Philosophical Cartography
This is an oblique response/reaction to @Csalisbury's thread on 'Stating the Truth’, though the rough idea is one I’ve been entertaining for a while so I’d thought I’d give it some space of it’s own.
One way of approaching philosophy which has been resonating with me for some time now is as a cartography - the art of map making. There are a few caveats to this, but the main import is to distinguish philosophical cartography from philosophical systematizing. If systems are static, self-relating Wholes, which each part playing a role in a larger, overarching program, cartography is both far looser, and in some sense, a lot more precise than system-building. For one, maps can be maps of all sorts of different things: terrain, air pressure, vegetation density, and so on. None of these maps are more true than the other, and maps are useful to the extent that they are used for some purpose or another. There’s a comment from Raymond Geuss on Nietzsche’s perspectivism which captures this nicely:
"The Nietzschean perspectivist holds that human beliefs are like maps. There may be different maps of a given area: Ordnance Survey-style maps that mark topographical features like elevation through the use of contour lines, maps that specifically mark the birthplaces of literary figures, maps that show differences in population density, income, rates of unemployment or diabetes, by using a colour code. There is nothing to prevent the perspectivist from claiming that some of these maps are definitely better than others. If I am tracking the incidence of goitre, a map that marks occurrences of the condition is much better than one that does not, regardless of how complete and exact it is in other respects. Equally, however, a map that locates Aberdeen north of Edinburgh is (other things being equal) ‘better than’ one that places it south of York, although it is also the case that if I am really intending to use the map only to orient myself in East Anglia this will not matter much to me”. (Geuss, Systems, Values, and Egalitarianism)
But aside from this, maps have the advantage of being tailored, of necessity, to local conditions: features on some terrain may simply not exist in other areas; that you have drawn an excellent map of the tundra - or series of maps - will not guarantee that you will have drawn an excellent map of the Amazon: each has distinguishing features that may require entirely new methodologies, entirely different tools, and even new vocabularies. What is significant in one area will not be of significance in another. In a book that’s become quite important to me recently, Anne Sauvagnargues argues for an approach to reading philosophy she calls ‘cartographic reading’, readings which attend to the specificities of philosophical problems as they arise, and which are not likely to converge into a neatly homogenous ‘system’:
"A system must be defined by its challenges, impacts, appropriations, and external contacts, as well as its variations, wandering lines, speeds, and paces that are not at all homogeneous. Texts are freed from such determinations and gravitate toward concrete problems and textual references that they put into play. Sticking to a static conception of a system would end up eliminating the becomings of thought for the sake of teleology in the work; observing the kinetic transformation of concepts does not result in historical disintegration, but is interested in paths and discloses the concepts’ movements… Thus, it is necessary to move from a static, abstract concept of a system, which ignores chronology and contextualization, to a dynamic concept of a system whose problems map their successive variations.” (Sauvagnargues, Deleuze and Art).
One important thing that Sauvagnargues does is not to discard ‘system’ altogether, but to attempt to think systematicity in a different way, as something that may not always be entirely coherent, and with parts which may not be at all commensurate with each other on a drawn-out scale. And again, what interests me is that this makes the ‘system’ in question more and not less robust: it makes it responsive to local conditions, it puts a premium being a 'better fit’ to whatever problem is at hand, than it does on making sure each and every part fits in nicely with the other. Yet - maps do not admit of absolutes. So: to think philosophy as a question of cartography, and not systematisation; this I think can be fruitful.
One way of approaching philosophy which has been resonating with me for some time now is as a cartography - the art of map making. There are a few caveats to this, but the main import is to distinguish philosophical cartography from philosophical systematizing. If systems are static, self-relating Wholes, which each part playing a role in a larger, overarching program, cartography is both far looser, and in some sense, a lot more precise than system-building. For one, maps can be maps of all sorts of different things: terrain, air pressure, vegetation density, and so on. None of these maps are more true than the other, and maps are useful to the extent that they are used for some purpose or another. There’s a comment from Raymond Geuss on Nietzsche’s perspectivism which captures this nicely:
"The Nietzschean perspectivist holds that human beliefs are like maps. There may be different maps of a given area: Ordnance Survey-style maps that mark topographical features like elevation through the use of contour lines, maps that specifically mark the birthplaces of literary figures, maps that show differences in population density, income, rates of unemployment or diabetes, by using a colour code. There is nothing to prevent the perspectivist from claiming that some of these maps are definitely better than others. If I am tracking the incidence of goitre, a map that marks occurrences of the condition is much better than one that does not, regardless of how complete and exact it is in other respects. Equally, however, a map that locates Aberdeen north of Edinburgh is (other things being equal) ‘better than’ one that places it south of York, although it is also the case that if I am really intending to use the map only to orient myself in East Anglia this will not matter much to me”. (Geuss, Systems, Values, and Egalitarianism)
But aside from this, maps have the advantage of being tailored, of necessity, to local conditions: features on some terrain may simply not exist in other areas; that you have drawn an excellent map of the tundra - or series of maps - will not guarantee that you will have drawn an excellent map of the Amazon: each has distinguishing features that may require entirely new methodologies, entirely different tools, and even new vocabularies. What is significant in one area will not be of significance in another. In a book that’s become quite important to me recently, Anne Sauvagnargues argues for an approach to reading philosophy she calls ‘cartographic reading’, readings which attend to the specificities of philosophical problems as they arise, and which are not likely to converge into a neatly homogenous ‘system’:
"A system must be defined by its challenges, impacts, appropriations, and external contacts, as well as its variations, wandering lines, speeds, and paces that are not at all homogeneous. Texts are freed from such determinations and gravitate toward concrete problems and textual references that they put into play. Sticking to a static conception of a system would end up eliminating the becomings of thought for the sake of teleology in the work; observing the kinetic transformation of concepts does not result in historical disintegration, but is interested in paths and discloses the concepts’ movements… Thus, it is necessary to move from a static, abstract concept of a system, which ignores chronology and contextualization, to a dynamic concept of a system whose problems map their successive variations.” (Sauvagnargues, Deleuze and Art).
One important thing that Sauvagnargues does is not to discard ‘system’ altogether, but to attempt to think systematicity in a different way, as something that may not always be entirely coherent, and with parts which may not be at all commensurate with each other on a drawn-out scale. And again, what interests me is that this makes the ‘system’ in question more and not less robust: it makes it responsive to local conditions, it puts a premium being a 'better fit’ to whatever problem is at hand, than it does on making sure each and every part fits in nicely with the other. Yet - maps do not admit of absolutes. So: to think philosophy as a question of cartography, and not systematisation; this I think can be fruitful.
Comments (82)
So, as with other vaguely relativist meta-philosophies I fail to see how this integrates with any form of judgement. If a philosophical investigation can be considered a kind of map, no more true than any other and no less valuable than its specific utility, then how does one go about judging such an investigation? How could a professor say of his student's thesis anything other than "Well, it's not of any terrain I recognise, and it has no utility to me", which is hardly the level of critique philosophy aspires to.
Also, how would this approach apply to meta-philosophy itself. The phrasing in the section you quote does not sound very "none of these maps are more true than the other" with regards to meta-philosophy. "A system must be defined by...", "it is necessary to move from a static, abstract concept of a system...". These do not sound like maps of meta-philosophy which are no more true than other maps, they sound like absolute edicts about what must be, what is necessary.
If philosophical investigations are themselves maps no more true than any other, then what is it about the investigation of philosophy itself which places it apart from such relativism into the camp of things which 'must be' a certain way?
This seems a silly question and symptomatic of your post in general. Any good thesis clearly and convincingly sets out the stakes upon which it turns; that they may not be stakes that you - or anyone else in particular - are interested in is, of course, entirely irrelevant. Is this something that really needs to be explained to you?
Quoting Pseudonym
This, in turn, trades on a simplified and unreflective opposition placed between necessity and the dynamism of cartographic practice. Any cartographer knows that map making is driven - absolutely - by the necessities of what is being mapped, along with what is aimed at by such mapping. Yet this does not imply, in the slightest, that a topographic map is somehow more true than a pressure gradient map. Even the most basic understanding of necessity recognizes that it can operate at varying levels of generality that leaves plenty of room for creativity and pragmatics - which in turn operate according to constraints appropriate to their own orders. It's very tiring to hear you bang your relativist drum over and over - your failure to think beyond first year distinctions is no one's problem but your own.
One's judgment related to this project cannot be separated from one's movement generated by a creation of the new cartography, and this movement is similar to autopoietic
self-establishment of aesthetic becoming.
Sensory and motor homunculi.
The Wound Man
The first pair of images are sensory and motor homunculi. They take an anatomically correctly proportioned human body then scale the body parts to the proportion of sensory/motor brain functionality devoted to that body part. You can see that there are a lot of similarities between them, but there are some differences. For example, the sensory (left) and motor (right) homunculi both have giant hands; lots of brain effort is concerned with hand movement and the sense of touch in the hands, but the legs on the motor homunculus are quite a lot thinner than those on the sensory homunculus. In terms of bodily movements, this corresponds to the comparatively more constrained movements afforded to the human legs than to the human hands.
You can also use each homunculus in turn, the sensory capabilities of the hands facilitate greater tactile location sensitivity than those on the legs. If you want to see this yourself, close your eyes and touch your knuckle with one finger, then touch just below the knuckle on either side. It's very easy to tell on which side of the knuckle the touch occurred. Close your eyes and try the same thing on the front of a quadricep on the legs, take roughly the same distance and compare the sensations; it's a lot harder to discern the relative locations of the touch points on the quadricep than on the hand.
The motor homunculus has similar comparative information; hand movements are a lot more versatile and need to be more precise than leg movements, and this is shown by how big the hands are.
You can also take both homunculi and see that the sizes of the body parts in both of them are strongly correlated; which is suggestive of the fact that sensory processing and the possible variations in movement and the required precision in movement go hand in hand. A hand needs to discriminate on at least a centimetre scale for most tasks, a leg doesn't have to for its usual load bearing and walking.
These maps have different functions again to the archetypical 'wound man', which is a labelled roughly anatomically correct catalogue of wounds and surgical interventions for them. Which differ again from the muscular and skeletal structures.
None of these are 'more correct' than any other, and they provide a different lens with which to view the objective features of a human body.
I was once at a talk by an anatomist who lamented the fact that we are not thought, in general, about just how variable the human body can be on in the inside: that the standard representations of skeletons hide massive differences in even very small groups of people (she pointed out a simple example where about half the room had particular bumps on their wrists, and others not; this, she said, barely scratched the surface of those differences just in that room itself). So one can imagine the variability in maps as well, each of which may need to be tailored to particular bodies, each with their own particular problems.
And contrary to the intellectually stunted who would see this as a mere relativism ('relative', one imagines, to some abstract ideal that in fact exists nowhere in reality), it would instead demand that one pay closer attention to things, that one hews more closely to the facts as they present themselves to our attention.
One thing the cartographic emphasis somewhat doesn't capture though, is the historicity of philosophical analysis. Unlike terrain or bodies, the formations of which are relatively stable in the medium term, the terrain of philosophy - that is, sense - mutates at far faster paces. The problems which call for analysis change far faster than the usual objects of maps.
I wasn't talking about 'interest' I was referring to the claim that they are useful insofar as they are used for some purpose or other. We're not talking about theses about how to build bridges here, where the purpose is well-established. A prospective engineering student could make no reasonable claim on producing a failed bridge design that he 'intended' it to fall down all along. The purpose to which his thesis is to be put is obviously to carry traffic. No such purpose exists for philosophical investigations and as such if any map is useful to the extent that it is put to some purpose, then it's utility cannot be external judged can it?
Quoting StreetlightX
I'm questioning the applicability of the cartographic metaphor, so your claim that it is obvious to any cartographer that Map-making is constrained by some necessities is irrelevant. You haven't demonstrated how philosophy is similarly constrained by a similar set of necessities. That is what I'm disputing.
Quoting StreetlightX
The fact that necessities exist at different levels of any hierarchy does not constitute a proof that the necessities within a proposition exist at the level of heirachy claimed, only that they could. You've yet to provide any justification for the claim that philosophical investigation is constrained by some particular set of necessities sufficiently well-known to yield universal judgement. Arguing only that necessities can exist at different levels is like arguing that I am six foot tall because some people are six foot tall.
As usual you've failed to examine the meta-philosophical assumptions behind your position. You're presuming that some new map (last time it was a new 'frame') or whatever alternative is next, is equally legitimate and so immune from criticism, but in order to preserve your antagonism to those world-views you dislike, you set up this second order certainty. Any philosophy you wish to promote becomes just a 'different map' and immune from analytical critique. Any philosophy you don't like can be safely dismissed by reference to this second order 'what philosophy really is', about which there is apparently so much certainty that even second years student all agree on it. A remarkable achievement considering 2000 years of debate among seasoned professors has yielded not a single agreement on any other subject.
Quoting Number2018
And in English?
Then I suppose you're unfamiliar with philosophical investigations.
Great, well why don't you enlighten me now then. The universally agreed on purpose of philosophical investigation is...
Who said anything about universal? Every investigation defines its own object and stakes; any competent reader can assess how well it goes about doing that, and if cashes out those stakes well. And philosophies fail and succeed at this at varying degrees at this all the time. The idea that what I'm saying renders anything immune to criticism is another silly non-sequitur.
How do you know that to be the case? Competent readers are the ones whose judgement you agree with and incompetent ones are the ones you disagree with?
Quoting StreetlightX
What examples would you give of such 'failed philosophies'?
Quoting StreetlightX
It's not the immunity from criticism that bothers me, it the simultaneous relativism within philosophical investigations but certainty verging on fundamentalism about what constitutes such an investigation and what does not, and how to judge how well those lucky few who pass your test have done.
It's generally something most people learn in the course of an education.
Quoting Pseudonym
Oh, philosophical 'therapeutics', say.
"We are not in the presence of a passively representative image, but of a vector of subjectivation. We are actually confronted by a non-discursive, pathic knowledge, which presents itself as a subjectivity that one actively meets, an absorbent subjectivity given immediately in all its complexity... This pathic subjectivity, before the object-subject relation, continues to self-actualize through energetico-spatiotemporal coordinates, in the world of language and through multiple mediations..." Guattari,
"Chaosmosis"
Well that's odd. Paul Horwich, for example, is a strong advocate of therapeutic philosophy and yet has held tenures at UCL, MIT, and New York University, institutions one would have thought made up of reasonably 'competent readers'. But then I suppose any 'competent professor' knows which universities are good and which aren't?
Thanks for this cartographic inspiration!
Thanks to you, I'm actually trying to re-orient my perspective into seeing the various branches and distinctive features of philosophy as maps with the hopes of ultimately being able to consolidate them all mentally into a coherent whole. It's something I've been attempting to do in an amateur capacity but now, thanks to you, I believe I can get a clear outline of what it might be.
Uh...are you actually suggesting that therapeutic philosophy is such a bad idea that its practitioners are dolts that don't deserve tenure? What do you say of Wittgensteinians who take up a concomitant interest in the idea of philosophy as therapy, folks like Conant and McDowell? Would you call them dolts? Or am I misreading you entirely?
Yeah, sorry, I'm a little loathe to get into the middle of an extended debate on this forum between two members, especially when it seemingly supports one side of that debate. It's just that I've seen you rail against this idea a few times (including supporting Russell's (in my opinion very bad) idea that Wittgenstein's interest in therapy was him copping out because he could no longer do real work) and I've been wondering why someone I respect is so dismissive of the idea.
Quoting StreetlightX
Using the cartography metaphor, I think it's more akin to seeing a map as a tool for getting you where you want or need to go. The point of working on your own map or adopting somebody else's is that you might need to call on it many times in your life, that you might desire or feel compelled to go many places with philosophy. Or, as in any activity, you might become deeply fascinated by the nature of the activity--you might have fun making maps, learning about how maps are made, the history of their various uses, the blunders that led us to perfect our current techniques. But when map-making becomes a sort of compulsion for its own sake, or (since you seem to prefer Nietzsche) an ascetic ideal, then you've lost the point of what it means to be engaging in cartography.
Mmm, and I have serious qualms about this. This 'use' - in the instrumental sense, like a bureaucrat's - doesn't seem to me to respect the autonomy of philosophy's problems. Any philosopher knows that problems impose themselves upon you, that they worm their way into you so its not a simple matter of submitting philosophy to one's whim and fancy, even if that is a 'therapeurics of the soul'; to engage in philosophy is to be driven where the problem takes you: to submit to necessity, as one does to a landscape which one maps out. Deleuze once wrote that the only use of philosophy is to sadden and shame and these are affects I think far more appropriate to philosophy than the self-gratifying attempts to make it some bourgeois weekend retreat in the Caribbean.
Therapeutics makes use of philosophy as one makes use of another without regard or respect for their autonomy. It prostitutes philosophy.
Come on now, this is pretty strawman. If not against my quick post then at least against the notion of philosophy as therapy. I have read you say many times that what marks or characterizes a philosopher - one who engages meaningfully with philosophy - is a set of problems that need to be worked through, that gnaw away at one. There's nothing instrumental or bureaucratic about raising the further issue to one's self about why precisely these problems gnaw away, why one works at these problems and what one hopes to achieve by working through these problems. This is how we keep philosophy from spinning in a void, both publicly and privately -- by making sure that we remain committed to mapping out the physiography of our problems and the nature of what we're doing when engaging in our philosophical investigations.
Quoting StreetlightX
I don't see how this runs counter to therapeutics. It's not either be driven where the problem takes you or do some namby pamby chicken soup for the soul. Problems take you down lots of twists and turns and wrong paths so it's important to be vigilant about the nature of the problem you're engaging, how you're engaging that problem, why you're engaging it.. there's a reason you wouldn't feed this quote to Csalisbury in his/her thread, because Csalisbury clearly needs to change the way s/he's approaching problems. That's therapy. In a thread like that we engage in a discussion with someone in order to better understand the nature of the problems that have wormed their way in, why s/he's not getting what s/he wants from the activity of engaging these problems in the way s/he is, and what changes in her life, her meta-philosophy and her understanding of these problems might get her feeling right again. This all seems quite natural to me, so I'm having trouble seeing why you want to pit therapy over/against the autonomy of philosophical problems.
Quoting StreetlightX
Not sure what to do with this. The stance that either we respect the full autonomy of philosophy and submit ourselves to it in the practice of philosophy or we're engaging in a bourgeois Caribbean retreat seems like a failure of imagination. Just as you have "serious qualms" about therapy I have pretty serious qualms about a statement that appeals to "the only use of philosophy...", even rhetorically. I'm pretty sure that you don't want to detach philosophy from life, immanence, joy, etc. so you seem to me to be following into a trap when you fetishize some ideal notion of philosophy's autonomy and set it against a meta-philosophy that stresses the importance of clarifying the physiognomy of our philosophical problems, why we seek out these problems, and what we seek to do in engaging with these problems. (Just as it doesn't invalidate another's autonomy by seeking therapy in order to better understand one's relationship with that person.)
Quoting StreetlightX
This sort of statement reads like you're getting carried away rhetorically with your personal distaste for a position you've got your heart set on opposing. How can we reason about this view of philosophy if we heedlessly set to work with a polemic that appeals to our moral sentiments? This view of autonomy would have that applied physicists make use of physics as one makes use of another without regard or respect for their autonomy, as though applied physics prostitutes physics.
Just as it seems reasonable to ask the physicist "Should we keep on doing physics?" when this work threatens to destroy the earth, so too it seems reasonable to ask the philosopher similar questions when this work threatens to destroy.
It is for this reason that I would shun looking at doing philosophy in such terms. Those terms will inevitably delineate one's ability to take account of some things, and as a result will render one incapable of understanding some of what philosophy has had to offer. That said...
If we're looking to understand all of the famous historical philosophers' positions, then it could be useful. I wouldn't call that doing philosophy though.
Ah, thanks, that all makes perfect sense now. It was the 'autopoietic self-establishment of aesthetic becoming' I was stuck on, but now you've explained it in terms of 'pathic subjectivity' which 'continues to self-actualize through energetico-spatiotemporal coordinates' that's cleared things up beautifully.
I agree - this kind of thing is therapy. Even philosophical therapy, if you will. But it sure as hell isn't philosophy, even if it is parasitic upon it. When you speak of "raising the further issue to one's self about why precisely these problems gnaw away, why one works at these problems and what one hopes to achieve by working through these problems" - this is a totally legitimate manner of inquiry, sure, but it is, as you've said yourself 'a further issue'. What I despise - and what I thinks merits all the scorn it can get - is the hopeless confusion of this with or as philosophy.
Perhaps, and this is all the concession I'll grant, there might even be a outcrop of philosophy that treats such problems as themselves problems of philosophy: but this too would be to place it in a long line of other problems of which 'problems of therapeutics' would be but one. The reduction - a reductive, psychologizing diminution - of philosophy itself to therapeutics really does make of it a carcass to psychologizing crows; its true that seeking therapy in order to better understand one's relationship with that person doesn't invalidate that other person: but to treat the other as nothing but the result of that relationship is intellectual violence of the worst kind, and I will never stop denouncing it.
Just as a physicist would resent, rightly, the idea that science is just a nice panacea for a bunch of intellectual neurotics - that it is, in fact, nothing but such a panacea, so would anyone who cares one jot for philosophy reject the impoverished and impoverishing idea of 'philosophy as therapeutics'. None of this, by the way, despite certain far-fetched claims here, constitutes a particularly exclusionary vision of philosophy. While it certainly entails a rejection of a fringe position that developed in some European backwater and popularized by a small cabal of contemporaries, the rest of the Western canon is more or less fair game.
Obviously you must feel free to engage (or refrain from engaging) in whatever way you see fit, but isn't it rather the point of a public Internet forum, that you get to take part in a debate between two members on one side or another? It would be a poorer forum I think, if we all withheld our input in these circumstances, so please do get into the middle of extended debates. Your input has certainly been interesting here and I'm sure would be equally so in other such debates.
That said, you seem to straddle both sides of this one, so perhaps you might have some insight into those areas about which I'm still in the dark.
The interest for me here is the psychology and how it interacts with philosophy, how people hold and maintain ideological beliefs. In this instance, it's in how the belief about what philosophy is (and crucially how it's quality is judged in the face of such seemingly extensive relativism). So StreetlightX is wanting to put that judgement at a second order of heirachy it seems. Within the set {all things which are philosophy} each investigation is to be judged by its own standards, whether it achieves what it set out to, but an investigation's membership of that set is judged by some objective (or at least widely agreed on) measure such that certain investigations can be readily dismissed with a waive of the hand, easily spotted by first years, or 'any competent reader'. The trouble is that the questions "what is philosophy for, what does it do, and why do we do it?" seems to have no place other than in the set {all things which are philosophy} and so must be judged by its own objectives, yet that judgement relies on an answer to its own question.
So how do we judge the merits of an investigation into the means by which we judge the qualities of such investigations as this one? I hope its not too much of a leap for you to understand from a social psychological perspective, how difficult it is to avoid the obvious conclusion that this construct is simply created to help people support belief systems. Half the structures in society are created for that express purpose and this looks exactly like one of them, so I don't think it's excessively cynical of me to at least start with that explanation as my default?
But alchemy, on examination, turned out to be, not the study of transmutation, but a complete misunderstanding about the difference between elements and compounds. Phrenology turned out, on examination, to be just a misreading of statistical anomaly. The overreach of neuroscience, psychology even physics have all been heated topics of discussion here. I'm sure the alchemists and phrenologists were mightily pissed of to have their subjects revealed to be something other than they thought. I'm sure the neuroscientists, psychologists and physicists have occasion to become riled at having the reach of their investigations circumscribed. The offense taken at the examination of the presumptions in one's own field is not an adequate defence against any issues thereby raised.
Would it be that you had anything of substance to offer as an 'issue thereby raised'.
I don't understand the link you're making. Chapter 2.8 is about why seemingly theories about philosophy do not necessarily suffer from the same problem as T-theories of philosophy. I don't see how this links up to what you quoted, perhaps you could explain a bit more?
So, we're back to this again. And the measure of the substance of an issue is...? Let me guess, something any competent reader automatically knows? Something any level of education beyond first year magically endows you with? Or could it just possibly be that your measure of the 'substance' of an issue has something to do with the degree to which you agree with it?
... Unable to be decided in advance of the issue's being articulated and its implications laid out. No doubt this seems like magic to anyone unacquainted with the elementary tenets of reading tout court.
I see. I misunderstood the implications of the way you asked the question. I took your "What's the difference between..." as a rhetorical assertion that there should be one, not an observation there there wasn't.
The difference is, as Horwich discusses, between an observation of what the subject is, the objective of which is to be as inclusive as possible, to capture as much of what goes on as one can; and a edict about what the subject must be, the aim of which is to be exclusive, to reject that which does not fit the theory. One of Horwich's issues with T-philosophy is this tendency to simply reject that which does not fit the theory, rather than adjust the theory to that which is found.
What difference does this make. I obviously think I have articulated it and laid out it's implications (within the very tight constraints of a short forum post), others have certainly done so in book-length detail, it's not a new approach. You're just shifting the subjective judgement, now it's whether the issue has been sufficiently articulated. Sufficient to whose satisfaction? And how do we judge the sufficiency of the articulation?
Sufficient to the problem as articulated: the physiognomy of our problems, as John so felicitously put it. Do they not teach the basics of immanent criticism any more? That you keep coming to this idea of 'subjectivity judgement' or 'agreement': it simply shows that you simply don't know what you're talking about. Even your questions are badly put; they don't deserve answers because they're not even worthy of their own articulation. Doubly tragic coming from a reader of Wittgenstein.
That doesn't seem to make any sense. You said that the measure of the substance of an issue (substance you claim is lacking in my critique) can be determined once it is sufficiently articulated. I asked you how one judges whether an issue has been sufficiently articulated and you've replied that it should be "sufficient to the problem as articulated". This just re-states the assertion. What is it to be sufficient? What distinguishes an articulation which is sufficient for you to judge it's substance from one which is not?
Fine, what were the criteria of assessment contained within your OP?
Also, who determines what the criteria of assessment are in the case where there is disagreement? Is it again the case that philosophy at large, who can't even agree on the meaning of the first sentence of most philosophical texts nonetheless miraculously come to a unanimous agreement as to what the criteria of assessment contained therein truly are?
So, if I decide the criteria of assessment contained within a work of philosophy are one thing, and you disagree, how is it that I'm wrong?
Any more hand holding you need?
How is "well-founded" a criteria for assessment? How is "meeting a challenge" or being "well articulated" criteria for assessment? You've not specified what would qualify as success in any of these measures. What distinguishes a thing which is "well-founded" from one which is not, what identifies a thing which has met a challenge, what marks something out as being "well articulated" as opposed to poorly articulated?
It's these assumptions that I take issue with. I doubt the honesty with which they are applied. Does it really seem impossible to you that I (or someone much more qualified than me) could not similarly come up with an arbitrary list of 'criteria for assessment' which would render any philosophical investigation a roaring success?
Then it seems you are not a competent speaker of the English language.
This goes back to the distinction I made in my previous post to you. A description of 'what is' aims to be inclusive. Wittgenstein is trying to describe what language is, and so there is no issue with his using language to do so. Its not a judgement, its a description. My issue with the metaphorical linking of cartography with philosophy is not the comparison itself (which I think is fine) it's the manner in which it's exposition goes on to distinguish, rather than define. It sets edicts about what 'must be', what is 'necessary'. This becomes theory, not description. Theories should be open to testing. If something 'must be' the case, then it should be possible to attempt the opposite and demonstrably fail, yet no criteria are set for this.
If a philosophical investigation is akin to a map, crucially (as specified in the OP) one whose utility is only that it be put to 'some use or another'. Then an investigation which serves some use is an act of philosophy no more true than any other. But the author then reserves the right to claim to be an authority on such philosophical cartography, to know with certainty what constraints this sets on the nature of the mapping. What investigations led them to this certainty, and where are the other maps showing different aspects of that same investigation measured only by the use they're put to?
Definitely. To employ a language-game is simply the minimal criteria of any coherent discourse, let alone philosophy. To set out a language-game in which the distinctions made shed light upon, or help think though, a problematic immanent to the game: that's philosophy. To cite a quote I often return to:
"A philosophical theory is an elaborately developed question, and nothing else; by itself and in itself, it is not the resolution to a problem, but the elaboration, to the very end, of the necessary implications of a formulated question. To criticize the question means showing under what conditions the question is possible and correctly raised; in other words, how things would not be what they are were the question different from the one formulated. This means that these two operations are one and the same; the question is always about the necessary development of the implications of a problem and about giving sense to philosophy as theory. In philosophy, the question and the critique of the question are one; or, if you wish, there is no critique of solutions, there are only critiques of problems". (Deleuze, Empiricism and Subjectivity, my emphasis).
Yes, but the point Horwich (and indeed Popper) are both making, is that any theorising is done, not in a exclusive sense. Wittgenstein is intending to unsettle us, to show that language is something other, not what it 'must be'. There may well be (indeed are) normative implications of this description, but it is not a normative theory. That's why the motivation is described as normative, not the theory.
So the difference, again, is between some theory which says "all things in this set must be defined thus", and a description whose normative effect is to ask "are you sure all things in this set belong here?"
To be clear. A theory of metaphilosophy which says that philosophy is a bit like map-making, is of this latter kind. It gets us to question any investigations we might have discarded as not showing any contours when we realise that may not have been the intention. By itself, it does not force human activity into artificial categories. Where it become T-philosophy (or T-metaphilosophy) is when it then says that because philosophy is like map-making, it must then be constrained by the same set of necessities as cartography.
My objection is simple.
Philosophy is like cartography - each investigation reveals the aspect of human experience that it is interested in, and its utility is judged by it's being put to some use or another. This is a metaphilosophical position.
Metaphilosophy is an act of philosophy (as your second quote describes).
Therefore a metaphilosophical investigation is also like a map, drawing out those aspects of the field that the cartographer is interested in, and measured by its being put to some use or another.
Therefore it must be the case that the metaphilosophical theory that philosophy is like cartography and so similarly constrained, cannot itself be normative.
There's simply no way anyone with any familiarity with Wittgenstein could make this kind of argument with a straight face: as if the metagame is here an act of interpretation. As if every act of philosophy - and hence language - doesn't carry its own metagame on its back in the mode of the practice of that self-same act of philosophy itself. Philosophical competency on holiday.
Ah, so now the conclusions of Wittgenstein's philosophical investigations have become universal truths, the ignorance of which renders any related proposition philosophically incompetent. And I thought they were all just maps, "none more true than any other".
Deleuze and Guattari developed their theory of philosophical cartography, they radically contrasted mapping with tracing:
“Make a map, not a tracing. What distinguishes the map from the tracing is that it is entirely oriented toward an experimentation in contact with the real. For it is inaccurate to say that a tracing reproduces the map. It is instead like a photograph or X-ray that begins by selecting or isolating, by artificial means such as
colorations or other restrictive procedures, what it intends to
reproduce. The imitator always creates the model and attracts it. The
tracing has already translated the map into an image; it has already
transformed the rhizome into roots and radicles. It has organized,
stabilized, neutralized the multiplicities according to the axes of
significance and subjectivation belonging to it. It has generated,
structuralized the rhizome, and when it thinks it is reproducing
something else it is in fact only reproducing itself. That is why the
tracing is so dangerous.”
Quoting StreetlightX
Tracing is a kind of reproduction, following an already established pattern; and using and making maps can also be a kind of calcomania. Whereas the true mapping is about making oneself a part of the rhizome, taking the risk of a becoming with the unknown outcome.
But cartography isn't constrained to any particular number of dimensional degrees at all; consider Minard's famous map of Napoleon's campaign in Russia:
It contains at least six points of data: number of troops; distance; temperature; latitude and longitude; direction of travel; and location relative to specific dates. Modern, interactive, digital maps can contain even orders of magnitude larger points of data: in most cases the problem is not to add dimensions, but to cull them in order to be rendered legible in the face of data overload. Philosophical cartography, is at once both easier and harder than this: easier because operates largely in the largely dimensionless world of words (and so perhaps should be called philosophical cartology) which makes it infinitely more malleable, and harder precisely because it is no longer constrained by the graphic and thus much harder to follow. Books - and not just philosophical books - are all maps in their own way; philosophy's distinction is in dealing with the terrain of concepts and of sense. Philosophy plots concepts as maps plot terrain or time.
In fact, picking up on the Wittgenstein thread, one could say that the constraints that function in a philosophical cartologly replace the graphic with the grammatical: to construct a philosophy is to construct a grammar, to the degree that "grammar tells what kind of object anything is" (PI §373); a philosophical map maps the world according to the grammar that it develops, highlighting these relations over those ones, allowing these moves of conceptual translation while disallowing others. If "essence is expressed by grammar" (PI §371), then philosophy's capturing of essences takes place by way of grammar (elsewhere Witty will speak of how "a drop of grammar" can "condense a whole cloud of philosophy" (PI §315)). And just as maps have their own grammar - the grammar of a heat map will differ from the grammar of a river map - so do different philosophies have grammars specific to them.
Thus - for example - the (concept of) Ideas of Plato will differ from the Ideas of Kant will differ from the Ideas of Deleuze: each has a grammar distinct to its 'language-game', locating the 'joints of the world' differently each time, and articulating the world according to the grammar specific to the philosophy (in the original sense of the word the Greek arthron: to join, and hence articulate, both world and word). These maps - these philosophies - each paint the world in a different light, bringing to light these features or those features, being more or less relevant, more or less significant, depending on the context of a particular investigation.
No, to a three dimensional observation, the map can only present itself as an image in two dimensions. Much like how actors in real life look different than on screen.
I'm reminded of saying vs showing distinctions.
The point is that dimensionality is not only visual when it comes to maps (or anything else for that matter): a dimension simply designates a variable, and a visually 2 or 3D map can expresses variables far in excess of its visual dimensionality. I.e. the restriction you're trying to gesture toward is not a relevant one.
Then take the saying, a picture is worth a thousand words. You have that as a common saying, even among ordinary folk.
But, what you're trying to do is reach a limit but never quite converge in my opinion.
This is wishy-washy.
So, is your description of how changes in dimensionality don't result in increases of information available to the total state space true or false?
This isn't a question of information 'availability' as it is expressive power so you 'getting technical' is you talking about something else entirely and again, irrelevant to the discussion.
By sheer irony, 'state space', by the way, is a concept that designates a multi-dimensional array that that can be 'instantiated' in physical dimensions far below the number of dimensions in the actual array (hence hard drives): which is exactly why the changes in visual dimensionality are - within certain bounds - entirely irrelevant. The 'state space' of writing is orders of magnitude larger than that of a picture because it can accomodate - in a way that pictorial representation can only dream of - both abstraction and hierarchical embedding of reference within it.
I meant to say that an increase in dimensionality increases information. Your point about making a philosophical cartography wouldn't capture the entirety, and probably most important parts, of philosophy.
I still believe there's more to philosophy than a cartography. You expressed this in your subsequent posts to the OP about there being more anatomical features than an anatomist's painting of the human body entails.
And that point had to do with the fact that maps must always be pluralized to be of better use: that anyone seeking 'one map to rule them all' was seeking after an illusion; and thus to place the accent on 'there being more' than the map can express is to miss the point entirely: the desideratum is to eliminate - ruthlessly - features: we don't want more least the map loses its efficacy. That the map is not the terrain is the best and most useful thing about maps. Those who think this expresses an inadequacy about maps don't understand, or have been seriously mislead about the point of a map.
A map is a two dimensional depiction of a three dimensional plane or surface with features on it. How can you argue that this doesn't jive with treating philosophy as a cartography?
Because this is an incredibly simplistic, and dare I say, naive, definition of a map. Maps at their most abstract are simply ways of condensing and communicating relations though abstraction and, traditionally, though graphic and symbolic means. Not only is any reference to dimensionality entirely superfluous, but so too is any reference to 'planes and surfaces'. What I'm suggesting is that those means do not necessarily have to be - and in fact are often not - strictly graphic or symbolic. Or differently, they can in fact be properly symbolic: though words and even concepts. Here is a link to an interactive map of Spinoza's Ethics that was doing the rounds the other day, one which puts paid to any trivial understanding of maps as 'a 2d depiction of a 3d plane': http://ethica.bc.edu/#/visualization (or, for a 3D version: http://ethica.bc.edu/#/3d)
I'm simply suggesting to think of maps in a different medium, as the above in fact already is; and mediums are - as medial, as mediators - able to be swapped out, in the right circumstances. In fact, if you want to get 'technical' about it, there's a reason why, in math, another name for functions are mappings, insofar as they map domains to codomains - that is, insofar as they express a relation or set of relations in abstract terms (here is the function/mapping of a one-to-one function):
A function is, in this respect, nothing other than a particularly abstract map: there's an argument to be made that math too is nothing other than a cartographic exercise. The difference here to a 'traditional map' is that the relations expressed are not geometrical but simply numerical (geometry in fact being a more restricted, less generic form of math). Again, all I'm suggesting is that the same thing can and does occur at the level of the conceptual.
Another way to play the game of defense is to cast the recognition of ones view as right as an index of some indefinable element of worthiness (this worthiness can take a lot of forms: aesthetic sensibility, requisite experience, nobility of mind etc. The rhetorical use of prostitution, for example, sets up a pure/defiled distinction, casting the opponent as someone who uses something good for bad purposes, and so besmirches the good. Plus you run the risk of slut-shaming philosophy, which maybe is a willing agent in the exchange, and doesnt need or want protection from the john or pimp.)
In either case its a fair rhetorical move for ones opponent to say that the sketch of a non-absolute object-level is being anchored by a meta-level absolute.
I think the only way out of the impasse is to assert, on the meta-level, that a philosophy of valuation is itself a product of valuation. You have to jettison an essence of philosophy and say: I think this is the type of philosophy that is worthwhile. And this is where rhetoric, persuasion, poesy, politics and the rest come in. If you state that its a matter of valuation, then any recourse to essence is in bad faith while any immediate use of high/low distinctions is tautologous. The use of the latter, at this point, is just re-emphasizing, but with a praise/shame undercurrent, that you value what you value and that the other person doesn't
But none of that (persuasion, rhetoric, poesy, politics) is inherently cynical. If you value what you value, then all you're trying to do is get others to see what you see, feel what you feel, and so forth.
I understand that; but, you have limited the range by excluding/restricting another dimension. I don't have anything more to add of coherence on the matter.
If I understand you right, this is more or less what I think is the case: the problem of how to understand philosophy is itself a philosophical problem like any other: and as such, it's form is dictated to a certain degree by shape of philosophy itself, if I may put it that way. Basically I think any strict bifurcation between 'object level' and 'meta level' needs to be seriously put into question: any work of philosophy carries within in an implicit 'meta-philosophy' simply by virtue of it being philosophy to begin with. One can isolate, artificially, this 'meta-philosophy' and start comparing it, as if a car-catalogue, to other 'meta-philosophies', but I think this is a doomed exercise from the start: if you disconnect the principles that animate the philosophy from the philosophy itself, you're just playing a shell-game. It's 'philosophy on holiday' in the same manner that Witty referred to certain strains of analysis as 'language on holiday'.
The question then is not "how does this meta-philosophy compare to that meta-philosophy?", or "how do you compare between the two?", but does this approach to philosophy capture what seems to be its relevant aspects? Does it leave out anything of significance with respect to what it claims to capture? In other words: is this approach adequate to the very object it aims to specify? And this can be answered in all sorts of interesting and creative ways. For example, one thing a cartographic approach does is to temporally 'flatten' the field of philosophy: it makes Plato our contemporary no more than Foucault: time is given a particularly short shrift.
("The life of philosophers, and what is most external to their work, conforms to the ordinary laws of succession; but their proper names coexist and shine either as luminous points that take us through the components of a concept once more or as the cardinal points of a stratum or layer that continually come back to us, like dead stars whose light is brighter than ever. Philosophy is becoming, not history;
it is the coexistence of planes, not the succession of systems." (Deleuze, What Is Philosophy?)
Is this a 'price' worthy paying? Maybe there's an argument somewhere that it isn't. And that would be interesting debate because it would be motivated by the object itself: philosophy as problem. The only thing not to do here is treat 'meta-philosophy' as a closed field in itself, which'll invariably lead you to the sort of clinical hysteria of Psuedonym's questions: but how do you know??; what's the meta-meta-philosophy that authorizes you to say that? And the meta-meta-meta-philosophy of that? It's a very sad game that needs to be headed off at the pass.
The second part of this sentence betrays the first as a falsehood.
But isn't it the case that you set up the comparison between different meta-philosophies in this thread and the ones prior to this one? Could we not describe as car-cataloguey the distinction betwen philosophies that are cartographic and those that rely on tracing ? There's a depth hermeneutics to cartography/tracing that requires work (sussing out the implications of thought) but it's still, in the end, dependent on a firm criterion. What makes one criterion better than another?
The potency of car-catalogue as epithet derives from the well-known image of a boorish consumer so stripped of the ability to create values (castrated?) that he has to choose between a pre-existent set of 'minor differences' laid out easily for him.
To differentiate oneself from this sad-sack consumer it would be necessary to show that one is the source of one's own valuation rather than someone choosing from among a series of options based on pre-existing values one has adopted.
The sad-sack consumer, as we all know, stakes a lot on his choice, and will mock the taste of those who choose otherwise. Or, less sad-sack, more flashy-but-vapid: the business card scene in American Psycho.
Reliance on external values leads to venemous shut-downs. Theyre checks backed by the confidence of others. wonder if this is also tied to the pronouncy thing I'm addicted to. I like much of the same philosophy you like. But pronouncing and shaming seem like interrelated smokescreens. Valuation from within, rather than adoption of values from without, seems inherently persuasive; it talks to rather than tells. It no longer feels the passion for imitation, or 'you know, what theyre saying is this' -- "it is known"
Quoting StreetlightX
'what seems to be relevant' or 'of significance' , then, can be understood in by reference to the adequation of approach and object. Do we understand relevance and significance through this sort of adequation, or adequation through relevance and significance?
Quoting StreetlightX
I disagree, not because I think Pseudonym is 'right'. I disagree because I think he's right that the tone and presentation of these ideas, here and elsewhere, remains the same as the old tone and old presentation of old ideas. Present in that way, defend it that way - its fair.
Craftsmanship and mastery: yes, all day.
But another metaphor in the vein and tone of the car catalogue one:
Artisan at a public forum hawking his goods and shaming as lacking appreciation all those who won't buy. Those who will: Ah but i can see youre a man of taste: witness the vulgarity of the customer just before you- can you believe?
Alternative vision: the artisan who gets to know his customers and what they value and, since hes interested in them and his own work, shows them, on their terms, why his wares are of value.
No, this isn't it. The distinction isn't between 'being the source of one's own valuation' or 'choosing from a series of pre-set options'. All 'options' are 'sourced from one's own valuation' - the only question is whether that's recognized as such, or not. Or to put this otherwise, the so-called 'meta-philosophy' is internal to the philosophy itself, it does not stand over and above it; it's the philosophy itself that structures and generates even the meta-field, the array of seemingly 'opposed positions' form which it distinguishes itself. You wouldn't even be able to 'see' or recognize the 'other' 'meta-philosophy' from the 'outside'. There's no such thing as meta-philosophy. It's all very Hegel I know, but it's what's needed to short-circuit the endless proliferation of "meta-metas" that end up seeping their way out if you really think that 'meta-philosophy' constitutes its own self-enclosed field. The only justification is immanent. If you don't like it - create.
I agree with this. I worry that it leads to effective (not metaphysical) solipsism. Or at least a shared, niche, solipsism.
As you pointed out in an earlier post, the meta-meta proliferation is ultimately a endlessly deferred (necessarily infinitely deferrable) question of authority. The only way to stop a regress of authorization is immanent self-authorization.
Drawing on your recent threads:
(1) Expression versus possession: 'the thing (whatever it is) coincides entirely with its expression: it is not something apart from its expression and does not possess it as though it stood outside of it’s own ‘properties’.
(2) Levinas on Shame (keeping in mind possession as a thing standing 'outside' of its own properties): "It is therefore our intimacy, that is, our presence to ourselves, that is shameful"
(3) Infelicity : 'the very effectivity of speech has failed, and not just it's 'content', as it were'
I want to say something like this:
There's a way of discussing Deleuzian philosophy that fails. It provides the 'content', but is not effective. It doesn't express it, precisely because it is still trying to possess it. What's expressed is not the purported content, but the will-to-possession itself. The will-to-possession is expressed in a kind of triangulation, which is legible in the form. There is the writer, the content, and a specific didactic form: the authority of one who speaks what is known to be true. The content is approached and handled in the way that form dictates. Its a kind of ownership.
The 'content' of Deleuze is something like immanent self-authorizing expression. If the form is not as much a part of this self-authorizing expression as the content, then the speech will fail. It will be read, correctly, as a kind of insular self-authorization.
It's insular because it's really speaking to an absent third-party. It can neither fail nor succeed because the third party isn't present. That's the solipsism part. It's self-authorizing, because it authorizes itself through reference to a third party that is guaranteed not to arrive. But this makes it only authorized to itself, or to others who also have the absent third party in mind- which is not actual authority.
If the expression doesn't render effective its content through its expression (especially when the content is the philosophy of expression) then there isn't any content. It's deeply infelicitous
And somehow this is all related to shame and joy
But wait, it's not about a third party: the authorization is taken from the problem(s) it sets out to address - it's internal to the philosophy, true, but there's still a dialectic of self-differentiation (and hence individuation) where implications are built upon and extended into fields beyond whatever jumping-off point served as the initial impetus (which in turn become self-consistent areas of investigations onto themselves - 'rhizomatic', not 'arboreal' logic); and yeah, in all cases form and content self-modify accordingly according to a logic of expression.
But a third party? No, that's not the reference point towards which it's all oriented. The third party's role is simply in providing further points of extension, further issues to be explored, additional problems to be addressed. But in all cases it's the problem(s) to which philosophy addresses itself, not the third party, who is just an occasion or source of encounter.
W/r/t authorization then, authorization is never complete or absolute: there's always more to explore, there are always more implications to be teased out, more fields which have not been addressed. And this is the case in principle and not merely 'in fact', not only because the world will always throw up new, unforeseen things which with to engage, but also because every new step in an argument will have retroactive effects on the whole: philosophy is kaleidoscopic.
Finally, there's also no reason why different approaches need to be in any way commensurate; different approaches might bring out or highlight different aspects of a problem, [cartography/maps discussion here, etc etc]. I'm happy to be pretty damn pluralist about this, which may or may not also effect the worry of solipsism, but that's for you to tell me.
Also, you're discerning alot more consistency in my threads than I am! I'm not saying there isn't, but most of them are a confluence of very dim, general intuitions about various things which were brought out by specific occasions (the pride thread was a response to fdrake's thread on political discourse; the expression thread because I just finished reading a particular book, etc, etc).
I agree with you, just want to add that the constellation “There is the writer, the content, and a specific didactic form: the authority of one who speaks what is known to be true” is actually constituted by what Deleuze and Gvattari call “an abstract machine of faciality”: “Significance is never without a white wall upon which it inscribes its signs and redundancies. Subjectification is never without a black hole in which it lodges its consciousness, passion, and redundancies. Since all semiotics are mixed and strata come at least in twos, it should come as no surprise
that a very special mechanism is situated at their intersection. Oddly
enough, it is a face: the white wall/black hole system. The white wall/black hole system is constructed, or rather the abstract machine is triggered that must allow and ensure the almightiness of the signifier as well as the autonomy of the subject”
Quoting csalisbury
I would like to question what you call “insular and solipsistic” characteristics of “self –authorized, possessing expression.”
Your analyses are not entirely Deleuzian since if one starts looking for the foundations of this conceptualization, it could lead
to closed off or transcendental conditions.” Particular assemblages of power impose significance and subjectification
as the primary forms of expression, in reciprocal presupposition with new contents: there is no significance without a despotic assemblage, no subjectification without an authoritarian assemblage, and no mixture between the two without assemblages of power that act through signifiers and act upon souls and subjects. It is these assemblages, these despotic or authoritarian formations, that give the new semiotic system the means of its imperialism, in other words, the means both to crush the different semiotics and protect itself against any threat from outside.”
So, according to Deleuze and Guattari, there are no entirely insulated utterances, and if the statements or discourses are spoken in the regime of faciality, they are determined and conditioned by the concrete socio-political assemblages.
Quoting Number2018
:sad: :gasp:
Oh, I figured. All the threads I cited felt, to me, like they were drawing on a family of conceptual knots, so I thought it might be useful to bring them together as a way of gesturing toward something.
I guess I'm still just circling around the same conceptual knot thats been troubling me for a while now. What I really want to talk about is the use and abuse of philosophy for life, but that's another subject, only tangentially related to this.
Something like: The philosophy of immanence seems doomed to chase its own tail, if its presented in a legible philosophical style. It seems like the ultimate end is to say being. To speak the truth of being. But to say the truth of being, in the philosophical sense, is to possess (my whole fixation on 'pronouncing.')
It goes right up to the edge and then stops.
I did lose track of this conversation though and and how it progressed. I had a bunch of ideas kinda sparking up but didn't really express them well or fully, and now theyve gone away a bit.
Something to do with: this kind of philosophy talks a lot about jettisoning imperial or assimilationist tendencies. But the extra-philosophical fields it draws on seem like wells from which to draw a series of examples furnished to emphasize a conceptual machinery thats already there. Deleuze actually more or lesse admitted this in some interview comparing himself to a mountain that brings with it a whole set of established concepts.
I think you're right that the problems and metaphilosophies are driven from within and can only be understood by immersion. But then how often do practitioners of this philosophy extract from e.g. chomsky without seeming to have mastered the linguistic probelms (it would take a long time to do this) from which his ideas developed?
This isn't very clear or an argument. Its just a dim uneasiness that I'm still trying to articulate.
If everything is immanence, and has to be understood in and of the world, what is this philosophy (as concretely practiced) doing? what are its effects, what ends is it serving?
I think I have an idea of what you mean, if only because I think I've struggled with similar thoughts before as well (and still do, though their intensity is not as strong). The major thing that's helped me through it is in finding my own locus of interest (or 'project', if you will) that's somewhat independent of my previous immersion in 'the study of philosophy'. The problems I'm interested in seem now to belong more to me, and I'm no longer studying the problems of others (or, when I do, I'm studying them on my own terms, and not theirs). That's one side of it.
The other, and it's occasioned and prompted by the former, is in coming to understand the role of philosophy differently. You ask what is philosophy doing? Here I've I've found the notion of the relay useful: philosophy as relay, connecting - at the level of thought - heterogeneous domains, enabling and facilitating communication flows between discourses and practices that might otherwise be silent about each other. It's a conception of philosophy as a 'potentiator' or as 'potentiating': it doesn't 'act', it doesn't 'make a change in the world' (that much is obvious), but it can rearrange relations, draw attention to things where there weren't any before (this is its creative function).
One thing about relays is that they can't exhaust their sources: the very idea doesn't even make sense. You're simply a kind of differential gear, transmitting torque from one element to another: there's no effort of subsumption at work here, no 'belly turned mind' (to use Adorno's quip about Hegel).
I mentioned before that Anne Sauvagnargues' work has been influential to me on this question. One of the things she captures very nicely is what happens in the shift from Deleuze's early to his late work, and it's something that I'm finding resonates with me at a personal level as well: "In Deleuze’s thought, immanence [is] conceived as the auto-consistency of thought, then increasingly as an outright empiricism and heterogeneity. Thus, the very constructed, formal characteristic of the first studies bask in an annoying atemporality, whereas his encounter with Guattari transforms the theoretical regime, which falls into a whirlpool of theoretical sections and joyous, transversal constructions, even though the last works pick up a more constructed regime". (Deleuze and Art); there's something to this, and I don't think it is specific to just one particular philosopher.