany. There are always
portents in the sky. UFOs are described. Alien abductions share things in
common. It is irrelevant whether something or nothing was there. Events in
parallel do not prove causation. Relation is not causation. Perhaps
nothing causes war.

2 There are battles without truths. There are casualty reports by both
militaries; by other observers. Reports almost never tally. There is
nothing to tally. There are deaths but there are not enumerable deaths.
There are always deaths elsewhere, inwards and outwards. There are always
deaths without causes.

3 I am thinking about operations without truths and causes. Casualties
accumulate according to protocols. There are semantic clouds. There are
ruptures, disseminations, gatherings, filterings. I cannot prove an
enumeration, nor can I prove a cause. A cause is a linkage among machines
that tends towards reiteration among cycles. Machines at best are local
distributions. The machine has indefinite chains, accumulations. There are
never enough chains.

4 One counts chains, local neighborhoods of filterings. One arrives at the
station. The station says truth or cause, and that seems sufficient. There
are rails. The rails are always already guides, to be rusted, mistrusted.
Nothing moves but the sememe. The sememe is a nomadic maw; the sememe
produces conclusions. The sememe is the postcloud, the chaotic cloud is
the precloud. Cause is interstitial. A mixup not to be confused with
structure.

5 A portent is not a cause. An action and reaction are couplings, rela-
tions, associations. They are imminent, ride the surface of the inter-
stitial. Don't mistake them for cause.

6 Deaths are not a cause for truth or enumeration. There is no truth in
death, in war, in illness. There are stations which filter truth. They
construct truth. There are facts but far fewer than presumed. A death may
be a fact; deaths are not facts. Wars are not facts.

7 The core of it: facts are neither true nor false. Facts are. Facts are
indescribable. There is no economy, no political economy, of facts. Facts
are invisible. Facts are not caused by facts. There is only reverse engin-
eering of chaotic clouds. No cloud is perfect. Clouds and languages mis-
match. Clouds and languagings mismatch.

8 To write fact, truth, cause, is to write inerrancy. To write inerrancy
is to inscribe, construct a logical negative. Negatives do not exist;
selves are always others, others are always others. Others disappear like
facts; others are invisible. Others are facts are others. Others do not
cause, are not caused, harbor no truth. Truth is always somewhere else.

9 Truth is always somewhere else; truth is always someone else. Truth is
always spoken by the other. The speaking of truth by the other is the
speaking of the visible other, who is not other. Others do not speak.

10 Without truths there are actions. Without causes there are resistances.
Without facts there are worlds. There are worlds without facts and others.
Our world is our own world without facts and others. Our own world is
invisible to us. Our own world is a disappearance.

11 'With facts there are words. There are words with facts and others. Our
words are our own words with facts and others. Our own words are visible
to us. Our own word is an appearance.'

12 One says: 'It is clear now that there are no events. There is no
reverse engineering. Surely there are clouds, surely there are preclouds
and postclouds. Surely they are clear.'


'Whatever _is_ may _not be._' (Hume)






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