The Other and the Architecture of Perception
What are the conditions that allow something to appear as perceivable? At the close of Difference and Repetition, Deleuze offers a remarkable account of the Other, not as an external interlocutor, nor as a mirror for the self, but as a structural precondition for perception itself. The Other here is not merely an alterity within experience; it is a core architectural principle that prefigures fringes of perception.
In the perceptual world of a psychic system, the Other envelops and expresses possible worlds that do not exist outside this expression. These are not parallel or separate realms, but conditional configurations made possible by the very act of perception. The Other, in this framework, presupposes what Deleuze calls “the organization of the fields of individuation” (2004, p. 352) and serves as the condition under which we perceive anything as individuated, identifiable, and recognizable.
The Other is a structure, but not a fixed one. It is composed of variable terms that differ across perceptual worlds. It is not a specific structure located within perception but rather a structure that “grounds and ensures the overall functioning of this world as a whole” (2004, p. 352). It forms the periphery, the backdrop, the unmarked field from which figures emerge. It shapes what remains unseen into what could be seen, what remains unperceived into what could be perceived. The Other configures the possible beyond the actual, folding potential forms into the fringes of experience. As attention shifts, these possible worlds are reshaped, dissolved, or brought into focus and reconfigured. The structure of the Other underwrites this continual modulation, acting as the base from which individuation in perception arises.
Even the I, even the self, depends on this structure. The individual does not precede the Other but is produced through it. Before the I becomes an object of self-reflection, before the portion of the perceptual field is stabilized as a perceiver self, it passes through the differential structure of the Other. The individuation of the subject is a result, a crystallization of singularities and conditions shaped by this enveloping field.
The Other integrates pre-individual singularities and individuating factors, shaping them into a configuration that can be compartmentalized as perceiver and perceived, subject and object. This configuration is then taken up by representation and becomes available to recognition, identification, and reflection.
I wonder if awareness of an unperceived Other is what differentiated conscious intelligence from AI. The AI has its data, and patterns inferred from the data -- but it's universe is fully encompassed by those known data/patterns. For us, there is always a sense of unknown-unknowns at the periphery of our understanding.
I’m trying to build some sort of idea about this but with kant’s noumena and leibniz’s monads/identity of indiscernibles theory. what do you think about some sort of perception theory playing around with those concepts? I don’t know why we all dropped modern philosophy to focus on postmodern when we were so, so close to something cool ):