









































44

δι
αν

οι
α

COGNITION, DOMINATION AND 
COMPLEXITY:

A Speculative Outline of Intersections Between 
Cognitive Activity and Structures of Control, and  

Their Relation to Dynamics of Complexity and 
Simplicity

RYAN CARDOZA

“Organization is suppression.” 1

 

“Life is founded upon the premise of a belief in enduring and regularly recurring things; 
the more powerful life is, the wider must be the knowable world to which we, as it were, 
attribute being.” 2 

“Morality of truthfulness in the herd. ‘You shall be knowable, express your inner nature by 
clear and constant signs—otherwise you are dangerous: and if you are evil, your ability to 
dissimulate is the worst thing for the herd. We despise the secret and unrecognizable.—’” 3 

1 Land, Nick, interview by James Flint. Organization is Suppression (February 1997)
2 Nietzsche, Friedrich. "Will to Power." In Will to Power, by Friedrich Nietzsche, 298. New York: Random House 

Inc., 1968.
3 Nietzsche, Friedrich. "Will to Power." In Will to Power, by Friedrich Nietzsche, 158. New York: Random House 

Inc., 1968.



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1) Introduction

Cognition and control are like two intertwined vectors of domination. To identify 
something is to bring it into one’s own order, so that it may become knowable—
so that it may be suppressed into boundaries which facilitate a clear and unified 
apprehension of it. To implement a law of nature is to organize phenomena into 
something apprehensible; to conceptualize something is to integrate it into 
parameters of explication, and, thus, into the order of the knowable. The Human, 
which is unaware of its fate as being doomed to want to know—being doomed to 
need to make knowable—gives names and systems to nature so that it might bring 
phenomena into its order of identification, thereby dominating them. A system of 
sovereignty is no different; an Empire that expands inevitably makes territories and 
peoples known to it; the State makes its territory knowable by imposing categories of 
representation onto geographical spaces, making its citizenry knowable by bringing it 
into its order of domination—into its realm of identification, so that it might know 
it. Functions of control and functions of cognition intersect in the sense that both 
employ techniques of domination, identification being but one of these techniques, 
albeit a very important one. The eyeball, which observes physical phenomena, and 
the eye of a surveillance camera, are both products of the same drive—they express 
the command “make knowable!”

Conquest is a word that commonly describes the trajectory of Empires or States, but 
the order of knowledge, too, has a conquest: a trajectory of cognitive-intellectual 
imperialism. If it is observable to us, then it is not immune from systematization 
and integration into something cognizable. Not even the stars are out of reach from 
the cold hands of knowledge, which bring them into the realm of identification, and 
which systematize their organizations, giving them names, and applying laws to their 
behavior. 

The story of control on earth is one whose trajectory is guided by concepts, which 
have a relative autonomy in the sense that the power of the concept is the power of 
the particular control system that incarnates it and that is guided by it. Internal to 
every regime of domination is a cohesive conceptual structure that determines the 
way it operates and functions. A critical reconfiguration of a concept necessitates a 
substantial reconfiguration of the control structure that envelops it.

I start with the following points, which will be expounded upon in what follows: 

1) Cognition and control converge at the point of the integration of 
materials into organized aggregates, the partitioning of matter into distinct 
categories of representation, and the selection out of what is not capable of being 
schematized. 



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

2) Higher-level operations of unification and integration—whether 
operations of a regime or operations of mind—are conditioned by the 
possibility of very high degrees of stratification at the level of structural 
organization. 

3) Stratification is not only a condition, but is also a shared tendency 
between cognition and control; the double-helix of control and cognition 
are connected by a bridge of stratification. Functions at the level of the 
mind and mechanisms at the level of political control integrate, systematize, 
and identify (which necessarily implies a form of stratification).

4) Structures of political control have as their internal mechanisms relatively 
autonomous concepts. Relative autonomy is established in contradistinction 
to absolute autonomy, in the sense that concepts are not unconditioned 
Platonic Ideas, but are rather relatively autonomous, since the concept 
guides the functioning of the regime, and the totality of the conceptual 
structure functions independently of any individual subject thinking or 
apprehending it.

5) Concepts and materiality interact with one another through relations of 
feedback and interpenetration. 

2) Stratification

In this paper, I will be using the definition of stratification provided by Gilles Deleuze 
and Félix Guattari, wherein Stratification “consist[s] of giving form to matters, of 
imprisoning intensities or locking singularities into systems of resonance and 
redundancy, of producing upon the body of the earth molecules large and small and 
organizing them into molar aggregates. Strata are acts of capture; they are like ‘black 
holes’ or occlusions striving to seize whatever comes within their reach.”4 Stratification 
(when considered at the level of materiality) is the suppression and imprisonment 
of primary intensive matter. Stratification at this level is the process whereby the 
indeterminacy and disparate potentialities of intensive material flux are suppressed 
into more rigidified and complex forms of determinate organization. When one 
refers to something that is stratified, he speaks about something that can also be said 
to have some degree of sophistication, which necessarily implies order. Stratification 
will be a useful concept, because we can use it to talk about the convergence of certain 
tendencies two different levels of matter without equivocating between levels. The 
two levels at which stratification occur are 1) the level of human cognition/cognitive 
activity in general, and 2) the level of materiality. While stratification extends to both 
levels, the precise nature of stratification implemented at one level is not reducible to 

4 Guattari, Gilles Deleuze and Felix. "A Thousand Plateaus; Capitalism and Schizophrenia ." In A Thousand 
Plateaus; Capitalism and Schizophrenia, by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, 40. Minneapolis : University of 
Minnesota Press, 1987.



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the nature of stratification at the other level; there is no equivocation between levels, 
only an “isomorphism without correspondence”5 between the two.

3) Scientific Conceptualization; Physics

In his Will to Power, Friedrich Nietzsche writes that “Thinking in primitive conditions 
(pre-organic) is the crystallization of forms, as in the case of a crystal.—In our 
thought, the essential feature is fitting new  material into old schemas (=Procrustes’ 
bed), making equal what is new.”6 According to Nietzsche, when we refer to human 
thought, we undertake a process of integration and equalization. If we look at certain 
disciplines of human knowledge, we can see this tendency of “making equal what is 
new”7 in a very potent and effective register. Physics is a practice that often proceeds 
by integrating different lines of information (different causal chains) into simple and 
unified schemata that explain these phenomena.8 In the case of Isaac Newton, the 
law of universal gravitational attraction is such a schema in the sense that it is meant 
to explain highly diverse phenomena. Yet, the law itself is a mathematical simplicity 
of sorts—the inverse square law.9 The simplicity of the law integrates the phenomena 
it is meant to explain into a unified system of understanding. The parameters of a 
scientific law are imposed onto phenomena in order to facilitate a conceptual 
understanding that can be further built upon, and the application of a law forms 
a schema through which the particular phenomenon in question is translated and 
codified, in the hope that the schema itself can also continue to be engaged with 
as science develops. Phenomena hitherto not understood by us become dominated; 
occurrences in nature are colonized and partitioned into territories that now belong 
to the sovereignty of knowledge. 

What’s interesting, however, about this integration of phenomena into unified 
understandings is that, in observing the materials upon which these laws are imposed 
on—such as the relations of the planets in orbit—there is nothing that suggests an 
essential simplicity that is absolutely independent of human cognition or perception. 
Moreover, why is it that humans come to understand relatively diverse phenomena 
as implicitly capable of being integrated into a unified scientific or mathematical 
schema? We agree with Nietzsche that the reason for this has to do with processes of 
integration and equalization as tendencies of cognitive functioning. The desire for 
more knowledge is the desire to integrate what is new into a schema that is further 
utilizable, and which can continue to be built upon. It is simply taken as a given that 
physical phenomena can be subjected to this process.

5 A Thousand Plateaus; Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.
6 Nietzsche, Friedrich. "Will to Power." In Will to Power, by Friedrich Nietzsche, 273. New York : Random House 

Inc., 1968.
7 Ibid.
8 For more on the relation between scientific laws and different causal chains,; see Stewart, Jack Cohen and Ian. 

"Collapse of Chaos; Discovering Simplicity in a Complex World ." In Collapse of Chaos; Discovering Simplicity in 
a Complex World, by Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart, 13-14. New York: Penguin Books, 1994. 

9 Ibid.



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4) Identification

 a) Partitioning

At a level that is further removed from specificity of scientific conceptualization, 
there is the act of identification in general. To speak of identification is to speak of a 
connection between points; the connection between the agent who identifies and the 
matter that comes to be identified as a thing. Identification is the mechanism that 
bestows thinghood onto matter. Identification is also an example of stratification at 
the level of human cognition; to the extent that identification integrates in the same 
way that processes of stratification integrate indeterminate matter into a determinate 
form. Identification is an action that selects out; the bestowing of thinghood onto 
matter implies the partitioning and selection out of any difference that would disrupt 
the simple continuities involved in the apprehension of a thing as a particular thing. 
That which is different—or that primary intensive materiality which would overturn 
thinghood as a category coextensive with representation – is partitioned outside of 
the territory of identification. Any particular instance of identification effectuates 
a partition at two different levels: 1) At the level of things; in the sense that to 
identify a thing or an aggregate of things is to select out other things, which are not 
part of that particular occurrence of identification, and, 2) at the level of primary 
intensive materiality; in the sense that what is primary at a material level is made to 
be something of the Outside. To be more precise, it is made to be of a transcendental 
delimitation that relegates it to a territory that cannot be seen or spoken of—primary 
materiality is encased within the parameters of a distinction whereby it becomes 
delimited to an “in-itself ” on the side of a transcendental barrier that is across from 
thinghood. To impose this type of inside/outside distinction is precisely to enact a 
partition onto matter. 

According to Immanuel Kant, ‘Pure Reason’ is a faculty that makes a similar 
partition. (This, indeed, is dependent on the extent to which we take Kant to be 
saying that the phenomena/noumena distinction itself is an ‘Idea of Pure Reason’.)10 
The phenomena/noumena dichotomy is not a concept given through the categories 
of the Understanding; rather, it indexes a point at which Reason encounters a 
critical limit and produces this distinction in its striving to grasp an Idea of which 
there cannot be knowledge. The Idea in question is a world independent of our 
experience of it. In trying to conceive of this Idea, thought becomes determined 
under such significant constraints that try to explicate the problem, which descends 
into deep conceptual rabbit holes. If it is true that we cannot know the things in 
themselves, then how can one speak in terms of a world completely independent of 
our experience, when to speak of a world is to speak within the parameters of our 
mechanisms of representation? And, as Arthur Schopenhauer (perhaps gratuitously) 

10 For a more comprehensive and rigorous account of this partition and its implications, see Kant, Immaneul. 
Critique of Pure Reason. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.



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pointed out, how can one speak of things-in-themselves when to speak of things is to 
imply multiple objects (the conditions for which are the inner intuitions of space and 
time)?11 A world independent of our experience would not contain multiple things 
that we cannot know—it would simply be unknowable altogether. But to follow 
this line of questioning is to miss the point completely. To speak about the problem 
strictly in terms of “we can/cannot know the things in themselves,” and to point out 
contradictions in the words being used to articulate it (like in Schopenhauer’s case) 
wades into the pitfalls engendered by ‘Dialectical Reason.’12 (I. Kant, Transcendental 
Dialectic, First Book, On the concepts of pure reason 1998) (I. Kant, Second Book 
of the Transcendental Dialectic, First Chapter, The paralogisms of pure reason 1998)
One could consider Schopenhauer’s criticism: “how can you say thing in itself when 
even thinghood is something conditioned by out interaction with the world?” But 
this contradiction bespeaks the nature of the problem.  It is precisely due to the nature 
of the possible pitfalls produced by this problem that Kant knows to say very little 
about things-in-themselves or a world independent of our experience—he simply 
says that you may think it, but that you cannot cognize it. In this paper, I do not aim 
to take an extreme position on one side of the very famous and inflated philosophical 
divide that this problem precipitates. In fact, if Kant were indeed correct, and if he 
were indeed saying what we take him to be saying, many of the philosophers who 
have fiercely articulated opposing positions of this divide have merely been bickering 
from two dyads of an antinomy of Pure Reason. Instead, I am of the opinion that 
this Idea of Pure Reason is a compelling example of partitioning at a transcendental 
level, which appears to be of something that has an extremely significant purchase on 
tendencies of thought. We do not take the fact that this inside/outside distinction is 
an Idea of Pure Reason to mean that we cannot talk about processes that implicate 
such a partition; rather, we understand it to be a powerful example of this tendency 
that lends itself to the point that we are trying to make about the significance of 
partitioning as a feature of cognition. 

 b) Unification/Complexity 

A thing is a type of simple unity that can be further integrated into other unified 
schemata of representation. If I am to identify an object that is in front of me, I can 
apprehend that object as a simplicity to the extent that it is totalizable in thought. I 
can integrate this object into a whole of compared and connected representations – a 
cognition, in the Kantian sense of the word.13 Not only does identification facilitate 

11 Schopenhauer, Arthur. The World as Will and Representation. New York: Dover Publishing, 1969.
12 See Kant, Immaneul. Critique of Pure Reason. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998., specifically the 

sections; "Transcendental Dialectic, First Book, On the concepts of pure reason." In Critique of Pure Reason, by 
Immanuel Kant, 394-95. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998., "Second Book of the Transcendental 
Dialectic, First Chapter, The paralogisms of pure reason." In Critique of Pure Reason, by Immanuel Kant, 438-39. 
New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998., and the section "Transcendental Dialectic." In Critique of Pure 
Reason, by Immanuel Kant. in general, wherein illusion and fallacious inference of unrestricted pure reason is 
termed “dialectical.”

13 Ibid.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

more sophisticated operations of connecting and comparing representations, but the 
act of identification itself implicates the apprehension of simplicity to the extent that 
a thing is a unified simplicity. Even if I can analyze and break down a thing into many 
different parts (or even different things), I will never stray outside the category of 
thinghood, and I cannot venture into the wilderness which identification partitions 
out without losing all semblance of thinghood and representation. Underneath, 
however, the operations of simplicity lies a dense complexity that bears no 
resemblance to the identity of thinghood. Contemporaneous with the apprehension 
of a simple identity such as thinghood are highly complex processes and firings at 
the molecular level of the brain. Additionally, the brain itself is a highly complex 
structure with more densely layered intricacies in functioning than the most robust 
computer (currently, at least), and the brain is nested within the larger—but still 
highly complex—structure of the human body, which is far from short of coexisting 
and comingling systems of organization. The dense material complexity of the 
body is an example of a highly stratified structure, which functions as the productive 
conditioning for “higher-level” operations (in this case, operations of identification, 
cognition, representation) without resembling them.

5) Conceptual Regimes; Societies of Control

In a short essay entitled Postscript on the Societies of Control,14 Deleuze identifies two 
distinct conceptual structures that accord with two distinct regimes of domination. At 
the time of writing the essay, according to Deleuze, society was standing on a precipice 
that faces an auspicious horizon: the arrival of a new regime—control societies. The 
regime that Michele Foucault called the “disciplinary society” is progressively being 
phased out in favor of a regime with an essentially different conceptual structure.15 
Deleuze compares the structures of the two regimes and indexes distinctions that 
concern a difference of concepts. Each of the two societies incarnates a distinct 
conceptual structure, and domination is effectuated in accordance to the structure of 
each particular concept. I believe that Deleuze’s analysis and theoretical approach lend 
themselves to a concrete example of what we have been referring to as “conceptual 
regimes,” or regimes that are guided by concepts.  The two concepts in question are 
not only a way to describe either regime, but they are also something that is said of 
each regime in a significant sense. Below, we will briefly outline some of the structural 
differences that Deleuze indexes in each regime. His allusion to the increasing level of 
complexity in the new regime also gives us another example of the dynamic between 
high degrees of stratification and simplicity. The distinctions between the two 
regimes discussed in the essay will be referenced in terms of identification, territory, 
and complexity. 

14 Deleuze, Gilles. "Postscript on the Societies of Control." October, 1992: 3-7. 
15 Ibid. “… a disciplinary society was what we already no longer were, what we had ceased to be. We are in a 

generalized crisis in relation to all the environments of enclosure – prison, hospital, factory, school, family.”



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Identification: The precise manner in which each regime brings a citizenry into 
its order of identification presents two distinct cases. Under the mechanisms of 
disciplinary societies, citizens are placed on one side of an individual/group partition, 
and are defined and identified by the regime in accordance with these limitations. 
The individual is determined in contradistinction to the group. But the workings of 
control societies facilitate an identification that is more abstract: “We no longer find 
ourselves dealing with the mass/individual pair. Individuals have become “dividuals,” 
and masses, samples, data, markets or ‘banks.’”16 The aforementioned individual/
group partition no longer has a place in the primary conceptual mechanisms of 
control societies—operations of quantitative abstraction act on the populace such 
that they primarily become identified as abstract mathematical aggregates. 

Territory: The spaces of disciplinary societies are analogically connected enclosures or 
molds. Each enclosure is an independent variable that starts from zero. The individual 
is at school, now at work, now with the family; one “never stops starting” from zero.17 
Disciplinary societies consist in spaces in which the individual always starts from a 
blank slate in learning a new discipline (work, schooling, family). In contrast with 
this, societies of control are characterized by the continuous modulation of metastable 
states; one is always undergoing more training, preparation or schooling.18 The 
closures of disciplinary societies dissipate, opening wide onto a complicated, 
seemingly un-partitioned space of flux, continuity, and relationality that give 
themselves to power; there is no longer a political space because everything is now 
political; there is no space in which privacy exists to the extent that mechanisms of 
surveillance only become more and more sophisticated. The ‘public sphere’ is no 
longer a distinct, purely physical space, but rather becomes inverted and enmeshed 
with certain pockets of cyberspace.  

Complexity/Stratification and Identity: The arrival of control societies at the impending 
end of the twentieth century bespeaks an omen which envisions a labyrinthine 
entanglement of connected serpent tails and cryptic vapors which conceal molecules 
of venom. The change from disciplinary societies to control societies indexes a distinct 
increase in complexity.19 (“The coils of a serpent are even more complex than the 
burrows of a molehill.”) The (conceptual) structure of the control regime is far more 
complex than the structure of the disciplinary regime it supersedes. This is also to 
say that control societies are more rigorously stratified than disciplinary societies. 
And it is none other than this dense level of stratification in terms of complex 
structural organization that facilitates the emergence of unified simplicities. A degree 
of stratification which is adequate to an idea of rigorous complexity is the condition for 
the possibility of emergent simplicities. In the particular case of a conceptual regime, 

16 Ibid.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid.
19 “The coils of a serpent are even more complex than the burrows of a molehill.” Ibid.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

high complexity facilitates unifications and simplicities at the surface level of its 
functioning and instantiation. For, in fact, a corporation or a data is nothing more 
than one of these mysterious, “emergent” simplicities?20 And to the extent that it 
becomes a function of political tactics that are currently deployed within control 
societies, is identity not one of these simplicities? The current tactical use of identity 
in American political spaces is extremely ubiquitous, from racial identitarianism 
on the right, to identity as a compartmentalizing mechanism for groups which are 
purported to require activist assistance on the left. Meanwhile, many people who 
claim they would like to move away from “identity politics” have no problem 
appealing to the abstract identity of the country, the equalizing power of which is 
apparently sufficient in subsuming any and all adversarial relations between groups. 
Identity has become widespread as a political tool because the current parameters of 
domination under which we are determined facilitate the intensified instantiation of 
this vaporous simplicity. Obviously, identity is an illusion that has long had a formal 
reality contemporaneous with the abstract and material processes of the brain. It just 
so happens that the complexity of the current regime determines its effectiveness as 
a political tool. This is not something that was present when Deleuze was analyzing 
the characteristics of control societies. Perhaps even this highly complex regime has 
reached its critical point of saturation. 

6) Complexity - The Body

Another complex structure, which facilitates the ‘functioning of unities’ like 
identity, is the Human. Humans are highly stratified organisms. It is this high degree 
of stratification at the material level—in this case, at the level of the body—that 
facilitates the capacity to identify and stratify at the level of cognition. In general, highly 
stratified systems have the capacity to produce sophisticated schemata of unified and 
simple understandings. The high level of material stratification in the body as a whole 
also facilitates abstract functions like identity, concepts, and conceptualization. The 
human body is a highly complex machine, even within just the eye/brain connection 
alone. In a procedure that requires a high amount of processing power, the brain 
creates the illusory experience of looking “through” one’s eyes. In reality, however, 
the retina—which is at the back of the eye—stops all light, and what appears as 
a continuity of colors and shade are in fact “pictures” or “frames” that are discretely 
captured and transmitted as electrical impulses by the retina’s nerve cells (and then 
sent to the brain).21 In the 1960s, David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel proved that about 
half of the nerves that connect the eye to the brain are not simply passive receptors of 
light input, and that some fibers in the optic nerve actually convey highly complex 

20 Deleuze, Gilles. "Postscript on the Societies of Control." October, 1992: 3-7. “… but in a society of control, the 
corporation has replaced the factory, and the corporation is a spirit, a gas.”

21 Stewart, Jack Cohen and Ian. "Collapse of Chaos; Discovering Simplicity in a Complex World." In Collapse 
of Chaos; Discovering Simplicity in a Complex World, by Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart, 155. New York: Penguin 
Books, 1994.



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messages to the brain in the form of electrical impulses.22 We see in three dimensional 
dimensions, even though our eyes only receive input from two. This is because both 
halves of the optic tectum (also known as the Superior colliculus in the literature, a 
structure common to the mammalian midbrain, which contains the neuronal visual 
pathways of both eyes) receive information from each eye—the right side of each 
retina sends its information to the left side of the tectum, and vice versa.23 The ear 
is another very complex organic device; the extremely small hair cells (of which 
humans have 15,000) on the basilar membrane are tuned to specific frequencies 
so that particular pitches are sensed at different positions along the cochlea.24 The 
cochlea is a “tuned receptor” that converts frequencies from vibrations of the eardrum 
to corresponding positions of vibration in the basilar membrane.25 The brain itself 
is an organ that also has a deeply intricate “structure.” The cerebrum consists of 
two cerebral hemispheres, and each hemisphere is connected to the other by thick 
bands of nerve fibers, with one larger fiber known as the corpus callosum.26 Each 
hemisphere has approximately three layers; the first and outer layer (i.e.  the cerebral 
cortex), the second and central layer, which is made up of white matter, and the 
third and deepest layer (also known as the basila ganglia), which is made up of gray 
matter.27 If we look deeper into the brain, we find other structures such as the thalamus 
or the hypothalamus. Each sub-structure of the brain has its own intricate internal 
organization, and different sections of the brain correspond to different aspects of 
cognitive function.28 The body is certainly replete with order and organization, and 
to this extent, qualifies as a very stratified aggregate of matter. 

7) Concepts and Materiality

Concepts are not precluded from interacting with materiality by virtue of their 
abstract level/function. This notion presupposes a framing of the distinction between 
the abstract and the concrete, which is unsustainable to the extent that it implies a 
relation of strict separation between the two. In reality, the abstract and the concrete 
are enmeshed within each other, and thinking is both a locus of convergence and 
an interpenetration between the two levels. I do not wish to imply that the abstract 
and that the concrete are not distinct or different from one another. Rather, we are 
calling into question the precise nature of their separation. They can be thought of 

22 Stewart, Jack Cohen and Ian. "Collapse of Chaos; Discovering Simplicity in a Complex World." In Collapse 
of Chaos; Discovering Simplicity in a Complex World, by Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart, 156. New York: Penguin 
Books, 1994.

23 Ibid.
24 Stewart, Jack Cohen and Ian. "Collapse of Chaos; Discovering Simplicity in a Complex World." In Collapse 

of Chaos; Discovering Simplicity in a Complex World, by Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart, 158. New York: Penguin 
Books, 1994.

25 Ibid.
26 Stewart, Jack Cohen and Ian. "Collapse of Chaos; Discovering Simplicity in a Complex World." In Collapse of 

Chaos; Discovering Simplicity in a Complex World, by Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart, 170-171. New York: Penguin 
Books, 1994. 

27 Ibid.
28 Ibid.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

as two different and distinct levels, each with its own distinctive order and dynamic. 
Additionally, the concrete and the abstract can also be understood as levels that are 
significantly interconnected and always in relations of mutual interaction. There is a 
widely discussed phenomenon in science that can give us examples of how different 
levels of matter can, while remaining distinct and disparate, be internally connected 
to one another. This is what is typically referred to as emergence. For example; the 
gas laws, which are indexed by statistical properties, are determined by dynamics at 
a micro-level (which is to say a non-statistical level);29 pressure is measured by the 
average number of molecules in a given region of gas; temperature is the average 
kinetic energy of the gas molecules.30The simple apprehensible averages constitutive 
of the gas laws are produced by dynamics at a level of matter that is different in 
nature from the “emergent” level of statistical features. A complex molecular 
dynamic (in this case, the interactions and dynamics of the gas molecules) produces 
molar simplicities (the averages which constitute the gas laws).31 Another popular 
example of emergence is the case of the Mandelbrot set, in which a high degree 
of geometrical complexity is generated by “simple” dynamical rules that bear no 
resemblance to what they produce. There is no apparent connection between the 
dense intricacies of the Mandelbrot fractal and the terse simplicity of the rules for 
making the Mandelbrot set. These examples are meant to demonstrate scientifically 
observable instances of feedback and resonance between disparate levels of matter. 
The contention is merely that a similar relation between levels exists in the case of 
the abstract-concrete distinction, not that this instance is fundamentally the same in 
nature as these scientific examples.

If we accept that there are disparate levels of matter that are nevertheless in a 
relation, then we can establish the two most relevant levels to the problem of the 
abstract/concrete distinction. There is a conceptual level—an order of matter purely 
concerned with concepts—and an explicitly material level of matter. The former 
corresponds to what one might think of as the abstract and the latter as the concrete. 
The cognitive activity of a human brain (material/concrete level) imposes partitions 
onto concepts, which transforms and reconfigures said concepts (conceptual/abstract 
level) until the reconfiguration of the concept affects activity at the material level of 
matter. There exists a counter-effectuation of concept and materiality; the cognitive 
activity of humans entails conceptual re-configurations, implemented partitions, 
and transformations at the purely conceptual level. These transformations make a 
difference, insofar as that cognition imposes partitions that entail a distinct change in 
what thought is interacting with (thought engages with a re-configured concept), as 

29 Ibid.
30 Stewart, Jack Cohen and Ian. "Collapse of Chaos; Discovering Simplicity in a Complex World." In Collapse of 

Chaos; Discovering Simplicity in a Complex World, by Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart, 233-234. New York: Penguin 
Books, 1994.

31 For various thorough conceptualizations of relations between “molecular” and “molar”, see A Thousand Plateaus; 
Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987., and Anti-Oedipus; Capitalism 
and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983.



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well as in how it is functioning. Thinking a transformed concept, as well as thinking 
the transformation of a concept, exacerbates different tendencies and intensities of 
thought. A concept always corresponds to a degree of intensity—or an intensive 
zone—to the extent that the concept is grasped within thought. To provide a rough 
mathematic sequence of what occurs, a reconfiguration in the concept = a change in 
intensity = thought traverses a new zone of intensity. To the extent that thought is 
something that occurs in the brain, a material difference made in thought necessitates 
a difference made in materiality in general. The difference is made not only at a 
molecular level—the material processes that occur in the brain—but also at a molar 
level; differences made in thought can cause people to take different actions, and 
to react differently to stimuli than they otherwise would have. To re-encapsulate 
the dynamic, thought subsists in materiality and in material processes (thought 
subsists in a brain). Thought enacts transformations at the level of concepts, the 
transformation of concepts, and enacts a new difference in thought, which effectuates 
change at molecular and molar levels of materiality. 

Outlining this dynamic of abstract and concrete levels and their relation to thought 
also sheds light on the precise nature of thought’s position. That is, thought is a point of 
convergence and interpenetration between the two levels. What is abstract is immediately 
apprehensible to thought and is cognizable a priori. Mathematical universals are the 
best example of this: a right angle, a straight line, an equilateral triangle, all of which 
are perfectly cognizable a priori. These things are immediately apprehensible and 
graspable in thought, and they have their own order of necessity. I am perfectly 
capable of cognizing a straight line a priori, and the essence of the straight line is such 
that if I imagine three straight lines congruent with one another, they each form an 
equilateral triangle. However, one never encounters in experience (i.e. ‘the concrete’) a 
perfectly straight line. What is ‘concrete,’ on the other hand, is clearly and immediately 
grasped by mechanisms of perception. Yet, there are things encountered in experience 
that are clearly not cognizable a priori (or, at least, not as easily as our straight-line 
example). The example that Aristotle gives is “the snub nose.”32 A misshaped nose 
is something immediately perceived; however, we cannot grasp it in thought with 
the same efficacy as we do with mathematical universals. The abstract is concrete in 
thought, but the concrete is abstract to thought. If we relate this configuration of the 
abstract/concrete distinction regarding thought to our discussion of conceptual/
material orders of matter, we can also view the interaction of the two orders (concepts 
and materiality) in another equally valid way; concepts are something abstract, and 
engage, and deal with, the concrete abstractly, or by virtue of abstract connections. 
The cognition of an object is an action that is enmeshed within the territory of the 
concrete, but the activity of cognition entails the powers and aspects of the abstract, 
abstract faculties, and the powers of abstraction.(I am tentatively defining abstraction 

32 For a similar distinction between differences in accessibility of the Abstract and the Concrete, see Aristotle’s 
Metaphysics.



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here as the apprehension of abstract properties [the straight/straight line], which are 
coextensive with the cognition and experience of a concrete object.)

8) The Implementation of Concepts in a Regime

 In order that a regime effectively realize the concept that is said about it, concepts 
must be configured and interacted within a particular way. This can be understood 
in terms of the conceptual-materiality circuit. The material order and the conceptual 
order must interact in order to implement conceptual structures into material 
structures of control.  A partitioning and value distribution process must occur in 
terms of concepts in order for this to happen. This is something that is necessary 
for the regime to employ, since concepts apprehended at a purely abstract level are 
not sufficient for political instantiation. Take something like equality: even though 
a dichotomous relation can be said of purely conceptual articulations of equality—
to the extent that equal/unequal is an abstract conceptual principle—articulations 
that are exclusively of the conceptual level are obviously not insufficient for politics. 
The order of the abstract on its own is too cold for political dynamics; heat must be 
applied in order to set things in motion. A partition must be applied to the concept, 
and values must be distributed according to the partition. At the conceptual level, a 
stricter partition must be applied to equality; the partition is imposed as an overlay 
to the purely conceptual dichotomy (equality/inequality), and different values are 
distributed to the two sides of the instantiated partition. In accordance with the 
relation of feedback between levels, the implementation of this partition functions 
on the part of those material institutions that conceive of it, who, in turn, determine 
the concept of equality in a certain way. The determination of this concept effectuates 
how the political program carries out that conception, and in what manner it does so 
at the actual/concrete level.  It might be objected that the aforementioned dichotomy 
of equal/unequal already invokes a type of conceptual partition, even though we are 
talking about it as if it is something different in kind from the partitioning process. 
This type of dichotomy exists completely a priori, so even if a partition is said about it, 
it is a partition that occurs at a level irrelevant/distinct from the political instantiation 
of concepts. Pairs of a priori conceptual differences, such as straight/curved, discrete/
continuous, or equality/inequality, are not deliberate partitions on the part of any 
given subject or regime. It would be more accurate to say that they are conceptual 
dichotomies that incarnate tendencies and internal limitations in thought. 

9) Conclusion; Complexity – The Order of Knowledge and 
Nihilism 

If we are told that the arrow of time necessarily corresponds to an increase in disorder, 
then the trajectories of both control structures and the domain of human knowledge 
would exemplify a tendency that does not accord with this postulate. The arrow of 
time that follows the trajectories of our control-cognition double helix also appears 



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Cognition, Domination and Complexity

to correspond with a progressive increase of order rather than disorder over time. 
Deleuze’s example of control societies alludes to this—political domination begins 
to become more complex, more sophisticated. Even before the control society, the 
modern State in general appeared to index something particularly sophisticated 
and abstract. What exactly is the State? It is not completely physical since many of 
its important functions (such as law and rights) are not concrete. Yet, despite not 
being completely physical, it clearly exists, and disobeying the injunctions of this 
thing that is not completely physical still has concrete material consequences (such 
as going to jail or paying a fine). On the other side of the double helix, the body of 
human knowledge becomes extremely saturated with systems and sub-systems of 
organization. Knowledge considered as a total body is not only a system of information-
preservation and organization. It is also like a gigantic complex of interlocking and 
communicating systems. Different intellectual disciplines communicate and interact 
with one another, often forming new sub-disciplines. Sometimes there is even a 
synthesis that produces a completely novel field. Even as older schemata become 
phased out or invalidated by new discoveries, archaic systems or ideas sometimes 
resonate with newer scientific projects, and can be re-integrated and updated into 
contemporary scientific practices. The order of knowledge is like an expanding but 
increasingly detailed web whose parallel lines resonate and communicate with one 
another. Different sections of the web are sometimes folded into and connected to 
other parts of the web, yet, the structural totality retains its distinct parts, and the 
entire thing continues to increase in size and detail. 

However, as this web becomes more and more detailed, a corresponding dynamic 
arises that is different from the other dynamics contemporaneous with complexity 
that we touched upon earlier. This web of knowledge possesses within it unified 
simplicities, but there is no higher-level simplicity that emerges on behalf of this 
sprawling structure of complexity. In the complexity of the human body/brain, 
we have something like identity, as well as abstract operations of identification 
and cognition. In the practice of science, which is an activity within the body of 
knowledge, we have the conceptualization and unification of phenomena under 
laws of nature. With the increased complexity of control societies, we witness the 
emergent function of certain mechanisms like corporations, data sets, and code. 
Where is the level of unification that corresponds to this highly stratified body of 
knowledge? There does not appear to be a connected level of unified simplicities 
and/or abstractions that corresponds to this complex web. However, this does not 
mean that there is no a corresponding dynamic related to the increasing order in 
the body of knowledge. As knowledge becomes more saturated with order, another 
tendency intensifies in connection with the former dynamic. If one looks up for a 
corresponding process of unification at a higher level, it looks like nothing is there. 
But if one looks down below, he will find that there is nothing. There seems to be a 
flattening effect; something becomes liquidated, something is increasingly becoming 



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leveled. The progressive acquisition and articulation of abstract universals on behalf 
of knowledge causes the implementation of a concrete universal of disenchantment 
among those organisms that are supposed to be its inheritors. The more about the 
world that is rigorously explicated and systematized on behalf of knowledge, the 
more that we seem to feel as if something that once deeply belonged to us is being 
expropriated from us before our very eyes. In fact, there seems to be almost no limit 
to what can be expropriated from our most cherished, personal intuitions about 
ourselves as they become articulated and codified into the colder, more impersonal 
territory of knowledge. This is because processes of knowledge and intelligence 
disintegrate, and what is being disintegrated are the givens upon which we have 
constructed very useful fortresses of illusion and ignorance that keep us sheltered 
from the Outside. Rather than producing a corresponding dynamic of unification, 
the trajectory of knowledge effectuates a dynamic of the intensified disintegration 
and destruction of unities —the destruction of givens which knowledge finds to have 
never existed in the first place. The liquidation of the ‘given’ opens humanity up to the 
absolute indifference of a universe that does not consider humankind to be nearly 
as important as it finds itself. Looking to a universe that operates with complete 
autonomy (but with no knowledge), we find ourselves on the other side of that 
chiasmus, as something endowed with knowledge, but with little to no autonomy. 
In understanding itself to be determined by impersonal and autonomous processes 
which lack knowledge, something which possesses knowledge apprehends its own lack 
of autonomy. Paradoxically, the condition of possibility for cognizing such a disparity 
is a condition that is produced by the autonomous—by a blind god. As the structure 
of knowledge becomes more saturated with order and detail, nihility coagulates and 
rises from the core of the Earth, oozing through the cracks in the surface, melting the 
ground below us. But there is nowhere to go but further down. ◆



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