nucleation

CLAIM-527: Viable reach, valence and emotion are three quantities in an organization, not one: an emotion is a claim to precedence, system valence is movement along the ordering that wins the negotiation, and a change in what the organization can viably reach is neither, so an organization can run ahead along its prevailing ordering while its viable reach contracts

4 min read

Properties9
StatusProposed
Rolethesis
Warrantinterpretive
Tagsemotion-and-affect, agency
Lineorganizational-affect, will-organization
Rests onCLAIM-440 — An organization's appraisal is the negotiation among its perspectives, a common currency is that negotiation's admitting an ordering of the options it faces, and goal-conduciveness valence is a regime in which an ordering of the organization's own states by their bearing on its maintenance prevails in the negotiation; so valence presupposes contested rankings, not frustrated demands, its sign is whether the organization runs ahead of or behind a reference course along the potential ordering, its intensity is how far the negotiation's decisions follow that ordering, and ambivalence, where no ordering prevails, differs from neutrality, where one prevails and the organization keeps to its course, CLAIM-079 — Stability does not entail viability: a system can occupy a stable regime while losing access to trajectories that keep satisfying its constraints
GroundsTHEORY-1282 — Affect, in Massumi's sense, is the felt transition of a body's power to affect and be affected toward a diminished or augmented capacitation, offered as a proposition to be regenerated in each use rather than a definition to apply, THEORY-1280 — Agency can be redescribed without agents, as the affective force by which one individuation process takes up another's excess action in a communicative event and both pass from a lesser to an augmented ability to act; agents are then effects of such events, and the absence of the force is disindividuation
ComplementsCLAIM-442 — Frijda's emotion and the potential account's system valence sit on opposite sides of the gap between the precedence a motive claims and the authority it is granted: an emotion, action readiness claiming control precedence, is a claim, a perspective's valence is read on its claims, and the system's valence is read on what the negotiation grants, so a change in grants with the claims fixed, as mindfulness is said to make, changes the system's valence and leaves the perspectives' emotions and valences as they were, CLAIM-354 — Freedom of will and autonomy come in degrees along several dimensions, among them viable reachability, control cost, robustness to disturbance, governance reconfigurability, revisability and motivational integration, and agents compare by inclusion of what they can viably reach under matched conditions: a partial order with incomparable pairs, not a scalar, and a gradient only of a declared measure
UsesTERM-094 — action readiness, with control precedence, in Frijda's sense: a state of preparation for action, not a representation of a desirable state, that claims control over behaviour by persisting until an end state, resuming after interruption, capturing attention and taking priority over other actions, TERM-076 — goal-conduciveness valence, organizational: a regime in which the negotiation among a system's perspectives has, approximately, a potential, an ordering of the system's own states by their bearing on its maintenance along which the moves that win its conflicts are improvements, persisting and restored after interruption; signed by whether the system runs ahead of or behind a reference course along that potential, and as intense as the negotiation's decisions follow it rather than any rival ordering

Graph View

The claim

The record’s affect line has two quantities and needs a third.

  • Emotion is a claim. A state of action readiness claims control precedence (TERM-094); whether the claim is granted is a further fact (CLAIM-442).
  • System valence is a direction along what wins. On the potential account (CLAIM-440, TERM-076), valence is a regime in which an ordering of the organization’s states by their bearing on its maintenance prevails in the negotiation, and its sign is whether the organization runs ahead of or behind a reference course along that ordering.
  • Viable reach is what the organization can still do. The set of states it can reach within a horizon, staying within its constraints, at bounded cost: CLAIM-354’s R_T^K, compared by inclusion.

The third is not a function of the first two. An ordering ranks states; reach is a property of the futures open from a state. Moving to a state the ordering ranks higher can be a move into a region from which fewer viable trajectories leave, which is CLAIM-079: a system can satisfy its constraints now without a trajectory that keeps satisfying them. So an organization can run ahead along its prevailing ordering, positive valence, while its viable reach contracts. Protective lock-in (TERM-020) and governance-maintained avoidance (CLAIM-446) are of that shape: the defensive ordering wins, and the avoidance it selects narrows what can be reached. A firm whose prevailing ordering is a proxy for its maintenance (QUESTION-267) is another. The reverse is also possible: an organization that falls behind its reference course while taking on capacities, as in an exploration that costs progress, has negative valence and a widening reach.

Why it matters now

Massumi’s affect, in the definition Bencherki et al. quote, is “a power to affect and be affected [that] governs a transition, where a body passes from one state of capacitation to a diminished or augmented state of capacitation” (LIT-1905, p. 1; THEORY-1282). The parent paper defines agency as its augmenting half, “the affective force that governs the transition from a lesser to an augmented ability to act” (LIT-1902, p. 1354; THEORY-1280), and says the sharing of excess action may “lead to a greater capacity to act for each individuation process” (p. 1351).

Read in the record’s terms, both are about the third quantity. A change in “ability to act” is a change in what can be done, not a claim to precedence and not progress along a ranking. That placing is the record’s. Massumi says the definition is “not a general definition that you can apply” (p. 3), and nothing in either text measures capacitation. What follows if the placing is accepted:

  1. The readings are not rivals to the Frijda line. Massumi’s affect and the parent’s agency do not compete with CLAIM-442’s emotion or CLAIM-440’s valence. They are about something neither measures.
  2. The potential account cannot see capacitation. It reads valence off grants (CLAIM-442), so an augmenting or diminishing transition that leaves the winning ordering where it was leaves no mark on it.
  3. The parent’s verdict needs a comparison the record says is partial. “Augmented” requires one reach set to contain another. CLAIM-354 holds that reach compares by inclusion, with incomparable pairs. In the parent’s MSF meeting (pp. 1359–1363) the organization takes on an “ad hoc training program” it had resisted (“MSF [is] … not a university”). By the paper’s own account it may be “becoming a ‘university’” (p. 1363), the direction Robert had tried to protect it from (p. 1362). Whether that is augmentation depends on a measure the paper does not declare.
  4. Massumi’s “felt” is a separate question. He adds that the transition is felt, but microperception is “felt without registering consciously. It registers only in its effects” (LIT-1905, p. 4). On CLAIM-439 that is unfelt. This claim takes no view on feeling.

What it does not say

  • That Massumi’s capacitation is viable reach. It places his term among the record’s quantities, and he would refuse the application.
  • That the three never move together. In many episodes they will. The claim is that none fixes another.
  • That more reach is better, or augmentation good. A narrow path can be viable and a large option set nonviable (CLAIM-079), and viability does not establish what ought to persist (CLAIM-075).
  • That emotion has no bearing on reach. A granted claim changes the trajectory, and so what is reachable from it.

Why it is Proposed

No case in the record measures all three on one episode. QUESTION-266 asks for valence by independently measured layers. A case in which the winning ordering, the reference course and the reachable set are each recorded, and valence and reach move apart, would promote it.

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