Modes of Existence - Chapter 3

In the previous posts, I have talked about defining our object of inquiry as well as a little on what documents matter. Recently, I also wrote about how defining is actually a bit more tricky but easier within this method because it allows researchers to learn.

So we found what we wanted to study, defined it, and then heard a little more about what documents are important. While these chapters are essential, it is not altogether difficult to really dig into a topic relentlessly, and exhaustively. Sometimes I wonder if Latour was a fan of Weber though I think if he was, it was more of trying to figure out how to save Weber from himself by giving him tools that we have developed since the early 1900s.

We turn now to chapter 3 of Modes of Existence, “A Perilous Change of Correspondence.” This chapter is incredibly dense. It ocilates between the “felicity conditions” or the conditions within which we can use language to achieve a description that is useful and the nature of knowledge as it moves among different networks. In specific, we are concerning ourselves about the trap of logic, the trap of reason, the trap of what Bourdieu might call the God’s Eye View in that we are stuck using methods and theories to explain rather than the actions and associations of our object of inquiry.

Or to put it more plainly, as an idea wanders around the various areas it has standing in, its value is constantly being translated, challenged, adjusted, and augmented. And this is where a definition, a history, and a way to catalog it ends up really starting to matter. But how to trace these moments of association and their outcomes when the idea continues on to some other association?

I think if we can begin anywhere, we can begin at the end of this chapter. Latour concludes saying that:

“We must learn to find in relativism, or, better, in relationism, that is, in the establishment of networks of relations, the fragile help that will allow us to advance in the inquiry, feeling our way without going too far astray. If the history of modernism is defined, in a highly canonical fashion, as “the appearance and extension of the reign of Reason,” it is clear that the direction of this history will not be the same depending on whether we call “ʀᴇᴀsᴏɴ: the extension of double-click information or the jealous maintenance of distinct sources of truth.” - page 95

In this passage, Latour uses the term, ᴅᴏᴜʙʟᴇ ᴄʟɪᴄᴋ. In essence, he uses this term in a long chain of associations that we could easily describe as, “the expectation that clicking a mouse will bring us answers in the world of computing which affords for only lopping off all noise, all context.” This concept often is the basis of the criticism of computing that folks like Sherry Turkle and Robert Putnam place on computing. And indeed, we could blame computing entirely for this issue and use the metaphor without caring about its implications. And yet, Latour is careful here to associate it with reason ʀᴇᴀsᴏɴ because computing is the intersection of ʀᴇᴀsᴏɴ and data which existed far longer than computing has. Our mistake was to give reason so much power that it has become the only way to evaluate just about anything. When ʀᴇᴀsᴏɴ itself is the issue, we run into this problem and there is a paradoxical relationship between inquiry and humanity.

For example, I am a human being and therefore am irrational; however, I am capable of abandoning my irrationality for ʀᴇᴀsᴏɴ and logic. And yet, I am an irrational being evaluating other irrational beings rationally. What is being done by the object of inquiry cannot be fully captured by my method nor the words i’ll use to describe it. So Latour defines the act of description of a particular concept or object of inquiry as itself transformative. We have to write things down and in doing so, all of our irrationality comes to the foreground. We can stamp it down but if the basis of communication is mediating miscommuncation, then writing stuff down transforms an idea into content for unknowable beings to digest, misunderstand, and mistranslate. So by definition, we cannot accurately describe something because descripion is transformation.

This comes up in another passage on ᴅᴏᴜʙʟᴇ ᴄʟɪᴄᴋ from the Modes of Existence website:

The metaphor is that of a computer mouse which has taught us to expect all the information we might require to be available at the click of a button without taking into account the dizzying series of mediations required by this operation. Via a historical paradox, this idea of access without tansformation took possession of the activity least apt to illustrate it, namely mathematical demonstration and laboratory experiments, in order to imagine, based on that demonstration, pure and perfect information that might serve as a template for judging the imperfection of all other modes…The history of Double Click is that of an intoxication by formalism stemming from the unexpected discovery of mathematics which should, on the contrary, have given us the idea of chains of reference but which gave, after being captured politically by philosophy, the opposite idea of a transportation without transformation.

What this is detailing is in how philosophy (which can be where the logic of computing originates) is additionally responsible for the belief that reason and formalism can give us the necessary felicity conditions to explain a concept without the idea that our explanation essentially transforms that concept.

By “felicity conditions,” it is meant that we are able to avoid judgement of something defined as true or false by our object of inquiry. We do this by avoiding our own standpoint as to whether or not an idea is true. Instead, we can base the belief on the way that the utterer of such a thing defines that utterance as true or false (this is called veridiction or “a statement that is true or valid according to a particular worldview or authority, rather than being objectively true or universally accepted”).

The paper attached to this project is itself partially burdened by the issues of ᴅᴏᴜʙʟᴇ ᴄʟɪᴄᴋ and ʀᴇᴀsᴏɴ. The sentence we can boil our project down to is that “Charisma represents an unoperationalizable aspect of humanity that is still constantly translated and re-attempted as witnessed by Dungeons and Dragons and video games like it.” I have made a number of statements that come from the viewpoint of being an outsider to the creation of both video games and tabletop roleplaying games. The way that i’m avoiding (or trying to avoid) this is that I am seeking definitions from those objects of inquiry and discussing how and what has changed both over time and between medium.

For example, we have the original definition of Charisma in the original edition of dungeons (0dnd). That definition was this:

“Charisma is a combination of appearance, personality, and so forth. Its primary function is to determine how many hirelings of unusual nature a character can attract. This is not to say that he cannot hire men-at-arms and employ mercenaries, but the charisma function w ill affect loyalty of even these men. Players w ill, in all probability, seek to hire Fighting-Men, Magic-Users, and/or Clerics in order to strengthen their roles in the campaign. A player-character can employ only as many as indicated by his charisma score.” - Men and Magic (1974).

And so we see that the nature of the original edition was mostly focused on the player-character being an officer in an army. This is a direct relationship to the wargame origins of D&D. We can juxtapose this with 2 other definitions:

“Appearance: Seldom used, and it can be ignored, but it makes for some interesting situations when a male player is captured by a ‘witch, for example - will she turn him into a swine or keep him for a lover? The reverse is also true. Loyalty: Optional and can be ignored, but it can cause for players some interesting and perhaps awkward situations. For example, how well a player can give or take orders and the reaction to a real or supposed insult, or the likelyhood that a player will risk his life for you in a dangerous situation.” - Beyond This Point Be Dragons - (before 1974).

This edition of D&D never made it to press as we are pretty sure that this was Arneson’s attempt which was rejected. The fascinating part of this is that the “sexual prowess” aspect of it would come back around with the 1st edition D&D but it has mostly disappeared from any game that uses D&D. However, there are still some remnants of it, for example, we can then take a game’s use of it:

This is a measure of the ‘leadership’ potential of a character. This characteristic also takes into account the ‘sexual’ appeal of characters which is important for Courtesans and Valkyries.

So there was an attachment to the idea of sexuality to charisma while also being part and parcel of a wargame interpretation of it as a “leadership style.” These definitions tend to take Weber’s use of the term to heart while also later attaching itself to the religious power because when Oubliette was later republished outside of the PLATO space that it came from, the definition changed slightly:

Charisma is the player’s physical appearance and leadership potential, and is an important characteristic for female thieves (who can seduce) and paladins (who must be handsome).

While not specific to religiosity, the concept of a Paladin being handsome and thus having extra power and leadership potential is itself an application of the term.

So, what this chapter allows us to think about is that there are constant transformations that a scientist will perform on their objects of inquiry. We have to constantly circle back around to make sure that we haven’t actually performed the trap of ᴅᴏᴜʙʟᴇ ᴄʟɪᴄᴋ. In essence, and I think i’ve mentioned this quite a bit, this method affords its researchers the capacity to learn and adjust, the reconsider their own felicity conditions and veridiction within the confines of our point-of-view as researchers. We can do this all the way up to the point of publication. This last point is best considered through the following passage:

“And now, finally, we can talk about correspondence again, but this “co-response” is no longer the one between the “human mind” and the “world.” No, we now have a tense, difficult, rhythmic correspondence, full of surprises and suspense, between the risk taken by existents in order to repeat themselves throughout another no less dizzying series of transformations on the other. Do the two series sometimes respond to each other? Yes. Do they always do so? No. If it is true of “co-responding” unless there are two movements in the first place, each of which will respond to the other–often multiplying their missteps. What the canonical idea of objective knowledge never takes into account are the countless failures of this choreography.” - page 86

The 4 definitions of charisma neither fully define the word or use it in the same way. Oubliette is a forgotten game, Blackmoor is itself mostly forgotten aside from those who have become fans of Dave Arneson whom Gary Gygax, TSR, and WoTC have all diminished in importance. As a result, we not only see failures of correspondence, but failures of felicity conditions that themselves are mostly manifest in the present and mostly missed in the past until recently. The “failures of choreography” allow us to understand how we moved stepwise through the various “truths” from the points-of-view of designers, players, and markets and as such, allows us to step forward a bit more normally rather than just by simply noting the definitions and moving on with an expected qualitative analysis.

Affording for researcher learning, contextualization that can be performed by a variety of human and non-human actants, and allowing for multiple, contextualized truths, we can perform an analysis that allows us to show designers not only how a concept has been operationalized, digitized, or applied, but how those things were transformed from their origin points to their new moments of inflection.

So while this chapter was dense as hell, I am excited about its implications and usefulness.