Week 11

Logic of Sense - Gilles Deleuze 1969

Third Proposition (Series)

• Events (things that happen, states of affairs) are inherently expressible or expressed in propositions.
• Propositions have 3 primary dimensions/relations:
  • Denotation (or Indication): We ask: “Is it that?” or “Is it not that?”
    • What the proposition points to in the external world (a state of affairs, a datum).
    • Works through the association of words with particular images; we select the image that corresponds to the given whole.
    • Indexicals/Designators (e.g., “this,” “that,” “it,” “here,” proper names) point to specific instances but derive their specific meaning from the context of denotation.
    • Logical value: True (if the denotation is filled by the state of affairs/correct image selected) or False.
  • Manifestation: The relation of the proposition to the person speaking and expressing themselves.
    • It reveals the speaker’s desires and beliefs corresponding to the proposition.
    • Desires and beliefs are described as causal inferences (e.g., my desire is an internal cause for my statement, or my belief is an anticipation based on external causality).
    • “Manifesters” (e.g., “I,” “you,” “tomorrow,” “always”) express this dimension.
    • Argued to make denotation possible; the “I” is the principle of possible denotation from the standpoint of speech.
    • Logical value: Not True/False, but Veracity (truthfulness of the speaker’s expression of their state) or Illusion (misleading expression).
    • This gives a certain priority to the subjective: the “I” (manifestation) grounds judgments (denotations) about the world (e.g., Descartes’ Cogito).
  • Signification: The relation of words to universal/general concepts, and of syntactic connections to the implications of concepts. It’s about how propositions relate to other propositions within a conceptual system.
    • Key linguistic elements: “implies,” “therefore.”
    • It’s an indirect process (relating to other propositions as premises or conclusions).
    • Logical value: The condition of truth (the set of conditions under which a proposition would be true). The opposite is not “false” but the absurd (meaningless, neither true nor false).
    • Example: “All unicorns are white.” This proposition has signification (it’s conceptually meaningful and implies other statements) even if its denotation is empty (false).
• What comes first (Primacy)?
  • In speech (parole, actual utterance, e.g., “I think, therefore I am”): Manifestation (the “I”) is primary, grounding denotation and enveloping implicit significations.
  • In language (langue, the abstract system of rules and concepts): Signification is primary, providing the conceptual basis for manifestation and denotation.
  • We can vary the denoted image/state of affairs (“this is that, not that”) while keeping the signified concept (signification) constant.
  • Manifestation (desires, beliefs) becomes truly “significative” (meaningful beyond mere urges) only when the words used refer first to concepts and their implications.
• The Lewis Carroll Paradox (Achilles and the Tortoise):
  • Signification (“implies”) can never fully ground denotation (“therefore,” asserting something as true of the world) on its own.
  • To assert a conclusion Z based on premises A and B, we rely on an implication C: “If A and B are true, then Z is true.”
  • The paradox arises if one demands that this implication C (which is a signification) must itself be stated as another premise. To then use A, B, and C to conclude Z, one would need another implication D: “If A, B, and C are true, then Z is true,” and so on, into an infinite regress.
  • The act of concluding (“therefore”) requires stepping outside the chain of implications to affirm the conclusion’s denotation.
• The Need for Sense (The Fourth Dimension)
  • Sense cannot be adequately reduced to or localized within denotation, manifestation, or signification.
  • Introduction of sense as a fourth, elusive dimension of the proposition.
  • Irreducible: It is not the proposition itself, its terms, the denoted object/state of affairs, the speaker’s mental activity (“lived” experience), nor universal concepts (signified essences).
  • Not a physical thing; it has neither physical nor mental existence (it “inheres” or “subsists”).
  • We infer it indirectly, often by seeing the limitations and circularity of the other three dimensions.
  • Equated with Husserl’s “expression” and the “noema.”
  • Perceptual noema: The “perceived as such,” the “sense of perception,” or the “appearance.”
    • Example: “Morning star” and “evening star” are two different noemata (senses) for the same denotatum (the planet Venus). They are different ways the object is presented in expressions.
  • “The tree greens” vs. “green.” “Green” is a sensible quality (part of denotation). “To green” (the verb, the event) is the noematic attribute, the sense expressed, e.g., the sense of the tree’s color.
  • Dual Nature/Boundary:
    • Sense does not exist outside the proposition that expresses it; it inheres or subsists in the proposition.
    • Yet, it is the attribute of the thing or state of affairs (e.g., “to green” is said of the tree), not an attribute of the proposition itself. It’s an “extra-being.”
    • It is the boundary between propositions and things.
  • Sense is an event (not the spatio-temporal realization, but sense itself); it’s dynamic, it “happens” or “occurs” as the expressed of the proposition.

Conclusion

This is a very interesting text that effectively deconstructs conventional understandings of what a proposition means. Drawing from phenomenology, Deleuze attempts to establish (or ‘posits’) an ephemeral fourth dimension: sense. While the immediate utility or full implications of this concept may not be entirely clear at this stage, its significance is presumably intended to unfold as the book progresses.

Things that connect Derrida, Felman, and Deleuze

• Meaning is always already there; it has no single origin.

• All three disrupt the idea that language straightforwardly represents thought (what Felman calls the Galilean moment in linguistics/NLP).

  • Traditionally: language → representation of thought → representation of ideas.
  • Instead: language and thought never fully align.

• Rationality is often framed as thought agreeing with itself, but this assumes representation can represent itself — an illusion of closure.

• If we collapse the distinction and say language is thought, we are left with two radical possibilities:

  1. LLMs (or any linguistic machine) must be considered subjects, or
  2. There is no subject at all, only language itself.

• Representation and reference are not intrinsic to language — they are imposed on it from outside.