What Kind of Panpsychist is Deleuze?

In what ways does Deleuze's philosophy use thought?

First chapter: Thought 'makes' difference (Deleuze, 1994: 29)

Thought 'makes' difference - Two possibilities:
1. Thought is understood as human, and as having privileged access to difference
the metaphysical concept which is central to Deleuze's
2. Thought is not limited to any conscious being, human or otherwise, and something
about difference is intimately connected with thought in a broader metaphysical
sense.

The first - some kind of Kantianism? cognitive exercise of our faculties that provide the
solid foundation from which we begin our philosophical investigation and which determine
the form of any knowledge claim subsequent to a transcendental epistemology.

The second some kind of panpsychism? Special role for thought in some expanded
sense?
Every body, every thing, thinks and is a thought to the extent that, reduced t its intensive
reasons, it expresses an Idea the actualisation of which it determines. (Deleuze, 1994:
254)

Second more plausible
Deleuze's opposition to Kant's representational philosophy categories are
identities whose conditions are brute facts in consciousness
repeated reference to thought by Deleuze
quotes like this:
Every body, every thing, thinks and is a thought to the extent that,
reduced to its intensive reasons, it expresses an Idea the actualisation
of which it determines. (Deleuze, 1994: 254)


What kind of Panpsychist is Deleuze?

John Protevi Larval Subjects, Autonomous Systems and E. Coli Chemotaxis
Biological panpsychism
cognition is fundamentally biological, that it is founded in organic life (2007: 29)

Protevi bases his characterization Deleuze as a biological panpsychist on
Chapter 2 - Repetition for Itself
The argument is connected to Deleuze's larval subjects - the universal subject
of the three syntheses of time

There is a mind which is the subject of contemplation for three syntheses of time.
1
st
synthesis expectation of the future based on a contraction of elements of
past in the present, a passive synthesis of habit in the material
2
nd
synthesis memory of the past based on the contraction of the whole of the
past in the present, a passive synthesis of memory in the spiritual
3
rd
synthesis novelty and individuation based on the eternal return of
difference, the bringing into the present of a future which is always a repetition
of difference
Deleuze is explicitly biological and psychical in his description of particularly the first
synthesis.
First synthesis is the basis for habit:
A soul must be attributed to the heart, to the muscles, nerves and cells,
but a contemplative soul whose entire function is to contract a habit. (Deleuze, 1994:
74)

It's interesting that we might interpret soul as psukh in Aristotlean sense
this is what Protevi does.
Protevi links to what calls the mind in life school, which includes Evan
Thompson and other autopoetic thinkers.
Explicates Deleuze's philosophy of difference in reference to an organic
philosophy in which the dynamic genesis of living things is a material and
cognitive or sense-making process.

Not really panpsychism? Claims for the univocity of difference become problematic if the
thought which makes difference is limited to a particular realm.
Another area for research might be whether this problem of the limited biological focus of
autopoesis affects Thompson and others.

Given the focus of biological genesis in Difference and Repetition - does this problem
affect Deleuze?

Rather than panpsychist, a more proper term for the power particular to living things
might be vitalist.

Link to Canguilhem medical doctor and a writer on vitalism?

Ray Brassier attacks Deleuze as a vitalist with the understanding that:
by 'vitalism' we mean the claim that physical and chemical principles cannot explain
biological functions and process (Brassier, 2007: 168)

Brassier's basis for the claim that Deleuze is a vitalist is twofold.
The first is the preponderance of biological examples in Difference and
Repetition
The second is a complex argument on Deleuze transcendental empiricism and
claims made from the stand point of our experience of intensive difference.

The first is not really an argument, and we'll return to it.
The second can be made clearer by a contrast to Canguilhem.

Canguilhem's definition of vitalism is given in the context of a discussion about how we
situate ourselves with regard to nature as alien to it or part of it.
A scientist who feels filial, sympathetic sentiments toward nature will not regard
natural phenomena as strange and alien; rather, he will find in them life, soul and
meaning. Such a man is basically a vitalist. (Canguilhem, 1994: 288)
The problem I imagine Brassier would have with Canguilhem, and I would share his
antipathy, is this: we may extend towards nature filial and sympathetic feelings, but it is
by no means certain that nature feels the same way about us. Natural phenomena can
assuredly be strange and alien and to deny so may be to project into nature, rather then
find in it, our own image of life, soul and meaning.

Brassier argues, partly on the basis of Deleuze's use of biological examples, that the larval
subject of the syntheses of time can only be understood as biological, memorial and
psychically individuating, the final power of which is as yet the prerogative of homo
sapiens.
Ultimately, it is the thinker the philosopher-artist who is the 'universal individual'.
(Brassier, 2007: 185)

First argument is extremely weak.
Second is more difficult. Depends on Deleuze's transcendental method and its relation to
Kant.
Hylozoism would be the death of all natural philosophy
we cannot even think of living matter as possible. (Kant, Ak. 394, 1987: 276)
we certainly have no a priori insight into whether such matter is possible. But
this means our explanation can only move in a circle (Kant, Ak. 394, 1987:
276)
Kant's argument that we move in a circle is not a problem for Deleuze for whom the
ungroundedness of natural production trumps the necessary identity of anything.
Transcendental conditions of a given: consciousness what are the conditions of its
production. Apply those conditions to the given thereby undermining its identity.
Can Deleuze be justified in extending to all things a thinking power, based on his work
from the human perspective?

Being is said in a single and same sense of everything of which it is said, but that of
which it is said differs: it is said of difference itself. (Deleuze, 1994: 36)

Brassier is committed to an eliminative materialism and even Protevi describes Deleuze's
work as materialist.

Deleuze's work is Idealism, not materialism.

Brassier damns Deleuze for relegating matter to a dream of mind (Brassier, 2007: 201).
This is a phrase taken from Deleuze however, and which can be used positively.

Nor is it certain that it is only the sleep of reason which gives rise to monsters: it
is also the vigil, the insomnia of thought, since thought is that moment in which
determination makes itself one, by virtue of maintaining a unilateral and
precise relation to the indeterminate. Thought 'makes' difference, but difference
is monstrous. (Deleuze, 1994: 29)

The process of differenciation, which is the process of actualisation, is a process involving
mentality synthesised in time.

The expectation of the future, the memory of the past and the production of novelty are
processes of Ideas enacted by a power Deleuze labels though - this is panpsychism
proper.

The question remains then whether Deleuze transcendental empiricism warrant such a
reading or otherwise undermines his claims for the univocity of being.