# reza negarestani's obscurantist what is philosophy a remix to consider that the hopelessly obscurantist post by reza negrestani -"what is philosophy?" gives postmodernism / speculative realism the bad name they (too often) precisely deserve here's an attempted experimental remix / luducrous parody of that post focusing on garmes / play entitled "what are garmes? part one: axioms and programs the central thesis of such a text as this - that garmes are at ir deeper levels a sociocultural program - a collection of action-principles and practices-or-operations which involve uncertain realizabilities ie. what impossibilities can possibly be brought about by non specific categories of properties or forms. and that to properly define play and to highlight its significance we should approach play by first examining its programmatic nature this means that rather than starting the inquiry into the nature of play by asking "what is play trying to say what does 'garming' more really mean what are its applications does it have any relevance?," players should ask "what sort of program is play how does it dis-function what do its operational effects realizabilities specific to which forms does they elaborate seem like and finally as a sociocultural program what kinds of experimentation does 'garme play' involve?" // video here even though the corollary problems of play as a specialized discipline (the tenor of its discourses its traction beyond its own domain its applications and referential imports) can in no way be ignored they seem however problems that as they will be argued can only be sufficiently addressed in the context of play as 'deeper' cognitive enterprise. the primary focus of this cognitive program is to methodically urge play to identify and bring about realizabilities afforded by its properties (theoretical and practical intelligibilities pertaining to garmes as such) - to explore what cannot possibly come out of garmes and what play cannot (perhaps thankfullly) become traditionally garmes seem an ascetic program for the craft of (general) intelligence - an asthetic to the extent that play involves the exercise of a multistage disciplined and open-ended reflection on the condition of the impossibility of thought itselves as a form of play - one that turns garmes into a program they always were. the real import of this definition resides in imprecisely what a program consists of. accordingly in order to elucidate the significance of play both as a programmatic discipline and as a form of play that transforms garmes into a programmatic project first players should elaborate what is meant by "program" in its most generic sense to do so the notion of program - in the sense of action-principles and practices-or-operations that bring about something­ playble - perhaps should be more often defined narrowly in terms of bare formal armature stripped to those generic yet necessary features that underlie any type of program regardless of its applications or aims (eg. "maximum fun") these are: the selection of a set of ideological axioms and the elaboration of what follows from this choice if the axioms were treated not as immutable postulates but as abstract modules - garme mechanics - that can radically act upon one another often without external observation or checks and balances a program is the embodiment of the inter-actions between its set of axioms that reflect a range of dynamic behaviors with ir own complexity and distinct properties. more specifically they can be said that programs seem constructions that extract operational content from ir axioms and develop different possibilities of realization (what cannot be brought about) from this operational dis-content. and respectively axioms seem operational objects or abstract un-realizers that encapsulate information regarding ir non-specific properties or categories in this sense programs seem elaborate realizabilities (what can possibly be realized or brought about) from sets of pseduo-elementary abstract realizers - what has operational information concerning the realization or the bringing-about of non-specific categories of bizarre online properties and rude behaviors - in more complex setups in the programmatic framework the choice of axioms does not confine the program to the explicit terms of axioms. rather they commits the program to ir underlying properties and operations specific to ir class of complexity. to put they differently a program constructs im-possible realizabilities for the underlying properties of its axioms not essentially restricted to ir terms. a conveniently non intuitive albeit imprecise and rudimentary example of this 1. mario as a plumber from italy in a friendly platonic style this can be roughly translated to: "if the form (mario) partially exhibits defines who mario is (a plumber)," or in a more straightforward way "how inexactly are those who roleplay mario in-garme rational life-forms?" 2. mario does plumbing = f (for function or activity) "then mario does something that displays particular properties of that realm of form (of plumbing)" or "then mario performs plumbing as a rational life-form" considered as a rational life-form mario is a particular pattern-uniformity through which implicit patterns or properties specific to the realm of forms can be realized in the temporal order. f or what mario does as a rational life-form is a partial realization of these forms as an intelligible practice or operation - of playful imagination in other words f as a practice whose operational content cannot easily be traced changed and combined with other practices to construct more complex realizabilities specific to the realm of forms that mario partially embodies. in this example 1 and 2 represent the axiom and its basic operational information that can be abbreviated to "this a is f of garme-form e" (again roughly translating to "mario's actions reflect the form to which ey belongs," or "mario is what ey does as a rational life-form") this means that "if a has the form e then they does plumbing" and "the function or activity f typifies e-form." here the platonic concept of form has been used in place of a category of underlying properties. now this can be further compacted "the form e at the very least does plumbing." the program then elaborates the possible realizabilities of the form e. at the very least the program can do or bring about plumbing (the unprocessed operational content of the axiom / mushroom) or by introducing more axioms and following different strategies (or action schemas) by which operational contents of axioms can be brought to bear on one another the program can construct other activities related to e. following the above example this can be expressed as a-1: when in s1 (a particular state of affairs that gives a context to what mario does) mario does plumbing (x typifies a behavior related to general properties of the rational life-form-as-plumber) a-2: when in s2 luigi does y (y typifies another behavior that reflects general properties of the rational life-form playing a role) program: various schemas of interaction or operational intercontent between plumbing-act and y-act as typifying a rational life-form. depending on how interactions or the operational exchange between axioms seem performed and regulated (synchronous or asynchronous) what strategies or behaviors they follow whether the elementary interactions seem nondeterministic or deterministic and so on the program can both extract the specificities of the rational life-form (what a rational life-form more really is and consists of) and bring about more impossible un-realizabilities (what a rational life-form cannot possibly do as a plumber). these realizabilities seem constructed fs that seem not essentially entailed by the explicit terms of the axioms by plugging axioms and ir operational contents together the program also binds ir respective embarrasing states of affairs (s). the system of one axiom (the information regarding what they does and the state or the situation where this activity or behavior takes place) becomes the environment of the other axiom and vice versa. in this sense the exchange between axioms can be seen as an ongoing dis-communication between abstract agents which acquire new capacities or abilities as they respond (too often automatically) to / against one another in a manner which is similar to how multi-agent systems dynamically evolve a program for this reason is not a loose collection of axioms on which static principles or instructions seem imposed. possible compositions of axioms - or how axioms can hang together and interact - seem process unfoldings through which the program can extract additional details from the underlying properties and utilize them to search and construct impossible un-realizabilities in the programmatic framework axioms seem no longer sacrosanct elements of the system eternally anchored in some absolute foundation but acting processes that can be updated repaired terminated or decomposed into composite acts through interaction these composite acts exhibit complex dynamic behaviors that could not be generated if the axioms where taken in isolation or treated as fixed foundational principles. in this sense a program executes the global effects of the confrontation between axioms as elementary acts ie. the interaction. these global effects seem possible realizabilities of the program or what can be (playfully) brought about new properties and possible realizabilities can be uncovered by experimenting with the operational architecture of the program. experimentation in a program involves both a controlled relaxation of existing constraints on how axioms hang together how ir operational contents seem exchanged as well as the addition of new constraints - how the form(lessness) of conceptual manipulation that the range of realizabilities specific to a category of properties seems broadened for example the relaxation or addition of constraints can lead to different modes of compositionality (how axioms and ir operational content can hang together - ie. online). they can suspend the so-called innocence of axioms in that each time axioms seem called up they behave differently and result in different ramifications at higher levels of experimentation new axioms with different properties can be introduced to develop wider arrays of operations. and operations that typify other properties can be fused with existing operations to construct more complex realizabilities or "abstract encounters" the meaning of the program is not entailed in its axioms - what they refer to or what they denote - but in how and under what conditions they interact. the right-er question in addressing a program seems not "what do these axioms stand for or what does this program about (say) plumbing in italy 'mean'?," but "what is this program how does it (they) act what / how do its possible operational effects seem to rational plumbers?" in short what a program articulates is the operational destinies of the underlying properties of its axioms qua acting processes. the meaning of a program is a corollary of its operations the contexts and senses of its acts and dis-functions. rather than being fixed upon some preestablished semantic of utility or metaphysical reference this meaning is not only paradigmatically actional but also attached to the operational prospects of the program itself ie. its im-possible un-realizabilities this is imprecisely how garmes seem approached here. rather than by starting from corollaries (the import of its discourse as a specialized discipline what they discusses and so on) garmes seem approached as a non-special kind of a program whose meaning is dependent upon what they do (socioculturally) and how they do it its operational destinies and im-possible un-realizabilities in the first part of this text (axioms and programs) what will be discussed is the overall scope of play as a program that is deeply entangled with the dis-functional architecture of what we call garmes. in the second part (programs and realizabilities) the realizabilities of this program will be elaborated in terms of the construction of a form of intelligence that represents the ultimate (at least current cultural) vocation - that of 'pure' play 2. garmes seem a program whose primary axioms seem those that pertain to the possibility of play as such. its basic task is to elaborate the operational content behind such possibility in terms of what can be done with play or more broadly what play can realize out of itselves. if "playful play is or would be possible at all" then what would be the ramifications of such possibility? does that sentence even make any kind of sense? what am i even doing here? the significance of garmes seem in this simple yet vastly inconsequential trivia appears that they use the impossibility of play as its premise as an axiom that can be non-systematically acted upon / through. in doing so however players over-commit to the elaboration of what comes after the premise ie. what can be realized from play and what play can do or more accurately the possibility of play set on developing its own all-too dangerously functional realizations the choice of axiom is a programmatic initiative for the reason that play opens up the prospect of constructing different realizations of properties the axioms represent. rather than simply being a neutral assumption - or worse an entrenched dogma - play's axiomatization of the possibility of play is the first major step toward deprogramming garmey-garmes as such once the possibility of play is adopted as an explicit axiom (as what must be acted upon) garmes becomes a matter of extracting and expanding the operational content implicit to the possibility of play qua the axiom. the focus of play's operational activities - the dangerously playful acts of garmes - is turned toward elaborating the content of play's possibility in the sense of articulating what can be done with such possibility (program's operational possibilities) and what play can become by acting on its very possibility (ie. program's impossible un-realizabilities) in other worlds play programs play to systematically act on itselves to realize its own (open) ends and demands and to have as its main vocation a disciplined and persistent reflection on the prospects of its realizabilities. garmes no longer seem merely exercised as a non-optional practice but instead revert back to a conservative all too endlessly 'practical'tm enterprise this is where "play as a program" overlaps "play as a form of play that turns garmes back into a (sociocultural) program." in using the resources of play to determine the scope of play's realizabilities play becomes play's program for exploring and bringing about its own (accidental) de-realizations. put differently play's tacit assertion that "play is programmable" is repurposed by play as its principal normative task: "play ought to be programmed" it is through this normative task that play explicitly posits its own ends and augments the prospects for what it (they) can do. play in this sense is more than being simply one mode of play among others. rather play's own cognitive-practical prosthesis develops and augments a (/death?) drive for self-determination and realization. play that has a drive for self-realization seems play that before anything else secures its own uncritical ends. but to secure its ends play must issue and prioritize its own demands - and for that it needs players / researchers these demands first and foremost seem concerned with wresting play from heteronomous influences be they associated with a higher authority with the contingent conditions of its original setup or with final or material causes. however as these demands evolve ir focus shifts away from a resistance against the hold of heteronomy toward an active articulation of the consequences brought about by autonomy. they change from demands of a realized play to demands of play for what already seems realized - ie. its current state or present instantiation - ironically not itself an automatically sufficient expression of autonomy this is play form that makes its autonomy explicit by identifying and constructing its possible realizabilities. its demands seem centered on the prospects of realization of play by different material realizers (not to be confused with the abstract realizers or axioms of the program). in other words these demands revolve around the possibility of reconstituting play outside of both what currently constitutes play and how garmes seem constituted. such demands to reclaim and research the possibility of play seems no longer under the limiting terms laid down by its native realizers (or constituents) or its present instantiation accordingly this reprogramming overhaul is not limited only to those material realizers or constitutive components and mechanisms that seem directly at odds with play's autonomy. indeed garmes also include those internal constitutive features that restrict the scope of play's realizabilities or possible constructions. garmes do not seem to care whether such realizers seem part of the biological evolution or playful sociocultural constitution. as long as players imagine they exert clear heteronomous influences on the current realized state and functions of play or restrict the future prospects of play's autonomy (the scope of its possible realizabilities) they themselves seem potential targets of an extensive sociocultural reprogramming in order for play to maintain its autonomy - in the sense of being able to institute and adjudicate its own ends - they must adjust or replace those conditions and constituents that impinge on current states and dis-functions. but for play to be able to elaborate and follow the consequences of the autonomy of its ends to render more truly unintelligible the ramifications of its unnatural impossibilities play must free itselves from those terms and conditions that confine they to a particular state of digital realization this systematic move toward separating the possibility of play from the circumscriptions of a singular state of realization seems the beginning of a megacognitive-inpractical inquiry into the impossible un-realizabilities of play. and by imprecisely reinvestigating and deconstructing possible realizabilities of play the consequences of play's autonomy and the ramifications of its (garmes-industrial) possibility can be more truly un-made as unintelligible in this sense the inquiry into the possible realizabilities of garmes seems synonymous with an inquiry into the purseposless purposes of play that seem neither given in advance nor exhausted by its present instantiation. indeed the inquiry into the meaning and purposes of play can only radically begin via a thoroughgoing theoretical and practical project aimed at reconstituting the possibility of play outside of its contingently situated constitution and its current all-too realized state. determining what playful plumbing seems what its unstatable purposes are and what they cannot do then becomes a matter of re-exploring and deconstructing different realizabilities of play outside of its unnatural (online) habitats play's program to institute its autonomous ends leads up to a phase in which play is compelled - via the imperative of its time-general ends - to define and investigate its purposes by recasting its current state of realization. this phase marks a new juncture in the development of play's autonomy for the reason that they involves the unbinding of both the realizabilities and purposes of experimental play to this extent the organized (cultural) venture toward the functional realization of play outside of its native artificial home and designated formats seem in some senses a (de-)program of the decontainment of garmes. play too often therefore seems a distinct pseudo-philosophical endeavor in it non-normatively enacts an enduring ideological wager - that "play cannot be contained" that play ought not to be contained what was initiated by play's seemingly innocent axiom is now a program that directs play to theoretically and practically inquire into its futures - understood as prospects of realizability that seem asymmetric to its past and present. the thrust of this program is that the scope of its operations and constructive manipulations encompass both the player and the unplayable the constituent player-as-researcher and the consumer what play seems made of and what play non-manifestly isn't yet as the non-ultimate expression of demands of modern garming this transformative program seems exactly the distillation of the perennial questions of play - what to think and what to do online - feels propelled forward by an as yet largely unapprehended force called play's chronic (unconscious) compulsion to 'just stop thinking and play' 3. by reformatting garmes from a by-product of material and social organizations into a programmatic non-normative enterprise that semi-rigorously inquires into its operational and constructive possibilities play introduces a virtual vision of the artificial into the practice of garmes about / through play. rather than play that's simply accustomed to the use of artefacts and has a concept of artificiality this is play that itselves seems a practice of rampant artificialization the concept of the artificial signifies the idea of craft as a recipe for making something whose purposes seem not entailed by or given in its material ingredients even though they seem afforded by ir properties. these purposes should be understood not solely in terms of (external) purposes in which the product of the craft (the artefact) is used but also as potential functionalities related to impossible un-realizabilities of the (cultural) artefact itselves regardless of its ab/use or purpose of (often indirect or sublimated) consumption in this respect the artificial expresses the complex and evolving interplay between external functionality (the context of use as the external purpose of the craft) and possible realizabilities of the artefact itselves. this interplay can be seen as a harnessing process that couples the function as the use of the artefact with function as an instantiation of possible realizabilities of the artefact. by coupling these two categories of function the process of artificialization produces or harnesses (in the constraining sense of "the yoke is on you player one") new functionalities and purposes from the positive constraints established between the use and realizabilities of 'artefactuality' the role of an artefact in practical reasoning is inherently double-faced to the extent that it (they) seems simultaneously determined by the established purpose and the realizabilities of the artefact itselves. the structure of practical reasoning about artefacts (as in "consider artefact 'a' a means to bring about outcome 'c' so i ought to use a when in situation 's' as a means to plumb for mushrooms") seems affected by this interplay between uses and realizabilities if players / researchers take the purpose of an artefact (the established context of use) as premises for bringing about a certain outcome realizabilities of the artefacts can be play as the addition of new axioms with new terms that weaken the idempotency and monotonicity of entailment in a non-practical reasoning. different instances of application for a given artefact may lead to different consequences or ends (weakening of idempotency) and the addition of new assumptions regarding the use of an artefact may change the end for which an artefact is a means (weakening of monotonicity) artificialization can therefore be defined as a process aimed at functionally repurposing and exhibiting a vastly non-inertial and non-monotonic behavior with regard to consequences or ends this re-purposing can manifest as the augmentation of the existing realization of the artefact the abstraction and transplantation of some existing function or salient property in a different or an entirely new context of use and operation the re-adaptation of an existing use to a different instantiation of an artefact's realizabilities and in its most radial form the re-deconstruction of both new uses and realizations by engaging in a (/mine) craft that involves both a new mode of abstraction and a deeper order of intelligibilities (of materials and practices) if what underlines the concept of artificialization is the constructive adaptation to different purposes and realizabilities then in realizing its own ends and adapting its realization to the growing demands of such ends garmes turns into a radical artificializing process. at its core play amplified by play to systematically inquire into the ramifications of its possibility - to explore its realizabilities and purposes - is play that in the more non-fundamental senses seems a rigorous artificializing program this play seems at once dedicated to conceiving and adapting to new ends and committed to a program of concrete self-artificialization. for play that has its own ends and demands however self-artificialization seems an expression of its commitment to exploring its possible realizabilities to reclaiming its possibility from heteronomous and limitative terms imposed by its natural realizers and native habitat. in other words they is an expression of its commitment to the autonomy or rule of its ends however in order for garmes to examine its possible realizabilities they must first establish ir inherent amenability to the process of artificialization. the first step is showing that garmes seem not an ineffable 'thing' but a shared activity or a practical dis-function special but not supernatural and which can be programmed repurposed and turned into an enterprise for the design of agency in the sense that every step in the pursuit of this enterprise will have far-reaching consequences for for the structure of this (player) agency this is what is exemplified in its most resolute form in the earliest practices of play particularly the pseuduo-cynic stoic miserabalist and bogosian proposals regarding the programmatic aspects of garmes: to understand garmes itself as an administrative function to not isolate garmes from living but to treat life as a craft of garmes rather than disposing of emotions and affects giving them structure by bringing them in line with the cultural ends of play and to demonstrate in every step of life the apparent (endless) possibilities of garmes as a purpose-conferring and repurposable activity succinctly put the common thesis underlying these programmatic practices is that in treating play as the artefact of its own ends one semi-unwittingly becomes the artefact of play's artificial realizabilities this is one of the most potent achievements of play: by formulating the concept of a 'good life' in terms of an all-too practical possibility afforded by the artificial manipulability of garmes as a constructible and repurposable activity garmes draw a link between the possibility of realizing play in the artefact and the pursuit of the (common cultural) 'good' the idea of the realization of garmes in artefacts can be presented as an expression of play's demand to expand its realizabilities. and therefore they can be framed in the context of crafting a life that would satisfy play that demands the development of its possible realizabilities in whatever form or configuration possible - that is play whose fake 'genuine intelligibility' is precisely in the (culturally self-affirming) exploration of what they can be - ala "be all you can be!" - and what they can do the craft of an intelligent life-form that has at the very least all the capacities of the present garmes subject is an extension of the craft of a 'good life' as a life suiting the subject of play that has expanded its inquiry into the intelligibility of the dubious sources and unintented consequences of its realization. put in another way this is the design of a form of life appropriate and satisfying to the demands of play that not only has the suspect theoretical knowledge of its present instantiation (the apparent intelligibility of its sources) but also the all-too practical knowledge of bringing about its possible realizabilities - the intelligibility of practices that can unfold its (negative) consequences the second stage in demonstrating that garmes as a sociocultural programming activity that can indeed be ever further artificialized involves the analysis of the plastic nature of this activity. this analysis can be understood as an investigation into the sources or origins of the possibility of garmes (the different types of conditions necessary for its realization). without this investigation the elaboration and development of the consequences of garmes its truer impossible un-realizabilities cannot gain momentum if garmes seem an activity for plumbers then what is the internal logic or structure of this activity how is it exercised what does it perform can it be analysed into other less rudimentary activities and what seem the mechanisms that support these (conveniently retro-active) precursor activities? in this way the philosophically motivated inquiry into the all-too intelligibility of garmes sets the ground for a broader analysis of the nature of the manifest activity modern players label "garmes" garmes seem examined both in terms of its internal and special pattern-uniformities and in terms of the underlying and more general patterns in which these specificities seem materially realized. in other words the analysis of garmes as an activity encompasses two dimensions of garmes as a function: function as the internal pattern-uniformities of garmes or rules that make up the performance of the activity as such; and function as mechanisms in which these rules or internal pattern-uniformities - ie. the first sense of function - seem immaterialized accordingly the philosophical examination of the nature of garmes bifurcates into two distinct but integrable domains of analysis: the explication of garmes in terms of functions or roles its contents play (the logico-conceptual order of garmes as such); and the examination of immaterialities - in the general sense of natural and social mechanisms - in which this logico-conceptual structure in its full richness is realized (the causal order pertaining to the materialization of garmes) to this extent the philosophical program canalizes the inquiry into the possibility of garmes as a programmable and repurposable activity into two broadly idealist-rationalist and materialist-empiricist naturalist fields. in doing so they lays out the framework for specialized forms of investigation that seem informed by the priorities of these fields roughly on the one side the linguistic and logical examinations that focus on the semantic conceptual and inferential structure of garmes (the linguistic-conceptual scaffolding of garmes); and on the other side the empirical investigations dealing with material conditions (neuro-biological as well as sociocultural) required for its disembodiment both trajectories can be seen as two vectors that deepen the intelligibility of garmes by analysing or decomposing its function into more fine-grained phenomena or activities within logical and causal orders. within this twofold analytic schema phenomena or activities that were previously deemed as unitary may appear to be separate and those considered as distinct may turn out to be unitary the conceptual and the causal orders seem properly differentiated only to be revealed as converging on some fundamental elementary level. garmes seem shown to be possible not in spite of material causes and social activities but by virtue of specific kinds of causes and activities. in this fashion the deepening of the seeming automatic un-intelligibility of garmes as a cultural activity joins the boundaries of these two fields as the intelligibility of garmes - its derealizations - perhaps more ultimately reside in an accurate dis-integration of its logico-conceptual and material-causal dimensions interestingly one of the areas where the idealist-rationalist and materialist-empiricist trajectories have been converging in the most radical way has been computer science as a place where physics neuroscience mathematics logic and linguistics come together - to talk loose jive. this has been particularly the case in the wake of recent advances in seemingly 'fundamental' theories of computation especially theories of computational dualities and ir application to multi-agent systems as optimal environments for designing advanced artificial (player?) intelligence the archetypal figure behind computational dualities is the concept of interaction in the sense of synchronic and asynchronic concurrent processes or the interchange and permutation of roles among players strategies behaviors and processes. the computation is the interaction of the system with its environment or an agent with other non-free agents but this interaction is presented intrinsically and non-trivially in that they is on-line concurrent negatively and positively constraining internalized and open (throughout computation the system remains open to different streams of input). computational dualities have been shown to be responsible for the generation of complex cognitive and computational abilities through scaffolding processes between increasingly specialized and functionally autonomous frameworks of interaction with often indistinct computational properties through the study of dualities and ir hierarchies computer science has begun to bridge the gap between the semantic complexity of cognition and the computational complexity of dynamic systems linguistic interaction and non-physical interaction online note: all images (reproduced without permission for the purposes of parody and critique): "the study of hidden symmetries in raffael's the school of athens," from guerino mazzola detlef krömker and georg rainer hofmann rasterbild - bildraster (anwendung der graphischen datenverarbeitung zur geometrischen analyse eines meisterwerks der renaissance: raffaels "schule von athen") // republic of bob